Eric Shaw Quinn

Brighton parked her Prius on the far side of the lot at Sunset Plaza.

She stared through the window at the amazing view of the city.  The best views at Sunset Plaza were in the parking lot.  The odd collection of designer shops, restaurants, salons and Eurotrash hangouts was perched on a ridge along the south side of Sunset Boulevard.  The tables and the show windows were all on the streetside so that the patrons could be seen.  The parking lots, at the back, faced a majestic view of the Los Angeles basin over the rooftops of West Hollywood.

Using the mirrors and a ruse of checking her makeup, Brighton surveyed the parking lot to make sure she hadn’t been followed.

No sign.

Warily, she emerged from the little black car.  Shouldering her oversized black bag, she again scanned the lot.  A couple of girls in impossible heels and blackout sunglasses, their hands filled with shopping bags, clattered down the stairs and across the pavement to their Bentley.  A few rows over, a couple emerged from their standard-tourist-issue-looky-loo-rental-red-Mustang-convertible.

Brighton smiled.  The couple, like most tourists to Los Angeles, were dressed as they thought people from Los Angeles dressed.  The girl’s gold-chainmail off-the-shoulder-handkerchief top hung precariously from her breasts.  Her companion’s hyper-embroidered designer jean pockets drooped well below his butt cheeks.  The sight lifted Brighton’s spirit’s.

Lowering her guard, she took a couple of tentative steps.  Persols shielding her eyes, she moved out from under the shade of the tree she was parked beside and into the lot.  The garish out-of-towners and the giggling Bentley girls, lifted her mood.

She smiled.

It was a perfect LA afternoon.  Sunny, cloudless, cool, a breeze rustled the leaves overhead.

Brighton flinched.  A black SUV with darkened windows had somehow managed to steal up behind her.  She saw the reflection of the Darthmobile in the window of a nearby Austin-Martin.  Pretending to search her pocketbook, she stepped into the shadowy alley between a nearby Hummer and a Range Rover.  Risking it, she turned to look.  The Darth was driven by a bleached-blonde-Beverly-Hills-shiksa-housefrau orbiting the parking lot.  She would burn up half a tank of gas waiting for a space ten feet closer to the door and was oblivious to Brighton and anything other than a prime space or someone leaving one.

Though relieved, Brighton’s spider senses still tingled.  She darted between parked cars erratically to avoid becoming an easy target.  She hit the back door of Chin Chin and raced up the tiled stairs to the street level dining room above.  A booth in the back was negotiated with the host in hushed tones.  Brighton settled in, her back to the wall, out of sight but with a view of the nearly empty room.  It was late for lunch, even in LA and early for dinner for those under 80.  She liked the quiet.

Convinced of her safety for the moment, her breath became steady.  She relaxed on the uncomfortable wooden banquette.  She surveyed the tall skinny menu.  Visions of shrimp toast danced in her head.  It was a long ago luxury she had eschewed along with most carbs, but in such proximity of her crispy fantasy she dreamt shrimp toast dreams.

Her crustacean meditation was shattered by lightning flashes and chaotic, frenzied, familiar shouts.

“Over here, Milan.”

“This way, Milan.  One for me.”

“Hey Milan, how much have you earned from the video?”

The video was called A Weekend in Milan.  It was a home movie of Brighton’s sister, Milan, engaging in a Karma Sutra’s worth of sexual antics with Brighton’s ex-boyfriend, Cody, all over the Carlton family vacation home in Aspen.  The commercial release of the video had been a key cause of Brighton’s break-up with Cody.  She hadn’t spoken to Milan until she could no longer stand to read about her not speaking to Milan every time she went to the grocery store or passed a newsstand.  She managed to patch things up with her sister but she never again ate at the breakfast table in their Aspen house.

“Naughty, naughty,” Milan giggled, shaking a finger at the photographer who asked the offending question.  With a photogenic toss of her fake blonde hair, she disappeared through the glass door and stepped behind the wall of plate glass.  Milan waved at Brighton as she runway-walked across the fishbowl of a restaurant.  “Brighton,” she shouted for the benefit of at least the photogs plastered against the windows like flies on a screen door on garbage day.

Milan was the sort of person who did everything as though someone was watching.

Brighton lifted the outsized black leather menu over her face and pretended not to see her sister or the swarm of paparazzi buzzing behind her.  She knew her sister had set her up.  She knew Milan had either tipped off the paps or found them and allowed herself to get “caught” and lead them there.

“I thought we were here to have lunch,” Brighton said, unsuccessfully trying to avoid the showy kisses her sister planted on both Brighton’s cheeks (and the pages of the next week’s tab mags.)

“We’re at Chin Chin,” Milan said, tossing herself into the both, clearly frustrated that her back would be to the windows.  “I thought you liked Chinese.”

“This is a photo op,” Brighton said with a sigh.  Giving up, she put down her menu.  “What do you want?”

“Why do I have to want something?” Milan said, straddling the banquette and turning so she was in profile to the cameras.  “Can’t I just have lunch with my sister?”

“Since when do you eat lunch?” Brighton asked with a laugh, amused at the idea.  “I can’t remember seeing you eat at all.  Not since we were kids.  Are you a vampire? So, trendy.”

“Don’t be like that, Brightie,” Milan said.

“Okay, Millie,” Brighton answered with a look that Milan returned.  Both hated the nicknames and would not use them again at that lunch unless there was a fight.  “Shrimp toast?”

“Just some tea,” Milan said, drumming her thick, fake nails on the menu.

“Tea is not lunch,” Brighton sniped.

“And a Chinois Chicken Salad.  Half.  Or we could split half.  Are you hungry?   I’m really not that…”

“What do you want, Milan?” Brighton enunciated firmly, cutting her sister short.

“What do you want?” Milan huffed.

“Shrimp toast.”

Another look.

“A pot of jasmine tea and two cups,” Brighton called to a member of the staff, most of whom were trying to look busy and get in the shot with Milan at the same time.  The trick was to not to block Milan but to get close enough into the frame that you couldn’t be easily cropped out.

Four of the black-apron-wrapped waiters scurried at the sound of Brighton’s voice.  Two collided.  One jumped a chair to be first to fill the order.

“Well?” Brighton said.  She fixed Milan with her patented And-That-Is-The-End stare and held Milan in it until her sister squirmed and looked away.  Milan may have gotten most of the press and all of Brighton’s boyfriends, but the look-could-kill event went to Brighton every time.

“They want me to do a reality show and I thought it would be great for your clothing line if you were in it.”  Milan blurted it out so abruptly that a nearby waiter, pretending to attend to planter of bamboo, gasped.  Caught he blushed and fled.

“Just thinking of me, eh?” Brighton said.  The look.

“I thought it would more interesting if we were both in it,” Milan winced under the glare.

The waiter arrived with the tea but was frightened by the way Brighton was looking at Milan and left before he could get his picture taken or ask them if they wanted to order.

“You’re smarter than me and it’ll just be . . .” Milan sighed.  “They won’t do it unless we’re both in it.  They want to capitalize on the fight over Co. . .”

“No.”

“Oh, come on,” Milan pleaded getting up and squeezing in on Brighton’s side of the booth.  It not only allowed her to wheedle Brighton more directly, she was once again facing the camera and, best of all, out of Brighton’s creepy-look eye line.  “It’ll be fun.  They’ll get us a place in West Hollywood and decorate it all up . . .”

“We both already live in West Hollywood.”

“Not a real place,” Milan explained petulantly.  “Something fun and hip and authentic.  And then they follow us around for a few days . . .”

“Just like the show you already did with Cissy?”

“Not exactly,” Milan said, putting her head on Brighton’s shoulder.  “We’ll call it Sisters.  Hot, right?”

“Why not just get Cissy to do it with you?”

“She’s mad at me.”

“I understand that make these kinds of things more popular.”

“She won’t speak to me.”

“Oh my God, Milan,” Brighton said turning and trying to catch her sister with the glare.  “Did you sleep with Cissy’s husband.”

“Ex-husband.”

“Since when?”

“Since I slept with him.”

 

. . . to be continued.