American Girls(15)

“You mean Chips Ahoy! with the Taylor twins? Seriously?”

She nodded her head, and we both started laughing at the same time.

“That is the worst show in the history of the world,” I said.

Chips Ahoy! with Josh and Jeremy Taylor was a show about two very rich teenagers named Dan and Mickey Chip. For unknown reasons, they’re traveling the world on a yacht with their butler, trying to find their parents, who have been lost at sea. And somehow they’ve brought friends along. It might have been the single stupidest show in the history of television. I’ll bet even six-year-olds across America have turned their televisions off in disgust.

“How is that show even on television?” I said. “And how did you meet this guy?”

“At a movie,” she said. “And he knows the show is terrible. He’s working on his own pilot. The show pays really well. He’s actually quite funny.”

This is where I can never really trust Delia. Because she would talk about Roger’s student film, saying, “It’s actually quite deep,” when the only thing deep about Roger was his voice.

“Well his show isn’t.”

“Be polite,” she said.

My sister made a sharp right into the garage of a cardboard box of a four-story condo building that took up the entire city block. After she parked, Delia grabbed the box of doughnuts, checked her makeup one more time in the car mirror, and directed me to walk at a clip toward the elevator. “And remember, if he asks about last week, there was no Roger. Got it?”

“And I’m the family *?”

“No one’s an *, Anna.”

We rode the elevator to the fourth floor and walked to the last apartment on the left, 427. The door was cracked and a television was on extra loud in the living room, running classic movies. Marilyn Monroe in her fat phase was leaning over some crazy-looking sailor and fogging up his glasses. And not watching TV, but leaning over the breakfast bar eating an extra-large bowl of Cap’n Crunch, was Dex, who looked less like an LA writer than any boyfriend my sister had ever had.

“Boo,” my sister said, handing him the box of doughnuts.

“I missed you,” he said, and slapped my sister’s ass like they were in a relationship where she was capable of being fun. She moved his hand around her waist.

“This is my sister, Anna.”

“Cool,” he said, nodding his head. “How’s it going, Anna?”

I shrugged my shoulders like I had never met a boy before, like I was an unsocialized troll straight from Middle-Earth. Dex was about eight million times better-looking that most of the men my sister dated. He had a close-cropped ’do, almost bald with just a shadow of hair, and he was tall. Taller than Delia in her stiletto boots, so I’d say six foot two, easy, and slim but muscular. He had one of those superhero square jaws, and light brown eyes, and when he smiled the left side of his face dimpled. His teeth were spaced a little bit apart in front, and he wore a “Too Many Rich Crackers” T-shirt, with a box of faux Ritz crackers on it. I could totally, totally, totally understand why Chips Ahoy! was not a factor in the dating decision. He could have written in crayons, and I would have been like, “Go, Delia!”

“So you’re a writer?” I finally said.

“I am,” he said. “I just got back from Hungary, helping a friend with a documentary he’s doing on the local music scene. Flying back into LA, it’s a different earth.”

My sister leaned over his kitchen counter, running her fingers over the tops of the doughnuts.

“You know you want one,” Dex said in a voice that was probably reserved for when little sisters were out of the room. “Do it.”

“Poison.” She closed the top. “I can’t even look at it.”

Dex mouthed She lies at me and I whispered, “I know.” If he only knew the half of it.

“They’re starting the summer season of Chips this week, and Dex said you’ll be fine on the set, better than watching me do my herpes audition.” Delia smiled her most commercial, plastic smile and made a Wheel of Fortune swipe over her mouth and lady parts. “Herpes. It’s not just for ugly people anymore.”

“Is that what you’re supposed to say?” Dex nearly spit out his doughnut. His third doughnut.

“Of course not, but they should, right? I think they need to rebrand the herp, not make prettier commercials for some drug. I mean, it’s just mouth sores on your ass, right? There are worse things in the world. It needs a better name. You’re the writer. Suggestions?”

“Ass pox?”

“At least that sounds edgy,” Delia said. “‘Herpes’ sounds like something a really dirty Muppet would get.”

Around Dex, my sister was a little less fake, a little more like the Delia I grew up with, goofy, even. She said that she’d met him when they were both stuck in line waiting to see the opening of Three Girls to the Left, a gag-worthy romantic comedy about a sports reporter and a wannabe cheerleader who keep meeting each other at the same basketball games. I’m not even kidding. Delia had three lines as “Bitchy Cheerleader,” and Dex had worked on one of the rewrites. They were both ashamed to be seeing the film in the first place, since the party line in LA is that no one ever watches their own stuff. I imagined them as two chimps who’d caught each other looking in the mirror and decided it was awesome. At any rate, Dex bought Delia some Twizzlers, and she knew she liked him because she ate half the pack, even though she made sure to let me know that she wound up with a stomachache later that night. All of this I had learned on the elevator ride to Dex’s apartment, though she swore she’d told me before.