American Girls(4)

“I’ll be the judge of that. Well, right now, I’m missing work because my phone rang this morning and I had to talk Cora off the ledge. Seriously, I’ve got to hand it to you. I thought I was a grade-A f*ckup for not going to college, but you’re leaving me in the dust. Is something happening?” Her voice lowered a bit. “Is anyone molesting you? Because I wouldn’t send you back, and I would always believe you.”

“No!” I said. “Gross. Who would molest me? Dad? Lynette? No, it’s just … I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You flew all the way across the country and you don’t want to talk about it. Fine for now, but I’m gonna let you in on a little secret, they’re gonna want you to talk about it.”

I hadn’t seen my sister in almost a year. She’d always been pretty, but now she had the smoothed-down look of a Barbie doll. Her hair was straight and the glossy black of an expensive magazine cover. She had on a wifebeater, blue jeans, and five-inch-high dominatrix heels: black leather with silver studs. But she could still walk faster than me, in my Converse low-tops, Old Navy denim, and red Georgia sweatshirt.

“They wanted to send you right back home,” she said. “You can thank me for the fact that you get to stay here to cool off for a couple of days. But you’re under house arrest, okay? No running off to the Coffee Bean for celebrity sightings. I want to understand what’s going on. You know this makes me feel guilty too, don’t you?”

Just walking through the LA airport made me glad that I wasn’t in Atlanta. When you go up the escalators at the Atlanta airport there’s a mural on the walls that features a mystery-race toddler with creepy blurred-out genitals playing in a fountain. I think it’s supposed to be friendly and We love everyone, yay! but it’s just weird. The LA airport is the exact opposite; no one is trying to look friendly, and everyone we passed looked half starved and almost famous.

“You’re not listening,” she said. “Does it even bother you that I could lose my job for missing work today? Finding an actress to fill my shoes is like finding a clover in a clover field, okay? A thank-you would be in order.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Delia stopped walking and stared me down, like the old days.

“And thank you. Thaaaaannnnnnk youuuuuuuu.”

“A little sincerity never killed anyone,” she said, and then she gestured for me to hand over the bigger of my bags.

“So what are you working on?” I asked.

“Were you even listening when I called last weekend? It’s an indie horror flick about zombies and the organ trade in China.”

“Seriously?”

I hadn’t checked any other luggage, so we headed straight for the parking lot. It felt like I was going on vacation.

“Did you know that part of the reason they won’t get rid of the death penalty in China is the organ trade? And they don’t just execute people in prisons, they have these vans that drive around and pick people up and do away with them on the spot. So I’m supposed to be this American woman who sees a body thrown from one of the vans”—she paused in creepy horror-movie style—“only it’s not really dead yet. I think they’re trying to make a point, the director keeps talking about human rights and Amnesty International, but I think that’s to hide the fact that he can’t write dialogue. Not my problem as long as he can pay my salary,” she said. “You want to know what it’s called?”

“What?”

“Thief of Hearts. I mean, unless your lead zombie is Internet dating, it’s too tragically idiotic, right?” She was cracking herself up.

“I guess.”

We got into a BMW convertible that was definitely not my sister’s. It had magnets on the bumper that advertised private schools, or where someone vacationed, code letters that only other super-rich people would recognize.

“What’s the HH for?” I asked. “Heil Hitler?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The sticker, on the bumper. And SSI? Is that Nazi too?”

“Hilton Head and St. Simon’s Island. Vacation spots. Lord, Anna, there are more of those on bumpers in Atlanta than here. Where do you get these things?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “The Discovery Channel?”

For the longest time she was dating Roger, a film student who would have been hard-pressed to drive a ’92 Corolla off a used-car parking lot. But now she’s “just good friends” with the producer of the Bond flick that she lost the part for, and he lets her use his car when he’s abroad. Because friends do things like that in LA, especially when one of the friends is extremely good-looking.

“Let me finish about the film,” she said. “Not that you were listening. I’m practically the lead, only I’m down a kidney or something by the end.”

It was three hours earlier in California and the sky hadn’t started to get dark, but I felt tired. I leaned my head against the window and watched the traffic, the palm trees, the fruit stands on the sides of the streets. It was easy to be in California with my sister. She was the kind of person who people didn’t just buy drinks for—they offered her their cars, their homes, their credit cards. I knew what the week would be like if I stayed here—Pilates and yoga, a trip to the old perv who balanced her energy, a few days on the set, a manicure or a haircut, and maybe a sip of a beer when we went out with the producer when he came back, just to prove how “cool” he was. People were nice to me when I was with Delia because I was her sister. My sister would never have to steal five hundred bucks—if she so much as looked a little sad, someone was there to open his wallet.