Angels on Sunset Boulevard Read online

  It was noon, and the SoCal sun flattened everything in sight, making everything look two-dimensional, as if drawn on a postcard—the guests lounging in bikinis by the David Hockney-blue swimming pool, the pool boys in their crisp white linens. At the Chateau, time seemed to stop in a cocoon of decadent luxury.

  She carried her board on her left hip and walked past the valet stand, where a Bentley convertible was parked. Johnny’s new car. Another gift from the record label.

  Taj lay down her skateboard and pushed off with her back foot—mongo style, they called it, because it was a bit more awkward and harder to pull off—balancing down the hill, cruising all the way. Johnny owned a different set of wheels now, but she still preferred to skate.

  The crowd gathered in front of the hotel suddenly went berserk, screaming and hooting. Taj looked up. Johnny had finally come out to the balcony; he was blowing kisses and waving. He caught her eye and smiled, gave her the thumbs-up. Taj nodded but didn’t return the smile. She weaved her way through the crying fans.

  To them, Johnny Silver was a hero. A rebel. An icon. A god.

  But to Taj, he was just the boy she loved who had broken her heart.

  Nick

  NICK HUNTINGTON WAS RUNNING LATE. AGAIN. IT was the usual story—too many things to do, too little time to do it all. School, then soccer practice, a shower, dinner with his stepsister, Fish—who at thirteen was left alone way too much, in his opinion, since their parents were never around—trying to get to Sunset before the weekend traffic hit, and failing miserably. He’d been stuck on Santa Monica for what seemed like hours, and when he finally pulled into one of the overpriced parking lots across from the club, the line in front of the Viper Room was ten deep on the sidewalk and snaked all the way down the hill.

  “River Phoenix bit it right here,” he heard someone say. It was the first thing anyone ever said about the Viper, as if claiming a dead actor added to the mystique of the place, and it probably did.

  Nick wormed his way through to the front. He had VIP tickets, thanks to Maxine; he was supposed to meet her in a booth in the lounge with the rest of the crew. He hoped she wouldn’t be too annoyed that he was late again. He really didn’t feel up to any Maxine drama right then.

  The club was packed wall-to-wall, by far the biggest crowd he’d ever seen at the Viper. Where did all these people come from? he wondered. What was the big deal? Sure, he liked Johnny Silver’s songs as much as anybody; he’d been one of the lucky few who’d seen the guy play at that party in the desert, when it seemed like everyone attending had experienced the same high, had shared the same visceral energy—it was the first time Nick understood what people meant when they described music as transporting them to a different place. Maybe it had been that TAP thing he’d drunk. That stuff they were handing out to everyone at the event. And afterward he couldn’t even remember what was so great about it, only that it had been an experience he wanted to feel again.

  What was it about this kid, Johnny Silver? Nick had heard he was some kind of homeschooled music prodigy some Internet phenom whose popularity had spread from the Los Angeles basin all the way around the world.

  Nick walked past the bar and saw Eric McKenzie, his cocaptain and best friend since second grade, sitting in the middle of a leather banquette, leaning over to the adjoining table to chat with Lindsay Lohan’s new boyfriend.

  “Yo, Nicky, over here!” Eric called. He was a lanky, good-looking boy, with a shock of red hair and a wide forehead. Like Nick, Eric played on all the varsity teams at Bennet Prep. He wasn’t the best athlete, but he was certainly the most enthusiastic. Eric was a starter on the varsity soccer team, but he gossiped like a girl—one of his most endearing qualities.

  Nick slid into the booth and nodded his greetings to the rest of their party—Clarissa Allen, Maxine’s second in command, who had been the most popular girl in school until Maxine had transferred to Bennet Prep. Clarissa was still stung by her dethronement, but she had decided that kowtowing to the enemy was better than being left out of the fun completely. Next to her were several girls who Nick was just starting to realize all looked the same, with their fluttery camisoles, tight skinny jeans, and pressed hair. They were as interchangeable as their names: Astley and Ashley and Amory and Avery. Something like that. And their boyfriends: guys on the soccer team, Trent and Hoyt and Carter and Hilson. His friends. Cookie-cutter versions of the same clean-cut American jock, West Coast version.

  He was beginning to wonder how many of his so-called friends he would be able to pick out of a lineup. It wasn’t that he didn’t pay attention; it was just that part of him was a little sick of his whole scene. They’d all been friends since preschool because their fathers worked with their mothers at the studios, or ran the studios, or starred in the pictures. Some of them already had their own reality TV shows on MTV or A&E; some of them had bit parts on Darren Starr melodramas; all of them thought they were definitely going to be famous one day. Just like Nicole Richie, except a little older and a whole lot thinner.

  And now they had all gathered here to anoint the newest star on Hollywood Boulevard: Johnny Silver, whose rise to the top had taken them all by surprise. A homegrown, grassroots phenomenon, some kid from the Valley, for God’s sake, who had no connections and no money, but who had captured the imagination of the world by talent alone. It was almost so old-fashioned none of them would believe it unless they had seen it for themselves.

  “Where’s Maxi?” he asked Eric.

  Eric shrugged. He had a nickname for Maxine too: Radioactive. But he held his tongue. “No idea. She was here a minute ago.” Eric handed him a bottle of vodka and an empty glass full of ice. “Drink up.”

  “Nah, I’ve got work to do later,” Nick said. “Plus I gotta drive.”

  “Never stopped you before, man.” Eric laughed.

  Nick smiled. He looked around the room. The show was already two and a half hours late; even for a rock show, this was pushing it. He decided to look for Maxine instead of waiting around. She was probably backstage, since her dad was part owner of the club, and Maxine liked nothing more than to be at the center of the action.

  “Excuse me, excuse me,” he said, trying not to shove people out of his way.

  Nick was surprised to find such a variety of kids at the show—sure, the Beverly Hills posse was represented in the VIP lounge, but the kids in the standing-room areas were a hodgepodge of styles and social classes. Grunge-rockers in their thrift-store plaid; goth girls showing off tongue rings; Mohawks and skinheads and Silver Lake kids with Bettie Page haircuts and boyfriends wearing old bowling shirts and baggy jeans. Artsy Japanese kids with their graffiti sneakers and blinged-out hip-hop kids with their crunk gold teeth and Louis Vuitton. Gorgeous Mexican girls from the barrio in tight tube tops and low-rise jeans that showed off their flat stomachs and J.Lo booty. Then there were the hard core Johnny Silver fans from the suburbs, already in their concert tees, their iPod recorders at the ready—you could tell the kids from the wrong side of the hills by their wide-eyed appreciation of it all.

  He cut through the line at the bar—“Watch it!” “Sorry”—and didn’t notice the admiring glances many girls threw his way. Nick was seventeen and classically handsome in the movie-star sense: a hint of Brad Pitt along the jawline, soft brown eyes like Orlando Bloom’s, a grimace like Josh Hartnett’s. He was six-four and moved with an ease that echoed his prowess on the playing fields.

  He was the kind of guy who could have anything he wanted. He usually did. Right now he wanted to see his girlfriend.

  The goon guarding the backstage door stopped him before he could get any farther.

  Nick held up the VIP ticket.

  “No dice. Need a backstage pass, dude.”

  “My girlfriend’s back there,” Nick protested.

  “Yeah, yours and everyone else’s.” The guard laughed.

  “C’mon, man, her dad owns this place. Maxine Ularte.”

  “You Maxine’s boyfriend?”
/>   “Yeah.”

  “Huh,” the guard said.

  A group of girls wearing passes that dipped low into their cleavage waved to the guard, and he let them through. Nick craned his neck to see if he could spot Maxine anywhere when the door was opened.

  He could see several groupies huddled together, whispering to one another, band members walking around, torsos pale and bare above leather jeans, caterers bringing out more champagne, and yes, a familiar dark head in the mix.

  Her back was turned to him, but he could recognize that back anywhere. Maxine’s black hair fell silkily down her shoulders; her tanned back was completely bare except for a string that held her halter top together underneath her shoulder blades.

  Maxine Ularte—even her last name was sexy. The girl all the guys at school were crazy for, and she had wanted him, had picked him above everyone else.

  But then again, that’s sort of the way of his world. Ever since he was little, he’d noticed how easy it was to get people to like him. Ever since he could remember, he’d always been the guy. Class president. National Honor Society. Captain of the soccer team. Everything came easy to Nick—he was rich, good-looking, popular. Although he never thought of it that way. He was just living his life.

  He was going to call her name when he realized she wasn’t alone. No, she was straddling someone. Someone whose hands were now all over Maxine’s back and undoing the knot that kept her top on. Maxine squirming in some guy’s lap. The guy getting up, Maxine still stuck to him like a leech, her legs now wrapped around his waist, her long hair obscuring the guy’s face. Not that Nick was too concerned about the guy’s face right now; it was his hands he was worried about. One of them had definitely disappeared up Maxine’s braless top.

  Then the door closed in his face, and he lost sight of the view.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Nick argued as he tried to shove his way forward to see if he could still catch them, before they … before what? It looked like it was too late to stop whatever it was that needed stopping. Maxine would do what she wanted to do. She was that kind of girl. Uncontrollable. It was part of her appeal.

  His stomach did a Montezuma’s Revenge—his favorite roller coaster at Knott’s Berry Farm when he was a kid. The one that turned you completely upside down.

  “Back off!” the guard barked, prodding him with a fat finger to the chest.

  He stepped away from the door—wanting to punch the guard, who was smirking in his face—when the back of his legs collided with something.

  “Oh, excuse me,” a voice behind him said.

  “My bad,” Nick said, turning to see whose foot he had crushed.

  It was a girl, he saw, in his heartbroken haze. A pretty girl with jet-black hair which fell in a graceful swoop above her shoulders. She was looking at him with catlike green eyes. She was gorgeous, even behind the thick square plastic frames she was wearing. An angel shrouded in black, from her leather jacket to her skinny jeans. He’d seen her before—but where?

  “Sorry,” Nick said again.

  “No worries.” She smiled.

  When had that become such a popular phrase? Nick knew one Aussie kid at Bennet who said it all the time, but now it seemed everyone said it. It usually bothered him, that slack-casual phrase—but from her it didn’t. She had sounded genuine, not affected and dismissive.

  She held up a backstage pass to the guard and walked easily into the room, leaving Nick alone on the other side of the door, suddenly feeling abandoned by the world.

  Then the houselights dimmed. The crowd started their rhythmic clapping. “Johnny. Johnny. Johnny. Johnny.” The curtain parted. The show was about to start.

  Nick walked blindly back to his seat, groping his way forward in the dark. He did a double take when he arrived at the table.

  Maxine was sitting in the booth. She waved at him with her long fingernails. There was no way she could have made her way back to the table before him, was there? Which meant that wasn’t Maxine he’d seen backstage … that was someone else.

  With a sigh of relief, he slid back into the banquette.

  “Hey baby, where’d you go?” she purred.

  “Looking for you,” he said.

  “Silly boy. I was here all along.”

  Taj

  SHE’D SEEN THAT BOY BEFORE, SHE THOUGHT. THE dark-haired one who’d bumped into her. It was hard to forget his face; he was that handsome. Not that Taj was interested—he had Westside written all over him, from his black Lacoste shirt to the dark denim jeans and the Tevas. Just another asshole rich kid, although he had seemed polite enough, and sorry that he had stepped on her toe. Ow. She bet he drove a European car, went to some fancy private school, and thought the city of Los Angeles ended at La Cienega—the boulevard of demarcation that no one from Beverly Hills ever dared to cross. Forget him.

  Taj scissored through the maze of bodies pressed against one another backstage. The excitement in the air was so strong it was almost a physical sensation—so many people determined to be part of it, the crowning of a new rock icon. This would be the kind of concert that generations would lie about forever—“I was there the night Johnny rocked the Viper” equal to having been at the Sex Pistols’ first gig at Central Saint Martins or having caught Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival.

  She’d counted thirteen camera crews set up around the stage; a fifty-foot boom hovered above the floodlights. If rock history was going to be written tonight, Access Hollywood wasn’t going to miss any of it. The show was even going to be projected on giant video screens on Sunset Boulevard to the throng of adoring fans who hadn’t been able to get tickets.

  “Pizza?” one of the stagehands offered, motioning to the crafts table.

  “Sure, why not.” Taj nodded, taking a slice. It was piping hot, and she almost burned the roof of her mouth when she took a bite. “Wow. This is good. Where’s it from?”

  “Brooklyn.”

  “Joe Peep’s in the Valley?”

  “No. Brooklyn. As in, next to Queens?” the guy replied. “Nothing but the best for Mr. Silver.”

  Taj almost choked on the slice. Flown in from Old Fulton Street? No way. It was a joke she and Johnny had cooked up when the rep from the label had asked him what he wanted—if he had a list of requirements before the show. Taj had thought up the most outlandish requests she could think of—perfume to be pumped in the air vents in the newly remodeled toilets, silver M&M’S only—and as a joke had written “Pizza from Grimaldi’s,” the famous New York City shop that she’d visited the one time she was in the city for band camp.

  Neither of them had really believed they would get any of it. And yet weren’t there heaping crystal bowls filled with silver M&M’S everywhere? And Taj would bet that if she visited the bathroom she would be doused in Route du Thé perfume and the porcelain seat would be brand-new. It struck her then that this was truly happening, that it wasn’t a joke anymore, wasn’t a prank that they had pulled on the world.

  Johnny was really going to be a star—he already was a star—the kind of star that spoke for a generation, with music that touched cheerleaders and misfit outcasts alike. Early reviews of the album had compared its genre-shattering appeal to Nirvana’s Nevermind, to Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet, to Radiohead’s The Bends.

  Where was he, anyway? Taj knocked on Johnny’s door, and hearing no answer turned the knob and stepped inside.

  “Oh my God! I’m so sorry!” She backed away from the door, her cheeks crimson. The half-naked couple stirred from the couch. For a panicked heartbeat, Taj had thought it was Johnny, but she could see now that it wasn’t. Thank God.

  The boy on the couch was Sutton Werner, Johnny’s boy-wonder manager. Sutton leaned back, and the girl on his lap, a topless dark-haired beauty, stretched her arms over her head, yawning. Neither seemed particularly bothered by the interruption.

  “Looking for Johnny?” Sutton asked, his amber eyes glowing. He was a good-looking guy, except that his eyes were slightly too
small, the nose was just slightly too big, and the mouth, a hard line, was almost cruel. Taj, who was an aficionado of eighties teen flicks, thought there was something very James Spader in Pretty in Pink about him. Beautiful but repulsive.

  Sutton had come into their lives just like any other fan, as a TAP request, and had been one of the first to pick up on the popularity of Johnny’s songs. Then he had become more than that—he had arranged the impromptu TAP parties, had been the one to bring the record label on board, had booked the Viper Room, had promised them—Was there still a them? Taj wondered—the world.

  “Yeah, you know where he is?”

  “Check the bathroom.” Sutton said, lazily stroking the girl’s hair.

  “Thanks.”

  “And Taj?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Tell him it’s all going to be okay. All right? He knows what to do.”

  Taj knocked on the bathroom door.

  “Come in,” a gruff voice replied.

  She entered the room. Sure enough she inhaled a massive dose of Barneys-brand perfume.

  Johnny looked up from the sink, where he was preparing the solution. “I knew it was you,” he said. His bangs were plastered to his forehead, and Taj knew if she touched his face, his skin would be damp. She tried not to look upset, not wanting to get into another argument.

  “Johnny, what are you doing?” she asked, crossing her arms in front of her chest.