Звёздный принц и Ангельское яблочко. Михаил Чирков

starts in five, four, three, two…

      “You need to learn that women are like dairy products to men, sugar. They’re fresh before use, and spoil quickly. Women friends are like milk. Something substantial to drink if there’s not an appealing alternative in sight—like a Coke. Right now you’re like an unopened carton of milk to Dylan. And man, he’s gotten thirsty. So he wants to drink you because you’re right there and there’s no Coke and he’s fucking thirsty! That’s all it is! So fine, but when he trashes you, don’t be surprised. You won’t even go to the recycling bin because milk fucking spoils! Hello!” Electra shrieked.

      “You’re totally stuck in the Milky Way, Electra, and besides—I’m not trying to alter the course of the universe,” Ava informed her. “I just like him.”

      “Yeah, well…he’ll stop thinking of you as his fucking star as soon as you start thinking he’s pulled down the moon!”

      Ava looked to be considering this. “Can I ask you a question?”

      “Sure,” Electra said graciously.

      “What makes you the authority on absolutely fucking everything?”

      “Oh, ha ha, really funny!” Electra bitched as Ava and I collapsed into giggles. “Let’s have a gathering, then. I can’t handle Dylan on his own. Doll, you call some people.”

      I called Jeremy even though I suspected he was with Pristina. He was. He told me over a bunch of restaurant racket that he may come over later because she was on call. If Pristina were kidnapped and held for ransom and I had a lot of money, I would put it all into mutual funds and not even feel guilty.

      I hung out in the living room with Andy Whitcomb, who is my best guy friend. We grew up around the block from each other and have been pals since our moms were in our elementary school PTA. I even took him with me to college, which we attended at Chapman University in Orange. Andy is just like me. And just like me, no way in hell was he moving back home after graduation. So he lives nearby, just off Third Street near the Beverly Center. Everyone thinks he’s gay because he works in couture at Nordstrom and his apartment is beyond Pottery Barn. Fashion sense aside, he’s not gay at all. He is actually a real sleaze. When he talks about the female sex organ he calls it “trim.” One time he was hooking up with a girl and he found a hair on her nipple all long and dark just like it was a pube. Instead of ignoring it he bit it off with his teeth. When I heard that story I laughed for an hour. Andy gets laid a lot.

      “Do you want to be in my wedding?” I asked him as he strummed his guitar and I looked through a Victoria’s Secret catalog for a pair of sexy boots I just know I saw in there. Have to have them. Ava and Dylan were making out on the other couch. I am a total voyeur. I kept sneaking glances at them.

      “Yeah, sure,” he replied. “But there is no way in hell I’m wearing a dress.”

      I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure you can wear a tuxedo just like the other guys, Andy. Only you’ll have to stand on my side.”

      I know this is the kind of thing everyone will ooh and ah over and think is the most adorable thing they’ve ever heard in their entire lives.

      He nodded. “I’ll do it, then. Hey, you know something funny?”

      “What’s that?”

      “This’ll only be the second wedding I’ve ever been in.”

      “The reason behind that, Andy, is that the majority of your bozo friends will be lifelong confirmed bachelors,” I predicted.

      “Let’s hope so,” he said. “But don’t you want to know what’s so funny about it?”

      “Enlighten me.”

      “The other wedding I was in was Dan’s. Remember? Ha ha ha!”

      Andy is cute but too much of a scamp. He has brown hair and impish brown eyes and a wiry build like a soccer player.

      “You’re a fucker,” I told him, glaring.

      “I am and I won’t deny it,” he practically giggled.

      He was referring, of course, to Dan Michaelson. My high school sweetheart. Though our breakup took place years ago, we have sustained a heinous feud. This feud spreads out over time and geography. It has invisible, toxic tentacles.

      “You’ve got to admit it’s kind of ironic,” Andy laughed. “I mean, wasn’t the original plan for you and Dan to get married at the same time? To each other?”

      “Yeah, when we were seventeen,” I said, starting to get itchy. I feel sick talking about Dan and Andy knows it. “Anyway, you just take that Dan shit and shove it. Now, promise you’ll really be one of my bridesmaids?”

      “I promise, Doll. It’ll be a great honor.” He winked at me. “Want me to play ‘Jane Says’ for you?”

      “Sure.” He thinks it’s one of my favorite songs because my favorite grandmother, my father’s mother, calls me Jane. She doesn’t like my first name at all. Dalton is actually my mother’s maiden name, and since my mom was an only child and had no cousins, there was nobody to carry it on in the traditional way. Grandma Jane said Dalton was an awful name to give to a cute little baby girl and she was going to call me by my middle name, and always. Grandma Mary, my mother’s mother, said there was absolutely nothing wrong with the name Dalton and that she would never understand why Grandma Jane had to be so hateful about it, especially because everyone got in on that Doll thing, anyway. Only a few people call me Dalton as it is. My mother when she’s very angry with me, my father when he’s very angry with me, and Roman. He says Dalton is a noble name and that he can’t say Doll with a straight face, it’s so ludicrous.

      Anyway, it’s not one of my favorite songs, really. It’s just one of the only songs Andy can play and definitely one of the only songs he can sing without making you want to run for cover. Case in point—he finished singing “Jane Says” and started belting out “Everlong.” Oh. My. God.

      I zoned and pretended that instead of an ICRA project director, Roman was a famous musician away on tour and I would soon be joining him. We would ride in a big bus all across the country with a hot tub in the back and drink champagne and when he gave a concert he would dedicate a special love ballad just for me as I watched from backstage. In the song he would refer to me as “My Girl,” just like Jim Morrison. When people asked about his love life in interviews he would say he would never dream of going anywhere without taking his girl with him. I would make tank tops out of concert T-shirts with the band’s name on the front and wear them with jeans and a leather jacket as I posed next to him for press photos. I would hang out with fashion designers and models. Fans and groupies would hate me and say they wouldn’t know what Roman even saw in me.

      Jeremy showed up around midnight. Ava and Dylan had retired to her bedroom and Andy had joined everyone else outside. I didn’t know who half those people were. That happens a lot around here. They were being too loud.

      “Wow, am I glad to get away from that,” he said, flopping down on the couch beside me.

      “That being Pristina?” I asked.

      He pulled his hands down over his face. “Her friends are such bitches. It makes me love coming over here.”

      I gave him a skeptical look. “Why, because my friends aren’t bitches? Come on.”

      “No, because nobody here cares. Anything goes and you may get shit for it, but nobody really minds. Around her friends I have to act totally different. I have to act all…I don’t know, like I have to carry her purse and shit.”

      “Oh.”

      “Do you mind if I go see who’s outside?”

      “Go for it.”

      I watched him leave the room. What a strange creature, really. And what a pushy broad, that Pristina!

      Dylan came out of Ava’s room with hooded eyes and a lit cigarette hanging out