Lies and Weddings(77)

“You realize it’s almost two a.m. here in LA?”

“I’m sorry! I was so surprised, I just got your present. Did I wake you?”

“No, not at all. I’m at the Fleur Room.”

“Is that a club?”

“Sure is. I’m here with my sister and some friends. You oughta be here with us.”

“I wish I could be. I was having the worst morning, but then your gift arrived and it really cheered me up.”

“Amazing! Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing. Everything’s turned upside down here. I think I might have lost my job.”

“Really? Well, if you don’t have a job anymore, you should come to LA. My sister’s engagement party is this weekend and you should be here!”

“I can’t go away right now, I just got back in town.”

“What does that have to do with anything? Let me send the jet for you—”

“Don’t you dare!”

“Why? You just said you don’t have to work, and correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve never been to LA before?”

“No, just New York…”

“Then you really have no excuse. It’s gonna be so fun. You’ve never been to a big Persian engagement party!”

“I can’t come to your sister’s engagement, I don’t even know her.”

Suddenly a bright, sharp woman’s voice came booming over the line. “Hi, this is Daniela. My brother hasn’t stopped talking about you since he got back. I want to meet you, you’re coming to my party. We are sending the plane and I expect you to get on it or I will be very offended.”

With that, Daniela hung up the phone.





Houston, 1998

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MD ANDERSON CANCER CENTER




It was because of Debussy. If the volunteer pianist in the lobby of MD Anderson hadn’t been playing “Claire de Lune,” Dr. Thomas Tong would never have stopped on his way up to his office, and he would have never noticed the woman sitting on the sofa near the piano. She was an Asian woman wearing a cloche hat, sipping tea out of a Starbucks paper cup. He always noticed other Asians when he was here in Texas. He studied the woman for a moment as he stood listening to the music. He could tell in a flash that she was a patient, probably here for a chemo infusion. Her chic little hat was a telltale sign that she had lost her hair. Even though she was painfully thin, she had a pretty face. Something about her looked familiar, but he didn’t have time to think much more about it as he rushed up to his office.

The physician’s assistant placed a stack of patient files on his desk. “With Dr. McKinley out on maternity leave, Dr. Varshney has reassigned all the patients today.”

“Great. So you’re telling me I wasted my whole night going through today’s patient files?”

“Yep. You could have been watching Felicity,” the assistant quipped.

Thomas flipped through the first file, Faye Wang, a patient from Vancouver, Canada, with metastatic breast cancer. The door opened and another clinician showed the patient into the room. Thomas looked up to see the woman in the hat enter. “Ms. Wang. Good morning.”

The woman froze in her tracks, her eyes flickering with fear. That was the moment Thomas recognized her fully. She had obviously recognized him immediately, but he had never met her in real life, only seen her in pictures.

“Have a seat, Ms. Wang. Let’s look over your CA125 numbers,” he said matter-of-factly, as though she were any other patient. But she wasn’t just any other patient; she was a ghost. This woman sitting across from him who called herself Faye Wang was actually Mary Gao, his late brother’s girlfriend. And Mary Gao was supposed to have died three years ago in Perth, Australia, after a botched abortion.





Things to Do with Eden in LA



by Freddy Farman-Farmihian [*]





MUST DO


Lakers Game

Troubadour (if anyone good is playing) Spa day at the Peninsula Beverly Hills Banks’s pickleball party

Fly to the Wynn Las Vegas

Drinks at Fleur Room, the Wolves, Death & Co., the Roger Room, Sunset Tower, Ace Hotel





MUST EAT


Fred’s Pasta at Mauro Cafe

Pastrami and latkes at Nate ’n Al’s Hamburgers at the Apple Pan

Garlic noodles at Crustacean

Best flourless chocolate cake on the planet at E. Baldi Drive to Laguna Beach for lunch at Nick’s Ice cream at Saffron & Rose

Shabbat dinner at Cousin Jack’s





MUST SHOP


Ron Herman, Just One Eye, Bode, The Row CULTURE STUFF (ONLY IF SHE ASKS) Academy Museum [**]

Dad’s wing at LACMA[**]

Getty Villa[**] (plus lunch at Geoffrey’s Malibu) Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens[**]

Griffith Observatory[**]


Skip Notes

* Bad ideas vetoed by Daniela Farman-Farmihian



** Neither Freddy nor Daniela has ever gone to these places (they have never been east of Chateau Marmont)





I


Holmby Hills

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA ? LATE MORNING