“Girls,” said Anders. “This is my friend Santiago. He’s come all the way from New York to teach ignorant Los Angelenos about Peruvian food.”
Santiago awkwardly shrugged off his leather duffel bag and lifted a hand in greeting. The models cooed a chorus of welcomes. The most striking of them came forward to embrace him. She moved with the hypnotic, liquid grace of a cobra. From her shoulders hung a sheer midnight-blue kaftan woven with stripes of glittering thread.
“So great to meet you,” she murmured. “I’m Yaayaa. And”—she turned to Anders with a knowing smile—“it’s just Angelenos, babe.”
Anders grinned. “That’s what I said.”
He collapsed onto the couch and poured a glass of wine for Santiago, then another for himself. He was wearing a pair of loose linen pants with no shirt or shoes. The skin of his flat sun-browned stomach rippled into tight rolls as he leaned forward to give Santiago a glass.
“I’m not here to educate,” said Santiago. “Only satiate.”
“I love that!” cried one of the other women, whose pert, pointed face reminded him of a strawberry.
Yaayaa returned to curl onto a cushion next to Anders and look at him with a curious, level stare. Her nose was dusted with freckles that crept over her cheekbones to her charcoal-lined eyes. Santiago perched opposite them and sucked in his stomach. He wondered when he could make his escape and take a shower.
“So, you live in New York?” she asked.
“Yes, how is New York Shitty?” said Anders. “God, I’m glad to be out of that place.”
Santiago bristled but kept his voice neutral. “Same old, same old, man.”
“You should move out here,” said Anders. “Everyone’s doing it!”
“But I would miss my friends,” said Santiago, treading lightly.
“It’s not that far,” said Anders.
“In fact,” he continued, “I saw Cleo just yesterday.”
He watched Anders’s face in the firelight for a reaction, but he remained stonily impassive.
“Oh yeah?” he said. “How’s she doing?”
“I think she’s struggling.”
“She’s an artist. She’s always struggling.”
“Who’s Cleo?” asked Yaayaa.
Anders opened his mouth to answer, but Santiago got there first. “His best friend’s wife,” he said.
Anders closed his mouth and gave him a tight-lipped smile. “I thought you were my best friend.”
“We both are.”
“How do you two know each other?” asked Yaayaa.
“We met a long time ago,” said Santiago. “Probably before you were born.”
“I’m older than you think,” she said. “I just have good genes.”
“We met back when I was modeling,” said Anders. “His wife Lila and I were cast in a photoshoot together for Paper about the downtown dance scene.”
“You were a dancer?” asked Yaayaa.
“She was. I was just there to look pretty.”
Lila and Anders had become fast friends. They were both outgoing, reckless, fun-loving. Santiago had initially been threatened, but he soon began to enjoy having another straight man around to talk soccer with, a rarity in Lila’s dance circles. The three of them frequented parties together during the ecstatic early period of the 1980s, when hip-hop, new wave, and dance music was colliding in clubs. In the dark years that followed, during which they navigated AIDs, the crack and heroin epidemic, and Lila’s death, Santiago and Anders stayed friends. In fact, it was Santiago who convinced Frank, a regular at the restaurant he became a chef at, to give Anders a shot as an art director.
“I still have those pictures,” said Santiago.
“Oh god, burn them.” Anders laughed. “I can’t believe how crap the style was back then. Those parachute pants.” He hid his face in Yaayaa neck at the memory.
“I’m not going to burn a picture of Lila,” Santiago said quietly.
Anders’s face reemerged with a look of genuine contrition.
“Sorry, that was stupid of me. Anyway, Lila probably looks phenomenal. She always did.”
Yaayaa, evidently bored by this turn of conversation, wriggled in her seat. “So … you’re a chef?”
“Right now, he’s the chef,” said Anders. “Aren’t you, big guy?’
“I have a small restaurant,” he said.
“Ever do free catering for photoshoots?” she asked.