out of hearing range. I fumbled with the teeny tiny buckles on my sandals but apparently they had been crafted by elves and my lumbering sausage fingers (swollen from the LA heat, surely?) couldn’t unfasten them quickly enough.
‘I don’t know, she’s kind of messed up,’ she said, slinking back up the store. ‘But I’m trying to take care of her. We’re shopping.’
‘Jenny,’ I hissed, ‘give me the bloody phone.’
‘We’re in Miu Miu,’ she winked, holding me at arm’s length. ‘Yes, I think she’d love that. OK, I’ll put you on to someone.’
By the time I’d found my way out of the shoes, my BlackBerry was in the hands of my lovely sales assistant who had returned holding something long and disarmingly sparkly. ‘But of course Mr Jacobs,’ he gushed, hanging up and giving me the phone. And the pretty sparkly thing. I felt like a kitten with a ping-pong ball. BlackBerry or shiny bag. BlackBerry or shiny bag.
‘What was that all about?’ I asked Jenny, unable to take my eyes off the bag. It was long and slender and round, like a pencil case I’d had in Year Eight. But, unlike the pencil case I’d had in Year Eight, it had a tiny five-hundred-dollar price tag, hidden discreetly inside the beautiful lining, and was covered in glittering, golden iridescent sparkles. Oh, and a little leather strap to slip around my wrist so that I would never, ever, ever lose it. Even in my sleep. ‘Jenny?’
‘We’ll take the bag and the shoes, thanks,’ she said, snatching the bag out of my hands and passing it back to the assistant. His eyes were shining almost as much as the sequins. ‘And ring up these bad boys.’ She pointed at the yellow and black Mary Janes on her feet and dropped onto the padded bench beside me.
‘You should get your photo taken with some more famous people.’ She slung her arm around my shoulders. ‘James wants to pay for your shoes. Actually, our shoes. But if he asks, both pairs are yours. He said to charge them to his account and he’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Are you kidding me?’ I asked, watching the bag and the shoes being whisked away behind the counter while the staff whispered intensely amongst themselves. ‘He can’t do that. We can’t let him do that.’
I pouted, wondering just for a second what Mary would have to say about me accepting handbags and shoes from James. And right up until the assistant replaced my empty champagne glass with two huge, ribbon-tied cardboard carrier bags, I really thought about refusing to accept them. Sort of.
‘Oh Angie, Angie, Angie.’ Jenny ruffled my hair and gave me a huge grin. ‘He can and we can. And I could not be happier. Where next?’
Jenny’s talent for shopping was matched only by her talent for eating, so after Miu Miu, after Dolce & Gabbana, Cavalli and Gucci, she finally gave in. I couldn’t enjoy even La Perla on an empty stomach.
‘Tiffany’s shouldn’t be part of a shopping centre,’ I said, spearing the omnipresent lettuce leaf on my plate. ‘I don’t care how posh a shopping centre. It’s just not right.’
‘Yeah, whatever …’ Jenny leaned back, smiling up at the sunshine with her eyes closed. ‘Eat your crab cakes and stop bagging on LA.’
‘I’ll leave LA alone if you’ll tell me about the last time you were here,’ I gambled. ‘I want to here all about your dancing. And how on earth the Pussycat Dolls managed to let you slip through their fingers.’
‘Shut up,’ Jenny carried on staring upwards. ‘Is that a humming bird?’
‘It is and even though that might be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,’ I replied, watching the tiny bird as it darted by our table and hovered by a floral display beside us, ‘you’re not going to distract me. Did you really dance?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you strip?’
‘It wasn’t stripping, it was burlesque.’
‘So you did strip?’
She sighed and looked back at me. ‘There was no nudity in my routine.’
‘So how come you came back to New York so quickly,’ I stirred my Diet Coke with my straw, ‘if you and Daphne were so amazing? Couldn’t the dancing have led to other stuff?’
‘Probably,’ she laughed quietly. ‘It led to Daphne doing other stuff. Other stuff for guys who came to see us dance. Other stuff for money.’
‘Daphne did it for money?’ I asked. According to the people at the next table who dropped their cutlery, altogether too loudly. ‘Daphne was a prostitute?’ I added quietly.
‘I don’t think she would say that,’ Jenny said diplomatically. ‘Maybe a private call girl. She seemed to think it was pretty glamorous at the time.’
‘But you didn’t?’ I asked. ‘Think it was glamorous, I mean? I know you would never do that. Would you?’
‘Trust me, there was nothing glamorous about those guys,’ she said.
‘So you didn’t, right?’ A dozen humming birds doing a synchronized dance routine couldn’t have got my attention at that moment.
‘Of course I didn’t,’ Jenny said, ‘but it was tempting. Suddenly Daphne had all this money, she stopped doing auditions, started missing gigs. Eventually, she stopped dancing altogether and I felt weird doing it alone. Especially since Daphne had kind of gotten us a reputation. I guess it would have been easier to just do it, but I couldn’t.’
‘So you came home?’ I wasn’t used to watching Jenny squirm. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as I’d thought it might be.
‘I went back to New York, yeah.’ She looked up and gave me her brightest smile. ‘And thank God I did, or you would have been screwed.’
‘She’s not still doing it, is she?’ I couldn’t help myself, even if Jenny was clearly trying to change the subject. ‘Not still, you know …’
‘Angie, it scares me that you can’t even say the words at your age. And no, she isn’t. She quit, like, right after I left. She started seeing some rich old guy and I guess she didn’t need the cash any more. And she’s making good money as a stylist now so …’ She trailed off.
‘Do you miss living here?’ I asked, even though I didn’t want to. She was my Jenny, my ‘I’m walkin’ here’ New Yorker Jenny, not Daphne’s LA private dancer.
‘It’s different now; it was so long ago. I’m not twenty-two any more; everything is so different.’ She gave me a little smile. ‘It is nice to be out in the sunshine again, though. I don’t know, I don’t want the same things I wanted the last time I was here. I don’t know what I want.’
‘You’ll work it out,’ I said, watching her pretend not to be bothered. ‘You always do.’
‘Yeah.’ Jenny pulled out her bright yellow Miu Miu shoe. It was all sorts of beautiful. ‘I always do, don’t I?’
‘I can’t believe you had this big crazy life.’ I was always amazed by Jenny. I’d never ever known anyone like her in my life. It didn’t matter how long we spent together or how long we talked,
