Loose Diamonds by Amy Ephron Read Free Book Online

if she wants to come?” I asked.
    “She hasn’t come down for two days. She has a”— Shannon hesitated—“headache.”
    “What’s wrong with Felix?” I asked.
    Shannon whispered, “He hasn’t been paid.” That was the first hint I had that there was trouble. The second hint would be coming soon.
    Shannon and I had an early dinner, and I dropped her off around ten and went home. At three in the morning, my doorbell rang. Let me just say, it wasn’t that unusual in those days for your doorbell to ring at 3 A.M. —a musician in town, a couple of friends who were on their way home, someone who didn’t want the night to end. I lived in South Beverly Hills, which was centrally located and seemed to be on everyone’s way from everywhere at any time of the night or day. L.A. hadn’t gone into full-tilt alarm lockdown yet (that would happen a few years later), and I generally opened the door to see who was on the doorstep even if I wasn’t going to let them in.
    Honey wasn’t standing on the doorstep. She was sitting on it, up against the wall, with her knees pulled into her chest like someone on the streets of London in 1912 trying to get shelter from the rain, except there wasn’t any rain. Her face was streaked with mascara and she looked as if she’d been crying for days. The Mercedes was in the driveway, but Felix was nowhere to be seen.
    I can’t remember if I made her tea or poured her a shot of brandy. Probably both. I remember that I built a fire because it seemed like something normal to do, and it seemed like something homelike and cozy, and she curled up on the couch under a cashmere throw.
    It was a long time before she started talking, sort of residual sobs. It was Max but it wasn’t what I’d expected. He hadn’t paid the mortgage. This surprised me as I hadn’t realized that he paid the mortgage, and it took me a while to get the details but I soon learned that it was Max, not Honey, who owned the house on “No Name Street.” And the first clue that there was trouble had been when a default sign was posted on their door. I sort of thought it was a “good news/bad news” story. At least she didn’t owe 1.2 million dollars on a house that I now realized she couldn’t afford to live in at all.
    “Shannon thinks we should have an estate sale and sell all the furniture.”
    “What good would that do?” I asked, not understanding the concept at all but realizing, in that moment, that the screwball comedy they’d been acting in had just turned into Dinner at Eight (without the light touch of George Cukor at the end).
    “Well, Shannon thinks, at least that way, we could pay the mortgage. But it won’t work,” she said without even giving me a chance to comment. “He’s being investigated by the SEC.”
    In those days, this sort of thing wasn’t commonplace—white-collar crime wasn’t splashed on the front page of the papers every day. Bernie Cornfeld and Robert Vesco (but I think they’d even been in business with each other, so it was hard to count them as two things). Everyone knew what a Ponzi scheme was, but SEC investigations weren’t commonplace.
    “For what?” I asked. I wasn’t surprised when Honey didn’t answer me, although I was certain that she knew. Myriad possibilities ran through my mind, insider trading, RICO charges, money laundering . . .
    “I’m not sure,” she said. And then she added, very matter-of-factly, “I think they’re going to seize his assets.” There was a finality to Honey’s tone, as if she was already considering her options. There was no sympathy in her voice, no seeming concern for Max’s predicament, as if in that moment, she’d turned on a dime. “And if he thinks I’m one of his trinkets,” she added, “he’s sadly mistaken.” It was a little startling. There was a determination in her voice I’d never heard before, or else some self-preservation gene had kicked in.
    She straightened up on the couch and had another sip