Somebody to Love? by Grace Slick, Andrea Cagan

and land in somebody's bedroom. After all, this was the L.A. movie crowd; I was no longer dealing with inexperienced college boys.
    The Luau, now a Mexican restaurant called The Acapulco, on La Cienega Boulevard, was one of Cece's favorite hangouts. She and I went there one night, and when I indicated an immediate interest in seeing the classic cars belonging to the older man (thirty years old to be exact) sitting next to me, Cece gave me a kind of wild-eyed warning smile. She was trying to indicate something she couldn't say out loud, and when I stood up and announced that he and I were going up to his house in the Hollywood hills, she gave me an even screwier grimace. I interpreted it as a congratulatory grin. Cece didn't stop me, but she wanted me to know that I might be out of my league with this guy. I dismissed all her facial expressions and went out into the night, actually thinking I was on my way to appreciate some antique cars.
    College boys didn't try to jump your bones in five minutes, but this was a grown-up predator looking at the new young meat in town. And I was naive enough to be sucked in by the “Wanna see my Bugatti?” routine. Not three minutes after we got to his house, though, Cece showed up, all smiles and apologies. “I'm so sorry,” she said to Mr. Older Man Car Collector, “but Grace forgot that we have a private party to go to in Bel Air and we're two hours late already.” Another wild-eyed smile in my direction and this time I understood it was the “Hello, Red Riding Hood, that's not your grandmother” look. As Cece and I drove off, she explained that, yes, my new friend probably would have shown me his private car collection—as well as his privates.
    Cece's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Shane, had been married a long time and kept a well-mannered relationship. Like my own parents. But unlike my household, in the middle of theirs on any given day, you might find a pet monkey in diapers swinging from the chandeliers over some drunken actress sprawled on one of the beds, crying about a fight with her ex-husband. Cece's mother, calmly wearing nothing but black eye patches, might be found lying facedown, getting the house-call treatment in the massage room. Cece always seemed to take a rakish delight in whatever was happening. I never saw her get angry, but at eighteen years old, with a pleasant and well-heeled family to rely on, what's to get mad at? Like a teenager winning an MTV trip to a backstage band party, I felt like the lucky kid who'd won a trip to Hollywood.
    Jill St. John, one of Cece's friends, often joined us to make a threesome. She was extremely intelligent and remarkably beautiful, and when we went shopping at Bullock's, she demonstrated the rich-and-famous ability to seek, find, spend, and acquire. When she spotted a throw pillow she liked, she bought twelve of them, one in every color. That kind of full-sweep spending was not a Palo Alto pastime. Her house included an indoor/outdoor swimming pool, a vast array of tropical fish, and a basement filled with miniature trains. Although she was the same age as Cece and I, she was already living on her own, and unlike most young people, she managed to refrain from any debilitating excesses. She had a mind like a steel trap and could give you details on subjects most people couldn't even pronounce. Lately she's become a gourmet cook. Mr. Robert Wagner is a lucky man.
    Richard Anderson, another actor friend of Cece's, was a bit older (twenty-nine?) than we were, so I considered him ancient. Cece liked them well seasoned—she later married director John Huston, who was at least thirty years her senior—but as
I've
sprinted through the decades, I notice that I don't even feel comfortable with people my
own
age, let alone those who're older. The post-fifty-five set seems deadened by something or soured by the constant intrusion of reality. I probably project that same ennui to my daughter's friends; they must be thinking,
Poor Grace, the