Larger Than Life

For her 24th birthday, Howard gave Anna a Toyota Celica, in which she and Sandi had many a fine time. One afternoon in January 1992, they drove down to Stop N Go, where Anna laid a 12-pack on the counter and asked for the current issue of Playboy.

"Do you know who I am?" she said to the clerk. When she held up the magazine to show him, he refused to believe her. Howard, for his part, was very proud to see Anna making something of herself, according to court papers. Sandi grew boastful, too. She had always found prettier girlfriends than her brothers, but they were awestruck when they opened Playboy.

The president of Guess? Jeans, Paul Marciano, actually thought Anna might look better in clothes. He signed her to replace Claudia Schiffer as the Guess? model, and after that, Anna took off.

Coming home from shoveling manure all day, Sandi would find mail from exotic ports. There was Anna in a leopard-skin cloth, roaming the wild plains with a stuffed tigress; Anna in a mermaid getup, coming out of the waves; Anna in jewels, blowing a kiss. She sent many pictures home but few words. Usually, on the back of the postcards, she wrote only ''Dido," which was her way of spelling "ditto," the word a character in the movie Ghost used to express his love. "Hey girl," she wrote otherwise. "I do miss ya. Call you soon. Are you okay financially? Let me no [sic]. Your fairy God mother."

Anna's image began appearing in magazines and on billboards around the world. She became the most supercharged sex symbol of the day, everything she had ever wanted to be. And Sandi felt she had a place in the dream when Anna asked if she would come live with her in New York. Sandi rushed out the door. She didn't slow down until she was met at the airport by the makeover crew. They put her in a dress and a more feminine wig, and painted her face with cosmetics. Anna had just been named Playmate of the Year, after all; she was a heterosexual sex symbol and could not be seen with butch companions.

For two months Sandi wore the wig and served officially as Anna's personal assistant. She paid bills, screened calls and cast malevolent looks upon any man gazing covetously at Anna. At last, she left. Sandi realized she couldn't be someone she wasn't in New York. Anna, conversely, couldn't return to who she had been in Houston.

Anna came after Sandi, but now when she visited the Hill, it was in the company of straight men. She threw drinks. She fell drunk out of her chair. Fights broke out on the night she began dancing naked. Owner Kellas told Anna to leave, and Anna's reply was, "I could buy this fucking place!"

She was only just emerging as the beautiful star she would become. She told People magazine during this time that she had given enough of herself, and "maybe it's my time to receive." Just as Anna was supposed to serve Howard, Sandi soon began serving Anna.

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Howard had installed Anna in a large brick house outside of Tomball, behind an iron gate. Anna installed Sandi in a small tin-roofed bungalow nearby that had engine parts strewn across the front yard and the smell of garbage in the air. Whatever charm the interior possessed was owed directly to Anna, who blotted the walls with great pink impressions of her bosom.

They called this place the Love Shack, but no love was conducted there. Sandi always came to Anna, who was usually found in bed, topless, watching television. It was a king-size four-poster bed, and for the bliss Sandi initially experienced there, she referred to it as "the Pearly Gates." But now the bed was simply where they sat as they watched comedies through the night. It became Sandi's job to rub Anna's feet and to braid her hair. When Sandi nodded off, Anna would elbow her awake and give her a pill. There were pills to stay awake and pills to go to sleep. Anna rewound to the last joke, and life went on.

For servants, Anna had hired her aunt Elaine and uncle Melvin. At all hours of the night, she would call for them, and sometimes she wanted them to get drunk with her, but more often than not, she wanted food. Usually she craved something Elvis would have liked. Her favorite food was mashed potatoes and brown gravy, which she ate from the pot. She'd order pizza with everything, eat all the toppings and leave Sandi the crust. Anna liked pickles and salt, fried bologna with cheese and whole packages of biscuits. Her bedspread was covered with stains from Colossus burgers. After devouring one of these, she would crush the paper into a ball and say, "I gotta throw up now."