Hollywood Ass. (3 page)

“You really need to stop eating all that cheese, Darryl, it’s not good for you.”

Look who’s talking!
I felt like saying, because I’d be stupid to take health advice from my closet alcoholic employer. And I happened to love my cheese, wine and novel-reading evenings - it might have made my stomach a bit bubbly, but you’ve got to
live
sometimes, right?

“Did you talk to
A
?”
B
’s voice sounded anxious, but not out of breath. I struggled to keep up with her.

“Yeah, well only a short one, he was polishing his Ferrari.” I said, knowing what her reply would be.

“Now that’s a surprise!”
B
said. “How much can you polish a car without it losing its color? He never even drives that thing!”

“A man must have his toys, I guess?” I said, not sure how to defend behavior I couldn’t understand, but on the other hand I wasn’t particularly experienced when it came to relationships. I had always been a bit of a loner and around women I automatically seemed to land in the friendship category.

“He doesn’t seem to care one bit about me anymore. He used to be the nicest husband, always bought flowers, jewelry, did the most romantic things. You remember that time when he brought me up on that skyscraper roof in New York and there was a helicopter waiting for us and we flew to a Caribbean island and had a romantic dinner by the ocean?”
Yes, I remember being left by the helipad like a fool
, I thought to myself and nodded.

B
looked out over the rolling hills like the answer to her problem was somewhere over there. Somewhere over the rainbow.

“From flower-petal-trails to scratching his balls openly and only lusting after things with wheels, what an amazing transformation! I used to feel like the most special woman in the world and now I’m like his sister, bucktooth Bree from fucking Oklahoma. I should take a sledgehammer down to that garage!”

What do you say to that? Here was bitterness and disappointment I’d never experienced before, but at the same time expected. The last year they had started to drift apart quite drastically after some major fights and I sometimes wondered how they had made it so far considering how different their personalities were. The banal jock with his cars and protein shakers and the emotional artist with her love for extravagance, yes they were pretty much opposites in everything except for that they were both very, very attractive and successful people. Sometimes that was enough.

At least in the short run.

We jogged the last bit to our regular stretching place and when we stopped I felt like my lungs were trying to launch themselves from my mouth. I was in bad, bad shape. Not fat, but with too much stress, too much wine and not enough exercise. I was maybe a bit unhappy in my own way, not that I had thought about it a lot, but it had slowly started creeping into my head that I might be coming to the end stretch of my employment with
B
. It was becoming too much work and not enough fun.

B
was stretching her leg muscles against a rock and I sat down next to her whilst trying to recapture my breath. “You don’t think he’s retreating to his little man-cave because you’ve been off the rails lately?” I said, leaning back on my role as the mediator and weirdly seeing it as my duty to make sure the couple stayed together. I knew how happy they could be, it had just been a long time since I saw it.

I looked at
B
’s body and thought to myself how genetically blessed she must be to be able to treat it so badly and still stay so fit and beautiful. She was simply born with that skinny-curvy look that all women want and pay handsomely to get. I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of lust.

“You know what I think?”
B
said, looking like she had just thought of something brilliant, “I think he’s cheating on me. It would explain everything, the evading behavior, the lack of affection, the night-time jogging, all that. I bet he’s been seeing someone for quite a while. You’d tell me if he was, right?” Her stark blue eyes were studying me and for a second I felt like I was in school, trying to invent some believable lie to explain why I hadn’t finished my homework. But I didn’t have to lie, I knew nothing about
A
’s love life outside
B
and my hunch was that he didn’t have any. He just didn’t strike me as the cheating kind.

“Why would he cheat on you? You’re one of the most beautiful women in the world, according to Maxims and many other magazines, and me, and I know he still thinks you’re the love of his life. You just need to work on yourselves and your relationship. It’s not the weirdest thing for couples to go through a rough patch.”

B
looked at me like I was trying to sell her a used car with a bad engine and rust in all the places you couldn’t see.

“Thanks for the compliment, Darryl, but that’s bullshit. And in a way I can’t blame him, I look like a toilet brush. I drink too much, smoke too much, do brainless parts in movies I don't even like myself and go to parties to meet people I don't care one bit about. We haven’t had sex in a long time and last time I was barely conscious. Who wouldn't cheat on me?”

“If you’re in that self-loathing frame of mind, there’s no point in talking anymore.” I didn’t want to waste time wading around in
B
’s well of depression, I knew it wasn’t going to get us anywhere.

“Last question then, if he loves me so god damn much, why isn't he here? Why is he never around?”

I didn’t know how to reply. Telling her she was hard work wouldn’t cut it, because she knew that already. “I don’t know. Maybe you’ve just hit a rough patch. In Hollywood people sometimes get too stuck in themselves, thinking me, me, me and nothing else and that’s why so many marriages crash faster than you have time to say “I do.” Your five years is pretty fantastic when you think of it, it must mean you have something really special.”

B
finally showed me a glimpse of a smile, “How do you do it? How do you always stay so positive?”

“Maybe it's because I don't think so much - guess I'm kind of stupid like that.” I flashed my million-dollar smile. I've got REALLY white teeth you know, proud of 'em too.

B
looked down on her fingers and then out over the rolling hills and said: “That's it, isn't it? I worry too much and that's why I
needs ma’ wine
.”

“Something like it. You ought to stop thinking and drinking and your problems will be shrinking.”

"You’re such a poet, Darryl. All those books you read must do you some good.”

“Books over vodka any time, girl,” I said and touched her shoulder, “Let’s get going again, I think I saw Mr. Gibson walking his dog over there and we don’t want you stuck talking to him about how much in common you have.”

“Shut up,”
B
said and laughed.

I had managed to bring out a sincere smile on her face.

This is why I was her assistant.

***

After our run,
B
wanted a Pinkberry, a non-alcohol indulgence I had no problem with.
She donned her oversized shades and I parked the Ranger Rover something like 50 meters from the frozen yoghurt place on a sun-streaked Santa Monica Boulevard. Before heading out, I looked around for paparazzi. To my relief, there were none to be seen, but they were prone to pop-up anywhere at anytime like some evil “jackass-in-a-box”. I was just about to walk out when, from the bottom of her cracked confidence,
B
unleashed: “You'd fuck me wouldn't you? If I was single?”

Now what this had to do with frozen yoghurt, I’ll never know.

“Yes, I'd pop your Pinkberry if that’s what you’re talking about. Anyone would, you’re smoking hot.”

“Thanks, Darryl. Don't you ever quit on me, okay?”

“I promise,” I said out of necessity, but it was a promise I knew would be hard to keep.

There was not much of a line in the Pinkberry which was good, because I smelled like locker room and I didn’t want to disgust the other customers. The young freckled man behind the counter repeated my order of one Watermelon and one Salted Caramel and gave me a wide smile. For a second I thought he was cross-eyed.

When I was back in the car,
B
dug into her Pinkberry like she had been on a month long Survivor-diet. I have always appreciated women with healthy appetites and I gladly watched her shovel it in.

B
of course noticed my big eyes, “What are you looking at? You’re staring at me like I'm miss Piggy!”

To which I smiled and said, “I just like to see a woman eat.”

“Is that a black man’s thing or what? I thought men wanted women who doesn’t eat, doesn’t talk, fart flowers and who never let anything out of the anus, just into it.” B took one more spoon, rolled down the window, threw out the cup and said, “Let's go home, okay?”

“Yeah, let’s go before they arrest us for littering.” I replied drily, turned the key and drove off.

On the way home we sat silently in the car, I tried to eat my Pinkberry while managing the steering wheel and
B
was next to me, lost in her own head.

Back at the mansion, she headed off to shower while I went to my office and sat down by the antique desk that
A
got from some celebrity estate for a ridiculously large amount of money. I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes. I felt a heavy weariness set in and knew I was in desperate need of a vacation. Assistants rarely rest and it had started to get to me, much like celebrity life had gotten to
B
. Since I started working for her, I had lost contact with most of my friends and I’d rarely been in touch with my parents. Work, and the glorified world that came with it, had consumed me and I was starting to pay the price.

I probably nodded off for a good twenty minutes, before I was kicked to life by my iPhone dancing on the dark wood. The display read “Julianne”.

Julianne was one of those women who had decided to compensate her less fortunate physical appearance by being a ruthless workaholic, determined to put all men down a peg-hole or ten. She had rat-colored hair, a thin mouth and a plank-formed body to go with her sharp, ear-cringing voice that penetrated all sound, and she was the last person I wanted to talk to at that moment. Still, it was my duty to take the call.

“Darryl,” I said, praying she would be in a good mood, but I of course knew this wasn’t the easiest time to be
B
’s agent, so I expected hell.

“This is one of the biggest fucking PR disasters in Hollywood, Darryl. My phone has been ringing constantly, everybody wants something from her, interviews, statements, appearances, the works but she’s refusing to pick up the goddamn phone.”

“You know she wants all communication to run through me, I’ve told you that before, Julianne.”

“I don’t get it though, why should I have to go through you? I’m
her
agent.”

She should have known there was no point in arguing about this,
B
held firm that I was the messenger and her filter to the outside world.

“But why is it so urgent to reach her now? She’s in no mood to talk to anyone and I don’t see how going on Letterman would make anything better at this stage.” I tried to be as firm as I could. You needed to with Julianne.

“This is exactly why I need to talk to her! I’ve actually started to think that we can spin this in our favor and use the attention to something good.”

This is why she was one of the best agents - she saw opportunities everywhere.

“So you’re saying she should come out and talk about her problems and in this way redeem herself?” I said, skeptically.

“For once you hit the nail on the head. She needs to take advantage of the publicity, otherwise there is a risk she’ll have a tainted image forever. She should talk about how she’s battling alcoholism as a result of a tough childhood or whatever the hell she’s drinking for. I think we could go for the Oprah book club too, I have some formidable ghostwriters ready to start typing as soon as I give the green light. This doesn’t have to be a disaster, but instead a great chance to connect with her fans, show her true, vulnerable self and come out on top. How is she feeling by the way?”

This was a rare show of emotion from Julianne. Maybe she had worked on what she needed to say to sound like an empathic and normal human being.

“She’s okay, considering.”

“So can I talk to her? I have loads of calls and e-mails I need to return today. If we get started now we can really flip this shit. I know we can!”

Julianne was frighteningly good at her job, but also frighteningly bad at reading people. The chance of
B
going on a talk show at this point in her life was pretty much zero and in a way I felt sorry for Julianne for not understanding this. But you can’t blame her for seeing only dollar signs either, it was in her job description.

“I’ll talk to her about her options and I’ll tell her to call you when she’s ready. But right now I think she just wants to rest. I’m pretty sure she’s not keen on going on TV to talk about a drinking problem she has hard time admitting to herself. She’s really fragile right now.”

“Rest is for losers, Darryl. The only thing you should focus on keeping her away from is the bottle, not the spotlight. Hope is not lost if we act fast.”

“I’ll promise to bring that up when I see her. Thanks.”

And Julianne hung up on me without saying goodbye.

***

I want to take a minute to talk about one of the frustrations with living and working in the celebrity world, at least as an assistant. It’s the problem to meet women. You see, I used to work all the time, pretty much every day and there wasn’t a lot of space for dating. And if I did meet a woman out in a bar or at an event or wherever I might have been, I didn’t know where to “conclude” the evening since I was living with the Johnsons and the mansion rule was
not
to bring any outsiders there.

It’s pretty logical when you think about it, but once during my first year I broke the role and learned a valuable lesson.