L.A. Success (19 page)

“Don't thank me yet. The hardest is
still to come,” she said as she backed away. I waved and she turned around and
left. I stayed there for a while trying to imagine myself as a big shot down
there, making deals and scooping up armloads of money.

As I rode the tram back down the
mountain, I thought of a way I could save the Helen situation. Now that I was
working for Gertie, I had a real reason to be following her around, and I could
even introduce Helen to Gertie if she didn't believe me. Even the hair removal
fit with the story—I couldn't meet clients looking like a hedgehog after all.

I whipped out the shit phone and
called Helen. No one picked up, and when I tried to leave a message all I could
hear was the crackling of bad reception. Anyway, she'd probably delete anything
I left without listening to it. I thought about going over there directly, but
that had the potential of ending in a restraining order—not that it would hurt
my new career. But then I thought if she got an email from me, she'd at least
have to look at the subject line before trashing it. That would give me about
five words to work with.

21

I got in my car and drove up the
four levels to the exit. Along with traffic-jammed highways, big underground
parking lots are the main places I start to get panicky. All those cars coming
in and out, and no air flowing through there. I usually try to hold my breath
for a while, but when I start getting blue in the face, I end up gulping in a
huge gasp of pollution. That's the weird part about L.A.—you always feel stuck
somewhere in pollution. You got this beautiful city surrounded by desert on one
side, the ocean on the other, and covered with a lid of smog. And then you get
stuck on the highways, in the parking lots, in the stores. But then, once or
twice a year, we'll have a big rain, and it washes the sky and the city clean,
and we all stand around looking at mountains and landscapes that are normally
covered up by the smog, and it's as if the whole place has just had some
perfect plastic surgery, and we know we'll never move away.

The highway looked jammed packed, so
I felt like staying off it. I turned south on Sepulveda, drove down to
Wilshire, and then headed east. I passed through Beverly Hills and by all the swanky
streets, shops and car dealerships; and even though I think it's overrated, I
took a long look at the Beverly Wilshire hotel. I only liked looking at this
place because of that romantic movie about the whore. Here was this expensive
hotel with the dirtiest kind of doing going on. But to look at it was weird,
because the ground-level part was really fancy with all sorts of architecture
crap, but then the upper levels looked like a dirty brick building from St.
Louis. You go to the lobby and you're thinking, wow, here I am in Beverly
Hills, yea! Then you get to your room and it's all East St. Louis and whores.

22

I headed toward the Beverly Center
because I was on a mission from Gertie to buy a stupid pen. I got to La Cienega
and turned north. The enormous gazillion-floor shopping center came into view,
and I pulled into the parking lot—this time an above-ground one. I parked on
the first level and then walked over to a series of escalators that ran up the
side of the building. There was a glass wall along the escalators facing
outside, so as I rose higher and higher I could look out over the neighborhood,
and toward the top there was an unbelievable view of the Hollywood Hills.

After the fourth or fifth
escalator—I lost count—I reached the top and turned left into the mall. It was
like a normal mall, except all the stores, decorations, people, food, and pets
had been replaced with perfect versions of those things. If the world ever got
nuked and we needed to preserve a sort of Noah's Ark of excess, the Beverly
Center would be a good candidate.

I walked over to a map of the place
and found the store on level seven. The floors were laid out in a semi-circle
and flanked by enormous department stores. I wandered through the mall,
surrounded by these rich people, these black holes of wealth, my eyes drawn to
their cleavage, their watches, their handbags. It reminded me of something on
my frog CD: when certain toads get angry or afraid, they make this nasty bark
and pop up on their back feet, flashing a brightly colored stomach to make
their enemies afraid. Here I was, surrounded by all these rich-people flash
signs, and if I hadn't been wearing Dennis' clothes and been all groomed up,
all that would have been directed at me, telling me I was in the wrong territory.

I got to the Montblanc store. Two
tough-looking guys in suits were standing right inside the doorway. One of them
opened the door for me. I would've been impressed before, but now I was
thinking maybe these guys were here just to make sure I wouldn't question the
quality of the goods inside. I mean, who's going to hire security like that to
sell Bics, right? You see all these suits and muscles, and you just assume this
store is the best, so you don’t mind shelling out the cash. I was starting to
think that everything in L.A. worked like Gertie.

“Can I help you sir?” asked a bald
man wearing a black suit. I couldn't see any hairs coming out of his nose or
ears either, and his skin didn't have a trace of oiliness. I even wondered if
he was wearing make-up.

“Yeah, you guys sell pens?”

“Of course. Allow me to show you our
writing instruments.”

“Nah...I already got a computer. I
just need a pen.”

“Ah, yes. Right this way then,” he
said and led me over to a display case. There was a sign in it that said “writing
instruments,” so at first I felt kind of stupid, but come on, if everyone
talked like that, now
that
would be stupid. If every time I picked up my
shit phone I said “excuse me, I have to actionate my communication-disrupting
apparatus,” how ridiculous would I sound? But then I realized that even this
held to Gertie's principals: hide the reality with a pretty layer of deception.
So I set out to buy me a writing instrument.

The bald man took out three
velvet-lined boxes and set them on the counter.

“This is our classic line, and here
it is in platinum. This third pen is our newest and features a floating emblem
at the tip and a jewel-studded clip.”

For some reason, this also felt like
a test. I had the definite feeling that it was possible to make a bad choice
here. I thought over how I'd be using this writing instrument. It wasn't the
kind of thing I'd be leaving in my pocket, because I knew that purposefully
showing people you had money actually meant you didn't have it. Likewise, if I
took the jeweled jobby, people would think I wanted it to catch their eye when
I took it out, and I'd surely be discovered as a fraud. Now, the classic was
nice. When I picked it up, it felt good, and the gold and black colors looked
great in my hand. But that would be like telling people “I knew I had to get
one of these to impress you, so I scraped up enough dough for the minimum.”

“I'll take the classic in platinum,”
I said without even picking it up. The bald man smiled and nodded.

“A very reasonable choice, sir. Between
you and me, this one here,” he said, pointing discretely to the jeweled pen,
“appeals more to our
nouveau rich
customers.”

“Who?”

“Well, for example, rappers tend to
buy this one. They seem to enjoy sparkly things.”

As he wrapped up my little box, I braced
myself for the bill. None of these things had price tags on them, which is a
sure sign that people like me are in for big trouble. I decided not to wait for
the bad news because from now on I was going to be in control. I took out about
a fourth of Tommy's rent money and handed it over before the bald guy could
even tell me how much it cost. He seemed relieved not to have to say any
numbers out loud. He handed me back a couple of twenties, and I strolled out of
the place past the respectfully nodding guards.

23

When I got back to Santa Monica, I
stopped off at the Barnes & Noble, grabbed a coffee and searched the aisles
for the writing section. With all the studying I had done at Gertie's office,
lots of movie stuff had flushed right out of my head. I picked up a copy of
Syd's screenwriting book and made sure it hadn't been stained by some moocher.
I wanted to buy this one so I could look at it whenever I forgot something.

When I got up to the register to
pay, I whipped out my credit card. The cashier, a lovely chick of the
“I-wouldn't-normally-talk-to-you” type, rang me up and handed me the receipt to
sign. I normally didn't use my card, and I even had enough cash on me to pay
for the book, but I wanted to put the writing-instrument aura into effect. I
took it out of my pocket, removed the cap, and signed. I had to admit that it
wrote smoothly. I looked up, caught her looking away from my hand, and slid the
receipt back over to her. For a brief instant, I saw on her face a look that
seemed to sum up all her financial difficulties and annoyances at having to
work in a book store. This was a lot different than the normal,
“don't-even-think-about-doing-me” look that I would have gotten had I paid in
cash. I thanked her and bopped out of the store, feeling like I had a secret
weapon in my pocket.

24

Back at Dennis', I looked up Helen's
email address by searching her school's website. I brought up my email account,
hit the “new mail” button and typed out the whole story, telling her at the end
how much I missed her. Then I put the cursor in the subject box. I thought for
a long time about what would get her to want to read the email. Finally, I
typed “Misunderstanding. I'm really hurting.” I knew that Helen couldn't stand
the idea of someone suffering, and if she thought there was the slightest
chance that she was the cause, she'd look into it.

For the rest of the weekend I
thought about how I was going to write up Gertie's activities so that they'd
make it to Spieldburt's eyes without arousing the suspicions of his goons. A
lot of it I was planning to put down verbatim, thanks to recordings I'd make
with Dennis' spy equipment. But I needed to spice everything up so that Grant
would think it was worth showing to his boss. I thought long and hard about the
type of stories Spieldburt normally turns into movies until the perfect idea
came to me.

25

That week I started work as Gertie's
right-hand man. It would have been stressful enough already, but since I was
constantly worried about putting my spy-pen recorder where it would pick up her
conversations when I wasn't with her, and then retrieving it without her seeing
me, I almost lost my mind from the stress. When she let me off early on Friday,
I went to rejoin my writing buddies. With my copy of Syd's screenwriting book
hidden in my jacket pocket, I got to work on my disguised report for
Spieldburt. Here's what I came up with:

SUPPLEMENTARY TERRIAN DWELLER

Act 1

By Lonnie Herisson

EXT. SWANKY BEVERLY HILLS HOUSE ON COMSTOCK AVENUE - NOON

A 1978 Yellow Eldorado Biarritz pulls into the driveway. The
car doors swing open and out step GERTIE ELLIOT, a 60-something real-estate
agent dressed conservatively in a gray skirt and white blouse, and LONNIE
HERISSON, a short, round man with very thick dark hair and a nicely groomed
unit. Any reasonable woman would want to do him.

They step to the front of the car.
GERTIE adjusts
LONNIE's tie.

GERTIE ELLIOT

Now remember: You're my husband and we met at church. You're
an accountant.

LONNIE HERISSON

Why an accountant?

GERTIE ELLIOT

Because no one ever asks accountants questions about their
jobs. It's the perfect cover. Now look, I've put a lot of effort into this
couple, so just follow my lead. I'll be selling this house in no time.

LONNIE HERISSON (VOICE OVER)

And once I have the evidence that you're cheating on your
lover, I'll stop pretending to be your real-estate assistant and return to
being Dennis Bates, Private Investigator. Ha ha ha!

They walk up to the door of the swanky house and ring the bell.
BRANDI POWELL, a 25-year-old blond whose presence causes most men to enter into
a pre-orgasmic state, answers the door. She is wearing tiny shorts and a black
midriff top. Upon close inspection, one could see, if one were curious to know
such things and one knelt down very quickly in front of her pretending to have
dropped something, that there was no lint of any color in her belly button.

BRANDI POWELL

(Smiling, with a tone as artificial
as her sweet, gravity-defying chest)

Gertie! So nice to see you again! Glad you could make it for
lunch. And finally, we get to meet the love of your life!

That was LONNIE's cue to direct his gaze north to her eyes.
Now having the complete picture of her, LONNIE realized she was not a classic
beauty, but rather a collection of pieced-together sexual stereotypes copied
from whichever starlets happened to be making the latest waves in Hollywood. He
still wanted to do her very badly.