L.A. Success (17 page)

I made my way south through the complex, occasionally ducking my head into a building to see what kind of stuff they had. One room had some modern art that I liked. There was a huge painting of an octopus, but instead of suckers, there were cut-out photos of lips or anuses, I'm not sure which. I came up with two very different interpretations of the work just in case someone asked. The kissopus was like your wrinkly grandma coming at you after a holiday visit as you try to escape into the back seat of your parents' car. The crapopus was pretty much just an animal that wanted to shit all over you. Hey, I'm not the one who makes this stuff up.

I continued to the rose garden. The south side of the museum had the most amazing view of L.A. and the ocean. Tons of people were standing around enjoying the view or sitting in the grass taking in the sun. The rose garden was designed in the shape of a huge bowl, bigger than my house, with a pool at the center, fed by a little stream that ended in a waterfall. There were two tree-lined paths winding down on either side of it, passing by every kind of plant you can imagine. I went clockwise down, swatting away an occasional bee as I walked through vine-covered arches.

When I arrived at the pool, I looked around for Gertie, but she wasn't there. People were moving slowly up and down the paths, throwing coins into the pool and taking pictures, so I was constantly moving out of someone's way. Then I got a tap on the shoulder. I spun around and there she was, wearing an over-sized UCLA sweatshirt whose hood covered her eyes.

“You
have
come as requested,” she said. “You must now follow me.” She led me out of the bowl along the circular path, occasionally bumping into a tourist and growling under her breath.

She led me off to the cactus garden on the south promontory without saying a word or looking back to make sure I was following her. When we arrived as far south as we could go, she whirled around, pushed her hood off, and stood staring into my eyes, all of Los Angeles behind her.

“Before I will allow you to accompany me into the jungle that lies before you, you must tell me what you have learned,” she said majestically.

I thought this over for a minute. I had actually learned a lot of stuff, so I started telling her about ethics, contracts, the history of L.A. real estate, current trends in selling, and how agents survived in times of recession. After fifteen minutes of this she began shaking her head vigorously.

“No no no! You are not ready! You have learned nothing!”

“What do you mean? I know those binders backwards and forwards!”

“Yes, but you must pull from them the most basic truth of real estate. Let your mind go. Free yourself from the technical information that confuses buyers and sellers, and tell me the one thing you know to be true!”

I closed my eyes and felt the cool ocean breeze. I imagined all the houses below, all the potential buyers and sellers, all of the signs posted on the lawns, all of the open houses, the business attire, the friendly smiles and reassuring slogans. But nothing came to me. I opened my eyes and shrugged. Gertie nodded slowly.

“You
are
not ready. I
cannot
train you,” she said, and began to walk away.

My stress level shot through the roof. What could these people, who were sometimes completely uneducated or even had criminal records, know that I didn't? And then it hit me.

“Any uneducated jackass can do this job, so there's no reason real-estate agents should make even half the money they do!” I yelled. She quickly turned around and stepped back to me.

“Shh! No one must hear! That is very good. You have passed the test!”

I felt tired and exhilarated all at once. Gertie let the whole vampire speak drop.

“It's very important to keep that in mind, kid. For the percent of the sale that we get, these people need to think our job is complicated. I set you on those binders so that you'll be armed, but be careful: many a promising agent starts buying his own load of crap and forgets the true spirit of the profession. Once you cross over, there's no saving you. You memorize the lines, but never fall victim to them. They're only there to make people think we're worth for one sale what would be an entire year's salary to someone else, when all we really do is take clients on a walk through a house and fill in the blanks on a contract that any monkey could download and get notarized.”

“So that's it? That's all there is?” I asked.

“No. That's only the beginning. Since none of us is worth a dime, the competition is vicious. Ever see a disaster-relief team throw a loaf of bread into a crowd of people who haven't eaten for a week? They tear each other apart for that bread. We're much worse, so to attract as many clients as possible, everything you do has to let people see that you are the best. You know my touch-screen organizer that I use to check my appointments?”

“Yeah. I saw you with it. You looked at it to find time to come out to my place.”

“No I didn't. I was looking at porn, but you were impressed and that's all that matters. In this economy, you have maybe one or two appointments a week. As if I'd forget them. But I need to give people the impression that I'm completely booked, because I'm
numero uno
.”

“So what—”

“Enough for today. I'll show you more next week. Until then, reward yourself with something expensive that clients will see you with. Do you have a Montblanc pen? They're expensive, but the more you spend on yourself, the more you'll look like the best and the more properties you'll sell.”

“I can't thank you enough Gertie.”

“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.