Misery Loves Cabernet (6 page)

“She’s had a bit to drink,” Liam says apologetically.

“I see that.”

Liam watches her as she finds a group of men to talk with. “Boyfriend broke up with her yesterday. She’s a mess.”

And the plot thickens.

Where’s my lipstick?

“You’re still working for Drew Stanton, correct?” Liam asks.

“Yes,” I say, not able to think of anything else to say to him. Except, maybe, “Do you want to lie down on a couch, and wear me as a blanket?” (Which I don’t say—although two more shots each of that purple glop and I’d consider it.)

“I heard his most recent project just fell through,” Liam says.

Oh God, please don’t make me talk about Drew
. . . , I think to myself as I try to change the subject. “He’s fielding other offers. So how’s life at Sony these days?”

“Actually, I quit last year. Now, I put together financing for independent features. Low budget stuff—in the five million range. Did you see
Yellow Cake
?”

“I have seen it,” I say, visibly impressed. “It’s brilliant. You’re going to get a ton of Academy Award nominations.”

Liam smiles, and looks down at the ground. He scratches his ear, a bit self-conscious. “Well, let’s hope so. Anyway, Ian Donovan, our director, is doing another independent film that starts shooting next week. It’s a thirty-three-day shoot. Low budget, about six million. Drew and Ian are both with CAA, so we sent Drew the script today. We’d only need him to shoot for eighteen days. Rehearsal period’s already over, but we could catch him up pretty quickly. We start shooting Monday here in L.A. Three weeks shooting in town . . .”

My shoulders tense up. I’m Drew’s personal assistant, I don’t get involved with his career decisions. So, I’m saddened to have to interrupt Liam by saying, “I’m afraid I really don’t have anything to do with—”

“. . . then a week off for Thanksgiving, and then we head to Paris for the rest of the shoot,” Liam finishes.

And I stop dead in my tracks. “Paris,” I repeat. “You’re shooting the film in Paris?”

Liam nods. “From the end of November until Christmas. I’m pretty excited about it. Paris is absolutely magical at Christmastime,” he says in his lilting Irish accent. “My parents live there, and they love it.”

“Isn’t your mother from Ireland?” I ask him, trying to get him to talk more about her. For some reason I think that if a man brings up his mother in any way, shape or form, that should always be taken as a good sign.

A good sign of what, I’m not sure. But definitely a good sign.

“Why on earth else would I have this name?” Liam answers. “Mom’s from Ireland, Dad’s from here. Now they’re in Paris. Anyway, we’d only need Drew for a few weeks here, then a few more days in Paris. And I think with Ian directing, Drew would be a shoo-in for an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.”

“Well, Drew does love Paris . . . ,” I say quietly, quickly thinking about my built-in excuse to see Jordan again.

“Of course, he wouldn’t have the regular perks of a studio shoot,” Liam warns me. “We don’t pay for drivers to pick him up, and things like that. And the paycheck wouldn’t be what he’s used to. But if you could maybe put our script on the top of his reading pile—”

“I’d love to,” I interrupt.

Liam seems taken aback by my enthusiasm. “Really? Well, that’s fantastic. Thank you.”

As I look at that handsome face, and lose myself in those beautiful eyes, I can’t help but want to kiss him.

Instead, I turn away, and pull my brand-new iPhone out of my purse.

“Cool phone,” Liam observes.

“Thanks. It’s new,” I say as I dial Drew’s number. “It’s waterproof and I’m told it can withstand hippo attacks.”

Drew picks up on the first ring, “Do you think Megan Travers is gay?” he asks me.

“I don’t think so,” I answer. “Why?”

“She’s making out with a girl wearing a shark fin.”

I look around the backyard. “Are you here?”

“Where’s here?” Drew asks.

“Robert Hazan’s party.”

“Um . . . I’m not sure. The party I’m at has a lot of women dressed as cheerleaders, schoolgirls, a scantily clad owl of all things . . .”

“Drew, saying you’re at a Hollywood party with a bunch of half-dressed women helps me identify the party as much as if you called asking what town you were in, and mentioned it had a Starbucks and a Gap.”

“There’s a woman dressed as a naked hippo,” Drew continues. “Speaking of which, did you figure out what you wanted in exchange for never mentioning hippos to me again?”

“As a matter of fact, I have. Did you get a script today from CAA called . . .” I cover the phone’s mouthpiece and whisper to Liam, “Wait, what’s it called?”

“
A Collective Happiness
,” Liam whispers back.

“
A Collective Happiness
,” I say into the phone. “Did you get it?”

“I have no idea. Why?”

“You need to read it,” I say, trying to give my voice an authoritative tone.

“Wait, she’s not a hippo,” Drew says, his voice suddenly sounding within earshot. “She’s just a naked Komodo dragon.”

Just then, Spider-Man walks over to us, talking into his iPhone.

“And what are you supposed to be?” I hear Spider-Man ask me in person as I simultaneously hear Drew’s voice over the phone. “A beheaded dinosaur?”

I look up at Spider-Man, and look into his masked eyes. “Drew?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says matter-of-factly. “But only when I’m assuming the guise of my secret, crime-fighting alter ego.” Drew leans his masked face in close and practically whispers, “You know, it really is liberating to appear in public with your true identity concealed. Especially when you have super powers. Did you know this costume is rigged with hand jets that shoot spider webs?” He throws his wrist out at me. “Wanna see?”

“I think I’ll pass,” I say, throwing my head back so as not to get covered with sticky fake spider webs.

The masked crimefighter eyes me up and down. “Why aren’t you wearing your cheerleader costume?”

I roll my eyes. “For the last time. It’s not a costume! It’s a uniform!”

“Oh,” Drew says, sounding like it’s the first he’s heard of it. “Well, if it’s a uniform, does that mean that as your employer, I can require you to wear it to work every day?”

Drew’s genuinely asking me that, by the way. There’s not a hint of sarcasm in his voice. So I decide to ignore the comment. “Drew, have you met Liam O’Connor?”

“Liam,” Drew says, extending a webbed hand. “You produced
Yellow Cake
, right?”

“I did.”

“I loved that movie!” Drew says, his voice brightening. “I didn’t understand it, but I totally loved it!”

As Drew and Liam continue their membership in the mutual admiration society, I offer to get Drew a drink, then make a hasty getaway.

I just can’t see Liam for too long without needing to come up for air.

As I take a glass of champagne from the silver tray of a mummy waiter, I chant quietly to myself, “I like Jordan. I like Jordan . . .”

Even though Jordan might be boinking some Parisian slut right now.

God, I want a cigarette.

As I debate rifling through the bushes to find my spit-out piece of nicotine gum, I see my little brother Jamie talking with a naughty vampire. He’s wearing a big red bow, with a giant cardboard gift tag that reads:

To: Women

From: God

As the blond Barbie doll of a vampire gives him a kiss on the cheek and heads off, I walk up to him.

“God’s gift to women?” I ask, visibly horrified by the outfit.

“So far, it’s been quite the conversation piece,” Jamie says cheerfully. He nods to the vampire who just walked away. “She just asked me what I was doing later.”

I look over at the girl. “She’s a hooker,” I point out.

“I know. That’s why I told her I was busy. But it’s nice to be asked.” He takes a sip from my champagne flute. “Guess what? The editor at
Metro
finally gave me a writing job.”

“You got an article published?” I asked, bursting with sisterly pride.

“Better!” Jamie says, smiling proudly. “I got my own column. You are looking at the official author of ‘A Man’s Eye View.’ I beat out over a hundred people.”

Jamie has been working at
Metro
, a women’s magazine, for a couple of years as a fact checker. He has been dying to become a real writer, and has been submitting spec articles to their managing editor ever since he started.

“Wait a minute,” I say, trying not to sound negative. “Isn’t ‘A Man’s Eye View’ that puff piece a guy writes every month saying stuff like ‘All we men really want is someone to love us’?”

“Yeah. Load of crap, right?”

I shrug. “Well, it’d be nice if men felt that way.”

“But they don’t,” Jamie says cheerfully. “And that’s how I got the job. Everyone else was turning in bullshit pieces about how we really love weddings, and how it’s okay to just cuddle on a Sunday morning, and complete stereotypes about why we like sports. I went totally the other way.”

“Okay, now I’m afraid . . .”

“I called my piece ‘Don’t Kill the Messenger,’ ” Jamie says proudly. “I took every question you and Andy ever asked about boys, wrote ’em down, and then gave honest answers. I started with a man’s intentions: if he is straight and he is single, he wants to sleep with you.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I blurt out in a huff. “No woman is really going to want to read—”

“If he is straight and married,” Jamie continues, “he may not want to sleep with you, but he still wants to know that you want to sleep with him.”

“I’m not sure I ever asked that . . .”

“How can men sleep with women they’re not in love with?” Jamie continues. “Duh! I believe the better question is, ‘Why do women always have to be in love with the men they sleep with?’ I’m making five dollars a word.”

Kate walks up to us. “Hi, sweetie,” she says to Jamie, giving him a quick kiss hello.

The kiss is just a quick peck on the lips—old friends who are comfortable with each other. You’d never know they had been fuck-buddies briefly last month, after Kate’s breakup.

“Hey, baby,” Jamie says. “You are looking sexy as hell.”

“Really?” Kate asks, looking down at her outfit. “You don’t think it’s too slutty?”

“I’m a guy. You hear us say the words ‘too slutty’ about as often as the words, “No, thank you, Miss Theron, I already have a date for Saturday night.”

“Hmm,” Kate says, still scrutinizing her outfit. “Okay, thanks.” Kate leans in to quietly ask me, “What do you think it means if a guy says he’s not technically divorced, but he’s leaving his wife?”

Jamie leans in and answers just as quietly,

When a man promises to leave his wife, what he really means is . . . he has no intention of leaving his wife
.

“Oh,” Kate says, sounding disappointed. “That’s kind of what I thought.”

“Wait. Who’s married?” I ask Kate.

“Well, not technically divorced,” Kate corrects me.

“Yeah, that,” I say, my voice dripping with suspicion. “Who is it? Mike?”

Kate nods, then starts to walk away. I grab her arm. “Oh, no. You’re not going back to talk to him.”

Kate shrugs me off with her tone of voice. “I’m not going home with him or anything. We’re just talking. . . .”

“I’ll come with you,” I offer.

“What am I? Fifteen?”

“Clearly not,” I retort. “Fifteen-year-olds aren’t stupid enough to go out with married men.”

It’s then that Mike magically appears in front of us, all smiles, as he puts his arms around Kate’s shoulders. “I absolutely love this song,” he says, referring to Britney Spears’s “Gimme More” blasting from the backyard sound system. “Come dance with me.”

Kate avoids my gaze, and the two trot off to the dance floor.

I turn to Jamie. “ ‘Gimme More’?!” I say incredulously.

“I know,” Jamie says, with a defeated tone of voice. “Clearly the guy’s a full-on liar. He’s the type of guy who will compliment you on your shoes.”

I think about that for a second. “I’m sorry . . . what about that is bad?”

“Guys don’t notice shoes,” Jamie says definitively. “We notice the legs in the shoes. We don’t care if you’re wearing Christian Louboutins. You’re dressing for your female friends when you spend five hundred dollars on a pair of shoes, not us. If a man compliments your shoes, he’s trying to get you into bed.”

I cross my arms and glare at him. “By your theory, aren’t all men who talk to us trying to get us into bed?”

“Yes, but getting a woman into bed is like getting to the end of a football field: there are a variety of techniques. A guy should have the confidence to methodically march the ball down the field, and not just throw up a Hail Mary with plenty of time left on the clock.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “I think my pretending to understand even one word of that sentence would be the female equivalent of telling you, ‘Nice shoes.’ ”

Dawn quickly walks up to us, carrying what appears to be a blood-red martini. “Okay, be subtle. Look over my shoulder.”

Jamie and I look over her shoulder.

Dawn continues, “Do you see the black man wearing a firefighter’s uniform?”

I do, and I want him all for myself. Unfortunately for me, I am pretty sure the six-foot-three Adonis with the perfect chin is a good friend of Rob, my cousin Jenn’s husband. They are both English professors at UCLA.

Damn, he looks good tonight.

“Looks like Patrick,” I whisper to Dawn.

Dawn winces. “That’s what I was afraid of,” she whispers. “See, he—”

“Patrick!” Jamie yells across the lawn.

Dawn’s shoulders drop as Patrick turns and sees us. His face lights up. “Hey,” Patrick says, walking up to us. “I haven’t seen you guys in forever.”

He puts out his hand and he and Jamie do the new handshake with the slightly apart hug and back pat. Then he turns to me. “Charlie. Gorgeous as ever,” he says, giving me a kiss hello on the lips.

In our little Hollywood microcosm where everyone kisses each other on the lips, Patrick then kisses Dawn ever so gently on the cheek. “Dawn, how are you?” he says, in a sentence loaded with deep desire.