Oh! You Pretty Things (13 page)

When Trent dropped me at the apartment, my mother met us at the curb. First time for everything. She gave Trent those three Euro cheek kisses. Her laughter was as light and silvery as tinsel.

I was rinsing sand from my hair when the bathroom door opened. Through the shower curtain, she said, “It wasn't a total loss. Trent thinks he can get better pictures of you another time.”

“I don't want to.”

“At least he hopes he can.”

“Mom. I don't want to.”

The shower curtain opened and she eyed me. “This is your one fucking chance. Show a little gratitude.”

“He's creepy.”

“If he were a nobody,” she said, “he'd be creepy. But he's Trent-fucking-Whitford. How many Independent Spirit Awards have you won?”

“He just—” I turned off the shower. “I don't want to.”

“You don't have to want to,” she said.

T
he morning after Scout's birthday party, I wake feeling jumpy and I can't immediately identify the cause. Then it comes into focus: Donna wants something from me, and my culinary audition for Eva ended without a job offer. Of course, Donna will probably just fade away—that's her specialty—and Scout will probably come through in the end. Still, I'm rattled, my bones loose in their sockets, my skin clammy and cold, even though I'm sweating from the warm air.

Part of the problem is that I'm alone in the apartment, since Megan and JJ are shacked up at his sprawling Spanish compound. And it doesn't help that we're having a heat wave, the kind of blistering, late-summer swamp that seems to get worse every year. We're usually immune down by the beach, but it's so hot in our apartment right now that even lying naked on my bed, five minutes after a cold shower, the fan is blowing at me like a hair dryer.

Also, Donna's been silent since that last text, which is freaking me out. Is she serious about coming to L.A.? Is she plotting something?

When the phone rings, I twitch before realizing it's Megan. I answer despite myself, and she launches into a burbling monologue for two minutes until it dawns on her I'm hardly responding.

“Aw, Boof, are you bummed? Come stay here,” she says. “There are three bedrooms for you to choose from.”

“I have to be at Tyler's first thing,” I tell her. “And I have a full day of bourgeois acquisition duty.”

“Air-conditioning and a pool,” she says. “Come when you're done?”

I roll onto a less-sweaty patch on the bed. “I'll call you,” I say, though I'm already feeling twitchy that she'll be able to see my Donna-based shame if she looks me in the eye.

I've never told her the whole truth about my mother. And something else is keeping me from ditching my life and joining her. My job for Tyler? Not exactly. It's more about his celebrity, I guess. His easy, low-key celebrity. He has all the fame among all the right people, with none of the hassle—no paparazzi or tell-alls or un-stares. But I'm not satisfied. It's not enough. I always wanted to slip into this world, and now I have . . . barely. I'm still on the outskirts, though. I'm in the suburbs of celebrity, with picket fences and lawn ornaments.

So am I jealous of Megan, my best friend, because she's gone all the way downtown—so to speak—with JJ? That's a pretty ugly picture of myself, but I can hear my mother whispering in my ear:
Megan's dating a star. What are
you
doing?

“Are you okay?” Megan says. “You sound weird.”

“Yeah, I'm okay.”

“Then why do you sound weird?”

“I'm weird but okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“I'm just hot, Boof. Go jump in the pool.”

“Okaa-a-y,” she says, unconvinced, and I hang up before she can ask again.

A few hours later, I'm in the queue at Starbucks when my phone blows up with a rapid-fire string of texts, all from Tyler.

My cigs are stale. Pick me up a carton on your way back?

Tyler keeps his cigarettes in the freezer, which apparently doesn't stop them from getting stale. I've replaced the carton twice this week.

TYLER:
Zelda's acting weird. Think she's dehydrated. Can u call the vet and see if we can give her coconut water?

ME:
Dude, she's hot. We're all hot. She's fine. Sure.

TYLER:
Can you stop and pick up some coconut water?

I tap out a grudging
No problem
and scoop my drinks from the counter. Halfway to the door, I feel a hand on my bare arm and I scowl.

What now?

When I turn, I find Kirk, for once not dressed in his Fleurs et Diables
tee. Instead, he's in a pair of perfectly worn green cargo pants and a faded orange T-shirt I want to bury my face in because it looks so soft.

By the way, he had been teasing about the whole kirK thing. When he came last week, he spent more time shooting the shit with me than on all the little snippy, clippy things he does to the plants and he copped to the fact that he was just fucking with me. And even though he spent most of his scheduled time chatting me up, when he left, the deck looked fantastic. And as long as I'm being honest, so did he.

And he's even hotter standing here in his civilian clothes.

“Hey, Jess,” he says. “What's up?”

I raise my coffees and quirk a brow. “I'm doing a coffee run and exploring the veterinary frontier of coconut water.”

He immediately says, “Zelda's panting.”

“Not bad.”

“Give me another one,” he tells me. “Facts about Jess.”

“Um. I kill at Mediterranean food.”

He eyes me briefly. “A party. For friends. You cooked so you'd have an excuse to hide in the kitchen.”

“That's not the only reason,” I tell him, impressed in spite of myself.

“C'mon, let's see if I can go three for three.”

“My mother says she's coming to L.A.,” pops out of my mouth.

“Is that . . . good?”

I look at him. “It's like a box of Teuscher chocolates, wrapped in foil layers of shame and rage.”

He looks alarmed. “Oh. Are you okay?”

“I've gotta go,” I say, and shoulder through the crowd, my heart suddenly beating way too fast.

Why did I say anything about my mom? Why did I ruin a perfectly happy flirtation? I let my brain grind on the humiliation of the encounter for a few minutes, then I force a lid on it and drive to the liquor store for the cigarettes. I call the vet. I stop at Whole Foods and grab some more coconut water. By the time I get back to the house, I've fallen into the rhythm of doing my job, and my worries are more like the distant buzz of a wasp than the ululating siren of an ambulance. There's something really soothing about taking care of Tyler, of anyone, really. You'd think I would have made an excellent wife.

S
cout calls the next evening, while I'm lying on my bed listening to old Fiona Apple on repeat and staring at the television flickering a tabloid show on mute. Even with no sound, Billy Bush irritates me, with his cheesy smirk and his carefully gelled hair.

“Dude,” I groan in lieu of a greeting. “Why is Billy Bush so smarmy?”

Scout laughs. “More important, why is your mother like one of those reality-show stage momagers?”

“For a thousand reasons, but I'm terrified to ask why this is coming up right now.”

“She just spent twenty minutes on the phone with me, not quite telling me to push you to meet Eva.”

You know how people say they see red when they're angry? Not me. I get sparkly constellations of little white stars that cascade like fireworks when I close my eyes. “I'm going to need to call you back,” I say through clenched teeth. “After I track her down and murder her.”

“Okay, deep breaths, no sudden movements. It's weird, but she's not wrong. I happen to agree that you and Eva are a perfect fit. Put down the remote and come to dinner with us at the Ivy.”

“You're fucking kidding me, right?”

“I swear, this has nothing to do with Stagey McStage Mom. We can talk about that later. I'm on my way to get you right now. Be ready in ten.”

“I can't,” I say. “I can't spend a hundred bucks on a chopped salad and a gimlet.”

“You don't have to spend a hundred bucks,” Scout says into my sudden silence. “Just pay what you can afford.”

“That's ridiculous,” I say. “I can't let your best friend subsidize me. I don't even know her.”

“Great,” Scout says. “See you outside in ten.”

She hangs up and I watch Billy Bush juggling eggs or lemons, I can't tell which. Okay, fine. This is about me, not my mother. Dinner with Scout and Eva. Why not? So what? I mean, it's not like I have anything else to do. It's not like I care about having dinner at the Ivy with Eva Carlton. It's not like I'm a
fan
or anything. I'm just curious about an employment possibility.

W
e get to the Ivy thirty minutes late. Eva is already there, which makes Scout falter as we approach a table tucked into the back by the fireplace. Apparently we're hiding out, because this part of the restaurant is the no-man's land reserved for well-heeled tourists and below-the-line creatives who don't get recognized by the laser-eyed hostess or her assistants.

Eva looks up with a winning smile, and Scout launches into an explanation of our tardiness with elaborate details about traffic. As Eva cranks up the wattage, Scout flops into the next chair, and her purse drops to the floor, spilling keys and a lipstick that rolls under the floor-length white tablecloth. I've never seen her off-center like this, not even with Weston, and I realize she's sort of flustered and crushy. It's pretty cute, really.

I smile to Eva, then to the pale, matronly woman beside her, who's having a murmured conversation into her Bluetooth headset. She keeps her eyes focused on the colorful, hand-painted plates on the white tablecloth in front of her, but Eva fixes me with her open gaze and I can't help but notice, even in the dim candlelight, that her eyelashes are spectacular. It looks like she has mink caterpillars fringing her impossibly huge brown eyes.

You know how people say that if you see a celebrity before they've been in the makeup chair for hours or backlit or Photoshopped, they look exactly like everyone else? Yeah, it's bullshit. Eva looks like a Vargas painting of a Gauguin Tahitian princess. She glows like a spotlight is brushing the tops of her perfect cheeks and pooling shadows into the deep spaces where her collarbone pushes away from her neck. And I can see from where I'm sitting that she's not wearing any makeup. Okay, maybe a little Benetint and some lip gloss, but seriously. This isn't a smoke-and-mirrors situation. Eva has the luminous, unlined skin of a well-hydrated six-year-old.

“I'm so excited you're here,” she says, and her enthusiasm feels so authentic that I get as flustered and blushy as Scout, and am suddenly grateful for the low lighting.

The pale woman ends her phone call and squints in my direction. “Who are
you
?”

The muted disdain in her voice makes me feel like I just got caught committing a felony.
Who am
I
?
Oh, you know. Just your run-of-the-mill famewhore whose mother tried to arrange this dinner like a playdate.

“Melanie,” Scout says, like she's reproaching a naughty toddler. “Jess is my friend from Venice. I told you she was coming.”

“Mel,” Eva says, smoothly. “Will you do me a huge favor? Run next door to Indigo Seas and see if they've gotten any more of the serving plates in?”

Indigo Seas is the heinously expensive store attached to the Ivy that sells their signature, hand-painted tableware plus a variety of overpriced flea-market finds. It's the kind of place where you can spend seventy-five-dollars on a vintage (read: used) tea towel. Celebrities eat that shit up.

“Uh . . . right now?” Melanie says, frowning.

Eva squeezes Melanie's forearm. “That would be great. I think they're getting ready to close.”

Melanie fakes a smile and pushes away from the table as the waiter approaches. “Sure. No problem.”

The waiter is so used to working the un-stare that there's no indication that he recognizes Eva or appreciates her little wisp of a black tank top, the spaghetti straps drooping dangerously from her tanned shoulders. She hands him the oversize menu, smiles at him with her minky eyes, and rattles off a special order that is pure truck driver with a splash of foodie: “Can we get the onion rings and an order of fries to start and”—she tips the menu back from his hand to peer at it briefly—“a couple of artichokes and—ooh, for the onion rings, can you ask them to make me some of that yogurt ranch stuff they do with the fresh herbs?—and a Caesar salad, with absolutely no anchovies, but a ton of shaved Parm; in fact, can you bring a plate of just shaved Parmesan on the side, and definitely some of the garlic bread, but, wait, on the Caesar, can you add a whole bunch of those oven-roasted tomatoes?” She looks up fetchingly at him. “You're getting all this?”

He assures her that he is, so she keeps going as I surreptitiously look around the room.

Having dinner at the Ivy with a celebrity is completely different from being part of the civilian population, no matter how much you tipped the host for that table on the patio, the one everyone has to pass on the way to the bathroom. For what it's worth, even if you slide the hostess a couple one-hundred-dollar bills, you're not getting that table unless no one of Kathy Griffin–level celebrity or higher is in the house.

I'm just saying. There's a caste system in play, and money doesn't override it. Though it helps.

Ten minutes later, I'm watching Eva Carlton eat onion rings like she's auditioning for webcam porn, her fingertips and lips glistening with grease as she dangles the dripping shreds above her glossy lips. She licks a droplet of ranch from the corner of her mouth, then sticks her forefinger into her mouth up to the second knuckle and licks it clean.

The part of me that isn't falling a little bit in love with her thinks, I bet that's the only onion ring she'll eat all night.

I'm more than content to listen to her and Scout catch up, until we hear the unmistakable sound of an iPhone camera shutter nearby. I turn in time to see our waiter descend on a table of women with Elizabeth Taylor hairdos—circa her bloated wheelchair period, not
National Velvet
.

They look chastened as the waiter wags his finger like a stern father, then launches into a speech he's clearly given a thousand times about the sanctity of protecting the guests of their establishment. Which is kind of comical when you consider the double layer of paparazzi out front—the A-list paps getting the prime sidewalk frontage while the B-team settles for long-lensing it from across the street in front of the Newsroom Café—but it's a nice touch.

Eva relaxes as the women huddle around their table, suddenly very intently not looking in our direction, their own version of the Midwest un-stare, not nearly as subtle.

We're half done with dinner when Melanie returns, laden with oversize white paper shopping bags from Indigo Seas. “They had everything,” she tells Eva. “I got you eight place settings.”

Eva lights up. “You're like a fairy godmother.”

They chat about the dishes while Melanie eats the remaining artichoke, and I'm already exhausted. When you go out in public with a celebrity, it's like everyone's watching every move you make, always. The walls are breathing, listening. On the other hand, it's intoxicating. It's gauche to say that, I know, and I can see how it would get old fast. Especially if you had a cold sore and PMS. But right now, my exhaustion is almost postcoital, basking in Eva's reflected heat.

So I'm feeling sort of replete and triumphant when the women at the next table stand to leave—then suddenly stampede closer and surround Eva in a tight half-circle.

“I'm so sorry!” the boldest one gushes. “But I just have to tell you that I'm such a huge fan of yours!” She rattles off the name of Eva's soap opera, and one of her favorite plots, which means nothing to me. For all my pop-culture obsession, I managed to completely miss the boat on soap operas.

“I've been watching you since your very first day
,
back when you were just a baby,” she continues.

Eva flashes a megawatt smile that doesn't extend to her eyes. “Thank you so much. That means a lot to me.”

Scout and Melanie scowl so fiercely that I'm a little intimidated, and I haven't even done anything.

“We're eating,” Scout says, icily. “Do you mind?”

They launch into stammering apologies, but make no move to leave. Then the ringleader clears her throat. “Do you think we could get one quick picture?” She brandishes her iPhone. “It'll only take a second.”

“Of course you can,” Eva says, and the women pack themselves around her chair.

“Excuse me!” Melanie barks to the blond hostess, who is nervously scanning the room for our missing waiter. “Do you
see
this?”

The ringleader knows her window is closing, and shoves her phone at me. “Can you take our picture?”

“Of course.” I take the phone, frame them in the viewfinder, and slip my forefinger over the lens. “Say cheese, ladies.”

They smile and I click the shutter, pleased with the flat, red square it records.

“Got it,” I say, and instead of handing the phone back to them, I head toward the front door, looking over my shoulder. “Come on, I'll walk you out.”

“You shouldn't have intervened,” Melanie tells me when I return, her voice sharp as an ice pick.

“Mel, stop,” Eva says reproachfully, and turns to me. “I'm sure I have grease all over my face. The thing with your finger was inspired.”

“It totally was,” Scout says.

“Do me a favor, Mel,” Eva says, and Melanie immediately stiffens. “Jesus, don't freak—I just want you to switch places with Jess.”

Melanie drops her gaze and mutters something about putting the bags in the car. Eva seems unfazed by her passive tantrum and pats the empty seat as Melanie slouches toward the valet, laden with her purchases.

“Maybe I should go?” I say, which is completely impractical, since I came with Scout in her car, but I'm grasping for something to defuse the tension.

“Don't be a dork,” Scout says.

“Mel's been my manager since the beginning,” Eva tells me, leaning in conspiratorially. “She's kind of a handful.”

I'm not sure how to respond, and before I blurt out anything inappropriate, the waiter sets heaping plates of ice cream and bowls of confections onto the table.

“Melanie and I are about to part ways,” Eva continues when he leaves. “She just doesn't know it yet. Her weirdness has nothing to do with you.”

I wonder why Eva is entrusting me with this information. I mean, we're only meeting for the second time. Still, Scout is nodding along and making encouraging eye contact with me, so I get a warm, fuzzy feeling that makes me think Eva might actually really like me. And it doesn't hurt that she wants to know everything about me. She curls into the chair and tucks her bare feet under her butt like she's settling in at a pajama party and finds me the most fascinating girl in the room.

It makes me feel a little dizzy, with a happy drunken buzz like a contact high from being in her presence. And the dessert. If you've never been to the Ivy, it's worth the trip for the fifteen-dollar banana split, which isn't a banana split at all, but a dinner plate piled with ice cream and fresh fruit—raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, and, yes, token chunks of banana. A separate, full-size plate holds a cluster of pitchers and tiny bowls—toasted, chopped almonds, freshly whipped cream, buttery house-made caramel, and thick, bittersweet hot fudge. It's a travesty. It's heaven. I've been to the Ivy dozens of times and I've never seen anyone order it, except for a birthday, where it melts on the table as people drink coffee and smoke e-cigarettes. It's a dessert for women who star in their own movies. No one else in Los Angeles would dare order it, at least no one with a vagina.

For once, Eva really digs in. She takes big, showy bites, pouring caramel onto a spoonful of ice cream and banana and jamming the whole thing into the pot of almonds before bringing it to her lips. Just watching her eat is making me split my pants.

“Eat this,” she says, shoving the plate in my direction. “It's sick.”

I'm supposed to say no, but, c'mon. Of course I eat the ice cream. I always eat the ice cream. And this time, the remarkable thing is that I don't feel guilty about it. Eva's enjoyment is contagious. No, not contagious. It's
empowering
.

When I was a little kid, my mom would pick me up from Gloria's every few months and take me out for ice cream, just the two of us. It always felt like a big deal. I'd kick my foot against the passenger door in her old GTO (so much cooler than the RAV4 that came afterward) and try not to show too much enthusiasm, because she always told me that a lady never shows emotions. Which was patently ridiculous, coming from her.