Oh! You Pretty Things (14 page)

So now I mumble something about how eating ice cream reminds me of my mother, and Eva perks up. She wants to know all about my mother. I can tell from her tone that Scout already filled her in but told her not to say anything.

I give her the short version, and I see her realizing that I'm holding back.

“Did you grow up around here?” she asks.

“In Santa Monica, mostly. But all over the place when I was living with my mom.”

“Oh, did you live with your dad in Santa Monica?”

I shoot a glance at Scout, who is feigning fascination with her phone. “My dad wasn't around. I grew up with my grandmother, really.”

Eva's face softens into a genuine smile. “That's awesome. I loved my
abuelita
.”

“Are you Mexican?” I say. “I read that you're Portuguese and French.”

Scout snorks.

“What?” Eva asks innocently.

Scout sets her oversize cup on its oversize saucer. “Please. Your grandmother was a train wreck. And the Portuguese thing is going to haunt you forever.”

A tiny furrow ripples across Eva's smooth forehead, then disappears when she bursts into delighted laughter and throws her arms around Scout's neck. “That is why you're my best friend,” she says affectionately. “You always speak your truth.”

Scout leans back as Eva crawls onto her lap and crosses her legs like she's about to bust a yoga move. I'm not uptight about public displays of affection, but it's a little weird that we're sitting in the middle of the Ivy and Eva's acting like she's in her pajamas in her living room.

“Are you okay?” she asks, catching something in my expression. “Am I freaking you out?”

“Not at all,” I say.

“Bullshit,” she says, but she keeps smiling.

The waiter materializes at Eva's elbow. “Can I get you anything else? More tea?”

Eva stands and stretches her arms over her head like she's just crawled out of bed. Her shirt rides up to expose her stomach and we all stare at it for a moment, flicking our glances away as she straightens.

“Just the check, please,” she says.

“Oh, no Miss Carlton, your friend”—he gestures to Melanie's empty chair—“took care of the bill on her way out.”

“Wait,” I say. “Did she leave?”

Eva digs into her Marc Jacobs handbag, then scrolls through the texts on her phone. “Apparently. Which is good, because I want to talk to you about something.”

“Uh, okay.”

“I mean, not that I wouldn't have talked to you with Melanie here, but . . . well, let's just say that she's been complicating things for me lately.”

“Right,” I say, deadpan. “Because that's not cryptic.”

Eva looks across the table at Scout. “You never said she was funny.”

“I figured you'd get that all by yourself,” Scout says.

“We like funny,” Eva says. “Hot is fleeting, but funny lasts forever.”

“Next you'll say I have a good personality,” I tell her.

Eva laughs loudly, her head back and her teeth as white and even as a toothpaste ad. “Okay, A, you're gorgeous. B, I'm straight.”

She pauses and looks at me intently. I guess she needs to clarify that.

“Right on,” I say. “What's C?”

“C is, I want you to work for me.”

W
hen I was in high school, I was always in awe of the girls who flirted with everyone and had a different date every weekend, but I'm a serial monogamist. With everything, really. Not just boys. I do it with friends, with food, even with clothing. When I find a pair of pants that make my ass look like Italian sculpture, I buy six pairs and wear them constantly. When I fell in love with kale, I ate it three times a day for months. Then came an equivalent pork phase, to balance it out.

My point is, I'm not good at juggling. And I have to say, after Eva's offer I find myself kind of wrecked. She said she'd call, so now I'm spending every moment waiting for the phone to ring. But at the same time, I'm still working for Tyler, and it certainly doesn't suck. I mean, he's a pain in the ass, but he's my pain in the ass. Plus, without him, Eva would never have asked me to work for her. Staff poaching could be a Celebrity Olympics event. I'm not a fan. I owe Tyler. Plus, I like him—though I still haven't learned to negotiate the roiling waters of his management team. Maybe if I didn't have Eva's offer lurking in the periphery of my mind—oh, who am I kidding, it's all I'm thinking about—I'd be a little more conciliatory when Cassidy calls two mornings later to bitch that I've fucked up the ratio of kibble to wet food for Zelda.

There's something about the way she launches into her grievance without any of the niceties that boots up a few angry, self-protective synapses in my brain.

“I don't know what to tell you, sweetheart,” I say, when she pauses for breath. I'm on my bike, as per usual, stopped on the side of the road at San Vicente and Seventh Street. I can't ride and talk at the same time, especially not to her. I'd drive right into oncoming traffic.

“What did you just call me?” Cassidy says.

“I'm doing the best I can. If I'm not living up to your expectations, maybe it's time to throw a flag on the play.”

I actually say that, “throw a flag on the play.” I think I'm channeling the high school quarterback I had an unrequited crush on, because I barely know what it means.

As expected, Cassidy clicks off without another word. That's another Olympic event in these parts: the upper-hand, end-of-conversation decathlon, featuring severed connections, slammed doors, ignored texts, and deleted e-mails. Cassidy is a gold medalist. By the time I walk into Tyler's house, a scant five minutes later, she's already brought the hammer down.

Tyler's standing in the immaculate kitchen in a pair of gray boxer briefs, holding an empty coffee cup and looking forlorn. “Jessie, I just got off the phone with Cass. What the fuck happened?”

“What have you heard?”

“She said you were completely out of line.” He knocks a cigarette out of one of the packs on the counter and flicks on the burner of the stove, dipping in to light it. “She actually used the word ‘insubordinate.'”

“Did she also mention that she called to rag on me for a dog-food issue?”

“No way,” he says. “I had no idea.”

I'm no psychic, but I'm clear he knows exactly what I'm talking about. I've broken one of the cardinal rules of Hollywood: don't breach the wall of the entourage. Managers, agents, business managers, and even assistants all earn their keep by being the emotional buffer between the talent and the outside world.

“Come on, Tyler, that's bullshit. You just don't want to get dragged down by the help.”

He widens his eyes. “Jess, you know me better than that.”

“And Steve gave me a talking-to about my ‘tardiness' on my first day, which was, in fact, exactly when you told me to be here.”

“Shit,” he says, and furrows his brow. “That's totally my fault. I got my times mixed up and I was having a moment when Steve called.”

“Fair enough,” I say. “We all have moments.”

He takes a deep breath. “Okay, truth, Jess? I'm barely keeping my head above the waves. My last three pictures were shit. It's a death knell. And someone's gonna realize I don't deserve all this, and—and I just can't deal, sometimes.”

“Wow,” I say.

“I honestly feel like I'm going to shatter into a million pieces from the time I wake up until the minute I fall asleep.”

“I get it,” I say. “I mean, I think everyone feels that way. You're only as good as your last trophy, right?” Jesus, what
is
it with me and the sports metaphors today? “I mean, I think it's pretty universal.”

He looks at me blankly.

“I realize it's not a competition,” I add hastily.

“That's where you're so wrong,” he says. “Everything in this town is a competition. Every-fucking-thing. It's exhausting.”

We stand there in silence for a moment. Then I say, “Did she really say ‘insubordinate'?”

His mouth twists into a wry smile. “That was the
nicest
thing she said.”

“She's a treat,” I say. “But I guess that's a good quality in a guard dog.”

This should be the moment in the movie where the music swells and I realize that I'm working for a nice guy who's maybe just a little neurotic, and who's maybe just a little plowed under by his shark-skinned entourage. But instead I find myself tabulating pro/con columns at lightning speed in my head. Three failed movies? What happens if there's a fourth? And, seriously, a composer? I mean, sure, he's viable in a certain subset in this town, but come on. He's no Eva Carlton.

“Listen,” Tyler says. “I'll put a stop to it today, I promise. In fact, fuck the trial period. Let's call this a done deal.”

“I really like you,” I say, and my voice comes out squeaky and uncertain. “But I don't think this is the right fit for either of us. You need an alligator. I'm a chameleon, at best. I'll get eaten alive here.”

“It doesn't have to be like that,” he says, putting a soothing hand on my shoulder. Uh-oh. Kryptonite. “Just give it a month.”

Ugh, why can't he be an asshole right now? It's so much easier to blow off someone abusive. But I'm having a selfish swirl of need: dinners at the Ivy, location shoots, the whole nine.

“I can't,” I say. “I have to trust my gut on this one.”

He grinds out his cigarette on the counter, and I think, Here comes the tantrum. But he just stands there in silence, looking crestfallen, and then, right on cue, Zelda wanders into the room, beelining over to me to start licking my bare, flip-flopped foot.

“See?” he says. “Zelda's the best judge of character I know.”

I think about making a joke about spilled gravy, but instead I dig the Hermès ring with the keys to his cars out of my pocket and set it gently on the marble counter.

“Are you sure?” he says. “I mean,
sure
sure?”

Deep breath. “Yeah,” I say softly.

“I'll have Steve cut your final check today,” he says.

God, I hope I'm making the right decision.

God, I hope Eva calls.

God, I hope.

God.

I
f you crane your head out the window of my apartment and look west, you can catch a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean between the high-rise condos on Neilson Way. That's the upside to my building. The downside is that when the elevator is out of service, I'm living in a five-story walkup. The apartments have nine-foot ceilings, so the flights are longer than normal, and tilted at a death-defying angle. I get bruises on my tailbone just thinking about it.

I mash the call button on the elevator and wait with a growing sense of dread as seconds tick by and I don't hear the creaky sound of old cables. Finally, I shoulder my purse and a bottle of Hendricks from the liquor store next to the Circle Bar, and trudge upstairs.

The phone doesn't ring while I'm walking upstairs. Nothing from Eva. Nothing from Scout.

On my front door, there's a scrap of paper taped with a piece of black electrical tape. At first I think it's an eviction notice, and my heart turns to water. Then I see what it really is, and the water turns to wine. It's a gift certificate for a box of Teuscher chocolates.

There's a phone number scrawled on the back, with a little sketch of a daisy.
Call me
, it reads.
kirK
.

I'm smiling at the note when I hear a voice inside the apartment. I smile, happy that Megan's home . . . then my mother's unmistakably throaty laugh sounds from behind the front door.

My palms and armpits pop an immediate cold sweat. I lean my head against the door to listen more closely. Nothing. I wonder if I'm having a guilt-induced aural hallucination.

I dig my phone from my purse and fire off a text to Megan:
ru kiddng me boof? Is donna in the apt? Did you let donna in?

I watch the screen like it's a countdown timer on a bomb. No answer. I press my ear to the door again, and it flies open. I stumble straight into my mother, who is wrapped in two of Megan's best bath towels and has some kind of goopy orange potion slathered onto her face.

She's holding Megan's phone between her thumb and forefinger and I can't decide if the moment is more Lucy and Ethel or
Fatal Attraction
, because there's the stumbling and the sticky face mask and other comedic elements, but there's also my sociopathic mother standing half-naked in the foyer and I had no idea she'd even arrived.

“Hi,” I say.

“Monchichi,” she says, dripping syrup and reproach. “I've been texting you.”

The guy from across the hall steps out of his doorway toting a trash bag and stops dead beside me, goggling at my mother in her post-bath splendor. He bears more than a passing resemblance to the Dude in
The Big Lebowski.

“Hey, Megan,” he says to me.

“Hi, Rick,” I say without making eye contact or correcting him.

My mother extends a slender hand in his direction. “Hello, Rick. I'm Donna. It's lovely to meet you.”

Rick is mesmerized by the swell of my mother's augmented breasts over the top of the knotted towel and I feel like I'm in one of those humiliation dreams where I'm naked at the school assembly.

“Mom,” I say, then stop. I've got nothing to say to her.

“You never told me you had such a hot sister,” Rick says to me, but really to Donna.

I roll my eyes so hard that I think I've pulled a muscle, but Donna just smiles and murmurs something about him being too kind.

Then the elevator door creaks open and Megan and JJ come spilling into the hallway, loaded down with bags of takeout from Urth Caffe and laughing about god-knows-what and that's the point where everything fades to black-and-white and I realize it's because my whole life has turned into a Woody Allen movie.

“Boof,” Megan says, still giggling. “You found your mom.”

“Yeah, thanks for the heads-up.”

“Wait,” Rick says. “Which one is Boof? I'm confused.”

“That makes two of us,” I say, and I shoulder my way past Donna into the apartment and leave everyone standing in the hall.

I click the inadequate lock on my bedroom door and flop onto my unmade bed. My mother is here. In my house. I crack the Hendricks and take a warm, stinging swig. It burns like roses and rubbing alcohol on the way down and I lie there in the muted glow from the streetlights and try to think of what to do next.

Two seconds later, Megan jimmies my bedroom lock with her ATM card, then regards the tableau of me in my underwear with my laptop and Hendricks between my legs.

“Boof,” she says. “What are you doing?”

I frantically motion for her to come in and shut the door. “What does it look like? I'm hiding.”

She kicks the door shut with her foot and flops onto my bed. “She's not that bad.”

“Oh, okay,” I say, like I've had a sudden and impossible change of heart.

She rolls onto her stomach and looks at me through her tangle of curly hair. “I need to tell you something.”

“Uh-oh.” I regard her suspiciously. “What?”

“JJ wants me to move in with him.”

“Wow.”

“I know.” She clearly wants to be serious but can't contain her enthusiasm. “I mean, it's a step. I mean, whoa, right? I mean—moving in together.”

There are at least five reasons that this statement guts me. The first two are—
Oh my God, don't leave me
and
What am I going to do about money?
—with a laundry list of the seven deadlies (envy, jealousy, lust in particular) making up the balance.

“That's awesome!” I say, forcing myself not to chug from the Hendricks bottle. “And . . . fast.”

“I kno-o-ow,” she says, dragging her words out into a groan. “But I'm completely smitten, Boof. I feel like a schoolgirl.”

“He's amazing,” I say. “You're great together. He wanted to cook you breakfast.”

“And—don't freak out—it's kind of good news that I'm doing it right away, because then your mom can have my room, you know?”

Before I can throw myself around Megan's waist and cling like a limpet, I hear my mother's trilling laugh from the living room.

“Oh my God,” I say. “Please tell me you didn't leave her in there alone with JJ.”

“Jesus, Boof, don't be a weirdo. What do you think is going to happen?”

“Will you please just get out there and do some damage control?”

Megan laughs. “You're ridiculous. Okay, I'm going. But tell me you're happy for me, or—or at least not pissed that I'm leaving. I'm in lo-o-ove.”

I'm the worst friend ever. She's practically incandescent, she's so happy, and I'm making her worry about me. “It's awesome. You and he—I don't know, you fit. I'm totally happy for you.”

“And you know I'll take care of the rent for a couple of months if you need it, right?”

“You just enjoy JJ,” I say, tugging a pair of sweats onto one leg and hopping around the room.

“You sure you're okay?” she asks, pausing with her hand on the doorknob, and my heart breaks at her genuine concern.

“I'm great, as long as you get out there before my mom starts blowing your boyfriend.”

“Jesus!” Megan says, somewhere between entertained and horrified. “You're so dramatic.”

“Oh, Boof,” I say to the door after she's gone. “You have no idea.”

When I finally summon the courage to leave my room, it feels like we're having a party. Megan and JJ have brought enough food to feed a dozen people: a caprese sandwich with fat, oozing tomatoes and thick slices of fresh mozzarella on a crusty baguette; a farmer's salad piled with grilled artichokes and spangled with shavings of fresh Parmesan; a Mediterranean platter with the biggest kalamata olives I've ever seen. There are containers of soup and an extra bag of breads and a pastry box that I'm sure has an assortment of their amazing pies.

“What the hell?” I say. “How many people are we feeding?”

Megan laughs and pulls a stack of plates from the cupboard above the sink. “We might have stopped at the Farmacy earlier.”

The Farmacy used to be the go-to medical marijuana emporium for young Hollywood. Now it's just an overpriced tourist trap, but it is right down the street, and I'm sure that JJ's face gets him special treatment.

“Are you stoned right now?” I ask. “I don't want to harsh your buzz, but can you please explain how my mother is in your bedroom, dressing for what appears to be a dinner party in her honor?”

“It's not a conspiracy, Boof,” Megan says, slinging an arm around my neck and leaning her head on my shoulder. “She got here forty-five minutes ago and we were on our way to get food, so we thought we'd make it easy for everyone. She's been driving all day. She needed a shower.”

“Yeah, well, a heads-up would have been nice,” I say. I sound like a pouty child.

“I'm sorry,” Megan says, and she's not insincere, but her sparkly mirth is completely annoying. “Why don't you go in and catch up with her? We've got this.”

JJ is unloading a paper sack filled with bottles of red wine, and I can't help but notice that it's the good stuff, I mean, domestic, but still.

I point at a bottle of Duckhorn Cabernet. “Can I get a glass of that first?”

JJ peels the foil from the bottle and uncorks it expertly. “Just like the old days.”

“You were a waiter?”

JJ nods. “I knew those shifts at Outback Steakhouse would pay off someday.”

Megan laughs and takes a sip from the bottle. “You're so full of shit. You've never worked a day job in your life.”

She's right, of course. JJ's been working as an actor since he was nine. In fact, I'm sure Donna's in the other room trying to figure out how to monetize her proximity to a solid B-list television actor. And probably going through Megan's lingerie drawer.

I peek through the doorway of Megan's bedroom and see Donna's fake Louis Vuitton suitcase gaping on the bed, a profusion of silky fabrics and worn denim spilling from the sides. Then I step forward and can't see anything except Donna. She's five-four in heels and a size 2 at the outside—but her presence fills the room to the point of suffocation.

She's kneeling on the settee in front of the dresser, brushing her blond, highlighted hair and regarding herself in the mirror. She's wearing what appears to be a vintage Pucci caftan, a swirl of ice-cream pinks, with a dangerously plunging neckline.

“Buttercup,” she exclaims, rising and holding her arms out like Jesus welcoming his flock.

“I brought wine,” I say, shielding myself with the bottle before she can envelop me in a bony, silk-clad hug. Seriously, I could slice prosciutto on her collarbone.

“Yes, please,” she says, plucking the glasses from my hand.

“You look great,” I say as I pour.

“You too, muffin,” she says, but her lip curls at my ratty Sex Pistols T-shirt.

I sip my wine, unsure how to handle that blatant lie so early in the conversation. The air between us is warm and sticky, like engine oil.