Oh! You Pretty Things (15 page)

“I've been trying to call you since I hit the Grapevine,” she says, lying again. “It went straight to voice mail. I was so thrilled that Megan and her new paramour were here to receive me.”

“Jesus, Mom, why do you say shit like that? You sound like such a poseur.”

“Says the girl wearing a T-shirt from a band who peaked before she was born,” Donna says with a tilt of her wineglass.

Busted. That's the irritating thing about Donna: she's pretty spot-on most of the time.

“Tell me everything about your world, lamb chop,” she says, glancing toward the living room. “You're certainly keeping good company these days.”

I nudge the door shut with my foot. No one needs to hear this. “I'm not
keeping company
, Donna. This is my house.”

“Well, of course, sugarplum,” she says. “But JJ Kelly? We're talking a whole different universe from your composer.” She says
composer
like she's saying
hobo
or
garbage man
, all blue-collar judgmental.

“Gross, Mom,” I say, and immediately hate my fourteen-year-old's response. “He's not my employer, for fuck's sake. He's my best friend's new boyfriend.”

“That's not all he is,” she says, lowering her voice to a throaty growl and sparkling her eyes like she's flirting with me. “Don't pretend you haven't noticed. I almost fainted when he opened the door. It was like something out of a dream sequence. Who expects to knock on a door in a place like this to have JJ Kelly open it and take your bag? And he was so friendly. He hugged me!”

Against my will, a small smile rises on my face. “Yeah, he's pretty great,” I grudgingly admit.

“Do you remember when we saw
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
at the Pantages?”

I absolutely do. It was a magical afternoon. We ate Milk Duds and Donna poured a little airplane-size bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream into her cappuccino and let me have some.

“Yes,” I say, yawning. “It was like a Bible-study class, starring Donny Osmond.”

“You're missing the point,” Donna says. “I wanted to teach you how to dream.”

“And here I am, living the dream.”

My sarcasm goes right over Donna's head, or, more likely, she's choosing to ignore it. “Well, you're closer than you've been in years, lamb chop. Don't be so hard on yourself. Life is short, and we don't always get to see it all the way to the end credits.”

Oh, barf. Now she's Gandhi in a Pucci dress.

“I mean, if I've learned anything from taking care of Emily all these weeks, it's that you need to carpe the hell out of the diem.”

I'm pretty sure she's not translating that properly, but there's no point in correcting her.

“So, how is Emily now?” I say. I ignore Donna's fabrications about 92 percent of the time, but sometimes I get petty and can't help tormenting her a little bit.

“She's fine, I mean, as fine as she can be, considering,” Donna says, suddenly enamored by the armful of gold bangles snaking up her arm.

“What's wrong with her, again?” I say, all faux concern.

“Stage IV anaplastic astrocytoma,” Donna says, and it rolls off her tongue like she's performing a walk-on role on
Grey's Anatomy.
“Do you know what that is?”

“Well, I know what the ‘stage IV' part is,” I say. “It's when the handsome, white-coated doctor tells the pallid yet beautiful patient to get her affairs in order.”

“Exactly,” Donna says.

“You seem kind of jazzed for someone whose friend is dying.”

Donna's face crumples like a wilted peony. “You have no idea what I'm feeling. Look, I'm tired. I had a long drive. Can we please just let this go right now?”

“Fine with me,” I say. “She's
your
dying friend.”

“Yes, she most certainly is,” Donna says, and there's a warble of sadness in her voice. Hat-tip to Donna for her theatrics. Yawn.

“Have you heard from Scout's actress friend? What's her name again? Ava?”

Okay, this is another thing that Donna does that really bugs me: she pretends she doesn't know who people are. I want to let it slide, but I can't help myself.

“Really? You can't remember the name of the person you tormented Scout about for twenty minutes the other day?”

Donna tosses her hair over her shoulder like a sorority girl. “It wasn't twenty minutes, it was more like two. You girls are so dramatic. So have you?”

“No.”

The disappointed set of Donna's mouth still kicks me in my gut like a kangaroo, but before I can figure out how to respond, she flips an imaginary switch and gives me a brilliant, spangled smile. “It will all work out, lamb chop. Let's go be good party guests.”

Of course she wants to be in the room where the wattage is. It's a family trait.

E
very now and then, when life feels particularly shitty—like, say, when I've quit a job without having another locked down, and my absentee mother shows up—I get the urge for an early morning hike. I'm talking
first thing
, before the dawn breaks over the Coffee Bean. I'm not what you'd call a morning person, but there's something about the still air that makes everything a little more bearable.

So the morning after Donna's arrival, I tiptoe out of the house, to Temescal Canyon, by the beach near Tyler's house. I've walked Zelda there a few times, on Kirk's recommendation. She loved it—there are rabbits and deer and a trickling waterfall—though Tyler would have shit himself if he'd realized I'd taken her into the
wild
. Lyme disease! Rattlesnakes!

Sure, I'm running the risk that I'm going to be murdered by a prison escapee, but it's a worthwhile tradeoff to be able to hike in the cool silence and watch the sunrise.

The other people at Temescal this early keep to themselves, with the exception of Yoga Guy—there's always a Yoga Guy in L.A.—who dresses in neon spandex and stands on the grass at the trailhead, contorting himself and emitting a stream of atonal
om
-ing. Sometimes I have to hike all the way to the ridge trail just to get out of earshot.

Today, Yoga Guy is absent, and I plod alone up the hill toward Skull Rock, breathing in the chaparral-scented silence. When I get to the ridge, the first fingers of rusty orange sun are just cresting over the hills. I climb up onto the rock's lowest ledge and tuck my legs under me, rubbing my hands together. My breath is faintly visible in the chilly morning air, even though it will be pushing eighty degrees by the time I get home. It's kind of heaven, this stillness in nature.

Except for my fucking brain.

My brain is not a stillness-in-nature kind of brain. It's more of a hateful drone:
Your best friend abandoned you and your mother is in your apartment; there's no getting away from her, she's always there . . .

I hear the crunching of trail dirt behind me, and my brain tumbles down Maslow's pyramid from “self-doubt” to “murderer, rapist, mountain lion!” I feel a big male presence standing over me. It's either Yoga Guy or Ted Bundy, and it's definitely not Yoga Guy. There's nowhere to go; Skull Rock is perched at the top of a slope that descends across a narrow footbridge over a boulder-strewn ravine of California sagebrush and coyote shit. The only way out is past whatever is lurking behind me.

I lurch to my feet and whip around, turning my car keys into a neck-maiming ninja star, only to crash into a solid mass wearing faded-green cargo pants and a pair of Timberland boots held together with duct tape.

“I thought that was you,” the prison escapee says.

It's Kirk. Fitted black T-shirt. Muscular arms. His hair mussed and a smile on his face.

I feel myself returning the smile. “I do love a pre-dawn hike,” I say.

“Liar,” he says. “What're you doing with your keys?”

I look at the ninja star in my hand. “Meditating?”

“Right, like janitorial prayer beads,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say, then look at him and count to three slowly before looking away. I read an article in some women's magazine that it's a foolproof flirtation tool.

There's a nanosecond of silence, which doesn't have enough time to become uncomfortable. “If you're done with your hike, you want to grab breakfast?” he says.

Wow. That shit is on point.

“I don't know, I've got, uh—” I almost say
Tyler
, but of course I don't have him anymore. “Places to be.”

“Come on. I'll buy you breakfast and have you back by eight.”

We walk down the hill and onto the paved path toward the parking lot, and I make a show of checking the time on my phone. “You're so full of it. We're not going to be back by eight unless you're taking me to McDonald's.”

“Who said I'm not taking you to McDonald's?” He opens the passenger door of his Volvo, and I realize this is the real Kirk, not the white Range Rover Kirk, and I'm kind of smitten. “Don't underestimate the power of an Egg McMuffin.”

“Fine,” I say, sliding into the charcoal leather seat.

It's not until I watch him walk around the front of the car that I become painfully aware that I'm wearing Target sweatpants and an oversize sweatshirt that says
IRIS FUCKS
in sparkly silver letters across the front—an ironic homage to Harold Robbins and his potboilers from the 1970s.

I barely have enough time to duck my nose toward my left armpit before Kirk settles in behind the wheel. At least I don't stink. We drive down PCH and onto the I-10 freeway in silence. I'm not sure if we're having a comfortable moment or an awkward one. Silences are weird that way. Or maybe it's just me. Kirk looks perfectly happy.

I have no idea where we're going when we glide onto the Sixth Street off-ramp downtown. The only time I've been down here this early was once when I had jury duty at the courthouse. “Do you have a court date?”

“Do you really not know where we're going?” he says.

“Not a clue.”

He's adorably elated by my response. “In that case, you need to put this on.”

He reaches into his glove box and pulls out a tattered red bandana tied in a knot like a cowboy's neckerchief.

“So you've got a western fantasy thing,” I say.

“No,” he says, laughing. “Over your eyes.”

Ted Bundy, mountain lion, ax murderer.
“Um, what?”

“Jess,” he says, patiently. “Would you relax?”

There doesn't seem to be an overwhelming flight-or-flight thing happening, so I figure, what the hell? I pull the bandana over my eyes.

“What's that smell?” I say.

“Oh, that's Ruby,” he says.

“Is Ruby your girlfriend? She needs to wash her hair a little more often.”

“Ruby is my bulldog,” he says. “You're wearing her favorite accessory.”

“That explains it,” I say.

He tells me that she's fastidious, then launches into the story of how he adopted her as we pull into a parking garage.
Uh-oh.
I'm a sucker for a dog story. I hear the bleep of the ticket dispenser, the closed-in whoosh as we ascend through the winding ramps, the squeak of rubber tires on the slick concrete.

Then Kirk kills the engine and opens his door. “Stay there. I'm coming around.”

He leads me down a couple flights of stairs, one hand on my arm and the other at the small of my back. I hear the clunk of an emergency exit door; then we emerge into a cavernous space that's teeming with activity and it smells like I'm standing in the middle of a lavender field in Provence. No, the rose garden at the White House. Or an orchid farm in Ubud.

“Are you ready?” Kirk says, then he pulls the bandana from my eyes.

I'm looking down a long aisle of buckets brimming with bundles of freshly cut flowers. There are roses and daisies and hydrangeas and snapdragons in every color of the rainbow, stuffed into five-gallon buckets and stacked on risers as far as my eyes can see.

It's not like I've never been to the flower market before, but not this early, when they only let industry professionals shop. When they're open to the public, their stock is diminished and their prices are tripled. This is like a backstage pass to Coachella, except much more fragrant.

I'm still gawping at fifty thousand square feet of fresh flowers when Kirk grabs an oversize garden cart and herds me down the aisle. He squeaks to a halt and chats with a green-aproned woman who starts piling boxes of cellophane-wrapped white dendrobium orchid stems onto his cart. It's an obscene amount of floral excess.

“Are you throwing a party for Jennifer Lopez?” I say.

“You're closer than you even know.”

“Let's see,” I say. “Birthday party for Mariah Carey's twins?”

His grin flashes. “Do you
have
a reference that's not stuck in the last decade?”

I flash back to the day at the Date Palm when I cracked Kenner for the same lame thing. Jesus, I'm more nervous than I realized.

“I do,” I say. “But I'm trying to play to the room.”

He laughs and gives me an appreciative head-to-toe once-over that reminds me I'm dressed like a semi-homeless person from the 1980s. Seriously, the Iris Fucks shirt? While he looks like the tear sheets they used to create the vibe for Bradley Cooper's
GQ
cover?

Kirk leads me to the far corner of the massive room and loads giant spools of invisible nylon thread and white floral tape onto a brimming cart.

“What's that for?” I ask.

Kirk looks at me sheepishly. “I'm making an orchid wall for Rachel Zoe's fashion show.”

“I hope you're getting seriously
paid
,” I say. “I've heard she's a handful.”

“She's fine. And it's not always about getting paid.”

“Really?” I say. “Because I heard she's an anorexic drug dealer who can't keep her former clients from selling her out. And also, why on Earth would you do what we do if you weren't getting paid?”

“Wow, slag much?”

“Three generations in Hollywood,” I tell him. “My grandmother slagged Judy Garland. You might want to get used to it.”

“And you might want to get
over
it,” he says. “Bitter only poisons the bearer.”

“Dude,” I say. “You need to find a Chinese restaurant with better cookies.”

This is where my smart-ass attitude is supposed to win him over, but it falls completely flat. He just gives me a long look that makes me feel like I've failed some kind of secret test. Which, of course, pisses me off. Fuck him and his secret tests. He should pass
my
tests.

I'm working up a righteous anger when he steers us into a stall that contains every peony in Southern California, a profusion of multicolored blooms spilling from five-gallon buckets. He grabs a double bunch of white-and-pale-pink blossoms and thrusts them into my hand.

I bury my nose in the petals and inhale a slight whiff of roses and lemon, sparking a vague recollection of an etched crystal bottle of Gloria's on a high shelf in our pink-tiled bathroom.

“For me?” I say.

“For you.”

I've spent half my life turning my face toward the warmth of fame, like a sunflower orienting to the sun. I've spun elaborate and detailed fantasies about the red carpet and the Academy Awards. I know exactly what I'd say, what I'd wear.

But give me a bunch of peonies wrapped in brown paper and breakfast at the Pantry and I don't know what the fuck to do with myself. I honestly don't know.

Here's the thing that comes out of my mouth: “I want to cook for you.”

When I get home, I drift through the apartment and see that Megan's door is cracked open. No noise inside. My mother's not here. A wash of relief warms me, and I creep into the bedroom. Her bed is in the wrong place. My mother shoved it against the wall.

I lay down in the space where Megan's bed used to be and look up at the ceiling.

I can't live here. Not with her.

As I'm thinking the words, the key scrapes in the lock.

I pass Donna in the doorway. If she's coming in, I'm going out.

She says, “Sweet pea, do you want—”

And I'm gone.

I nurse a cup of mint green tea at the Coffee Bean for two hours, smoking four American Spirits and checking my phone compulsively for a message from Eva. No message. No text. I spend the rest of the day shifting between various wireless hotspots, checking celebrity blogs on my laptop. Nothing holds my interest. I can't even drum up a modicum of enthusiastic snark over the fact that Kim Kardashian has a baby named North West. It's a sad day.

Eventually I go home, where I get a double whammy of Donna smell before I even step through the door: the usual whiffs of wine, perfume, and hair spray—and a new, yet completely recognizable scent. Donna is making Irish stew.