Oh! You Pretty Things (27 page)

I
want you to come with me to New York,” Eva tells me on the phone a few days later. “I'm doing a bunch of press, but we'll have plenty of time to do fun shit too. It will be a mini vacation.”

“That sounds awesome,” I say.

“Call Janine and she'll give you the details. Then why don't you run by Pressed Juicery and grab me the usual and come up to the house? We'll figure out what needs to get FedExed, and you can pack me.”

“On my way,” I say.

It's cute the way Eva phrases her requests like they're up to me. “Do you want to?” she'll say. Or, “You know what would be great?” I'm not being facetious. It's really charming.

Janine, Eva's publicist, is not so charming. I guess she uses up all her charm kissing her clients' asses. She's a major pain, but Eva loves her, so I'm always sweet as pie, even when I have to spend the first five minutes of every phone call listening to staticky hold music and then reexplaining who I am.

Today, Janine picks up the phone as soon as her assistant clicks me onto hold.

“Hey, Julie,” she says. Calling me by something other than my name is always her opener. It's such a common diss it hardly even bothers me. Hardly.

“Thanks for getting back to me so quickly,” she says. “The studio has Eva booked on the Virgin America flight into JFK at one forty on Wednesday, returning Monday at one.”

“Sounds great,” I say. I used to try to engage Janine in banter, but it always felt like shouting into a pile of wet laundry, so I finally just gave up.

“I'll e-mail her itinerary this afternoon. I'm still waiting for a call time from Jon Stewart.”

“Holy shit,” I say. “She's doing Jon Stewart?”

“Please tell me you'll be able to contain your enthusiasm when you're on set,” she says drily.

“Of course,” I say, and I'm grateful she can't see me, because I'm grinning like an idiot, unable to contain my leprotic enthusiasm.

“The only other thing I need is the name of her traveling companion.”

“Oh, that's me.”

“No,” she says, in that mock-patient way people do when they aren't willing to say what they mean. “I mean who is the person who will be flying in first class with her?”

“Still me.”

“Really?” she says. “That's . . . unnecessary. If she's not going to use it, I'll have the studio move you to coach.”

First of all, it's not the fucking PR hack's business what Eva does with her extra studio ticket, and, second, well, there is no second. She's a bitch. I struggle to not call her out, but there's something about her smarmy pause that pushes me past the bounds of personal-assistant decorum.

“You know what?” I ask. “Why don't I tell Eva what you suggested, and I'll have her let you know how to handle it?”

She launches into an indignant, spluttery rant.

“Oops,” I say. “There's my other line.”

I click off while she's still yammering about there being no need to involve Eva at this juncture. It's a risk, but I tap out a text to Eva, choosing my words as carefully as the opening sentence of an SAT essay.

Janine wants to tell the studio I don't need a first class ticket. Also, and I haven't wanted to tell you this, she is really strident for a PR person. I'd hate to think she's as abusive to anyone else while she's representing you. Yikes.

I hit Send, then reread the message a half dozen times, reviewing each of my word choices. Fortunately, I don't have long to wait, as my phone buzzes with a string of texts from Eva almost immediately.

Ugh, yeah, she's a leftover from my first manager. Sorry she was a bitch. Of COURSE you are flying with me. Please call her assistant and tell her to call me immediately.

Use the word immediately.

I feel a frisson of vindictive pleasure in my chest.

Also tell her assistant we want orchestra tickets to Lion King while we're there. It's cheesy, but you will die. It's such a spectacle. You need to see it on Broadway.

I'm basking in the glow when the phone buzzes again.

Also—that poet I met at M Cafe a while back? I promised I wouldn't Google him. But you can.
Will u work your Internet voodoo and find out about him? His name is Antonio Cavalucci.

She actually met him at the Newsroom, but I know exactly who she means. And it turns out that he's the reason we're going to New York. Of course, big surprise, he doesn't look like a poet, he looks like an actor playing a poet. Floppy blond hair, three-day stubble, vintage concert T-shirt. He's in Brooklyn for three months, shooting a movie with an A-list cast on par with Al Pacino and Julia Roberts. No big shocker that Eva's suddenly willing to do TV press. She hates doing press. She says she feels like someone's going to push her off a cliff when she's on live TV, which I'm sure is true, but you'd never know it from watching her.

Are you on your way?
her next text reads.
I'm lonely.

Coming right now,
I tap back immediately.

I
'm driving down Santa Monica Boulevard toward Pressed Juicery, inordinately pleased about the phone call I'm making.

“Hey, it's Jess for Eva Carlton,” I tell Janine's assistant.

“Oh, yes, hi,” she says, and I can tell from her tone that Janine has been ranting about me since I hung up on her.

I make the
Lion King
request, then I say, “Also, can you please tell Janine to call Eva immediately about the travel situation? I just got off the phone with her and she's waiting for Janine's call.”

There's a millisecond of silence before she tells me she'll relay the request directly.

“Wish I could be a fly on the wall for that conversation,” I say, and the assistant whispers, “Me too,” before we say our good-byes.

Here's a tip: don't mistreat the fucking assistant. Only owners are allowed to beat their slaves in Hollywood.

I'm not even past Doheny when Janine calls. “I'm so-o-o sorry about our misunderstanding,” she says, oozing syrupy contrition. “I just got off the phone with Eva. I'll have the itinerary to you within the hour, and the
Lion King
tickets are no problem, of course. Third row, center. And they'd love to have you backstage after the performance for a meet-and-greet.”

“Great,” I say. I'm not willing to give her a single extra syllable.

Janine says—in entirely too many words—that if there's anything else we need, she's here to help.

“You're a peach,” I say. “I'm sure Eva hasn't even remotely considered what she'd do without you.”

Janine laughs, a reedy, high-pitched giggle that probably has all the dogs in a three-block radius howling. “Perish the thought,” she says. “I'm here for you guys.”

“We love that about you,” I say, and end the call.

I crank the stereo and light a cigarette, rolling down all the windows in Eva's Jaguar and opening a half-empty Fiji water bottle and jamming it between my legs to use as an ashtray. I get a thready, jacked-up adrenaline rush when I stand up for myself, even if I don't do it graciously, and now I need someone to talk me down.

I call Megan and get voice mail.

“Boof, hasn't your visa to New Guyland expired yet? You're pathetic. In the best way. Call me.”

It's a testament to my adrenaline rush that when my phone rings, I answer before the ringtone registers. I'm that coked-up girl sitting at the end of the bar with bright eyes and a clacking jaw, willing to have a conversation with any warm body in the immediate vicinity.

“Cupcake,” my mother says. “There you are! I was starting to get worried.”

“Sorry,” I say, and immediately regret leading with an apology. “I've been slammed.”

“Tell me everything. How's your new arrangement?”

“It's really good, actually.”

“Do tell.”

“Let's see,” I say, like I'm racking my brain to think of what it is I want to tell her. “I'm going to New York to do press for Eva's new show.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“The
Today
show, whatever that Kelly Ripa thing is now, and Jon Stewart.”

“You know who I love?” she says. “David Letterman. I mean, so smart.”

“Yeah, not this time.”

“That's too bad,” she says. “So where are you staying?”

“Le Parker Meridien, midtown.”

“Lovely,” she says. “Does the assistant need an assistant?”

“She does not,” I say, and I'm more than slightly skeeved out by her question and my response in the third person, but I continue unburdening myself anyway. “I just got into a whole thing with my boss's PR person about how I didn't need to fly first class, being as I'm the hired help and all.”

There's a small whoosh of release in my chest. Sometimes I need to say things out loud, even if it's into a vacuum.

“Darling, that's awful. There's no accounting for some people. What did Eva say?”

“She totally has my back. She told her PR girl that I travel like talent.”

There's a beat of silence, beneath which I can hear my mother's gears turning.

“Anyway,” I say. “I'm going to be out of town for a few days.”

“That's a shame. I was hoping we could go out to Malibu and have lunch, maybe take a drive past Winbrook Stables.”

It's so out of left field that I actually look at my phone, like there's going to be a clue to her intentions in the glowing screen. “What?”

“You know, Winbrook,” she says. “Riding lessons? What were you, eight?”

Manipulator. I was ten, and of course I remember. That summer was one of the happiest memories of my childhood. There was a girl at school, the shy daughter of an uber-famous acting couple, and she kept her show horse at Winbrook, out at the end of Cross Creek Road in Malibu. It's been gone for years now, but back then Donna would drive me out every Saturday for a private lesson. Sometimes the girl and her parents would be there, which, in hindsight, probably had something to do with Donna's willingness, but I just remember week after magical week of cantering around the ring while Donna whooped encouragement from the bleachers.

“You took me every Saturday for a whole summer,” I say. Well, she'd forgotten me a week or two, but there's no reason to mention that now. “You threatened to get into the ring and wrestle Daisy to the ground that day I got thrown. Fucking Daisy—that horse hated me.”

Donna laughs. “I wanted to kill her when I saw you go flying.” Her voice gets soft around the edges. “You gave her a candy apple.”

“It wasn't a candy apple, it was a green-apple Jolly Rancher you had at the bottom of your purse. You
told
me it was just like a candy apple.” I find myself smiling at the memory. “I have to say, Daisy loved me after that.”

“You catch more flies with honey,” she says.

“An adage you adhere to about ten percent of the time, but okay.”

“Listen, there's something I need to tell you,” she says, and the dramatic edge in her voice starts my alarms ringing. She's not talking to me anymore, she's performing. “Something important.”

“Now's not a great time.”

“I should tell you in person.”

Because I haven't put in enough time, sitting in the front rows of her life. “I can't do it before I go.”

“Really?” she says. “Can't I just stop by your new place later?”

“I'm really crazed right now,” I say. “But soon.”

Soon as in never.

When I hang up, my phone beeps to tell me I've missed a call. Fucking T-Mobile. Get your shit together, will you? I'm in Beverly Hills, not Botswana. It's Megan.

“Boof,” her recorded voice says. “I'm thinking Koreatown. El Cholo, Margaritas. Five
P.M.
tomorrow. Just be there.”

I get her voice mail when I call back, and I say, “Nothing makes me happier than tequila, chips, and you—not necessarily in that order—but I can't. I'm bailing tomorrow for a
very important business trip
. Details to follow. Tequila mandatory.”

Her text comes in while I'm fast asleep.
When you get back then. I can't wait to see you.

She seems happy, which makes me happy too. I'm bummed that we can't connect, but I'm also kind of stressed about the trip, so it's easy to let it slide.