Skinnydipping (16 page)

And this time, I felt like I could actually measure up. The audition went better than I’d expected. Maybe acting school had taught me something after all—I actually felt like I knew what I was doing. After I read my lines, the director looked at me with some interest. I could tell I’d nailed it. I’d used every trick I’d learned from school, and I was motivated because I was doing it for Matt Dillon. Because c’mon! I was perfect for him. I was sexy and flirty and funny, and I couldn’t believe the director wasn’t going to be at least somewhat intrigued.

But something was wrong. I could see it on his face.

“I liked it,” he said. “But … well, can I give you a little bit of advice?”

“Of course.” I lowered my script and stepped forward. I assumed he was going to critique my delivery. I imagined him praising my sex appeal and humor, maybe suggesting I try the scene again in some other way.

“Look, you were OK. It was actually pretty good. But frankly, you’re a little too heavy. If you could lose twenty pounds, we might consider you, but I’m just going to tell you right now that as is, we’ve got to pass.”

What? It was everything I could do to keep my mouth from dropping open. “You … you think I need to lose twenty pounds?”

“I do. Consider it a valuable tip for the future. This is L.A. Thanks for coming in.”

He looked away from me to the assistant at the door, signaling her to admit the next girl, and I could tell I’d been dismissed. Doubly dismissed.

I was stunned. I knew I’d been cooking too much lately, but twenty pounds? I thought I’d been doing pretty well, depriving myself on a daily basis.

In a daze, I walked back out to the waiting area. Perry gave me a “How did it go?” look, and I just shook my head. I walked outside to get some air.

Was I really that fat? I was five foot seven and I weighed 135 pounds. Wasn’t that … relatively normal? I was going to have to be harder on myself. Every ounce counted. I sat down on the step in front of the building and put my head in my hands. I was so embarrassed, I wanted to die. I would never eat again. Ever. I would find a better diet plan. I would go to the gym twice a day. I’d eat breakfast and nothing else. Something. I had to do something!

A few minutes later, Perry came out and sat down next to me.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“No really. What happened?”

I couldn’t look at her. “The director said I was too fat.”

“What? He said that?” She stared at me in disbelief. Then she
looked down at her own stomach and put a hand on it. “I wonder if that’s why they didn’t like my audition.” She looked at me with resolve. “OK, we just both need to lose some more weight. We can do this. No more cooking. No more baking. No more eating out. You are banned from that damn Sybil Hunter cookbook, do you understand me? No more fat for us. Got it?
No more fat
.”

Somehow, this made me feel a little bit better. It seemed proactive. And appropriately punishing.

“Agreed,” I said. We shook on it. “Let’s skip dinner tonight.”

“OK,” she said. “I’ve got a bottle of wine. We can just drink.”

I was definitely ready for a drink.

The next week, I felt
better than I had in years. I’d lost five pounds and Perry had lost three. I was more tired and wired, especially from the herbal diet pills I was taking. They got me wound up and feeling a little bit high, but they killed my appetite. I felt thinner and more free because I was so much more in control of what I was eating (which was, essentially, nothing). I was a new woman—strict, disciplined, in control. My new confidence prompted me to end it with Meisenburg, too. It just wasn’t me. I’d learned what I needed to know.

Amazingly, the school bought my fictitious sob story about my father being in the hospital—proof that I really
had
learned to act—and I was able to get half my tuition refunded. That was a huge relief. I probably should have paid it right back to the credit card, but instead, I went shopping. If I was going to be twenty pounds lighter, I was going to need a new wardrobe. Every day, I spent the time I would have been in acting school obsessively pedaling on the exercise bike at the gym and visiting the Diet Center for weigh-ins—and not following their meal plans because I thought they had too many calories.

Then, on a random Wednesday afternoon, at the peak of the lunch shift, it finally happened: Vince Beck walked into La Fenice with a big group of corporate suits. He looked even more handsome than I remembered, and I got a little hot and prickly seeing him.

He was talking with an older man as they came in the door. I didn’t recognize any of them, but they could have been from the network. Vince broke out into a big grin when he spotted me.

“Darling!” he said, leaving the man he’d been talking to, midsentence. He gave me an L.A. hug and a kiss on the cheek. “What are you doing here? I’ve missed your”—he looked me up and down—“your presence in the office. You look
fantastic.
”

“This is my new job,” I said. I waved at the room, a little embarrassed.

“Sweetheart, we have to go out again!” he said, and he sounded sincere. For the thousandth time, I wondered if he really was the one. There was just something about him. “Here, call me when you’re free, will you?” He handed me his card. As if I didn’t already have his number on speed dial.

“Sure, Vince,” I said, a little sarcastically. “I’ll call
you.
”

“That’s my girl!” he said, and kissed my hand. “Got to go. But seriously, darling. Call me!” As he walked away, he turned and yelled over his shoulder, “I’m at your disposal!”

“Who was that?” asked one of the waitresses walking by. “He’s hot.”

“Yes he is,” I agreed. “He certainly is.”

Through the rest of my shift, I couldn’t help looking over at him, posing, trying to catch his eye. It worked two or three times. He winked at me, but never called me over. When he left, he didn’t look back.

About a week later, a
bone-thin, high-strung movie director’s assistant came into the restaurant to book a screening party. She said she worked for Josh Kameron, one of Hollywood’s biggest directors and screenwriters, behind multiple major box office smashes, and she was freaking out because the date she wanted was booked.

“Let me see what I can do,” I said. “If you want the smaller private room, you can have it at eleven a.m. You could market it as a screening brunch.”

“What a great idea,” she said. “I’ll take it. I think it’s the last thing on my list. Oh my God, if I get through this without losing my mind, I might actually make it to Paris.”

“You’re going to Paris?” I said, envious.

“Yes, an opportunity I can’t pass up. Now, all I have to do is find my replacement … since the Kamerons don’t even know I’m leaving yet. They’re going to murder me, I swear to God.”

“What does your job involve?” I asked, trying to sound neutral.

“Why? Do you want it? Oh God, tell me you want this job.” She looked at me, practically wild-eyed with hope. “A La Fenice hostess is
exactly
the kind of person Carol would want to be her assistant.”

“You work for Carol? Josh’s wife?” That sounded a little bit less intimidating than working for Josh Kameron himself. “I might be interested.” My lunch shift at La Fenice definitely wasn’t covering the bills, and I needed something else to do—some other excuse to avoid auditioning.

“Basically, you do everything Carol tells you to do, which could be picking up her dry-cleaning or planning her parties or walking her dog or making reservations like this one or just listening to her throw a fit about something and nodding and smiling. It’s never boring. Are you good at multitasking?”

I wrote down my phone number and gave it to her. “I am
very
good at multitasking,” I said.

“Great. You might have just saved my life.” She dashed off and my mind started racing. Me, personal assistant to Carol Kameron? Who might I meet doing a job like that? This could be exactly the opportunity I’d been searching for all along, the one I thought my
Hollywood & Highland
job would provide. I let myself feel the familiar but always exciting sensation of change. I loved nothing more than casting aside the old and embracing the next big thing.

As I obsessed, I gazed out the window and noticed a small shaggy dog sitting next to the door outside the restaurant, peering in through the glass. She didn’t seem to have a collar on, and she looked hungry. And she was looking at
me.

chapter ten

H
ey, little muffin,” I said.

The dog had shaggy gray and white fur and soulful brown eyes. She wagged her tail and barked at me. I knelt down and petted her. She wasn’t wearing a collar and her fur was dirty and matted, like she’d been on the street for a while. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Where did you come from?” I stood up and looked around. Nobody seemed to notice her. “Dogs aren’t allowed in my apartment,” I explained, as if she could understand. She cocked her head at me. “Hmmm. How quiet can you be?”

She wagged her tail and didn’t make a sound, as if to prove she could do it. I wondered what Perry would think if I brought home a dog. I walked down the street to my car, and she followed me, right at my heels. I opened the passenger side and looked at her. She paused. “Well? Are you coming?” I asked.

She jumped right into the car. That’s when I knew she was going to be my dog.

She was such a little muffin, so that’s what I named her: Muffin. After a good bath and a bowl of dog food she gobbled up hungrily, she settled right in, as if she’d been living with me all along. Perry told me I’d better put up posters to find her owner, but I couldn’t believe
she had one, and if she did, I didn’t like the way they’d been treating her. She was jumpy and skittish and she’d obviously been neglected. I tried not to think about whether she’d been abused. Still, I made a halfhearted attempt, in case she really was just lost. I called a few local animal shelters and described her, asking if anyone had reported a missing dog like her. I even put up one sign on a post by the restaurant, but nobody called.

Muffin seemed to know to be quiet. She barked one time when someone came to the door, but not enough to annoy anyone. Unlike a typical small dog, she wasn’t yappy at all. She was protective, though. She didn’t like people coming near me, and while she stopped growling at Perry after the first few days, any visitors had to watch out.

My landlord was hardly ever around, and my neighbors were so eager to get more of my baked goods that they didn’t report me. When I told Muffin someone was OK, she condescended to let them pet her. She stuck to my side most of the time when I was at home, and every morning I took her on a walk around the neighborhood. Sometimes we drove over to Runyon Canyon, where everybody else walked their dogs.

Neither of us questioned that we belonged to each other. There was something about the way she looked at me that made me feel like everything was OK in the world.

“That dog sure likes you,” said Perry one evening, her feet on the coffee table, a glass of white wine in her hand. Muffin was half on the couch next to me and half on my lap with her chin resting on my thigh. “It’s kind of weird.”

“No it’s not,” I protested. “That’s what dogs do. They bond to someone.” I stroked her head. “She’s my girl.”

About a week after I found Muffin, the phone rang.

“Faith, it’s Mara Callahan … Carol Kameron’s assistant? Carol would like to meet you.” Muffin was starting to feel like my good-luck charm.

The Kamerons, it was no
surprise, lived in posh Benedict Canyon, near so many other movie stars, directors, and producers. The interview went well. Carol had a crisp British accent and kept a fastidious house. She was dressed in the tastefully understated way of the very rich, and she seemed impressed with my style and efficiency. I was proud of myself for coming across as the person I really felt I was—practical and quick-witted and down-to-business. It was a side I couldn’t show in auditions, where they expected you to be creative and emotional and arty, and a side I couldn’t show enough at La Fenice, where my shift was only a couple of hours long and my duties were limited.