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I turned my calendar at work to August on the first of the month. I drew a little continent of Africa on the square and put a little stick man in it to represent Roman.
My boss came into my office and folded her arms at me. “If you’re bored, Doll, I’m sure I can find plenty for you to do. As it is, I gave you a whole list of things to take care of before the day is over.” She gave me a meaningful look.
“Oh, what?” I asked innocently. The list was long and uninteresting. “I was just, uh…keeping my calendar up to date.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, not convinced. “Now, listen. I’m going into a meeting with the rest of the partners and then I’m leaving straight for my lunch appointment. Can you try to remember to call on my cell if anything comes up?”
I nodded dutifully.
She looked at my finger with interest. “That’s not an engagement ring, is it?”
I hid my hand. I was actually surprised it had taken her so long to notice, but then again, Karen is very self-absorbed. “Oh, what? Yes.”
“Let me see it.” She took my hand and gave the ring a critical once-over. “Excellent clarity. From Tiffany?”
As if there is no other jewelry store in the entire fucking galaxy. But yes, it was from Tiffany. I still thought it was presumptuous of her to ask.
She nodded with approval as she let go of my hand. “This is the guy who lives back east, right? Not that other clown I see you with?”
“It’s the one back east. But he’s not there now. He had to leave the country for six months.”
She raised her eyebrows. “What exactly does he do again?”
The woman is fucking oblivious. “He’s with the relief organization. Remember? We did their fund-raising gala two years ago? You and I?”
“I remember now. Congratulations, then. That’s very exciting. We’ll have to take a lunch one day to lay out some ideas for your wedding.”
“Yes, we certainly will.”
She left me alone after that. I swiveled around to the window and stared out at the city. When I am way up high in this Century City skyscraper I pretend I’m somewhere else, like Chicago or Dallas or Atlanta. I thought my boss was probably having her period. When she’s on her period I keep my office door closed. Usually we get along okay, even though I think she’s an ass.
The dossier on Karen is this: Karen Brazington, executive partner of Charisma and guru of the event-planning industry in Los Angeles. Thirty-six years old. Once married to her UCLA sweetheart, a heart surgeon at Cedars-Sinai whom she left when he became married to his career, now divorced and not speaking except through their lawyers. Currently engaged to a William Morris talent agent named Sal Lefkowitz whom she met when he contacted her, by referral, to put together his niece’s bat mitzvah. Has lived in seriously high-rent Westside property all of her adult life and drives a new C-Class Mercedes in a fetching metallic silver. Wears her hair in a shaggy, uneven cut that she gets trimmed and highlighted every six weeks with nearly religious fanaticism. Drinks flavored martinis, listens to Sting and Norah Jones, coughs reflexively when exposed to cigarette smoke and watches all reality TV shows courtesy of TiVo.
Please don’t ever let this happen to me.
My job at Charisma is to be Karen’s personal and administrative assistant. On my résumé it says Event Coordinator. Karen gets to do all the fun work and the big planning. She gets to have the power lunches and wear the killer suits. I get to wear the killer suits, too, but only for show. My only real purpose there is to do everything Karen doesn’t want to do. My friends say I have a glamorous job. And in some ways it is a glamorous job. It is so glamorous that sometimes I want to jump out the window.
I started at Charisma right out of college. I walked into an employment agency with big plans to walk out with a corner office and a fancy title and sixty thou’ annually right off. Instead I walked out with a new job as the assistant to the office manager at Charisma. I think that literally translates to “slave” because all I did then was put away supplies in the copy room, wash the dishes in the kitchen and run errands for people. Karen noticed me and made me her assistant after four months of that mindless crap. She liked me. She said I was sharp. I think what it was really all about was that she liked the way I dressed. When I first started with her, she sat me down and said, “You and me, from now on, are a team. We need to look like a team, think like a team, take care of each other like team members. So far you’ve got the first part down.”
There are some perks. I get to go to premieres and their after parties. I get to talk to famous names on the phone. I get to go to the Emmys, the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards. But since I’m not really into all that shit, sometimes it’s really just like a whole lot of unpaid overtime.
There are also some quirks. Such as the long, endless days of trying to keep myself sane. Luckily you learn pretty early on that to keep yourself sane in the life as somebody’s assistant, the trick is to waste as much time as possible when the boss isn’t looking. So I wandered out into the hallway to see if anyone was doing anything. The head-honcho meeting was in full swing in the conference room. Lots of free time until they got out.
There was a deep discussion going on among my fellow minions about how everyone had lost their virginity. I joined in.
It happened when I was fifteen with the neighbor boy Charlie Porter. He was cute in an ugly sort of way, with coarse dark hair like a rottweiler and knowing eyes the color of desert sand. He was popular because he acted like a jerk and he didn’t care, and kids respected that quality. He was the kind of boy who talked back to teachers and wasn’t afraid of the consequences. When his parents were gone he had parties and people had sex in his parents’ bed and no one washed the sheets afterward. He was forever sucking on an orange Tootsie Pop so his breath always smelled like oranges. He wore Drakkar Noir cologne and forest-green Vans and listened to Jane’s Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Total dream.
Charlie lived up the street from me, at the top of the hill, and the water from the hose when he washed his dad’s car would run down in the gutter past my house with soap bubbles and leaves. We played together when were little kids. But somewhere around the start of middle school, boys become boys and girls become girls. That’s when Charlie started calling me fatty and porky and piggy and his friends did the same and laughed while they rode their skateboards past my house and I hid beneath the front window and watched, ashamed. Then I would go upstairs and watch Stayin’ Alive and wish I were some sexy dancing queen on the Manhattan show scene instead of a fleshy preteen eating Oreos and dreading the fact that my P.E. class had access to a swimming pool.
On the first day of school sophomore year he passed by me at my locker and stuck a little pink flower in my hair. They grew in clumps of orange and purple and fuchsia by the front entrance of the school, where all the most popular kids hung out before the bell rang. I was wearing black pants with suspenders. I was skinny from dieting all summer. I was starving. When I turned around he kept walking, his back to me, his arm out as he slapped hands with Pete Keller. I glanced in my locker mirror. No way. I knew that Charlie and Aurelia Sparks had broken up over the summer, but still. They’d been together since seventh grade.
In geometry the teacher asked us to pick homework partners. He passed me a note that said to pick him because my last name came before his in the alphabet and she was going to call on me first. When she got to me and I said Charlie Porter, the whole class turned around to look at me. Aurelia had a pinched-up expression on her face. She had worn her hair in the same glossy golden ringlet curls since we were little girls. I could feel my face burning. Charlie said, “Okay,” like it was no big deal, like thirty pens weren’t suddenly flying across thirty pieces of loose-leaf paper, penning notes to be distributed via the hallways of Ventura High as soon as nutrition break was under way.
I went up the street to his house after school and banged on the door. He answered it, eating a piece of toast with lots of peanut butter slathered on top. I could hear the TV in the background, the characters from Charles in Charge trapped inside of a rerun. I asked him what the hell was going on and felt my face burning again. He told me to relax about it, then threw his toast over my shoulder and pulled me up against him. We kissed and I could taste peanut butter and the faint sweetness of orange candy rolling around on his tongue. He said I could come in after that and I said I had to go home. I almost fell walking back down the hill. My mother made my favorite dinner that night, chicken and pasta with mushrooms in cream sauce, and I couldn’t even eat it. She laughed and said the first day at school will do that to you. Later that night I wrote Charlie’s name next to First Kiss in my diary.
He held my hand the next day walking into geometry. I thought Aurelia’s eyes were going to pop out of her head. When I had tried out for cheerleading she had been one of the judges. I knew she had voted against me even though I had practiced my routines for weeks and was definitely the best choice. I heard her talking about me in the bathroom after class, as she and Liz Major stood in front of the mirror in their cheerleading get-ups, putting more and more drugstore makeup on and spritzing themselves with Le Jardin. She said, “He’s only into her now because her boobs have gotten so fucking huge.” Liz said, “No kidding. Remember how fucking fat she used to be?”
I knew I wasn’t “fucking fat” anymore. But even when you’re not fucking fat anymore, you sometimes think and act like you still are. You see the same person in the mirror. You’re surprised that the most popular guy in school suddenly likes you. A real dream come true.
“Fuck those stupid bitches,” my best friend Lily Lovejoy told me at lunch. We shared a bag of carrot sticks and a half pint of chocolate milk. “Aurelia’s a piece of trash and Liz is just debris. You know you’re not fat anymore. And you weren’t even fat, you were just a little chubby. There’s a difference. So fuck those cheap whores.”
Lily always had her own way of putting it all into perspective. She taught me a lot about life. She taught me almost everything. This is Lily Lorraine Lovejoy and you goddamn better believe it. Her motto then, her motto now.
“Lily is totally right,” Daisy Kiplinger agreed. My other best friend, she was eating frosted Hostess treats and outfitted in various forms of surfer-girl wear. I knew she was ditching fifth and sixth period to go to the beach even though it was only the second day of school. “I’d like to see that bitch choke on her pom-poms and for Liz to O.D.”
Everyone started saying Charlie and I were “going out.” Everyone acted like I had never been forgotten, like those dumpy in-between years had never happened, like I had been important forever. Now I joined Lily and Daisy talking shit about all the bitches who were always hanging around our boys. I still remembered how our boys had called me names, but now they referred to me as one of their “girls” with pride. I still remembered how the bitches had looked at me in the shower in P.E. as if I was a gruesome creature from a Tobe Hooper movie, but now they couldn’t stop talking about how cute my clothes were and how we should all ditch and go to the Busy Bee Café and how I just had to go to this party and that party. At football games, Aurelia bounced around with the other cheerleaders, her hair bouncing with her, throwing hard looks my way. Everybody said she was jealous because she still liked Charlie. Liz Major came up during a break once and gave me half her Coke and asked if I had any cigarettes. We smoked together up behind the snack bar, her in her cheerleading get-up and me in my Guess jeans and an oversize Stussy sweatshirt that belonged to Charlie. She said now that I was with Charlie, everything was cool. She said now that I was with Charlie, I was cool. I told her that was very gracious of her, but that I had always been cool. I said it was only stupid people like her that had made everybody else think otherwise.
Charlie waited a grand total of six weeks before asking, “Can we do it?” one afternoon when we were in his room fooling around and listening to The Cure. “C’mon, Peaches,” he said. “It’ll be fun.” I thought about it. Lily’s virginity was long gone. I wasn’t sure that Daisy had ever been a virgin.
“I guess,” I told him. “I mean, you love me, right?”
“Yeah. I totally do.”
“Okay, then. We can.”
His naked skin was clammy and his pillowcase smelled like greasy hair. He was insistent and bold and I was surprised when it touched me. I closed my eyes as he dug his chin into my chest, making a bruise. My head kept hitting the Bible that was behind me on the bookcase. The Bible was on top of a book called Naked Lunch. After what felt like an eternity he tensed and collapsed and I felt sticky hot wetness running out of me and down onto the faded Scooby-Doo sheets.
I rode my bike home afterward with “Lovesong” running through my head and an uncomfortable dampness in my underwear. When I went to the bathroom it was all red and brown and weird in there and I didn’t want my mom to see it when she did the laundry. It hurt like fire to pee and I had to squeeze my eyes shut and hold on to the roll of toilet paper as I did it.
My mom gave me a cookie as I got a can of Diet Pepsi from the fridge and told me I was getting too skinny. She said she was making fried chicken for dinner and she wanted me to eat a whole plate. I pictured great big bones of some dead chicken, covered in globs of greasy fried flour and oil, and a mountainous mass of mashed potatoes erupting and overflowing with salty gravy. Suddenly everything sounded horrible.
I asked Charlie to the Sadie Hawkins Dance the next day. He said he was going with Aurelia.
I was so wrapped up in the loss-of-virginity round table that I forgot to call Karen with the message that her lunch appointment had been changed to Thursday. Oops. When she got back from Barney Greengrass she yelled at me to get behind the eight ball and start thinking outside of the box. She said I had to step up to the plate and take ownership.
And I thought I could get by on the ability to multitask with attention to detail in a fast-paced environment.
“You’ll never be promoted if you can’t even remember the smallest details,” she told me with a frown.
I nodded.
“You’ll never convince me that you want a future here if you can’t even keep on top of the things you do now.”
I nodded.
“Now, try to get me the things I asked for by the end of the day, could you?”
I nodded.
“Your first priority is straightening out that catering mess at the Hyatt!” she yelled. “Tell them we are paying bulk for lunch or we’re taking our business elsewhere!” she screamed, just before slamming the door on her way out.
The idea of calling the caterers and haggling over the chicken florentine for the Women in Business luncheon down in Irvine was really unappealing. So I surfed the Internet.
I looked on www.weddingchannel.com and started freaking out because there are about a million and a half details that go into planning a wedding and so far I’ve only taken care of the location…kind of. My mother wants to have the wedding at our church and the reception at this old mansion in Santa Paula that rents out for such occasions. But when I told Lily I was getting married her mother got on the phone and said if we really want to do something special we should have the reception on her yacht. It’s parked in the Ventura Harbor and was Kitty’s wedding present from Lily’s first stepfather, Don. He died when we were in sixth grade. He drowned in the ocean during a day of bad undertow when he was surfing. They had to drag his body out of the water. Kitty was so upset that she got married again eight months later, to a stockbroker named Al who wears lots of gold chunk-chain jewelry and shaves his head bald on purpose. Al smokes cigars and calls women “honey” no matter how old they are. Everyone loves Al.
Thoughts of all the things that make a bride crazy and annoying drove me to the Cosmo Web site, where I read a piece titled “A Girl’s Life in the Big City.” According to the girl in the article, life in L.A. is just like in the movies. L.A. men are successful and nice and vying to set up romantic dates, everyone goes to trendy bars or clubs to drink green apple martinis every single night, the rent on a stylish two-bed-room beachfront apartment is completely affordable, and one is always, but always, outfitted in really expensive sandals and sundresses. Because as I’m sure you already know, it is always summer here in Los Angeles. Endless Summer, just like the Beach Boys sang.
You’ve got to love the stigma of the feminine existence in this town. I wondered if any of the other readers thought this chick’s perspective to be true to life, because I couldn’t really relate to such ridiculousness at all. I drank a fattening blended coffee drink and snacked on some Cheese Nips and stressed about my enormous “minimum” payment to Macy’s and heard Karen bitching on the phone to her attorney through my wall. I cranked up my music to tune her out and got back to my surfing.
I pulled up the Lonely Planet Web site to read about Cameroon, even though Roman told me all about it before he left. It had a big warning message about what a dangerous place it is. Roman’s there with a group of big cheeses who have government connections. He always comes home safe. I thought if he got kidnapped like in Proof of Life and a man who looked and talked like Russell Crowe showed up to help me find him, Roman might be on his own.
Our meeting was fortuitous. Roman was only at that gala because Landon commanded him to make an appearance. I was only at that gala because Karen has this habit of pretending she can totally handle it and then calling me at the last minute before an event and begging me please, please will I attend, because the woman can’t fucking do anything for herself. I’d planned to skip Roman’s speech for a smoke break but then thought I’d wait it out because Karen was giving me the eye. Turned out he had some really interesting things to say. I thought what a smart, handsome man and knew he would never talk to me, even though I swore I had caught him looking at me a lot. The next day there were a dozen peach roses waiting for me at work with a note asking me if I would have dinner with him. I never had any idea that men actually did things like that.
He took me to an unknown restaurant and we ate creamy garlic pasta and drank delicious sweet wine and he talked to me as if I was every bit the intellectual that he was even though he was ten years older than me and he had graduate and doctorate degrees on a shelf at home from fancy universities like Georgetown and Oxford. I was fascinated. I was enchanted. He lived in Washington but he spent a lot of time out of the country (“in the field” was how he put it) doing really nice things for really unfortunate people. At my door he kissed my cheek and asked if he could call me when he was in town again. He was the first man who ever walked me to my door and kissed my cheek like that without expecting a screw in return. I said yes. He came back the very next weekend and took me up the coast to a bed-and-breakfast in Santa Barbara. We held hands as we took moonlit walks on the beach and cuddled in corners of dark romantic restaurants and bade each other good-night before going into our rooms to sleep in separate beds. He said he had to go back to D.C. but he wanted to fly me out to visit as soon as we could arrange it. And so became our relationship.
And now we’re getting married. And I know I really lucked out. Because with Roman I’ll never have to worry about sitting in this office for the rest of my life, wishing I were somewhere else. With Roman I’ll never have to worry about anything.
I picked up the phone to call the caterers. Might as well make myself useful till then.
Chapter 4
I picked up Electra on the way home. She works right in Beverly Hills so usually we carpool. The funny thing is that I’m almost always the one driving. She says it’s because her big red Range Rover is a gas-guzzler, but I think it’s just that she likes to be chauffeured.
“Has Roman called from Cameroon?” she asked.
“He will when he has time. He said he’s going to be very busy.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say. You know, I can just tell when Josh has his secretary lying for him. Like he’s really in that many meetings!”
A quick rundown on this one. Electra Hanover Kibbler, former Miss Teen South Carolina. All-knowing know-it-all. Want her opinion—you’ve got it. Don’t hate her because she’s beautiful.
At home we found Ava sprawled out on the living room floor. She was burning every candle in the house. She was playing Morrissey and drinking vino from a big jug. She was wearing Mickey Mouse socks and her hair was in beribboned pigtails.
A quick rundown on this one. Ava Maria Damiano, household pet and resident oddball. So sheltered growing up that she only ever left the family home to go to Catholic school. Grew up fast in college. Decided that grown-up life sucked and she’d rather be somebody’s baby.
“What’s wrong, sugar?” Electra asked. “Why aren’t you at your acting class?”
“I didn’t want to go,” Ava replied, pouting.
“I hope to God you’re not wallowing in memories of Tim,” Electra told her, as she sat down on one couch and I sat down on the other.
I noticed that Ava was wearing one of Tim’s old shirts. He’d left it at the house and bitched for weeks that he knew we had it even though Ava swore it was nowhere to be found. I’d kept it hostage in my middle dresser drawer, with a note attached that read, “You are one nosy fuck,” in all caps just in case he went looking. When you write in all caps it means you are YELLING at someone.
“Are you wallowing in memories of Tim?” I asked.
“I’m not wallowing in anything,” she replied.
“So are you moping for a reason, then, or do I have to come down there and beat it out of you?” Electra demanded. Harsh, but necessary. Ava pretends. She denies. She can go wacky just like that. It’s hard to know when she’s on and when she’s off.
“I fucked up an audition,” Ava told her, pouting anew.
“Oh, is that all?” Electra asked, none too sorry.
“It was for a movie, Electra,” Ava informed her. “I would have been billed.”
“As what?”
“Party Girl Number Three,” Ava replied.
“Pooh,” Electra dismissed. “You’re Party Girl Number One, sugar.” She got up from the couch. “Now howsabout I turn off this depressing moaning and put in something we can sing to? That’ll make you feel better!”
“You don’t even care,” Ava grumbled.
“Sure I do!” Electra said, turning on my karaoke microphone. I think I have a serious problem because sometimes I’ll use it when nobody’s home.
“But you’re just trying to make me forget about it,” Ava complained.
Electra started dancing around the living room, singing “Back in Baby’s Arms.”
“I’m serious,” Ava told me.
Electra climbed up onto the coffee table, really belting it out. She always dresses like she’s going clubbing. In her shockingly low-cut red pants and seriously scandalous red spangled tank top, it was like watching Shakira but hearing Patsy Cline.
Ava’s good at depression, very good—but not even she could help herself. She laughed hysterically. In all honesty, it’s pretty easy to placate her.
I drained a bottle of Coors Light (who the hell bought that?) I’d found way in the back of the fridge. It had no label and that meant it was free to anyone who wanted it. Electra labels everything because if she doesn’t, she thinks we’ll eat her food. I would never eat her food. She eats the grossest shit I’ve ever seen. I don’t even know what half of it is. She has cheese that looks like Kraft Singles, but when you read the label you see that it’s really fake veggie cheese made from a bunch of supposedly healthy crap. I don’t think anything that color can truly be healthy no matter what it’s made from.
Electra collapsed on the couch and fanned herself with a Lucky magazine. “Any calls, Ava?”
“Just Jeremy. He said to call him, Doll.”
“I don’t know why. He called me at work after he talked to you,” I told her.
“Typical.”
“Yes, and how typical of him to come running as soon as Roman’s touched down on foreign soil,” Electra said, her voice decidedly snotty. I knew she was just jealous that she didn’t have anyone to come running just then. Except for brief moments of kindness or hilarity, Electra really only wears one face. Not much mystery there.
Ava jumped to her feet and slipped and slid over to me across the smooth floor in her socks. I let her fall into me and take my hand in her dainty way. She turned my finger this way and that, trying to catch the light with the diamond. “Are you going to keep seeing Jeremy, Doll?”
“I’m going to keep hanging out with him, yes.”
“He sleeps over, though.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like we’re screwing every time. I just…need that.”
“Need what?”
“Him. His company.”
