Party Girl

by Anna David

  “Oh, honey.” Oh, honey is about all she’s said during this incredibly unpleasant conversation. Lately I’ve been having this feeling that I’ve stopped disappointing Mom—that, in fact, she’s resigned herself to the fact that I’m always going to be sharing disappointing news—and so she just sounds sad and I resent her for this.

  “Everything’s going to be fine, Mom,” I say. “In fact, things will be better than fine.” I’m having this conversation on absolutely no sleep since yesterday, after getting home from work, passing out, then waking up and calling Alex, I’d proceeded to stay up all night with a gram while listening to this Black Eyed Peas song over and over. But obsessively playing the song had actually sparked some mind expansion of sorts, wherein I’d realized that the publishing world simply didn’t appreciate my gifts and it was time to find a place that did. “I’m beginning to think, like, screw the magazine business,” I say to her. “Maybe I should get into the film business, you know? I am, after all, in Hollywood.”

  Mom “Oh, honey”s me a couple more times and doesn’t provide any of the comfort, I think, that a mother should. No proclamations that I was surely right and Brian and Robert were wrong and declarations that no one should undervalue her baby, who was clearly so special. “You better call your dad to talk about money,” she eventually says before we hang up. “And let me know what happens.”

  The truth is that I’m a trust funder. The only thing is that Dad convinced me to sign the trust over to him and Mom when I turned eighteen and was supposed to get it. So, in theory, Mom and Dad share the responsibility, but Mom essentially relinquished all decision-making power to Dad so he decides if I ever get to see any of the cash. The fact that the money is technically mine—and I won’t get the bulk of it until I’m like forty-five or something—usually feels like a moot point. Convincing my dad that I need and deserve some of it has to be, I think, more challenging, and surely more guilt-inducing, than earning every penny.

  But now, of course, I don’t have the option of earning it. I’d like to work, I think, as I dial Dad’s number. But they won’t let me. As I explain to Dad what happened—the version he gets is that I was fired even though I was doing a really good job because my two bosses were complete pricks—I promise myself that I’m going to make it through this entire conversation without crying.

  “So, there’s no chance they’ll change their mind and take you back?” he asks.

  “Haven’t you been listening, Dad?” I wail, incredibly irritated with him for not keeping up with the story. “I wouldn’t want them to take me back. In fact, I’m getting out of publishing and into the film business.”

  He sighs. “How much do you need to live?” he asks, ignoring my film business plan altogether. “What’s your budget?”

  Dad’s always asking me annoying questions about my “budget”—about how much I spend on dry cleaning and renting movies and other things—and it tends to depress the hell out of me. It’s so anti-life—this insistence he has on counting up every penny even though there are so many of them.

  “Just send me a couple grand and I’ll start looking for a new job today,” I say, and for some reason this makes me want to sob. I’m such a piece of shit, I think. A good-for-nothing spoiled brat who can’t support her-self at an age where most people are married and self-supporting. Dad doles out a lecture on the importance of valuing money, promises to send a check in the next couple of days, and I’m able to get off the phone before the wracking sobs start.

  I get into crying for a while, burying myself under my covers with a box of tissues to blow my nose into and watching my pillows get drenched in snotty, teary—and I have to confess, even slightly bloody—liquid. But then I remember that I don’t need to be depressed because I can just do a bump or two and that will make everything okay.

  Just a little bit, I think as I get out of bed and walk over to my purse, to keep me motivated today. I pull out the enormous plastic bag filled with coke, take the Gretna Green picture off the wall, pour it out, chop it up using my Macy’s credit card, and inhale. I feel immediately better and decide that I’m going to make better use of my time than I would if I hadn’t been fired and still worked at Absolutely Fabulous.

  I e-mail a girl I know who’s an assistant at UTA and ask her to send me the job list. UTA is one of the big agencies in town and for whatever reason, they have a list of the unannounced industry jobs available. In order to see it, you need to know someone who works there, and so the lack of availability of the job list to the general populace serves as its own screening process. It wasn’t announced—I just found out about it from the UTA job list, I’ve heard people say. I was, I decide, going to be one of them.

  I do a line and then, in what seems like minutes, the UTA girl e-mails me back. I print up the job list and start highlighting the positions that sound appealing, taking only one break to snort up a few more lines. Even though I already did assistant duty—slaving away as an editorial assistant at a parenting magazine in San Francisco—I realize that if I’m going to take the film business by storm, I’m probably going to have to start at the bottom. And the UTA job list provides many different opportunities to do just that: Mailroom clerk at William Morris, one listing reads. Second assistant to top-notch producer with Sony deal, reads another. And then my eyes catch on a listing that seems tailor-made for me: Part-time personal assistant for Imagine executive Holly Min, it says. Ideal for writer or actor needing extra cash. I think I’ve seen Holly Min’s name in the trades before. And, as I focus in on the words “ideal for a writer,” it occurs to me that what I should probably be doing is writing screenplays of my own.

  Think about it. Everyone in this town, down to the guy who bags my groceries at Gelson’s, is a “screenwriter.” They all lug their laptops to Starbucks and register their scripts at the Writer’s Guild and talk about their “second act problems,” even though none of them are actual writers. Most of them will even admit as much. Oh, I’m not really a writer, I heard a guy say at the premiere of his movie. I just had a great idea.

  Well, I am really a writer. I wrote short stories from the age of about twelve on, majored in creative writing for Christ’s sake, and have logged time as a professional journalist at two different magazines. I’ll show these wannabe writers how it’s done, I think, imagining my life as an aspiring writer working for Holly Min. I would schedule her meetings—when she, Ron Howard, and Brian Grazer would meet with Russell Crowe or Tom Hanks or whomever—and read her scripts for her, and over time she’d realize that the comments I gave her about the various scripts she was developing were more intelligent than anything in the scripts. This girl’s the real thing, Holly would say one day, grabbing my hand and bringing me in to meet with Ron Howard. This is the mind we need to tap. Ron would value Holly’s opinion so much that, on her word alone, he’d beg me to write something that could inspire him. I’d hesitate for just a second, and then blushingly admit that I actually had been working on a script. Holly would wink at me from across the room because she, of course, would have already read this screenplay, declared it brilliant, and planned this reveal. I’d pull a copy of the script out of my chic Coach briefcase bag (which Holly would have given me when she realized after a few weeks of our working together that her life had never run more smoothly) and leave a copy with him. I’d go to Starbucks with Holly, where we’d smoke cigarettes and make plans to start our own company based on her producing acumen and my writing talent and by the time we’d return to the office, Ron would have finished reading, declared it a masterpiece, and offered me a million dollars—or maybe, like, $750,000.

  I call Holly’s number, and speak to her assistant, Karen. “I’m actually going to be doing the interviewing for Holly,” she says, “because she’s just too busy.”

  That makes sense, I think, as I try to suss out if Karen and I are going to be friends or if she’s going to be resentful over Holly’s clear preference for me. “Great,” I say. “Can I fax you my résumé?”
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  “Oh, there’s no need,” she says. “But I’m meeting with people today. Can you come in around three?”

  After making the appointment, I gaze into my closet and try to figure out what outfit would impress Holly the most. My eyes dart quickly from tank tops to dresses to jeans and I realize then that I’m quite wired and should probably chill out on the coke until after the interview. I can’t very well be ducking into Holly’s private bathroom—I’m somehow positive she’ll have one—for a bump if I start to come down during my interview. I pick out a conservative brown dress, but can’t stop staring at my closet once I notice how fucked up the paint job around it is. It’s the same off-white, cruddy color that decorates the rest of the room—and, in fact, the entire apartment—but while repainting the apartment has always sounded entirely insurmountable, repainting my closet some cool, dark color sounds absolutely within the realm of possibilities. If I get the job, I decide, I’ll celebrate by painting my closet tonight. Feeling more motivated than I have in ages, I decide to hit the gym for a long workout and then a steam—which will surely deplete all the drugs from my system—before heading over to the interview. I should get fired more often, I think, as I open my exercise clothes drawer. It does wonders for my motivation level.

  Wow! Absolutely Fabulous magazine! Are you serious?” Karen asks, widening her eyes. “That’s so cool! Why would you ever want to stop working there?”

  Karen, a slightly overweight Valley Girl, is, I quickly determine, no match for me. Before I’ve even handed her my résumé and explained my desire to start working part time so that I can dedicate the rest of my time to my screenwriting, she’s telling me how perfect I seem for the job. When I mention that I recently left my writing gig at Absolutely Fabulous, the girl practically has a conniption fit.

  “I want to be one of the people doing things, not one of the ones who writes about them,” I say. When she nods sympathetically, I make a mental note that I should remember this line for future challenging conversations with Mom and Dad.

  “I totally hear you,” Karen says. “But working at Absolutely Fabulous would have to be, like, so cool and, like, a dream job. So I totally admire you for leaving that to do, like, this.”

  I feel my nose starting to run as I smile and tell her that this sounds like a dream job.

  “Well, before you decide that, let me tell you about it, she says. “You’ll be taking care of all the details of Holly’s personal life: food shopping, picking up dry cleaning, and walking the dog. Walking the dog is, like, the main thing, actually. Her boyfriend gave her this Doberman pinscher and she was so excited, but then she’s at the office 24-7 and never has time for it! I was finally like, ‘Holly, man, you need another assistant.’”

  I nod at Karen and smile, knowing that Holly’s not going to need Karen’s inane advice anymore now that she can have mine. Holly’s life sounds stressful and glamorous and since I plan to make part of her life my own, I decide that I like everything that Karen’s saying. I figure, groceries today, scripts tomorrow. I keep nodding, while Karen tells me about how I’ll get $10 an hour and I should invoice Holly once a month and walk the dog at least every day and the whole time I’m wondering why she’s talking to me like I have the job when I’m not even sure we’ve started the interview. I’m tired so I zone out a little bit while Karen rambles, and I allow my eyes to fixate on her fleshy cheeks as she explains how Holly likes things done. The cheeks stop moving at a certain point and it takes me a second to snap out of the zone I’ve gotten into.

  “So that’s it,” Karen says, looking at me kind of strangely. “Could you start today?”

  “Today?” I ask, positive that I missed something crucial. “You mean, I got it?”

  “You got it!” she exclaims, standing up and reaching out to pump my hand. “Congratulations!”

  Landing the job right then and there wasn’t something I’d bargained for, and being given keys to Holly’s house, her grocery list for the week, and the name of her dry cleaners without ever meeting the woman herself was likewise something I hadn’t quite anticipated. But I’m so high off of the ego boost of getting the first job I interviewed for—a job off the UTA job list, no less—that I decide not to let any of this bother me.

  I chain-smoke as I drive to Holly’s house in Carthay Circle, but when I get to the address I’ve written down on Imagine letterhead, I think I must be in the wrong place. It’s this barf-colored tract house, not exactly the kind of place I’d think a producer for Imagine would live. Inside, the floor-to-floor carpeting and low ceilings are, in fact, so reminiscent of the first apartment I had after college that it actually makes me feel like where I live isn’t all that bad. But she probably owns this, so it’s a good investment, I tell myself as I try to ingratiate myself with her growling, unpleasant dog.

  I grew up with golden retrievers and like dogs in general but Doberman pinschers, I realize as I nervously let Tiger out of his cage, sure are big, mean, stern-looking things. When Karen had asked me if I knew how to walk and “take care of” a dog, I’d nodded vigorously because I figured only an idiot didn’t know how to deal with dogs and besides, I’d grown up with dogs my entire life. But the dogs we’d had just ran freely around the neighborhood, where people didn’t seem to use words like “leashes” and “pooper scoopers.” All too late, by the time I’d already gotten to her house, I realized this chick was expecting me to pick up the dog’s shit. Artists have to make compensations along the way, I tell myself as I slide a leash on Tiger and lead him outside. Brad Pitt, I seem to recall hearing, dressed up in a chicken suit and handed out El Polo Loco flyers when he first moved to town.

  So I take Tiger around the block, marveling over the fact that walking a dog isn’t as much fun as it sometimes looks like it is when I pass people doing it in Runyon Canyon. Of course, the depressing, utterly unpopulated streets of Carthay Circle don’t exactly make for impressive scenery. And Tiger isn’t, of course, a very furry, warm, or even especially cute animal. It feels, actually, more like walking a sort of surly, serious old man than walking a dog, and I’m utterly convinced that I’m somehow doing it wrong. Does it hurt them if you pull on their leashes? Tugging Tiger along, I imagine accidentally snapping his neck and having to explain to a tearful Holly that I just didn’t know you were supposed to let dogs lead.

  When I put Tiger back in his cage in the kitchen—is it normal to keep dogs in cages? How come we never did that with our dogs at home?—I realize that my enthusiasm for my new life is flagging. I need to treat myself to a little of my stash, I think, as I glance at the vial I’d remembered to put in my purse before I left for the interview.

  Even though I’m obviously the only one there, I slip into Holly’s bathroom to lay some coke on my hand and snort it up. I know this is the wrong way to start working for you, I silently tell Holly as I snort. But making me pick up shit and keeping your dog in a cage is wrong, too.

  Feeling inspired again, I decide to do a little more, then bid Tiger good-bye, lock up, and realize that I’m not up for doing Holly’s grocery shopping or picking up her dry cleaning just now. Karen had, in fact, told me I simply had to do it “later,” and she hadn’t specified whether “later” meant later today or simply later in the week. With the coke now flowing fully through my veins, I decide that I need to do something for me, and that painting the closet would really be a way to embrace this new turn my life was taking.

  So I start driving toward the paint store on Beverly. I’d never really fancied myself someone who was capable of doing things like painting. But now, I was beginning to see, anything was possible. I was, after all, on my way to becoming a screenwriter with a deal at Imagine. I needed to prove to the universe that getting fired and landing this new personal assistant job was a good thing, and if I painted, I’d prove that I was now more productive than ever. Tomorrow, I decided, I’d start working on my script.

  As I park, I realize that I’m incredibly exhausted and jittery. But the thought of givin
g in now—going home, getting in bed, and sleeping this whole thing off—doesn’t seem within the realm of possibilities so instead I go inside and tell a guy who works there that I want gray paint.

  He starts bringing out little paint cards with all those different shades on them, asking me if maybe I want a silver-gray or even a greenish gray, and I want to snap his neck. Doesn’t he understand that the exact nuances of color don’t matter, that people only debate between mauve and taupe and baby blue because they don’t have anything better to do?

  “I just want gray,” I say, with barely simmering rage. He eyes me nervously, then says he’ll go and mix the paint for me. As I wait for him, my nose starts running and I reach into my purse for one of the wads of Kleenex that I thankfully stashed in there this morning. I wonder if the guy knows I’m high and isn’t in fact “mixing color”—what the hell does he need to mix if I’ve just picked a solid gray color anyway?—but calling to report me somewhere for something. I pick at my cuticles and then file them down with a nail buffer I keep in my purse for this very purpose until he returns—it could be twenty minutes later or it could be two hours—with a can of the paint.

  “Do you have paintbrushes?” he asks, and I feel certain this is a test. I shake my head and he picks a paintbrush off the shelf behind him and places it next to the can of paint on the counter. He rings everything up and I pay him with as businesslike a demeanor as I can muster. I dare you, I think as he hands me my change, to think I’m crazy or weird or on drugs. But he just smiles and tells me to have a nice day.

  Both painting and writing get put off for the next week or so as I fall into a routine of sorts—going to Holly’s, walking Tiger, picking up his shit and pretending it’s not happening, then coming home and doing some Alex while I figure out my life. I keep telling myself I’ll start my script just as soon as I finish reading Us Weekly, but somehow I never seem to finish reading Us Weekly or, if I do, I’m too high by then and need to do something else to come down, like take a bath or a shot or a ride on the Magic Wand.