Right in is a relative term in Hollywood. Actually what Scrappy means is, “We’ll be down when enough time has passed to remind you that we—and our time—are more important than you are.” I’m guessing given Scooby’s faded status but still contentious pride, I’ll have a good thirty minutes before they deign to show.
I head into Scooby’s equally sprawling living room, where I start to pull out my cell to see if Charles has called, when I catch sight of several oversized silver picture frames lining the fireplace mantel. I move in for a closer look. The family gallery. Scooby and Scrappy at the Oscars! At the White House! At an AIDS ride benefit! And a few artful black-and-white shots of Scrappy in various states of undress.
“Aren’t they great?” a childish voice pipes up behind me.
I whirl around, startled by the intrusion. The voice belongs to a twenty-something sylph, long blond hair straight as a bedsheet, dressed in a pair of tight low-rise jeans, flip-flops, and a red cotton tank top. A pager is clipped to her waist and in one hand she carries a cell phone, keys, and a pen. Amber.
“I just love that one,” she says, reaching past me to pick up one of the arty shots of Scrappy. “They took these themselves, which is just so cool.” She studies the photograph before slowly replacing it. “Hi, I’m Amber,” she says, finally turning and extending her hand. “Welcome.”
Typical. Assistants. The mini-me’s of Hollywood with their little-girl voices and assassin’s eyes.
“Oh, hi,” I say as frostily as I can. You misread assistants at your peril, but you can’t give them an inch.
“Well, I see you’re set with your water,” she says in the kind of voice you would normally use on a child. “Can I get you anything else before I go?”
Of course, she wasn’t staying. Assistants just act like they’re important. “No, really, this is fine,” I say, holding up my water like a victory wreath.
“Okay, well, I unfortunately have to be somewhere else this afternoon,” she says, giving a luxurious shake of her hair.
“We’ll miss you,” I say, aiming for a chipper but unmistakably ironic tone and hitting it with deadly accuracy.
Amber shoots me a look. “I’m sure we’ll be in touch,” she says, firing off one last shot. “They’ve really been wounded enough.”
Right. Wounded. I almost forgot.
After Amber flip-flops out of the living room, I flee to the safety of one of the sofas and punch up Steven on my cell.
“Yes, for God’s sake he finally called,” he blurts out before I can even ask.
“Did you tell him I’m out for the day and did you give him my cell number and did you get his?”
“Aye, Captain,” Steven says, launching into his Scottie impersonation from Star Trek. “Aye, and now I’m working on securing the missile launch.”
“Look, just because you’re having regular sex doesn’t mean you get to make fun of those of us who are, for all intents and purposes, celibate.”
“Ach, define regular sex,” he says, still in Scottie mode.
I’m just repeating the words regular sex when I hear footsteps behind me. I pray it’s Amber again and whip around. Nope. Scooby. Barefoot, bright red jeans, white V-neck cashmere sweater. And she’s not smiling. Why are the funny ones always so forbidding in person? Eddie Murphy was the same way. Took one meeting with him and he sat there for an hour, never removing his sunglasses, never once smiling. Like he was the head of the Crips or something.
I give Scooby a chipper little wave and vamp. “Okay,” I say to Steven in my all-business voice. “So fax those figures to the studio and leave a copy on my desk and I’ll go over them when I get back. Oh, and leave that number on my cell voice mail.”
“Don’t tell me,” Steven says, laughing. “Scooby just showed.”
“That’s correct,” I say, still in business mode.
“Hey, if there’s anything Scooby gets it’s the concept of regular sex.”
“We’ll see about that,” I say and click off.
“So,” I say, extending my hand to Scooby. Or rather I try to extend my hand but Scooby drops onto one of the other sofas and spreads one arm across the back. “Doug speaks quite highly of you,” she says, still not smiling. “Alex, isn’t it? Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself. Why you’re here.”
Why am I here? Why am I here? I’m tempted to scream, Do you think I’d be here for one minute if I didn’t have to be here? If my new, scary, unreadable boss hadn’t made me take you as a client?
“You have such a beautiful home,” I say, ignoring both my inner rantings and Scooby’s directive. “I only bring that up because I’m thinking it’s a great incentive for a piece in InStyle. Or US.”
“Really? And why would that be our first move?”
I’m about to think of some bland but plausible response—I don’t know, because they’re the only magazines vapid enough to write about you at this point—when Scrappy bounds into the room.
“Hey,” she says, all but throwing herself onto the sofa and curling up next to Scooby and pulling her hand into her lap. “What have you two been talking about?”
At least she is dressed. Sort of. She’s wearing a thin white halter top in a wool so sheer, cashmere, I’m guessing, that her nipples show through. Her tiny, pubescent breasts are in no need of a bra, but rather, apparently, constant exposure. She also has on a pair of tiny black leather shorts. On her left hand flashes an enormous diamond. Just a girl in love.
Smiling, I launch into a reprise of your-house-is-so-beautiful BS, which Scrappy is all too happy to run with. For the next fifteen minutes, she goes through the play-by-play, how they found the house, where the furniture came from, and on and on until even Scooby looks bored. “I think Alex gets the picture,” she says.
“Hey, I’m going to open a bottle of champagne,” Scrappy says brightly. “Join me?”
“Are we celebrating?” Scooby says, smiling for the first time.
“When aren’t we? I mean, I just think with Alex here, and her great ideas about the magazines and stuff, that we should drink a toast or something. To Alex. Or to us. Or to the beginnings of— what’s that line Ingrid Bergman said? ‘The start of a beautiful friendship.’ ”
I’m not keen to crawl into a glass of champagne. Nobody drinks in Hollywood. At least not while they are on duty. On the other hand, perhaps a few drops of the bubbly would loosen up Scooby. Scrappy looks pretty loose already.
“Sounds good!” I say, trying for amenable but essentially uninterested.
For the next two hours, I sit there going through my checklist of objectives and goals, never touching the crystal flute at my elbow, its merry stream of bubbles percolating like a tiny, golden lava lamp.
“Come on, Alex,” Scrappy says, shaking the nearly empty Cristal bottle like a maraca. “You’re not keeping up!”
I smile and check my watch. Almost five. Good enough for government work. I even have enough of a plan to snow G. A few articles in the mainstream press, nothing controversial. Some AIDS fund-raisers. The Matthew Shepard anniversary. Maybe even some testimony at congressional hearings or something. It could all just work. It’d better, otherwise all that’s left for these two is cable movies and hosting Hollywood Squares. I reach for the glass and its gorgeous nectar gilds my throat. I look around the room, deep in shadow with the late-afternoon sun falling across the floor. I’m exhausted but I’ve done what I needed to do. Broken the ice, gotten them to trust me. At least it looks that way, since Scooby is all but prone on the sofa, her arms folded under her head, with Scrappy curled at her feet like a cat.
I take another sip of champagne. Maybe Scrappy will start licking her paws.
“It’s all about perception, and the media creates that,” Scooby suddenly blurts out, struggling to sit up, accidentally kicking Scrappy in the process. “If the media decided to say, ‘Let’s put them back on top because they’re underdogs,’ I guarantee you that studios would offer us jobs. But not one magazine has gotten
behind us.”
Okay, happy hour is over. “Well, I don’t think that’s true,” I say, putting my glass down and wracking my memory for some recent article, any article on them that has been favorable.
“For some reason, collectively they all decided ‘Let’s not support them,’ ” Scooby goes on, her voice angry now. “I can’t even look at magazines anymore.”
I see my entire afternoon beginning to unravel. “Well, I don’t think—” I start but Scrappy cuts me off. “Certainly this town could decide as quickly as they decided the other way that ‘Hey, they’re hot,’ ” she pipes.
“It can change,” says Scooby gloomily. “But it’s not up to us.”
I have to get out of here. Any moment, they’ll turn on me and their whole fallen state of grace will be my fault. And my first assignment from G will just go south. “Yes, well, I think we’ve made some good progress this afternoon, although obviously there is a lot of work to do,” I say, scrambling to my feet.
Who am I kidding? This is going to be an uphill slog all the way. Actors are notoriously thin-skinned yet tone-deaf to the nuances of the public, but these two are in a league of their own. After making a hash of their own careers, they are still looking for someone to blame. And now I am the closest target. If G is trying to flush me from the herd, find a reason to fire me or whatever he has up his sleeve, he couldn’t have picked a better weapon than these two.
“We’re just trying to be truthful,” Scooby says, sounding like she might burst into tears. “But we’ve learned this is a hard town to be truthful in.”
Truthful? Truthful? It’s a fucking tissue of lies out here in case you haven’t noticed.
“Well, I recognize that,” I say, knowing I have to say something more. Offer some balm, some salvation. After all, I’m the publicist. The one with answers. So I do what anyone does in Hollywood when her back is against the wall.
“I’ll call you,” I say, grabbing my bag and fleeing for the exit. “I’ll call you and we’ll do lunch.”
7 The Invasion of Troy
I have barely an hour at home between Scooby and meeting Troy to change out of my battle fatigues into something sexier but that still screams I’m really working so don’t getany ideas. Which in my case means replacing my black suit with a pair of black pants, a black sweater, and my black leather jacket—leather jackets are now as ubiquitous in Hollywood as the baseball cap once was. What can I say, black makes me feel safe.
I grab the Pinot Grigio out of the fridge and pour a glass as I dial up my messages on my cell. The usual nonsense. A couple of editors. A studio publicist. Mom with more details about Christmas. Oh God. Deal with that later. Rachel saying she’s bored, call her. Steven saying he’s going home but call him later. Steven again, saying sorry but here’s Charles’s cell phone number. Finally. Charles. Charles!
“Hi, it’s me. Sorry I missed you. Your assistant gave me your cell phone and told me you were doing your meet-and-greet with Scooby. Can’t wait to hear about that. So listen, I’m coming back to L.A. on Saturday and was wondering if you can do dinner that night. I know it’s kind of last-minute and you probably have plans but I thought I’d take a shot. I’m sick of work getting in the way of this. So leave me a message at the office. Or try me on my cell.”
It takes a second for this to sink in. I’m sick of work getting in the way of this? This? Our dinner is a this, not work? I play the message again just to make sure. But yes, I heard right. Our dinner is a this. Jesus, that’s almost a date. I think it’s a date. If it’s not work, it’s a date, right? I mean, why would he suggest dinner instead of lunch if it’s not really a date? I think it’s a date. I’m going with date.
I punch up Steven’s cell to fly all this by him but hang up before he can answer. Can’t check in with nanny every five seconds. Besides, it’s seven o’clock—ten in New York—and given that I have less than half an hour before I’m due to meet Troy, I’d rather talk to Charles than Steven. I start to dial Charles’s cell but stop. Wait, what am I going to say if I get him? Of course I have no plans on Saturday? I never have plans on Saturdays because I have no life and anything I was planning on doing on Saturday is just killing time before I die? Fuck. I forgot there’s a party Rachel was dragging me to. Oh, fuck it, there’s always a party. I’m going to dinner. I take a breath and dial again.
Rats. His voice mail. Oh, well. “Hey, it’s me. Got your message. Yeah, Saturday is actually good. I mean, there is a party. There was a party, but you know, there’s always a party and I’m with you, let’s do this.”
Let’s do this? What am I saying?
“Let’s do this dinner,” I say quickly. “And yes, I, ah, can fill you in on Scooby and also my meeting with Doug and Troy because my day is not over yet.” I’m starting to ramble. Get out. Now. “So, yes, Saturday’s good and call me. Call me and, uh, and I’ll see you soon.”
I hang up and realize I’m short of breath. An hour ago I was ready to open a vein and now I’m Dorothy waking up in a snowstorm sent by Glinda the Good Witch. Even the thought of spending the next three hours riding herd on Troy doesn’t dampen my spirits. I drain the last of my glass, grab my jacket, and head out to the House of Chanel. To my evening, which is most definitely not a date.
Even before I make the turn off Santa Monica, I see the klieg lights raking the sky. This seems a little overkill for a retail event. Who’s coming to this thing besides Troy? Should have checked. Oh, well, too late now. I turn left onto Rodeo and spot the clutch of valets and the crowd already forming in the glare of the video cameras down the block. I glide down the street past the glowing windows—Prada, Ralph Lauren, Armani, Hermès—and the sidewalks empty of the usual Eurotrash tourists, slip into the valet line, and wait my turn.
Good evening, good evening. Yes, yes, I’m here for the event. Yes, thank you. Yes, yes, I will have a good time. I take the ticket from the chattering, smiling valets and head toward the crowd. My heels sink into the red carpet—that familiar cushiony walk of fame—when I feel one of the pangs I feel whenever I attend one of these things now. That feeling of what? Guilt? Fear? Or maybe it’s just that gnawing sense that it’s all a little too let-them-eat-cake. I mean, don’t the valets ever get sick of telling perfumed, blow-dried, high-heeled chicas like me to have a good time at a party that they will never in a million years get closer to than where they are now? That there are limits to what even Carla Selena—the Latina queen—can do with a wave of her pop-cultural wand?
I move into the crowd, which is already packed with the usual pretty young things waving and smiling at the screaming photographers, trying to shake off my unease—think of Charles, think of our date. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a cameraman heading in my direction and I duck quickly to get out of his way. Actually he’s chasing some willowy blonde in a leather jacket up the carpet. Is that Charlize? Actually, it could be. Jesus. I look around, squinting in the glare of the lights, and realize there are a number of stars—Christian Slater, Daryl Hannah, Courteney Cox—on the carpet chatting with reporters. Why didn’t I know this was a thing? Somebody else in the office had to know this was a thing. Why didn’t I? For a brief second, I feel another stab of fear. That I’m being set up. I’m being set up by Peg, who is in cahoots with G.
Okay, I’ve already had enough paranoia for one day. I don’t need to see ghosts everywhere.
“Hey, Alex!” I look over and recognize another publicist, from BOB, I think. Melinda, I think. Or Mindy. A million publicists in the big city. I can’t know them all. Who would want to?
“Hey,” I shout back and give her a wave like she’s my best friend.
“Hey,” Melinda or whatever-her-name-is says, wriggling through the crowd toward me. “Did you know this was going to be this big?” she says, shouting over the roar.
“I don’t even know what it’s for,” I shout back. “I just got a call from my client’s manager asking me to be here. A last-minute thing.”
“Who’s the client?”
>
“What?” I practically scream but my voice is all but drowned out by the crowd and some engine roar from the street. Some star’s limo or maybe it’s the Harleys arriving.
“Who’s the client?” Melinda yells again.
“Oh!” I say. “Troy Madden.”
“Troy Madden?” She sounds incredulous.
“Uh, yeah. Why?”
“Isn’t that him?” she says, nodding over my shoulder toward the street.
I turn around in time to catch the crowd parting like the Red Sea and Troy, astride a gleaming Harley and with a lit cigar in his mouth, rocketing up the carpet, through the open front door, and into the Chanel boutique.
By the time I claw my way through the crowd and into the store, they’re pretty much done sweeping up the glass. Apparently Troy managed to stick his Evel Knievel landing—his little stunt was actually planned, or as planned as Troy plans anything—but he did collide with one of the waiters, an accident that sent a tray of filled champagne flutes flying. Fortunately, none of the merchandise was hit by the spray; there are only a few slightly damp guests who are doing their best to laugh off the accident. At least it looks like they’re laughing in the midst of all those towel-bearing Chanel minions. God knows Troy’s feeling no pain. Blowing smoke rings while leaning against the Harley, which is parked now in the center of the store, Troy is all but holding court in his leather jacket and T-shirt. Like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. A man who never looks better than when he’s in some sort of trouble.
“I’ve ridden these for years,” I hear Troy say in his unmistakable drawl. “And don’t call ’em hogs. They resent that, you know,” he says, giving the Harley a pat. “Best bikes money can buy. Shit, I rode one all the way from Des Moines to Tampa one spring break. Better than a car.”
Well, at least he’s not going anywhere for a minute. I take a second to glance around the store. What the hell is this event? More important, whose idea was Troy’s rocket-from-the-crypt arrival? I hope the dealership’s, although considering the Chanel gift bags lined up by the door, this is a Chanel event to promote its new “Harley” bag, which, judging by all the Plexiglas displays, is a slouchy shoulder bag in navy or black leather, with a rather nasty-looking chain available in stainless steel or vermeil.
So 5 Minutes Ago Page 9
