I head back out and scan the crowd. Some mid-level actors. Studio people. Agents; no party is complete without agents circling the waters. A few producers. A few ersatz producers. No one I feel like talking to. Or even pretending to talk to. I know I should work the crowd. Get the lowdown on the movie. The actors. Meet them. Woo them. Bag them. Mount their heads on BIG-DWP’s walls. But you need one of three things to get through a Hollywood party—energy, celebrity, or the right drugs—and at the moment I’m lacking all three.
“Hey, you made it.”
I whip around. Rachel. A little glassy-eyed. But then she’s better a little glassy-eyed.
“I didn’t think you guys would show. Given your date, I mean.”
“What date?” I say glumly. “It was just a business lunch that got moved to dinner. And now he’s out doing some more business,” I say, waving vaguely toward the crowd, “with a potential client.”
“At least you got dinner,” she says, and I can tell she’s trying to be helpful.
“And if you came in the same car there’s still some chance for nooky on the way home.”
I look at her. “Nooky?”
“I think it’s the decor,” she says with an airy wave. “It’s getting to me. I just told someone ‘Cheerio.’”
“Yeah,” I say, eager to talk about anything besides my nondate. “What’s with this guy? Couldn’t just head to Trousdale like the rest of the anointed?”
“I don’t know. I think one of his relatives was English or something,” she says. “Or maybe he bought it like this. Who cares? All the studio knows is that his movie tested through the roof.”
“What is it again? Some Martin Lawrence comedy?”
“Which I used to think was an oxymoron, but the cards came back off the charts.”
I take another slug of wine and gaze around the room. No sign of Charles. My ride. I feel like a Macy’s parade balloon with a fatal leak. All bloated expectations slowly expiring. In public.
“Did I ever tell you I actually hate talking about the movie business?” I say.
“Several times.”
“Hey, Rachel. Alex.” Some studio exec floats by, his arm around some actress on the WB channel. “How’s it going?”
“Great, great,” we say in unison, although I have no idea who the guy is or why he knows my name. The actress smiles coyly.
“Love your series,” Rachel says.
“Yeah,” I say automatically.
“What’s her show again?” I say when they drift out of earshot.
“Like it matters,” Rachel says. “So do you think you’d hate the movie business if you actually had a date with Charles tonight? I think it’s just a defensive reaction.”
I am in no mood for the analyst’s couch. “I mean it,” I say. “Unless you’re an A-list whatever—actor, producer, exec—coming to these things is just a Sisyphean exercise. You have to be at the top to make it all work. I’m just not powerful or famous enough.”
“Actually, I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Rachel says, grabbing my arm and pulling me away from the crowd. “I wasn’t going to bring this up, given your frame of mind and yesterday’s Post, but there’s a rumor that you and Troy are, ah, an item.”
I laugh so hard wine spurts out of my nose.
“Come on, you’re not that hard to ID in the pictures,” she says, rooting around in her jeans pocket and handing me a balled-up cocktail napkin. “What’d you think? No one would figure it out?”
“So what if they know it’s me?” I say, dabbing at my face. I realize I’m using on Rachel the exact line I tried out on Steven. “I was at the event with my client. I’m guilty of what? Being a dutiful publicist?”
“Look,” she says with a shrug. “You don’t have to convince me. All I’m saying is what I’m hearing. That you and Troy are an item. Or—”
“Or what?”
“Well, there’s a second opinion that you’re just trying to make it look like you guys are an item. That you planted the story in the Post. To goose your profile. In light of the merger.”
I am Barney collapsing all over Broadway. “Troy fucks anybody! You said so yourself. But I don’t make the cut?”
“See, I knew you’d like the first rumor better,” she says but I’ve stopped listening. I am not Barney. I am a dead woman. Not only am I not on a date, but I have managed to drag my new boss to a party where people either think I’m sleeping with my client, which is totally unethical, or I am such a loser that I want them to think I’m sleeping with my client, who would never sleep with me. Whatever shred of dignity I had when I started this evening is now shot to hell. I have to get out of here. I have to get Charles out of here. And preferably out of town.
I dive into the crowd. Cinderella on uppers. Racing to find the prince before I turn into more of a pumpkin than I already am. But faces leer up out of the crowd.
“Hey, Alex, how’s it going?”
“Hey, Alex.”
“Hey, Alex, I hear you’re handling Troy Madden now.”
“Hey, Alex.”
“Hey.”
I feel like I’m caught in that dream when you’re naked in a roomful of people. Then I spy him. Out on the patio. With the same actress. The one who seems to have her tongue planted in his ear.
“So you told him what, that you were sick?”
We’re in Rachel’s Jeep Cherokee heading up Laurel Canyon toward my house.
“It’s not like I was lying,” I say, leaning back in the passenger seat with my eyes closed. Or as closed as I can keep them without feeling carsick on the twisty road.
“I thought the plan was to get him out of the party.”
“Well, it didn’t look like that was possible. Not with Miss Thespian going in for the kill.”
“But he did offer to drive you home.”
“He said he would. Look, I’m sorry if I made you leave earlier than you wanted.” I twist in the seat so I can see her. “It just seemed like the least humiliating option.”
“Don’t be retarded,” she says, downshifting so abruptly that the gears grind and I can’t tell if she’s pissed at me or Charles or just the evening in general.
I close my eyes again and then, suddenly, we are at my front gate.
“Do you want me to walk you to the door?” she says, her voice softer now. “It’s late and your stairs are pretty steep.”
I feel tears spring to my eyes. This town is pretty steep and for the first time I think I might not make it. Navigate the highs and lows of Hollywood. The highs so out of reach and the lows all too easy.
“No, I think I can make it,” I say, glad Rachel can’t see me too closely in the dark. “But thanks.”
I get out of the car and head for the stairs.
Down.
10 Girls, Interrupted
It’s all so high school. “Hollywood is high school with money.” Just like the saying goes. I just hadn’t realized how true it is. Until now. Until my nondate with Charles. My nondate with Charles and our Carrie-like homecoming party. And of course my paranoia about running into him at the office on Monday.
To his credit, he did call. Early the next morning after the party. Actually he left a message, since I was in no shape to answer the phone, let alone lie at 9 A.M. on a Sunday morning. Apologies all around. For being late, for the car mix-up, for getting roped into a business conversation at the party, for not taking me home. For all of it. He’s sorry and hopes I feel better and call him. And he sounds sincere—even contrite—and for a moment I’m tempted to try and put the genie back in the bottle.
“Are you out of your mind?” Steven says, when he calls later in the morning looking for a full accounting of the evening. “You think only gays are into self-abusive relationships? Honey, I’m about to make you an honorary member.”
“Yeah, well, hold that thought because I’m not calling him.” I’m sitting up in bed, sun pooling on the sheets, a mug of coffee strong enough to dance on, the Sunday papers, and Steven in my ea
r. The world has turned again on its axis. Miraculous, and I am in no position to question it.
“Look, whether it was a business thing or a date that went south, I’m treating it like business. It’s the only way out.” I add, “Charles is my colleague. My boss. End of story.”
“Still, he told you about his parents,” Steven says, and I can tell he wants to analyze the data again.
“Forget it.” And I mean it. It’s Sunday. In L.A. I’m going to read the papers. Maybe garden. Or hike a canyon. I hear it’s what people do in L.A. on Sundays. Besides, I’m more concerned about the rumors about me and Troy. Or I am until Steven comes apart with laughter when I mention it.
“Rachel wishes people were talking about her and Troy. About her and anyone,” he says. “That girl is so deluded. Besides, who’d she hear that from? Other studio people? They never know anything.”
“Look, I know you don’t like her, but try to keep your well-honed animosity toward all females except me in check. She is one of my closest friends.”
Steven snorts. “It has nothing to do with her being a woman, which if you ask me is debatable. I just think her tough-girl act is a little old.”
“My tough-girl act is a little old.”
“You guys are not remotely similar,” he says. “You’re confused. She’s just mean.”
“She isn’t mean,” I say. “You just don’t get what it’s like to be a short brunette woman with a brain and a mouth in a town that values none of those attributes.”
“Why do you think I live here?”
“Okay, we’re getting off the track,” I say, starting to feel flickerings of last night’s despair. “About me and Troy. You don’t think I need to mount a counteroffensive?”
“I’m more worried you’re using military metaphors, but nooooo,” he says, ticking off our usual list of reasons why nothing bad ever really happens in Hollywood unless it involves money: all publicity is good publicity, no one reads anything, and J. Lo. “It will only be a matter of time before she gets married again. Or divorced—or wherever she is in her social calendar—and everyone will have something else to talk about. You know attention levels in this town.”
“I do and it’s why we’re hanging up now,” I say, feeling better than I thought was possible twelve hours ago. “I have to go hike a canyon.”
Of course, our paths do cross. On Monday to be exact. When Charles comes by my office. To apologize. In person. The evening might have been fucked up, but the guy’s got manners. I give him that.
“So at the very least, I owe you a ride,” he says, running his hand through his hair with the kind of gesture that if I hadn’t just spent the world’s most embarrassing evening with him, I would describe as bashful.
“No, no, no. No problem,” I say, busying myself with some papers on my desk. Miss No Problem again. “Really, Rachel was just leaving and it worked out great.”
I look up with a steely smile and realize Charles looks—what? Crestfallen? Surprised? Well, too late now. This is-he-or-isn’t-he road only leads to heartbreak. Or a bad country-and-western lyric.
“So did you manage to sign—what did you say her name was? Stella?”
“Oh please,” he says, shaking his head. “She has no idea what she wants.”
I’m about to say she seemed to have a pretty good idea Saturday night, but think better of it. I may not know if Charles was or wasn’t my date two nights ago, but I do know, in this office, he’s my superior. “Well, at least you tried,” I say. Another steely smile. “So?” I add briskly. Old business? New business? Move to adjourn before I lose my cool here?
“So?” He looks at me like he’s trying to read Proust in the original and can’t quite make it out. “So, I’ll see you around the office?”
Could not sound more like Chinese water torture. Or reading Proust in the original.
“Absolutely.”
“Unless you have time for lunch before I leave. To make up for the ride—the nonride—home.”
Just when I’m out, they pull me back in. I feel Miss No Problem beginning to crumble, when there’s a knock at the door. Steven. With news from the front, apparently, judging by the look on his face.
“Yes?” I say, bracing for some new emergency with Troy.
“You have that lunch meeting today?”
“Lunch meeting?” I look at him blankly. Then at my calendar. I have nothing down for today. “Oh, you mean the thing?” I’m guessing Steven is trying to pry me away from Charles by doing that scene from Annie Hall where Woody Allen tries to keep Diane Keaton away from Paul Simon by reminding her that “we have that thing.”
“No,” Steven says archly. “Kelly Cohen. At her house,” he adds, looking at his watch. “At one.”
“Oh, Kelly. Jesus. That’s today?”
It’s true. I do have a meeting with Kelly Cohen, but why I don’t have this down in my book, I have no idea. Probably too distracted by my dating Troy and not dating Charles. An actress-turned-screenwriter, Kelly also happens to be my favorite client. Actually, now that she’s got her medication adjusted, she’s the only client I can stand to spend any time with, and given that I still need an exit strategy from the Days of Our Lives scene playing out in my office, I’m not about to reschedule.
“Hey, you’re busy,” Charles says, raising his hands and heading toward the door. “I’ll let you go.”
I feel like Kate Winslet drowning in the North Atlantic, watching the lifeboat row off into the fog. “Well, let’s see if we can work out lunch,” I say. If I had a whistle, I would blow it. “I’m sure I can move something around.”
But he’s gone. An enigmatic smile and out the door. Out of my life.
“Well, that was close,” Steven says like he’s saved me from a burning building. Or from buying a pair of acid-washed jeans.
“I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “I cannot read that guy.”
“So read this instead.” He hands me a copy of the press release I have to approve for Kelly’s new movie, some family comedy she wrote called Butterfly Girls. “If you want my advice,” he adds, “talk to Kelly. If anyone has seen it all, she has.”
This was true. Although I’m not sure if a woman with two ex-husbands, including one who’d turned out to be gay, is really the fount of relationship knowledge. What Kelly does know is Hollywood. All too well. Her mother, Lily, was an MGM stock star, and her father, Dave Cohen, a fifties game show host. Until his embezzlement scandal. Kelly did some acting as a kid. Guest-starring stuff on Lassie and Donna Reed. But after her parents divorced, she got shipped off to boarding school and when she resurfaced, Kelly had given up acting to become a screenwriter. She’d also acquired a husband, a drummer in a seventies heavy-metal band. Or he was her husband until his drug habit got the better of him. Kelly refers to her first marriage as “my Black Panther phase.” Or if she is feeling more cynical, her “Heather Locklear phase.” Then there was her brief marriage to a hot young producer, a close friend of David Geffen’s like that’s not a clue, who wound up coming out of the closet and out of Kelly’s life.
Now, Kelly is mostly famous for being famous. In addition to her famous parents and famous ex-husbands, she has a famous house, a rambling Spanish-style hacienda off Coldwater that once belonged to Fay Wray and later, George Hamilton. Under Kelly’s aegis, it is the site of lots of famous parties where there are so many famous guests that Kelly uses a velvet rope to cordon off the less famous from the really famous. It is about knowing the difference between Liz Taylor and Matt LeBlanc. Or it would be if Kelly bothered knowing Matt LeBlanc.
As Kelly’s publicist, I don’t have to worry about the velvet rope. I don’t have to worry about much with Kelly, unless she is changing medication. There was a bipolar thing, but that’s pretty much under control now. Most of the time, Kelly’s on autopilot because there’s nothing to publicize. She writes her scripts. Actually, she mostly rewrites scripts. She sees the doctor.
But then she wrote Butterfly Girls,
a cable movie about some high school honor students who go to South America to study Monarch deaths but stumble on some ancient ruins. Normally this was the kind of thing Kelly would run from, even if it was based on an article from The New Yorker and supposed to star Britney Spears, who wanted to shoot a companion video at an Inca temple if they could get the Peruvian government to sign off on it. But when Kelly got an estimate from her roof contractor that took all of her summer-in-the-Hamptons budget and then some, she allowed her agent to talk her into writing a draft. She also extracted a stipulation—or as much of one as a writer can extract—that her mother would be considered for the role of a teacher. Or Britney’s grandmother. Or something.
Amid her own career ups and downs, Kelly was worried about her mother. Like many a star who came of age during the studio system, Lily never earned big money. She also weathered one too many bad marriages. Or one too many bad managers. Anyway, given Hollywood’s brutal sell-by dates, Lily was not exactly living the InStyle lifestyle. If Kelly didn’t want to see her wind up in the SAG retirement home or in some cramped, one-bedroom condo down on Doheny like Evelyn Keyes, who played Scarlett O’Hara’s sister in Gone with the Wind, something, even if it was as loathsome as Butterfly Girls, had to be done.
In Kelly’s mind the script deal was a twofer and she gave it six weeks and her usual professional approach, which meant sitting cross-legged on her bed with its six-hundred-thread-count sheets, smoking about eighteen cigarettes an hour, surrounded by a pile of coffee-table books about Machu Picchu and some old Hayley Mills videos, before she could bring herself to type lines like “Girls, I think we should stick to the map,” and “Hey, I didn’t know you could sing!”
Of course, Britney wound up passing, they always do, and when Butterfly Girls finally got a green light more than a year later it had morphed into a cable movie shot in Veracruz starring a bunch of Britney wannabes. Still, Lily had a part—she played a tourist who befriended the girls in Lima—which at least meant a paycheck even if it was cable. And now there’s talk of a possible series commitment.
So 5 Minutes Ago Page 13
