What: Our own Doug Graydon’s Birthday! When: Friday! Who: All of us! Where: The office conference room.
“Oh, that’s special,” I say. “They send out an engraved invitation to a party in the conference room?”
“I think it’s about the spirit of the thing,” Steven says, making another choking sound.
“You’re not helping.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, wiping his eyes. “I’ve just never seen a sorority rush before and it’s actually kind of moving.”
“Since you’re so into it, you can RSVP for both of us.” I toss the invitation aside and reach for my headset. “And find out what the deal with the gifts is. We don’t want to be left out of that.”
I hear my cell phone burble inside my bag. Against my better judgment I fish it out and answer. Probably Mom with more details about their trip out here, which I’m already regretting.
“So I hear the party is Friday.”
Rachel.
“What is this? G’s birthday is a local holiday?”
“I told you, it’s a huge deal. At Sony it was like sorority rush. You either made the cut or you didn’t. Believe me, G’s keeping score.”
“Okay, so I’ll get a big gift. A custom-made bullwhip. Or some chaps. One size too small. I’ll go to Henry Duarte, king of custom leather wear. That should make his day.”
“I’m serious. Has he laid off anybody yet?”
“You know he hasn’t,” I say with more irritation than I intend. It has taken me weeks to get the whole merger and G’s arrival, not to mention my trip to the woodshed after Troy’s little dust-up, into some kind of workable perspective where I’m not looking over my shoulder every second. Now I’m starting to get riled up again.
“Look, all I know is that at Sony, he usually found a way to dump a few people every year and he tended to do it right after his birthday,” Rachel says. “Read into that what you will.”
“I choose to read nothing into it. Not since Suzanne took me to lunch and I’m no longer officially on the agency shit list. Besides, I just don’t have the energy.”
“Well, it’s your party,” Rachel says.
“Actually, it’s G’s,” I say, anxious to bring this to a close. When Rachel is in her apocalyptic mood, it’s best to just get out of the way. “But I’ll give you a full postmortem.”
“Thanks,” she says, brightening. “You know I love hearing about other people’s misery.”
By the time Friday rolls around, I have a packed schedule. Overly packed. A conference call with the New York office at 7 A.M., followed by a breakfast meeting over in the Valley with some Warner publicists to go over an upcoming campaign. Then I have to spend the rest of the day baby-sitting the People shoot at Kelly’s that I just know, given Kelly, will become the Bermuda Triangle—the black hole from which I will never escape in time to make it back to G’s party by five.
Plus, it’s roasting and humid as all fucking get-out—the wind is off the ocean, straight up from Mexico—so I have no chance with my hair this morning. I couldn’t get it together to book a blow-dry the day of G’s party? Now, heading back from Warner’s with the car’s AC roaring, I’m already melting in my gray suit and white cashmere tank top, my hair all but exploding out of my ponytail.
“So if you’re not out of Kelly’s by four, I’m coming over to relieve you,” Steven says, when I reach him on my cell.
“Funny, that’s exactly what I was going to say,” I say, scrunching the phone up to my ear as I wiggle out of my jacket.
“By the way, what are you planning on wearing to the party?”
“What I’m wearing now. A sheen of sweat and a bad mood. Why? What are you wearing?”
“A gray suit. And a red satin bow tie.”
“You’re going for what there? Pee-wee Herman?”
“Before the arrest.”
“Oh, nice call,” I say, throwing my jacket into the backseat. I can only imagine what G will think about my Boy Wonder in full West Hollywood mode. “Look, I’ll call you later. But promise me you’ll rethink the tie.”
All in all the shoot goes about as well as these things go. Which is to say five hours of fucking around with the lights and the clothes and the hair and the setups—the endless setups—for two workable three-by-fives that Kelly and the magazine can live with. There’s a little trouble when the hammock—in which the stylist has carefully arranged Lily and Kelly over Kelly’s objections that it makes her thighs look “even fatter to be pressed together with knotted rope like two smoked hams”—gives way, dumping them to the ground. Lily thinks she might have sprained something and Kelly disappears into the house to change, or rest, or make a call, or take something.
And then there is the minor accident with a pitcher of pomegranate juice Marta brings out after Kelly announces she’s moving on from Atkins to antioxidants. “I couldn’t get rid of any fat cells, so I thought I’d try eliminating free radicals,” she says, hoisting a glass. “Plus, it sounds so seventies.”
I would be more appreciative in my laughter if half the juice hadn’t wound up all over my white tank top when Kelly’s dogs chose that same moment to make their appearance. Since Kelly owns nothing that remotely fits me, she has to go into “the archives,” as she puts it, “when I still resembled normal human form,” and emerges triumphant with an old T-shirt silk-screened with a caricature of Richard Nixon and FUCK THE BIG DICK scrawled below. At least it’s white. If I can bear to put my jacket back on in this heat, you won’t really be able tell it’s Nixon. Besides, none of the Biggies are old enough to know who he was.
“Hey, do I still have that old cashmere cardigan in the office that I kept there for emergencies?” I’m on my cell to Steven, speeding down Coldwater toward the office. It’s four-thirty and I have no time to swing by my house to grab something else to wear. Not if I’m going to make the party in time, and according to the tart-tongued follow-up e-mail from the Biggies, late arrivals are strictly forbidden.
“Negative. You took that to the cleaners when we moved the office,” Steven says. “Why? What happened to that uptight Kate Spade outfit you had on this morning?”
“Yeah, well, Kate had a little run-in with a glass of pomegranate juice. Now my chest is covered in a protest poster from the seventies.”
“I’m sure there are some who would find that a turn-on.”
“Well, only if you’re a Democrat and old enough to have voted in 1972.”
“No one in this office will admit to even being alive in 1972; better just keep your jacket on,” Steven says. “Besides, everyone will be looking at G, not you. He’s gone hedgehog finally.”
Maybe it’s the heat or the chaos of the day, but I have no idea what Steven’s talking about. “Hedgehog?”
“Hair transplants. You know, the Jack Nicholson–Harrison Ford overgrown brush cut where their hair stands straight up. Like new sod or the white guys’ version of Don King’s ‘do. Actually, I think it’s a sign for ‘I can no longer get it up, but at least my hair can.’ ”
A car swerves to a stop right in front of me—must have finally picked up their cell connection in the canyon—and I slam on my brakes. “Well, God knows you and not I are the expert on men getting it up,” I snap.
“And she’s already feeling sorry for herself. Good thing there’s a shitload of sugar in your future,” he says, and I can tell he’s trying to be nice. “Better hurry. I already hear singing down the hall.”
By the time I pull into the garage and take a second to check the damage in the rearview mirror, I realize I am beyond repair. The T-shirt is the least of it. After a day sweating through a photo shoot on Kelly’s sun-baked back patio, my suit is wrinkled, my face is shiny, mascara pools under my eyes, and my hair is a mess after I managed to break the only hair clip I had with me. I fumble in my bag looking for a pen or a pencil, anything to make an emergency ponytail. Nothing. I try the glove compartment. Maps of Marin County and New Orleans, a stained Entertainment Weekly baseball cap,
Burger King napkins slightly used, and red lacquer chopsticks from some Jackie Chan press junket. Oh well, no time to quibble. I yank my hair into a knot and anchor it with one of the chopsticks, wipe the mascara from under my eyes, and blot my face with the Burger King napkins. Fresh lip gloss and a spritz of Creed to cover the smell of ketchup. It’s as good as she’s gonna get.
I don’t even bother to hit the ladies’ room when I get to the office. I looked scary enough in my rearview mirror. Hardly need a bigger view. I drop my bag in my office—Steven must already be at the party—finish buttoning my jacket so only the top of Nixon’s head is exposed, and head down the hall. Toward the high-pitched squealing.
No wonder. The conference room looks like a bridal shower. Masses of white flowers from Mark’s Garden, silver balloons, and hyper-looking blondes. Instinctively, I head for a corner. As I pass by the conference table, I see the cake. Cakes, actually. One large white one from Sweet Lady Jane with the frosting done up in black and green like a Variety front-page headline: GRAYDON DOES IT ANOTHER YEAR! with a squiggly head shot of G in black icing, although it’s unclear if that’s his new hairdo. At each end of the table are more cakes—cupcakes, actually, dozens of them decorated with tiny Gs in silver icing and stacked on tree-shaped cake stands. At least there are what looks to be half a dozen bottles of nicely chilled albeit nonvintage Dom on the table.
“Isn’t it adorable?” I hear one of the Biggies say. “We’re going for a silver anniversary theme although we don’t actually know how old Doug is.”
Surely old enough to know better.
I scan the room. Where the hell is Steven? I hate coming stag to office events. Leaves me open to conversations with my fellow publicists, which is something I try to avoid.
“It looks like a Hostess truck exploded in here,” he suddenly hisses in my ear.
“Oh, forget the room. How do I look?” I say, trying to smooth the worst of the wrinkles from my skirt.
He gives me the once-over. “Is that a chopstick in your hair?”
“Oh, that really hurts,” I say, glancing at Steven’s skintight gray suit and red bow tie, “coming from you, Pee-wee.”
“No, I like it, it’s kind of Kate Spade–goes–Suzie Kwan,” he says, reaching over to pull open the top part of my jacket. “Tricky Dick,” he says admiringly. “You are a mass of messages in that outfit.”
Before I can think of a snappy fashion-worthy comeback, I catch sight of a pile of bags—Barneys, Tiffany’s, Fred Segal, the usual Hollywood sacrificial offerings—on one of the conference table chairs, and I freeze.
“What’s with the gifts? I thought we all gave toward the one big gift.”
“Apparently the Biggies went the extra mile.”
“Those fuckers.” I should have known they’d do something like this to embarrass the DWP publicists. “We all chipped in for the stupid Steuben eagle and they get him the good stuff?”
“Relax. See that Fred Segal bag? It’s from you.”
“What?” Visions of silver-plated condom holders or roach clips dance in my head. No telling what Steven would think is a suitable gift for G.
“Oh, you would have picked it out yourself if you had time.” But before he can elaborate, there’s a commotion at the door. Suzanne, Charles, and G. In his new spiky hair, G looks like Badger in The Wind in the Willows. An impenetrable pelt and temperament to match. But to the Biggies, it’s like Mick Jagger has arrived. The room erupts into screams.
“So what exactly did I get G?” I shout over the noise as the Biggies surge toward the door. I glance over at Steven, but he is busy waving a red silk handkerchief. Oh well, at least it matches my chopstick.
One hour, two cupcakes, and three glasses of champagne later, I’ve had as much of G’s birthday as my blood sugar can handle. The eagle has been opened, which means G has tried to kiss all the DWP publicists, which means between dodging him and Charles, who is diligently working the room in a coat and tie as the agency’s newest senior partner, I’ve spent most of the party hiding out in the ladies’ room. It’s during my last visit that I overhear two Biggies talking about another party for G. At some club, tomorrow night. A party to which neither I—nor any of the DWP agents—are invited. Apparently, Rachel was right. G is culling the herd and using his birthday party to do it.
“Hey, Alex,” the Biggies say in unison when I emerge from the stall. They shoot one another nervous looks. “Nice eagle you guys got Doug.”
I head to the sink and turn on the water with such force that it splashes the nearest Biggie. “You think so? Because there was some debate about whether it should be a seagull.”
“That would have been pretty too,” the other Biggie says in the kind of oh-really voice you would use on a child.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I say, wiping my hands and turning for the door. “Garbage eater. I thought it would have been perfect.”
I head back into the conference room. I need more info on this after-party party. If Steven knew about the Biggies’ extra gifts, he must know about their little suck-up soiree. I find him foraging among the empty champagne bottles.
“Did you know there’s another staff party for G—a private one, tomorrow night?”
“No, but I’m not surprised,” he says, pouring the dregs into his glass and downing it. “G just screams velvet rope.”
“Okay, Pee-wee,” I say, reaching for his glass. “I’m heading back to the clubhouse now, but I need you to find out more about this party. I don’t mind not being invited, but I need to know what I’m not being invited to.”
I’m just heading for the door when I feel a tap on my shoulder. One of G’s minions.
“Doug wants to see you in his office.”
“Now?”
She draws back like I’ve slapped her. “Yesss.”
“Uh, sure,” I say, glancing over at Steven. What’s another visit to the principal’s office?
“Okay, Suzie, watch what you say in there,” Steven says when the minion moves off.
“I think it’s going to be more about what G has to say.”
“Look, we’ve all had way too much sugar. Things could get ugly. Just nod politely and get out. If you’re not back in fifteen minutes, I’m coming in after you.”
“Pee-wee, you do care.”
“Make it ten minutes,” he says, checking his watch. “I’m going to the movies later.”
When I hit his office, G is already sitting at his desk. The crystal eagle, a red ribbon tied around its neck, and an untouched piece of birthday cake, the one with his own head shot, are in front of him.
“Alex,” he says, waving me in, “thanks for coming by. And thanks for coming to the party. It’s great when we can all get together like that, don’t you think? Since the company is still all so new?”
I may have had three glasses of champagne, but I can bark on command.
“Absolutely,” I say, glancing first at the eagle and then over at the sofa where the pile of gift bags, including my Fred Segal bag, are stacked. Shit. In all the commotion, I totally forgot to ask Steven what he bought.
“Please, have a seat.” G gets up from behind his desk and moves toward me. His new hair comes along too. Up close, it looks even more dense. Like a thatched roof. Or the rough at Augusta. Small animals could live in it and never be seen.
“Oh, no, I can’t stay,” I say, instinctively backing away. Last time I was here, I thought he was going to throw something at me. Well, it’s been known to happen. “It’s been a long day and as always,” I say, nodding at the door, “there’s more to do.”
I have no idea what this meeting is about. Maybe G wants info on Troy. Updates on his court date. Or news about the Phoenix. Her on-again, off-again departure. Or maybe he’s just fucking with my head. Trying a different tactic than fear and intimidation. Between the cake and champagne, I’m too wired to run the options. I shoot him a steely smile. All business. Sir, yes, sir!
He meets my gaze for a second and then gi
ves me a chilly smile. “Actually, I wanted to let you know that a few of the publicists are getting together at another, ah, smaller party, and I was hoping you could join us. It’s tomorrow night. At the Viper Room. I know it’s kind of last minute, but I’m hoping you can stop by.”
Stop by? Stop by? There is no place I would rather not be than at this stupid party. But there is no place I need to be more than at this stupid party. Even on my sugar-and-champagne high, I know somehow and for some reason I’ve made the cut. Made it past G’s velvet rope. It’s just not clear what’s on the other side.
“Oh, that sounds fun.”
The Viper Room is a black hole under the best of circumstances. Literally. You need a coal miner’s helmet and at least three drinks to make it through an evening there. I can only imagine what it will be like when G is running the room. Probably need to get my shots. “I’m sure I can move some things around and stop by.”
“Great,” he says, stepping closer. So close I catch a whiff of his cologne. Or maybe it’s the new-car smell of his hair. “By the way, we’re not inviting all the publicists so if you could just keep this to yourself. You know.” He gives me another tight smile. “So, I’ll see you there.”
He steps toward me again and I realize G is about to put his arm around my shoulder. Maybe it’s the champagne or his new hair, but I step back again, this time stumbling a bit in my mules.
“Great,” I say, catching myself on the door handle. “Great. So, I’ll, I’ll see you all there.”
G leaves his hand in midair for a second—so I can’t miss his thwarted gesture—and then smiles and looks down. “I look forward to it. And feel free to wear your Nixon T-shirt,” he says, looking up and nodding at my chest with the kind of expression John Huston wore through much of Chinatown. “Dick looks especially good there.”
“He actually said, ‘Dick looks especially good there’?”
I am back in the relative safety of my office, pacing and being debriefed by Steven.
So 5 Minutes Ago Page 15
