Of course not. Not when they can turn their lives inside out for you. Against golf and this baby, I don’t stand a chance. Forget my job, my office, my clients. Even if I had thrown a party at Skybar and the entire DWP-BIG client list had shown, it would have been wasted on them. Except for Barkley. L.A. is just another oddity in my odd little life. Steven was right. I had wanted something from their visit. Not praise. Not awe. I wanted them to understand why I had come to Hollywood. Even if I don’t fully understand it myself.
But I’ve failed. Tripped up by rain, an unborn fetus, but mostly by that disconnect, that gap that exists between the movies, the TV shows, the racks of magazines at grocery store checkout lines—the endless fat issues with their beaming celebrity covers—and the reality that is Hollywood. The country is besotted with celebrity, obsessed with it, but somehow the place that creates it, churns it out by the bucketful, is still a little unseemly up close. Still leaves a bad taste in the rest of the country’s mouth. And now I’m part of it.
“Right,” I say, nodding. “The baby. Well, it was a thought. Maybe another year.”
A waiter cruises by and we bury ourselves in the menus, heads bowed as if in prayer. Festive offerings are listed: pheasant, foie gras, strawberries with blackberry coulis, and pumpkin tart with a walnut crust. The room is blazing with light. The first sun we’ve seen in days and the views are astonishing. The hills, green from the rain, and the gray-green ocean are visible with the slightest turn of the head. The crowd too is good. Well-dressed foreigners. Japanese. Italian. Families with quiet, gleaming, ebony-haired children. And locals who look like they work for foundations. Or the museum. Not studios. Who are faithful contributors to NPR. Women in long skirts and with their long gray hair wrapped in chignons. Men in blazers and ties. Anonymity at its most perfect. Its most acceptable.
“Oh, this is lovely,” my mother says, turning excitedly in her chair. “Alex, I’m so glad you chose this place.”
The pace of our conversations, so halting and awkward over the past two days, quickens, loosens. We talk about the baby, the hideous inappropriateness of the Chateau, and how next time, yes, next time, the Bel-Air Hotel with the swans and the stream. And golf. And no rain. And a drive. Yes, a day trip up the coast to Santa Barbara. And lunch at the Biltmore, yes, where the press used to stay when Reagan was at his ranch. Yes, all of it sounds lovely. Yes, California is lovely, lovely, after all. And we are lovely, lovely, after all.
“So, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the baby.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Amy and I are in the upstairs lounge of the spa at the Century Plaza Hotel watching the cracks in the dam grow ever larger. Actually, we’re dressed in identical butter-colored microfiber robes lying on lounges gazing out at the rain lashing the giant floor-to-ceiling window. Or I’m gazing. Amy has a lavender satin eye pillow over her eyes.
I take a sip of my raspberry tea in the little sea-green ceramic cup and take a poke at the largest crack. “But why didn’t you tell me?”
Amy sighs. “Because we only just found out and when I told Mom she said, ‘Don’t tell Alex yet. Let’s let it be a surprise.’ ”
“Yeah, well, it was.”
Amy rips the eye pouch from her eyes as the water bursts through the dam. “Well, I’m sorry I didn’t clear it with you first. I hoped you might be happy for us. For me. But I knew you’d be mad. You always have to see everything in terms of you.”
“I do not see everything in terms of me,” I say, struggling to sit up and managing to spill the tea on my robe, so it looks like a pale bloodstain. “That is such BS.”
“Really? Then why have you been such a bitch the whole time we’ve been here?” she hisses. “Even Mom thinks you’ve been acting weird.”
“Mom always thinks I’m acting weird. She thinks it’s weird that I moved to L.A. You all think it’s weird. Except for your husband, who’s so whipped up about Hollywood. At least he has the grace to talk about my work. The rest of you could give a shit.”
“Leave Barkley out of this. I just want to know when you’re going to stop being jealous of me. I was so stupid to think that my having a baby might make things easier between us.”
“Jealous?” I can’t believe Amy is going this far back. Here in my own city, on my own turf, she is managing to yank me back twenty years, to the fights we used to have in our old bedroom in Upper Darby. The little house we lived in before Jack and Helen moved up in the world and out to Bryn Mawr. “You think I’m jealous of you?” I shake my head, disbelieving. “You are so far from the truth. So far.”
“Oh really? Well, believe what you want,” she says, replacing the eye pillow and sinking back on the chaise. “We all know what it looks like.”
“Oh gee,” I say, flopping back on my lounge. “Next, you’re going to tell me Mom always liked you best.”
An attendant cruises by wearing a kimono and an alarmed expression. “Ladies, is there, ah, anything we can get you?” she says in her whispery Asian accent. “Some ice water? Or more tea?”
“No thanks. We’re fine,” I say, forcing myself to smile. “We’re just waiting for our massage appointments.”
The attendant checks her watch, gives us another worried glance, and shuffles off. Silence radiates off Amy. I stare out at the rain. We never could travel as a family. Even when we were kids. Stupid to think we could get along now. I look over at her. So pious in her stillness. Her marriage. Her pregnancy. In the rightness of her life and the wrongness of mine. I close my eyes and try and force myself into stillness. I take a few deep breaths. Shit. All I want to do is knock that pillow off her eyes and tell her to stop being such a jerk. That I am not jealous of her, have never been jealous of her, that I actually feel sorry for her, stuck back in Philly with Barkley and seeing Mom and Dad every other weekend. That I moved to L.A. precisely to avoid that life.
“Oh, honey, this is such a lovely place.”
I open my eyes a crack. Helen. At the foot of our lounges, wearing her own buttery robe and a blissful expression. “I’m so glad you suggested it. It’s so, I don’t know, calming,” she says, sinking onto the end of my lounge.
“Yeah, Mom, it’s calming all right,” I say, sitting up. “How was your facial?”
“Oh, it was wonderful,” she says, rubbing her cheek. “Not that I’m any expert. But the girl was so nice. Hmm . . . Where’d you get that tea?”
“Oh, it’s over there,” I say, nodding toward a sideboard at the back of the room. “I can get you some if you want.”
“No, I’ll get it. In a minute.” She turns to the window. “I have to say, even with all this rain, this trip has really turned out surprisingly well.”
I look at her looking out the window. I know I should just let it go. But I can’t. If the dam is broken, the dam is broken. “Why? What were you expecting?”
She turns back to me, looking slightly startled. “Well, I didn’t mean surprising. You know, it’s just what you hear about Los Angeles. What you expect.”
“Like what exactly?” I say. “You mean the riots and O.J. or the Oscars?”
“Oh, Alex,” she says, sighing. “You’re always so defensive. I only meant that whatever I was expecting from this trip, it’s been different. That’s all. In a good way.”
“So you were expecting it to be bad?”
Amy snatches the eye pillow from her eyes. “This is what I was talking about,” she snaps. “This kind of hostility.”
“Oh, girls,” Helen says, shaking her head. “Don’t spoil this, this way.”
“You know, I’ll just get you that tea,” I say, clambering up off the lounge and nearly colliding with a therapist.
“Mrs. Harbinger? We’re ready for your pregnancy massage now.”
Amy gives her a blazing smile—the beaming Madonna—and the two of them float off. Since I’m up, I decide to get the tea anyway. Give myself a minute to calm down, get out of the raging torrent. When I come back, Helen has taken Amy’s place on
the lounge.
“Thank you, honey,” she says, taking the cup. We lie there for a minute, sipping our tea and staring out at the rain.
“What are you having done?” she asks after a minute.
“Shiatsu.”
“Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Not if you’re used to it.”
We fall silent again.
“What was Dad doing this afternoon?”
“He and Barkley went to the automotive museum.”
“Oh, right,” I say.
We sit there silently again, sipping our tea.
“Honey, we really have had a wonderful time. Whatever you may think. Whatever Amy may have said.”
I stare straight ahead. I know she is looking at me. That she wants me to take the olive branch she’s holding out. And I should take it. For all our sakes, I should just take it.
But I can’t.
“Well, I’m glad,” I say evenly, my eyes never leaving the rain-lashed window. “I’m really glad.”
We sit silently again. After a minute, I hear the rustle of her robe.
“Well. I’m going to go down and change,” she says, getting to her feet. “We have a long trip home tomorrow.”
She stands next to me and suddenly I feel the weight of her hand on my head. “You always had the most beautiful hair,” she says, stroking my head. “Of all of us, you were the lucky one.”
I don’t say anything. Luck is not something I’ve ever, ever had. Even if she doesn’t know it, I do. So I just nod and keep staring out the window. Staring until it all blurs together and I can’t see the rain anymore.
16 Running as Fast as I Can
The deal with the Phoenix, like all celebs, is you don’t just show up. Not without an invitation. And FBI clearance. For one thing, the fortresses are not equipped to just let people in. For another, the fortress owners usually need twenty-four-hour notice. Just to get ready. Unless you’re like Cybill Shepherd, who likes to run out the clock while her visitors cool their heels in her living room watching the fish guy clean out the saltwater tank.
My pilgrimage along PCH to the Phoenix’s latest nest has required dozens of calls. Suzanne and the Phoenix’s manager. Suzanne and the Phoenix’s assistant. The assistant’s assistant. Me and the second assistant. Finally, I am in. I have no idea what the pretext for my meeting is—no doubt something Suzanne cooked up having to do with the Phoenix’s new reality series—but I am clear on my mission: Save Suzanne’s Ass.
Or at least Suzanne thinks that’s my mission. I have yet to decide, despite G’s Deep Throat efforts in the parking garage. As far as I’m concerned, I have an audience with the Phoenix, but no idea what I will actually say once I am there. Maybe this is my way of backtracking from the line that I apparently drew in the sand during my phone call with Charles. A call that was, predictably, the last time we’ve spoken, but that’s a whole other issue. Or maybe it’s some proactive reaction to my parents’ visit over Thanksgiving, a visit that has left me, ironically, determined to make a go of my demeaning but still-so-glam job. Nothing like a visit from Mom to focus the mind.
Or maybe it’s my way of hedging my bets in the shifting inter-office wars between Team Suzanne and Team G. According to the latest intelligence, Suzanne’s lawyer is threatening counter suit—that classic Hollywood ploy—so now G’s attempts to thin the ranks have been put on the back burner. Temporarily.
Besides, the week after Thanksgiving, Hollywood is neck-deep into its annual year-end madness, the flurry of big-budget holiday releases and pious Oscar hopefuls, and with the chaos of award season yet to come. Given the all-hands-on-deck mode now operating at every studio and publicity agency, even G knows it’s no time for head rolling. Still, the feeling is that it’s not a question of if Suzanne and most of the DWPers hit the road, but when and how. Already the smart money is on an exit strategy during the post-Oscar doldrums. But as we all know, a lot can happen in Hollywood in those few short weeks.
“Here you go,” Steven says, dropping the directions to the house on my desk. “But before you leave, can we go over your call sheet?” I glance at the directions. One of the far corners of Malibu near Point Dume, with no doubt the requisite fabulous ocean view.
“Wait, which house is this?” I say, staring at the address. Last time I had seen the Phoenix, she was holed up in some monster rental off Doheny. But that had been between tours or boyfriends or surgeries or something.
“The one she bought last year. The one that’s already for sale. Because it’s been in Architectural Digest. Because she’s bored with it and because she already bought a new house that she’s renovating,” he says, distractedly flipping through my massive call sheet.
“Oh, right,” I say vaguely, recalling pictures of a bunkerlike beach estate with morbid, Addams Family interiors. Or maybe that had been her furniture catalog when the Phoenix had been in her retail phase. “You know, why is it that female stars buy and discard houses like they’re Manolo Blahniks? I mean, just take the Phoenix, Scooby, and Courteney Cox. Between them, they’ve probably owned more than two dozen houses in the past five years. But all the guys, like Jack and Warren, Johnny Carson and Michael Douglas, buy houses and hang on to them.”
“That’s because they just trade up the women they put in them. Or down, if you’re looking at it chronologically,” he says, without glancing up from the call sheet.
I ponder this a second. “Like baseball managers and the free agency system.”
“Or plastic surgery,” Steven says, looking up impatiently. “I mean for the women. Redo your face. Redo your house. You know, moving on. Like we need to be doing now, given all these calls.”
“I don’t know,” I say, ignoring his impatience. One of the ironies in my making a more concerted effort at my job is that I am slower at returning calls. Like any publicist worth her Palm Pilot. “I think it’s because women have more of their self-esteem wrapped up in their home. And it’s not just celebrities.”
“I guess that explains your penchant for patio furniture indoors,” he says, giving up and heading for the door.
“Hey, I cooked you marshmallows,” I say, flinging a pencil after him.
“Women and sugar,” he says, dodging. “More sacred than sex.”
I always forget that, even without traffic, getting out to the far reaches of Malibu is a haul. No wonder nobody lives out here full time. Except for surfers, has-beens, and retirees like Johnny Carson and Barbra. I pass the old Getty museum. And the nursery that was almost wiped out in the floods two winters ago. The Colony. Geoffrey’s restaurant. The road where I used to go horseback riding when I first moved to L.A. and, like every new female transplant, felt it my duty to leap aboard some dusty steed every weekend. Just so you could say casually on Monday mornings, “How was my weekend? Great. Went riding. In Malibu.” After I got hives from plowing through one too many thickets of fennel, and especially after the time I nearly got thrown when we encountered a rattlesnake on the trail, I started spending my Sunday mornings at the car wash, reading the papers at the Starbucks down the block. There were snakes of a different sort, but at least I didn’t get hives.
I check the address again. Cliffside Drive. God, did I pass the turnoff? I reach over to the passenger seat and fish out the Thomas Guide, heavy as the Yellow Pages, and flip to the Malibu section. Or try to. You think driving while talking on a cell phone is dangerous, try reading the Thomas Guide. I fumble with the book for a minute—where is page 667? torn out, of course—nearly driving off the road before I give up and dial Steven. My personal satellite navigation system.
“Where the fuck is this place?”
“Where are you?”
“Just passed Geoffrey’s. And Coral Canyon,” I say as I whiz by.
“You know, I’ve got three other calls going,” he says.
“Well, I’m missing the right Thomas Guide page and who am I supposed to ask for directions out here, Nick Nolte?”
“Oh, hang on,” he says, putting
me on hold. He clicks back on in a minute. “Okay, two more miles. Take a left at Dume Drive.”
“Thanks, Hansel. Next time, I’ll definitely drop bread crumbs.”
In about three minutes I see the turnoff and hang a left. It’s a narrow road snaking down toward the beach with the water on one side and sprawling estates on the other. Like every upscale L.A. neighborhood, it’s also stone empty. Not a soul or a FedEx truck in sight. As if nuclear winter has fallen. You only know money lives here because the carapaces remain. I try to count down the address, but hardly any are posted; the houses just get bigger as I get closer to the water. Finally I see it. Just like I remember from the magazine, only more massive. And more bunkerlike. A genuine fortress.
It’s the usual drill getting in: roll up to the gate, punch in, recite password BIG-DWP, drawbridge comes down. I expect the usual pack of animals. Mastiffs. Or Irish wolfhounds, given our surroundings. Instead, I see only a lone gardener in a straw hat stooped over the far end of the lawn. For a second, I feel like I’m in that scene in Chinatown where Jack Nicholson shows up at Faye Dunaway’s estate, where only the gardener is working. Except for the faint roar of the ocean, it’s utterly silent. And a little eerie. Most stars thrive in the midst of chaos. Kids, dogs, assistants, nannies, ringing phones, a million cars in the driveway, overbooked schedules. Too many commitments and not enough time. It’s their way of stilling the demons that stalk them: What if they forget about me?
But apparently the Phoenix’s self-esteem needs no such shoring up. At least not here. No one would ever accuse her of being a minimalist, not with that showgirl wardrobe and all those wigs made out of Christmas tinsel, but her house has the bunkered, deserted feel of a secret government lab.
I am admitted by the side door. The servant’s entrance. Amazingly there are still no dogs. And even more amazingly, no Latinos. Just a slim, thirty-something brunette in tight jeans and a T-shirt. Tracy. Or Stacy. The Phoenix’s personal chef. Or her trainer. Or a post-op nurse. It’s not clear and I don’t bother asking. Tracy/Stacy leads me through the kitchen. Acres of black granite and chrome with not a pot, pan, or piece of food in sight. Just a plate on a tray wrapped in something like six layers of plastic wrap and holding a wan-looking chicken breast, broccoli, a few cherry tomatoes. It looks like punishment. Or a public school lunch. Not a meal for someone who once hawked $2 million worth of cosmetics in an hour on QVC.
So 5 Minutes Ago Page 22
