It was not that she was 18, idiotic, and just beginning to understand the world: She was 35, maxed to the limit on all fronts, and still wondering why the world treated her differently now than it did when she was ten.
But she had learned her urban survival skills a long time ago. She was an operator, someone who knew or had discovered how to use everyone who came into her universe. And like any operator she was a deflector, a girl who somehow pretended that negative things about herself did not exist. And that deflector trait gave her the confidence to be, or in fact, to insist on being the most popular girl in her school in every grade.
Marcie had best friends, and second best friends, and friends in waiting. Given the basic insecurity of all pre-teen girls it was easy for her to pretend to be an authority—none of her friends did anything without her approval. She told them what to wear, whom to date, and how to cut their hair, given their particular facial flaws.
I was told to cut my mid-back-length hair and dye it black.
“That Malibu blond hair makes you look so… so… common,” she said.
She, of course, had no flaws.
“I have a classical look,” she said.
I never knew what that meant.
Like any urban operator she wasn’t good at anything, but invented arbitrary categories of importance. At ten, it was the proper music to be “cool.” At twelve, it was the “must have” things—shoes, purses, hairstyles—for all occasions. At fourteen, it was the basics of finding your Proper Boyfriend on the School Eco-Chain of Dating and your correct level on it. At sixteen, it was the “must have” resume items to get into the college of your choice. At eighteen, it was absolute “must” colleges to apply to and receive acceptances. At twenty, it was the “must haves” for a complete and proper china collection.
Now, in our 30s, it was the basics of finding your Proper Mate (and correct gene pool) on the L.A. Eco-Chain of Dating. And as dating in L.A. was completely mystifying, some of us found ourselves listening to her, overlooking the fact that she was not exactly successful in finding boyfriends.
Like many of her friends, Marcie had become an attorney after graduating from a lower rated UC and stumbling through a law school of a Catholic persuasion. She thought “law” would be a cool thing to do after watching TV lawyers on popular dramas and seeing the neat suits that Ann Taylor was making for women. She even managed to get an offer from a medium-sized downtown firm, because one of her sorority sisters was the head of the recruiting committee.
But working came as a shock. She had assignments with deadlines. Many nights she was there beyond 7:00 p.m. Every other weekend she had to work. And her assistant laughed when she asked her to get her coffee or even pick up her calls.
Her first review at her law firm was not good: the partners thought she was a nice person but found her work to be sloppy. She was going to have to work much harder, just to make a passing grade. Unfortunately, her training as an urban operator and her skills of deflection did not work within the law firm environment. And it just killed her that Bettina had become a wife and SAHM, a Stay-At-Home Mom.
“If Bettina doesn’t work, why should I?” she said.
“She has kids,” I said.
“I’m preparing for that time,” she said.
She decided to stop working until she determined her next step. However, most of her friends were still working—a fact which bored, then depressed her. She needed to go back to Europe, to collect herself.
After twelve months in Prague, drinking endless cups of coffee and having affairs with other American expatriates who, like herself, were doing their best to forget that they were in their thirties and at an age at which their parents had three kids, a mortgage, and a start on a summer house, she came back home, to nothing.
Nothing other than her $150,000+ in consumer debt.
She refused to work as an attorney. When I reminded her that she had an insanely expensive legal education, she shrugged her shoulders.
“So what. Practicing law is nothing like the cool stuff those lawyers on TV do—it sucks.”
Her parents, house poor from the financial charade it took to both buy and live in South Pasadena, could not afford to bail her out.
Marcie realized that her urban survival skills had not prepared her to work. However, it had prepared her for the one job that eluded her: being a member of L.A.’s Civilian Class Royalty and one of the rare L.A. women who had married well. There was only one part missing: the groom.
When I saw her again she was dating—or should I say spending time with—an accountant for the adult movie industry named Russ.
Russ was bald except for the Ronald-McDonald red hair tufts that were two inches above each ear, weighed in at 260, and topped out at five foot seven. He never called her and refused to acknowledge that he was even dating her. He would only get together with her at her tiny apartment for sex and Chinese take-out (which he made her pay for) on his way home from work when he would drive by her apartment and remember that he had “a friend” living in the neighborhood.
Because of the amazing growth of his industry of expertise, Russ had money. But with money came the usual by-product: lots of women. Lots of women and an attitude.
“Aren’t you going to tell Marcie to get rid of Russ?” I asked Bettina.
“Why?” said Bettina. “He’s a good catch.”
“He’s in porn,” I said.
“It’s a growth industry. He’ll make a good living,” said Bettina.
“This is her proper mate on the Eco-Chain?” I asked.
“He has a huge house above Montana in Santa Monica,” said Bettina.
Was it better to have your friend date someone you openly acknowledged as horrible or to help your friend get together with someone you knew was just terribly wrong?
I really didn’t want to interfere in Marcie’s life, but I thought that I might stage an intervention. I would find her someone who was so totally wrong that eventually they would both realize, this will never work. Hopefully, then she would find someone worthwhile.
I introduced her to the absolutely cheapest person I knew. I introduced her to Greg.
If Marcie was looking for a bucket of money to enable her to live out her preppie fantasies, Greg thought that every dollar that came across his hand was more precious than cheap real estate in San Francisco. As a partner in his father’s real estate empire, Greg knew the location of every dollar in their empire, at all times.
Yes, his family lived in Bel Air, but they operated their real estate empire from that location so it was mostly a tax write-off. He was a good businessman and as a partner in the business which had occasionally been on the verge of bankruptcy, he was very practical about money. Greg could, with ease, figure out everyone’s collective contribution to a restaurant bill down to the penny, including the fact that although he had eaten as much as anyone, he never seemed to owe anything.
In the ten years that I had known Greg I rarely saw him pick up a check, bring a gift to a birthday party, or waste the gasoline in his car by picking up a stranded friend. That alone assured me that he and Marcie would not last. But the one thing that I knew would kill them instantly was his standard operating procedure with women: Greg insisted that all dates, no matter what their income, pay half of everything including those very expensive dinners to which he had invited them.
It would never go anywhere.
But Marcie didn’t want to meet Greg, because she, like Bettina, thought Russ was great husband material and very close to giving her a ring. Although I explained to her that if she married Russ she was likely to have a best man at her wedding who was known for his ability to produce the money-shot, that still didn’t stop her.
Fortunately, Russ proved himself true to form. He did something so despicable that she didn’t need an intervention.
Marcie had invited me to Shutters on the Beach on the Santa Monica-Venice border for cocktail hour with Russ. We were to meet in the lounge, a room which
reminded me of my grandmother’s living room in San Marino because of the manner in which some interior designer had placed eight over-stuffed couches that were covered in a fuchsia floral print.
It was a big moment. Russ was finally going to be seen with her in public.
When I got there, Marcie was sitting on a fuchsia floral print couch by herself. Russ was sitting on another floral print couch, not ten feet from her. His hand was glued to the knee of some girl who looked like she was fourteen years old and his face was peering into the cleavage of the poor waitress who was serving him drinks. Although he was sitting so that he was staring right at Marcie, he pretended that he didn’t know her. I sat down next to her.
“What’s going on?” I said, trying to catch Russ’s eye. She had tears in her eyes. She eyed me.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I told you to throw that red sweater out. Blue is your color.”
“I didn’t.”
I nodded at Russ.
“So what’s he doing over there?”
“He told me that he can’t be seen with me in public because it’s bad for his professional profile.”
“What?”
“He said that my breasts are too small and I’m too fat… and too old.”
She started sobbing. “Don’t tell Bettina.”
“OK.”
She blew her nose on a Shutters on the Beach cocktail napkin. The cocktail waitress came by and I ordered four martinis.
Marcie’s mascara began to run down her face with her tears.
“I don’t get it,” she said.
I did.
After this, it was easy to dislodge Marcie from Russ. In fact, she called me the next day with her game plan. She would agree to meet Greg, as long as he met her very strict criteria.
“Does he make money?”
I decided to be honest.
“Yes…” I said, “but you’ll have to pry it out of him.”
I don’t think that she ever heard the second part of my answer.
They met. They started dating. They hit it off. Greg called me and thanked me for the set-up of his life. Marcie seemed happy. Then they started complaining.
“She thinks I’m an ATM machine,” he said.
“He’s so tight,” she said.
They broke up.
It was as it should be.
But then they got back together.
Not three days into reconciliation, they started fighting again.
“She actually expects me to pay for everything,” he said.
“He actually expects me to pay for something,” she said.
It seemed impossible.
I decided to help them end their pain once and for all by sending them to the Kevorkian of relationships.
I gave them Roberta’s phone number. I was positive that she would tell them that they shouldn’t be together because “they had so much work to do.”
I was wrong.
Working with Roberta proved effective for them. They somehow came to some compromise with regard to their money problem.
They got engaged.
I thought the ring issue might prove to be another stumbling block. But Greg was able to get his family to cough up a stone which had belonged to his grandmother. He was thrilled. The total cost of the ring would be less than dinner for four at Mélisse. Then he insured the ring for a low five-figure amount and made it appear as if it were worth a respectable sum. It was a beautiful strategy. Marcie got a decent ring, and Greg had paid nothing.
About three weeks after my last conversation with Bettina, I ran into Marcie at the new face-lifted version of my local market. I was depressed. What formerly had been a slightly rundown grocery store where I could buy creamed corn, Velveeta, and Hostess Cupcakes—foods no one would admit eating—had been gutted.
My little market was now a glass and wood beam palace which contained trendy no-fat foods, 24 different versions of coffee, a holistic medicine section, free range ostrich meat, a wine store, organic fruits and vegetables, a flower market, and a pretty good take-out area where you could pick up everything. The heartbreaker was a cheese section labeled “Fromage.”
“Is that a joke?” said the Cheese-Person Cyndee, when I asked her when the store would be getting its latest shipment of my beloved Velveeta.
Marcie told me that she missed me and asked if she could treat me to lunch. “But stop wearing that mauve lipstick,” she said, “it’s not your color.”
She took me to lunch at a lovely little restaurant on the deceptively low-key Montana Avenue where you paid $50 for two heads of lettuce splashed with Ranch dressing while sitting on picnic benches with other people.
Not 30 seconds after I had parked myself on a bench, Marcie started in.
“Weddings are expensive,” she said.
“Marcie,” I said.
“Mar-cee,” she corrected.
“That’s what I said, Marcie.”
“No, it’s pronounced Mar-Cee,” said Marcie, “like Mar-CEE.”
“Whatever,” I said. “Why don’t you get a job in law again? Then you can pay for your wedding.”
Marcie looked at me and rolled her eyes. “I hate being an attorney.”
“Welcome to the party. Everybody hates it.”
“But I wasn’t having any fun whatsoever.”
“You know,” I said, “if it were fun, they’d call it play. Instead, they call it work.”
“I don’t see why I should have to do something that I don’t want to do,” said Marcie.
“Because that’s what grown-ups do,” I said.
“I’ve never had to do that and I never will,” said Marcie.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
“Hmmmm,” she said, looking at my shirt, “you should never wear blue.”
“Two months ago you told me that I should only wear blue.”
“I can’t believe I said that,” she said.
“So help me out. You’re not working. You’re not independently wealthy. Your parents have cut you off. And you and Greg are planning The Dream Wedding, which in this town can easily come with a $500,000 to $1,000,000 price tag. How do you plan to pull this off?”
“Well, you see,” she said as she pulled out a piece of paper, “we’re planning on having our friends help us.”
And then I saw it. Greg’s itemized wedding budget. All of their close friends, including me, with their expected contribution to the blessed event next to their name.
This was the compromise they had come to in therapy. Marcie would have to be on Greg’s budget for the rest of her life to make their relationship work. And that meant the urban operator was going to have the hand-me-down wedding of the century.
I found my name.
“$10,303?”
“Oh, don’t get excited. It’s not in money. It’s in goods and services,” said Marcie.
“Oh?”
“Greg and I figured that no matter what you said, you’d eventually let me have your dress because you’re a practical person and now that you and Frank have split up, well, you wouldn’t want that dress to go to waste.”
“I thought you hated my dress… remember you told me ‘the only proper dress is a Vera Wang. Everything else is trash’—after I bought my non-Vera Wang designer dress.”
“Although you had a lapse in taste and it’s not a Vera Wang, it is a designer dress. And I’ll use your dress as my back-up—well, one of my back-up dresses, in case I don’t get a Vera Wang from someone. So that dress has got to cost at least $5,000.”
“$6,750 to be precise.”
“Oh, great. Greg will be so happy to learn that we’ve saved another $1,750.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly while the waiters came by and asked us if we wanted refills on ice tea, which they failed to tell us cost $2.50 apiece.
“And the other $5,303 that you had me down for?” I said.
“Oh, that should be obvious to you. We checked around, and found out that
the going rate for a string quartet to entertain the guests for the time that we’ll need one will be about $5,000.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, Greg and I realized that we wanted music for the hour before the wedding, to set the mood. And then we wanted music during the ceremony, so that we could be sure that everyone knew what our favorite song was.”
“That wouldn’t happen to be The Pachelbel Canon?” I said.
“Oh my God, how did you know?” she said with a thousand-watt smile.
“Of course, we have to have music to keep the guests entertained while we shoot our photographs and serve the hors d’oeuvre.”
“Uh huh.”
“You know as well as I do, dinner can’t go without music. And we’ll need some background music while the band sets up and maybe when it’s on a break.”
“God forbid that there should be a moment of silence.”
“So, Greg calculated five hours of music at $1,000 per hour.”
“Marcie…”
“So if you and your quartet…”
“Marcie, I don’t play with a quartet anymore.”
“Well, can’t you find some people to play with you for our wedding?”
“If I paid them.”
“That would be great! So if you and your quartet played for those five hours, it would save us another $5,000.”
I stared at her for about five seconds in complete silence.
“You’re not saying anything,” she said.
I didn’t know what to say. It was like inching by a six car pile-up on the San Diego Freeway during rush hour that was caused by a big-rig that jack-knifed across the center divider at the Sepulveda Pass. It was too awful to be believed, but you couldn’t keep yourself from taking a long look at the whole thing.
“We’re up to $10,000,” I said. “Where does the other $303 come in?” I asked.
“Well, of course you’re going to get us a present. And we registered at the Apple Store and Bloomingdales, so you can either get us something like a new iPhone. Or, if you want to be romantic, you can help me fill out my china pattern.”
Almost Royalty: A Romantic Comedy...of Sorts Page 12
