I’ve done one interview, and I’m getting kicked out already. Plus I really have to go to the bathroom, and the kind folks at Intermix don’t seem to have one available to “noncustomers.”
About four or five blocks down, I can see the golden arches of McDonald’s, beaming at me like a beacon. They must have a bathroom, even if I have to buy an overpriced hamburger ($2.39 in New York) to get access to it. Head hung low, I sling my backpack over my shoulder and begin to schlump down the street toward the arches when suddenly I feel another tap on my shoulder.
“Look, I’m going, okay?” I snap, not bothering to turn around.
“I thought you could use some help with your survey,” a familiar voice says behind me. I turn to see Victor Ragsdale, grinning in a black suit and sunglasses. He holds up a Post-it note that says, Fifth and Nineteenth in my handwriting.
“Or maybe I could just take you to lunch.”
• • •
“Victor, I have to get back and finish these questionnaires.”
We are back in Victor’s apartment, tangled in his sheets, with cartons of Wong Wu’s take-out littering the bed.
“Fuck it,” he says.
“Really? Just fuck it?” I ask sarcastically. “Great idea! Why didn’t I think of that sooner?”
Victor laughs and pulls me on top of him. “I mean it, Lindsey. Fuck it! We’ll stay here and do the questionnaires. We’ll just make it up.”
“Victor, I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can. It’s all bullshit, anyway. These people you’re interviewing are talking out of their asses. Like they know what’s trendy, or what’s going to be trendy in six months. They don’t know! So who cares? Just make it up!”
I bite my lip. It is tempting, and God knows I’ll never be able to finish all these surveys… but…
“I just wouldn’t feel right about it.”
Victor sighs in exasperation. “Okay, I’ll tell you what. We’ll spend the afternoon making some of them up. Then you can go back out tomorrow and finish up with real interviews. If what we make up doesn’t reflect what you’re hearing from real people, then you can throw away the fake ones and start over.”
“Well…”
“Come on, Lindsey. Don’t be such a square. You think I know what the fuck I’m talking about half the time I’m advising my clients? You think that girl you work with doesn’t pull most of this crap straight out of her ass? That she really stands on street corners doing fifty surveys in a day? It’s humanly impossible. So you fudge a little. That’s what business is all about – being creative and convincing. Fifty-fifty, baby.”
“Well…” I’m feeling very nervous about this, but Victor’s right about one thing: I just don’t believe that anyone, even Jen, could get fifty of those interviews done in one afternoon. She has to be giving herself a little creative leeway.
“Well, I guess we could try a couple,” I say hesitantly.
• • •
We didn’t just try a couple. We finished the whole fifty, plus a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue, going back and forth using each other’s naked butts as clipboards. Then we ordered dim sum to celebrate the birth of the new finger-food trend, as it appears to be all the rage in Manhattan. I’ve never had so much fun in my life.
And now it is Tuesday morning, three days later. My alarm goes off at six a.m. and I carefully roll over out of Victor’s embrace. The past three days have been a blissful whirlwind of extravagant restaurants, elegant bars, ritzy clubs, and long, delicious nights.
And here I am, leaving for Los Angeles today. I don’t want to go. I desperately don’t want to go. I want to stay right here in Manhattan, where I can breathe in the city, where I can bask in the bliss of my sexy new man. And maybe most important, where I can pretend that I’ve done my work – anything to resemble the trend-tracking notes Jen will surely demand the second my plane hits the ground. Aside from forty-nine fake interviews, I have nothing. Nothing. And a flight to L.A. in two hours.
Chapter 10
The flight to L.A. is hell. Six hours on a cramped airplane, and I’m sitting next to an eight-year-old kid who has been reading me cowboy jokes from his Old West Riddle Book the entire way. I need time to figure out how I’m going to explain my lack of deliverables when I get to California. I never even called the Versace designer. What was I thinking?
But that’s what love does. It engulfs you, consumes you, makes you think of nothing else. It turns you to Jell-O, rendering you completely ineffective at accomplishing anything productive. If love truly makes the world go round, how the hell does anybody get any work done?
“Hey.” The kid pulls at my sleeve. “What do you get when you cross a toad with a six-gun shooter?”
I give him a look that could freeze lava. “I don’t know. What?”
“Hop-a-frog Cassidy.” He bursts into cackling laughter.
“Look, kid. You need a better joke book. I’m telling you, this shit isn’t funny.”
The kid looks hurt. “But it’s all I have.”
“Here—let’s get you some headphones. You’re going to watch Seabiscuit.”
“I don’t want to watch that.”
“It’s good. It’s about a horse. You’ll like it.”
“A cowboy horse?”
“A horse is a horse.”
“Of course! Of course!” He howls and snorts at his own horse joke, which, I admit, had better comic timing than anything in his stupid book.
But I need to think. I’m getting in around noon, and Jen’s going to want to brainstorm immediately. I can’t face her. I just can’t. The minute the plane lands, I’ll call her from my cell and tell her that I missed the flight and won’t be in until tomorrow morning. Good plan. She’ll totally understand.
• • •
“You what?! Are you fucking kidding me, Lindsey?” So maybe she won’t understand.
“I’m sorry. Why can’t we just pool our ideas when I get back to New York next week?”
“Why didn’t you take a later flight?”
“They’re all booked.”
“They’re all booked. Come on.”
“I’m serious! Call the airline and check.” Can I have that suggestion stricken from the record?
“But I take it you do have some ideas.”
“Of course I do. I’m really looking forward to sitting down with you.”
“And did you finish the interviews I asked you to do?”
“Yep, all fifty.” I have got to do some of those interviews with real people. I swear, it’s first on the agenda in L.A., and again when I get back to New York.
There is a long moment of silence, and I can tell that Jen is fuming.
“Fine then. I’ll put the key under the mat. I can’t leave the rental car for you, so you’ll have to get your own.”
“Sounds great.”
“I’m going to leave a list of places for you to check out. You’re just going to have to learn your own way around.”
“Absolutely. Done with pleasure.”
“Liz is going to be pissed.”
“Only if you tell her.” I’m trying to appeal to her sense of camaraderie.
She sighs. “Fine. I’ll see you next week in New York.”
So I might as well explore. I’ve got the whole day. I can’t go to the apartment, so I guess I’ll have to spring for a hotel room. The weather here in Los Angeles is pretty nice – warm but not sweltering. And where’s the smog? I thought the whole city was supposed to be covered in a thick gray cloud, but it looks pretty damn clear to me. Not a cloud in the sky.
The apartment is up in Hollywood, but I think I’ll drive past the beach first. Trend-tracking is going to be a little difficult today, not knowing my way around or anything.
As I merge onto the 10 freeway toward Santa Monica (the guy at the car-rental place was addressing the highways as “the” – the 10, the 405, the 101), I realize how strange it is to be surrounded by palm trees, ocean air, and mountains in the distance
. Compared to New York, I feel like I’m on a different planet.
Parking at the beach is easy, and as I make my way toward the boardwalk, I just can’t believe how many thin, blond, beautiful women are walking around in next to nothing. Everybody is carrying bottles of water or fruit smoothies, and there isn’t a cigarette in sight. LaLa Land indeed. It feels so clean and healthy that I don’t know how to process it.
I arrive at the Santa Monica Pier and buy myself a veggie burger and an oxygen water. When in Rome. As far as I can see, the boardwalk runs up the ocean, along the Pacific Coast Highway toward the hills in Malibu, and down the other direction into Venice Beach. It’s a small slice of paradise, but I’m just somehow not in the mood. I don’t feel the same sense of energy here, the sense of urgent excitement. I miss New York, and I miss Victor Ragsdale already. Victor would hate this place. I can practically hear him making fun of the tanned, blond beachcombers playing volleyball in the sand.
I walk out toward the water and notice several small huts scattered down the beach. A closer look reveals that they are rental shops, leasing out Rollerblades, bikes, and surfboards for the day. Gazing out over the rolling waves, I try to imagine myself on a surfboard. Now that would be a hoot. A picture to send home to the kids.
I walk up to one of the huts where I rent a beach chair for five dollars and buy a pack of cigarettes. Might as well kick back for a while. I set up the chair in the sand and close my eyes in the sunshine.
Jesus. What am I going to do about this trend-tracking thing? I have to find a way to pull it together. Liz Gordon was crazy for hiring me. I have no idea what I’m doing, and I feel paralyzed by fear of letting her down. This week I will buckle down. If I can just keep my mind off Victor long enough to focus.
Victor. His eyes, his hands, his lips…how dashing he looks in his dark suits and crisp white shirts. He’s a little rough in bed – but it suits him. In fact, I love his roughness, his ability to take charge and demand what he wants. Victor is New York to me. He’s –
“Excuse me. Lady?”
From a far-off distance, I hear a voice and feel a touch on my shoulder.
“Hey, there. I think you fell asleep.”
My eyes flutter open and focus on a soft male face with blue eyes and long blond eyelashes.
“Huh?” I murmur sleepily.
“You fell asleep. You should wake up. The sun is setting.” He steps back and I notice that he is all kinds of California dreamin’: tan, shirtless, and hunky, with blond hair and blue eyes that match the ocean. Behind him, a glorious red sun creeps down onto the horizon as seagulls swoop around the sky and waves crash into the beach.
“Oh, shit.” I sit up and glance around. The boardwalk has emptied out and all the shops have locked up. “This beach chair. I didn’t return it on time.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Over there.” I point to the hut where I rented it.
“No worries. That’s Petey’s place. I’ll return it in the morning for you.”
“Really? That’s so nice of you – thanks.”
He reaches out to shake my hand. “I’m Danny Wynn.”
“Lindsey Miller.”
He picks up my pack of cigarettes from the sand.
“Well, Lindsey Miller, you shouldn’t smoke. You’re way too pretty to throw it all down the drain.”
“Throw what down the drain?”
“Whatever it is you’ve got goin’ on.”
I stand up and start to gather my stuff. “Thanks. But I needed to relax.”
“If you want to relax, you should come by and take a surf lesson. From me. That’s my hut over there – the Surf Shack.”
“How funny – I was just thinking about that. I mean, about how ridiculous I’d look on a surfboard.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You’d love it. Ridin’ the waves, feeling the sun on your shoulders, checkin’ out some starfish. And it’s easy. I promise. Especially with me showing you the ropes.”
I’m trying to dust myself off, but there’s sand everywhere. “Hey, thanks for waking me up and for taking the chair back. I’ve gotta take off now.”
“No problem, pretty girl.” He throws me a lazy grin and turns to walk back to his hut. “I’ll keep the offer open. Think about it.”
I nod and watch him walk away. He’s barefoot, but his feet look nice – strong and clean despite the sand. His blond, sun-streaked hair kind of flops into his eyes, and he’s got that slow tranquility about him that suggests he’s never had a stressful day in his life. He looks like he belongs in a summer ad for Abercrombie & Fitch. Many women would find him incredibly sexy, but not me. He’s not my type. In other words, he’s not Victor Ragsdale.
I think about Victor all the way up to Hollywood, where I quickly drive past the apartment, then check into a fifty-dollar hotel close by. It’s pretty shoddy, but it’s on Sunset Boulevard, only four blocks up from the infamous Sunset Strip, so I should be fine.
At the hotel, I lie on the bed and continue thinking about Victor. It’s three hours later in New York, so it’s going on eleven already. What’s he doing? Who’s he with? Is he thinking about me too? Should I call him? It’s going to be a long week if I don’t find something to keep my mind occupied. I laugh out loud because the answer is so obvious: I’m here to work, in case anyone’s forgetting.
So anyway. Should I call him? What will he think if I call him? I just got here – I shouldn’t miss him already. But I do! Does he miss me? He hasn’t called me yet. Why not? Does he think he’ll look like a loser if he calls so fast? That’s probably it. So I should be the one to call him – because we both miss each other, but neither one wants to be the one to call, and it’s accepted for girls to be sappier than men.
Unless he hasn’t called because he doesn’t want to. He did say, “Call me when you get back” before I left this morning. Does that mean, “Don’t call me until you get back?” This is driving me crazy. What’s one little phone call? One little phone call means nothing. Nothing. Not that it wouldn’t mean something if he called me.
I dial the number of his cell. It’s ringing. And ringing. His voicemail picks up, and I can hear his smooth voice. “This is Victor. Leave a message.” Where is he? Why isn’t he answering? He can see my name on the caller ID, but he’s not answering. He doesn’t want to talk to me. I knew it.
I hang up. Great. Now he’ll see that I called and hung up. He’s going to think I’m stalking him from three thousand miles away. He’s going to check his mail tomorrow for a boiling bunny in a FedEx box.
This sucks. I’m alone with nothing to do. I’ve always dreamed of visiting Hollywood, and here I am – lying in a crappy bed in a shitty hotel, by myself and without a clue. I wonder what Jen’s up to. Can’t call her, of course, or I’ll have to pony up the goods. I bet she’s getting ready for an incredibly fun and glamorous evening. Or getting ready for some serious nightlife trend watching. Or both. Desperation actually has me wishing I could go with her.
Wait a minute. I could follow her. See where she goes and what she does. And more important, how she goes about scoping for trends – that would give me great insight to work with during the week ahead. I just have to make sure she doesn’t see me, that’s all. How hard could that be in a crowded restaurant or club?
First, I need to find out if she’s home. If she’s already out, the whole thing’s a wash. I look up the phone number of the apartment and dial. After a few rings Jen answers. Good – she’s home.
I hang up, then remember that once again my name will appear on the caller ID. Oh, who cares. It’s my cell phone – I could be calling from anywhere. Easy to explain.
After freshening up a bit (and trying to get the sand out of my hair), I attempt to choose an outfit. It’s hard because I don’t know where I’m going to be. What do they wear here? From what I observed on the beach, not much. I guess a black miniskirt with a brown net summer sweater should do. Looks good, anyway.
I drive over to the apar
tment to wait for her exit. The apartment looks nice – a long, sprawling building nothing like our brownstone in Manhattan. Palm trees all around, and a few blocks up, the base of the Hollywood Hills. Mental note to look for the sign later.
God, I hope Jen goes out tonight, or I’ll be sitting here for hours. I feel excitement low in my stomach – like I’m a private investigator casing his subject. With more time I could’ve even worn a disguise.
An hour goes by and boredom sleep is closing in on me fast. Finally a black Audi pulls up to the building and I see Jen bounce out and get in the car. She looks fabulous in tight black pants, sexy sling-backs, and a glittery sheath top that barely covers her breasts.
Follow that car, I think, and pull out behind the Audi.
Chapter 11
The Audi doesn’t go far. Back down to Sunset and onto the Strip, it pulls over to the valet stand at the Sunset Marquis Hotel. Ah, they’re going to the Whiskey, a classic hotel bar that even I’ve heard about. I watch as Jen gets out with a tall, attractive guy who hands his keys to the valet. At the door I see Jen checking in with the bouncer. Will my name be on the list too? I hope so. I’m about to waste ten dollars in valet parking if it’s not.
But it is. And the Whiskey is very cool—upscale and lush but also fun and laid-back. Right away I feel a shift. Hard to explain. It’s a different atmosphere than in New York. People look tanner and healthier, and their demeanors seem a little brighter and, though I hate to say it, a little happier. Not to mention that off in the corner, Ryan Gosling is hobnobbing with Heidi Klum and one of the guys from Lord of the Rings. Wow. Though my eyes never leave Jen, I walk around and make a mental note to bring Victor here when he comes to visit.
If that ever happens. Victor would despise L.A. “Plastic” is what he calls it. And yes, I do see a lot of blond hair, a lot of fake boobs, and a lot of skin. These L.A. chicks wear next to nothing. And they all pull it off – I can’t believe how many gorgeous bodies there are in here.
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