Even so, Victor would still scoff. “None of them do any fucking work,” he’d complain. “Ask them – they’ll tell you. They’re all actors or writers. What the hell does that mean? It means they’re either waiters out spending their tip money, or freeloaders out spending their daddy’s money. Posers. All of them. Get a fucking life.”
Victor doesn’t mince words. And he’s sure not afraid to express his opinion. And though he may be right on some level, it doesn’t change the fact that there somehow seems to be more laughter in the air, more openness than you’d find in a New York bar. So whatever their work ethic may be (or how much certain cynical New Yorkers may disagree with it), these Californians must hold the key to something. The key to what? Well, that’s my job to find out.
Jen seems to know people here. From where I’m standing (across the bar and as close to Ryan Gosling as humanly possible) she appears to be doing a lot more socializing than trend-tracking. I watch as she flutters around, flirting with the men (and the women, it seems) and downing champagne by the glassful. I catch myself thinking, I want her life, then remember that she can flirt all she wants, but I have Victor Ragsdale—and she can’t flirt with him.
“Hey, there.” I hear a voice, and turn to face a handsome stranger in jeans, a sports jacket, and a T-shirt that says THOSE GUYS.
“Are you here alone?” he asks.
Can’t get too tied up in random conversation, so as not to lose sight of Jen. “Yes. No, I mean. Not really.”
“My name’s Brian. I’m a film director. Well, an aspiring film director.” I laugh, imagining Victor’s face. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“Um…” If I accept his offer, I’m stuck talking to him, at least until I finish the drink. Any other night it would be a perfect opportunity to pick his brain on trends. But tonight – too risky.
“No, but thank you. I’m actually waiting for someone.”
“You’re waiting for me. You just don’t know it yet.” He winks and it makes me smile.
“Who’re Those Guys?” I ask.
“That’s my TV show.”
I do a double take. “Wait, you have a TV show, like, actually on TV?”
“Would you let me buy you a drink if I did?”
Shit. I have no witty response. Not even an un-witty one.
“That’s not what I meant,” I stammer. It’s the best I can do.
“That’s okay.” He shrugs it off. “I’m used to it. You L.A. girls are all alike.” (Ouch.) “But let me know if you change your mind.”
He seems nice, and he is cute. The vast majority of guys in here are cute, actually – very cute. But they’re not Victor. Not a single one of them.
I have to go to the bathroom, and I have to be quick. Chances are low, but if Jen steps into the bathroom at the same time, I’m toast.
Oh, God, there’s a line. And about ten women in it. What’s the matter with these places? Don’t they realize that if they’re half as successful as they hope to be, they’re going to need a bathroom bigger than two measly stalls?
I can’t stand in this line. I can’t risk having Jen walk in and see me. But I have to pee like a racehorse, as my beer-guzzling uncle Dan used to say, and my bladder is in no mood to be patient.
“Can I leave and get back in?” I ask the bouncer. “I’m on the list. Lindsey Miller.”
He nods. I step out and look around. The hotel takes up the whole block. The only space I can see is the lot where the valets are parking cars. I glance down the block, then back at the parking lot, a desperate whiny sound coming up the back of my throat. Okay. A person’s gotta do what a person’s gotta do.
I limp around the valet stand and back by the parked cars. All the valets are on the other end of the lot, so it looks pretty safe. I crouch down, hold my miniskirt up with one hand, and pull my panties to my ankles with the other. Ahhhh. No feeling in the world like relief. Not that I know, but I can’t imagine even a Tiffany diamond matching the feeling of finally going pee when you really have to go.
And on that note, I can’t imagine a feeling worse than when you’re squatting in the middle of the Sunset Marquis parking lot, and the car behind you suddenly turns its engine and flips on its lights. I freeze. I hear a gasp and an “Oh, my God!” but I’m too frozen to turn around. In fact, I’m so frozen that the pee has probably formed an icicle from my body down to the pavement.
The valet has come for this car, but by the way it sounds, the car’s owners aren’t too far behind. I scramble to pull my panties up. I want to make a run for it, but there’s a fence on all sides. All right, fuck it. I’m just going to stand up, laugh it off, and make like a cheetah, right past these people and back into the Whiskey. I’ll even accept that director guy’s drink. This is not a big deal! When suddenly –
“Lindsey?”
Jen’s eyes are as big as saucers. Her date is gulping back laughter so hard his head looks like it’ll fall off.
“What. The hell. Are you doing?”
“I got an earlier flight.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I did.” That one’s true. “I called the apartment.”
“Yeah, and you hung up when I answered!”
“It was a bad connection.”
“Did you go to the apartment?”
“I’m actually… staying with a friend tonight.”
“And you just happened to turn up at the Whiskey.”
“I… uh… wanted to get a head start on the trend stuff.”
She looks skeptical. “So what have you uncovered?”
What is this? I have to stand here in a parking lot with my panties half-down, being interrogated like this?
“What have you uncovered?” I demand. “I saw you in there! Didn’t look to me like you were working very hard.”
“What have I uncovered?” She reaches into her handbag and pulls out a mini-notebook, which she slams into my hands. “There. That’s what I’ve uncovered. You can have it. Pretend it’s yours.”
I don’t know what to say. Four pages of the book are filled with notes, very messy, obviously scrawled quickly in the bar bathroom or something.
Jen turns away, pulling her guy with her. “I’ll see you in New York,” she calls angrily.
As I stand there with the notebook, watching her get into the Audi, I feel like a real idiot. I am a miserable failure, and we all know it. Well, Liz Gordon may not know it, but I’m sure she’ll know it soon.
• • •
I barely sleep that night. Turns out, my rattrap hotel rents by the hour, and the walls are paper-thin. Not to mention there’s a rusty spring sticking straight up out of the middle of the mattress and my pillow has yellow, crusty stains on both sides of the pillowcase. Despite this misery, I can’t stop thinking about how I should enjoy Los Angeles as much as I can this week, seeing as I probably won’t be back anytime soon.
My horizon is grim. I try to shut my eyes, but all I can see are faces, one after the other. Liz Gordon’s look of disappointment when she finds out that hiring me was the worst thing she’s ever done. My friends’ look of pity when I arrive back in Chicago, not even a month after I left. Jen’s look of cruel amusement and victory when I’m fired and she’s promoted to “executive” trend-tracker. And Victor’s look of confusion when he sees me begging for change at Grand Central Station, trying to raise enough money for the Greyhound back to Chicago.
I sleep in the next morning (if you’d describe “sleeping in” as staring at black-and-white fuzz on a ten-inch TV for four hours until I’m certain Jen will have left for the airport). Then I drive to the apartment, which is actually very nice. Seveneen hundred bucks (which is what Gordon-Taylor budgeted per month for each apartment) gets you a lot farther in Los Angeles than it does in New York. It also gets you a hot tub and pool deck, an elevator, a dishwasher, central air and a laundry room on each floor. Not too shabby.
Jen has left me a long list of happening places to check out, along with a map of how to get a
round. I still have her notebook, which I have yet to read. I’m too afraid that it will contain a well of trend-forecasting brilliance that will sink me even deeper into my depression. To make matters worse, it’s been almost a whole twenty-four hours and Victor has not returned my call. I know I didn’t leave a message, but he had to have seen me on his caller ID. I bring my cell phone into the bathroom with me when I shower, just in case.
The shower is a great place to regroup. No matter how down I feel, a shower always helps, at least a little. Some people relieve stress by cleaning their bathrooms, scouring away at the toilets and bathtubs until their inner demons have been drowned in Scrubbing Bubbles. That’s me, but with my body. A good, soul-cleansing shower neglects no crack or crevice – big, foamy lather behind the ears, between the toes, belly button and all. And as a bonus, Jen has a shampoo in here that smells like peppermint, and makes my head feel cool and tingly as I scrub it onto my scalp. Perfect.
And I’m a shower singer too. A loud, tone-deaf, belt-it-out-bad singer of tunes that you’d almost always flip right by on the car radio, but that seem to reverberate with greatness when howled out to the pulsing beat of the steamy shower stream. A theme is always nice. And today, of course, the theme is California.
“Welcome to the Hotel California…” I start out softly as I carefully pull the razor up my legs.
“California dreaming… on such a winter’s day…” I pause with the sudsy shower poof. Wait a minute – I don’t even like that song.
“California gurls, we’re unforgettable…” There we go – except I can’t remember what comes after the “Daisy Dukes” line.
“I wish they all could be California girls!” I pull my hair up into a shampoo mohawk and growl at the tile wall like David Lee Roth as I continue the chorus, rinse off, and reach for a towel.
Somehow, when you’re out of the actual shower, you feel like you can’t sing as loudly. Like you’re naked without the sound of the water (despite that you actually were naked only a moment earlier and now just wear a towel). But I keep singing, repeating the one verse I know, hoping to keep my rejuvenated mood alive as long as possible. I wrap up my hair like a turban and brush my teeth, still attempting to sing past the toothbrush.
I hear the phone ring, but it’s the apartment phone – not my cell. I walk out into the living room (still singing and brushing) and jump a mile high when I see Jen sitting on the sofa, next to the phone, looking extremely amused at the entertainment.
“Coffee?” She reaches a large cup of Starbucks out to me. I’m too horrified to move. Smirking, she picks up the phone.
“Hello?” she says into it, her eyes still on me. “Yeah, this is Jen. Hold on a minute.” Jen puts the phone into her lap and gives me the once-over.
“Well, if it isn’t the next American Idol.”
“What are you doing here? I thought you left for New York.”
“I’m taking a later flight. We need to get some work done.”
“But I thought—”
“Go get dressed, Van Hagar. I have to take this call.”
I schlump back in the bathroom and contemplate excuses never to come out. I swear, God has shot this girl down to earth like a lightning rod of misery to make my life a living hell at every turn. And she’s not even that cool. Van Halen didn’t even sing that song—much less when Sammy Hagar was with them. Or does she already know that? Is her humor so urbane and sophisticated that she’s one step ahead even when you think she doesn’t get it?
See, this is what I’m talking about. She’s the kind of person whose mere presence makes you question yourself, standing in bathrooms, wasting your time trying to figure out what she means, and whether or not she’s laughing with you or at you. I hate those people. They act like they’re in this super-elite, members-only club of “cool,” in which only those who possess the most cutting-edge, razor-sharp wit will survive the torment of not “getting” a joke faster than the speed of sound (at which point the joke is turned on you and suddenly everyone is laughing in your direction, which confuses you because you’re still trying to figure out the original joke). This isn’t really a club, you know. It’s all in your imagination. But people like Jen make you feel like it’s real, and to me that’s close enough to warrant no fucking Christmas card from the Lindsey Miller residence, this year or any other.
I have to go back out there. It’s showtime, and my falsetto concerto in the shower is not going to cut it. I have nothing to show. Nothing but a bullshit pile of phony questionnaires. Which, of course, is why she’s here. She’s sniffed out my fear like a dog, and she’s ready to pounce. Hopefully it’ll be a quick death.
Chapter 12
“Show me what you have.”
We’re sitting at the table with our Starbucks, me with a pen and a blank notepad, and Jen with three scratched-up notebooks, four page-marked magazines, and a pile of finished questionnaires that practically touches the ceiling.
“Uh…” I stammer. “Tell me what you mean, exactly.”
“You’ve had a week in New York to pull ideas together for the newsletter, and our deadline is in ten days. So let’s see it.”
I jump up from the table. “I’ve got the questionnaires you asked me to do.” I snatch them from my backpack. “Right here. All fifty.” Hopefully she won’t look too hard, and I can substitute most of them later for real interviews.
Jen takes the pile and begins to rifle through it. “There’s only two topics on here. Pinstripes and finger food.”
“Right.”
“Where’s the third one?’
Shit. I forgot all about the third one. I still can’t even remember what it was.
“Ambiguous endings, Lindsey. Why isn’t it on here?”
That’s right! How could I have forgotten that? Ambiguous endings. What exactly happened, nobody knows for sure. Kind of like three months from now, when no one’s heard from me and they can’t locate a body anywhere in the state of California.
“Well, I can explain that. See, I started asking people about it, and they really didn’t know what I was talking about. So I figured, if they don’t get it after I’m even explaining it to them, then how trendy can it be?”
“Did you give them examples?”
“Yes.”
“What examples?”
Think quick. Quick. Quicker.
“Independence Day.”
“Independence Day, the movie?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you use that?”
“It wasn’t clear what happened at the end.”
“Lindsey, the world blew up.”
“Oh. Right.” What can I say? Went right over my head. Should’ve gone to film school.
“So why isn’t the question on here?”
“What do you mean?” I’m getting pretty proficient at this playing-dumb game. I think I’m managing to convince her that I actually am a complete moron. Which only helps my case a slight bit, because while stupidity isn’t technically my fault, my contribution to the newsletter is still a big zero.
“The ambiguous-endings thing isn’t even on your questionnaire.”
“It was on a separate page. I ended up tearing them off.”
“Why would you put it on a separate page? This page is barely filled.”
“Look, it’s not a trend, okay? Get over it. And even if it was, it’s about movies. How could advertising clients use it?”
“They could stylize their commercials after it,” she says flatly.
Good point.
She looks at me, obviously waiting for what else I have to contribute. Which, of course, is nothing. And I have nothing to say. I’m cornered, like my family dog, Buster, the time we caught him standing on the kitchen table with the London broil hanging out of his mouth. But I have no London broil. And no ideas. And no excuse.
We stare at each other in silence for what feels like a year. I can’t tell what’s going on behind her eyes, but I can feel what’s going on behind mine: hot te
ars of embarrassment and failure, welling up like water in a pressure cooker. We might as well skip the inquisition so I can pack my suitcase and get the hell home. But she’s not letting me off that easy. Her beady little eyes are like X-rays, probing past my bullshit and straight into my guilty soul as she watches me, patient, waiting silently for my meltdown.
This is ridiculous. We both know what’s going on here.
“Jen. That first day in New York, you made it very clear that you wanted to run this show. That I was to be the lackey who followed up your brilliant trend discoveries with corroborating data.”
“I never said that.”
“You implied it. And you know what? Fine. If walking around New York and L.A., concocting nuggets of something that may or may not be popular six months from now is your life’s dream, then you can have it. Fine by me. I can stand on street corners all day harassing people about your insights. Just give me the topics and tell me where to go.”
“And if my name were at the top of The Pulse, that would be ideal. But it’s not. It’s our names on that newsletter, Lindsey. Equal billing. So if you think I’m going to do all the creative work while you stand around and regurgitate questions like a robot, you’re out of your mind.”
“That’s what you said you wanted!” I get up from the table and turn my back. The tears are coming fast, and I don’t want her to see.
“I changed my mind. I’m out there doing interviews too, you know. I’m working on this thing day and night. Everywhere I go, everything I look at, every conversation I have – it’s all a part of this.”
“Well, I’m sorry if, in my first week, I haven’t been able to osmosize your trend-tracking chi into the core of my human existence.” I turn back to Jen, tears in full view. I don’t even care anymore. “I don’t have any experience at this. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Oh, really?”
“I don’t even know why Liz hired me!”
“Well, that makes two of us.”
“What do you want from me?” Now I’m shouting through my tears.
“I want you to get out there and figure it out. There are no classes for this. No training courses, Lindsey. It’s sink or swim. And you know what else? It’s really not that hard!”
Bicoastal Babe Page 9
