The Unnoticeables

by Robert Brockway

  I knew that being afraid of going home to my apartment was ridiculous. I knew there was never anything there—not really—it was just an episode, a hallucination or some kind of seizure. I mean, it hadn’t happened to me since I was a kid, that night with the fire, but they say you can never cure mental illness, you can only treat it. The angel had been entirely in my head. I knew that for a fact. But when I went searching for some kind of comfort that knowledge could give me, I came up empty.

  “Fine.” I sighed wearily. No point letting Carl know I wanted it—might as well get a favor out of this mess.

  “Then you start now,” Carl said, hopping down from his stool and moving immediately for the door.

  “Wait—no, I haven’t had lunch y—” I started, but the door was already jingling, sounding his exit.

  I stared glumly down at the leftover burrito. I pulled the condiment knife out of the limes and cut the thing in half, discarding the portion Carl had been eating. I sneered and stuffed one corner into my mouth.

  The chimes jingled again.

  “Carl, you are at least covering until I get a burger or something,” I said, still poking at the mess in awe. “I don’t even know who makes a burrito this bad in Southern California. Did you drive to fucking Michigan for Mexican food or—”

  Jackie was standing there cockeyed, smiling as she let me ramble.

  “K,” she said, laughing all the way to the bar, “what’s up?”

  “Carl’s got me on bar tonight.” I grabbed Madison’s apron and tied it about my waist. I’d been back behind the bar a few times while waiting tables, but not enough to be familiar with it. I flipped open tray after tray—cherries, oranges, limes, little umbrellas, and twisty ribbons of lemon. I had absolutely no idea what to do with any of them.

  “Free booze?!” Jackie practically leapt into her chair.

  “If you want to get me fired on my first night,” I replied, staring at the vast wall of liquor behind me. There were twenty-six different kinds of vodka. Twenty-six different varieties of a liquid that’s supposed to taste like nothing.

  “But,” I continued, “I do need to practice mixing drinks a little bit. You can be my guinea pig for a few.”

  “Well, if it’s for science…” Jackie said, and leaned into her elbows on the bar.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “I’ll take a beer.”

  “Funny.” I slapped the condiment lids shut and went about finding glasses. A mistake: If there were twenty-six kinds of nothing, there were an infinite number of receptacles to hold that nothing. Long, thin flutes, squat little cups covered in nubs, elaborately curved shot glasses—each ostensibly for a different purpose.

  I am going to die in this place.

  “How about a margarita?” Jackie finally asked. “Even you can’t screw that up.”

  “We’ll see,” was all I could reply, grabbing a round glass that I almost remembered getting a margarita in one time. I wouldn’t even know where to start noticing that a drink was served in the wrong glass. But this being West L.A., some plastic-faced Hills-woman was bound to try to get me fired over it.

  “How’s work? Real work, I mean—jumping cars and stuff. Any leads?” Jackie asked, already bored and heading over to the pinball machine. It was mostly for decoration: Carl liked that “retro Americana look,” as he put it—but Jackie loved the thing. It was a reference to a TV show I never watched. Something about wagons and Indians, complete with vaguely racist overtones. When you lost your last ball, a little chieftain automaton jerked to life on the back of the board, making chopping motions with his hand and laughing evilly.

  “Not for a while,” I answered unhappily. When stunt work came, it was the best job in the world, but it was coming few and far between—not enough to get me unionized, at any rate. “How are things going for you?”

  “Great!” Jackie slammed a paddle, and a bunch of dim lights flickered on, flashing yellow and orange. A wagon on fire. “I got an intern gig with a little improv troupe over in Santa Monica. Only two nights a week and no pay yet, but I get onstage.”

  “That’s amazing, Jackie. You just tell me when, and I’ll come laugh way too loud at all of your jokes. It will be intensely embarrassing,” I said.

  I poured what felt like an objectively absurd amount of tequila into the blender, followed by a vaguely greenish mixture in a clear plastic bottle, and some triple sec. I flipped open the bin and grabbed a scoop of ice. Madison had left the metal scoop in there all night. The handle was so cold it burned.

  “Eat cowboy justice,” Jackie swore, as the machine threw up a howl of stereotypical Indian chanting. “Are you sure everything’s okay with you, K? No offense, but you look like you’re on the tail end of a meth binge.”

  “Yeah.” I briefly, madly entertained the idea of telling Jackie what I saw last week. The light. The angel. The impossible tear in the world that burned like the heart of a star. The sacred, terrifyingly beautiful cosmic anomaly … that liquefied a bum masturbating outside of my window. I flashed back to my half-remembered childhood. Flames on the plastic tablecloth, plaid melting and fusing to wood. Crying. Angels.

  I told somebody about the angels before.

  “Some people need pills to be normal, Katey,” Mom had said, stuffing half of a white oval into a piece of cut-up hot dog.

  Never again.

  “Yeah,” I continued, “Carl just sprung this bartending gig on me, and I haven’t eaten all day. That’s all.”

  I poured the ice into the blender and hit the button. It whirled to life, gargling the concoction into a fine mush. I slid the mix into the round glass and tried to rub salt on the side with my fingers, but it wouldn’t stick.

  How do they do that?

  “Here.” I slid the drink toward Jackie. “Tell me how it turned out.”

  Jackie abandoned her pinball genocide and skipped back to the bar. She slid onto her stool and took a giant gulp of margarita. Her eyes bugged out of her head, and she coughed half of it back into the glass.

  “Jesus!” she stammered, trying to breathe out the liquor fumes. “Did you brush your teeth and spit in a bottle of tequila?”

  “What? Here, let me try.” I took a sip and gagged. It was pure, cheap alcohol, with just a hint of stale, horrible mint. I opened the bottle of greenish mixture and took a whiff: like mouthwash.

  Jackie was laughing now.

  “I thought this was margarita mix,” I pleaded.

  “It says ‘mojito’ right on the bottle,” Jackie countered.

  “What does that mean? I thought it was, like, some special brand of margarita.…”

  “They’re going to tear you apart tonight,” Jackie said, throwing up her hands. “There’s going to be a riot. It’s going to make the news: ‘Society brought down by lone, shitty bartender.’”

  “Like I wasn’t nervous enough already!” I whipped off Madison’s apron and threw it at Jackie.

  “Seriously, though, call your bartender and tell him he has to work tonight,” Jackie said, and poured the abomination down the bar drain.

  “I can’t; she’s a walkout. Madison didn’t even call in.”

  “Oof.” Jackie took to her feet and started heading back to her game. “Are all of these flaky Hollywood bitches named Madison?”

  “Can you stay with me? Help out? I’ll split my tips with you. It’s supposed to be a lot of money.” I could feel my heart racing already. We got so busy on weekends. The bar was standing room only. What the hell was I doing?

  “Well”—Jackie dug through her pockets for change—“I guess so. But only because you said the magic word: ‘money.’”

  She came up with a quarter and plunked it into the slot. She was greeted by angry chanting, pounding drums, and a series of dim little bulbs, flickering like fire.

  “It’s weird, though,” Jackie continued, after losing three balls in what I assumed to be record time, “everybody’s just skipping out on work lately. A bunch of girls at the plaza are wal
kouts, too. Even Emily—remember her?”

  “Oh, wow, seriously?” Emily was nice. Short Asian girl with a nose ring. She came out drinking with me and Jackie a few times, when they mostly bitched about work together while I feigned interest. She may have been the only person in L.A. that didn’t have any desire to be in movies.

  Including me, I thought bitterly.

  “Seriously. She’s supposed to be coming to this party with me tonight, but I haven’t heard from her in days.”

  “Weird,” I said, and let the conversation drop.

  “It is weird,” Jackie said loudly, and stared me right in the eye.

  “What?”

  “It is weird that now I have nobody to go to this bullshit Hollywood party with me,” Jackie reiterated.

  “Oh, God, Jackie, no. Come on, I’m going to be drawn and quartered during this shift…”

  “This shift that I am selflessly volunteering to help you with,” Jackie supplied.

  “You know I hate those damned parties. Nobody talks to you; they just yell parts of their résumé at each other while pretending they’re not on coke.”

  “It’s called networking.” Jackie sighed. “And that right there is the reason you’re not finding work. Come on, we’ll get through this shift together and then go drink off the post-customer-service filth in the hills.”

  “I…” I had nothing. “They better have something wrapped in bacon.”

  I dumped half of the soggy burrito in the trash and tried to build a fruit salad out of the condiment tray.

  * * *

  Jackie looked amazing. She was wearing a form-fitting tuxedo, a thin black waistcoat pinned tight to her midsection, complete with a perfectly cocked top hat. I forgot how well she did the whole appearance thing when she wanted to.

  “How do I look?” she asked me, spinning halfway around and giving a genteel little bow.

  “Hot, but funny, like an old-timey magician’s assistant,” I said, suddenly feeling ill at ease in my own basic cocktail dress and black flats.

  Don’t get me wrong: I don’t have body issues. I know how to look pretty damn presentable. Give me the right jeans and T-shirt, and I can floor a man from halfway across the bar. But I barely understand what “cocktail wear” is, much less how to pull it off.

  “I was going for a fuckable Charlie Chaplin,” Jackie replied, frowning. She did that Chaplin walk, all splay-footed and waddling, but infused with just a hint of sexy runway hip swivel.

  “I see it now. You are going to confuse the hell out of some poor Hollywood hipsters.”

  I poured another shot of tequila into my coffee mug and downed it. I shuddered as the warm wave broke back up my throat.

  “Oh, do me.” Jackie practically pranced over to the counter.

  “You’re not that fuckable,” I said, waggling my arms as if I could shake the liquor out of my skin.

  “The booze,” Jackie said; “and if you keep drinking like that, who knows where the night may take you?”

  “It’s only two. If I’m going to an ‘industry’ party, I’ve found I need an exact two-drink head start to remain charming.” I slopped an abstract amount of golden liquid into her mug. It said “#1 Dad” on the side and had a picture of a hammer. Mine was a sleepy owl. I didn’t own any shot glasses.

  “Ah, the two-drink theorem. It’s sound math.” Jackie knocked hers back and didn’t even make a face. “Just be careful to keep the pace. Two drinks can snowball into twelve. Remember Tyler’s house?”

  I laughed.

  “That started as a sensible two-drink base, and then…” Jackie closed her eyes and shuddered.

  “Then you did a shot-by-shot reenactment of the Pump Up the Jam video in your underwear. In front of everybody.”

  “Then, yes, that happened. Thank you for explicitly reminding me.”

  “I’m just happy to get an excuse to say that out loud. Try it: ‘Shot-by-shot reenactment of the Pump Up the Jam video in your underwear.’ It’s fun.”

  Jackie rolled her eyes at me and went back to fussing in the mirror in my living room.

  “Am I underdressed? I can change,” I said, acutely aware of how broad my shoulders were in a strapless dress.

  “No, no! It’s good. Honest. Even better because you don’t know it. You could stand to throw on some heels.…”

  We stared at each other in silence.

  “Jackie…” I started.

  “I know, I know”—she waved me away—“you don’t have to outrun the bear.”

  I had this highly irrational fear that as soon as I leave the house in heels, I’m going to be chased down by some sexual predator or something. When I told Jackie about it, she gestured at her own feet and asked me what in the hell I thought she would do, in her heels. I told her it’s like that old joke: “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun the skank next to me.”

  “I’m going to change really quick.” I moved toward the bedroom, but Jackie intercepted me. She started to say something, but three beeps from outside stopped her. She smiled.

  “Can’t. Cab’s here.”

  Shit.

  * * *

  The cab driver was Iranian. He tried to sell me a used pickup truck his cousin owned.

  * * *

  The party was at one of those generic Southern California hilltop mansions. You know the type: a bunch of neomodern boxes locked together by small glass hallways, big pool overlooking the city, track lighting everywhere. I swear to God, every industry party I’ve gone to was held in a house just like that one. In fact, it could have been the same house.

  Does anybody even live here? Do they rent houses just for reality TV shows and schmoozing?

  There was a little table for appetizers, but it was mostly shellfish and avocado.

  Los Angeles.

  I nabbed six bacon-wrapped somethings—it didn’t matter what they were, beyond “not shellfish and avocado”—and made for the deck, where I last saw Jackie. She was talking to a paunchy guy with a soul patch. As usual, she had gathered a small crowd of newly converted fans around her. She was telling some kind of story, but I walked out right as she finished and only heard the paunchy guy’s huge laugh. I caught her eye, and she wiggled her ears, making the crooked top hat dance. I smiled.

  She was great at this stuff. But then, she needed to be: This, we’d both discovered upon moving down here after high school, was the only way anybody got jobs. This was networking.

  I was terrible at it. I didn’t think it would matter for me. Nobody’s going to hire you to jump off a bridge because you give good conversation at parties, I argued. But judging by my absolute work drought lately, that apparently wasn’t the case. Four years ago, Jackie had convinced me to move to L.A. with her. She wanted to be an actress, and, she insisted, I absolutely had to come with her: How many hot chicks could jump a dirt bike over a train? They would throw work at my feet, she said.

  Turns out, there indeed are not many girls who can power-slide a muscle car, but every single goddamned one of them is in Hollywood, competing for the same job. Jackie was pretty, funny, confident, charming; she was making slow headway, but she was making headway. I was treading water.

  I admit it: I was jealous. Bitter, even.

  But also kind of proud. Of her, I mean. Jackie really was meant for this life. In my better moments, I even tried to swallow my pride and learn from her example. I did the dance, no matter how bad I was at the steps. I … networked. God, just the word is filthy. So far I had shared small talk with a bitch agent (that’s not a dig; he was an agent exclusively for female dogs) and bitterly complained about the 405 with a girl who painted food. Not pictures of food—she literally painted food to make it look good for commercials. That’s all she did.

  “What’s the point of a brand-new Jag,” she asked me, “if I’m just going to park it on the freeway?”

  Just by painting grill stripes on fake hamburgers! What the hell?

  I was growing to hate L.A., even though that
in itself is such an L.A. thing to do. Everybody hates it here, if you ask them. But they don’t move, and I wasn’t about to, either. It may not happen often, but I made three months’ rent this year by speeding a ’69 Charger into a dump truck. It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. Show me anywhere else in the world where I can make a living doing that, and I’ll move. Until then, L.A. is a necessity.

  “K!” Jackie shouted, seizing a man from out of her crowd of fans and dragging him over to me. “This is Marco.”

  She smiled giddily, waiting for something. I narrowed my eyes at the guy. Extremely good looking, but in that alien Hollywood kind of way. Vaguely Latino, but not so much that he couldn’t “pass,” as they so horribly say in the business. I knew him from somewhere.

  “Oh, holy shit,” I said, when it finally clicked. “Sable! You’re J. C. Sable!”

  “It’s Marco, actually.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Marco Luis. But, yeah, that was me.”

  “I lived for that show as a kid!” I practically squealed.

  Oh, Jesus Christ, Kaitlyn, close your jaw, you jabbering yokel.

  “Sorry,” I added hastily, “I don’t get starstruck often. It’s just that me and Jackie ran home after school every day to watch Home Room. Wow, I haven’t thought about you in, like, ten years.”

  Jackie slapped me on the arm, and I instinctually went to slap her back, when I realized what I’d said.

  Marco saw my eyes bug out, but he just laughed again.

  “It’s okay!” he exclaimed cheerfully. “That was my household-name moment. It’s a blessing and a curse. I’m just glad the show meant so much to you two.”

  “She had a poster of Sable up above her bed”—Jackie smiled wickedly—“the shirtless one in the pool.”

  Oh, son of a—

  “Hey, me too!” Marco said, so earnestly that it took me a minute to realize he was joking. He stayed deadpan until I laughed, then joined in.

  “Personally, I was a Mack girl, myself,” Jackie said, already backing out of the conversation. “I go for the well-meaning jerks. But Kaitlyn’s always had a soft spot for the misunderstood jockish type.”