A Not So Model Home

by David James

  “Ian, Amanda is here,” Drake called up the stairway, reminding me how few homes had a second story in Palm Springs because of height restrictions. But this house had been built long before that. In fact, it had been lived in by many a silent film star—none of which I could prove because of a large fire in the town records building decades ago. I guess it didn’t matter now to the Gen-X kids who were taking over the town. “Theda Bara who?” they’d ask. “Charlie Farrell? Who the hell is that!” they’d answer, taking a moment from their iPhones to text someone interconnected to the human race only by the safe skin of electronic transmissions. No human contact necessary. (Charlie Farrell, for whom Farrell Road is named, was part creator of the famous—infamous—Palm Springs Racquet Club, the lodging, swimming, and tennis club in north Palm Springs that helped put this town on the map. It attracted the biggest and brightest stars in the world at the time to Palm Springs, from Marilyn Monroe to Audrey Hepburn, from Joan Crawford to heiress Christina Onassis.)

  A moment later, the biggest star in the world appeared: Ian. At the top of the stairs, he floated down in a cloud of not-so-subtly-perfumed hair, too long for the year 2012.

  If you live in a cave and have never seen Ian on countless television programs burning the hair of annoying Hollywood celebrities, then let me describe him to you and let me tell you a little about his past.

  Ian is the head of a ginormous hair-care products and salon empire. Some estimate that the entire net worth of his holdings tops $400 million. He wasn’t always this wealthy or this well-known, however. Rising from very humble (dirt-poor) roots in Glasgow, Scotland, he had a salon there for a while and then immigrated to the United States a bazillion years ago. Well, while you can take the boy out of Scotland, you can’t take the itchy wool out of the boy. To capitalize on his Scottish heritage, to this very day he wears a kilt, works on his legs in the gym religiously (but sadly, not his stomach or his diet), and for some unknown reason, also wears a sort of headband to hold back his Braveheart mane. He rounds out the whole chic-and-trendy oddball appearance with large Jackie O sunglasses. Ian is the opposite of the masculinity he tries to project. Jewelry-wise, he’s a cubic zirconium stone in a platinum setting.

  “Darling,” Ian gushed and planted an air kiss on both sides of my face. “Let me look at you!” He began fake crying. “Oh, Amanda, are you still letting that gobshite Micky Hamilton do your hair?” he added, forever in battle with his nearest rival, a local he could squash with one wave of his hand.

  “Ian, you keep forgetting that Micky killed himself after you trashed his hair-coloring abilities on national television,” I replied.

  “And he couldn’t even do that right. If I were to jump off a cliff, I would make sure it was high enough.

  “Ian, it was over two hundred feet high.”

  “If you’re going to kill yourself, you have to be thinking at least four to five hundred feet high. What you don’t want to do is hit a bunch of rocks on the way down, bruising your face in case there are television cameras. You want to leap and make a huge splat and lie there on the ground, arms akimbo in a perfect swastika pattern for the photographers at the top of the cliff to capture. The aftermath is just as important as the act itself. Now, where were we? Would you like something to drink, Drake?” he asked into the air, but Drake had withdrawn from the room like an obsequious servant.

  “No, thank you, Ian, it’s a little early.”

  “It’s ten o’clock! Perfect time for a hairball.”

  “A hairball?”

  “That’s what I call a highball around here.”

  “No thanks, Ian. So you want Alex and I to list your house?” I ventured, relishing the idea of listing one of the largest homes in Palm Springs.

  Ian put an arm over my shoulder as he steered me toward his dining room. “Yes, but not right away.”

  “Rent it? We can handle that.”

  He stopped. “No, Amanda. As you know, a television producer wants to make a reality program here in my house.”

  “And I suppose it’s a real-estate show?”

  “Yes and no,” he said, smiling like a crocodile waiting for an unsuspecting stork.

  “It’s going to be a reality show about finding an heir and boyfriend for me.”

  “A boyfriend, Ian? But you’ve had plenty over the years!”

  “That’s the problem, Amanda. Too many. I’m going to have my therapist, Aurora Cleft, as the judge on the program. We’re going to bring back a handful of my present and former boyfriends onto the show and they’re going to compete with each other, and Aurora is going to help me pick a suitable heir.”

  “Heir?” I snorted with a chuckle. “What, are you dying?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  I was horrified at what I had just said. Of course, not as horrified as the time I mistakenly uploaded a picture of myself making love with my ex-husband, Alex, to my real-estate Web site. Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal, but my Web site gets thousands of hits every month, so you can imagine my shock. And my continued shock when I found the very picture on several online sex galleries, including nymphouniverse.com.

  “Oh, Ian, what’s going on?” I asked with real concern in my voice—the first time such concern was probably ever uttered in his house.

  “I have pancreatic cancer. Inoperable. So I might as well go out with a bloody great bang, huh?”

  “So where do I come in?”

  He looked around to make sure no one was listening, then walked me into the dining room where two men plainly from Los Angeles were sitting—you could tell from the heavy black Elvis Costello eyeglass frames they both wore.

  Ian finished, “That’s why I’ve invited these two gentlemen here—to discuss your role.” He approached the dining room table and introduced the two men. “Amanda Thorne, this is Jeremy Collins and Tony Marcello. They’re from the Q Channel.”

  “A pleasure to meet you,” I uttered, extending my hand for them to shake as though it were a fragile lily. I threw in a curtsy.

  “Perfect!” the man named Jeremy blurted out. “Ian, she’s just what the show needs! A comic persona . . . some comic relief! And you were right about her offbeat looks! The nose too! Great! She does look like someone punched Kathleen Turner in the face!” he said. Then sideways out of his mouth, “Something I’d like to do myself to that haughty bitch!”

  Jeremy was a tired, but prevalent stereotype from Hollywood. He seemed to speak mostly with exclamation points at the end of everything he said—like everything he said was brilliant. For Jeremy, excitement equaled believability. Tony motioned for me to sit down.

  Jeremy continued, “I assume Ian’s brought you up to date on the show! What we want to do with you is bring you in as a good friend. . . .”

  “But I’m not Ian’s good friend,” I protested. “I guess that didn’t come out right. He invites me to parties, he’s a great client, but we don’t see each other that often.”

  Jeremy laughed an ironic laugh. “Amanda, I know that. Ian’s so toxic, he doesn’t have any friends. You’re like a . . . a stunt friend!”

  “I don’t have to do cartwheels while I’m on fire, do I?”

  Jeremy mouthed to Ian: I love this woman! “No, what I meant is that you’re a stand-in . . . since no one really likes Ian. Plus, you’re a fag hag. . . . Gay viewers love fag hags.”

  Ian dabbed his eye with an imaginary handkerchief. “Now, Jeremy, let’s not start with the testimonials right now. I’m not dead yet.”

  “You can bet you’re not, Ian! You’re going to be big! This series is going to be right up there with American Idol!”

  Since I could remember, I have seen countless films, television clips, and read hundreds of novels that had characters like Jeremy in them, and I always felt that the characters were over-the-top, but necessary foils for the protagonists. But here in the flesh was the actual thing. If you could peel back the facade, you would find, well, nothing.

  “So what do you want me to do,
guys?”

  Jeremy produced a thick document from seemingly nowhere and slid it across the table like a loaded gun in a game of Russian roulette. “Here’s your contract, Amanda! Read it, sign it, and get it back to us! Your primary role is that you’re a good friend of Ian, and at some point, you get into your secondary role: to put Ian’s house on the market! But you can’t tell anyone else, including the others in the show, about putting the house up for sale! We’re going to use it as a bombshell on the show, you know, to add the element of surprise! We’ve got to keep the drama up! It’s Survivor crossed with Project Runway crossed with The Real Housewives of Orange County!” he said.

  “Okay, Jeremy, I will go look over the contract and get back to you,” I said, picking up the 100-page document.

  Ian ushered me out of the room while Jeremy called from the background, “You’re gonna be a star, Amanda! This opportunity is going to open doors for you everywhere. Doors you never dreamed existed.”

  Doors that I might get my fingers slammed in, I thought.

  CHAPTER 3

  Sign Now, Pay Later

  “You ought to see this contract, Alex,” I said, waving the thick document in the air. “It’s worse than the amount of forms we have to fill out to sell a home. Sheesh. Listen to this, Alex, on page forty-five: ‘Said participant, Amanda Thorne, shall not, at any time, hold liable . . . blah, blah, blah . . . for physical injury or trauma, miscarriage, nor for mental distress caused directly or indirectly by an appearance on Things Are a Bit Iffy.’ ”

  “Wait a minute. The name of the show is Things Are a Bit Iffy?”

  “Yeah,” I replied, looking at Alex as if he had attacked me.

  “Oh, I get it. The play off of Ian’s initials: I.F. Clever.”

  “Well, I can tell you one thing. This contract is really making me think twice about being on the show.”

  “All contracts are like that, Amanda. Look at the ones we get from the banks once you have an accepted offer on a foreclosure house. The house you bought from us is built right on top of the San Andreas Fault line? Too bad. You should have talked to geologists first. The former owners poured cement down the drainpipes? You should have sent cameras down the sewage lines.”

  “So you don’t think I should do this TV show?”

  “On the contrary. I think it would build character. You’ll build up a presence. You’ll learn to speak on camera. You’ll meet people. You’ll make some money.”

  Make some money. Despite all the other reasons for being on the show, I think this is the one that stayed with me. We were still in the throes of the New Great Depression and I had exposure to several rental properties, none of which was fully rented. I needed cash, and the show was one way to bring in some money.

  This Depression was like a speech being delivered by a presidential candidate—endless. It was all around us, but the real-estate agents were doing their best to hide it—even the ones with dozens of listings and a seemingly thriving business. You could see it in the clothes and the cars. You noticed that people were wearing the same outfits over and over—instead of tossing them into the trash after a few wearings when times were good. The cars said it all too. They were no longer sparkling clean every day of the week. Or, you noticed that they kept on being traded down, from top-of-the-line BMWs and Mercedes to the lower-end versions of the same models. Or worse, to Hyundais and Kias. When the mask falls off, it really makes a thud.

  I went back into my office and signed the ominous paperwork, deciding once and for all to commit personal suicide and to stop worrying about it.

  Then I had to get back to the business of selling homes in a market where no one was buying. I hunted Alex down and found him at the copier.

  “I got another call from Angry Woman again. She wants to know why her house hasn’t sold yet.”

  “Which Angry Woman? Be more specific.”

  “Mrs. Begley?”

  Alex raised his splayed hands on either side of his head to express mock surprise.

  “Did you tell her that her house is uglier than the south end of a northbound pig, it needs tens of thousands of dollars in repairs because she’s either too lazy, cheap, or stupid to fix things when they start rotting, and it’s overpriced by $200,000?”

  I shook my head.

  “I told her that you and I work in the market. We don’t control it,” I said.

  “To which she responded . . .”

  “She said she wants to see her house on television. She thinks this whole Internet thing is a fad and TV is the way to go.”

  “Amanda, we explained that to Mrs. Begley. Close to ninety percent of all people look for homes on the Internet. Local media is only for those agents to trumpet their listing and get more of them. Those ads don’t sell homes.”

  “She said she wants to see her home on The Tonight Show. She likes Leno.”

  “Let me tell you what, Amanda. Let’s just get rid of all the overpriced listings and all the fucked-up sellers.”

  “Then we wouldn’t have any homes for sale, Alex.”

  “That’s not true, Amanda. What about James Murray? His home is mid-century, it’s priced right, it looks great.”

  “The last agent who showed it said there were one hundred twenty rifles stacked in the closet and that there was a six-month supply of food, water, and ammunition in the garage.”

  “So the guy likes to hunt, Amanda. . . . And hydrate often. What about Janis Frommer?”

  “She shot her husband in the face with buckshot on the front lawn of her home after she found him in bed with her sister.”

  “She has anger-management issues. So what?”

  “Alex, I know you are fed up with all the shit in this business. Me too. This used to be a pleasant business to be in. You took people around, they found a nice home, they went to get a loan and got it without threatening anyone, and the house sold and we got paid. Now, it’s like a hatchet fight with the two opponents handcuffed to each other.”

  “I think it’s more like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Week after week.”

  “I have had just about as much as I can take. The sellers think they’re sitting on a pile of gold and that they’re in the driver’s seat, and when someone is stupid enough to put a full-price offer on a home, then we can’t make the appraisal and the whole deal falls apart and the seller yanks the listing from you after you’ve spent all this time and money, only to give it to another agent who’s desperate to have a listing under his or her belt.”

  “That’s it in a nutshell, Amanda. The sellers are unrealistic and haven’t come to the reality that their house is worth a lot less than they paid for it. Then along comes an agent who’s terrified that he or she has another car and mortgage payment due, and that they don’t want to be known as the agent with no listings, so they take the overpriced listing and the abuse that follows while the agent tries to ratchet them down into reality adjacent. It’s a vicious cycle.”

  “Like buying panty hose.”

  “Exactly.”

  I looked into Alex’s eyes.

  “I think we should become door-to-door dildo salespeople. We would probably make more money.”

  “And we’d have a lot more fun.”

  “How’s about it, Alex? I said, offering my hand to shake and close the deal.

  “I’m in.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Let the Games Begin

  A week later, the initial cast meeting for Things Are a Bit Iffy was called at Ian’s house at 9 A.M. When I arrived at Ian’s estate, I was surprised to see no camera crews or large semi-trucks filled with cameras and lighting equipment.

  The parking area to Ian’s house is very large and usually filled with unimaginably expensive cars—all Ian’s. But today was different. The cast was here to snag an enormously, fabulously wealthy boyfriend, so the parking lot was full of gleaming, top-of-the-line Mercedes, BMWs, a Rolls Royce, and one Lamborghini—all probably rented. I assumed that one or two of the cars belonged to the show’s
producers and directors, but the rest were all for show. And what a show it was. I almost felt ashamed to park my Toyota Land Cruiser next to such ultimate driving machines.

  I climbed the stairs to the living room to find it full of gay men who were as gleaming and polished as the cars they supposedly owned. Gucci and Prada shoes, $400 jeans, tailored long-sleeve shirts with cuff links—these guys all had the looks down pat. Except one. A short, steroidal muscleman with tattoos visible even on his neck stood there in the crowd of peacocks looking as out of place as myself. Me, I was dressed in casual chic, but that’s not why I stood out. I was the only woman in a sea of gay men.

  There were plates of deftly arranged breakfast foods that made me drool, but I quickly noticed that none of the men were eating. They all had very European, emaciated figures, and they intended to keep them, especially now that flat-fronted pants were all the rage. Of course, this didn’t stop Mr. Musclehead. He shoveled in the protein while steering clear of the carbs.

  The thought struck me. Unless this was some kind of colossal joke on Ian’s part, there was a phenomenal amount of money at stake. Millions! These guys were dressed to kill, and to get their hands on that much, it occurred to me that someone just might.

  Jeremy Collins, the producer, clapped his hands several times in rapid succession to call us to order.

  “Welcome, everyone, thanks for agreeing to be on Things Are a Bit Iffy, one of the biggest reality-show hits of the ’12 and ’13 season!”

  Again with the exclamation points. I pictured Jeremy—if he was lucky to have landed a boyfriend who could stand his never-ending hype—at home over morning coffee, gushing over a strawberry Pop-Tart. This would be followed by a breathless description of his morning bowel movement and a recounting of the amazing dreams he had last night that no one, mind you, no one could top in their vividness. Of course, as improbable as it would seem, Jeremy would have no trouble locating a partner who could stand him. There’s always a man willing to put up with endless bullshit in order to have a cushy life. And a cushy life is something that Jeremy’s endless string of Aaron Spelling–inspired television bilge probably provided.