Cherries In The Snow (23 page)

The car picks me up at LAX and I feel very little in the backseat. My legs don't touch the floor. It's funny to fly business and then get picked up by a limo. It makes me think: Oh, yeah, our company makes money. It's easy to forget that when you're in the office. Marley told me on the way to the airport
that he had a huge commission he would be working on while I was gone, so he might be hard to reach. Against my better judgment I call David Consuela Cohen and he insists we have dinner that night.

‘Oh, my God! We'll go to Les Deux! It's fabulous on a Friday night.'

I go straight to Fred Segal, meet the manager, make nice, admire our makeup, bitch about the counter having less space than Stila and Benefit. After she goes back to her office, I move the products around so that ours are in front of Stila's. A security guard comes up to me.

‘Miss. Is everything okay?'

‘Great. Great. Grand.'

‘All right then.'

He keeps his eye on me. I zoom in on it with my makeover mind and psychically curl his lashes and put purple powder on him to bring out the green in his irises. As he goes about his business, my makeup is still on him although none of the other shoppers seem to notice.

Before I leave, I stop to look at the clothes, rail after rail of jewellike beauties. Delicate, spaghetti straps, strapless, chiffon, satin, silk. But when I try on the tops and dresses that I'm drawn to, none of them look right. All of them have something in the way: my bra straps. So I take off my bra and, whoomp, the outfits fall flat, to say the least. ‘Oh, Christ, no,' I say to my reflection. I go to the lingerie department and pick out a flesh-colored strapless bra.

‘Can I have this in a thirty-four D?'

‘Sorry. It doesn't come above a C cup.'

‘Okay, okay, no worries.'

I leave depressed and empty-handed and return to my room to brood. I pick up the phone and call Dad.

‘Did you save the wash bag from the plane?' he asks. I can
hear how excited he is for me that I have a job that sends me traveling, pays for me to fly business class no less.

‘Yeah, Daddy. It's pretty good. I'll send it to you.'

‘What's in it?'

‘Uh, toothbrush, toothpaste. Comb. Nice comb made of balsa wood, not plastic.'

‘Sweet.'

‘A moisturizer and face wash.'

‘What brand?'

‘Aveda. What's it to you?'

‘Oh, I've heard that stuff's good.'

‘From who? Who's been talking skin products with you?'

‘I know stuff. So, anyway, how's your room?'

‘It's huge, Dad. But I feel a little lonely.'

‘You do, baby lamb? Why so?'

‘I dunno, Daddy. I just do. I wish you were here. You know how it is.'

‘Yeah, I do. Can you call someone?'

‘Well, I'm seeing this gay guy I know tonight for dinner. But he's kind of silly.'

‘Well, that won't help, will it? Anyone else?'

‘Uh, this is weird, I suppose, but Jolene, Marley's ex, said I should call her.'

‘Is she kind of silly?'

‘Yes, but a different kind. A more interesting kind.'

‘So call her. I don't see why that's weird. They're exes, after all. You don't have any suspicions about them, do you?'

‘No. But she's crazy.'

‘And you're lonely.'

I hang up with Dad and try to psyche myself up to call Jolene, but I can't do it. The intimidation factor is still too high. After I met her at Marley's, I Googled Jolene on my laptop and came up with this:

Forty-two, my ass. Her body is better than mine, technically. But it has a lot of vanity to it. The vanity of being forty-six and wanting to beat a twenty-two-year-old at her own game. Twenty-two, note, not twenty-four. My body's way too downhill for Jolene. She's like a successful version of my mother. In her head my mum's beating all of the twenty-two-year-olds at their own game, her body sinewy and taut, but in reality it's soft and sad and can't move off the sofa. There's such a thing as soft and happy, don't get me wrong, why do you think the whole world loves Drew Barrymore? There's something incredibly erotic about a body that looks like it doesn't have a single muscle in it. It made Marilyn Monroe a star too.

I demanded the whole weekend in L.A. and now I don't know what to do with myself. Worst of all, I am missing the Saturday-night launch party for our Are You There, God, It's Me, MakeUp line. I try to change my flight to go home the next morning, but it would cost five hundred dollars to do it and I left the company credit card at the office and Vicki refuses to tell me the numbers.

‘Oh, no, Sadie. It's not really my place.'

I try to reach Holly, but she and Ivy are in meetings all day long.

‘What the hell are you meeting about all day that you can't answer my calls,' I IM Holly. I get no answer so I try Ivy. ‘Yo,
lady. Where you guys at? I need you to call me back!!!' No reply. Bitches. Useless bitches and their dumb ugly makeup.

By the late afternoon, I realize that though I have done nothing but lie in bed, my deodorant isn't working. It's troubling to me that a deodorant can just stop working like that and you are a person with body odor issues. And it's awful to smell yourself, alone, where there is no one to offend and so it only is a smell without social context. The soft water that flows from Angeleno taps is making my hair straight instead of curly. Straight hair, b.o., what does that collectively mean to the outside world? I'm not sure, so I stay in my room, which is vast and hideous. Vicki did the booking. I call the office again.

‘Vicki, when are they coming out of there?'

‘Never.'

‘Vicki, go and bang on the door.'

‘I tried that. Holly yelled at me to fuck off.'

‘What did you do?'

‘I fucked off.' She is in a snit. ‘Really, this is ridiculous. We have a huge launch party tomorrow night. They're making me nervous.'

‘Really, it's ridiculous. That's my makeup line and I should be there. Just give me the fucking credit-card numbers.'

‘I told you, Sadie, I can't okay the fare change without getting the word from Holly.'

‘But Holly's in a meeting!'

‘See exactly. So anyway, how's the hotel?'

‘Vicki, have you stayed here?'

‘No, but I heard it was fabulous. Is it?'

I hang up on her as I gaze at the terrible paintings on the wall. Terrible. I can't stop looking at them. One is quasi-Cubist. The other is of the Hollywood hills at night. They don't go together. They are like two desperate people having
bad sex, trying to fit big things into small things and soft things into the wrong holes. It gives me a headache.

I call David and arrange to meet him at Les Deux at 9 P.M.

To pass the time I keep ordering room service and the food keeps getting worse. It isn't fun at all. The French fries have cheese on them and no matter how many times I ask for them without they come back cheesed. I line up the inedible portions in the bathroom annexe so I won't have to look at them. The shower is good and strong. I try to shower away my headache, aiming the nozzle at my forehead and it works while I am in there, or at least the sensation distracts me, but once I towel off it is back.

My room smells of chemicals, broken dreams, but how many could there be in a new hotel? It opened last week. It must be the workers who built it. I drop my bobby pin in the multi-colored carpet, and when I bend down to look for it, the smell almost knocks me out. I lie on my back and look at the ceiling.

A taxi picks me up and takes me to Les Deux, where David is waiting.

‘Woo hoo!' He waves. ‘Woo hoo!' He is wearing a buttondown T-shirt with rainbows on it. I steel myself for a long night. ‘My bitch!'

‘David, have you noticed that all the clothes nowadays are cut for women who don't have to wear bras?'

‘What are you complaining about, you're only twenty-four, you don't need a bra.'

‘Any woman with real D-cup breasts needs a bra!'

‘You mean yours are real?'

‘Of course!'

‘Oh, fabulous. I never would have known.' Isn't that what you're supposed to say about fake breasts?

‘That's because I'm wearing a bra.'

I have a glass of Merlot, then I reckon: He's gay, I'll show him my breasts. He'll tell me the truth. Gay men love breasts.

‘Come to the loo with me, David.'

‘Ooh, are we going to do coke? Because the last time I did that was with Robert Downey at the
Vanity Fair
party at Morton's. Or was it the
Vanity Fair
party at Cannes?'

‘I get it. You've been to a
Vanity Fair
party.'

‘They're very hard to get into. Most publicists don't manage it. Anyway, that wasn't the point. The point was that I was with Robert Downey. Note, I don't bother with the “junior.” That's how well I know him.'

In the bathroom I unhook my bra and lift my shirt. I did that once in a toilet with Isaac. Man, was that a letdown.

Not sexy at all. Of course, I faked up a storm. He was all proud of himself for a week and he wrote a blazing column that ended up winning him a Columnist of the Year award.

‘Oh, yes,' says David, ‘I see the problem. You can buy the natura bra and keep your clothes on when you fuck. Or you can go to Dr Ron Kitchen. All the top porn stars go to him.'

‘David, I haven't really seen much porn – actually I haven't seen any – so can you tell me what they look like?'

‘Tall, blond, they look fabulous…'

‘No, I mean the breasts.'

‘Oh, perky, but not overdone. You don't make real cash with the big bazonkas anymore.'

I have not heard the word
bazonkas
since grade school and I'm not sure that I needed to.

‘I don't want them to be bigger. I just want them to be higher.'

‘Call him tomorrow! I'm so excited for you!'

He lets me pick up the check. I go back to my room feeling
more hollow and depressed than I can remember. I can't get ahold of Marley. His cell phone is turned off.

The sprinkler has a sign warning not to put a coat hanger on it in case of flooding. The hotel staff keeps telling me they are delighted to assist and then they don't. I call down five hours after I have asked for the number of the nearest pharmacy and they answer me like I am someone they have slept with and can't place.

‘This is Jared, delighted to assist.'

‘Remember, I called down before for the pharmacy number?'

‘Uh …'

‘Sadie Steinberg?'

‘Uh …'

I hate it when my name sounds like a question mark.

I call my father again. ‘Daddy, my head hurts. I hate it here. Come and get me. Please get me out of here.' I know it is like asking to be taken off a plane to Australia. But it helps to ask.

‘What's wrong with it?'

‘It smells funny. The carpet smells weird.'

‘Why were you smelling the carpet? You can check into a new hotel.'

‘I don't want to be here.
Here
.' I gesture around my head. It could mean Hollywood or California or the Earth. All feel true.

I call Marley. ‘Would Jolene really have me?'

‘Of course she would. Jolene is one of the kindest people in the world. She would never let you sit there crying.'

‘I'm not crying.'

‘Yeah, but you were. You still have her number?'

I had secreted it in a tampon case as though it was illegal drugs. I had smuggled it past the sniffer dogs, this number of the ex, which sounds like the number of the beast. I call
her with trembling hands and she answers with a booming voice.

‘Man!'

I'm a lady, I want to interject.

‘Man! I'm so psyched you called! What's doing? We gonna hang out? How's the hotel?'

‘Jolene, I think … it's a little depressing here.'

‘Would you like me to come pick you up tomorrow?'

‘Maybe.'

‘You could spend the day with me, then I'll drive you to the airport Sunday.'

I don't bother to vacillate. ‘Okay.'

Jolene picks me up from La Poubelle in her red truck. I was waiting half an hour, not that she is late, but because I wanted to be out of my room and I was so excited to be leaving. She comes from having her nails done exactly the same color as the truck. I was killing time, hanging around the hotel shop looking at fifty-dollar bubble bath. I think that's why I know nothing. Every time I went on a school field trip to a museum, I just wanted to go to the gift store. If there was a dinosaur skeleton in front of me, I only wanted a postcard of the dinosaur skeleton.

She calls me on my cell and I run outside before the valets can move her on, which they do at a rapacious speed. She is parked in front of two limos. ‘Sorry I'm late, I had to get a manicure.' The idea that a person has to get a manicure. Need is odd. But who am I to judge? I scan her truck for more things to judge. There is dry cleaning in the front seat and empty packs of American Spirit cigarettes. She sees me clock them.

‘My only vice!' she cries. ‘Two a day! And never, never in front of the kid.'

She is wearing a white tank top, a cut-off denim miniskirt, and Ugg boots. ‘I've had these bastards for five years, long before Sarah Jessica Parker picked up on them. She's a client of mine. Sweet woman.'

I climb in and she thrusts the dry cleaning onto my lap. I buckle up.

‘Fuckety fuck,' she says, ‘I smudged my nails.' When you become a parent, your curse words become Seussian. ‘Had my hair done too, then saw that I was running late for you and didn't have it blown out. What do you think?' Her wavy blond hair is being dried by the California sun through the open side windows.