Hollywood Ass. (16 page)

“I'm out having a few beers with Cesar. How's dinner?” I clicked send.

The reply flew through the air and into my heart like a digital dagger.

“Are you possibly wearing a silly wig?”

Oh God, she knows!
Sweat poured out of me. This was bad, very bad.

I decided to try one last shot at innocence. “No :) Whyr u adking?” my finger nervously mistyped before I corrected it and sent it.

Then
B
came out from the restroom and sat down opposite me with an angry glare. Suddenly I felt the wig itching.
Itching like a muthafucka
.

“Now can you tell me what the fuck this is about, Darryl?”

If you didn't think black people could blush, let me tell you...we can.

***

After getting told I'm a worthless, no-good, distrusting leech, which ended with
B
returning to her table furious and leaving me feeling as small as a pebble, I quickly paid the bill and left the fancy restaurant together with Cesar. He suggested a bar, while I thought jumping from the Brooklyn Bridge was a more apt solution to my problem.

“I think this is it,” I said, my voice cracking, “My employment is over,
B
will start a relationship with Matteo,
A
will hate me for not telling him about the sneaky Italian dude, which will definitely screw up my chances of another Hollywood job and I will be thrown out into the real world where there are no golden expense cards, no LA mansion and no red carpet events. What do I have left? Nothing!”

“This impression of a baby you’re doing is really great, but please stop.” Cesar said and took a huge draw on a cigarette, “Okay, your plan was pretty fucked up, but you shouldn’t assume complete defeat, not with your almost impeccable track record of serving her every need. So you might still have your job and your gold card, but the question that’s buzzing around in my shaved head like a giant bumblebee is if this pampered existence does more bad than good for you. It would probably be healthy to have your own place and your own credit card for a while.”

He was right. I’d become far too comfortable living someone else’s life and when I had started to mismanage my feelings around her, it was even clearer to me that I needed some kind of drastic change.

My friend rubbed his recently bald head for something like the fiftieth time and said, “Why not get your chunky butt out of that padded chair of yours and look for a job in New York? You can move in with me until you find a flat. See this as a chance to break free and stop sulking.”

“I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but I’m not sure what I would do. I can’t afford opening up my own place yet, at least not the way I want it to be and I don’t feel like going back to a regular job either.” We were walking uptown and I was starting to think a beer wouldn’t be half-bad. A last one before I hit the hay and hopefully dreamt all my troubles away.

Cesar put his right arm around me, “You’re probably the smartest guy I know so I would be very surprised if you end up living in a cardboard box or move back in with your parents! You can do whatever you put your mind to; you just need to figure out where to put it.”

And as he gave me this compliment, we stopped outside the bar Cesar had intended for us. He motioned to me to head inside.

The place was called “New beginnings”. I shook my head, chuckled and opened the door.

***

I don't know how I got into bed, but I woke up a few hours later with
B
breathing in my ear. She was lying next to me for some reason, hot like a desert sun (I’m talking temperature here) and cramping my space. I picked up my mobile from the nightstand and found out it was seven in the morning. I wasn’t feeling as bad as I thought I would, the buzz of “new beginnings” were still vibrating inside of me and it felt pretty relieving.

Still, having
B
so close to me stirred emotions I had promised myself to block out. Why was she in my bed? After the storm of hatred she had thrown at me yesterday, it was very confusing. Had she tried to suffocate me with her pillow and fallen asleep while doing so or had she changed her mind completely?

I watched her snoring for a little while, her face smudged with make-up and her hair smelling of cigarette smoke and hair care products. I slowly got out of bed and tucked her in. I guess I would get an answer to why she was there when she woke up, but until then I needed some time for myself.

After a hot shower, I got out and walked two blocks to the nearest Starbucks, where I ordered a large cappuccino and a flavored sparkling water to go. I was feeling a spring in my step as I wandered the remarkably quiet morning streets. I thought of what Cesar and I had talked about and on this crisp spring morning it all made sense to me. It was time for
Ch-ch-ch-changes!
I hummed the classic Bowie song to myself and felt...slightly relaxed.

I found a small park with an empty bench and took a seat, probably with a silly little smile on my face, because despite everything, I was feeling
gooooood
. An elegant woman with abnormally long and skinny legs beautifully displayed in a mid-length skirt and tugging a small white terrier on a leash, stopped not far from where I was sitting. She looked like the kind of woman who does everything with class and never takes no for answer, the kind of woman who rules the world and could make any man feel exactly like that little terrier with just the snap of a finger. It’s an attractive look, someone so seemingly in control of herself and her surroundings and I couldn’t help but look at her. While I did, the fuzzy little dog sat down and took a shit on the ground with a content look on his face. I noticed it was looking right at me while doing so, almost like it was thinking:
Yeah, right. I‘m shitting right here on the ground and this elegant lady, which they call my “master”, will have to pick it up. Ha-ha! Like humans rule the world...

...
And the dog was right of course. When it had finished defecating, the elegant long-legged lady took out one of those small, black plastic bags from her jacket and picked up the turd. And in a way the action reminded me a bit of what my job had been a lot of the time,
B
shat on the floor and I picked it up. It wasn’t weird that I was getting tired of it, because let’s be honest here, even beautiful and famous people’s shit smell.

In retrospect, I think I needed to force myself to see my job and
B
in a different light to be able to let go. I had been saving her ass from loads of mini-disasters over the years and gone beyond my call of duty to make sure she was happy. Like that time when she let out a loud fart at a reception and I claimed it was mine or when she was about to cut her hair depressingly short and I talked her out of it thanks to carefully collected images of women who went short and ugly, or all the arguments between her and
A
I’d managed to mediate away from bigger blow-ups. I’d been putting up quite a performance over the years, and although it had been fun and somewhat rewarding and all that, I hadn’t given much thought to my own life. I’d been completely captivated by the celebrity glow, the lifestyle, the expense card and that
something
she had which you couldn’t really put a name on. That something that, no matter how difficult she was at times, made it seem worth it almost every single one of those times.

But with her marriage collapsing,
B
on the brink of breakdown and the strong possibility of another
man
lurking in the wings, it wasn’t hard to see that quitting my job would be a logical option. How to practically go about it was a completely different story and something that churned around inside my brain when my phone interrupted me.

I was very surprised to hear Jorge, the estate chef, on the other line. Especially since he had never ever called me before.

“Jorge! Long time! How are you?”

Jorge’s deep, booming voice made my iPhone vibrate and images of James Earl Jones pop into my head, “Sorry if I’m calling at a bad time, Darryl. But I really need to talk to you. You’re in New York, right?”

“No problem. Yes, I’m in New York. We all are. It’s been a crazy week. What’s up?”

“It’s my son again. He’s gone off to New York to audition for American Idol. I told him not to, but as usual he ignored my advice and he is staying with my brother in the Bronx this week. I know this is a lot to ask, but I would really appreciate if you could meet up with him and talk him out of it.”

Now this is a twist I couldn’t have foreseen, “Talk him out of it? Why?”

“You know how those blooper reels are, they’ll make laughing stock out of him and it will break my heart. I can't just stand by and watch my son get hurt on national TV. But he doesn’t listen to me, he thinks I don’t understand what he’s trying to do. And that’s why I would be very, very grateful if
you
could talk to him.”

If I had been in a more sound state of mind, with less thoughts flying around my head like papers in the wind, I’d probably said no, but hearing Jorge’s desperate voice made me feel there was really no way I could turn him down. I guess I have always had this strong need to be needed and maybe that was why I ended up like an assistant.

“I don't really see what I could contribute though, why would he listen to me? I don’t know anything about the music industry.” I said, hoping the conversation would end there.

“Well, I’ve told him I know someone who works in the business and could listen to his stuff. I thought you could be that person and let him down nicely. I’m sorry if I put you in an awkward position, but I didn’t know what to do. He’s my son, my everything and I can’t have something happen to him that will hurt his self-esteem for life.”

“So you want me to pretend like I'm some kind of music mogul and tell him not to audition for American Idol?”

“Something like that, yes.” Jorge’s massive voice was down to a whisper.

“And you're sure he would listen to me? Because it sounds to me like he's made up his mind and won't take no for answer, even from a fake record label executive or whatever I'm supposed to act like. What if he just thinks I'm a dick and decides to go ahead and do it anyway?”

Jorge seemed to ponder this, “I know my son pretty well and I know he won't listen much to me, not these days anyway, but he usually takes outside people to heart, especially if they’re experienced. It’s definitely worth a try.”

This was something alright. Here I had walked the streets, thinking that my days of weird assignments were coming to a close and suddenly I needed to don a suit and play a record label exec for a 19-year-old kid who thought he had talent. Life works in mysterious ways.

“Okay, I'll do it,” I said at last, “When do I need to meet him?”

Jorge was quiet again. He was obviously embarrassed to ask, which I thought was a nice personal trait.
B
was never embarrassed to ask me anything, but of course she paid for it.

“The whole thing goes down next week, so the sooner the better. All I want is a chance to protect my son’s feelings.”

How do you argue with that? How do you say no to a father with a bleeding heart?

“Give him my number and tell him we can meet at Bar Pitti in the West Village at 5 pm today. I don’t have much time, so I better take care of it straight away. I'll try my best to play the part, but I can’t promise you anything.”

“I know I could rely on you, Darryl.”

I imagined Jorge smiling on the other end of our conversation. On my end? Not even a grin.

***

My day had done what it sometimes did, turned on a dime. Suddenly I needed to rehearse a plan to imitate a record executive. What first came to my mind was that
B
knew a big fish at one of the major labels. His name was Barry Waldruff and I had said hi to him twice at parties.
B
had told me he had a crush on her and I thought that maybe I could have used that angle to get a meeting with him. But I didn’t have the time and I wasn’t sure that kind of expertise was needed to fool a teenager with stars in his eyes. I just had to look serious, talk serious and pretend to know what I was talking about. I had done that before.

A text message from Julianne popped up on my iPhone. It read: “OK magazine cover. WHO’S THAT GUY?”

OK magazine? What kind of rotting corpse could they have dug up now?
I thought to myself. The upcoming divorce should have been well-kept under wraps, so anything along those lines seemed unlikely. I opened up my phone browser and typed in okmagazine.com.

What met me on the first page was exactly the same thing which met my eyes the night before - an image of
B
and Matteo eating together. The photo was slightly blurry, taken from the outside and through the glass with some super lens, but you could see them alright. I got a jolt in my stomach and an unpleasant tingling saying:
I knew something like this would happen
. I clicked the post and found more pictures of them eating, smiling towards each other, and exiting the restaurant with dreamy looks on their faces. They looked like a couple in love and I hated seeing it.
What was she thinking?

The article wondered pretty much the same. It talked about an affair and the possibility of a divorce. It was guesswork, not journalism, but was bound to blow up to become
the truth
very soon. I knew the retaliation from A would be swift and that things could get nasty fast. As I slalomed the streets downtown I came to the conclusion that things had finally gone beyond saving. I needed to talk to
B
and tell her about the article and about how I felt, I needed to set things straight.

But she didn’t pick up the phone, so while I waited I decided to ask Cesar for help in fooling a lost teenager.

***

Cesar saw no problem in tagging along with my so called “prank”, but of course he’d always liked practical jokes, which was kind of how he saw this “assignment” from Jorge. He had even been kind enough to borrow me his second suit, an ill-fitting grey apparition with a no-name brand. It was too tight and it looked like it had been hanging in Cesar’s closet since he got his first dreadlock, but I had no time nor desire to head back to my hotel room and bump into
B
or possibly even Matteo, so I said I could live with it.