Party Girl: A Novel (12 page)

“Bruce Young,” he says into the phone, sounding harried.

“Bruce, hey. It’s Amelia Stone in L.A.”

“Who?” He sounds frenzied and annoyed.

“From the L.A. office. A staff writer.”

“Oh. And?” Christ. I know editors aren’t renowned for their interpersonal skills but can’t he make more of an effort to be gregarious?

“Look, I’m doing the reporting on the Linda Lewis piece and—”

“Are we doing a story on her?” he asks, cutting me off.

“Yes, it’s on the schedule,” I say, marveling at his incompetence. “You’re listed as the editor.”

“Oh, okay. So what about it?”

Something inside warns me not to continue with what I’m about to do but I feel strangely powerless over my ability to stop now.

“Look, here’s the thing. Linda won’t say her age—”

“She has to say her age. It’s company policy.” The guy clearly has no issue with repeatedly cutting me off.

“I know, but here’s the thing. The interview was amazing. I mean, she
cried.
She talked about stuff she swore she’d never tell anyone. I really think it could be an outstanding story.” I’d normally never use the word “outstanding,” but Bruce seems like the kind of guy who might respond well to it.

“So go find out her age. Call the DMV.”

“Well, she said she’d rather have the story killed than have her age run, and I just—”

“So let’s kill the story. Or, if we’ve already photographed her, let’s not waste valuable film and a photographer’s time. Just find out her age and print it. Screw what she wants. Personally, I think she sucks, anyway. I mean, ‘Sinner’? Are you kidding me?”

Even though Bruce is insulting Linda, I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face. For a brief second, I want to be outraged by his ridiculous lack of empathy for the human race but the truth is, my outrage seems, like most things, to be all about me.

“Well, it’s a ridiculous policy,” I snap after a stray tear manages to escape from each eye.

“Excuse me?” For the first time in the conversation, I seem to have inspired something more than an indifferent response from him. I’m about to respond with a snippy explanation for exactly why I feel the policy is insane when suddenly Brian appears at my cubicle.

“You need to come to Robert’s office,” he says. He has this look on his face that I’ve never seen before, like he’s somewhere between scared and furious.

I nod at him that I’ll be there in a second, hoping he’ll walk away so I can finish my conversation with Bruce.

“Now!” Brian yells so loudly that I jump out of my seat and about three feet in the air.

“I have to go,” I say to Bruce and hang up, not even waiting to hear if he says good-bye. I suddenly know exactly what’s about to happen and start passionately wishing for that mammoth earthquake everyone says is going to come and wipe out all of California.

“Follow me, please, Amelia,” Brian says. The word “please” sounds formal and uncomfortable coming from him.

As I follow Brian down the hall, heads poke out of office doors and then back inside. Nosy motherfuckers. Brian bypasses his own office, me just a step behind, and walks straight into Robert’s. It’s only my second time in Robert’s office and I’d forgotten just how austere and uncomfortable it was. I sit down on the corner of a brown couch while Brian sits opposite me in a cushioned seat that’s the same color. Robert leans back in his Herman Miller chair. Nobody says a word and for one brief, horrific second, I think I’m actually going to have to be the one to start this conversation.

“We know what you’ve been doing today,” Robert finally says, staring at the ground.

“In the bathroom,” Brian, who now looks pink with anger, adds.

“Apparently you weren’t very subtle,” Robert says, his gaze still fixated on some small stain in his carpet. I’m about to defend myself, to tell them that what I’ve been doing today is practically
de rigueur
in Hollywood, but I seem to have lost the ability to speak.

“And do you know how much trouble you’ve gotten us in lately, Amelia?” Brian continues, looking like he literally might cry. “This thing with Amy Baker. What the hell did you say to her?”

I should have known that anorexic, soulless wench would call someone above me to complain
, I think. I’m about to defend myself and explain that she was the one who falsely accused me of misquoting people, but I seem to have lost the ability to speak or even, for that matter, focus. I try to keep my mind on what’s going on in this room but my head seems to have other ideas.

“And this ridiculous drama with Kane—telling me you’re going there during the day for a follow-up interview when really you were going to his house at night!”

Janet is a scum-sucking whore for telling on me
, I think. I don’t say anything.

“What were you thinking?” Brian asks but it’s the very definition of a rhetorical question because it’s perfectly obvious he’s made up his mind about me and nothing I have to say will make a damn bit of difference. I’m feeling light-headed and sort of confused.
Am I being fired?
I wonder but then tell myself,
I can’t be fired because this job is the only thing I have. I have no friends. No boyfriend. No family here. Nothing. And this is a town that forgets about people who have nothing.

This is just a warning
, my head tells me.
If I was going to be fired, they
would be really nice and apologetic and tell me they were sorry things didn’t work out. People feel bad when they fire you.

I force myself to tune into what Brian is saying.

“—one thing if it was just a drug problem—”

A drug problem?
I think.
Christ. I need a pick-me-up one damn day and suddenly I have a “drug problem”?

“—but we’ve given you, frankly, more chances than you deserve—”

More chances than I deserve
? I think. How the hell should they know what I deserve?

“—attitude problem—”

Now that was something I’d been told since I could remember. Whenever I got upset when I was little and cried, my dad would laugh and call me his “little actress.” He’d call me a petulant princess, and Mom, thrilled to see her always-depressed husband actually smiling, would laugh, too. There were entire car trips to Tahoe where I’d be crying and my parents would be laughing at me. Later, Dad would summarize the incident by saying that it all started because I had an attitude problem.

Focus on what Brian is saying
, I tell myself,
before it’s too late.

I look up and concentrate very hard on not crying. Brian seems to have stopped talking. I notice that Robert’s lips are moving but it’s very hard for my brain to comprehend the fact that he’s talking to me because of his utter focus on a piece of lint on the ground. But when I tune in completely, there’s no mistaking his words and what they mean.

“We’d like you out of here within the hour.”

I nod, and somehow make it out of his office without allowing even one droplet to leave my eye.

The next thing I know, I’m at my desk, packing my files into a box someone had placed next to my chair. Christ, had the entire office been told I was going to be fired before I even knew?

As I copy all my files, delete everything else on the hard drive, and take pictures and notes off the cubicle walls, I marvel at the fact that not one of the spineless assholes I work with is going to come over and tell me they’re sorry and what’s happening isn’t fair, the way they did when this nerdy guy, Raoul, was fired a few months ago. It’s true that I wasn’t exactly friends with any of them—Brian was actually the only person I really talked to here—but you’d think that an iota of human compassion might penetrate one of their superficial hearts.
What do they think, that getting fired is contagious?
I wonder as I grab unused notebooks, packs of Post-it notes, and packets of Uniball pens, and toss them in my to-go box.
Consider this my severance package
, I silently tell the halls of
Absolutely Fabulous
as I pick up the box. The coke I’ve been ingesting over the past twenty-four hours has definitely drained from my system, leaving me depleted and dry, but my desire to get the fuck out of this building somehow overrides my comedown. I make my way to the elevator, pray not to run into Stephanie, and eventually make it to my car, where I collapse in hysterical sobs.

Then I remember that Brian and Robert or anyone else from
Absolutely Fabulous
could come down to the garage and see me like this, so I force myself to get it together enough to drive. Somehow I make it home, where I walk inside and straight to bed.

11

“It’s completely unfair,” I say to Mom. “I mean, I could probably sue them for wrongful termination.” I don’t mention anything about the coke, because I don’t see how it’s any of her business, and just tell her I was fired for having an “attitude” problem.

“Oh, honey.”
Oh, honey
is about all she’s said during this incredibly unpleasant conversation. Lately I’ve been having this feeling that I’ve stopped disappointing Mom—that, in fact, she’s resigned herself to the fact that I’m always going to be sharing disappointing news—and so she just sounds sad and I resent her for this.

“Everything’s going to be fine, Mom,” I say. “In fact, things will be better than fine.” I’m having this conversation on absolutely no sleep since yesterday, after getting home from work, passing out, then waking up and calling Alex, I’d proceeded to stay up all night with a gram while listening to this Black Eyed Peas song over and over. But obsessively playing the song had actually sparked some mind expansion of sorts, wherein I’d realized that the publishing world simply didn’t appreciate my gifts and it was time to find a place that did. “I’m beginning to think, like, screw the magazine business,” I say to her. “Maybe I should get into the film business, you know? I am, after all, in Hollywood.”

Mom “Oh, honey”s me a couple more times and doesn’t provide any of the comfort, I think, that a mother should. No proclamations that I was surely right and Brian and Robert were wrong and declarations that no one should undervalue her baby, who was clearly so special. “You better call your dad to talk about money,” she eventually says before we hang up. “And let me know what happens.”

The truth is that I’m a trust funder. The only thing is that Dad convinced me to sign the trust over to him and Mom when I turned eighteen and was supposed to get it. So, in theory, Mom and Dad share the responsibility, but Mom essentially relinquished all decision-making power to Dad so he decides if I ever get to see any of the cash. The fact that the money is technically mine—and I won’t get the bulk of it until I’m like forty-five or something—usually feels like a moot point. Convincing my dad that I need and deserve some of it has to be, I think, more challenging, and surely more guilt-inducing, than earning every penny.

But now, of course, I don’t have the option of earning it.
I’d like to work
, I think, as I dial Dad’s number.
But they won’t let me.
As I explain to Dad what happened—the version he gets is that I was fired even though I was doing a really good job because my two bosses were complete pricks—I promise myself that I’m going to make it through this entire conversation without crying.

“So, there’s no chance they’ll change their mind and take you back?” he asks.

“Haven’t you been listening, Dad?” I wail, incredibly irritated with him for not keeping up with the story. “I wouldn’t
want
them to take me back. In fact, I’m getting out of publishing and into the film business.”

He sighs. “How much do you need to live?” he asks, ignoring my film business plan altogether. “What’s your budget?”

Dad’s always asking me annoying questions about my “budget”—about how much I spend on dry cleaning and renting movies and other things—and it tends to depress the hell out of me. It’s so anti-life—this insistence he has on counting up every penny even though there are so many of them.

“Just send me a couple grand and I’ll start looking for a new job today,” I say, and for some reason this makes me want to sob.
I’m such a piece of shit
, I think.
A good-for-nothing spoiled brat who can’t support her-self at an age where most people are married and self-supporting.
Dad doles out a lecture on the importance of valuing money, promises to send a check in the next couple of days, and I’m able to get off the phone before the wracking sobs start.

I get into crying for a while, burying myself under my covers with a box of tissues to blow my nose into and watching my pillows get drenched in snotty, teary—and I have to confess, even slightly bloody—liquid. But then I remember that I don’t need to be depressed because I can just do a bump or two and that will make everything okay.

Just a little bit
, I think as I get out of bed and walk over to my purse,
to keep me motivated today.
I pull out the enormous plastic bag filled with coke, take the Gretna Green picture off the wall, pour it out, chop it up using my Macy’s credit card, and inhale. I feel immediately better and decide that I’m going to make better use of my time than I would if I hadn’t been fired and still worked at
Absolutely Fabulous.

I e-mail a girl I know who’s an assistant at UTA and ask her to send me the job list. UTA is one of the big agencies in town and for whatever reason, they have a list of the unannounced industry jobs available. In order to see it, you need to know someone who works there, and so the lack of availability of the job list to the general populace serves as its own screening process.
It wasn’t announced—I just found out about it from the UTA job list
, I’ve heard people say. I was, I decide, going to be one of them.

I do a line and then, in what seems like minutes, the UTA girl e-mails me back. I print up the job list and start highlighting the positions that sound appealing, taking only one break to snort up a few more lines. Even though I already did assistant duty—slaving away as an editorial assistant at a parenting magazine in San Francisco—I realize that if I’m going to take the film business by storm, I’m probably going to have to start at the bottom. And the UTA job list provides many different opportunities to do just that:
Mailroom clerk at William Morris
, one listing reads.
Second assistant to top-notch producer with Sony deal
, reads another. And then my eyes catch on a listing that seems tailor-made for me:
Part-time personal assistant for Imagine executive Holly Min
, it says.
Ideal for writer or actor needing extra cash.
I think I’ve seen Holly Min’s name in the trades before. And, as I focus in on the words “ideal for a writer,” it occurs to me that what I should probably be doing is writing screenplays of my own.