So 5 Minutes Ago (13 page)

“Oh,” I say, fumbling for my bag. Why didn’t I turn it off? “Actually this could be a Troy thing,” I say, suddenly fearing the worst. “Hello?”

“Where the fuck are you? And don’t say in bed.”

Rachel, and from the roaring sounds in the background at a party. Oh, the
party.
The one I said I’d meet her at and then forgot to cancel when I made dinner plans with Charles.

“Actually, just finishing dinner,” I say casually. “With Charles. You remember I said he was coming back to L.A.”

“ ‘Charles.’ That’s cute. At least you stood me up for a good reason,” Rachel says, and I can tell she’s only slightly pissed. Or on her second martini.

“So how’s it going there?” I say.

“How’s it going
there
?”

“Oh, you know,” I say blandly, giving Charles a what-can-you-do? shrug.

Rachel gives me the rundown—the party’s at the house of some kid director of one of her studio’s upcoming releases—and tells me that if I’m, if
we’re
not there in thirty minutes, she’s leaving. I know the party will be the usual cutthroat jockeying of egos disguised as fun. Like a Jim Carrey movie. I make noncommital noises and hang up.

“There’s a party?” Charles says. He sounds surprised but not unpleasantly so.

“You know Hollywood. There’s always a party.”

He asks me if I’m planning on going. I’m about to say, are you crazy, I’m planning on going home and crying myself to sleep, when I realize it’s the perfect face-saving coda to the evening.

“Actually, I did tell her I’d stop by.”

“Well,” he says, leaning forward and smiling in his warm, crinkly-eyed way. “Then let me go with you.”

Really?

Not so fast. “Oh no. You must be exhausted,” I say, waving him off. “Besides, it will just be a work thing. They’re all work things.”

But no. He’s keen to go.
Eager
to go. To get out and experience the Hollywood scene although, thank God, he doesn’t use those exact words. Nothing worse than some out-of-towner dying to find The Hollywood Scene.

“Get the address and I’ll order the espressos,” he says, signaling for the waiter. “I’ll even drive us.” He turns back and gives me another crinkly smile. “Let’s keep this going.”

The party is north of Sunset off Doheny. A good neighborhood although technically not Beverly Hills. Still, the house itself is impressive in that bullying L.A. way. New England Colonial on steroids. So Greenwich manqué. Or
Home Alone.
We dropped my Audi at my house, so Charles is driving us in his rental. A black BMW. The 5 series. Nice. And he can actually drive in L.A., which hardly any New Yorkers can.

By the time we hit the valet stand at the end of the drive, the party is going full bore. Probably the third quarter. The front door is open and light pours onto the flagstones. Voices and laughter float in the night air. Over in the shadows on the front lawn, I see a group smoking and laughing.

“Very West Egg. Or is it East Egg, I can never keep those straight,” Charles says as he hands the keys to the valet and we begin our trek up the drive. Up is right. It’s one of those houses sited at about a twenty-degree angle up from the street, and in my mules, I feel myself starting to slip.
Fuck.

“Here,” he says, reaching out for my arm. “Hang on to me.”

Oh, honey.

Outside might be faux Greenwich, but inside we step into a corner of Britain’s Home Counties. Black and white slate and limestone tiles cover the hallway floor. On the wall, an equally dizzying series of hunting prints. Some dogs, some horses, some horses
and
dogs. Against the other wall, an antique bench and a coatrack holding a riding coat, a checked driving cap, and several riding crops. On the floor are several pairs of well-worn riding boots. As if.

I know for a fact that the director is the latest thirty-year-old whiz kid. Grew up in Jersey. One low-budget indie comes in a gusher. Now he’s got a studio deal and this stage set. Usually these overnight wonders head to Malibu. Rent a beach house. Or Trousdale. Pick up some mid-century white box, toss down a shag carpet, some Eames chairs, a little Noguchi, and call it home.

But this is off the charts. Almost Old Hollywood in its clueless ostentation. Like Tony Curtis. Or Nancy Reagan. The house is steps from the Strip, with the clubs and tattoo parlors and Larry Flynt’s house of sex, where the dazed-looking tourists and weasel-chested rockers kill time fingering the crotchless panties and the rainbow-hued dildos. But up here, up here this is Disneyland.

“Well,” I say, rolling my eyes at Charles. “Tallyho.”

We head into the living room. More Hollywood English manor. Beamed ceiling. Leather sofas. A DJ scratching out Kid Rock. And the usual Hollywood demimonde. Guys in baggy jeans, T-shirts, and V-neck sweaters. The women: low-riders, tight, midriff-baring sweaters, and three-inch heels. Britney may be over but like Farrah’s hairdo, her navel-baring style lives on. Over the pounding sound system, snatches of conversation drift our way.
Turnaround. Development deal. Option clause. Yeah, I’ll have another hit.

“I told you it was a work thing,” I say to Charles, hollering over the crowd.

“No problem,” he hollers back, and I wonder if he’s making a joke. “Let’s find the bar.”

I know by now the bar will be a figment of imagination. Judging by the hour and the energy in the room, everyone has moved on to other mood enhancers. The bar, or what’s left of it, will be dead soldiers in a kitchen manned by the usual bored-looking, non-English-speaking help.

“Sure,” I say, heading for the kitchen. Or where I think the kitchen might be. But we’ve barely moved when Charles is waylaid. Some actress. The usual Amazon with surgical enhancements and special needs. They met in New York a few months ago when she was looking for new representation. Or that’s as much as I gather before she hauls Charles off for further consultation—“Hey, I’ll catch up with you,” he says—and I’m left to make my own way to the kitchen. Nothing like taking someone to a party where they know more people than you do.

In the kitchen, the bar is clearly finito. Empties and tired- looking Latinos. I give an embarrassed smile and am about to back out, when I spy a half-empty bottle of warm Chardonnay and pour myself a glass. Probably not the best idea after last night, but then so far, not much of this evening has been the best idea.

I head back out and scan the crowd. Some mid-level actors. Studio people. Agents; no party is complete without agents circling the waters. A few producers. A few ersatz producers. No one I feel like talking to. Or even pretending to talk to. I know I should work the crowd. Get the lowdown on the movie. The actors. Meet them. Woo them. Bag them. Mount their heads on BIG-DWP’s walls. But you need one of three things to get through a Hollywood party—energy, celebrity, or the right drugs—and at the moment I’m lacking all three.

“Hey, you made it.”

I whip around. Rachel. A little glassy-eyed. But then she’s better a little glassy-eyed.

“I didn’t think you guys would show. Given your date, I mean.”

“What date?” I say glumly. “It was just a business lunch that got moved to dinner. And now he’s out doing some more business,” I say, waving vaguely toward the crowd, “with a potential client.”

“At least you got dinner,” she says, and I can tell she’s trying to be helpful.

“And if you came in the same car there’s still some chance for nooky on the way home.”

I look at her.
“Nooky?”

“I think it’s the decor,” she says with an airy wave. “It’s getting to me. I just told someone ‘Cheerio.’”

“Yeah,” I say, eager to talk about anything besides my nondate. “What’s with this guy? Couldn’t just head to Trousdale like the rest of the anointed?”

“I don’t know. I think one of his relatives was English or something,” she says. “Or maybe he bought it like this. Who cares? All the studio knows is that his movie tested through the roof.”

“What is it again? Some Martin Lawrence comedy?”

“Which I used to think was an oxymoron, but the cards came back off the charts.”

I take another slug of wine and gaze around the room. No sign of Charles. My
ride.
I feel like a Macy’s parade balloon with a fatal leak. All bloated expectations slowly expiring. In public.

“Did I ever tell you I actually hate talking about the movie business?” I say.

“Several times.”

“Hey, Rachel. Alex.” Some studio exec floats by, his arm around some actress on the WB channel. “How’s it going?”

“Great, great,” we say in unison, although I have no idea who the guy is or why he knows my name. The actress smiles coyly.

“Love your series,” Rachel says.

“Yeah,” I say automatically.

“What’s her show again?” I say when they drift out of earshot.

“Like it matters,” Rachel says. “So do you think you’d hate the movie business if you actually had a date with Charles tonight? I think it’s just a defensive reaction.”

I am in no mood for the analyst’s couch. “I mean it,” I say. “Unless you’re an A-list whatever—actor, producer, exec—coming to these things is just a Sisyphean exercise. You have to be at the top to make it all work. I’m just not powerful or famous enough.”

“Actually, I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Rachel says, grabbing my arm and pulling me away from the crowd. “I wasn’t going to bring this up, given your frame of mind and yesterday’s
Post,
but there’s a rumor that you and Troy are, ah, an item.”

I laugh so hard wine spurts out of my nose.

“Come on, you’re not that hard to ID in the pictures,” she says, rooting around in her jeans pocket and handing me a balled-up cocktail napkin. “What’d you think? No one would figure it out?”

“So
what
if they know it’s me?” I say, dabbing at my face. I realize I’m using on Rachel the exact line I tried out on Steven. “I was at the event with my client. I’m guilty of what? Being a dutiful publicist?”

“Look,” she says with a shrug. “You don’t have to convince me. All I’m saying is what I’m hearing. That you and Troy are an item. Or—”

“Or what?”

“Well, there’s a second opinion that you’re just trying to make it
look
like you guys are an item. That you planted the story in the
Post.
To goose your profile. In light of the merger.”

I am Barney collapsing all over Broadway. “Troy fucks anybody! You said so yourself. But
I
don’t make the cut?”

“See, I knew you’d like the first rumor better,” she says but I’ve stopped listening. I am not Barney. I am a dead woman. Not only am I
not
on a date, but I have managed to drag my new boss to a party where people either think I’m sleeping with my client, which is totally unethical, or I am such a loser that I
want
them to think I’m sleeping with my client, who would
never
sleep with me. Whatever shred of dignity I had when I started this evening is now shot to hell. I have to get out of here. I have to get
Charles
out of here. And preferably out of town.

I dive into the crowd. Cinderella on uppers. Racing to find the prince before I turn into more of a pumpkin than I already am. But faces leer up out of the crowd.

“Hey, Alex, how’s it going?”

“Hey, Alex.”

“Hey, Alex, I hear you’re handling Troy Madden now.”

“Hey, Alex.”

“Hey.”

I feel like I’m caught in that dream when you’re naked in a roomful of people. Then I spy him. Out on the patio. With the same actress. The one who seems to have her tongue planted in his ear.

“So you told him what, that you were sick?”

We’re in Rachel’s Jeep Cherokee heading up Laurel Canyon toward my house.

“It’s not like I was lying,” I say, leaning back in the passenger seat with my eyes closed. Or as closed as I can keep them without feeling carsick on the twisty road.

“I thought the plan was to get
him
out of the party.”

“Well, it didn’t look like that was possible. Not with Miss Thespian going in for the kill.”

“But he did offer to drive you home.”

“He
said
he would. Look, I’m sorry if I made you leave earlier than you wanted.” I twist in the seat so I can see her. “It just seemed like the least humiliating option.”

“Don’t be retarded,” she says, downshifting so abruptly that the gears grind and I can’t tell if she’s pissed at me or Charles or just the evening in general.

I close my eyes again and then, suddenly, we are at my front gate.

“Do you want me to walk you to the door?” she says, her voice softer now. “It’s late and your stairs are pretty steep.”

I feel tears spring to my eyes. This
town
is pretty steep and for the first time I think I might not make it. Navigate the highs and lows of Hollywood. The highs so out of reach and the lows all too easy.

“No, I think I can make it,” I say, glad Rachel can’t see me too closely in the dark. “But thanks.”

I get out of the car and head for the stairs.

Down.

10 Girls, Interrupted

                  It’s all
so
high school. “Hollywood is high school with money.” Just like the saying goes. I just hadn’t realized how true it is. Until now. Until my nondate with Charles. My nondate with Charles and our
Carrie
-like homecoming party. And of course my paranoia about running into him at the office on Monday.

To his credit, he did call. Early the next morning after the party. Actually he left a message, since I was in no shape to answer the phone, let alone lie at 9
A.M.
on a Sunday morning. Apologies all around. For being late, for the car mix-up, for getting roped into a business conversation at the party, for not taking me home. For all of it. He’s sorry and hopes I feel better and call him. And he sounds sincere—even contrite—and for a moment I’m tempted to try and put the genie back in the bottle.

“Are you out of your
mind
?” Steven says, when he calls later in the morning looking for a full accounting of the evening. “You think only gays are into self-abusive relationships? Honey, I’m about to make you an honorary member.”

“Yeah, well, hold that thought because I’m
not
calling him.” I’m sitting up in bed, sun pooling on the sheets, a mug of coffee strong enough to dance on, the Sunday papers, and Steven in my ear. The world has turned again on its axis. Miraculous, and I am in no position to question it.

“Look, whether it was a business thing or a date that went south, I’m treating it like business. It’s the only way out.” I add, “Charles is my colleague. My boss. End of story.”

“Still, he told you about his parents,” Steven says, and I can tell he wants to analyze the data again.

“Forget it.” And I mean it. It’s Sunday. In L.A. I’m going to read the papers. Maybe garden. Or hike a canyon. I hear it’s what people do in L.A. on Sundays. Besides, I’m more concerned about the rumors about me and Troy. Or I am until Steven comes apart with laughter when I mention it.

“Rachel
wishes
people were talking about her and Troy. About her and anyone,” he says. “That girl is so deluded. Besides, who’d she hear that from? Other studio people? They never know anything.”

“Look, I know you don’t like her, but try to keep your well-honed animosity toward all females except me in check. She
is
one of my closest friends.”

Steven snorts. “It has nothing to do with her being a woman, which if you ask me is debatable. I just think her tough-girl act is a little old.”

“My tough-girl act is a little old.”

“You guys are not remotely similar,” he says. “You’re confused. She’s just mean.”

“She isn’t mean,” I say. “You just don’t get what it’s like to be a short brunette woman with a brain and a mouth in a town that values none of those attributes.”

“Why do you think I live here?”

“Okay, we’re getting off the track,” I say, starting to feel flickerings of last night’s despair. “About me and Troy. You don’t think I need to mount a counteroffensive?”

“I’m more worried you’re using military metaphors, but nooooo,” he says, ticking off our usual list of reasons why nothing bad ever really happens in Hollywood unless it involves money: all publicity is good publicity, no one reads anything, and J. Lo. “It will only be a matter of time before she gets married again. Or divorced—or wherever she is in her social calendar—and everyone will have something else to talk about. You know attention levels in this town.”

“I do and it’s why we’re hanging up now,” I say, feeling better than I thought was possible twelve hours ago. “I have to go hike a canyon.”

Of course, our paths do cross. On Monday to be exact. When Charles comes by my office. To apologize. In person. The evening might have been fucked up, but the guy’s got manners. I give him that.

“So at the very least, I owe you a ride,” he says, running his hand through his hair with the kind of gesture that if I hadn’t just spent the world’s most embarrassing evening with him, I would describe as bashful.

“No, no, no. No problem,” I say, busying myself with some papers on my desk. Miss No Problem again. “Really, Rachel was just leaving and it worked out great.”

I look up with a steely smile and realize Charles looks—what? Crestfallen? Surprised? Well, too late now. This is-he-or-isn’t-he road only leads to heartbreak. Or a bad country-and-western lyric.

“So did you manage to sign—what did you say her name was? Stella?”

“Oh please,” he says, shaking his head. “She has no idea what she wants.”

I’m about to say she seemed to have a pretty good idea Saturday night, but think better of it. I may not know if Charles was or wasn’t my date two nights ago, but I do know, in this office, he’s my superior. “Well, at least you tried,” I say. Another steely smile. “So?” I add briskly. Old business? New business? Move to adjourn before I lose my cool here?

“So?” He looks at me like he’s trying to read Proust in the original and can’t quite make it out. “So, I’ll see you around the office?”

Could not sound more like Chinese water torture. Or reading Proust in the original.

“Absolutely.”

“Unless you have time for lunch before I leave. To make up for the ride—the nonride—home.”

Just when I’m out, they pull me back in. I feel Miss No Problem beginning to crumble, when there’s a knock at the door. Steven. With news from the front, apparently, judging by the look on his face.

“Yes?” I say, bracing for some new emergency with Troy.

“You have that lunch meeting today?”

“Lunch meeting?” I look at him blankly. Then at my calendar. I have nothing down for today. “Oh, you mean the
thing
?” I’m guessing Steven is trying to pry me away from Charles by doing that scene from
Annie Hall
where Woody Allen tries to keep Diane Keaton away from Paul Simon by reminding her that “we have that
thing.
”

“No,”
Steven says archly. “Kelly
Cohen.
At her house,” he adds, looking at his watch. “At one.”

“Oh, Kelly. Jesus. That’s today?”

It’s true. I do have a meeting with Kelly Cohen, but why I don’t have this down in my book, I have no idea. Probably too distracted by my dating Troy and not dating Charles. An actress-turned-screenwriter, Kelly also happens to be my favorite client. Actually, now that she’s got her medication adjusted, she’s the only client I can stand to spend any time with, and given that I still need an exit strategy from the
Days of Our Lives
scene playing out in my office, I’m not about to reschedule.

“Hey, you’re busy,” Charles says, raising his hands and heading toward the door. “I’ll let you go.”

I feel like Kate Winslet drowning in the North Atlantic, watching the lifeboat row off into the fog. “Well, let’s see if we can work out lunch,” I say. If I had a whistle, I would blow it. “I’m sure I can move something around.”

But he’s gone. An enigmatic smile and out the door. Out of my life.

“Well, that was close,” Steven says like he’s saved me from a burning building. Or from buying a pair of acid-washed jeans.

“I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “I cannot read that guy.”

“So read this instead.” He hands me a copy of the press release I have to approve for Kelly’s new movie, some family comedy she wrote called
Butterfly Girls.
“If you want my advice,” he adds, “talk to Kelly. If anyone has seen it all, she has.”

This was true. Although I’m not sure if a woman with two ex-husbands, including one who’d turned out to be gay, is really the fount of relationship knowledge. What Kelly does know is Hollywood. All too well. Her mother, Lily, was an MGM stock star, and her father, Dave Cohen, a fifties game show host. Until his embezzlement scandal. Kelly did some acting as a kid. Guest-starring stuff on
Lassie
and
Donna Reed.
But after her parents divorced, she got shipped off to boarding school and when she resurfaced, Kelly had given up acting to become a screenwriter. She’d also acquired a husband, a drummer in a seventies heavy-metal band. Or he was her husband until his drug habit got the better of him. Kelly refers to her first marriage as “my Black Panther phase.” Or if she is feeling more cynical, her “Heather Locklear phase.” Then there was her brief marriage to a hot young producer, a close friend of David Geffen’s like
that’s
not a clue, who wound up coming out of the closet and out of Kelly’s life.

Now, Kelly is mostly famous for being famous. In addition to her famous parents and famous ex-husbands, she has a famous house, a rambling Spanish-style hacienda off Coldwater that once belonged to Fay Wray and later, George Hamilton. Under Kelly’s aegis, it is the site of lots of famous parties where there are so many famous guests that Kelly uses a velvet rope to cordon off the less famous from the really famous. It is about knowing the difference between Liz Taylor and Matt LeBlanc. Or it would be if Kelly bothered knowing Matt LeBlanc.

As Kelly’s publicist, I don’t have to worry about the velvet rope. I don’t have to worry about much with Kelly, unless she is changing medication. There was a bipolar thing, but that’s pretty much under control now. Most of the time, Kelly’s on autopilot because there’s nothing to publicize. She writes her scripts. Actually, she mostly rewrites scripts. She sees the doctor.

But then she wrote
Butterfly Girls,
a cable movie about some high school honor students who go to South America to study Monarch deaths but stumble on some ancient ruins. Normally this was the kind of thing Kelly would run from, even if it was based on an article from
The New Yorker
and supposed to star Britney Spears, who wanted to shoot a companion video at an Inca temple if they could get the Peruvian government to sign off on it. But when Kelly got an estimate from her roof contractor that took all of her summer-in-the-Hamptons budget and then some, she allowed her agent to talk her into writing a draft. She also extracted a stipulation—or as much of one as a writer can extract—that her mother would be considered for the role of a teacher. Or Britney’s grandmother. Or something.

Amid her own career ups and downs, Kelly was worried about her mother. Like many a star who came of age during the studio system, Lily never earned big money. She also weathered one too many bad marriages. Or one too many bad managers. Anyway, given Hollywood’s brutal sell-by dates, Lily was not exactly living the
InStyle
lifestyle. If Kelly didn’t want to see her wind up in the SAG retirement home or in some cramped, one-bedroom condo down on Doheny like Evelyn Keyes, who played Scarlett O’Hara’s sister in
Gone with the Wind,
something, even if it was as loathsome as
Butterfly Girls,
had to be done.

In Kelly’s mind the script deal was a twofer and she gave it six weeks and her usual professional approach, which meant sitting cross-legged on her bed with its six-hundred-thread-count sheets, smoking about eighteen cigarettes an hour, surrounded by a pile of coffee-table books about Machu Picchu and some old Hayley Mills videos, before she could bring herself to type lines like “Girls, I think we should stick to the map,” and “Hey, I didn’t know you could sing!”

Of course, Britney wound up passing, they always do, and when
Butterfly Girls
finally got a green light more than a year later it had morphed into a cable movie shot in Veracruz starring a bunch of Britney wannabes. Still, Lily had a part—she played a tourist who befriended the girls in Lima—which at least meant a paycheck even if it was cable. And now there’s talk of a possible series commitment.

“I know it’s cable but Lily’s terrific in it,” Kelly is saying when I finally arrive. After letting myself in the kitchen—
hi, hi, hi
to Marta, Kelly’s housekeeper busy frying bacon, Chris her assistant, busy waiting for the bacon, and all the dogs yapping away—I follow the sound of Kelly’s voice, its whiskeyish resonances, through the cool barrel-vaulted living room that could stand a paint job, and into her bedroom. The one with the gold stars on the robin’s-egg-blue ceiling.

“And if it goes to series, she can do it,” Kelly says. A tiny red cell phone adorned with Swarovski crystals is jammed against her ear while she wiggles enough of her upper arm out of the neck of her black cashmere sweater to slap on a nicotine patch. I reach out to help her adjust her sweater sleeve.

“Well, if it shoots a season in three months, she could do it,” Kelly says, nodding at me and rolling her eyes. “Look, I have to go.” She wiggles her arm back into the sleeve. “I’ll talk to her when I see her this weekend.”

“Hi, honey,” Kelly says, putting the phone down and giving me a hug. “Did you eat? You look great. But then my standards aren’t much these days. Visible features qualify.”

Kelly quit smoking a month ago and gained something like ten pounds. Or maybe twenty. Now she’s on the patch and the Atkins diet. Or her version of it, which, by the looks of things, is not a match made in heaven. Atkins is
the
Hollywood diet: broiled fish, bottled water, and belligerence. Naturally, everyone is on it. Even Chris, her hyper assistant with the build and attention span of a schnauzer, is on it. But for an orally fixated, sugar-addicted woman like Kelly, eating bacon to lose weight makes about as much sense as eating dog food. Still, as Kelly’s publicist, her diet is my diet.