You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again: The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny (24 page)

“Suzy? Will you still bring me back pictures of you water-skiing like you said?”

I began crying all over again.

Apparently my subconscious really didn’t want to go back. On the morning of my flight to LA, my alarm didn’t go off. I had to connect in Portland, and if I didn’t catch the right plane, I’d be hours late. I was petrified of Judy’s wrath, especially given how I’d left things. Mom screeched out to the airport with me, yelling “Go faster” the entire way. I checked in at 8:42 for a 9
A.M
. flight. Miraculously, the agent said I might still be able to make it if I ran—the Eugene airport is very small, and passengers walk right on the tarmac to the planes. I tore off across the asphalt, my enormous purse swinging behind me. Even from fifty yards away I saw the flight attendants waving for me to hurry up. I could only imagine what was running through the minds of all the passengers staring out at me from the little windows.

And then I tripped.

The entire contents of my bag—four tampons, wallet, a banana, two magazines, four sticks of Doublemint gum, my ticket, a paperback
book, a pair of socks, a small can of Mace, nail polish, about four dollars in change, several loose slips of paper with notes for journal entries, pictures of the kids, and a backup toothbrush—spewed out across the tarmac. I lay there sprawled out amid it all, some free preflight entertainment for those infernal staring passengers. One of the flight attendants—laughing uncontrollably, I might add—dashed down and helped me pick up the stuff. Humiliated, I finally boarded the plane. My seat? Perhaps I should have known that it would be at the very back of the plane, past rows and rows of snickering people.

Thankfully, when I got back to Brentwood, it looked like there might be some good news. While I was home, my sister Cindy told me how bored she was with her accounting job at the headquarters of a national restaurant chain. In a flash of brilliant inspiration, I persuaded her to apply for a position in the accounting department at CAA. She had to send in a photo with her résumé—why they cared what the back-office number crunchers looked like, I’ll never know, but she must have been cute enough, because she got an interview. Cindy had an outstanding work ethic and was very good at what she did, and I wasn’t surprised when she got the job. Sarah had briefed Michael, and he said in passing one night, “I hear your sister is moving down here and coming to work for us.” It was the most personal remark he had ever made to me.

Just two years older, Cindy and I had always been great friends, and we were both excited to live close to each other. She aspired to do great things with her career, and I aspired to get an occasional Saturday night off and stay at her apartment. She put me in charge of finding a place for her. My priority was proximity to
me
, of course. The best I could do was a two-bedroom box that cost $1100 a month. Poor Cindy couldn’t muster up the rent herself, so she ended up convincing two of her friends to move down and share a two-bedroom five-hundred-square-foot flat not far from my house. One of the girls had to take up residency in the walk-in closet. I am not kidding.

At first, Cindy’s job seemed no different from shuffling paperwork in Eugene. She processed clients’ compensation in a room with eight other women and no windows. Though CAA’s clients weren’t employees, money they received from movies, TV, commercials, whatever, came through the office first, and CAA deducted its commissions immediately.
Then the balance was sent on to the clients. On her first day, Cindy took a call from an actor’s manager demanding that CAA pay interest on the money that he was supposed to have received the month before. Apparently the check had still not arrived at his mansion. Cindy didn’t understand why such a wealthy actor would be worried about some measly interest—until she realized that the check was in fact two months late and was for four million dollars. Of course she wouldn’t ever tell me
who
it was; she has this confidentiality thing hardwired into her brain, and it has always been impossible for me to get information out of her.

During Cindy’s first week on the job, she was asked to handle the phones for the CFO while his secretary went to lunch. She was told to interrupt him if anyone “important” called. Since it was only her third day, her first thought was “How am I going to know who’s important and who isn’t? What am I supposed to say? ‘Excuse me, but before I can put you through, I’ll need to know how much your last film grossed.’ ” No, that wouldn’t work. She had
no idea
what amount made a movie a blockbuster.

The truth is that my sister never knew which actors and actresses were currently hot in the media, let alone the names of behind-the-scenes people. To this day she’s probably not quite sure exactly what Steven Spielberg does.

The very first call she received was a memorable one.

“Hello, Bob Goldman’s office. How may I help you?”

“Is Bob in?” came the stressed-out reply.

“I’m sorry, he’s not available right now. May I take a message?”

“Yes, it’s extremely important. Tell him to call …” Cindy didn’t know what to do. She hadn’t heard clearly; the caller was talking so fast that she hadn’t caught the last name.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t get that. Could you give me your name again?” she asked politely.

“It’s Michael …” Still she couldn’t catch the last name.

“I’m sorry, sir, one more time?”

“O-VEE-EYE-TEE-ZEE.” He spelled it loudly and dramatically. “OVITZ!!!!” he screamed into the phone.

She gulped. “Thank you. I’ll put you right through.”

One night Cindy called, all proud of herself, informing me that I was
wrong about thinking she was not up to date on the latest happenings in Hollywood.

“Suzanne, you know how you are always saying that I don’t know who anyone is?”

“Of course, yes,” I confirmed.

“Well, I will have you know that Nancy in the office just invited me to go with her to a wedding for that girl who played Lucy on Dallas, and I knew exactly who she was talking about.”

“Of course you’re up to date on it; no one watches that show anymore,” I explained. “Maybe we can rent some current movies this weekend. It might be helpful if you are going to be in this industry.”

The poor girl had a lot to learn.

Less than a week after she began her new job, Cindy realized that it provided more entertainment than an issue of
People
. The government had just required a new form in accounting, an I-9, which served as proof of U.S. citizenship. CAA tapped Cindy to gather the necessary paperwork on all of CAA’s clients. She needed to make copies of several documents: a passport, driver’s license, and social security card, and the law required that she “physically” see original documents.

Since CAA’s clients included some of the most notable and reclusive actors and directors in Hollywood, what might have been a relatively mundane accounting procedure at any other office quickly became a hot issue among the celebrity clientele. These folks maintained their privacy at any cost, and things like birth-date verification could be quite upsetting to actresses of a certain age. I told Cindy that this was a job better suited for a
National Enquirer
reporter.

The adventure began when she went to the local clients’ homes with her portable copier on wheels. (She looked like a flight attendant perpetually headed to the airport.) In the first few weeks, she dropped by the homes of Demi Moore, Cher, and Dolly Parton. She could deal with looking like an overworked insurance saleswoman, but then came the complication of the out-of-town clients. Driver’s licenses and passports aren’t exactly the kind of documents you want to be mailing here and there. Cindy kept hearing some of the same comments over and over: “Oh, the government didn’t care if I was an American citizen during the past ten years when I paid millions of dollars in taxes, but now suddenly
it’s imperative” or “Who’s going to see these documents; why do you need it?” Translation: Who’s going to know how old I
really
am, or how I lied about my weight on my driver’s license?

She persevered despite their protests. One day she was sent to track down Chevy Chase in a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel. When she pulled up, she was mortified that she would have to use valet parking. Cindy drove an old clunker, and suddenly she found herself surrounded by Ferraris and Range Rovers. She said she felt a little like the girl in class who was wearing faded jeans from the Goodwill while all the cool kids had on name-brand clothing.

She nervously found Chevy Chase without a problem (although she hated interrupting him during a meeting), but as she headed back down to the lobby, she rummaged through her purse and discovered that she was virtually broke. Outside the hotel’s massive glass doors stood two valets. In queue were a Rolls, a Bentley, a Mercedes, and a Lamborghini, each driven to the entrance by a valet who would then dutifully stand by the open doors, awaiting guests. And a big fat tip.

Cindy stood frozen, not knowing how to handle her predicament, when a young valet in a purple uniform approached her and asked for her receipt. She winced and handed it over. A succession of cars came and went for nearly ten minutes. Evidently her jalopy had been trundled to a far lot.

Cindy soon realized Chevy had followed her and was now waiting for his car as well. She felt sick. What would he think about CAA if he saw that the accounting person entrusted with valuable, personal information drove an ancient Toyota with two bald tires and a “nonstock” baby blue paint job? She could only hope that somehow her car would be hidden on the other side of one of the limos.

The valet was quite tall, so his arrival in the tiny rattletrap—in front of more than fifteen waiting businessmen and dignitaries—was even more ridiculous than it might have been. His legs were so long, he had tangled one of them between the steering wheel and gearshift knob. As if the appearance of the lovely blue Toyota had not been embarrassing enough, the sound of the horn blaring under the valet’s twisted knees certainly was. There might as well have been a contingent of marine honor guards firing a twenty-gun salute along with a loudspeaker announcement:
“Will the very poor person with a very old foreign car please come to the valet station immediately and take this pile of trash off the premises before more of our important guests are further offended?”

By the time she reached the car, my sister had managed to find a single dollar bill in her purse. She carefully folded it in fourths so that the numeral one wouldn’t show, not so much to hide the denomination, but to make it look like there was more than one bill.

The valet opened her door and stood formally by as she climbed in. She then engaged the clutch, put the car in first gear, put her other foot on the accelerator, and tossed the tiny green square of paper at the valet. She careened down the driveway, knowing that by the time she cleared the hedge protecting the hotel from street view, he would just be unfolding his largesse, and she would be safely out of sight. Cindy’s first Hollywood lesson in Class Consciousness 101:

• It’s not who you are, it’s what you drive.
  
• Appearances really are everything.
  
• Fake it while you can, then bolt.
  

After Chase, Cindy continued to work her way through the
C
s. She came upon a name that seemed out of order: Mapother—a name she didn’t recognize. Certainly not a big star; perhaps a director? When she asked Mr. Mapother’s agent why his client was in the
C
s, she was quickly ushered upstairs by two male employees.

“Here, make a copy of this passport and be quick about it,” he said, tossing the paperwork at her.

“Now listen to me,” the agent said while Cindy stood there, bewildered. “This Mapother guy is really Tom Cruise. That’s why he’s in with the
C
s. You’re not to tell anyone else about this, ever. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Yes, I understand,” she replied, feeling as if she had been kidnapped momentarily by the Secret Service. She had just entered the secretive Society of the Keepers of the Name, and her lips were sealed. She wouldn’t betray it to a soul, not even to her own sister. And she knew how much I adored Tom Cruise. (I had to look up his real name to write this book.)