Bicoastal Babe (14 page)

“Yeah, a few.” I’m still glum because “I’ll be there in a minute,” indicates that the phone conversation I’ve waited all week for is about to be cut short.

“Listen, Lindsey, it probably wasn’t the best time for me to call, seeing as I’m out at dinner right now.”

“So why did you call now?”

He ignores this. “So let’s talk when you get home, okay? Dinner Monday night?”

I can’t hang up like this. This is not how I wanted it to be.

“Victor?”

“Yeah?”

“Uh… You still want that lap dance?”

He laughs. “Do you accept tips?”

“Only tens and higher.”

“Sounds like it’s worth it. See you then.”

I smile, disconnect the call and sit down on the step outside the studio.
Let’s talk when you get home,
Victor had said, which got me thinking. Is New York my home? What
is
home, and how do you know you’re there? I still have my apartment back in Chicago, and most of my stuff is still there. Is “home” wherever my stuff is? Holly used to say that home was wherever her dog, Cha-Cha, was. If she went on vacation and left Cha-Cha home,
home
was waiting for her return. If she took Cha-Cha along, home had come right along with her.

But I don’t have a dog. So I suppose my furniture, dishes, and box of disorganized photographs constitute the next best thing. That seems a little off to me. though. Why would “home” be the place that houses my crappy twenty-four-inch television, and not the place that houses
me?
Or maybe “home” follows me around, and settles in wherever I may be at the time. If that’s true, it would mean that right now, I have three homes. Three homes! Or that I have none, depending on how you interpret it. “Three homes” sounds so wealthy and glamorous. “No home” sounds lonely and lost. But it’s all a matter of perspective, really. So it’s decided. I am a woman who has three homes. The only problem is, I can’t escape the nagging feeling that if I
did
have a dog, I’m not sure where he’d be right now.

“Hey, you never came back.” Carmen walks through the door, followed by her classmates, who are toweling off and chugging bottled water. Carmen sits next to me.

“Victor called.”

“Finally! What did he say?”

“Not much. He was out at dinner. It’s already nine o’clock there.”

“Hmmmm,” she muses, which is quite possibly the most frustrating response in the whole English language. No clue how to begin to interpret a good, long “hmmmm,” so I decide to analyze it later, when I have more time.

Carmen tells me that she’s leaving in a few hours to drive up to San Francisco for a gallery tour, so that’ll give me three whole days to crack down and get some good work done before I go back to New York. I hug her good-bye and realize that my heart aches when she walks away – even more so when I think about the warm, welcoming comfort she’s given me, versus the evil wrath that awaits me when I have to see Jen again. I’ve known Carmen for less than a week, but she already feels like a friend – which may be exactly what I need.

I begin the next day by taking inventory of my life.

Health: Could be better. Haven’t worked out in quite a while. I am an extremely busy woman of the world, who has very little time for such things as exercise. Mental note to begin hiking/swimming/jogging routine as soon as humanly possible. L.A. is game.

Love: Victor has only called once this week, and technically he was calling me
back,
so it doesn’t really count. But he is a guy, and guys hate talking on the phone, right? Luckily, I am so incredibly busy that I have no time to think about this right now. If Victor wants me to sit around thinking about him and wondering what he’s doing and obsessing over how he feels about me, he is just going to have to wait.

Work (and this is where any trace of optimism vanishes like vapor in the open wind): I’ve come up with virtually no ideas for the newsletter, and Jen is expecting to write up our first collaborative issue in four days in New York. I have fifty interviews to show for my trip to L.A., and no idea where to go from here.

A fax has come through from Jen, outlining a long list of L.A. hot spots – stores, restaurants, clubs, even animal shelters that are becoming the latest trend in celebrity philanthropy. At the start of my trend-tracking career, such a list would’ve made me squeal with glee and delight. But as I stare at it now, I am paralyzed, because I know that in each and every one of these places, there is so much to capture and learn, but I am blind to it. I can stand directly in front of it, eat it and drink it, kick my heels up in the thick of it—and still not see it or recognize it at all. The truth about my life’s inventory is, I suck at this job and my chances of getting fired are higher than probable. Schlumping back from Starbucks, it dawns on me that I
do
know who I am. I am indeed Dumped Woman Walking – not only by Victor, but by Liz, Gordon-Taylor, and the entire universe that I tried to pretend I could be a part of.

The next day goes by in a haze of depression-induced lethargy. I lie on the couch, snoring as the dried-up bits of pepperoni and crust crumbs from the Domino’s pizza fall from my shirt into the cracks of the sofa cushions. I have just watched seven reruns of
Doogie Howser
on cable, and it has really tired me out. I have absolutely nothing to offer this world, apart from the remote possibility of perpetuating the human race (which seems like a real howler, seeing as I can’t find one single animal, mineral, or vegetable of the male species to love me, much less impregnate me). There is only one thing to do in times like these – sleep, of course – and it is the one thing I have learned and mastered with great skill and confidence. Sleep. Sleep.

•   •   •

But the next day I get up. My back hurts from lying around so much, and it occurs to me again that this is probably my last chance to see L.A. The thought motivates me to take a shower, get ready, and get out of the apartment – not necessarily to accomplish any work, but at least to do something interesting.

Carmen calls from San Fran, and I give her the bare-bones version of my woes. But she just laughs and tells me that I’m a drama queen and that every day is a chance to turn everything around and start over. Maybe she’s right. Maybe not. I don’t know. I just don’t know anymore.

I spend the day driving around, past the hot spots Jen’s listed for me, just so I know where they are. Katsuya, the wildly popular celeb-hangout sushi restaurant that Carmen swears is overpriced with mediocre food. Lucky Strikes, the midnight fluorescent bowling alley where Bruce Willis just had his birthday party. Hot clubs like The Highlands, Voyeur and Exchange L.A., where “young Hollywood royalty sips low-carb fig martinis in the VIP room until the wee hours,” according to
Us Weekly.
I vaguely wonder if I’m on the guest list at these places, but at the moment I’d rather swallow an electric razor than find out. I have to lift myself out of this funk, and fast. I need something – something to raise my spirits and give me back a little confidence. If only Victor would call again…

I’m on my way home when I decide to purchase a map to the stars’ homes from some guy on the corner. Perfect. Driving past Gwen Stefani’s mansion will inspire me to get back to the grind – in the hopes that someday I can have a life like hers. Hell, I’ll even drive past John Travolta’s ten-million-dollar “bungalow,” to remind myself that people can indeed have comebacks and rise to glory after being embedded in muck.

Of course, turns out I can’t find any of these crazy houses, as they are all buried ass-deep in this bizarre vertical labyrinth called the Hollywood Hills. The narrow roads going up fit only one car, which makes me wonder how all the celebrity substance abusers get home in one piece. After getting thrice lost on the way down, I finally give up and return to the apartment.

I want to drink. Soak my sorrows in cheap vodka to the point where smoking an entire pack of Camel Reds sounds like a fantastic idea. Then I can puke up my despondent outlook and toxic attitude, and start completely and totally afresh. But there’s nowhere to smoke in this city. I picture myself sitting on the street corner in front of 7-Eleven, puffing away with tonight’s selection of brown baggers. Maybe they’ll know what’s trendy.

But instead I put on my suit and sit down by the pool, my feet swooshing around in the cold water. Feels great. I’d love to go in, but the chlorine would kill my highlights.

And then it hits me. I know what I need. I need to immerse myself in water, to cleanse myself of this venomous karma that’s built up and kept me from thriving in my new life and job. I need to plunge headfirst into the sea in a baptismal ceremony organic to the California experience. I need to take what is offered to me, to follow the path that life lays down before me. I need to go back to the beach. And I need to take that surfing lesson from the blond guy who woke me up.

I
n the history of popular music, there are five singers whom I can’t listen to. It’s not that I don’t like them as people, and it’s not even that I don’t like their songs. It’s that for whatever odd reason, their voices make me skeeve and shudder like sharp nails screeching across a chalkboard. To some people just the mere thought of eating liver makes them turn green and feel urgently nauseous. To others it may be the smell of paint primer or some other strong odor that instantly induces an overwhelming nervous queasiness. For me, it’s the sound of these particular five voices, and let me tell you, the effect is quite potent.

The first is Karen Carpenter’s. And yes, I realize that she had anorexia and died at a young age – very sad. But I had nothing to do with that, and I’m not going to feel like a bad person for saying that her voice runs creepy shivers up my spine and makes me want to scrub my face and body with a Brillo pad. The next is Christopher Cross’s, the one who sang “Sailing” and the theme song to that movie about a drunk Dudley Moore trying to get it on with Liza Minnelli in New York. When I hear those songs, it sounds to me like Christopher Cross needs a strong hit of oxygen. Or like he takes a deep breath, and then starts singing when the air is about halfway out of his lungs. I’ve never heard anything like it, apart from Michael McDonald (from the Doobie Brothers), whose solo hits sound suspiciously like Christopher Cross after popping a month’s supply of steroids. I forgot about Michael McDonald. Okay, with the inclusion of Michael McDonald, that makes six total.

The fourth voice I hate is Burl Ives’s, the fat daddy who wore cardigan sweaters and bounced laughing children on his lap for a living in the seventies. When I was six years old, listening to “Goober Peas” and “Polly Wolly Doodle” on my scratchy record player, I did not yet understand the term “closeted pedophile,” but I did know that those songs tweaked my “be alert” sensor and gave me a funny feeling in my tummy. Of course, I am not alleging Burl Ives to be a pedophile. I’m sure he’s not. I’m only saying that the whole business just left me regarding Burl Ives with the same discontent with which I still regard childhood horror-foods such as creamed beets and minced olive loaf: thanks, but no thanks.

Number five. My God, this voice is the reason that keeps me a hell-mile away from 98.7’s “Eighties Hits at Noon.” That black-haired, black-eye-linered, purple-coated freak from the Cure. His pale, pancake skin and strained voice, moaning out like an injured cow… the whole thing makes my skin crawl. I can’t recall what this singer’s name is, but I’m convinced that he tries to save time by recording his tracks while simultaneously attempting to erotically asphyxiate himself in the linen closet. Which is not the visual image I like to imagine while driving down the highway at lunchtime.

And finally we come to number six. I almost hate to mention this one, because the man is highly respected in the music biz, and widely considered to be one of the “greats.” But reputation chucked to the wind, I have to say that I really can’t stand the voice of James Taylor. I don’t know why. I just don’t like it. But I do feel kind of sorry for the guy. I mean, he’s had a billion hits back in the day, but is now pretty much reduced to the incessant overplaying of “You’ve Got a Friend” on the soft adult contemporary stations, and occasionally, the elevator version of “You’ve Got a Friend” at the doctor’s office. But the point is, James Taylor’s voice makes me cringe, and if I hear it, I must get out of aural range as fast as humanly possible.

And wouldn’t you know it. The next afternoon, after I park my car and wade through the hot sand toward the Surf Shack… after I take a deep breath and pause to contemplate the impending rebirth of my spirit and personal vitality, I pull open the straw door and am immediately assaulted by “You’ve Got a Friend” (the non-elevator version), droning through a bass-heavy boom box on the floor.

Bad sign. Shit.

I look up quickly to see the blond guy, Danny, showcasing some surfboards to a touristy-looking couple in the back corner of the shack. He doesn’t see me. Wow, that is one California tan. And those arms. I watch as his blond-streaked hair flops over his eyes as he runs his hands slowly down the front of a red surfboard, explaining its texture and contour to the customers. I wonder how he got those streaks. Somehow I just can’t see this guy sitting in a salon chair with his head wrapped up in foils.

I slip back out the door and slide down against the side of the hut to sit in the sand. A few yards out toward the water, two girls in string bikinis are walking by with surfboards hoisted up on their shoulders. Their tight bodies are thin and rock-hard, and their skin is tanned to a perfect, glowing bronze. Their long, salty-ocean hair blows in the breeze, and it occurs to me that
Baywatch
may not be just a cable-television myth.

I myself did not wear a string bikini for the occasion. I wore a navy blue sports tankini that covers as much skin as possible and my neon-green scuba shoes, along with a greasy coating of hair sunscreen and three layers of waterproof mascara. This day is not about parading bod. It’s about releasing the evil sprite from my soul and finding inner freedom and harmony with the universe. Those chicks piss me off, though. Don’t they have jobs? Who has all day to strut around the beach, surfing and tanning like the July page on a Budweiser calendar?