Citizen Girl (25 page)

After hours of watching four crappy movies simultaneously, I finally feel ‘relaxed’ enough to click off the TV. I stare for a while at the slim shaft of boulevard light twitching where the curtains meet over the air conditioner before sliding my hand out of the covers to dial Buster’s number, loneliness overriding any guilt about rousing the
roommates. The phone rings repeatedly out into the ether until his machine picks up.

‘Hi, everyone. It’s me out in LaLa Land – just wanted to say goodnight to Buster. I guess it’s kind of late. Or early. I left a message this afternoon. I’m not sure if he got it —’

‘Girl?’ his sleepy whisper beeps on.

‘Hey! Sorry to wake you.’

‘Don’t be.’ He inhales groggily. ‘It’s good to hear your voice.’ My heart clenches and I want to crawl in next to him. ‘I missed you tonight – there was a party. It looks like Atari’s gonna buy us out.’

‘Oh, Buster —’

‘Yeah, we all get to stay on staff. And they’re not gonna relocate us, so we’re pretty psyched.’ He yawns. ‘You okay? Get out there all right? Meet your client?’

‘Not yet. Congratulations, Buster, that’s really wonderful.’ My voice sounds loud in the empty room.

‘Yeah, I didn’t want to worry you, but I heard rumors of layoffs if we sold.’

‘Buster, you can worry me,’ I whisper. ‘I want to know if you’re stressed —’

‘Nah, it’s gonna be okay now. Shit, I miss you,’ he mumbles, his breathing getting heavier.

‘I miss you, too. I’ll call you tomorrow night, okay?’

‘Yeah. Don’t forget. And, G?’ His voice perks awake; I half-sit up. ‘I like you a lot.’

‘I like you a lot, too, Buster.’Night.’

‘’Night.’

*

In the morning I’m told breakfast is served on the unnaturally, oppressively blue patio, where Guy sits in a linen suit before an untouched plate of French toast. Across from him, I recognize Rex’s long legs sticking out beneath the pink pages of the
Financial Times
spread like a wall in Guy’s pinched face.

‘Good morning,’ I say, affecting chipper, productive, and, above all, relaxed.

‘Morning, Girl!’ Rex folds his paper to reveal a cleaned plate.

‘Hey,’ Guy says.

‘Hey,’ I reply as Rex continues to read. ‘So, where’s Seline?’

‘Sleepin’ in.’ Guy fingers the base of his coffee cup. ‘We had a late night.’

‘That’s my boy.’ Rex drains his espresso. Ew.

Guy seizes the opening. ‘Look, Rex, I can lead this meeting. I’ve done way more prep on this than Jeffrey and frankly his whole …’ Rex’s face is impassive. ‘I just think he’s going to overhit it. It’s too much drama —’

‘I told you what I want.’ Rex slips his tongue forward to suck something from his teeth before continuing coolly, ‘And yet we still seem to be having this conversation.’ They stare at each other.

Guy breaks the gaze, picking up his fork and fiddling with an orange slice. ‘Right. If you felt you needed to have the prep meeting as a one-on-one with Jeffrey, if you didn’t need me there, that’s cool. That’s …’ he nods with too much enthusiasm, ‘that’s great.’

Rex drops both hands on his chair arms, ‘Great,’ and
pushes back from the table, reaching his paper to Guy and sliding his blazer off the back of his chair. ‘I’m choppering out to Pebble Beach. Jeffrey has my schedule.’ Guy nods again. ‘Girl,’ he slaps me on the back as he passes, ‘excellent proposal. Excellent catch.’

‘Thanks! Thank you. I’m glad to help,’ I call after him as he struts into the shadow of the lobby.

Guy throws his fork across the table and it clatters like a skipping stone, dropping soundlessly onto the Astroturf. I stand stock-still. ‘What?’ he exhales quietly, turning to me with a slackened face. ‘What do you need?’

‘Oh.’ I take a breath. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘No, everything’s not okay,’ he says, his voice low. ‘I’ve been working twenty-five hours a day for the last eighteen months since this was just the seed of an idea I had in the shower.’ He rubs his face. ‘This is my thing. Mine.’ He lets out a grim laugh. ‘It just blows, ya know?’

‘I do.’

‘Right,’ he scoffs. ‘I’m sure.’

And … back to hating him. ‘I got a note from Jeffrey to meet him out front at noon.’

‘So, can you do that?’ He opens the pink paper with a snap and begins to tensely flip through it. ‘Or do we have to psychoanalyze it first?’

Lettingitslidelettingitslidelettingitslide. ‘I can do that. But I am going to need fifteen minutes to take you through the PowerPoint.’

‘I don’t have fifteen minutes.’ He hastily folds the front section and opens Markets. ‘Just go meet with Jeffrey. He’s the brand man. He wants to work on yours.’

‘My brand?’

‘Lighten up, Girl. It’s just an expression.’

‘Okay. So I’ll …’ He stares at his paper. ‘Guy, given all your feedback, we need to be on the same page before I go in front of the client.’

‘Jesus, Girl, just meet with Jeffrey and don’t give him any trouble.’

So then I shouldn’t put gum in his hair?

‘Oh yeah, hey!’ he recalls me. ‘Do me a favor and have room service send up some breakfast to Seline. Pancakes or something. Something birthday-ey. Oh, and have them stick a rose with it.’ His cell rings as he heaves his briefcase into his lap. ‘Jeff, man.’ His face darkening, he angles away from me and I take my cue to head back up, order birthday room service, and stare out the window at four lanes of traffic and one lone palm tree.

Promptly at noon, the silver Porsche glides up to the lobby with Jeffrey yapping away in the passenger seat. ‘No, no, that’s all wrong!’ he cries as I squeeze in back.

A disembodied voice retorts, ‘Jeffrey, you always order four shrimp platters – there’s no need to yell.’

‘On speaker,’ mouths the same surfer-gorgeous blond who picked them up at the airport as he gives me a wink from the driver’s seat. ‘Tad, Jeffrey’s “assistant”.’ Offering back his right paw, he steers us out with his left.

‘Hi,’ I mouth in return.

‘Don’t take that tone with me, mister. Last time you ran out halfway through so I’ll yell if I damn well please,’
Jeffrey says testily, disconnecting the call and dialing his office.

‘Jeffrey,’ Tad intercedes, ‘I can handle this crap. You don’t need to micromanage all the details.’

‘It’s not that I don’t trust you.’ He pats Tad’s thigh. ‘It’s that they’re only scared of me. Now be a love and put me through to the florist – I’ve changed my mind, I want bamboo.’

‘Jeffrey, about my brand,’ I begin in the pause.

‘Not now, Girl. You’ll have my undivided attention as soon as we get out of the car. Yes, hi, it’s Jeffrey Wainright. About the bamboo …’

Thwarted, I sit back and take in the city as the traffic slows to a crawl beneath the beating sun. Steaming vapor trails from the tar roofs along Sepulveda while Jeffrey’s ceaseless patter of charm and derision fuels us across town. Pulling into Fred Segal, the infamous department store/celebrity haunt, Tad jogs around the Porshe to let Jeffrey out onto the radiant asphalt.

‘Girl, we’re here. Chop chop. Tad, I’ll ring.’

I follow Jeffrey through a blast of cold air and techno into the labyrinth of upscale boutiques, each one painted a different Lifesaver shade and trolled by a different desperate demographic – wife, waitress, starlet, star, and stylist. Yet, despite the differences in status, all the women have the same too-blonde hair, too-tan skin, too-wide eyes, too-full lips, too-small noses, and too-pert breasts. They are all in some form of midriff- and calf-baring ensemble. Only the range of accessories – from gym bag
to cheap bag to free bag to custom bag to twelve bags – distinguishes them.

‘Come along!’ Jeffrey turns back like Orpheus to make sure I haven’t been waylaid by Anna Nicole Smith. ‘People are waiting.’ We arrive at the reception area of the bright pop-art salon. ‘Hello, yes, I have an appointment with Jean-Claude,’ he informs the receptionist, who wears a white retro smock over black turtleneck.

‘Hello, Jeffrey,’ she confirms, batting her black awning of fake eyelashes like Twiggy. ‘You’re all set.’

‘You’re up, Girl.’ He indicates the woman holding out a folded robe. I look skeptically from her to him. ‘Up. Up. Let’s get a move on.’ He pulls off his Prada wrap shades. ‘Didn’t Guy tell you our plans?’

‘No, and I’m not going “up” until
we
have a conversation—’

‘That man. Whatever shall we do with him?’ he smiles, straining for conspiratorial as my protest arouses the attention of the other customers, prancing the white floor in their Ugg boots, denim minis slung so low that they seem designed to barely cover crack on either front. He lowers his voice to a purr. ‘Dear, you’re in LA now. And out here it’s ninety per cent show, ten per cent go.’

‘Go?’

‘Go.’ He flits his hands, the Pradas snapping open and shut. ‘Content. Ten per cent content. Goodness, just
relax
.’

‘God, I’m relaxed! Look, you want to give me a free makeover, I’m game. But I think I deserve an explanation of what my appearance has to do with selling our
services—’ I’m interrupted by the stylist I saw earlier passing between us lugging an armful of shoes.

‘Gosh,
I
don’t know which pair,’ we hear from the other side of a shoji screen. ‘The network has a teen demographic, so I want something that says “young”. But experienced. Humorous. But with a sense of the dramatic. And a flair for writing cop dialogue.’

Jeffrey swoops his shades in the direction of the shoes about to take a meeting. ‘In this town every detail tells a story. We want yours to tell the right one.’

I take the robe and lean into his face. ‘Fine. But my details aren’t getting implanted. And I’m leaving here a brunette.’

‘Let’s move.’ He maneuvers me through the sonorous whir and snip of the salon, past a long wall of framed gratitude-inscribed magazine covers, to where a man with a platinum goatee is waiting behind an empty chair.

‘Girl, Jean-Claude.’ Jeffrey drops his voice to address him. ‘What we talked about.’ They nod in agreement. ‘I’ll be on my cell, should you need.’

Jean-Claude waves Jeffrey off with diamond-laden fingers. ‘Zo,’ he runs his fingers along my scalp, ‘beautiful.’ He takes my face in his hands and turns it side to side. ‘Tall, zin, could be model, no? But you need to be brightur. You’re dark, so darrrrk.’ He lifts a chunk of my brown hair with derision. ‘Your clothes are darrrk. Your hair is darrrk. You New Yorkerz, you need your
soulz
lightened.
Tout de suite
!’ He claps his hands to have my soul whisked to the color station. And I let him.

*

Several hours later, my hair is a long-negotiated caramel, my toes deep pink, and my fake tan is rapidly developing. I’m Malibu Me. Fingering the racks, I wend my way through Red Carpet, Black Tie, Luncheon, Cocktails, and Beach House, bopping along as Prodigy pounds from the loudspeakers. Arms filled with Marc Jacobs and Marni, soon I alight on the still-coveted Nanette Lepore jacket, which I parade before the mirror, trying to analyze the story I’m telling. ‘Too sweet,’ the stylist says as she passes with another armload. ‘Here, try this.’ She reaches deep into her pile and hands me a short-sleeved black blouse, gathered at the shoulders.

‘Thanks! I’m going for feminist, but relaxed and bright, and no …um, dreary activist poo.’ I fan my hands along my silhouette. ‘Are you getting that at all?’

‘Then wear it with irony. Switch the shirt out for a tank top and find a baby-pink leather cuff bracelet.’

‘Thanks!’ Having more fun than I’ve had in a very, very long time, my Anistoned-self skips over to the jewelry department to find a cuff.

‘Girl!’ Jeffrey descends on me as I ogle the Me&Ro case. ‘Fabulous! You look perfect! Well done. Now, come on.’ He trots me back to the dressing rooms.

‘I’ll show you what I picked. I think you’re going to be really happy.’ I pull my pile off the woven dune-grass counter.

‘Mmmhmmm …’ He chews the tip of his glasses again as he stares the Nanette Lepore down. ‘Yes, yes, and yes, but with a tank top and it needs a leather cuff – baby pink.’ I proudly extend my cuffed wrist out of the sleeve. He pulls out his corporate Amex. ‘Okay, so you’re squared away for the meetings. This is for tonight.’ He hands over a small velvet jewelry pouch.

‘Oh my gosh. Wow.’

‘Go try it on. Then come out and show me.’

I return to my changing cabana and gingerly untie the ribbon securing the pouch. I cup my left palm and shake out… a ball of gold string. What the? I untangle it and hold it to my throat, tying it loosely and leaving the slightly thicker bits to dangle like a deconstructed Chanel flower choker.

‘Taa-dah!’ I hop out of the dressing room.

‘Not on your neck.’ His eyebrows dart up as he gives me a withering appraisal. ‘It’s a bikini, you idiot.’

‘What?!’

He tugs at the threads. ‘Girl, it’s a pool party – a little ice-breaker thing with the client.’ He balls the fabric in my palm, gripping his fingers around mine. ‘
Everyone
will be in swimsuits. We want you to be comfortable.’

‘Comfortable?’ I cock an eyebrow, pulling back from him.

‘Now don’t get all uptight,’ he smiles. ‘Just go put it on properly.’ One arm supporting the other elbow he waves me back.

‘Not a chance, Jeffrey,’ I say, laughing at the idea.

Jaw set, charm evaporated, he bears down on me, lowering his voice to a tight hiss, ‘Wipe that smile off your face. I can have you fired with a phone call.’

‘I —’

‘You’re lucky to even be here. We’ve paid to have you
made-over by one of the premier salons in the business. We’re about to buy you a whole new wardrobe, for fuck’s sake. So just go try on the goddamn bikini.’ His eyes sparkle anew. ‘Hop to it!’