Oh! You Pretty Things (11 page)

I
thread between a dozen Harleys on my way to the front door of Scout's building. The sidewalk looks like a holding pen for the extras on
Sons of Anarchy
, all beater American bikes and denim vests barely covering biceps tattooed with partially disguised swastikas and cartoon-titted girls on candy-striped poles.

This is so not my tribe, and I'm more than a little uncomfortable as I slog my eco-friendly bags stuffed with artisanal cheeses and rustic breads and dips up the stairway to Scout's third-floor apartment. We're half a block from the ocean, on the alley that locals call Speedway. I guess everyone calls it Speedway, but if you're a tourist and you Google it, you'd think it was a street. It's not. It's a drunk-ass, crack-smoking, bike-stealing alley, fifty feet from the sandy shores of Venice Beach.

It has a certain
Endless Summer-
y cachet, but it feels a little shady when I'm pulling up in a one-hundred-thousand-dollar car, loaded down with party accoutrements. And the truth is, I'm already nervous because of Scout's boyfriend, Weston. He's a six-foot-four, recently released ex-con with long hair like a wood nymph. Here I'm supposed to say that on the inside he's a cuddly teddy bear, but he's so not. On the inside, he's a domestic disturbance. And even though Scout and I are tight, I don't know her nearly well enough to ask the question that's on the tip of my tongue every time I'm within a quarter-mile radius of Weston, which is
What the fuck are you thinking?!
Weston's not a bad boy with a gentle side, he's a bad boy with a sociopathic inner child and a mile-long criminal record. But Scout is totally smitten.

A thick clot of bikers in the living room makes Scout's cramped one-bedroom apartment feel exponentially smaller. As I shoulder my way through to the kitchen, I glimpse a familiar face sitting on a faux Eames chair that Scout salvaged from a Dumpster on Electric Avenue on her way home from a meeting. How do I know that guy?

Because it's Billy Idol.

Scout is nine years sober, which has a weird way of obliterating the fences in the Hollywood caste system. Her ex-con boyfriend is digging into the same bag of Tostitos as a musical icon from the 1980s—
Hey, bro, great meeting at Chinatown the other night, amirite?
Billy and Weston are both working a very similar vibe, in fact, in their ratty denim vests and armloads of tattoos. It's just that one of them is worth forty million dollars, and the other is waiting for the balance of his prison earnings account to be released in the form of a money order and sent to his halfway house in the city of Downey.

I blow past them and dump my crap on the counter in the minuscule kitchen. It's nine cubic feet of Formica countertops, a three-quarter-size electric stove with crusty heating coils, and a refrigerator that looks like it came from the set of a '70s sitcom where a plucky mom doles out platitudes and meatloaf.

As soon as I finish unpacking—before I've even seen Scout, who must be in the bathroom primping—I get a text from Megan that says:
We're out front. WTF, it's like the Rock Store with all the bikes. Come get us?

A curling finger of dread in my stomach tells me that everything is about to go off the rails entirely. And that's before Scout comes bouncing into the tiny kitchen dressed like a Harajuku Girl from a vintage Gwen Stefani video: her red hair in two high ponytails fastened with black fabric flowers; a white button-down shirt tied under her giant breasts and a blue plaid schoolgirl skirt riding low on her ample hips; her wide, tanned belly with its leaping koi and mermaid tattoos exposed unself-consciously. She's wearing enormous platform shoes and towers over me when she sweeps me into a sweaty hug, even though I'm taller when we're both barefoot.

“I was starting to get worried about you,” she says, and I hear a slightly elevated tone in her voice that makes me wonder if she's fighting with Weston.

“Long story,” I tell her. “I had to make a last-minute market run.”

Scout eyes the bags on the counter. “Is this everything?”

“Not even close,” I say. “I'm going to the car for another load right now.”

“I'll help.”

“No need. It's just one more load.”

“That's crazy,” she says. “I'm coming with.”

“Seriously, I've got it,” I say, with forced offhandedness. “I asked Megan to help me do some prep. She's downstairs too.”

Scout gives me an exaggerated head turn, like she can't believe what she's hearing. “You invited Megan to my birthday party?”

“Not invited. Pressed into service.”

Scout stares at me with one arched eyebrow and a motionless everything else.

“Dude,” I say. “You're welcome.”

Scout gives a grudging smile. “Yeah. Thanks.”

But it's her party, so I say, “Listen, if you want me to tell her I don't need her, I totally will. This is your day. It's no big deal.”

It's a huge deal, because I've got four man-hours of prep to do and the party is already getting under way, but I'm not going to argue.

“No, it's fine,” she says.

Then Weston slouches in and leans against the kitchen doorframe. “I'll help, babe,” he tells Scout without making eye contact with me.

“You will, baby?” she says in a little-girl voice I've never heard her use before. Jesus, all she needs is a lollipop and she's ready to shoot some kind of submissive, big-girl alt-porn.

“I'm good,” I say, and bolt for the front door.

Before I get there, a wave of girls I assume are Scout's friends come bursting in, tittering about JJ.

“Did you
see
that girl he's with?” says one who is sleeved in tribal ink and wearing a pair of Halloween cat ears in her dyed-black bob.

“I know, right? Like, honey, I can see your nipples from here.”

This from a pale girl who looks like Marilyn Manson's little sister. She's marginally ruining the effect with a battered pink Hello Kitty lunchbox she's got slung over her shoulder like a purse, but still. Glass houses.

I brush past them with a chirpy “hi” that makes me hate myself, and run downstairs. Out on the street, Megan and JJ are sitting on the fender of Tyler's car, kissing like they're getting paid overtime to do it, as a touristy-looking middle-aged woman unabashedly uses her phone to record the event.

I bump into her, hard, and the phone clatters to the ground.

“Oh, jeez,” I say, scooping it up. “I am so sorry. I really need to watch where I'm going. Here, lemme make sure it's still working.”

She's still gaping at Megan and JJ as I'm mashing buttons, trying to find the delete key. It's a fucking Android. I have no idea.

Megan is wearing an old white Pixies shirt and short denim cutoffs with a pair of ancient, perfect cowboy boots she's had forever. She looks fantastic, but I can see what Suicide Kitty Girl was saying about the nipple thing. Whatever. If I had a body like Megan's, I'd wear a string bikini to the opera.

“Yeah, I think it'll be fine,” I say, sending the file to the trash. “I'm really sorry. I just didn't see you there, ogling the celebrities.”

Her face crumples like a brown paper lunch sack.

“Sorry, that was harsh,” I say. “But seriously, they're not zoo animals.”

“Fuck you!” she says loudly. “I was just trying to get a picture for my niece, you ugly cunt.”

Wow, not what I was expecting. I'm getting that buzzy adrenaline rush that happens before confrontations when Megan and JJ descend on me from either side, loaded with food, steering me toward the door to the building.

“Boof,” Megan says, laughing. “You're a bulldog today.”

“Yeah,” JJ chimes in. “You had Paula Deen shaking in her Crocs.”

I can't help but laugh. “I love that you know who Paula Deen is.”

“Honey, I'm from Tennessee,” he says, snapping his fingers out in a wave. “She was my mama's patron saint.”

“Good to know,” I say. As he rounds the corner into the lobby, I mouth quickly at Megan,
Uh-oh, racist mother-in-law
, and she flips me off, to limited effect, since she's concentrating on balancing four half pans of savory Greek pastries.

Upstairs, there are at least thirty people in Scout's living room and even more spilling onto the tiny balcony hanging precariously over the alley. It's a pretty even mix of ex-cons and manic pixie dream girls. Someone set my thirty-dollar block of feta on a stack of soggy paper towels and one particularly menacing dude is tearing a Bread and Cie baguette into large chunks and piling them alongside in a sloppy heap.

“Shit,” I say to Megan. “This is my nightmare.”

“Boof, please. These people are hardly expecting a five-course meal from Le Bernardin. Just tell me what to do.”

JJ is immediately swallowed up by a group of men who look like they'd carve your heart out for the extra storage space. Except they're squealing like schoolgirls and thumping him on the back as they recount their favorite scenes from
Malibu 90265
,
which was the show that catapulted JJ to stardom. It's in endless reruns now, millions of dollars in syndication money for JJ, I'm sure. I'm more amazed that this rag-tag crew of recently incarcerated felons recognizes him from that decades-old show, but I guess there's not a lot to do in the joint after you work out, right?

“I need that cheese,” I tell Megan. “Do whatever it takes.”

“On it,” Megan says, and she heads into the fray.

In the kitchen, one girl is dumping triangles of fresh pita bread and thin, green stalks of blanched asparagus onto a single platter while another appears to be trying to create a yin/yang symbol with hummus and baba ghanoush in a mixing bowl.

“Hey, thanks for helping.” I pluck the slotted spoon from her hand. “We've got it from here.”

“Are you the caterer?” she asks reproachfully. “You should have been here two hours ago.”

I'm getting that buzzy adrenaline thing again. “Then you must be my waitstaff.”

Yin/Yang looks affronted. “I'm a guest of Scout's!”

“Yeah?” I say, like I'm about to get all remorseful about it. “Guess what? Me too. So how about you go throw some ice in the drink cooler on the balcony?”

“You are?” she asks, clearly dubious.

I grab the hummus and baba ghanoush and start deconstructing her efforts. “Go on,” I say. “Shoo.”

She glares at me for a moment before turning on her Converse-clad heel and flouncing away. Her skirt looks like she's about to compete in the women's figure-skating finals in 1988. Jesus, Scout's friends.

I chase off the other one, who is wearing a drum-majorette jacket, replete with brass buttons and epaulettes over a pair of thick Wolford tights that are completely inappropriate for the eighty-degree weather. She's made a mess of my beautiful asparagus, which is now a tangle of bright-green seaweed on what looks like a leftover plastic platter from a Super Bowl party.

I say a silent prayer that no one fucked with the spanakopita and goat-cheese tiropita I spent three hours layering and wrapping, and when I open the refrigerator I'm relieved to find the trays of geometrically folded triangles untouched beneath the layers of clear plastic.

Megan comes into the kitchen, holding the feta block like a sacred chalice. “Remind me not to go back into that room without pepper spray.”

“Where's JJ?” I ask, immediately regretting my level of interest.

Megan plops the cheese on the counter. “Handling his business with the boys. Look at him.”

I glance into the other room and see JJ being hugged by the baguette-tearing predator, who is bellowing, “Yeah, dude!” as he flops poor JJ around like a rag doll.

“He's like a catnip mouse in a lion cage,” Megan says.

“Ehhh, he's holding his own.”

We stand there for a moment, watching the surreal spectacle.

“Listen,” Megan says, turning to face me. “I know it's been weird since I got back.”

I cycle through a thousand possible responses, trying to pick one that acknowledges that while JJ is electrifyingly hot, and standing too near him makes my stomach hurt, of course all that lust is nothing personal. Celebrities do that: spark the most intensely personal feelings in an utterly impersonal way.

I say, “Okay.”

“I can't even wrap my mind around what is happening with him.” Megan's brow furrows faintly. “It's so weird. He's a great guy, Jess. I mean, he's the real thing.”

Shit. She's not talking about me; she's talking about herself. I fucking suck. “I have no doubt,” I say. “But I've got a roomful of hungry bikers and a bunch of fucked-up food. Let's clear this wreckage.”

The next hour passes in a pleasant blur of baking, assembling, and plating. Even when I'm not cooking, I always end up in the kitchen at parties: it's the only safe place for a girl like me. Small talk and forced conviviality always feels like an audition. Megan acts as my sous chef while JJ runs interference in the doorway. He's good at it, the perfect distraction for anyone who decides they need to help. Two particularly determined girls try to wedge their way into the kitchen, and I understand the impulse, but there's no room. It's every misanthrope for herself.