Oh! You Pretty Things (6 page)

T
yler is a dream boss. We ate burgers, took the dog for a walk, looked at Kilim fabric swatches from George Smith for the new sofa Tyler wants. It was kind of a magical day.

When I pull up at the door to my apartment, I lock my bike and dash into the One Life to buy real food to cook myself a proper dinner, something I haven't been motivated to do for weeks. I buy a bunch of organic dinosaur kale, a perfectly ripe avocado, a can of Italian white beans, a shallot, and a handful of roasted pepitas. It's like I can't commit to feeding myself more than one meal, but it's definitely a start. I even dash across the street to the liquor store and pick up a twenty-dollar bottle of white Burgundy. I mean, why shouldn't I treat myself like a grown-up? I'm feeling pretty sassy, I have to say.

As I'm hauling my bike and my groceries off the antiquated elevator, my phone rings, lighting my screen with a picture of my friend Scout and me in a thrift store in Echo Park. I'm holding a shirt up across my chest that reads
I'M WITH STUPID
, the arrow pointing toward her, and we're both laughing. For the record, Scout is way less stupid than I am.

Scout works as a tour manager for a couple metal bands. Not A-list, like Motörhead or Metallica. I'm talking about bands on a level where they sometimes turn down shows because they can't afford to pay for transportation to the venue. It's a harsh gig. Not many girls could hack it.

“I'm getting too old for this shit,” she says in lieu of a greeting when I answer.

“Where are you?” I say.

“You don't want to know. A random Motel 6 in Texas. How's your job? Today was your first day, right?”

“Dude, it was like the best blind date ever. He has a Weimaraner named Zelda and Dupioni silk drapes in his living room that cost more than the house I grew up in.”

“Dude,” she says, mocking me.

“Today? I drove around in his Carrera and picked up fabric swatches for the sofa he wants to buy.”

“Swatches?” Scout says.

“Yeah.”

“Well, good. Maybe he has a straight brother.”

“I think he's straight.”

“Yeah, the hot guy with a Weimaraner?” she says. “What did you say his curtains are?”

“Dupioni silk.”

“Single straight guys don't have curtains, let alone doopy-whatever.”

“What do you think, they tape cardboard over their windows?”

“What windows?” she asks.

“You are hanging around with the wrong single straight—”

There's a huge crash, followed by the unmistakable sound of puking. Which sort of proves my point.

“Shit, I have to go,” Scout says. “We'll hang out when I get back.”

“Sounds good,” I say. “I'm around.”

I cut the connection with a smile on my face. Fucking Scout. I met her on my first day at the Date Palm counter, and we almost got into a fistfight.

I'd only been behind the counter for ten minutes when she came striding in with her tattoo-sleeved arms and her ironic red pigtails and her size-14 skinny jeans that are so body conscious they're a thrown-down gauntlet challenging you for even looking. Her whole persona screams,
Go ahead, say something about my body
. People either love Scout or hate her. She's like cilantro or Chris Brown. For the record, I love cilantro.

She was wearing a skintight white wife-beater over a purple lace bra that day, and she'd twisted an old-school white bandana into an ad hoc headband that was part Bettie Page rockabilly chick and part Aunt Jemima. She had big black platen headphones clamped on her ears, and I could hear something feedback-filled and angry leaking out into the space between us, maybe an old Tool song. She was tapping on her phone and didn't even look up at me when I said hi.

“Double red-eye, no room, maple scone,” she said, and turned her back to lean her ample ass against the counter, like
We're done here, right?

I looked at the leaping koi and exotic mermaid decorating the backs of her arms and thought,
Huh, that's kind of a bold attitude to take with the person who's about to handle your food.

When I set everything on the counter, Scout grabbed her order and headed for the open front door without another word, trailing a guitar solo and the scent of gardenias.

“Hey,” I yelled after her. “Hey, that's $11.75.”

I ran from behind the counter, hobbled by the apron, and caught up with her at the edge of the patio. I reached for her elbow to get her attention, because she still had her music blasting and she wasn't acknowledging my presence.

She swears I grabbed her arm in an aggro Freddy Krueger slasher grip, but we agree on what happened next, which is that she startled like a gazelle on the African veldt and sloshed a good sixteen ounces of hot, black coffee—with two shots of Italian roast espresso—all over her tattooed arms and white tank top.

And here's my favorite part. She dropped her purse, still without making eye contact with me, and carefully set her phone and the bag with her scone on top of it. She sluiced coffee from her forearms and wrung a thin stream from the lower part of her shirt. She took off her black-framed glasses and wiped them on a clean spot on her shirt.

The whole thing took maybe ten seconds, but it was very effective:
You will wait while I deal with your mess.

Finally, she looked at me with her crazy-beautiful pale blue eyes and said the most ridiculous, clichéd, L.A. thing that you'd think nobody could ever be cheesy enough to say aloud.

“Don't you know who I am?”

(For the record, she says that I said, “Who do you think you are?” but she lies.)

“Yeah, you're the girl who just tried to ditch out on paying for breakfast. Can I get an autograph?”

Scout flicked her hair over her inked shoulder. “You must be new.”

It turned out she lived in an apartment that was practically connected to the Date Palm, and she was such a regular that Pete let her run a tab. Which was lovely, except the Date Palm has a strict “no credit” policy and she's one of a handful of exceptions, which no one had bothered to mention to me.

She grudgingly accepted the replacement shirts I handed over in a beribboned gift bag two days later, then ignored me for the next couple weeks, even when I had her drink and pastry waiting by the time she got to the counter.

Finally, I asked how long she'd lived in the area, and she said she got emancipated at fourteen and moved into the one-bedroom apartment next to the Date Palm and had lived there ever since, with about as much forward momentum as a car on blocks.

“Jesus, really?” I said.

“I know,” Scout said, like she was used to answering the question. “Crazy, right?”

“No, you don't get it. I'm blown away because it's so familiar.”

And on that foundation, our friendship was built.

Scout and I mostly hang out when Megan's out of town. Which is weird, because Scout's best friend is an actress too. The difference is that Scout's best friend is bona fide famous. She's Eva Carlton, who spent her formative years playing the slutty sister on a sitcom, then moved to one of the big five soap operas—and finally hit the big-time on a high school show where every actor was gorgeous and pushing thirty.

You'd think that Scout and I would bond over it, but instead it creates a weird distance between us. Maybe it's that neither of us is good at girl stuff, or maybe it's that Scout's celebrity friendship is bigger than my celebrity friendship. It's a very L.A. question: can a girl who hangs with a solid B-lister be friends with a girl whose closest friend is clinging to the D-list?

I
'm riding down Lincoln Boulevard on the morning of my second day for Tyler when my phone rings, an 818 number I'd normally let go to voice mail, but I
am
a celebrity personal assistant now, after all. I mean, what if it's something important?

I stop at the corner and slip in my ear buds, balancing my foot against the curb. “This is Jess,” I say, pressing my mouth to the mic as a Humvee guns through the yellow light.

“Hi, Jess, it's Steve Collier.”

“Oh, hey,” I say. Shit. Tyler's business manager. I immediately get a flutter in my chest like I've done something wrong, which, hello? I've been on the job for exactly one golden day.

“So, you had your first day yesterday,” he says. “How was it?”

“Oh my God, are you kidding? It was great.”

“Good, good,” he says, and I can hear the buzz of an office behind him, people talking, computer keys clacking. “Tyler thought you were great, really top-notch, but there's the little problem with your tardiness.”

The flutter in my chest migrates south into my stomach. “I'm sorry, my what?”

“Tyler told me he asked for you at ten, and you were almost half an hour late.”

“No,” I say. “Absolutely not. He said ten, but then he changed it to ten thirty. I'm positive about this.”

“There's no need to be defensive,” he says soothingly.

What the fuck? I'm not being defensive, I'm being accurate. In my own defense. Aren't I?

“Listen, Jess, I don't want you to get off on the wrong foot. My suggestion is that you build an extra few minutes into your commute time so this doesn't happen again.”

“Okay. Uh, thanks for the heads-up.”

“No problem,” Steve says. “I'm sure we'll talk soon.”

“Great,” I say, but he's already terminated the connection.

I wheel in on my bike at 10:25. I'm still not sure if that's five minutes early or twenty-five minutes late, but I dump the bike in the courtyard like it's on fire and paw frantically through my road-ravaged hair as I burst through the front door.

“Hello?” I call out softly.

Zelda leaps from the sofa and gallops over to greet me, burying her nose in my crotch.

“In here,” Tyler calls from the kitchen, where I find him pacing and smoking in what looks like acute agitation. “I'm so glad you're here! The espresso machine isn't working. Again. I hate this thing. Can you run to Starbucks before we get into our day? Double cappuccino, extra dry.”

“Absolutely.” I'm hyperaware that I'm possibly late, but I can't say anything, so my voice sounds all fake and tinny in my ears. “Do you want me to take my bike? I can probably get there and back in about twenty minutes.”

“Oh God, no,” Tyler says. “I can't get through the next four minutes without caffeine, let alone twenty. Take the Bronco.”

In addition to the Carrera and the vintage 280SL Mercedes that lives under a car cover tailored better than anything in my closet, Tyler has a restored mid-'70s pistachio-green Ford Bronco, with a layer of mud along the sides that looks like it was painted on by a prop stylist. I'm there and back in nine minutes, mostly thanks to the fact that I hit a lull at what is normally a bustling Starbucks location.

Tyler makes a face when he takes his first sip. “Too much milk.”

“Here,” I offer. “Try mine?”

He wrinkles his nose. “Don't be silly. It's fine.”

“I can run back and get you another. Or maybe I can look at your espresso machine. You know I have a degree in barista service.”

He laughs. “Don't worry about it, Jess. I'm pretty low maintenance about this kind of stuff.”

Uh-oh. Death knell. When people say they're low maintenance in L.A., it inevitably means that they're anything but.

For the record, that was the last day Tyler's coffee was “fine.”

Cassidy calls when I'm pedaling down the bike path the following morning. I've given myself an extra half hour to get to the house, just to be on the safe side, and I am so ahead of schedule I'm thinking of stopping at Patrick's Roadhouse to treat myself to a breakfast burrito.

“This is Jess,” I say.

“How hard is it to get a coffee order right at Starbucks, Jacqueline?” Cassidy snaps. “I honestly don't get it.”

I twitch, but ignore the deliberate wrong-name thing. “Good morning, Cassidy,” I say, with my most passive-aggressive chirpiness. “Are you talking about Tyler's cappuccino?”

“What the fuck else would I be talking about? Tyler said it was completely undrinkable.”

“I know. Starbucks, right? I should make his coffee myself.”

There's a seething pause. “Every detail is equally important in Tyler's world,” Cassidy finally says. “If you can't handle the simple tasks this week, then you're not going to make the cut. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” I say.

“Great,” she says, and clicks off.

“Okay,” I say to the dead phone in my hand. “Nice talking to you, too. Have a great day.”

When I walk into the house, Tyler's bedroom door is shut. I can hear Zelda snuffling around on the other side. There's a Post-it on the door that reads:

Can you run up and get me a coffee before you wake me up? Two cups: triple shot of espresso in one and (in a separate cup) a venti nonfat milk foam. Milk foam, not milk.

It's becoming clear that Tyler is a bit off-kilter. Although I have to say, with an Oscar and two Grammys and an impeccable taste level, he's so out of my league that if he weren't a little crazy, I'd have no chance. Not that I have a chance now. Frankly, I'm still pinching myself that this is even happening. I mean, only a couple weeks ago I was stacking quarters from my tip jar and wondering if I had enough money to get a burrito
and
a bottle of wine after work.

When I get back with the coffee—which Tyler pours as carefully as a chemistry experiment into an Arte Italica mug without remark—we set up my day's schedule, which consists of discussing which clothing stores, fabric stores, and antique stores I'll need to visit to obtain snapshots of merchandise he may want to acquire. He doesn't like the resolution on the pictures I take with my iPhone, so he sends me out with a Polaroid One Step, which has been obsolete for about a million years. He has a stash of film that Kenner bought off eBay for God-knows-what per cartridge.

Turns out they're used to it at Villa Melrose and Bountiful and the other places he dispatches me to visit, but still, the eye rolls are endemic.

“Oh, you're Tyler's new assistant,” a girl who could be Gwyneth Paltrow's younger, hotter sister says to me as I'm awkwardly trying to grab a snapshot of a dresser that looks like it was made from discarded barn siding. “He's got such a great eye.”

I copy the information from the back of the tag onto the damp, square photo: fourteenth-century Italian shaving cabinet, sourced in Bagno Vignoni, twenty thousand dollars.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

My third day passes without incident and I'm still on the phone arranging a restoration carpenter to fix Tyler's French doors when I get home and Megan starts bleating incomprehensible enthusiasm at me from her bedroom.

I finish with the carpenter and poke my head in her room to find her packing. Gary Scott Thompson came through. The pilot is on.

“Throw some shit in a bag!” she says. “We're leaving tonight.”

“I can't,” I say, flopping onto her bed. “I'm employed now, remember?”

“Trial period,” Megan says. “And I'd like to point out that you've graduated from making coffee to ordering from Starbucks. You've hardly broken the glass ceiling.”

I flip her off and light a cigarette from the crumpled pack on her bed. “That's not all I do, I'll have you know.”

“Oh, of course, my bad. You also walk his dog.”

“And take Annie Leibovitz–like photos of fabric.”

“Just admit it's a hell job.”

“It's not, Boof,” I say. And frankly, I'm more into Tyler than I am Maui right now. They're both hot, but only one of them is having a meeting with Brad Pitt's Plan B production company next week.

“Just for a few days,” Megan wheedles. “You can stay in my room, and I'll get you paid on production's dime. You won't even have to do anything.”

“Why do you think I'm such a slacker?”

“You're not a slacker,” she says. “You just need to find your niche.”

“Boof, my niche isn't sleeping on your pullout in Maui, trying to find something to do all day while you're being a TV star.”

“Shut up, slacker,” she says. “Just come. Linus will live.”

Megan calls Tyler Linus, based on the wrong Peanuts character. She means Schroeder, but I haven't told her because I find her confusion adorable.

“I would love to come to Maui and be your beck-and-call girl, but I just can't bail. This is my first real job since Robbie and I broke up.” It's more than that, of course, but I don't know how to articulate it, even to Megan. Going to Maui with Megan—even though I love the shit out of her—still puts me on the wrong side of the velvet rope. She's not big enough to have an entourage; I would just be a tag-along.

“Mai-tais, room service, cabana boys.” Megan gives up on sorting a tangle of bikini tops and chucks the whole thing into her open suitcase.

“All very tempting,” I say. “Hopefully the offer will still be open when his Cruella de Vil manager shitcans me.”

Megan fake pouts as I take the wad of brightly colored fabric from her bag and start untangling it. “Hopefully, but you never know.”

She's so adorably full of shit.