Shooting Stars (39 page)

“Yeah.” I don't add anything. Adrian still makes me nervous; it's best I say as little as possible.

“And, so you got pregnant. And not keeping it wasn't your thing.”

“Right.” I laugh at the sheer ludicrous nature of this conversation.

Adrian seems undeterred. “Boy? Girl?”

“Boy.”

“Adrian's a good name,” he suggests.

I laugh again. Adrian's not arrogant—or alone—in recommending his own name. No joke, I can think of only one guy, Dule, who didn't suggest his moniker for my little one when he heard it was going to be a boy sans dad. And that's only because Dule hates his name since no one can pronounce it. I guess, guys need to have a male heir. I mean, if I were having a girl, no woman would ever think to suggest her name.

“So, how did it happen exactly?”

Just like a typical dude, Adrian gets back to the sex of it all.

“The timing was…improbable,” I stammer out, still nervous, “based on the day of the month and other things. I actually was much more worried about STDs since just after sex, the guy told me he was looking for a bisexual girl in an open relationship. I wasn't really thinking about getting pregnant.”

“And I assume you're all-OK there?” Adrian, again, seems unfazed by his words.

“Yes, no diseases. Just pregnant.”
Does he really need to know?

He grills me for a while about the identity of the dad, but I stay strong—plenty of times I've seen Adrian at the Starbucks on Western Ave., Bo's employer.

I'm still standing outside his car, the sun is setting, and it's getting cooler. My getting-ready-to-nurse nipples are poking through my shirt and I feel self-conscious. My roommate jokingly calls them “Bo Derek nipples” and says I should be proud. Simon calls them “bear's noses” when they suddenly appear under my shirt, and I don't think that's a compliment.

“I'm freezing,” I say. “Can you back up into the sun?”

“Get in,” he says. “I'm not going anywhere. Just pulled out for my mom.”

Sure enough, his mom backs out just at that moment. She has an older man in the passenger seat.

“Bye, Mom,” Adrian calls out. “See you guys. I love you.”

The man hollers “I love you” back.

We continue to chat in his car. Adrian continues to text. I pull down the visor mirror to get something out of my eye.

“I look awful,” I say. And I do. After last night with my other celebrity neighbors, the tap dancers in my head wouldn't let me rest.

“I think you look really good,” he says.

“Ugh,” I groan. “I have no makeup on, and I barely slept.” I'm not fishing for a compliment either. I just want him to know I generally look better.

“Maybe that's why I think you look so good,” he replies.

Now, I'm totally flustered, regardless of his texting. Adrian just said I looked good, and he was serious.

I stare at his mouth, longingly. He has a little chip in his tooth, the left front one, which I've never noticed before.
Has it always been chipped
?

There are a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, but nice-uncomfortable. I don't know if he notices since he's still texting.

“You know, you're interesting,” he comments.

I wait for him to continue.

“I mean, not having sex for…but then…” he trails off. I know he's struggling with the juxtaposition of my life—how can I be a good, moral girl who doesn't have sex for years, yet one who is also an in-your-face paparazza? I know he's not thinking about having sex with me, but he is thinking about
sex
and
me
.

“Just like L.A.,” I offer with a smile. “In so many ways good. In so many ways not.”

We talk for about ten more minutes. Then I hop out of his car to get a magazine clipping from my trunk. It's one of “our” pictures, which printed from the day at the pool. (As promised, I never sold the backyard shots to the magazines.) This is one of him leaning on his Prius with his guitar. I have two copies, which I've carried around for months: one for him to sign for me, and one for me to sign for him.

He signs first.
Good luck being a single mom. Adrian.

“What kind of note is that?” I question as my heart sinks. He knows what I'm thinking too: my boy needs a dad.

He shrugs.

Adrian's documentary,
Shot in the Dark
, tells of his upbringing and being raised by a single mom. Adrian never knew his dad growing up.

He's getting kind of aloof now and has pulled back into his drive and put his cell phone away. It signifies our time is coming to an end.

Thanks for the shot.
(Heart)
Jennifer.
I sign his more personal.

“Well, good luck,” Adrian says, then just stares at me.

“Thanks,” I say, turning toward my car, always wanting to be the first to go. “See ya around.”

* * *

Later that evening, my roommate and I watch a rerun of
House
. Like many people, I watch TV to forget about life for a while. But like many paps, I struggle to find things to watch. The
Grey's Anatomy
folks appear in my days way too often to want to spend my evenings with them; the same for the
Desperate Housewives. Ugly Betty
is out because America Ferrara's “a bitch.” And
Entourage
—no way—I definitely can't watch that.

Mostly I watch
House
. In its plethora of reruns—currently three shows in a row, four nights a week on the USA Network—it's a great combo: fantastic writing and mindless entertainment. All the episodes end in the same feel-good way; it's a respite for the senses. The main reason I watch
House
, though, is because of “House,” a sexy doctor I've never worked, who still makes me dream and forget about life.

“Too bad our lives don't tie up in a bow each night with music and cozy resolutions,” Amy notes.

I ponder lives. They don't really come to happy
or
sad endings. In fact, they don't come to endings at all. Even when you die, your life is not fully resolved. Or if it is, you've probably lived a lonely last few years.

I've often wondered how my story would end. And I've come to realize
that while life doesn't end, it is a chain of seasons. And seasons do end. This season of my life is ending. A baby is coming, and for me that means no more papping and no more celebrities. My friends and activities will also change as my life refocuses. As well—and this is big—I'm finally ready to be called “a woman.” That's right. At thirty-seven-and-one-half, I'm not a girl anymore. My ambitions and prayers have even changed. I pray for peace instead of adventure, for wisdom instead of winning, and for happiness instead of exhilaration. I continue to beg God for love.

My hormones command:
You gotta get ready for baby.
Like many nesting moms-to-be, I obsessively clean my house and my car, for which Simon, the ultimate clean freak, has bought me a paintbrush so I can dust!

Sleep comes easily whenever I have time for it. I still desire ten to eleven hours a night, and upon waking it takes me several minutes to get out of bed as an invisible, twenty-pound, lead blanket seems to cover me.

The need to make as much money as I can before my child arrives haunts me, though I now loathe every split second of being a pap. When Claudia told me long ago that everything in her nature went against this job, I didn't get it until now. “Pregnant pap” is an oxymoron. The constant adrenaline—the “why” Aaron gave as the reason, two and a half years ago, we do the job—simply doesn't work for me anymore. My baby
hates
it. So now, as I drive, I divert my eyes in an attempt
not
to spot celebrities on the road. I'm thankful when my doorsteps
don't
leave, and if they do, I hope to lose them. If I don't, I pray they hurry home without getting out of their car. Rarely do I exit my car: besides being sloth-slow, a pregnant paparazza is most unattractive. No matter how beautiful the mommy-to-be, she exudes pure ugliness when walking backward with squatted knees, her eight-month swollen bump bulging in front of a random celeb.

For these reasons, at least three times a week, I spend my day—which now goes from about one to five—at the West Hollywood Whole Foods. I feel fortunate to have found this comfortable sit in the heart of celebrity
neighborhoods. I secure one of two tables where I can see all the checkout lanes. Then I write or work on the Internet, eat salad, and drink smoothies. Pap “friends” pop in and out all day to say hi. Sometimes one of the security guards will come over to tell me if a celeb has walked in. Even if they don't, I'll always catch the star checking out. If I don't think they'll cover, I'll go for interior cash-register shots (rare, good money), then head outside and shoot them carrying their groceries to the car. If I think they may not oblige, I'll leave the store, go hide in my Prius, and nail the exit shots.

Already, I've shot Leonardo DiCaprio with his current girlfriend Bar Refaeli (his hat was pulled low but you could see his eyes—score!),
Grey's Anatomy
's Ellen Pompeo (reliably, she comes every Friday), Christina Ricci (the
Addams Family
's Wednesday), T.R. Knight (George O'Malley on
Grey's
and Heigl's real life BFF), and Dita Von Teese (the burlesque dancer and Marilyn Manson's ex-wife). Not always huge celebs, but grocery-store shots, so full of colorful bananas and broccoli peeking from the bags, always sell. (They're much more interesting than just a celebrity walking down the street. They show the stars actually shop for their own groceries—“Just like
Us
!”) And the start to finish—spotting to shooting—is so swift that only moderate amounts of adrenaline toxins seep into my pregnant body. All in all, it's not a bad way to wind down my career shooting stars.

* * *

My weekends, at this point, are pretty stress-free too. Mostly I spend them in front of the TV. As previously mentioned, I've never watched
Entourage
. Intentionally. Besides the show offering me no escape from my reality—they write it right I'm told, and much as it happens in Hollywood—I never wanted to elevate Adrian to any sort of exalted celebrity status in my head. Moreover, if the possibility existed for us to “get together” (a faint fantasy of mine still), wouldn't it be better if we just merged as a guy and a girl?

Plus, I don't have HBO.

Three days after our car talk, I'd explored every foreseeable Adrian Grenier sex scene in my head. I had exhausted all of the possibilities, and then I let them go. But I started to miss them. Without an active crush—and being that
House
wasn't on over the weekend—life felt listless again until the arrival of
el bebe
. I caved and rented the first season of
Entourage
.

Snap
! Adrian plays himself on TV. I'd suspected this all along but never imagined the degree to which similarities exist. Like Adrian, Vincent Chase in
Entourage
is a pretty face with an easygoing personality. Vincent is also an actor whose goal in life is just like Adrian's: to enjoy himself. Vincent, like Adrian, has loads of roommates “just for fun,” and the girls, in both lives, are endless.

I could not believe it.
It was Adrian.
They just call him “Vince” on the show, and Vince somehow seems weirdly taller, but Adrian and Vince are exactly the same guy.

Watching Vince gave me insight into my real-life movie star. Adrian/Vince doesn't hit on girls; they hit on him. Adrian/Vince effortlessly connects with any beautiful woman he wants, but without any work. Maybe Adrian and I have never kissed because I've never made the first move, and he doesn't know how to make the first move because he's never had to. Unfortunately for Adrian/Vince, this inexperience with “the chase” has produced a sort of natural apathy toward pursuing women, which is not so attractive on-or off-screen. At least not to me.

Even so, Adrian's a successful, attractive guy in his early thirties with a good head on his shoulders, and that's about as hard to find here as snow. So as I watch, I find it hard to shake my longtime crush on him.

“No wonder you like him,” my roommate says when she sees the wanton look on my face. “How many guys are there like that in L.A.?”

“I've never met one,” I concede.

And therein lies the problem. The issue, as Amy and I discuss, is that other than paparazzi, Adrian is pretty much the only single guy over the age of thirty that I've spoken to, much less flirted with, since Bo. Eight long months have been filled with paps, nosy neighbors, and West Hollywood metrosexuals. No wonder I'm still pining for Adrian. Simply
put: thirty-something, healthy, manly-men are so precious and lauded because they do
not
grow on trees. Added to the L.A. conundrum is, of course, the massive quantity of crazy but hot women who move to this city to act, realize that they cannot act, and in an out-of-character moment of clarity, recognize that their only hope for survival is to harvest themselves one of the few eligible and solvent heterosexual man-fruits.

That doesn't leave much Adrian to go around.

But that's kind of OK. I'm ready for a change anyway. More than the obvious new baby change, I mean. Soon, I'll be finished with papping; I have no reason I
must
stay in L.A. Three of the girls—Georgia, Alex, and JoDeane—are transitioning back to their homes in Michigan; and while I don't see myself in the South, where my family is, maybe a new city's in order for me too.

Not that I wouldn't miss it here. L.A. is
so much
that I would miss. L.A. is energy, culture, passion, influence, sunshine…like I've never seen it anywhere else in the world. I adore this city full of beautiful, talented young people all with a drive to make their dreams come true. But I'm getting older, and the only dream I want to come true is the dream of a family. And while I've had the experience of my life here, I'm just not sure L.A.'s the place to make that happen.