“I should have. Boy, I screw everything up. If I could go back in time.”
“I’m sure you could have another shot. Just strike up a conversation the next time you see him at the coffee shop.”
“He’s drop dead gorgeous, but he’s too rich for my taste. He wouldn’t give me the time of day.”
“Well, forget him for now. Think about Marcus’s extravagant party. He’s hosting it in his fancy mansion!”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Marcus loves the women so he’ll totally be approachable. Just smile and flirt.”
“And why do I want to approach some stud who has his choice of a million women?”
“To talk about the agency, of course. I’m getting myself a big, giant, fat bonus. If anyone says they’re coming to the agency through us, well, we get a $1,000 bonus. Isn’t that awesome?”
“Sweet!”
“Apparently Marcus just got back to LA from like, Nepal or somewhere, and it’s the social event of the season.”
I snorted in laughter, earning me scandalized looks from every corner of the salon. “I’m sorry, it’s just—is that a real thing? Does our season have social events?”
Amanda faltered, but then continued with confidence. I could tell she had obviously read this somewhere reliable like the Internet in anticipation of my resistance and was ready for any question I could throw her way.
“Of course it does.” Her voice took on a slightly higher, hollower tone—vowels sagging weakly from all the weight she was putting on them. “There’s a ribbon cutting at Tiffany’s in the Grove, Barneys’ opening on Rodeo—and no, Bex, if you make a joke about a dinosaur exhibit it won’t be funny—Karl Lagerfeld is launching his new line so it’s looking for models, and then there’s that huge Los Angeles Diabetes Fundraiser Gala.”
“Thank you, Google.” I rolled my eyes. “And here I thought it was just Thanksgiving.”
Amanda frowned critically as Veronica Violet (and she’d hit you if you asked if that was her stage name) arranged her curls so they spilled down the back of her neck. “I don’t think they have that here.”
“Of course not,” I said bleakly. “Why would they?”
Amanda ignored me and beamed at her reflection in the mirror. “It’s perfect, Veronica, exactly like the picture.”
Veronica took a step back. Her eyes dilated hungrily and she poked at the curls as if she took her work very seriously. Either that or she was actually just as hungry as she looked. “It is perfect, isn’t it? Well, there are going to be at least ten other girls with the same style at the party tonight, so you can rest assured that it’s very fashionable.”
Amanda nodded seriously in response, and I looked at the two of them like they were nuts. I was about to say something along those lines, but at that moment, Paulo returned, and I was forced to duck for cover.
“Actually, Veronica,” Amanda frowned, “haven’t we seen you somewhere before?”
“She was Confused Cashier Number Four,’” I volunteered from beneath a tangle of steam and wires. I was surprised Amanda hadn’t immediately recognized her.
“Number Three, actually,” Veronica corrected me coolly. “But who’s counting?” She flashed Amanda a bitchy smile and disappeared with a cartoonish clicking of the heels.
“I can’t believe we live in a city where that wasn’t just said ironically...”
Amanda shushed me with a warning look, and I dragged my weary eyes back to the mirror to see what new nonsense Paulo was up to.
I had wanted to move to Portland—not Los Angeles. It was a given that anywhere we’d like to live in San Francisco was going to be way out of our price range, and I had decided that Portland was the next best thing. The music and arts scene was on the rise, and all the pictures I looked at online had at least one person with a wizard beard. I was intrigued. But Amanda reminded me that cinematic glory wasn’t going to come to us, we had to seek it out ourselves. And the best place to do that, unfortunately, was in the belly of the beast.
Perhaps she wouldn’t have been so quick to move if she’d known about Mrs. Wakowski and the three parking tickets we’d get within the first two weeks of living here. Then again, perhaps she would. It was hard to tell with Amanda. You never knew which things she’d choose to desperately care about, and which things she’d let thoughtlessly slide.
“Anyway,” she answered my question from hours before, “you would have gotten an invite too if yo
u’d come with me to the casting.”
“I told you—some of us have to work for a living. Not everyone can rely on their parents for rent.” I threw a hair tie at her playfully and pretended that Paulo didn’t slap my wrist.
Three hours later, we were back on the streets. Not the streets I would have preferred, mind you. Not my dear Westwood where I was still a local folk hero. No—we were prowling around the high-price shops and oxygen bars (yes, they’re real) of Beverly Hills. The agency that employed us to be unemployed actors had set aside a bit of a budget to make a good impression with the social elites at the party tonight. Since two of the four girls going had to drop out due to food poisoning (a lucky break for us, according to Amanda) that ‘bit of a budget’ had grown into more money than either she or I had ever spent in one afternoon.