Been There, Married That (ARC)

by Gigi Levangie

  “Diet Coke?” I asked her. “Perrier?”

  “Are you enjoying your launch party?” Liz asked.

  “Ugh. LA is rotten with launch parties—restaurants, vodka brands, pop-up stores, jewelry . . . books,” I said.

  “Bread and circuses and launch parties,” Liz replied.

  Juliette and Karyn and a slender Asian man squeezed through the agent barricade.

  “Devastated!” declared Juliette, tiny Band-Aids adorning her face like ornaments. “I found this flyer in Jordan’s Range Rover!” She foraged through her Birkin, which I called her “leather vial,” and thrust a crumpled hot yoga flyer at my nose. I winked. Juliette’s translucent, unmarred skin was peeling in sheets under a thin film of Aquaphor. Aquaphor is the glue that held her face together. Aquaphor is the lifeblood of the Hollywood wife.

  Jordan had recently rediscovered yoga and spirituality; he’s temporarily Buddhist. Happily married men do not hot yoga. I took comfort in the fact that Trevor would never hot yoga. I feel temporarily smug. What a great marriage I have!

  Karyn cooed, “Darling, please. Don’t be ridiculous.” Mystery Asian, whom she toted everywhere nodded and pursed his pillowy lips in support. I wondered how they felt on her neck.

  “My face looks smoother, right?” Juliette said, shining her phone light on the contents of her purse. A sliver of cheek dropped in her drink as she fished a white tablet with ink marks from the well; she swallowed the pill and the drink in one swig, and down went the flake.

  “Where’s Trevor? Don’t tell me he’s not here,” Karyn said with her cat smile, like she knows what you’re hiding in the back of your bathroom drawer.

  “Late meeting,” I said. “He’s blowing up my phone, sorry this, sorry that.” Karyn is the Westside AT&T the friend you lie to unless you want information spread like herpes on a Carnival Cruise. Behind her, stacks of books on the signing table beckoned. I’d better start signing before everyone runs out of filters.

  A woman appeared, wearing my Tory Burch, but in red; I immediately regretted buying the blue.

  “I brought Sharpies,” Petra said, and I swear I’m not upset about Trevor’s house manager wearing the exact same but better dress. She smiled, showing off new veneers that I paid for. I felt guilty about my straight-ish teeth, and now hers are objectively better. Petra was cheery in the way only a depressed Slovak can be. When we first hired her, she’d told me her parents died hauling a wagon on an icy mountain road escaping civil unrest, then mentioned her pet mule had survived and she’d sold him to a meat factory for a ticket to America. She’d smiled, her teeth small and gray like the pill bugs I used to poke as a child to watch them roll into a ball.

  “Oh, A-nus, could you be any more beautiful?”

  “No, I really can’t,” I said. “You look stunning. The red really flatters your teeth.”

  We all air-kissed each other. Karyn insisted on four, as in a tiny French town she and Michael visited three years ago.

  I pulled Petra aside, and it occurred to me that I liked her perfume, as well. It occurred to me that . . . I wore the same perfume. Guerlain.

  “Have you heard from Trevor?” I asked. Petra knows Trevor better than I; I jokingly call her my wife, but she’s more like Trevor’s second wife in his current marriage.

  “If you don’t mind,” Petra said, squinting. “I have a migraine.” She re-squinted.

  “Oh no,” I said. “You should leave right away.”

  “Are you sure? I could stay and help.”

  “I can sign on my own,” I assured her. When you have “staff,” there’s very little you wind up doing on your own. I was on course to being unable to wipe my ass in a year.

  Liz sidled up next to me and cocked her head toward the ninja assistant as she squint-smiled her way through the agent-wife-B-list crowd.

  “When did Petra cut her hair like yours?” Liz asked.

  “Did she? I hadn’t noticed,” I said.

  “She’s you if you were blown up in a particle machine and pieced back together,” Liz said. “The teeth were a mistake. You never buy your assistant teeth.”

  The actress we want for the movie adaptation (0.0001 percent chance) appeared at my side, pushing her pouty breasts into my triceps; she’s nineteen and has cashmere skin and hair of mink; she’s inebriated and smells like the morning after and is all over me.

  “I fucked the director,” she said. Her “whisper” emerged like a clumsy warble. “He has huge balls!” Her trunk-sized LV bag, the latest version, appears to be carrying her. (I know it’s the latest because Juliette told me I absolutely needed one.)

  She could sleep in it if she wanted and probably has.

  My head was spinning from tequila drinks and the crowd and balls. Big balls. The director, a Canadian, lived on one of the Italian Riviera–named streets in my neighborhood with his pleasant wife and wriggly mass of towheaded kids. He was soft-spoken and polite and never failed to wave when I drove by while he’s tending his roses. Which means to say, I assumed he was gay. No straight men in the business are that polite. (“The business,” by the way.)

  “Let’s play,” she said, opening her elephantine purse to reveal its tenant: a neon dildo.

  “Oh! I only play tennis,” I said. In fact, her dildo’s as big as my Babolat. (A cool name for a dildo, btw. Market that.)

  A spark of realization like a penlight in the back of my cranium. The actress must know I’ve been given the superfluous executive producer credit on the movie. Poor child. She thinks I, the writer, have power. I tell her Liz’s producing the next Harry Potter and send her and her Babolat in Liz’s direction. Liz is a lapsed lesbian; I’m a good friend.

  The buoyant temperature dropped; the Enviro-bullies, a subset of Hollywood wives that doesn’t wear makeup or have sex with anyone but Robert Kennedy Jr. (totally kidding!), are out in force, sucking fun out of the room like a green-powered vacuum. They have climate change worry lines and berating - gardeners - for - driving - diesel furrows. The prettiest one—a former daytime soap star and heroin addict whose current drug of choice is paper straws—approaches.

  “Honey!” She was clutching my book as she kissed my cheek. I smelled lingering cigarette smoke, a weak spot that softened me for whatever was coming next.

  “Did you use recycled paper?” She tapped my book with her nail, right between the eyebrows on my author’s photo. I winced.

  “I’m not sure,” I said and then decided to lie. “I asked them to, of course . . .”

  “Ink that doesn’t kill Indian babies?”

  I saw my agent, Lucas, across the room and waved at him like I’d just fallen overboard into choppy seas. As the Enviro-Bullies descended on the Good-Time Blondes, I scurried away; the GTBs drove Range Rovers and wore dyed-pink fur and turned sprinklers on their fake lawns. I couldn’t watch.

  I dog-paddled across the room to my human lifeboat, Lucas Kirklow, a tall drink of Hollywood legacy water (movie star mother, playwright father). He was forehead to lip with an ethereal giantess with a blue vein that beat beneath the skin of her albino forehead. She was draped in black, light catching at her neckline, illuminating a crystal wrapped in gold. I’d found the one person who belonged here less than I did. She smelled like incense and the musk of other people’s darkest secrets. I was scared but also wanted her to hold me.

  Lucas, in his hipster Malcolm X-tra glasses, gave me a hug and a moist peck on the cheek. His rich chocolate curls flopped forward and that crooked smile that made women (me) weak and stupid (also me) were out in full electrifying force.

  “Agnes, love the party, so good, you’re amazing, are you wearing eyeliner? Perfect! Meet Waverly Brown,” Lucas said. The woman gazed down at me from her imaginary throne. “Just signed Waverly to a three-book deal.”

  “Congratulations,” I said. Then bowed.

  “Waverly is a cognitive,” Lucas said, “You know her work.”

  I bit my lip. “Cognitive?”

  “It’s like an . . . intuit
ive,” Lucas said.

  “You mean . . . a psychic?” I asked.

  Waverly sniffed and looked away.

  “Have you had a drink?” I gestured over the bobbing agent heads toward the bar. Any minute now, I’d have to start signing books. Waverly opened her clutch and slipped out a card, handing it to me. Silver with black filigree numbers. A phone number. No name.

  “Thank you?”

  She leaned in and whispered in my ear, “He’s getting his ducks in order.”

  My eyes moved from Waverly to Lucas, who was laughing at something one of the waitresses with perfect teeth said, his curls bouncing with thoughts (I imagine) of Waverly’s commissions and sex. I didn’t tug on them like I usually do.

  “That’s a mixed metaphor, and not to be nitpicky, but isn’t it getting your ducks in a row and house in order?” I asked Ms. Cognitive. I was thirsty and aware that I might be hyperventilating. The room felt smaller and the walls were undulating and I needed to sit down.

  “Call me,” she said, holding my gaze.

  “How do you spell your name, again?”

  “E-y.”

  Me: blank stare.

  “Agster!” (No one calls me Agster.) “S - h - e - l - l - e - y.”

  “Oh my God, Shell-i-e, I mean, Shell-e-y, stop, I know!” Ha ha! I smiled outwardly. Inwardly, I died. Twelve books in, my signing devolved into “Hope you enjoy! XoAggie,” twenty books in, I’m at the “Enjoy! XAg” stage.

  Party was over in ten minutes, not that I was counting. Next in line, beady eyes framed by belligerent lash extensions in a waxy face. A menopausal party girl for whom the party would have ended a long time ago if it weren’t for that handy trust fund.

  “Carrie!”

  I’m thrilled to remember her name, though. We cheek kissed; I could feel her Aquaphor rub off on me.

  “I did a walk-through of your house today!” she said, her teeth phosphorescent. I tried to remember what her grandfather invented (shoelace tips?). She’s on Liz’s and my Instagram “Hall of Shame” for flip-o-gram moms spending weeks picking out fringe for their Coachella halters. Shooters at Sky Bar at 2:00 a.m. Screwing the Brentwood High football quarterback.

  “What?” I winked. Even though Carrie’s five Deadlies in, she caught my discomfort like a black widow spider.

  “Have you ever thought of taking the fireplace down? I mean, a fireplace in the middle of the kitchen? Who does that?” She snorted, tequila dripping from her nostrils.

  I loved my fireplace. It’s authentic and original . . . except, it’s not my fireplace. My name is nowhere on the deed. Indeed.

  Wink. Wink.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” She’s the opposite of sorry. She’s ecstatic, like biting into a warm pain au chocolat after hot-stranger-sex ecstatic. “What am I even saying? Of course you knew. How could you not know? That would be so weird, right? And sad. So, so sad. Can you sign this to my nana? She’s ninety years old. I think she might like it.”

  She slid an open book over to me.

  With shaky hands, I wrote, Your granddaughter’s a bitch, XOAg.

  No, no, I didn’t.

  (Okay. Yes, I did.)

  3: Uber-Hyphenate

  I Ubered home in a blacked-out Suburban, Adele crying on the radio, air-conditioning blowing up my dress, and legroom for my emotional baggage. My calls and texts to Trevor went unanswered. I hoped he wasn’t lying in a ditch somewhere, but I also hoped that he was. F04A

  Crazy, crazy Agnes. I’d assumed Trevor would materialize during my party, a 5 percent body fat rabbit hopping from a magician’s hat, waving my book, dedicated to him, my dear husband. Meanwhile, I was checking my phone like Lil Wayne waiting on a codeine cough syrup delivery. I wasn’t even the family OCD. That would belong to Trevor, who could make a miniseries out of a meal and a lifetime out of a T-shirt drawer.

  Uber driver Sami was a battery-operated Lebanese comic (“Only open mics in Burbank so far, that’s okay, that’s okay!”) with doe eyes and long lashes and the enthusiasm of a Jack Russell kept in a studio apartment too long. He’d driven Trevor home from his office once and did I know Trevor and was I married to Trevor and could I get Trevor his screenplay and also his 8×10?

  “Of course,” I said. “I’d be happy to.” Don’t be a dream-stomper. You never know. Remember what William Goldman said about Hollywood? You don’t know who William Goldman is? (Sorry. I’m an antique, I mean “vintage.”)

  Mr. Goldman famously said, No one knows anything.

  Also applies to politics, the media, and AT&T customer service professionals. I’d send the Lebanese comic’s 110-page baby to one of Trevor’s three assistants and hope that someone would read the script and throw the kid a bone, give him feedback, a little encouragement. If it sucked, Trevor would never be the wiser. As his wife, I was the official buffer; my job was to protect Trevor from incoming scripts, 8×10s, uncomfortable conversations with “civilians.”

  We drove west on Sunset, my favorite street in a city I knew like the back of my freckled hand (those aren’t age spots, I tell you), winding through wide, palatial streets of Beverly Hills, floating past ivy-covered Bel Air gates, to the edge of the Palisades, twisting up a darkened road into the Riviera. Capri, Amalfi, Umeo . . . sexy, curvy streets with no street lighting, no sidewalks, and no pedestrians, thank you very much. Pedestrians were for south of Sunset.

  Unless you were four-legged; coyotes padded in from the parched canyon, hunting for saline swimming pool water and Fluffy.

  Our gates were closed. I leaned out the window and punched six numbers in the alarm pad—Trevor 68 Pep 07 Me 75.

  I waited for the gate to groan open.

  And waited. La la la.

  “My screenplay, it’s about childhood buddies who grow up in Beirut.” Sami painted the scene with his elegant hands. “They meet this wizard in the rubble of war. Is he real? Is he not? Are the boys dead? Are they alive? Sort of magical realism, you know what I mean?”

  “Sounds more interesting than anything I’ve seen in a long time,” I said. “What about car chases? Any superhero costumes? Hot mutants?”

  I punched the code again. Waited. Nada. Coyotes howled deep in the canyon, a scraggly, furry Greek chorus.

  “Power outage,” I lied.

  Trevor didn’t do power outages. We owned the most powerful backup generator west of the 405 Freeway. Years ago, Trevor one-upped Brad Grey after hearing the former Paramount chief had the beta version. On an autumn night in the aftermath of a jarring earthquake, Trevor mixed margaritas, and we observed the ink city from our balcony and toasted our industrial-strength generator.

  Pep slept in my arms, her strawberry head on my chest.

  We were happy. Wasn’t that a happy moment? I had to write this down, might need to pitch it later. To my husband.

  Sami glanced at me over the front seat, his velvet eyebrows knitted together. “You, ah, sure you live here?”

  “Listen,” I said, my humiliation antennae finely tuned, a human praying mantis. “Do you want your magical realism read or not?”

  He adjusted the rearview mirror.

  “I’m sorry . . . look, I’ll stay, call my nanny,” I said. “She’s babysitting; she just can’t hear the ring.”

  I hopped out, his screenplay and photograph balanced atop my box of extra books that I’d shove into a closet to be dredged up decades from now, after my death at 102 from boredom. “Great-great-granny Agnes was a writer?” “I think so.” “What’s a writer?” “Some silly shit.”

  “My phone number’s on the title page,” Sami said as he pulled out of the driveway. “It’s called Escape from Childhood. It’s a home run for a movie star, an Oscar for sure, I’m telling you, I wouldn’t lie.”

  A warm, dry wind blew. I dropped the box on the driveway and checked my phone. No bars. We lived in a dead zone, I’d told Trevor. I’d have more bars on a raft in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

  A bar blinked. Call Gabriela!

  Straight to v
oice mail, in English and Spanish. FYI, I speak bad Spanglish; I stumble over slippery conjugated verbs but can throw down insults like a native.

  I lost service again.

  I walked into the street, surrounded by silent, unblinking mansions. I held my phone aloft, raising it like a flag.

  Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? What about now?

  One bar. Now two. That elusive third bar. I called Trevor, smiling, slightly younger Trevor hoisting the Oscar popped up on my screen, a favorite shot of his, taken from People magazine.

  Voice mail. His assistant—the motherly Brit at the office, not the fresh-faced, trembling assistant with the colitis, and not the third, silent, faceless one I never remember because they’re always being replaced.

  I walked back to the gate, punched in the family code once again. Sniffed. The temperature was dropping. My stomach rumbled. I’d barely eaten the baffling appetizers. I stared down the wooden gate, now illuminated by stingy moonlight.

  “Open sesame!” I yelled. Coyotes howled.

  Fuck it. I slipped off my heels.

  I grabbed the side of the gate, hitched my foot into the center of the wooden X, and pulled myself up, my hips hitting the top. I was no Mary Lou Retton. Don’t come calling, Wheaties. Using all my strength and lack of common sense, I flipped over the gate, landing on the other side, dropping my phone during the vault.

  Russian judge gives silly Hollywood wife a 5.2.

  All those hours spent in Pilates and hot yoga and SoulCycle for the Mom Olympics finally paid off.

  I ran down the long driveway that curved into a circle in front of the house. Security lights flickered overhead as I dashed past giant hedges, mechanical sentries alerted to sudden movement.

  The home I’d lived in for the last ten years emerged.

  I imagined Trevor’s Realtor, “Westside’s Realtor to the Stars™”, Peter Marks. The description on his website, next to an old photo. That Peter, bright-eyed, brown-haired, newly married. Today’s Peter. Baggy-eyed, gray-haired, divorced. Stars will do that to a person.