A Star Is Bored

by Byron Lane

  I look over to see a cookie sheet sitting on two pot holders. There’s a dish towel on top of them and a Post-it note that reads, “Shhhh cookies sleeping.”

  My tension melts away; I feel both relief and rage.

  Duality.

  “Okay. I guess everything is all set,” I say.

  “What? What about the vet?” Agnes asks, cupping her hand around her ear, struggling to hear.

  “No. I said, ‘Guess everything is all set.’”

  “I don’t have any pets myself,” she says. “Kathi had a bunch of dogs in the past, but they always got killed. Hit by cars or accidentally poisoned by stray pills. One of those damn dogs was sick in the head and had a seizure and died right in front of the hostess while me and Kathi and Miss Gracie were waiting for a table at La Scala.”

  Miss Gracie.

  I swoon at the mention of Kathi’s mother—Gracie Gold. I delight at her being mentioned so casually, in everyday conversation, in this, her daughter’s home. I can’t wait to meet Miss Gracie, to see the legend from which all this grew, this—Kathi’s current life, and my budding new one. But first:

  “Is Kathi here?” I ask.

  “She’s back in bed,” Agnes says. “It was odd for her to be awake so early.”

  “It’s eleven in the morning,” I say, my adrenaline slowing down, my senses returning, the smell of the fresh-baked cookies finally reaching me.

  “Is it?” Agnes asks, looking around for a clock, as if she has no idea where to find one, as if no one in this six-thousand-square-foot manor has ever had to worry about time, responsibility, accountability.

  “Should I get anything else?” I ask.

  Agnes shrugs.

  “What should I do now?”

  Agnes shrugs.

  “Who’s in charge?”

  Agnes shrugs, staring at me. She’s innocent, sweet, a brain tumor apparently behind her eyes, smiling, satisfied as her days are spent, literally spent—nearly gone—nodding off in the kitchen of Kathi Kannon, film icon.

  And as Agnes turns away from me, turns back and looks up to Judge Judy on the television, I get it. I know who’s in charge. Me. I am. I’m in charge. I’m responsible. I’m at the controls. I’m the adult in the room, in every room of this estate. And I know nothing.

  Hey, Siri, I want to stake my claim in this home, in this life. I want to make this happen. I want to be an A-plus assistant like I was an A-plus student. Therapista says I’m a people pleaser, I’m an overachiever, I’m a perfectionist in an imperfect world. And I plan to put all those qualities to use immediately.

  “Agnes, show me what needs to be done!”

  * * *

  Agnes can barely walk, barely stay awake, and barely show me the routine, the ins and outs of the job I’ve apparently won.

  In the living room, she hands me a Barneys New York shopping bag full of bottles of prescription medications for Kathi’s bipolar disorder. I pull out one of the bottles. The pills rattle around as I roll it to read the label. It’s so strange to see a celebrity’s name on a prescription bottle. It’s odd, somehow reductive. Stars, they’re just like us: menopausal, depressive, anxious. It reminds me of that out-of-place feeling I got as a kid when I saw my teacher carrying her purse in Walmart, as if that purse—these meds—made my teacher, make Kathi Kannon, somehow more real as people. As if before that, it’s like they’re not humans, just ideas, concepts.

  My responsibilities include feed her, water her, medicate her.

  “Every morning you’ll go in her room,” Agnes says, “wake her softly, greet her nicely with her pills for the day—make sure you get the pills right and don’t kill her.”

  I stare at Agnes. The animal portraits behind me stare at Agnes. She’s not joking.

  She continues, “For breakfast, Kathi eats a bag of Weight Busters cereal. Dry. Also, bring in a glass of ice with a can of ice-cold Coke Zero. Pour the Coke Zero over the ice while you’re in the room so that she hears it fizz and starts craving it, and that will help her wake up.”

  Agnes shows me the glasses in the bar, the same ones Kathi used to pour me a soda not long ago. “Kathi found these glasses in China. They’re probably toxic but just the right size to hold one full can of soda with ice. Sometimes she’ll wake up when you go in, and sometimes she’ll want to sleep in. Make sure her electronic cigarettes are fully charged and stocked, and good luck.” She shuffles away, nearly falling over twice as her slippery socks barely hold her wiry frame to the endangered floors. I’m thinking, What else in this house is endangered?

  I sit in a Parisian chair and sift through the bag of meds, reading the instructions for each and sorting the daily pills into a pale-blue plastic pill dispenser with seven sections, one for each day of the week. I fill every section. Of course, these are not her assortment for the week, they’re her assortment for the day; it’s just that this massive number of pills won’t fit into a single daily compartment.

  Tap, tap, tap, as I put the day’s pills in the various blocks. I’m working at an antique coffee table sculpted from a single piece of tree trunk, which sits in the middle of the circle of the leather-chair empire. There’s a sculpture at the center of the table that looks like a hunk of driftwood adorned with the kind of garnish you put on a fancy Christmas present instead of a bow. Alas, maybe it’s art. I’m just a kid from Louisiana, sitting in my first celebrity mansion, surrounded by more wealth than I’ve ever known, more pills than I’ve ever seen, more uncertainty than I’ve ever felt.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  * * *

  A short time later, per Agnes’s instructions, I’m holding a tray with a cold, sweating can of Coke Zero, a full glass of ice, a gently crackling cellophane bag of Weight Busters cereal, and a container with a smattering of daily medications, all rattling as I walk down the hallway to wake a sleeping film giant.

  I’m standing outside of her bedroom. The closed door is both disappointingly ordinary and utterly amazing—a lot like her. It’s thick old wood, with history and survival in its grain. It has two long stained-glass windows—just shapes, no fellatio here, unlike the front door. It’s dark in her bedroom. I can only imagine what it looks like from her point of view, the light out here flirting into her vision from my side of these stained-glass panes.

  I knock gently on her door. Nothing. I turn the knob—an antique, wobbly, metal-and-glass door handle with an actual keyhole. I’m certain it’s another antique throwback to a long-ago time—you can’t get things like this anymore; everything here seems profoundly unique.

  Light from the hallway jets into and across her room as I open the door. Things inside start to reveal themselves: a massive pile of clothes on the floor, an elliptical machine draped in evening gowns and a single dangling bra, a nightstand overwhelmed with books and papers and pill bottles and a lamp and a phone that’s off the hook. A king-sized bed fit for a queen, the queen, my queen, my new boss, apparently, now reduced to a lump. She’s a single woman and presumably alone in bed, but I’m not totally sure. She’s under what appears to be a huge pile of quilts and blankets and throws knitted from the fur of some soft and exotic wild animal—like one of those creatures featured in National Geographic, previously living a life of horror, desperately avoiding predators, hungrily hunting for food, dying an early and violent death in a hot and miserable climate—now woven into a flat work of comfortable art adorning the body of an internationally celebrated millionaire.

  The room is wall-to-wall blue shag carpet. Her bed looks as if it’s made of pages of books, but they’re just interwoven scraps of linen upon which pages of classic works of fiction have been printed: Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Kathi Kannon. E-cigarettes are charging in every power outlet, casting a pulsing, eerie red glow in the air.

  “Good morrrrrrrrrrning,” I softly speak-sing to her, my voice cracking, not used to this new cheery tone. She doesn’t budge. Her body is so entombed in blankets, small and isolated like an island in the middle of a king-sized ocean, it’s not pos
sible to notice any movement, any breathing.

  “Good morning,” I say, louder and even cheerier, hoping she’s not dead, which would end my life’s rebirth, my new power position, my wresting of my dull life from the clutches of nothingness, before it even began.

  “Hi,” I say sweetly but more authoritatively. No movement. I swallow, my smile fades. “I brought you…” I say, looking down at the ice and soda and pills, “… breakfast.”

  I lean in, my eyes scanning this space where my childhood hero from TV and film has landed as a collection of actual living atoms and molecules.

  “Are you dead?” I whisper kindly. (ALWAYS BE POLITE! I hear my father screaming in my head.) “Are you dead, ma’am—I mean, Kathi?” I look around for a clue, what to do next, but then I hear something.

  “Mmmmm,” Kathi groans, and rolls onto her back. “What? Who?”

  “I’m Charlie, your new assistant. I’m here. Obviously. I got your toothpicks. They’re in the kitchen.”

  “My what?” she asks.

  “And I have your breakfast here,” I say, chipper, relieved, nervous, hoping I’m doing all of this correctly. I unsteadily balance the tray on one hand, and with the other I crack open the can of Coke Zero and pour its fizziness over ice. “It’s a lovely day. Isn’t it great to be alive?”

  “I feel like I’m in a cocoon of quiet and not quiet,” she says.

  “Here’s a soda and cereal and your favorite antipsychotic medications. Where do you want them?”

  “Anally.”

  “Ha ha,” I say. Literally the sound ha and then ha, the fakest enthusiasm I’ve ever heard, the faking of faking of real.

  “Oh, my,” she mutters, maybe thinking this has been a mistake, and by this, I mean me. “You must lighten up, Cockring.” She checks out the goodies I’m carrying. “Just put all that stuff on the nightstand.”

  Beside her bed is not technically a nightstand but a weathered drop-front secretary desk, as if she’s the kind of writer who can’t bear to be far from her work, even while asleep. But there’s no evidence of its intended use. It’s covered in candy wrappers, books, jewelry, makeup, a huge lamp with a leather shade featuring cowboy patterns. I start to push the trash aside. I move a few half-full cans of Coke Zero to the back. I hang up her phone receiver.

  “Thank you for the job,” I say.

  She says, “It’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle.”

  I continue to collect obvious garbage, a rock-solid half-eaten brownie, 7-Eleven receipts, a crusty spoon.

  “What’s happening?” she asks.

  “I’m just making room for your … treats—”

  “No, what’s happening in the world?”

  “It’s a beautiful day outside. Life is glorious—”

  She turns to me playfully, brushing wisps of hair out of her face, revealing evidence of the kind of night she must have had: thick mascara, glitter on her eyelids, a smudge of lipstick remaining on her lips. “Are any celebrities dead?”

  I think for a moment.

  She says, “I mean, I know there are dead celebrities in the universe at large, but are there any who are newly dead today?”

  “Not that I know of,” I say.

  “I read yesterday that doctors removed a bird’s feather from a boy’s cheek. They have no idea how it got there.”

  I say, “Wow!”

  She says, “Do you have any news like that?”

  “Not immediately. But I’ll get back to you.”

  “Am I still famous?”

  “You’re hanging in there.”

  Kathi chuckles, reaches for her soda, and takes a sip. “I was up all night. I kept getting emails from someone named Linda Kin. Who is that?” she asks, handing me her phone.

  I look at her home screen, with 105,271 unread emails and 97 unread texts. My heart palpitates at the slow reveal of the scope of my new duties.

  “Linda Kin. K-I-N?” I ask.

  “Yeah.”

  Kathi’s emails load and it becomes clear.

  “Do you mean … LinkedIn?”

  “Whoever she is, make her stop!”

  I move the emails to her spam folder. She’s trying to gift me a sense of humor; I’ll try to gift her a sense of order.

  “Want to do some writing today?” I ask. “Work on your next book? Do you want me to proofread anything, type anything up?”

  “There’s nothing to proofread. I haven’t written anything. Yet! But we will, Cockring. Don’t worry.”

  “Can I get you anything else?”

  “No. Thank you, Cockring. I need to rest a little longer.”

  “Okay,” I whisper, bowing only slightly, barely noticeable, as a servant leaves royalty. “Thank you again for the job.”

  “You mean the lifestyle,” she whispers back, rolling farther away from me, deeper into her wrappings, sinking further into her memory foam and back into slumber.

  “Yes, the lifestyle.”

  I put my hands in my pockets as I back out of her room, my right fingers rubbing my cell phone, my left fingers tracing my keys down to the key ring, to that familiar tiny, oval shape, down to my mother’s locket. I’m thinking, Hello, Mom. I’m thinking, Maybe you’re really with me. I’m thinking, Did you make this happen for me?

  I gently close the door of Kathi Kannon’s bedroom, the light retreating slowly from the lump of celebrity, the bed, the nightstand, the elliptical handlebars, the pile of gowns, the lonely bra.

  The door clicks shut, and I exhale not just air but my very life force, breathing it out, shoving it from my body as if my heart is so full there’s no room left to store anything in my lungs. My body heaves, my face turns red, not from the usual embarrassment or humiliation but, this time, from the physical need to refill my lungs. I left my physical form for a brief, heavenly second and now I’m forced back, that cruel twist of life, of living, that instinct to survive and even to thrive. I take a deep breath in and try to steady myself, my hero behind me, my future with her in front of me. I calm myself, surprised to feel on my face … that I’m smiling.

  I’m thinking, Thank you, Kathi Kannon. Thank you for my new life, my new lifestyle.

  5

  My new office is a mansion. Oppressive lighting gives way to streams of sunshine from stained glass. Newsroom noise of police scanners is now silence, save for Beverly Hills birds chirping and squirrels chatting. Hey, Siri, I want to relax, relish, enjoy this new me. I want to slow down, destress, and be my best, calm, less-suicidal self. And so far, so good. The first week of my new lifestyle with Kathi Kannon is surprisingly simple. Being a celebrity assistant is glamorous, fancy, easy.

  I sort Kathi’s pills into a daily pill caddy.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  I bring Kathi her soda. I open it, pour it over ice.

  Fizz, fizz.

  I wield Weight Busters cereal, the small oat circles rolling around inside, the cellophane bag making that familiar sound in my hands.

  Crackle.

  And this becomes my little, luxurious life.

  Tap, tap, tap. Fizz, fizz. Crackle.

  I’m still feeling like an outsider, an observer, but no worries. I’m new. Feeling like an insider perhaps takes time. For now, I watch Agnes sleep in the dining nook all day. I wave to Benny pretending to do yard work. Kathi stays to herself, mostly in her bedroom, occasionally walking past me to the kitchen. I ask, “Can I get you anything?”

  Smiling, she shakes her head no.

  I get the sense I have to prove myself worthy of entry into the real inner workings of the world’s kookiest country club. But I don’t really know. I’ve never been a celebrity assistant before. I’ve never even known a celebrity assistant before. I don’t know what this job is supposed to look like. I want to help, and so I do what I know how to do: follow directions.

  Tap, tap, tap. Fizz, fizz. Crackle.

  Monday, I get a text:

  KATHI: Nano-blap! Please find the nearest and dearest and dopest cobbler-arama. My fave-of-the-flave sh
oes have torn—rudely ripping themselves from my pointy loin at dinner of a fortnight ago—and the septic sight of my tepid tinkle toe gloriously appearing at the table nearly caused Frank Gehry to choke on his baby sheep dinner blox and think of all the lies people would say about me and him were he to die in my weeping moist embrace etc.

  Translation: Get her shoes repaired, and I do.

  Tap, tap, tap. Fizz, fizz. Crackle.

  Tuesday, I get a new task. We’re in her bedroom. She asks me to get her cell phone.

  “Sure,” I say. “Where is it?”

  She looks up at me, sucks in a draw from her e-cigarette, and exhales, “In a toilet at Barneys.”

  And off I go to a luxury department store, to the lost and found, and up to a suspicious but handsome concierge who hands me a familiar cell phone. He says it was discovered not in a toilet but simply, mercifully, beside one. It’s now wrapped in white tissue paper, tucked in a fancy black Barneys shopping bag as if it’s a scarf or wallet. “My regards to Miss Kannon,” he says.

  Tap, tap, tap. Fizz, fizz. Crackle.

  Wednesday, I get the plea for advice:

  “Which porno should I send James Cameron for his birthday, Cockring? Assablanca, Black Loads Matter, or Good Will Humping?”

  Tap, tap, tap. Fizz, fizz. Crackle.

  Thursday is an adventure:

  We’re at an eye doctor’s appointment so Kathi can get new glasses. She fills out the doctor’s standard questionnaire and hands me the clipboard. “Will you give this to the receptionist, Cockring?” I take the form and read over what she wrote as I pass it to the front-desk clerk. We share a smile as she reads:

  NAME: Marcia Gay Harden

  ADDRESS: Hell

  HEIGHT: Negative

  WEIGHT: 600 pounds

  REASON FOR VISIT: Sexual

  Tap, tap, tap. Fizz, fizz. Crackle.

  While Kathi sleeps the day away, I’m sitting in one of her Parisian chairs, her medications strewn about on the coffee table, waiting to be sorted and filed into the next day’s pill container. I wonder about this place, a home that tabloids have lauded as being ground zero for legendary parties over the years. Did Madonna mingle here? Am I sitting where Anjelica Huston once sat, resting on the edge of the chair so she could lean in and hear some scandalous story being told by Warren Beatty? Which one of them left their drink on the coffee table too long, forever marking it with a circular stain that would give a curator a heart attack—a drink stain on this antique table! Alas, there is no curator here, just a sleeping celebrity, a dying kitchen helper, an unhandy handyman sleeping in the shed (allegedly), and me, a perfect stranger tasked with sorting the medication that keeps film icon Kathi Kannon alive and functioning, mostly. This could be the most important job I’ve ever had.