Hollywood Ass.

by Eriksson, Jonas

  I went back to the kitchen to check on Fredric, who was struggling with the mixer. Fredric had green hands and knew styling and make-up like it came in his breast-milk, but couldn't tell the stove from the fridge, so I helped him by clicking on the wall-switch.

  “She's really off the tracks, isn't she?” Fredric said above the mixer noise and gave me a concerned look.

  “Yes, it’s bad. We need to do something, but I don’t know what.”

  “Why can't we call AA? Or a psychologist? We need an intervention!” Fredric’s voice traveled up to a pitch I thought wasn’t known to man, at least a man. I think part of him got really excited about the drama B’s life provided. After four years together, I wasn’t excited by it, just worried.

  “I don't know. We’ve tried to talk her into therapy, counseling, even some holistic stuff, but she’s not budging. This goes deep and if she’s not seeing it as a problem herself, then we can’t force her to do anything.”

  Fredric poured the thick green mixer liquid into a glass and said, “Can we at least get her to drink some water and do a facial? If she keeps this up her skin will be hosting next months blackheads-fest.”

  He was right. B’s star glow had been hijacked by the evil Dr. Vodka and his mischievous cousin Deep Depression and we needed to guide her towards a better, brighter path. Wherever this lay.

  “You know what?” I said, “Call that dermatologist lady who came last time, she was a pro and B was really happy with the results.”

  “Roger that.” Fredric said, handed me the smoothie and strutted off like a flamingo bird on speed.

  ***

  Before heading out towards Runyon Canyon, I managed a long and disturbing call with Julianne. Julianne was almost always pissed at something and after the “vomit incident” she obviously had plenty to be angry about. Besides, she didn’t like me much and didn’t understand what my role had become. Before, I was managing and coordinating most of the time, everything from sorting out dry-cleaning, to booking appointments, arranging schedules and plans, and now I delegated most of those things to Fredric and the rest of the team. I had my hands full just being around B and making sure her every wish came true. I was her one-man entourage and had strangely become her link to the rest of the world. Yes, even between her and her husband sometimes.

  I put on my tracksuit and headed over to the garage to take out the Range Rover, when I stumbled upon A, polishing one of his many luxurious toys, the Ferrari F430 Scuderia. He looked like he had gotten dressed in a time machine in his tucked-in white t-shirt and tight, stonewashed jeans and cowboy boots. He was an attractive man with a muscular jaw and bulging biceps, but had the dress sense of someone collecting bottles for a living. This was one thing that irked B, but she said that, like most men, he was unchangeable in this respect. He looked up at me and I followed a bead of sweat roll down his forehead with my eyes.

  “What’s up, man?” he said. A sometimes talked like he was still in college. Maybe he thought this was how black guys talked, that we couldn’t utter a sentence without inserting words like man or dawg or worse, the dreaded n-word. Since I had worked alongside him for years and was a book worm, he should’ve known better.

  “I’m taking her for a walk,” I said, and realized I was talking about his wife like she was a dog. If only she was as well-trained and easy to please.

  “That's good. Hope it makes her feel better,” A’s voice came out dead as timber and reflected the emotional investment he had shown for her the last year, at least according to B. He had a knack of retreating down to his four-wheeled friends as soon as the going got rough. And it had been rather rough lately.

  “She’s worried you're still angry with her.” I put my hands in my tracksuit pockets and leaned against the door frame. Talking about B with A always made me feel strange, because I was B’s assistant, but at the same time a close friend of both. I didn’t like to take sides or listen to the rants of a married couple in a desperate need of counseling.

  A focused his eyes back on the Ferrari logo, the stampeding horse which was now so shiny it looked like it would spring to life and run away by itself. “Well, she can keep on worrying, because I am. She really took it to another level last night. I mean, how would you react in my shoes?”

  “Pretty much the same, I guess.” I said, and thought nobody knows what they would do in another person’s shoes, but I didn’t think A’s reaction was strange either. What concerned me was how much he had managed to slip away prior to the vomit. It didn’t strike me like he wanted to fight for their marriage, but even the all-seeing assistant couldn’t know everything of course. There are two sides to every story and naturally I mostly got B’s point of view.

  He looked back up at me with his sharp blue eyes and said, “I don’t know what to do anymore. She’s become this other person, so deeply unhappy and strange. It’s not who I fell in love with that’s for sure. She refuses to seek help for it too, like she doesn’t see a problem that’s right in front of her, you know?” A was waiting for a guy response, some agreement, a feeling of camaraderie.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was contemplating a divorce. After all it wasn’t the most uncommon thing in Hollywood for people to say, “I’ve had it with you and your obsession with yourself, your constant traveling and your absurdly elevated need for attention,” although it was a mirror image they were talking to. How could you make such a strenuous concept as marriage work in a world so demanding? There are obviously no secrets, only hard work, and my guess was that A had grown tired of working hard for the relationship, he wanted to see some results.

  “It’s very frustrating,” I said, feeling uneasy about being sandwiched in between their struggles, “We’re heading out now, I’ll see if I can talk some sense into her.”

  “Good luck,” A said without a hint of belief in his voice and returned to his Ferrari, a car that always performed flawlessly, something I’m sure he wished for in his wife.

  ***

  Runyon Canyon is the celebrity-prone park above Los Angeles, which has featured in countless of movies and series, especially from the 80s. The fact that it’s near high-end neighborhoods like the Hollywood Hills makes it possible to run into a celebrity at any time and if you were lucky you might even have stumbled upon the Johnsons taking an evening walk or a morning jog.

  I parked the black Range Rover and B walked out in her velvety blue Juicy Couture track suit and adjusted her pants and her hair. I had told her the outfit wasn’t in fashion anymore and that it made her look like a big baby in overalls, but she said she loved the material too much to let it go. And let’s face it, when your new claim to fame is vomiting on one of the bigger televised awards in the calendar year, showing up in a three-year-old tracksuit is not going to do much to your reputation. I was wearing a grey t-shirt with “Who let the dogs out” in big block letters, so perhaps it wasn’t the right time to be pointing out fashion mistakes.

  B started walking down the so called Star trail with verve, her long legs striding and picking up speed rapidly and her head focused forwards. She was apparently eager to shed both calories and inner demons and that was a positive sign. You go girl! I thought to myself in my inner gay voice. Every man has an inner gay voice, at least if you spend as much time around a woman (without sleeping with her) as I did.

  I jogged a few steps to catch up with her, “Aren’t you an eager beaver today?” I said, trying to keep my voice upbeat. She needed me to be on my A-game today and remind her the world wasn’t ending just because she had literally spilled her guts on TV.

  “I’m no beaver, I’m Barney the drunken dinosaur. Please keep the tempo with me, I can’t run into someone today. I just can’t.” B said, annoyed.

  She had a fire in her step while I was panting like a dazed Rocky Balboa after 15 minutes. It felt kind of humiliating that she drank alcoholic smoothies for breakfast and still was in much better shape than me, a warning signal to lose my morning chocolate croissant. Not that I
would, but I considered the signal.

  “How are you feeling back there?” B said, likely noticing the increased intensity in my breathing.

  “I’m good, I’m good.” I lied, trying to sound unaffected. “How are you?” I threw right back at her.

  “I feel like I’m in a bad dream and I can’t wake up. But otherwise I’m fine.” B was in a sour mood which was very hard to reverse. She had been sinking for some time and it finally seemed like she had submerged herself entirely in misery. It would take a heroic effort to dig her up and to be honest with you, I wasn’t sure I was up for it.

  “Did you fart? Something smells nasty,” B said and wrinkled her face in disgust.

  “Small one. Sneaked out.” I raised my hands in the air to show my innocence.

  “You really need to stop eating all that cheese, Darryl, it’s not good for you.”

  Look who’s talking! I felt like saying, because I’d be stupid to take health advice from my closet alcoholic employer. And I happened to love my cheese, wine and novel-reading evenings - it might have made my stomach a bit bubbly, but you’ve got to live sometimes, right?

  “Did you talk to A?” B’s voice sounded anxious, but not out of breath. I struggled to keep up with her.

  “Yeah, well only a short one, he was polishing his Ferrari.” I said, knowing what her reply would be.

  “Now that’s a surprise!” B said. “How much can you polish a car without it losing its color? He never even drives that thing!”

  “A man must have his toys, I guess?” I said, not sure how to defend behavior I couldn’t understand, but on the other hand I wasn’t particularly experienced when it came to relationships. I had always been a bit of a loner and around women I automatically seemed to land in the friendship category.

  “He doesn’t seem to care one bit about me anymore. He used to be the nicest husband, always bought flowers, jewelry, did the most romantic things. You remember that time when he brought me up on that skyscraper roof in New York and there was a helicopter waiting for us and we flew to a Caribbean island and had a romantic dinner by the ocean?” Yes, I remember being left by the helipad like a fool, I thought to myself and nodded.

  B looked out over the rolling hills like the answer to her problem was somewhere over there. Somewhere over the rainbow.

  “From flower-petal-trails to scratching his balls openly and only lusting after things with wheels, what an amazing transformation! I used to feel like the most special woman in the world and now I’m like his sister, bucktooth Bree from fucking Oklahoma. I should take a sledgehammer down to that garage!”

  What do you say to that? Here was bitterness and disappointment I’d never experienced before, but at the same time expected. The last year they had started to drift apart quite drastically after some major fights and I sometimes wondered how they had made it so far considering how different their personalities were. The banal jock with his cars and protein shakers and the emotional artist with her love for extravagance, yes they were pretty much opposites in everything except for that they were both very, very attractive and successful people. Sometimes that was enough.

  At least in the short run.

  We jogged the last bit to our regular stretching place and when we stopped I felt like my lungs were trying to launch themselves from my mouth. I was in bad, bad shape. Not fat, but with too much stress, too much wine and not enough exercise. I was maybe a bit unhappy in my own way, not that I had thought about it a lot, but it had slowly started creeping into my head that I might be coming to the end stretch of my employment with B. It was becoming too much work and not enough fun.

  B was stretching her leg muscles against a rock and I sat down next to her whilst trying to recapture my breath. “You don’t think he’s retreating to his little man-cave because you’ve been off the rails lately?” I said, leaning back on my role as the mediator and weirdly seeing it as my duty to make sure the couple stayed together. I knew how happy they could be, it had just been a long time since I saw it.

  I looked at B’s body and thought to myself how genetically blessed she must be to be able to treat it so badly and still stay so fit and beautiful. She was simply born with that skinny-curvy look that all women want and pay handsomely to get. I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of lust.

  “You know what I think?” B said, looking like she had just thought of something brilliant, “I think he’s cheating on me. It would explain everything, the evading behavior, the lack of affection, the night-time jogging, all that. I bet he’s been seeing someone for quite a while. You’d tell me if he was, right?” Her stark blue eyes were studying me and for a second I felt like I was in school, trying to invent some believable lie to explain why I hadn’t finished my homework. But I didn’t have to lie, I knew nothing about A’s love life outside B and my hunch was that he didn’t have any. He just didn’t strike me as the cheating kind.

  “Why would he cheat on you? You’re one of the most beautiful women in the world, according to Maxims and many other magazines, and me, and I know he still thinks you’re the love of his life. You just need to work on yourselves and your relationship. It’s not the weirdest thing for couples to go through a rough patch.”

  B looked at me like I was trying to sell her a used car with a bad engine and rust in all the places you couldn’t see.

  “Thanks for the compliment, Darryl, but that’s bullshit. And in a way I can’t blame him, I look like a toilet brush. I drink too much, smoke too much, do brainless parts in movies I don't even like myself and go to parties to meet people I don't care one bit about. We haven’t had sex in a long time and last time I was barely conscious. Who wouldn't cheat on me?”

  “If you’re in that self-loathing frame of mind, there’s no point in talking anymore.” I didn’t want to waste time wading around in B’s well of depression, I knew it wasn’t going to get us anywhere.

  “Last question then, if he loves me so god damn much, why isn't he here? Why is he never around?”

  I didn’t know how to reply. Telling her she was hard work wouldn’t cut it, because she knew that already. “I don’t know. Maybe you’ve just hit a rough patch. In Hollywood people sometimes get too stuck in themselves, thinking me, me, me and nothing else and that’s why so many marriages crash faster than you have time to say “I do.” Your five years is pretty fantastic when you think of it, it must mean you have something really special.”

  B finally showed me a glimpse of a smile, “How do you do it? How do you always stay so positive?”

  “Maybe it's because I don't think so much - guess I'm kind of stupid like that.” I flashed my million-dollar smile. I've got REALLY white teeth you know, proud of 'em too.

  B looked down on her fingers and then out over the rolling hills and said: “That's it, isn't it? I worry too much and that's why I needs ma’ wine.”

  “Something like it. You ought to stop thinking and drinking and your problems will be shrinking.”

  "You’re such a poet, Darryl. All those books you read must do you some good.”

  “Books over vodka any time, girl,” I said and touched her shoulder, “Let’s get going again, I think I saw Mr. Gibson walking his dog over there and we don’t want you stuck talking to him about how much in common you have.”

  “Shut up,” B said and laughed.

  I had managed to bring out a sincere smile on her face.

  This is why I was her assistant.

  ***

  After our run, B wanted a Pinkberry, a non-alcohol indulgence I had no problem with.

  She donned her oversized shades and I parked the Ranger Rover something like 50 meters from the frozen yoghurt place on a sun-streaked Santa Monica Boulevard. Before heading out, I looked around for paparazzi. To my relief, there were none to be seen, but they were prone to pop-up anywhere at anytime like some evil “jackass-in-a-box”. I was just about to walk out when, from the bottom of her cracked confidence, B unleashed: “You'd fuck me wouldn't you? If I was single?”<
br />
  Now what this had to do with frozen yoghurt, I’ll never know.

  “Yes, I'd pop your Pinkberry if that’s what you’re talking about. Anyone would, you’re smoking hot.”

  “Thanks, Darryl. Don't you ever quit on me, okay?”

  “I promise,” I said out of necessity, but it was a promise I knew would be hard to keep.

  There was not much of a line in the Pinkberry which was good, because I smelled like locker room and I didn’t want to disgust the other customers. The young freckled man behind the counter repeated my order of one Watermelon and one Salted Caramel and gave me a wide smile. For a second I thought he was cross-eyed.

  When I was back in the car, B dug into her Pinkberry like she had been on a month long Survivor-diet. I have always appreciated women with healthy appetites and I gladly watched her shovel it in.

  B of course noticed my big eyes, “What are you looking at? You’re staring at me like I'm miss Piggy!”

  To which I smiled and said, “I just like to see a woman eat.”

  “Is that a black man’s thing or what? I thought men wanted women who doesn’t eat, doesn’t talk, fart flowers and who never let anything out of the anus, just into it.” B took one more spoon, rolled down the window, threw out the cup and said, “Let's go home, okay?”

  “Yeah, let’s go before they arrest us for littering.” I replied drily, turned the key and drove off.

  On the way home we sat silently in the car, I tried to eat my Pinkberry while managing the steering wheel and B was next to me, lost in her own head.

  Back at the mansion, she headed off to shower while I went to my office and sat down by the antique desk that A got from some celebrity estate for a ridiculously large amount of money. I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes. I felt a heavy weariness set in and knew I was in desperate need of a vacation. Assistants rarely rest and it had started to get to me, much like celebrity life had gotten to B. Since I started working for her, I had lost contact with most of my friends and I’d rarely been in touch with my parents. Work, and the glorified world that came with it, had consumed me and I was starting to pay the price.