Lila sat at her desk and contemplated the outcome of her almost thirty-three years on the planet. She thought about all the time she’d spent tottering around her childhood home in high heels, swathed in feather boas pretending to be either Diana Spencer or Jessica Rabbit, sort of Princess-Pin-Up, if you will. When those dreams faded, her next ambition was to write the great American novel, a historical epoch along the lines of North and South. Yet every time she sat at her computer, some inner vixen took over and began creating volumes of racy fantasies instead of historical intrigue. The fantasies happily filled the gap in her social life, but did nothing for her dreams of becoming a celebrated novelist.
Consequently, the serious historical events she’d set out to portray always turned into alarming bodice-ripping incidents. The gallant young officer, who urgently set out to deliver a top secret message, was inevitably delayed by a lush-bosomed young thing bent on seduction. What was a red-blooded young man to do?
At first, Lila fought against her tendency to write trash. After all, she wanted to be nominated for a Pulitzer one day. She wanted respect. But after years of struggling to compose a serious narrative, she gave up and let her alter ego (alarmingly named Jasmine Sheath) have her way. Now, Lila, a.k.a. Jasmine, spent all of her free time at her computer orchestrating de-flowerings, seductions and all sorts of bawdy goings on.
As her mind continued to wander, Lila’s eyes fixated on the two letters sitting on her desk. One filled her with a pure rush of pride and excitement. The other filled her with dread. She set aside the envelope full of happy tidings knowing full well that she could never share its contents with anyone. In fact, she thought the news was so private that she’d best lock it in her desk drawer for safe keeping.
Once that task was accomplished, she picked up the other envelope and let out an audible sigh. In her hands was that bit of correspondence, that depending on what you’d accomplished in your life, you either anticipated like Christmas morning or dreaded like a bad case of poison ivy on your private parts. It was the invitation to her fifteen year high school class reunion. It cordially invited the graduate and his/her spouse to the gala affair being held at The North Hills Country Club, the very same establishment where half her classmates were already second or third generation members.
Lila didn’t begrudge them their memberships to the club, having spent much of her early days treading those same hallowed grounds. In fact, had she never left Bentley, she would probably be teeing off with the Ladies Junior Golf League every Wednesday morning while her offspring learned to doggy paddle in the kiddie pool. What Lila did envy were their spouses and children. She longed for similar domestic bliss. After all, she had worked at least as hard as they had and what did she have to show for it? A twenty-two hundred dollar a month rent payment on an apartment that she didn’t own and a five-year-old Mitsubishi, no husband, no babies, not even a pet.
Three decades had come and gone and Lila finally realized what she really wanted was the life she grew up with. She didn’t need an Academy Award. She didn’t even need a Pulitzer. She just wanted to have someone to love and someone who would love her back. Was that too much to ask?
Lila’s musings were interrupted by the ringing of her private line. “Josh Furber’s office. How may I help you?”
A breathy voice responded, “Lila, its Jilly? Did you get it? Did you get the invitation?”
Lila automatically smiled when she heard her childhood friend’s voice. The two girls had been inseparable ever since the fourth grade when Jilly had accidentally broken Lila’s nose with her skateboard. That encounter was the beginning of a life-long bond.
Jilly married her college sweetheart, Bill and had recently given birth to their third, perfect, blonde baby. Jilly was the epitome of everything Lila wanted to be: wife, mother, homeowner. Yet during their weekly chats, her friend complained about those very things. Sometimes Lila wanted to scream, “Jilly, your life is perfect! You’re married to the man you love and your babies are on the outside. They aren’t still in egg form with no hope of imminent fertilization!” Of course she never said those things because Jilly had always been supportive and encouraging of the choices Lila made in her life. It would have broken Jilly’s heart to find out what an envious bitch her friend had become.
So she simply replied, “Yep, I’m staring right at it.”
Jilly pleaded, “Promise you’re coming back for it.” Then she hurried to add, “You did swear you’d come to the fifteenth when you missed the tenth, remember? So you’re coming, right?”
Lila thought her friend sounded positively desperate. “Jilly, is something wrong?”
After a beat too long, Jilly answered, “Of course not. I’m just dying to introduce you to Titty.” Titty was her five-month-old daughter, whose real name was Betina. But her son Jackson, who was three, couldn’t say Betina, so he called her Titty. Then they all did.
Lila admonished, “Jilly, you have got to stop calling your baby Titty. She’s going to grow up to be a stripper.”
Jilly laughed, “I know, I know. But Jack sounded so cute when he said it that it just sort of stuck.”
“Yes, well, remember when Jack couldn’t say fire truck and would just yell out FUCK every time he heard one? That was cute too, but you didn’t let him keep doing it.”
“I know, you’re right. We’ve been trying out other nicknames. It’s just that Betty sounds like a fifty-five-year-old church lady and Tina sounds like a bimbo.”
“So,” Lila ventured, “why not just call her Betina? You know, with it being her actual name and all.”
As always, Jilly was delighted by her friend’s wit and begged, “Oh, Lila, I miss you so much, please come home.”
Without any more encouragement than that, Lila agreed. She secretly wanted to go anyway. She’d amassed at least fifty vacation days she never took because Josh swore the agency would crumble without her. Translation: “My wife might discover what a philandering pig I am if you aren’t here to run interference for me.” That was the reason Lila only went on vacation when Josh did and Josh had no plans to vacate any time soon. But after talking to her best friend in the whole world, Lila realized she could use a couple of weeks in the bosom of her friends and family. She desperately needed a normal Midwestern perspective on life. Too much time in La La Land was starting to seriously mess with her equilibrium.
The buzzing intercom interrupted her conversation and Lila told Jilly she would call her later. Hitting the button on the other line, she inquired, “What’s up, Josh?”
“Did you send Tibber’s script to DreamWorks yet?”
“About twenty minutes ago. They should have it in another ten.”
“Good, good. What about my reservation at the Ivy? Is everything all set?”
Lila nodded her head. “Yep, two o’clock, table on the patio so the paparazzi can get great shots of Melinda.” Melinda Forrester was one of Josh’s hot young clients. At twenty-six she had just received an Oscar nomination for her depiction of a drug-addicted hooker/college student, who beats the habit and becomes an Olympic track star, only to discover she’d contracted AIDS from her hooking days.
It never ceased to amaze Lila that scripts like that got made into feature films. What didn’t amaze her though was how Melinda acquired the starring role. She assumed the actress got the lead in the same way she snagged Josh as her agent. The Hollywood rumor mill had it that Melinda spent copious amounts of time on her knees and—this just in—she wasn’t the religious type.
Lila held Melinda in such low regard the star had become the prototype for many of the scheming sluts in her stories. Melinda had morphed into such characters as Wanda Toolmaker, streetwalker extraordinaire turned blackmailer; Lucy Gosling, scheming housemaid; and most recently Isabelle, Countess of Trent, whorish actress who was desperately trying to sleep her way into the upper echelon of society.
Lila was always solicitous and pleasant to Melinda in person. She truly hadn’t set out to dislike her. But M
elinda, being Melinda, simply made it impossible for Lila to do anything but despise her. Melinda was by far the most vicious, calculating celebrity Lila ever had the misfortune of dealing with. That was a pretty damning statement when you considered the magnitude of the egos that paraded through Amalgamated’s doors every day.
Lila picked up her reunion invitation and absentmindedly tapped it on her desk. She wished she could show up and share her real accomplishments with her old friends. Yet that wasn’t possible. Jilly would die of shock if she knew what was in the letter safely locked in her desk. And if Jilly would be shocked, her mother and father would probably disown her! No, Lila had been raised to be a lady. She was from good stock and she wouldn’t risk everyone’s disappointment by telling them the truth. She would simply show up single and childless and face the pity of her peers, her success safely hidden away from discovery.
In the midst of her reverie, Lila heard a buzzing noise. She tried to block it, but it just kept getting more insistent. When she finally realized it was the intercom, she picked up the phone and none too gently demanded, “What?!”
In a screechy voice, Josh demanded, “What do you mean, what?! I’ve been buzzing for five minutes. Is that any way to talk to me?”
Lila rolled her eyes as she had always been professional and a tad subservient to Josh. After all, he was her boss and it was her job to orbit around him like a faithful satellite. But at that moment she’d had enough. So she informed him, “Look, Josh, I’m having a period from hell, I haven’t had lunch yet, and I’m sitting here with an invitation to my fifteen year high school class reunion. If you want something from me, you’d better just tell me because I don’t have the stamina to pry it out of you today, okay?” There was silence on the other end so she demanded, “What do you want?”
In shock, Josh replied, “Lila?”
“Yes, Josh, it’s me. Now what do you want?”
He stammered, “Um, nothing.” When he hung up, Lila started to fantasize about getting fired. If Josh cut her loose, she could take some time off, go on unemployment and get on with the business of finding a real life. Sadly, she knew the only way she would ever leave the Triple A was if she got canned. It was just too steady a paycheck to turn her back on otherwise. While not her dream career, her job did supply her with enough money to live on. It also offered excellent health insurance and a pension plan. How could she walk away from that kind of stability? Maybe it was just her hormones, but Lila was currently so disenchanted with her life that she was torn between banging her head on her desk and bursting into an emotional tear storm, the likes of which would have put El Niño to shame.
That’s when she heard the clicking of stiletto heels heading her way. Then there was an impatient, “Ahem . . .” Lila looked up to find Melinda standing before her, size two Melinda, with the most remarkable set of flotation devices this side of the Mississippi, Melinda. Lila briefly flashed sixty years into the future to a vision of the movie star lying in a casket with her enormous missiles standing at attention. The mourners torn between saluting and being just plain relieved the wicked witch was finally dead. Melinda smiled sweetly (or rather her non-award-winning attempt at such) and asked, “Lila, are you okay?”
Lila glanced up. “I’m just a little under the weather today, Melinda. Thanks for asking.”
Undeterred in her glee, the actress announced, “Well, I have the BEST news for you! I read in In Style of all places that fat girls are making a comeback and I immediately thought of you. Isn’t that great?”
Lila had no idea how she was to respond to such an asinine question. First of all, she wasn’t fat. She was tall and curvy. She studied the lip-injected face of the young starlet and couldn’t for the life of her figure out what had caused her to become such an infernal bitch. After all, Melinda was Hollywood skinny, considered beautiful by most, and she was worth millions. Why did she always go out of her way to be so nasty to a lowly assistant?
The only answer that occurred to Lila was that Melinda must simply loathe people who didn’t drop to their knees to worship the ground she walked on. Of course, there was the time she walked into Josh’s office unannounced and caught Melinda worshipping at the ground that Josh walks on. It was such a horrific sight, Lila wasn’t sure an exorcism would be powerful enough to erase the ungodly image from her mind.
Lila opted to ignore Melinda’s enthusiasm and hit the button on the phone that connected her to her boss’s office. “The Queen of Oral Pleasure is here for your lunch date, Josh.”
Her other line buzzed immediately and when she picked it up, she heard the boss man (or the Big B.M. as she secretly thought of him) yell, “Jesus, Lila, you can’t say that! What has gotten into you today?”
Instead of conjuring a response, Lila opted to simply hang up on him. Then she smiled at Melinda and relayed, “Josh will see you now, Your Highness.”
Melinda gasped, threw her shoulders back (woe be to any dwarfs in the area, lest they lose an eye as her silicone boobies thrust forward so violently) and stomped into Josh’s inner sanctum in total and complete outrage. Lila shook her head at Melinda’s dramatic display and declared, “I have had enough of her crap. I have had E-N-O-U-G-H!!!”
As soon as the bitch stormed away, Lila picked up her purse, grabbed the invitation to her reunion, checked to make sure her desk drawer was safely locked and headed toward the agency’s dining room on the third floor. Maybe she was suffering from a bout of low blood sugar and that’s why she had less patience than normal. Either way, she was going to sit down and enjoy every single simple carbohydrate in sight. Healthy be damned, she was in the market for comfort.
Her best L.A. friend, Cynthia, was already in line at the buffet when Lila walked in. As soon as she spotted her friend, Cynthia pointed to an empty table near the window. After filling her plate with a tantalizing assortment of culinary pleasures, Lila snaked her way through the maze of chairs and joined her.
Cynthia took one look at the heaping bounty on Lila’s tray and asked, “Hungry?”
Lila sighed, “Today, my friend, I’m eating for a variety of reasons, the least of which is actual hunger.”
Cynthia raised her perfectly arched eyebrow. “Uh-oh, what’s going on?” A year younger than Lila, Cynthia Flynn was 5’1" and her size twos sagged on her. As such, she was the epitome of all that Hollywood held dear. She was pretty in that “I can afford the best products” kind of way and she was a barracuda of a business woman. Having been an agent in her own right for seven years, she was also one of the wunderkind movers and shakers in The Land. The reason she and Lila were such good friends was because she was also one of the nicest, sweetest, most sincere people Lila had ever met, although this persona was as heavily guarded as Fort Knox. Most of the industry regarded Cynthia as a cold-blooded man-eater. Grown men actually feared her and she loved it.
Lila didn’t answer her friend right away as her mouth was already full of bucatini drenched in a heavenly cream sauce. So in lieu of talking, she slid the invitation across the table with a look that said, see for yourself.
Cynthia made a grab for the missive and almost before the engraved card stock was out of the envelope, she groaned, “Shit. There’s nothing as scary as a high school class reunion.” She actually had every right to fear them, since unlike Lila, Cynthia had gone to her ten year and made a spectacular display of herself. In her own words, she got drunker than an Irish skunk on St. Patrick’s Day and proceeded to tell anyone and everyone what she really thought of them. Then she threw up all over the dance floor. She claims to have forgotten what happened after that, but Lila just assumed it was something so spectacularly awful that Cynthia chose amnesia as the best way to recoup her dignity. Still transfixed by the invitation, Cynthia demanded, “You’re not going, are you?”
With a new mouthful of noodles, Lila nodded her head in response.
“Holy shit, Lila, why? Why would you do that to yourself?”
Lila answered, “Believe it or not, Cyn, I actu
ally have some great memories of high school. And as much as I’m embarrassed by the fact that I’m not where I want to be in my life, I would much rather spend time with people from my childhood, than say, Melinda Forrester and Josh.”
Cynthia’s radar immediately went up. “Josh is a perpetual prick, so there must be something up with Melinda.”
Lila relayed the scene that had just taken place in the office. She ended the tale with, “So I’m pretty sure Josh is going to fire me when he gets back from lunch.”
Cynthia started to laugh so hard she actually shot Diet Coke out of her nose. “You’re making that up! Tell me that you didn’t really call Melinda the Queen of Oral Pleasure right to her face.”
“Sorry,” Lila answered, “can’t tell you I didn’t when in fact, I did.”
“Lila, my friend, I have more respect for you now than ever before. And don’t worry about Josh sacking you. After seven years, you know where all the bodies are buried. He’s not about to take the chance of your talking. In fact, this may be the perfect time to ask for a raise.”
Lila mulled over that suggestion for a couple of bites before deciding Cynthia might be right. After all, she secretly wanted to get fired, so what did she have to lose? No matter how she looked at it, this was a win/win situation. She started to feel a shift of power and for about a nanosecond she actually felt a little sorry for Josh. Then she remembered who she was talking about and the feeling passed.
Unfortunately, Lila didn’t get the chance to confront the Big B.M. with her new list of demands until the following morning, as Melinda accompanied him back to the agency to continue their “meeting” after lunch. When the star finally left, her hair was mussed and her shirt was misbuttoned. As she passed Lila’s desk, she bestowed her nastiest smile and sneered, “Poor Lila, you know you’ll never amount to anything.”
Lila wanted to unlock her drawer and pull out her secret letter and yell, “Never amount to anything, huh? Well look at this, you hussy! I bet you’ll never accomplish something like this!” Unfortunately, she couldn’t do that so she merely responded, “You might want to floss, Melinda; there’s something dangling between your front teeth.” Lila felt like she’d unleashed her inner Jasmine as the things she had been saying that day were much more in keeping with her alter ego than her own. She decided to have a talk with Josh before banishing her racier side. After all, she concluded, she could use the extra chutzpah.
Kindred Spirits: A Romantic Comedy About Love, Life, and the Afterlife . . . Page 26