Smoke

by Meili Cady

  The conversation continued as Lew spoke with a suspicious and increasing shortness of breath. Suddenly, he stuttered and breathed out. Hank stared at him. Then, Hank realized what had been going on beneath the table when I crawled out from under it and nuzzled up to Lew. “Thanks, sweetheart,” Lew said. I kissed him and said, “Anytime.” My next line was “You’re welcome,” but it was inaudible as I walked off camera. Lew added, “Job well done.” Hank looked under the tablecloth to see if anyone else was hiding there. “Cool,” he said. “Very cool.” And thus ended my television debut.

  When the episode aired on Showtime I was bombarded by e-mails and calls from friends and acquaintances who had seen me on TV. Someone wrote on my Facebook wall, “And the Emmy goes to . . .” Everyone was supportive, and we all thought the scene was funny, if a little crude. My parents went to dinner at a restaurant I’d worked at in high school in Washington, and the manager came to their table and whispered, “Um, did I see Meili on TV last night . . . ?” My folks just laughed and said, “Uh, yeah, you did.” Though the scene was ultimately a “blow job scene,” it was done in a humorous and tasteful way. My parents were happy for me because my dream was finally beginning to come true: at last, I was granted qualification to join the Screen Actors Guild.

  I wondered if my aunt Wanda ever had to crawl out from under a table for a SAG card. My guess was probably not. Either way, I was sure that I wasn’t the only girl in Hollywood who could say that she got into the union because of a blow job.

  5

  DOWN AND OUT IN ENCINO HILLS

  At the top of the Great Recession in the winter of 2007, the Writers Guild of America began a strike. Jimmy Kimmel Live, along with practically every other television show on the air, halted production. After months of negotiations, the writers’ issues were settled and the strike was over in early 2008. When filming resumed for television, to my surprise, the company that had given me a job as the caterer at Jimmy Kimmel Live did not invite me to return. I was unemployed and running out of what little money I had left in savings.

  After my brief appearance on Californication, I thought that my acting career would gain momentum and take off. But it felt more like a ship that was rapidly sinking in the harbor after one short “bon voyage” toot of a horn and a golf clap from vaguely interested passersby.

  When I chose to move to Los Angeles, I knew that it would be a challenge to make it as an actress here, but I never expected that I would find it a challenge to pay rent. I hadn’t realized how quickly the odds could stack up against me, how quickly they can stack up against anyone trying to make it in Hollywood. I made a conscious, and in retrospect very foolish, decision when I got to town that I would only accept part-time work so that I would be available for auditions. The reality that followed was a tough pill; auditions were scarce, to say the least, maybe once or twice a month. I felt my dream slipping away from me, right in front of me and all around me.

  My parents were generous to give me an allowance of twelve hundred dollars a month for my first two years in L.A. But those years were behind me now, and with them any financial crutch. My mother and father had been nothing short of remarkable and supportive of me my entire life, but I didn’t want to keep asking them for money when they were facing potential hardships of their own in a failing economy. I was in my twenties, and I should be able to take care of myself. I was lucky to get any help from them to begin with. A lot of people here never have that.

  Lisette had always encouraged me to “just ask” if I ever needed money, and even told me once that if she found out that I’d needed her help and I hadn’t asked for it, she would be deeply insulted. Before I got the job at Kimmel, I’d been struggling, and I asked her if I could borrow a thousand dollars; she usually kept a few times that amount in cash in her purse and I knew it wasn’t much to her. I was sure she’d say yes; I was her best friend, after all. But I’d never intended to actually take her up on the offer she’d made. I was nervous when I asked, my palms sweating as I held my phone. It was a blow to my pride to admit to her how bad things had gotten.

  To my amazement, she’d answered me with a cold refusal and no explanation, despite her offers in the past. “It’s not a good time right now.” She seemed annoyed and judgmental—she had never wanted for anything in her life, and she couldn’t relate. I’d rarely spoken of money woes around her, in part because I hadn’t wanted her to think that I was asking for a handout, and in part because I was embarrassed. I never expressed to her how much it hurt me that she turned away when I’d asked her for help.

  When I simply could no longer afford rent at the apartment I’d been sharing with the director of my first independent film, I moved in with a friend from acting class who lived with her family in Encino Hills. They had a spare room in a house, and generously didn’t charge me any rent while I looked for more part-time work and struggled to make money. I tried my hand at being a club promoter at a small but trendy venue on the Sunset Strip, but I didn’t like being in the chaotic atmosphere of nightclubs. Beyond the first nightclub event or two, it was difficult to get people to show up, and I knew I wasn’t cut out for it.

  Finding little success with the clubs, I made the difficult but necessary decision to step away from acting and find my first full-time job. I needed to survive, and part-time work wasn’t cutting it. If I couldn’t afford rent, I certainly couldn’t afford to pay a photographer for new headshots, let alone the twenty-five hundred dollars I’d need for union dues. I hadn’t had the money to officially join yet.

  Desperate for work, I scoured Craigslist, where the effects of the down economy became painfully obvious and close to home. I e-mailed my résumé in response to every post that I could conceivably be hired for. I applied in person to a Jamba Juice on Ventura Boulevard, wearing a blazer and a dress. A pimple-faced teenager wearing a visor seemed confused and bewildered as I forced a smile and handed him my résumé. He stashed it behind the register and asked me if I wanted to order anything, but I said I was good. I couldn’t afford it. Even Jamba Juice didn’t give me a call back.

  At last, I was hired by a marketing company to sell discounted spa packages door-to-door in the Valley. It was by no means a dream job, but it was a job, and I was grateful to finally have one. The company’s hiring process was quite a departure from the norm; the managers hired anyone who was willing to work for them. The pay was purely commission based, so anyone who wasn’t willing to cut their teeth in the trenches wasn’t going to last more than a day or two. I woke up at 5 A.M. every morning and came back to the house after 7 P.M. every evening. The full-time sales position was grueling, with daily, often demoralizing rejection, but my hunger to climb out of a financial hole and return to pursuing my passion gave me the strength to endure the long hours and dedication that came with the job. I put money aside every day toward my goal of a fresh start.

  Lisette told me that she wished she could buy a house for us to live in together, but that now wasn’t a good time because she was still living with her boyfriend. She had never made a habit of being faithful to him, but she stayed his girlfriend nonetheless for reasons that I didn’t understand. I was glad that I wasn’t living with Lisette. I didn’t want to lean on her, or anyone. I wanted to be independent and prove that I could take care of myself.

  Within weeks I was one of the top sellers in my new position at the marketing company. I felt a sense of pride and self-worth that I hadn’t had in quite a while. I made enough money there to move out of the house in Encino Hills and look for an apartment in town with a friend named Brie.

  Brie was a fashion designer from the East Coast who looked more like a model than a designer with her thin frame, almond eyes, and mane of auburn hair. She was one of the most genuine people I’d met since moving to Los Angeles. I wish I’d met her sooner. We found a corner apartment above Sunset Boulevard that had hardwood floors and an abundance of natural sunlight: to us, it was perfect and symbolized a new beginning. In the throes of the recession,
Brie had also struggled to find work, but she had recently been offered a job as a wardrobe assistant on a popular TV show. She designed jewelry in her spare time and hoped to one day develop her line into a successful business, so Brie and I were both artists in our own right. We talked constantly about our respective dreams and how we planned to reach them.

  After signing the lease and giving a deposit, Brie and I couldn’t afford to buy any furniture to fill our new home, but we spent countless nights after work sitting on the floor in our empty living room, sharing cheap wine and talking about how we wanted to decorate when we could afford it. Brie was a wonderful roommate, and we became close friends in our corner apartment. Lisette had no interest in meeting her, just as she had never wanted to meet anyone in my life outside of my family, who she made time to see whenever they came into town. “I can’t blame you for keeping yourself busy when I’m not around,” Lisette would tell me with a playfully pouty face, “just as long as no one tries to steal you from me.”

  ONE AFTERNOON IN THE SUMMER of 2009 Lisette asked me to come with her to the home of a music producer who wanted her to “lay down a track.” She’d never met him before, but he’d come recommended to her by a friend she’d known for years named Petey, whom I’d met with Lisette a few months back. Lisette described Petey, a soft-spoken and pale white boy with a shaved head and a thin frame, as a “trust fund baby” whose parents had “helped build Vegas.” He had an openly elitist attitude and enjoyed talking about money and his connections to the hip-hop community and various celebrities. He was enamored with Lisette.

  Lisette and I arrived at the producer’s house in the Hollywood Hills. She linked her arm with mine as we walked to the entrance and rang the doorbell. Petey greeted us. “Hiii,” he said in a low voice that dripped with lust for Lisette.

  The music producer was a man in his forties with shoulder-length hair and an excess of energy. He seemed nervous to meet Lisette, perhaps intimidated by the reputation that had surely preceded her. I knew well that Lisette would never agree to meet anyone without some information about her already being known, namely her ties to the Samsung dynasty. She had a huge ego, which she readily admitted, but I always kept my suspicions that she had secret insecurities to myself. I found the fact that she wasn’t perfect, as none of us are, to be endearing, but I never let on to Lisette.

  The producer treaded lightly around Lisette. It appeared that Petey had already regaled him with stories about the Samsung heiress and warned him that if he said the wrong thing to her, he was likely to get a verbal evisceration that would make his balls shrink back into his body—though possibly make his dick hard too, if he was anything like Petey. Petey loved it when Lisette acted like a bitch, and she rose to the occasion whenever she was around him.

  I was uncomfortable in this environment, and I didn’t understand why Lisette wanted to be here. If she had a contract with Sony Records, why was she bothering to come to this house to record something? It didn’t strike me as the way things were usually done, but she’d always preferred to make her own rules and I respected that about her. Here, she was encouraged to act the part of the “Mafia princess” that she’d always joked about embodying. Guys like Petey and the producer loved the act and hung on her every word; meanwhile, it made me nauseated. I’d always felt as though she wasn’t really being herself when she carried on that way, like she was putting on a front because she believed that was what people expected of her. Just another expectation she felt she had to live up to, I supposed. It had never been my favorite side of her personality, and I rarely saw it when it was just the two of us. I knew the giddy, sympathetic, and even silly side to Lisette that was practically never seen by others, and that wasn’t invited to the party today. Though I was annoyed when she seemed so different around other people, I felt secretly lucky that she saved her best side for me, the way she really was at her core. I’d come today strictly on best friend duty, because she’d asked for my support, and I was ready for the show. I knew I was in for an afternoon full of it, and I braced myself.

  After Lisette and the producer entertained some vague discussion about music, Petey announced that someone called “Freddy” was going to “come by.” I soon gathered that Freddy was a drug dealer who was coming over to deliver a few grams of cocaine. “You gotta try Freddy’s coke,” Petey told Lisette. “He’s got some sick shit.”

  I would later learn that Freddy’s real name was David Garrett. “Freddy” was a pseudonym that David used when he dealt drugs.

  David, a.k.a. Freddy, showed up with the coke. His appearance was shocking. I couldn’t remember ever seeing someone with so many tattoos. David’s body was covered with ink, all the way up to his neck. When he walked in the door, all eyes turned to him, including Lisette’s. He was a well-built Hispanic man with a shaved head, who looked to be in his late twenties and walked with the kind of “hustler” swagger that I knew Lisette would find attractive. There was something handsome about him. He wore expensive jeans and a black polo shirt, revealing that his arms were also covered in tattoos. Lisette didn’t get up from her chair when he came in, but stayed seated at the head of the dining room table, taking in his appearance while establishing her dominance in the room. David set the coke down on the table and introduced himself to Lisette. She shook his hand and said in her ambiguously British accent, “I hear you’ve got some good shit.” David nodded and said, “Yeah, I like to keep it clean.” Lisette smirked. “I’ll be the judge of that.” David seemed intrigued. “Be my guest.”

  Lisette asked Petey for a razor, but he didn’t have one. “Goddamnit, Petey, of all the people to not have a fucking razor. I need a knife.” Lisette stormed into the kitchen and pulled a large butcher knife out from a wood block and examined the blade. “This knife is filthy,” she said. “This is disgusting. It’s like you butchered Lizzie Borden’s parents and put it right back.” After rinsing the knife in the sink, she poured the cocaine on a plate and chopped it with the now clean and dried knife. Once she was done, Lisette sampled David’s product and gave him her approval. “Well done,” she said. “You should know that I’m not easily impressed.” She offered David a line.

  “Nah, I’m not into that,” he said. “I’m a businessman. I don’t like to mess around with that stuff.” I could tell that Lisette liked his control. Though I was on the sidelines of their exchange, I respected David for not partaking. It was obvious he wasn’t a typical drug dealer, and it appeared that this was more of a side gig for him. I knew about taking side gigs and having plans for something greater. I didn’t give any thought to what his greater ambition might be.

  David stayed for a drink. I sat in a chair across the room, playing with my phone in silence while Lisette talked with him at the dining table. I tuned in to bits of what they were saying, but I mostly zoned out because I was uncomfortable and wanted to hightail it out of there as soon as possible. What I caught of their conversation was agonizingly boring and easy to ignore.

  Little did I know that Lisette meeting David here would come to drastically change not only both their lives forever, but mine as well. Had I paid attention and been more aware of my surroundings, maybe things would have turned out differently for me. But I was too busy texting and fantasizing about getting home to my cozy apartment.

  I did hear Lisette and David speaking about Commerce Casino, and several names of people there who they knew in common. I’d been aware that Lisette’s work took her to Commerce Casino often, but I’d never asked her for details. Her father was a heavy hitter in the casino world of Japan so I understood that Lisette’s role in the local casino industry was somehow connected to her family. I didn’t know the first thing about that kind of business, and I was frankly not interested. If Lisette wanted to tell me about it, I would have listened, but if she didn’t volunteer it, then I wasn’t going to pretend to be curious. It was one of the few things that Lisette seemed to actually enjoy. I was happy if she was happy.

  It was hours after nightfal
l by the time we left the producer’s house in the hills. Lisette never “laid down a track.” The idea was barely even discussed. When she told me it was time to go, I practically jogged outside and climbed eagerly into her Bentley, though at this point I would have accepted a ride in a shopping cart from a homeless person if it meant I’d be on my way.

  I HADN’T SEEN LISETTE IN more than two months when she unexpectedly texted me on the morning of her birthday. She’d been disappointingly absent from my life recently. I’d tried to make plans with her, but she said she was busier than ever with work. This wasn’t the first time she’d gone off the radar, always with the same vague excuses. Before, I’d written it off as the busy life of a businesswoman heiress, but after four years of inconsistencies in our friendship, it had finally caused some distance between us.

  I read her text message:

  ANGEL, DO YOU HAVE PLANS TONIGHT? I WANT TO SPEND MY BIRTHDAY WITH YOU. THERE IS NO ONE I WOULD RATHER BE WITH TODAY. I MISS YOU. I CANCELED FAMILY PLANS IN THE HOPE THAT YOU’LL BE ABLE TO SEE ME. CAN YOU STAY WITH ME TONIGHT AT THE RITZ IN MARINA DEL REY? DINNER IS ON ME. I KNOW YOU’RE BROKE. I NEED TO SEE YOU.

  ~LOVE ALWAYS, YOUR SETTA

  Lisette was the one in the beginning who was dead set that we commit to each other in this “ride or die” kind of way, with an intensity rarely seen in platonic relationships. She’d insisted on the title of “best friends,” which now felt a little juvenile as we were both adults well into our twenties. It had all felt romantic when it started. I didn’t know anyone in L.A., and it was as though Lisette had swept me off my feet, there to save me from the world! But our honeymoon was over. I’d since developed other, healthy relationships with people in L.A., and I couldn’t deny that what I had with Lisette was abnormal and severely imbalanced.

  But we’d always said we were different, hadn’t we? That no one would ever understand us except for each other. I tried to understand her, and I believed that on some level I did. The imbalance dug at me. Over the years I’d known her, she’d make plans with me only to cancel at the last minute, while I’d always dropped plans to see her at a moment’s notice. She regularly took a long time to respond to my texts or phone calls, but she acted profoundly hurt and offended when I didn’t respond to her right away. She allowed months to go by without making time to see me.