by Meili Cady
A limo driver took Ko, Henry, Frankie, and me to Van Nuys Airport. With the help of a pilot, the men loaded the half-dozen or so suitcases out of the limo and into the luggage compartment of a chartered G3 jet that was waiting for us. We arrived in Ohio in the evening and checked into another dreary hotel. David met us there. After he checked us into rooms, David paid me with an envelope containing two thousand dollars cash. He gave me a second, smaller stack of money for one plane ticket back to Los Angeles. “Keep the change for food or whatever,” he said. “We need Henry and Frankie for the drive this time. There should be enough money in there for a cab to the airport tomorrow and one back to your car once you’re in L.A.” In the morning, I flew home to Los Angeles by myself.
“DID YOU OFFER TO HELP with the suitcases?” Lisette stared at me from behind her Bloody Mary as we sat at a booth in the lounge of a Beverly Hills hotel, waiting for the team to assemble for a meeting.
“Um, I think I offered to help them when we landed,” I said. “I didn’t want to just stand around while they worked.”
“Jesus, Meili.” Lisette shook her head. “That’s what I heard. I heard that you were ‘very sweet.’ ” She used a mocking voice and gestured quotations with her fingers. “How do you think that made us look?”
I was stunned. “I don’t—I don’t know.”
“Babe”—Lisette sighed—“I love you because you are so sweet. You’re nice. And that’s great to be a nice friend. But when you’re my employee who I’ve asked to act like a diva, that’s not going to help me.”
“Sorry,” I said.
She went on. “Anyone who would travel with seven suitcases, with a fucking bodyguard, would never offer to help with the bags. Do you follow me?”
“Lisette, I didn’t know. You never said—”
“This should have gone without saying,” she said. “It’s common sense. I thought this would be so easy for you. I mean, you’re an actress for fuck’s sake. All you had to do was say nothing! I can’t afford mistakes like this.”
“I won’t offer again,” I said.
“It won’t matter now,” Lisette said. “Now I have to clear my schedule and go with you because no one believes you as a diva.”
“You mean you’re coming from now on?” I asked her.
Lisette cracked into a smile. “Well, yeah, I have to, since your dumb ass couldn’t keep a lid on it. Jesus”—she laughed—“you’d think that you’d know how to act like a diva after four years with me.”
I couldn’t stop myself from smirking a little. “Okay, I’m sorry that I messed up, but I’m really excited that you’re finally coming with us.”
“I’m excited too, sweetheart,” she said. “We’ll have fun.”
Her smile faded as she took a sip from her cocktail. “Angel, I need to talk with you about your pay. Now, I don’t know how this happened, but someone found out how much you’ve been getting paid. I won’t say who, but they’re pretty upset. They said that it’s not fair for you to get two thousand dollars when you don’t really do anything for it. David knows not to tell the guys, so I don’t know who the leak was.”
“I never told anyone,” I assured her.
“I believe you,” she said. “But this puts me in a tough position because I can’t play favorites just because you’re my best friend. I can’t show that weakness. I’m sorry, but I have to lower your pay to fifteen hundred dollars a trip.”
“Okay. I respect your decision,” I told her.
I felt relieved. For a moment I’d thought it was going to be much worse than that. Fifteen hundred dollars was still a lot of money to me, and Lisette said that we would be making trips every week or so once things got organized, so that could add up to quite a bit.
“I knew you would,” she said. “This doesn’t have to be permanent. We’ll see how things go moving forward, and hopefully we can get you back up to two thousand.”
“Thanks.”
“Of course,” Lisette said. “You know I always look out for my girl.”
Frankie, Ko, David, and Henry joined us in the lounge. Lisette announced that she was going to be coming to Ohio with us from now on. She lifted her glass and said, “And we won’t be flying in those goddamn cargo planes you’ve been using. You’re going to see what it looks like to travel in style, with a real diva.”
PART TWO
A BAD HIGH
7
MY DOUGH, MY SHOW
ANGEL, GO DOWNTOWN TO SEE DAVID. HE’LL GIVE YOU CASH FOR THE WIRE TRANSFER TODAY. COME SEE ME WHEN YOU’RE DONE.
After reading Lisette’s text, I drove downtown to David’s apartment building. I pulled my car up to the curb in front of the valet station, where the limos usually picked us up before we flew out. I put my car in park and craned my neck to look around for David, but I didn’t see him. A valet dressed in a vest and tie approached me. From behind my closed window, I waved him off and tried to gesticulate that I was waiting for someone. Come on, David, where are you? After a minute, my phone buzzed with a text message. It was from David.
NOT THERE. GO AROUND THE BLOCK AGAIN AND STOP JUST BEFORE THE VALET AREA.
I pulled out from the curb and went around the block. Great, now this is going to look like a drug deal. Every day on this job feels shadier and shadier. Perhaps David had held on to some of his old habits from his days as a cocaine dealer, and doing business out of sight was one of them; but it was bizarre and made me uncomfortable. When I’d agreed to work for Lisette, I envisioned tagging along with her to board meetings and picking up dry cleaning—not hiding from the valet while I waited for her business partner.
I stopped my car along the side of the building, just short of where it would be visible to the valet staff. This is ridiculous. I was startled when my passenger door was suddenly opened. “Yo,” David said as he climbed into my car. He handed me a shoe box with some weight in it. Oh God. Please tell me that isn’t the money. “There you go,” he said. “Later.” He got out of my car. Once he’d disappeared, I slowly lifted the lid of the cardboard box. Money. Shit. Tens of thousands of dollars, stacked and rubber-banded. Shady, shady. It wasn’t all neat, crisp hundreds like what Lisette had given me for the past two trips. The denominations of bills appeared to have quite a range this time. I saw some twenty-dollar bills, some fifties, and even a few tens in there.
How the hell am I going to keep a straight face walking into a bank with a shoe box full of money? I’ll look like I’m there to exchange a pair of basketball sneakers, not charter an airplane.
I parked at the bank in Beverly Hills. I turned my car off and looked at the shoe box in my passenger seat. I can’t do this. I grabbed my purse and rummaged through it. It was decently sized. This could work, as long as I don’t try to zip it shut. To make room for the money, I took out some hand sanitizer, a pack of gum, and some lotion from my purse and set them aside. I stole a quick look around the parking lot to make sure that no one was watching me, then I grabbed the money from the shoe box in handfuls and stuffed my Chanel purse like a Thanksgiving turkey. It was absurdly full by the time I’d shoved the last stack of dollars inside. Oh well. It’s better than a shoe box!
Standing in line inside the bank, I was relieved to see that the teller whom Lisette had introduced me to was working today. Maybe he worked here full-time. He’d been here when she’d sent me by myself for our previous trip.
“Hi!” I said as I stepped up to his window, setting my purse on the counter.
“How are you?” he greeted me.
“Oh, good,” I said. “We’re just . . . Lisette and I are going to Miami again.” No, we’re not. That’s a lie.
“Again?” he asked me. Nope! I’ve never been to Miami.
“Yeah!” I said. “We just, we love it there. Great, beautiful place.”
The teller nodded as he filled out the form for the wire transfer to JetSetter Charter. “Yeah,” he said, “she said she has a brother who lives there?” I doubt that.
“Uh, yeah,
her brother, yes,” I said. “He lives there.” I hate this. Get me out of here.
I felt guilty when I left the bank, after looking the teller in the eye and lying to him. He’d believed everything I was saying, and he was so nice to me. All the while, I was betraying his trust and breaking a code of human decency.
I didn’t understand why we needed to lie about everything. Lisette thought that it was a fun charade, but when I lied, it made me feel sick to my stomach. I didn’t know how she could do it without feeling anything, to lie and actually enjoy it. And I still didn’t understand why the money had to go through my account. Why couldn’t it go through her account?
I met Lisette at her condo nearby on Wilshire Corridor. She greeted me at the door wearing her signature lounge attire—a lavender velour tank top and matching drawstring pants. As always, her makeup was a thick application of purple and lavender eye shadow with long, fake eyelashes.
“I just came home from a god-awful meeting,” she said. “I swear these people are trying to kill me. Did everything go okay at the bank? Was our favorite guy there?”
“Yeah,” I said.
She smiled. “Excellent. He is such a sweetheart.” She looked off for a moment in thought. “I should drop him a little something extra for helping us.”
“Lisette?” I asked.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Um.” I breathed out. I was already nervous, remembering her reaction to this question last time, but I needed to ask again. “Are you sure that it’s okay for me to be wiring the money? I just wonder about taxes and whatnot. I wonder if the IRS would think that the money is mine or that it’s income, you know?”
Lisette pursed her lips and said, “I thought I already explained this to you.” She was pissed. “Were you just not listening? You know I don’t like repeating myself. I’m exhausted enough as it is. It has to go through your account for taxes. We’re going to get you on the Samsung payroll at the end of the year, so you’ll be square on taxes. Stop freaking out about it. We need a paper trail to prove that you work for me; otherwise, you don’t exist on paper!”
“What?” I asked. “Babe, that doesn’t really make any sense.”
“You are not going to have to pay taxes on it!” Lisette rarely raised her voice like this. I braced myself. “It’s not even your fucking money!” she yelled. “Why the hell would you have to pay taxes on money that’s not yours? Any idiot could see that.”
“Sorry,” I said. “But I just still don’t understand. I don’t know how these things work.”
“Well, I do know how these things work, and that’s why I’m telling you. You should try listening to me,” she said. “Honestly, babe, I could throw a stick down Sunset Boulevard and hit some other dumb broad who would do this for half the money. David already said that he has friends who would do it for five hundred dollars. You’re making three times that much. I stuck my neck out for you when I hired you. If you can’t grow up and handle the responsibility of being a professional, feel free to walk out the door.”
I sat in silence for a minute. I didn’t want to look at Lisette because I knew how angry she was. This was why people say you should never do business with your friends. I knew she had a temper when I’d agreed to work for her—I was just not used to having it directed at me. I usually tried to avoid upsetting her at all costs because I knew how vicious she could be, and she always knew what to say to get to someone. She’d given me the job because she was my friend and wanted to help me. I had to remember to be grateful for that, even when she acted like this. At least I knew that she was ultimately trying to help me, for the benefit of both of us. She wanted me to learn to be better.
“You’re not going to regret hiring me,” I told her. “I really am trying to do a good job.”
“Well,” she said, “then stop asking stupid questions. I don’t have time to hold your hand every time I ask you to do something. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
AS IN THE FIRST TWO trips, we assembled at David’s penthouse in the morning before our flight. Lisette would drive separately and meet us at the airport. The men took the suitcases downstairs and loaded them into a limo and a black Escalade along the curb—more suitcases this time, maybe ten. Lisette said that we would be staying a few days, so I could bring one personal bag. On the ride to the airport I was anxious to see her and finally travel with her. I had been sad to not be able to see her often due to her busy work schedule, but now that I was her employee and would be traveling with her, our problems would be solved. We would be with each other constantly, as we’d always wished that we could; I’d be able to pay my bills and work with my best friend. I was going to show her that she hadn’t made a mistake in hiring me. No more questions. She knew what she was doing when it came to business, and it had probably been insulting when I’d questioned her.
When we pulled up to the airport entrance, I saw Lisette’s new pearl-white Bentley passing through security ahead of us. Perfect timing. She had given her new ride the pet name of Diablo, after lyrics in a Notorious B.I.G. song.
Lisette cruised onto the tarmac and parked Diablo a few yards away from the chartered jet that awaited her. She stepped out of the car “dressed like a diva.” She wore a fur-trimmed winter coat, a vanity drawer’s worth of diamonds, tight designer jeans, and leather boots with stilettos long and sharp enough to rip a man’s throat out. She collected one small item of Louis Vuitton luggage from her trunk before passing her keys to a skycap. “Hi, sweetie. Take good care of her for me, okay?” The skycap smiled as he accepted a tip.
Her British accent was in full force this morning. She’d told me that her mother was in town this week, which would explain it. Lisette said that her half-Korean and half-Italian mother spent a great deal of time growing up in Britain, and she spoke with a heavy British accent. Lisette learned to speak with an English accent from her. Whenever she spent time with her mother, it became more pronounced.
I stepped out of the limo and joined Lisette. “Hi!” I rushed up to greet her. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said under her breath. She gave a small smile that told me that she was excited too but wanted to maintain a professional demeanor until we got on the plane. She handed me her purse. “Babe, can you put this up on a seat for me?” she asked. “Go ahead inside. I’ll be up shortly.” Another skycap took her Louis Vuitton into the cabin of the plane.
As I walked toward the jet, I could hear Lisette instructing the men exactly how and where to load the bags into the luggage compartment in the back of the aircraft. She was in her element. The moment she’d arrived this morning, everyone knew that she was in charge. She didn’t need Diablo for that, though I was sure it didn’t exactly hurt.
Lisette commanded the attention of anyone whose path she crossed. It was far more than just her smoky bedroom eyes and designer attire; at first glance, everything about her suggested that she was the walking epitome of a snobby, entitled bitch, but when she opened her mouth, people were stunned because she wasn’t what they expected. Her appearance got people’s attention, but she fascinated people because of her contradictions. No one would look at her and expect that she was whip smart and spoke five different languages, was extremely witty, and could hold her own at any board meeting in the world. When she spoke, everyone listened to her. She carried herself with such certainty and imperial confidence that people were afraid to question her, even grown men.
Just before I entered the cabin, I looked back and saw that Lisette was chatting with the chief pilot and the copilot, already charming them with her knowledge about the inner workings of this specific kind of Gulfstream jet. After knowing her as long as I had, she still never failed to impress me with her depth of knowledge of things I knew nothing about. I felt proud of her. She had always complained about being forced to work for her family, and now she was finally running her own business. For the first time in quite a while, she seemed happy.
I was the first passenger to board the plane. As I climbed the steps, I f
elt like the first kid to see the tree on Christmas morning. I smiled as I carefully placed Lisette’s purse down on a cushiony seat near the front of the cabin. Now this looked like a private plane, with lacquered wood grain and buttery leather covering the interior. At least ten people could comfortably travel in this jet. There were rows of oversized, overstuffed chairs that reclined, in addition to leather benches filled with decorative throw pillows and folded blankets. There were snack baskets, as in the other planes, but these were larger, with more variety. In the middle of the aisle a bottle of champagne on ice waited for us with a greeting card, courtesy of JetSetter Charter and signed by someone named Carol. I’d heard Lisette talk about Carol as being her contact point at the jet company. A catering spread was ready at the back of the cabin in a small yet elegantly lit kitchen area. There was fresh coffee and orange juice, as well as a refrigerator stocked with sodas and booze. I noticed a bottle of Bombay Sapphire in the kitchen, Lisette’s favorite. There were two large plastic catering trays. One was filled with fruit and berries, and the other was stacked with panini sandwiches.
Once the suitcases were loaded, the rest of Team LL boarded the plane and settled into seats. Lisette took the champagne and walked it back to the kitchen. She put it on ice in the sink. “That was so sweet of Carol,” she said. “We’ll pop it after we’re in the air.” Lisette and I sat close to each other in a row near the front of the plane that was separated by the aisle, each with two seats to ourselves. She instructed us to wait to help ourselves to the catering until we were stable. “Jesus,” she said, laughing. “I think you guys can wait five minutes. Meili, sweetie, can you serve it to everyone in a little while?”