But your best friend from high school invites you to a brunch at her house and she is there. So you can say something other than “I love your work” because they don’t expect that and you know her from then.
I leave Bettina and Marcie at the unavoidable coffee franchise with the resume of Tom Fricking West’s nanny.
Ten days later.
“I just love my new nanny,” is the message Bettina leaves on my cell. “She’s fabulous.”
A few days later.
“Bettina is a little concerned,” said Marcie.
“What do you mean?” I said, placing my phone under my ear so I could hold my Velveeta.
“Her nanny showed up late three times the first week.”
“True late or L.A. late,” I said.
“True late. 60 minutes or more.”
“Interesting. Did she ever check her references?”
“I don’t think so,” said Marcie.
“Hmmm.”
“And then she arrived on Monday morning with $575 of purchases that she said Bettina’s kids desperately needed.”
“Like what?”
“A baby monitor. Those Einstein Baby tapes. Stuffed animals.”
“Nice of her to give those things to Bettina’s kids.”
“She didn’t give them. Bettina is expected to pay for them and reimburse her for overtime for buying those things.”
“But her kids are in elementary school. They’re too old for that stuff.”
“I know,” said Marcie. “What’s that squishy sound?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh no, you don’t still eat that awful Velveeta, do you?”
“No,” I said as I spit it out, “of course not.”
At Group that week everyone contributed endless snotty remarks about my alien-scanner theory.
I mean they were very supportive.
“This star/celeb thing really resonates with you,” said the former kiddie-actress.
“I mean really… what does that mean? Can anyone help me?” I looked around the Group.
“Courtney…” said Roberta.
“What?” I said. “You said I could do whatever I wanted in here. Can’t I ask for help?”
“Not if you’re going to be provocative,” said Roberta.
Oh here we go.
“OK,” I said. “I’m sorry if I was provocative.”
Not really.
“Does it bother you that you’re not a celebrity?” said the former kiddie-actress, long between shows.
“Not exactly,” I said. “Does it bother you that you’re no longer a celebrity?”
“That’s not very nice,” said the divorced housewife.
“Since when was this about being nice,” I said. “Look, this is Los Angeles. We don’t have tradition. We don’t have royalty. So we’ve invented our own royalty: stars and celebrities. An illusion of someone having a better life. But you stop being a celeb when no one other than your friends and family gives a damn about you anymore. Does that mean that you stop having a better life?”
Roberta was shaking her head left-right, left-right, left-right.
The former kiddie-actress started crying.
“Doesn’t anyone want to say anything?” I said.
No one did.
And then there was the inevitable message in my voice mail.
“I think that you should stop coming to Group for a while,” said Roberta. “You’re very, very disrespectful. And you’ve become a lightning rod for the Group’s anger.”
Whatever.
13
A Dinner
Josh wants to take me to dinner.
“Why?” I said.
“It’s a thank you. For being so nice to me when I was so sad.”
“You already said thank you.”
“But I want to say it in person.”
“What if I eat?”
“I expect you to.”
“Have you been dating?”
“Cody was it.”
“D-girls don’t eat.”
“She ate.”
“What?”
“Salad.”
“Leafy salad or Cobb salad?”
“Leafy.”
“With dressing?”
“Sometimes.”
“I’ll take that as no. Anything else?”
“Fish.”
“Broiled with nothing on it?”
“There was something on it.”
“Balsamic vinegar doesn’t count.”
“You’re tough.”
“I know how it goes. Why don’t we go to IHOP?”
“Are you kidding?”
“I know this restaurant in Monterey Park.”
“What?”
Monterey Park. No pressure. No pretense. No celebs.
“I was thinking of this new restaurant on Melrose that’s gotten rave reviews…” said Josh.
“Hmmmmm…”
“Something wrong?”
“Well…”
“What?”
“It’ll be celeb hell, which means that we don’t have a chance of getting seated for two hours.”
“I thought you liked celebs. You work in the industry.”
“You’re joking, right?
“Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I live in Brentwood. That’s adventure enough.”
The parking lot is full. People must leave the restaurant before there is room. And there is absolutely no street parking because this is a neighborhood where you must have that little sticker on your car to park or get towed. So the commercial area is jammed and the residential area is off-limits. Bad planning. Bad, bad planning. A seven-car line, extending one block down Melrose. Traffic has to come to a dead stop in front of the restaurant. All with reservations.
“Go in and tell them we’re here,” said Josh.
“It won’t make any difference,” I said. “Unless we’re both there, it won’t count.”
We call and explain. The hostess tells me that unless we are in the restaurant in five minutes she will give our reservation away. We circle the block again. Finally a space in the lot clears. As we turn into the lot we have two minutes to go. But the valet fumbles and the machine which issues the parking tickets is out of paper.
“Just take our keys!” Josh says as he tosses his keys to the valet. We sprint into the restaurant with the valet chasing us, screaming, “I… can’t… do… that.”
“Ohhhh, I’m sorry,” said the smiling hostess with the whitest white porcelains capping her teeth—and where did she get the money to pay for that? Josh, a panicked valet, and I are all standing with the hostess. A guy comes by and squeezes her butt and—oh yeah, that’s the celebrity owner/chef—and I know where she got the money for those porcelains, and maybe her boobs.
“But we made it with 30 seconds to spare,” I said.
“Not by my watch. I’m sorry. It’s the policy of the restaurant. We gave your reservation away,” said the hostess who is wearing what looks suspiciously like Gap khakis, a T-shirt with a stain on it, and flip-flops. Maybe they’re fancy flip-flops.
“But go into the bar, and if you work with me I’ll get you in,” said the hostess.
“When did this become a group project?”
“Excuse me?” said the hostess.
“We’ll be in the bar,” said Josh.
“We should go.”
“No. I want to try this restaurant,” said Josh.
“We won’t be seated for two hours.”
“The hostess likes us. She’ll fit us in,” said Josh.
“I don’t think so.”
I’m right.
Seated at 10:00 p.m., after watching eight groups of celebs who maybe have reservations, but kiss the owner of the restaurant, “Congrats on opening this place,” “No congrats on that big opening weekend…”
The food is good. And Josh and I are having a nice time eating forbidden foods: beef, mashed potatoes and creamed spinac
h.
“Man, who makes creamed spinach?” I said. “But it’s great.”
“I think after the cream, they topped the mashed potatoes with sour cream,” said Josh.
“It’s great,” I say, with the biggest smile on my face. I love fat. I love fat food. I love to eat fat food.
And then I see him. Alien-scanner thing ex-TV star, who played a sensitive TV doctor who fought “the system” to save his patients, but truly is a major twit with an inflated sense of his own worth, bearing down on us at one o’clock.
“Don’t breathe.” I wonder if Josh can stop his heart.
“What?” said Josh.
“Stop talking. And hold your breath.”
“Why?” said Josh. By then it’s too late.
“It’s over.”
“What? Why?” said Josh.
Alien-scanner thing ex-TV star stops at our table. He’s weaving and bumps into three tables on the way to ours.
“Beef,” he said. “I haven’t had beef in two years.” Our waiter—not exactly present during dinner—appears at our table.
“We’d love you to sample all the beef you want, as a gift from us,” said the waiter. “Go back to your table and we’ll serve you.”
Nice try. I suddenly see the owner/chef, someone who would normally stare through me, hovering.
“But I want this beef,” said alien-scanner thing ex-TV star. He reaches down onto my plate and picks up my meat with his hands. He starts eating it.
“It’s good,” said the ex-TV star.
“Put her meat down,” said Josh.
“OK,” said alien-scanner ex-TV star as he spits out all of the meat, spraying both me and Josh.
“You shit,” said Josh lurching out his chair, which makes it easier for alien-scanner ex-TV star to clock him in the face.
It goes without saying that dinner is “on the house.” The battalion of waiters/starving actors who staff every restaurant in L.A. muscle alien scanner ex-TV star to an unseen part of the restaurant.
“I’m so, so, so, sorry,” says the owner/chef. “Sometimes, I really hate these people,”
“Preaching to the choir.”
“Are you OK?” I ask.
Josh has a little bump on his left temple. At least we get out of the parking lot in record time, what with the owner/chef personally overseeing the valet staff to ensure that we leave the restaurant premises safely.
“Really, I’ll drive,” I said.
“I see why these people irritate you,” said Josh.
“That’s not true.”
“What? They don’t irritate you.”
“No. That they’re people.”
PART 2
January 2008
14
The Right Match
Headmistress Barbara Ellen (“Brell”) Donovan stared at the color of the walls in her office. Something about it was just… well… a little off. Was it the shade of green she had chosen? She had always liked that forest green color and thought that it gave the room a formal, make that an imposing, look. But did that forest green really go well with that cream border print with the lavender pattern? Hmmmm. Perhaps the forest green didn’t lift the mahogany furniture with the cream silk padding the way she wanted it to. Whatever it was about her forest green walls that didn’t work, Brell was bothered. And when something in her domain bothered her it consumed her to an obsessive point to make it right again, which is why it was so important to Brell to only allow those individuals and their spawn who were right—who were a “a good match”—into Thorton, the one and only private academic (absolutely not-developmental) elementary school in Santa Monica, California.
As it was, the parents in front of her smelled of fear—no make that terror—and desperation. Sure they were blabbing their heads off, doing their best to entertain her, to connect with her on any level. Yes, they were high achievers—she an attorney, just like every working woman on the Westside (Where do they all come from?) and he some sort of producer of something with an impressive Ivy League education.
No doubt they had a fabulous application with lovely recommendations from highly impressive sources. And of course, their child was nothing short of a genius, a five-year-old who read at the fifth grade level, spoke three languages fluently, and played the violin like a young Jascha Heifetz. But maybe that was the problem: They were too good.
As it was, Brell didn’t like to admit too many people who were accomplished. This would have destroyed the balance of her domain and perhaps not allowed her to meet her goals, well, the goals established by those ridiculously well-intentioned Thorton trustees, of a multi-cultural and diverse community. But more to the point, although these parents were accomplished, well-mannered, extraordinary, etc., she knew instantly that they were not going to significantly enable her to meet her number one goal: that of a new building and soccer field for the school, no easy feat in fantastically expensive Santa Monica, an area so valuable that it was more expensive than the fantastically expensive Beverly Hills area known as “the platinum triangle.”
Sure these parents smelled of money—new money—and if they really pushed it and gave up some of their lifestyle, maybe the winter vacation in Vail, they probably could have given her a good $15,000–$20,000 per year “contribution” on top of the full $30,000 per year “comprehensive” tuition. But she needed more than that. Much more, and she wasn’t going to waste a precious spot in that Kindergarten Class—one of the two to four spots open to non-diverse boy applicants—with good, but not great applicant parents. Brell had over 500 applications attempting to fill that spot and she was absolutely sure—because she had peeked—that the little darling of some software inventor, studio president, or high-tech venture capitalist, someone who could afford to give her the $500,000 she was seeking with ease, was in that pile.
Suddenly, Brell knew what was wrong with her room. It was the applicants. They just didn’t look right in it. They just didn’t fit. They were the worst thing that you could say about any applicant’s parents at any private school anywhere: They were not a good match.
So Brell, expert verbal marksman that she was, decided to focus, aim, and kill the applicants’ desire to be part of the Thorton community.
She scanned the application in front of her.
Ahh. Of course. This would be easy.
“Tell me, Wendy?” Brell said, looking the nervous mother-parent of the prospective applicant in the face. “Where did you go to law school?”
Brell knew at that moment exactly what that mother wanted to say. She wanted to say, “I went to Harvard and clerked with the Fifth Circuit.” She wanted to say, “I went to Yale and then did a Masters in public policy.” She wanted to say, “I went to Stanford after working at McKinsey for two years.”
But as Brell had that mother’s application in front of her, she couldn’t say that: she had to tell the truth.
The nervous mother swallowed and looked down. “I went to UC Davis,” she said.
Brell pulled the trigger and let her bullet fly.
“Oh,” Brell said with a big toothy smile, “I just love those public schools.”
One shot, straight through the heart.
She was good.
It wasn’t always like this. But certain events had conspired to make acceptance to an academic and selective private school in Los Angeles much, much more difficult to obtain than membership to the most exclusive country club. And to be honest, acceptance in an exclusive private school was the new country club, where only the very, very select few were admitted. Frequently while she was out and about, getting her nails done, having a dinner, sitting in a waiting room, Brell heard parents boasting that their little angels just loved John Thomas Dye, Crossroads, or The Brentwood School as if admission to these schools by their child was some extraordinary accomplishment with which to trump their colleagues. Brell found this so amusing.
To begin with, the Los Angeles public schools were a mess. No, make that a disaster. Once upo
n a time, the California Public Schools were some of the best in the country. During that time, Brell practically had to beg applicants to come to Thorton.
At that time, attending a private school was almost considered quaint, something only the rich or troubled did to deal with their difficult offspring, a luxury few considered. Most who applied were accepted to Thorton and those who could pay the tuition had no problem gaining admission. But the problem was that this situation presented various conflicts as to who was in the power position in the school and Brell rarely won these power struggles with parents, especially when Brell’s duties included driving the school bus—a little awkward when she was dressed in her classic Talbot’s dress suit with matching Nordstrom’s pumps—as well as being the headmistress of the school. This was something that Brell would most definitely like to forget. And anyone who ever spoke about those days would be frozen in place by one of Brell’s infamous sideways glances, a look indicating that all hopes for that prospective Thorton application had been permanently and irrevocably dashed.
As it was, Brell took a little sadistic delight seeing the hoops, the exhaustion, the pure unadulterated humiliation—an exercise benignly known and outlined in the application as The Steps to Thorton—which she put those parents of prospective applicants through.
Step 1: The Application. Could they come by and simply pick one up? Absolutely not. You could not even physically get an application unless both parents—not just the mom or the dad—but both parents together (or both partners, or the sole legal guardian if that was the situation) submitted to a complete 90-minute tour of Thorton, a tour which was intentionally led by a well-intentioned but completely mono-toned and inarticulate eleven-year-old Thorton student. It always made life so spicy, so interesting for Brell to glance outside her window and see the parents, whom she knew to be divorced, attempting to create a façade of civility as they pretended to listen to a sixth-grade Thorton student lead a tour of something so very, very interesting, like that computer lab filled with 20 Apple computers which every private school in the city had.
But if they made it through the mind-numbing tour and got an application, then there was:
Step 2: Submitting the Application and $200 “Processing Fee.” Could they just drive by and submit the application? Absolutely not. Thorton (and Brell) had created the most creative process for submitting applications for the incoming Kindergarten Class: (1) The applications could only be submitted during the second week of September, and not one day before; (2) The application must arrive by standard US mail (absolutely no overnight mail, messengers, faxes, pdf, or personal delivery was allowed); (3) The application must arrive before Thorton received 500 girl applications and 500 boy applications (which usually was more like September 10); (4) The application must arrive no later than September 14; and (5) The applicant (boy or girl) must have turned five years old by July 1 (a certified copy of the birth certificate had to be attached to the application).
Almost Royalty: A Romantic Comedy...of Sorts Page 19