by Lisa Ferrari
“Fuckin-A right we can,” says Calista.
Heather continues, “So, tonight is kind of like a preview of what we’ve got cooking. It’s like the chef taking a little spoon of sauce out of the pot and letting them have a taste. Don’t worry, when they see you in that dress and they get one look at your legs and your boobs and they hear you speak and they watch you smile confidently for the cameras–”
“The paparazzi leeches?” I ask.
“Exactly,” says Heather.
“But we really shouldn’t call them that,” Calista adds. “They need us and we need them. It’s like one of those little birds who eats fleas and bugs off a rhinoceros. Or one of those little sucker fish who attaches itself to a shark. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Both parties benefit. Without those paparazzi leeches, we wouldn’t have the tabloids and the gossip rags and the bazillion websites documenting what we had for breakfast, where we went shopping, what we wore to the gym, who is dating who, who is cheating on who, who is dumping who, and blah blah fuckin blah. I don’t follow any of that shit.”
“Even though you’re a part of it?” I ask.
“Especially because I’m a part of it,” Calista confirms. “I play into it because my job benefits from it. I always make sure I don’t walk too fast when they find me. I let them photograph me. I answer their questions. I’m friendly. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of them are just guys trying to make a living, same as us.”
“They love Calista,” says Heather. “They love her.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because she knows how to play the game and she plays it well. And you should, too. It’s not that hard. Just be yourself, be confident, smile, be friendly, let them take your picture, answer their questions as long as they’re respectful. Most of the time they are. Besides, you handled those SEALs so you can certainly handle a bunch of photographers.”
“And have fun with it,” Calista adds. “I mean, think about it. What would you be doing if you weren’t here with us right now shopping for a dress for tonight’s benefit?”
This is a sobering thought. “I’d be at work.”
“Doing what?” Calista asks.
“Carrying trays of food at a banquet.”
“That’s right, you used to do catering stuff, right?” Heather asks.
“Right.” I see myself in my white tuxedo shirt and bowtie and black men’s work pants from Walmart, sweating my ass off scurrying back and forth from the kitchen to the ballroom a million times a night carrying big oval trays of ten dinners each because I’m the only one strong enough to carry them, despite there being two men on staff.
A powerful wave of understanding washes over me. Calista is absolutely right. Being here in L.A. and acting in a movie is profoundly more exciting and interesting and financially lucrative than working at my old job schlepping trays and setting tables and clearing dirty dishes and traying salads and putting rolls in bread baskets and making coffee and making lemonade (I hate making lemonade; almost as much as I hate those black men’s Walmart work pants). Kellan and I have discussed this very thing in the past. Whenever I began to panic at the notion of being in a movie, he helped me understand that we take it one day at a time and enjoy it because it’s better than working a dead-end job, and that millions of people would give almost anything to be in my position.
This logic tends to fade over time for some reason and I find myself terrified again at some point. But this pep talk from Calista and Heather hits home. Maybe it’s because I’m hearing it from women who have lived it. Calista used to wait tables someplace far away, Minneapolis, I think, and Heather was a biology major from Lincoln, Nebraska who decided to go to Hollywood instead of to med school. Her parents weren’t really speaking to her, either; we had that in common.
A calm comes over me because they’re so right. I still am blown away by my good fortune. But I recommit to enjoying it and to being in the moment rather than being so scared that I’m simply waiting for the moment to pass because hopefully the fear will pass with it.
“Don’t worry,” Heather says, “when they see you in that dress, and they chat with you for a few minutes and you charm them the same way you’ve charmed me and Cali and Sheila and Rami and Aaron and those Navy SEALs and everyone else, they’re going to be reassured that their money is safe with you.”
“All one billion dollars of it?” I ask.
“Yes,” Sheila replies confidently.
“What are you wearing, Calista?” I ask.
“Call me Cali. Only my mother calls me Calista. This.” She holds up the same dress I’m wearing.
I imagine us there, dressed as twins in tiny little dresses and towering heels. We’ll probably have to stand there in front of some sort of backdrop with the charity’s name on it, maybe on a piece of red carpet. Photographers will bathe us in flashing white lights from their expensive cameras.
And there we’ll be, the two of us, in identical dresses, showing off our legs.
Actually it strikes me as a good idea.
“Go put it on,” I say.
Cali comes out of the fitting room a minute later wearing the dress. We stand beside each other in the mirror. She’s a bit taller and her dress is a size larger, but I feel fine standing next to her, the girl from the famous bacon bikini.
Actually, I feel good.
“This might actually be fun,” I dare to say.
“At five thousand a plate, it better be,” says Calista.
“Five thousand a plate? Five thousand dollars?”
Calista nods and inspects her dress, turning side to side to inspect the back. “Can you see my ass cheeks?”
I check. “No.”
“What if I do this?” She bends over and touches her toes. The dress rides up. A lot.
“Now I can.”
Calista stands upright and straightens the dress. “Guess I’d better not do that tonight, then.”
“Is it really five thousand dollars a plate, you guys?”
“Yes,” they both say.
“So Kellan and I are shucking out ten grand tonight?”
“Yes,” they both say.
“What’s the charity for? The billion-dollar movie?”
They both laugh.
“No,” says Heather, “but that’s a good idea. It’s for after-school programs for kids. There are centers all over the city where kids can go play and do arts and crafts and stuff between the time when they get out of school and when their parents, or, usually, their single parent, gets home from work. Otherwise, history has shown that the kids have nothing to do and they wind up getting sucked into gangs and crime and the juvenile criminal justice system which then becomes the adult criminal justice system. Then they begin this whole big cycle of recidivism that pretty much guarantees they’ll be incarcerated before they’re old enough to buy beer.”
“So, my five grand is going to help keep kids out of prison?”
“Pretty much,” says Heather.
I recall the track day I attended with Kellan, when we drove to Sears Point raceway in Sonoma with a busload of kids from an orphanage and they got to ride around the racetrack in expensive cars brought by local car club members. It was so much fun. It felt good seeing all their smiling faces and how they’d forgotten their unfair lot in life, if only for a day.
“How many people will be there?” I ask.
“Five hundred,” Heather replies.
“So five hundred times five thousand is…” I do the math in my head, five times five, and add the correct number of zeros. But surely I must be off.
“Two-point-five million,” says Heather. “At least, that’s the goal.”
“Wow. That’s a lot of money.”
“Yeah. But there are a lot of kids who need help. We can pay for the after-school programs now or we can pay higher taxes to pay for an out-of-control prison system later.”
The notion of helping kids allows me to take the focus o
ff of myself and of being photographed and going on what is essentially a giant job interview during which I have to be interviewed 500 times. Focusing on the kids feels much better. It feels good. It’s something I can relate to.
ON THE WAY back to my place, Calista cranks up the Maroon 5 and we rock out. You can practically smell the estrogen coming out of the air conditioning vents.
It feels good to laugh and spend time with girlfriends. I haven’t socialized with other females since hanging out with Denise. And it’s been months since I did that. And, sadly, Denise’s qualifications as a girlfriend are at times suspect. Like the time she tried to get me and Kellan, especially Kellan, drunk so we could all have a three-way which would’ve degenerated into a two-way between Denise and Kellan, no doubt. Thank God Kellan didn’t go for it. I saw a thing online once that said there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women (I remembered it on the way to the Beverly Center when Cali and Heather joked about the reeducation campaign). That includes women who try to take another woman’s man. And that, sadly, includes Denise. We’ve been friends since college but her vaginal tendencies know no bounds. I think back to our undergrad dorm room days and try to remember if she’s always been like that or if it started after her divorce. Being cheated on definitely messed her up. She hardly drank before that. She was so focused on her career, on being an excellent attorney, which she certainly is. But she also tried to get into Kellan’s pants. I’ve never understood why some women act that way. I’ve always believed it was simple insecurity. Fear. Envy. I don’t get any of those vibes from Sheila or Heather or Calista. I find myself keeping my guard up at times, though they’ve done nothing to deserve it. Unless they’re straight-up lying to my face, which I find hard to believe. Is there a bucket of pig’s blood in my future, just waiting to be dumped on my head like in Carrie? I don’t have Carrie’s telekinetic powers that I can use to exact revenge the way she did. But as I watch Heather and Calista bee-bopping in the front seats, singing along to Maroon 5, it makes me smile. I feel light. Lighthearted. And happy.
THE CHARITY BENEFIT is exhausting.
It’s for the most part what I expected. And every bit as high-profile.
The red carpet photography session goes as planned. I’m photographed with Calista. And then separately. Calista and Sheila and Heather and their men and Kellan stand aside and watch me stand before the photographers. The flashbulbs on the cameras are blinding. And loud. I guess it’s the shutters on the cameras. I get my picture taken ten thousand times in about one minute before Sheila steps in and ushers me inside. She takes me by the arm and we all go into the ballroom, which is good because I can’t see. My vision is full of green spots from the flashbulbs.
Sheila leads Kellan and me around and introduces us to what feels like all five hundred people. Everyone is dressed to the nines. Even Kellan, who is wearing a tuxedo. All the men are. Kellan looks gorgeous. I find myself having sexual thoughts about riding him in that tuxedo with only his penis poking out of his zipper.
I bring myself back to reality as I converse with the people at the benefit before dinner is served.
It seems they all know about the track day Kellan and I did with the kids up at Sonoma. Many of them own Ferraris or Porsches or Mercedes and they want to participate in the next track day. Focusing on the kids has the desired effect; it alleviates my nerves and by the time dinner is served I’m ravenous. I force myself to eat slowly, putting down my knife and fork between bites, which is a weight management and portion control technique I read about decades ago but have never actually utilized. I’ve often wondered if I have food anxiety.
I also make certain to cut my food and to then return my fork from my left hand to my right hand before putting the food in my mouth. I’ve noticed everyone around the table does so. It’s a tiny bit hoity-toity and I feel a touch out of place.
But for now, I look around the table at everyone dressed in such finery. I marvel that I’m here and I remember what Calista and Heather said at Candy Cloud about how being here is better than being at my old job.
And they’re right.
KELLAN AND I drive home.
I’m amped.
Exhausted but amped.
Kellan asks if I enjoyed my first charity benefit.
I assure him that I did.
They raised the full $2.5 million, plus an addition $1.2 million through the silent auction. Not a bad night’s work. I’m amazed that 500 people can come up with $3.7 million. The generosity is as impressive as it is touching.
WHEN WE GET home, I have my way with Kellan.
I make him keep his tuxedo on.
He makes me keep my heels on.
And only my heels.
Chapter 28
THE NEXT SEVERAL weeks are a blur.
We visit Paramount almost every day for meetings. Everything accelerates as the production begins.
Calista and I have become known as the Billion-Dollar Girls, after the sexy photos of us in our little black dresses made the media rounds. It seems everyone spent a day or two talking about them. Which I guess makes each of us worth $500-million. Sheila says she’s had about fifty calls regarding getting Cali and me in a TV show called Billion-Dollar Girls. The pitches have come from every network, even HBO (and they’re flush with GoT money), Netflix, and Amazon. The ideas for the pitch have ranged from us being drinking, drugging, hard-partying daughters of a wealthy real estate tycoon who becomes President of the United States, to us being two female executives in the oil industry somewhere in Texas and we get sick and tired of the chauvinistic, beer-bellied, Scotch-drinking, cigar-smoking men telling us that women don’t know the first damned thing about “drillin’ for crude”, so we quit and start our own company and immediately hit the jackpot by discovering the biggest oil field in the history of the world, which apparently actually happened in Texas recently so they want to say our story will be ‘Based On Actual Events’ even though the whole female-empowerment thing is made-up. Where anyone thinks we’re going to find time to star in a TV show (23-episode commitment, by the way, which is, like, amazing; the best you can get) while we’re traveling around the world living on location after location after location for Forever Love is beyond me. And I feel too stupid to ask. Finally, one day, Sheila speaks these exact words, and that we’re going to be far too busy.
KELLAN AND I are sent to a wilderness survival school run by a bunch of hardcore Army Ranger Delta Force guys. It’s me, Kellan, Calista, Garth (who is the sweetest guy!), Rami, Sheila, Aaron, and Heather. But Rami, Aaron, Sheila, and Heather leave on only the second day, after spending only one night in a cold, dank tent. Much to my chagrin, a friggin helicopter comes and gets them and they head back to the warm beds, hot showers, and yummy food of Hollywood while Kellan, Calista, Garth and I stay in the cold, damp woods with no food or water.
Just a big bowie knife.
I feel like Bear Grylls should be here teaching us to snare skunks and bite the heads off of lizards and store our urine in the skin of a snake we killed with a rock. (Btw, Bear, how-oh-how is a woman supposed to urinate into a snakeskin? Ooh, I know! Make a funnel out of a big leaf, put the small end into the snake skin, and squat over the big end!)
Whenever we’re not doing all manner of exhausting physical activity, the Rangers make infinite jokes about me running on the beach with the SEALs. One of the Rangers wears a tee shirt that says If you can’t be a Ranger, be a SEAL.
Cute.
The SEALs probably have shirts which state the opposite is true (If you can’t be a SEAL, be a Ranger.)
I’m sure each branch has adequately-sized penises.
Speaking of penises, we are going to spend an entire week here in the woods, living off the land, so it’s doubtful that Kellan and I could sneak off and make love in a glade, like Bella and Sparkly Edward nearly did in the scene Stephanie Meyer dreamed about on the night she conceived of sparkly vampires and the whole Twilight gang. Fr
om what I read, she dreamed about being in the woods with a drop-dead-gorgeous (and already undead!) guy who sparkled in the sun. She wrote about it the next day, wondered if it were any good, showed it to her sister, and her sister loved it and asked her to continue writing. So she did. She wrote the rest. And then she went back to the beginning and caught up to the scene with all the sparkles. I love Twilight as much as the next girl, but I’m not sure I could make love with Edward because of the cold. I’ve never diddled myself with a popsicle, but could you imagine? Wouldn’t your vagina go numb? How could you possibly have an orgasm with numb lady-parts? I mean, Kellan did eat Vanilla Bean Haagen-Dasz out of my back door, but that was different: his tongue was nice and hot; besides, it’s not like we stuck the whole pint up there. Imagine giving Edward oral. Hello! Brain freeze! And what about his, um, secret sauce? It would be cold, too, right? Like, really cold. I would make a lousy member of The Polar Bear Club, those people who like to go swimming in frozen lakes.
So, no elven forest nookie for Kellan and me this week. We’re so not in the mood anyway. I’m already dirty and hungry and thirsty and my butthole itches like mad because we don’t have toilet paper. I have pee and poop under my fingernails because of the lack of toilet paper. I’ve used three different twigs and the tip of my bowie knife to clean my nails as best I can. But I can still smell the scent of my own waste when I bring my fingers to my mouth to eat the meager so-called food we find in the woods. We boil pine needles over a fire to make what they call Ranger Tea. It’s horrid. We eat fat pale-white grubs found under the bark of a tree and cooked over a fire to make what they all Ranger Popcorn. They’re horrid.
By the third day, my asshole is not itching quite as badly because I haven’t pooped. I haven’t pooped because I haven’t eaten enough to form a solid bowel movement.