Absolutely True Lies

by Rachel Stuhler

  Ten thousand dollars. My retainer for this four-month job was ten thousand dollars. And if my limited understanding of the contract was correct, my fifty/fifty deal was for a total of fifty thousand, double my salary for last year. In fact, if I could finish this job, I’d finally be above the poverty line for the first time in my adult life. It was another ten minutes before I could inhale properly and continue reading the endless document. I then quickly realized the other “fifty” was a percentage.

  I read those lines of the contract four times before the realization finally sunk in and I began to hyperventilate, convinced I was one shallow breath away from a blackout. It couldn’t be, I thought. I couldn’t possibly be reading the contract correctly. But right there, in black and white, it said that I was guaranteed fifty percent of the book’s royalties. Half of every dollar that Daisy Mae Dixson, a girl who once sold out Staples Center in twenty-four minutes, made with this book.

  I’d love to tell you that my next thought was about the work, about the possibility that I could carve out a new career for myself and make some good money at the same time. But those things never once crossed my mind, at least not at that point. "I wasn’t qualified to do this job, not in any way, shape, or form, and I guessed it was just a matter of time before Jameson discovered this and canned my ass. So my first real concern was how much money I could get out of the deal before they realized I was a talentless hack.

  I dutifully signed the contract and headed back out of my apartment; I was surprised to see that the messenger had waited all this time. I immediately felt like a jerk because, despite having a ten-thousand-dollar check burning a hole in my wallet, I didn’t have a single dollar with which to tip the poor kid. I apologized profusely, offering him a glass of water or use of my bathroom, but he just waved me away. Which was probably for the best, as I didn’t have a washed glass and I hadn’t cleaned my bathroom in a month.

  “Mr. Lloyd takes care of me,” he said, taking the envelope back. Of course he does.

  I followed him back out to the street and was dismayed to discover that this kid, who couldn’t have been a day over twenty, drove a Mercedes.

  “Nice car,” I told him, purposely not moving toward my fifteen-year-old heap of scrap metal.

  “Eh. I should’ve gone for the S-Class.”

  Clearly, I had been working with the wrong people.

  • • •

  One of the strangest things about this town is the erratic work schedules. Sometimes people work fifteen-hour days, six days a week, and other times, those same people are off for an entire month. It’s not really unemployment, at least not the way the rest of the country thinks about it—my best friend, Camille, likes to call it funemployment. They go off to do a movie, fall off the face of the earth for six weeks to three months, then reappear with money to burn and endless free time. Rinse, repeat.

  On that particular Sunday night, I was in luck. Camille had just gotten back from shooting a Fox reality show in Mexico and could stay up for nine days straight if she wanted. We’d met my first month on the job at Westside Weekly, when I was writing an article about one of her earlier reality shows, Man vs. Sea. My boss had tried valiantly to get me an interview with the show’s “star,” but Camille was as close as she could get (and I have been forever grateful). As Camille’s always had the better job, our friendship’s largely made possible by her generosity. For the first time in the entire four years since I’d met her, I was beyond excited to take her out to dinner. She readily agreed to this, with the stipulation that we take a cab—partly so we could both drink, and partly because she was embarrassed to be seen getting out of my car. I swear to you, Camille’s not really as shallow as I’m making it sound, these are real-live networking concerns in a town as glossy and superficial as L.A.

  We started off at Il Sole, an upscale Italian restaurant on the Sunset Strip. I’d promised myself that Camille could choose the place and I wouldn’t worry about the bill—in fact, I wasn’t even going to look at the prices on the menu. It had been months since I’d been anywhere that didn’t have a kids’ meal, an early-bird special, or require their servers to wear the appropriate amount of “flair.” And I’d certainly never been able to afford a place like Il Sole before. For the first time since I’d gotten to L.A., I felt like I belonged to the special little club that is the Hollywood elite. I almost passed out from the excitement.

  As we settled in over a glass of Cab Sav and I excitedly told Camille about my new job, she didn’t react quite the way I’d hoped.

  “You took the job?” she asked, dumbfounded.

  “Yeah, why?” I asked, confused. I’d expected a squeal of glee and maybe an over-the-table hug. Not a blank stare and obvious incredulity.

  I noticed that Camille took a deliberately endless sip of her wine before responding. “It’s just that, well, you never take any job offers.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” This night was quickly going downhill, and we hadn’t even ordered yet.

  “Oh, babe,” she rushed on, reaching across the table and squeezing my hand. “I didn’t mean anything by it. But when I got you in for that story editor job last year, you canceled the final interview.”

  “I was sick.” I’d woken up that morning with a migraine. It had disappeared shortly after my original interview time, but that wasn’t my fault. Besides, I didn’t want to be a story editor, no matter how much it paid. I’d seen Camille get sucked into the cushy, miserable life of reality TV, and I didn’t want to join her.

  “And when that recruiter from LA Weekly asked for samples of your writing?” she pressed on, eyebrows raised.

  “I . . . I just forgot to send them,” I said. I had forgotten, right? “And he wasn’t going to hire me, anyway. He was just being nice.”

  Camille’s expression was dubious, but she didn’t push me any further. Instead, she broke into a sympathetic smile. “You know what? It doesn’t matter what happened last year or even yesterday.” She raised her glass. “Today you are the new personal pet of Daisy Mae Dixson, and that is definitely something to celebrate.”

  Uncertainly, I raised my glass and allowed her to clink it with hers.

  She seemed determined to move on from the sensitive subject. “She’s an uberbitch, right?” Camille giggled. “Please tell me she’s a brain-dead, oversexed, stuck-up bitch.”

  I wanted to be mad at her, but I couldn’t. After all, there wouldn’t be many nights as good as this one and I didn’t want to waste it by pouting.

  “Sorry to disappoint you.” I shrugged. “But Daisy was pretty nice. Her mom, too. They’re a little odd, but what teenage gazillionaire isn’t just a bit warped?”

  “Nice?” Camille cried, throwing up her hands. “Nice? I can’t sell ‘nice’ to TMZ. They’ll want the real dirt.”

  “No selling anything to TMZ,” I warned her. “You have to keep your mouth shut.”

  Camille groaned, then drained the rest of her glass and promptly refilled it. “But that’s boring. Why do you get to have all the fun?”

  I rolled my eyes. “You just came back from shooting STD Island, or whatever this one’s called. You can’t tell me that wasn’t an adventure.”

  Camille is a producer for a reality show company that specializes in ruining people’s lives and making them look like whorish morons on network TV. She started as a production assistant right out of college and found that her ability not to have sex with any of the contestants was the elevator to success. Though she loathes every minute of every day, it pays alarmingly well and there never seems to be a shortage of work.

  “One of the wives tried to lure me into the hot tub at the hotel. . . . Said she’d always been bi-curious, and with me around, she knew the cameras wouldn’t be rolling.” Camille shook her head slowly. “I told her I’d been propositioned by much hotter women and none of them had succeeded. I swear to God, I don’t know what it is
about reality TV and casual bisexuality.”

  “Boredom?” I suggested.

  “I dunno.” She shrugged, sighing. “But it’s making me nuts. It’s bad enough having to fend off the men, but the women just don’t give up.”

  “Cam, those people didn’t sign up for reality shows because they’re fabulously well adjusted.” I’ve never believed that claim that people are doing it “to make a little extra money.” If you feel the need to have your face plastered all over prime-time TV for the number of bugs you can eat in sixty seconds, there are deeper psychological issues at work.

  “I suppose you’re right.” In the space of two minutes, Camille had drained another glass of wine and was reaching for the bottle. The persistently casual bisexual must have taken a toll on her. She looked up me, crestfallen. “But really, Daisy Dixson is pretty normal? I mean, you can’t even lie to me and say she has a hidden tail or something?”

  I laughed loudly. “I didn’t say she was normal. For her birthday, she wants to be launched into space. Honest to God, outer space.”

  A tiny spurt of wine escaped Camille’s surprised lips as she started to giggle. “Oh, that’s more like it. Please tell me there’s more.”

  Little did I know there would be oh so much more.

  • • •

  By 1:00 A.M., Camille and I were staggering out of the bar at the Chateau Marmont, where, if I hadn’t been drunk off my ass, I might have sworn that we were standing about twenty feet away from Adele. I could have just walked up and talked to her if I’d really wanted to be sure, but you learn quickly to ignore the celebrities in their natural habitats. That, and I’m just too chicken. It’s probably why, after four years, I didn’t have a single really juicy celebrity story.

  Cam and I stumbled out onto Sunset Boulevard and got all the way to the curb before it occurred to either of us that we hadn’t called a cab. She pulled out her phone and loaded Uber, squinting at the swirling cars in the area. It’s one of the perks of living in a big city that you can find a local cab in the middle of the night just by pressing a few buttons. At least, you can on a smartphone. Mine only makes phone calls and you have to press the two halves together tightly to get that to happen.

  “Do we pay more for a taxi or use UberX? I’m sure there are lots of people out tonight looking for a few extra bucks.”

  “Taxi. I’m not getting in some rando’s car.” I couldn’t help but think how many torture porn movies start just this way, two girls alone on a dark street, climbing into an anonymous car. Not that Sunset is ever particularly dark or empty, even in the middle of the night.

  “Shit,” Camille said, rubbing her eye tiredly and smearing eyeliner down her face. “I told Donovan I’d be home by midnight at the latest.”

  Donovan is Camille’s fake producer/poser/live-in boyfriend. He’s forty-two, his real name is Donnie, and the only thing he’s produced in the last ten years is a tuna fish sandwich. But like most people in L.A., he’s always got some “big project” in the works and wants to attach me as the writer. Every few months, he corners me in their apartment and tells me about what he’s supposedly working on, and each time, the roster of producers and so-called investors changes. I’m never sure if these are guys he met down at the Laundromat or if he’s just randomly picking names off the Internet. And though Cam refuses to believe it, Donovan’s been trying to knock her up for the last year, just so he knows he’ll never be alone. The guy’s a real winner.

  “Oh, what does he care? He’s just on the couch watching infomercials and eating Hershey’s miniatures.” The man has an unnatural obsession with child-size bars of chocolate.

  “He doesn’t like to be alone at night,” Camille whined, sympathy creeping into her tone. “And you know Donovan’s had a lot of trouble with his weight the last couple years. He says he feels more in control of his snacking with the miniatures.”

  “He’s not in control if he’s eating the whole bag,” I replied, leaning on a streetlamp to keep from falling off the curb.

  “I know, I know,” she said, shaking her head with a level of empathy I couldn’t understand. “It’s just that the financing on his latest project fell apart and he’s very depressed. He says we can’t afford to get engaged this year because he just doesn’t have the money for a ring. Like I care about a stupid diamond.”

  They’ve been together for five years. Every year he tells her they can’t afford to get engaged, even though Camille makes well over a hundred grand. Usually I can keep my opinion of that bottom-­feeder to myself, but on this night, I was too far into Jäger country to keep my mouth shut.

  “What is it with you and that loser? There are like four million eligible men in Los Angeles and you can’t get away from a guy who thinks leather pants are appropriate funeral attire.”

  Understandably, this riled her up a bit. “Four million eligible men? This from the woman who hasn’t gotten laid since Obama’s first term? Where are all these eligible men? Huh?”

  She had me there. I paused for a moment and put on my most serious, contemplative expression. “Well . . . I’m sure they must be around here somewhere.” I turned my head to the right and left, but all I saw were similarly inebriated Angelenos leaving the bars and clubs, most of them laughing or shouting obnoxiously. It wasn’t doing much for my cause. “If you’ll just give me a minute, I’ll find one for you.”

  I spun around just in time to see a forty-year-old guy with slicked-back, thinning hair pull up in a Bimmer. He lowered the passenger window and leaned over to talk to us. “Marmont’s played out for the night. Get in and I’ll take you to this after-hours in Silver Lake.”

  “Is that the guy you were looking for?” Camille asked.

  “Clock’s ticking, ladies.” No lie, the guy even held his wrist out and tapped the face of his watch. I think it was a Rolex, but for all I know, it was a fake—either good or bad. Fifty bucks or fifty thousand, they all look the same to me.

  “No one’s getting in your car, asshole,” I told him.

  Camille took things one step further, moving to kick the guy’s passenger door. As drunk as I was, I had the presence of mind to pull her back, lest she put us both on the receiving end of an arrest warrant. “And come on, loser, you’re forty! What are you doing at after-hours clubs?”

  “Screw you,” Bimmer Man said. “There are plenty of hotter girls than you out tonight.” He gave us the middle finger before swerving back out into traffic.

  There was a long moment as we watched him go before Camille gave me the annoyingly smug look I knew was coming. “Please, go on, Holly. You were telling me about these four million eligible men?”

  “Shut up and pick a taxi.”

  CHAPTER 4

  With a schedule as crazy as mine, one of the most important things is having good people by your side to make sure all of the arrangements are made. It’s easy for things to slip through the cracks when you have a last-minute appearance scheduled at a store or on an awards show. Is the hotel room booked? Does the airline know you need a vegan meal? Is there a car to meet you at the airport? Do you have enough time to get through security or from the hotel to your appearance?

  My parents are the most important people in my life, but my manager and his helpers are a close second.

  Faith Dixson promised that we’d get started on the memoir in two weeks, after the family returned from Nice. So I didn’t worry when I didn’t hear from anyone right away, and used the time to try to figure out how the hell to do my new job. I called every writer I knew, asking about the rules and the tricks—and the no-no’s—of working with stars. I spent a fortune at Staples buying supplies and digital tape recorders and then bought out the celeb tell-all section at Barnes & Noble. And owing to Daisy’s obsessive fans and the lax stalker laws on the Internet, I was able to compile almost an entire life history for her. I followed her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, sloggin
g through endless tweets about the best BB cream and how “totally amazeballs” her friend Teri was in that latest ABC Family movie. If I was going down on this job, I was going down fighting.

  I was gratified to discover that most celeb autobiographies are basically insipid chronicles of bad behavior, and told in an entirely linear way. There didn’t seem to be much stylish language or heady writing technique, which made me less afraid of the immediate road ahead. I did notice that even though the celebs in question hadn’t written a word of their own books, every line sounded like it came directly out of their mouths. I had no idea how to pull off that kind of feat; I could only hope that as I spent more time with Daisy, her voice would become second nature to me. Which was scary in another way entirely.

  Once I couldn’t read another word of rock-star drivel, I went to Target and spent eighty dollars purchasing all four seasons of Daisy’s current show. The writing and acting were so terrible I only made it through about five episodes, but the behind-the-scenes footage turned out to be a gold mine. Despite the fact that all of my friends work on film sets, I had remarkably little idea what they did. Seeing this enormous crew working like cogs in Daisy’s teenybopper machine was fascinating. Everyone talked about how rewarding it was to spend fourteen hours a day working on something so fun and family-oriented. Now, I don’t know much about jobs like script supervisor or wardrobe stylist, but I can’t imagine anyone being happy and excited at the fourteen-hour mark. It had to be a lie, but it was definitely a lie I could print. I also instantly noticed that Daisy’s movie-set home had most of the same furniture as her real home. I wondered which came first.

  And because I was now flush with cash, I got cable for those moments when I just couldn’t work anymore. I’d never had cable in my life, but I immediately wasted four days watching something called WE TV for reasons unknown. One night I found myself watching a show called Rehabilication, where an “addiction specialist” with dubious credentials tried to stop various celebrities from snorting anything they could find—all while on a fabulous vacation. It was a terrible name for a show, but it was also apparently the name of the actual rehab center. First I wondered if Camille knew anyone who worked on the program, then considered who would routinely watch such garbage. And lest I be casting the first stone, I quickly turned the channel to History’s The Nostradamus Effect. Yes, it was equally suspect, but at least it was the History Channel.