Geek Charming

by Palmer, Robin

  Her snooty look was replaced by a smile. “Oh yeah? I just happen to have a copy of my headshot and acting reel in my bag.” She gave me what I guessed was supposed to be a sexy look, although it was more like she needed to go to the bathroom. “I’d love you to take a look when you have a moment.”

  “Oh. I’m not—I mean I’m still in high school. This is a documentary I’m doing to get into film school—”

  She walked away before I could even finish my sentence.

  Dylan came out of the dressing room wearing a dress that looked like a Hefty garbage bag with armholes. “Okay—you can start filming now.”

  With the camera in one hand, I used the other to reach into my pocket and pull out the list I had made during physics class entitled “Questions to Ask Popular People.” It was a little trashed, due to the fact that I had spilled salsa on it that afternoon, but it was still readable. “What would a typical night out for a popular couple be?” I read from the list, before looking up at her. “What do you and Asher usually do?”

  “You mean when he’s not off at those stupid Ultimate Fighting things?” asked Lola as she came out of her dressing room dressed in something that looked half spacesuit/half army uniform.

  “He doesn’t do that every weekend,” replied Dylan.

  Hannah came out wearing something that looked like a nun’s habit. “When was the last time you guys even hung out?” she asked.

  “We hang out all the time,” said Dylan defensively. “We hung out . . . three weekends ago!”

  “You mean that night that he was supposed to meet you at Heidi Lehmann’s party and didn’t show up until ten and then only stayed for fifteen minutes?” Lola retorted.

  I just kept moving the camera back and forth like I was at a tennis match, trying not to look too excited. Catfights always helped heighten the drama of a film.

  “Excuse me for not being one of those girls who’s so insecure she needs to be with her boyfriend twenty-four/ seven,” Dylan huffed as she marched over and put her hand on the camera lens. “Okay, you need to cut.”

  “Ow,” I said as the camera bopped me in the nose again.

  She put her hands on her hips. “Rule number 876: no talking about my relationship on camera. Some things need to remain private and personal.”

  “Especially when they’re, like, ending,” said Lola quietly.

  “What?” Dylan snapped.

  “Nothing,” Lola said as she disappeared back into her dressing room.

  “Okay, I think we’ve had enough for today,” Dylan said as she marched back to her own.

  Hannah walked up to the camera. “You’re not going to put that part in, are you?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Because it just makes us as popular girls look . . . I don’t know . . . bitchy. And we’re so not.” She leaned in closer. “You probably won’t get this because you’re a guy, but seeing that the three of us are best friends, we’re on the same cycle and it’s, you know, that time of the month, so we’re all a little oversensitive. I mean, as you know, usually we’re super sweet. Well, maybe Lola isn’t, but Dylan and I are.”

  So much for loyalty among friends.

  “So will you keep this part out?” she whispered. “Because even though I don’t come across as bad, I don’t want to be thought of as a bitch because I’m friends with them, you know?”

  “How about I think about it?” I whispered back.

  “That would be great,” she said with a smile before she ran off to her dressing room.

  Even with our Just-Because-It’s-Thursday-Again-Get-70-Percent-Off sale, work was still dead the next day. I spent most of my shift trying to convince an elderly couple that it wasn’t that their ungrateful daughter-in-law had given them a defective laptop, but, rather, they needed to turn it on first in order for it to work. At 6:30, as I was getting my stuff out of my locker at work and about to head over to the New Beverly for a double feature of the Chinese director Wong Kar-wai’s work, which I had been looking forward to for months (especially since Quentin was a huge fan of his as well and was sometimes known to show up at the New Beverly on occasion), my phone rang.

  When DYLAN flashed across the screen, I sighed. This was the fifth call in three hours. Apparently in addition to being her director, I was also a human weather vane, a human calculator, and a human MapQuest.

  “Hi, Dylan,” I said as I answered the phone.

  “Josh?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Dylan.”

  “I know. I just said that,” I said, reaching for my inhaler. It had gotten to the point where just the sound of her voice made my lungs start to constrict. I made a mental note to go on WebMD when I got home to find out if you could be physically allergic to a person.

  “So listen,” she said. “My car won’t start again—I can’t even tell you how many problems I’ve had with this thing, it’s beyond annoying—and if it’s not too much of a hassle, I really need you to come pick me up and drive me to Pilates in Santa Monica because my trainer said that if I cancel one more time she’s going to drop me as a client, and with Fall Fling coming up, I can’t afford to have even a trace of a poochy belly and I would’ve asked Marta, our housekeeper, to do it but she’s already left because she had to go to church because it’s some saint’s day and Hannah and Lola can’t do it because Hannah’s getting her hair cut and Lola’s at her Adopted Ethnic Children of White Families therapy group, so there’s really no one else for me to ask, and seeing that you’re my director and want this documentary to be as good as it can be, I know you want me to be in the best possible shape I can be, which is why I thought that if you’re not doing anything right now, maybe you could take me.”

  “But we weren’t supposed to get together until Saturday—”

  “Okay, well, obviously this film isn’t all that important to you. And, you know, if it’s not important to you, then I’m not sure why it should be important to me, so maybe I should just explain to my dad that you couldn’t be bothered.”

  I wondered if Dylan had ever considered a career as a politician. Her blackmailing skills were beyond impressive.

  “The problem is I’m just finishing up at work,” I said, “so I’m all the way across town—”

  “That’s okay. I don’t need to be there until seven, so we have some time.”

  “Yeah, but traffic this time of day is pretty awful, so—”

  Her sigh almost broke my eardrum. “Look, Josh—I’ll just cut to the chase: for someone like myself who’s already got major trust issues, I’m not sure that I’m going to be able to work with someone who’s so unsupportive of me.”

  Here was a perfect opportunity for me to practice what my mom liked to call “showing up for myself.” Not letting someone take advantage of me, or not putting my needs to the side just so they’d like me or approve of me. To stop being a wimp and rolling over.

  I took a deep breath. “What’s your address again?”

  Yes, I needed to show up for myself. But even more important was getting this documentary done. After my parents’ divorce my grades had gone down, and I’ve never been a good test taker (I went through an entire inhaler during the SATs), so if I wanted to get into the most competitive film school in the world, I needed this documentary to be as kick-ass as possible. Even if it meant having to suck it up and become Dylan’s personal assistant for the next few weeks.

  “Seven-two-one-seven Luna Drive,” she replied.

  “Give me a half hour,” I said, glancing at the picture I kept taped to the inside of my locker of Quentin holding up his Independent Spirit Award for Pulp Fiction. All the stars in that cast put together couldn’t be as high maintenance as Dylan.

  “Okay, so before Pilates we just have to make one quick stop at Alice, this little boutique on Montana Avenue,” Dylan said as she got into the Neilmobile. She looked around the car. “How old is this thing anyway?”

  “It’s an ’87.”

  Sh
e wrinkled her nose. “Is it safe?”

  I nodded. “Volvos are known for being the most reliable car there is. In fact, in 2005 they did this study where—”

  “Okay, FYI? I’m so not interested in facts and figures,” she said as she fastened her seat belt. “I already have enough stuff to think about, thankyouverymuch.”

  Like what color nail polish to wear? I thought to myself as I put the car into drive.

  As we crawled down Sunset Boulevard in the bumper-to-bumper traffic, she reached for the stereo. “We need some tunes.” As she clicked it on, Neil Diamond’s “Holly Holy” boomed out of the speakers and she turned to me. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “It is called the Neilmobile.” I shrugged.

  “Okay, well, I’m afraid this is going to make me throw up, so can we please listen to something else? Especially since I’m starting to freak out with all this traffic.”

  I shrugged. “If you want. Personally, I find Neil very relaxing. Like vocal yoga or something.” I definitely needed all the help I could get at that moment to relax. Being alone with Dylan in such close proximity made me anxious.

  She gave me a look. “Personally, I find Neil really annoying.” After nixing all my preset classic-rock stations, she landed on a Top 40 station. “Omigod, I love this song!” she shrieked as some overproduced, bass-thumping, alien-voice-sounding garbage filled the speakers. As if having to listen to the song wasn’t bad enough, Dylan started to sing. At the top of her lungs.

  I had never heard anything more frightening in my life.

  I took my eyes off the road to see if she was being serious or if she had a knack for comedy that I hadn’t been aware of up until this point, but apparently she was serious. And things got even more frightening when she started “dancing” in her seat, which resembled an epileptic seizure.

  She opened her eyes. “Don’t you love this song?” she demanded.

  “Uh—” I wanted to say that since I wasn’t a tween girl, the answer was no, but I didn’t think that would help on the bonding front.

  “Last week my teacher played it in Yoga Booty Ballet and I went insane. Everyone was saying I should so try and get on American Idol.”

  Before I could come up with a reply that would neither offend nor encourage her, the Neilmobile began to make a sound that was somewhere between a donkey braying and a mouse squeaking.

  “What is that noise?!” Dylan yelled, clutching my arm so tight I almost swerved right into a limo. She may have been tiny, but she was strong.

  I reached into my pocket for my inhaler. “I’m not sure,” I panicked. “The only other time I heard something like this was when—”

  As the Neilmobile started to slow down, I managed to make it over to the far-right lane of Sunset.

  “—I ran out of gas a few months ago,” I finished.

  Which, from the way the car drifted to a full stop, was apparently happening again.

  “Are you saying we’re out of gas?” Dylan asked.

  I looked at the gas gauge. “Well, since the needle is on the far, far, far left of the E, yeah, I’d say that’s probably the case.”

  The Neilmobile coughed up one last sputter and then got quiet.

  “I cannot believe this!” Dylan yelled. “I mean, who runs out of gas on Sunset Boulevard? During rush hour?!”

  “Look, it’s not like I planned it or anything,” I said defensively between inhaler squirts. “I thought I had enough to get you to your Pilales thing—”

  “Pilates,” she corrected. “Like latte, the drink.” She started fanning herself. “Look at this—you’ve gotten me so freaked out I’m sweating.” She took out a towel from her workout bag and started dabbing at her forehead. “I hate sweating.”

  “I would’ve stopped to get more gas on my way here, but you were in such a hurry,” I snapped.

  “Safety should always come first,” she said, sounding like a PSA as she dabbed away.

  “You’ve never run out of gas before?” I asked, inhaling with the inhaler again.

  “Well, yes, I have, but at least it was on the freeway,” she shot back.

  “And that would be better because . . . ?” I asked.

  She thought about it. “I don’t know. It just is. Listen, if I’m still going to make it to Pilates I really don’t have time to fight with you about this right now. Do you have a Triple-A card with you?” she asked as she took out her phone.

  “Yeah, but my mom never paid the renewal fee, so it’s expired.”

  If looks could kill, I would’ve been a victim from Saw 4. “So now what do we do?” she asked.

  “Well, do you have a Triple-A card?” I asked.

  “No. I switched wallets this morning because I was using my Rachel Romanoff bag instead of the Serge Sanchez and the black of the wallet clashed with the black of the bag. I mean, they’re close but that kind of thing really bothers me even though Hannah swears it’s not a big deal.”

  Why she thought this stuff was of interest to another human being was beyond me. “I guess I could call Steven or Ari and ask them to come by. Or maybe you could call Asher.” I picked up my phone.

  The look she gave me would have melted the Wicked Witch of the West. “Or not,” I added.

  “Why don’t you just call a tow truck?” she asked as she went back to fanning herself.

  “Good idea,” I said as I started to dial the phone. In the entire time I had spent with her, that was the smartest thing that she had ever said. “Uh oh,” I said a moment later.

  “What?”

  I looked at my phone, where none of the bars were lit up. “No reception.” There was a stretch of Sunset that was known for being a dead zone. Apparently we were in it.

  Dylan started banging her head against the back of the seat. “I. Can. Not. Believe. This.”

  “I know there’s a gas station a little ways up the street,” I offered.

  “How far?”

  “I don’t know . . . a mile?”

  “You want me to walk a mile?!”

  Frankly, I didn’t care if she walked at all—by this point, I just wanted her out of my car. I liked to think of myself as a pretty patient guy, but as my mom’s friend Jo’Say liked to say, she was working my last nerve. Between the personal-assistant stuff, and the chauffeur stuff, and the insults, I had had it. “If you want, you can stay in the car,” I said.

  “By myself?! I could get raped or killed.”

  I looked at the Range Rovers, Mercedes, and BMWs whizzing by. “I’m thinking there’s not a lot of serial killers in this part of town,” I replied.

  She grabbed her bag. “No way. I’m coming with you.”

  “Whatever you say.” I sighed as we got out of the car, taking my video camera with me in case someone did try and break in. Maybe the documentary wasn’t such a great idea after all, I thought.

  Within ten minutes maybe had changed to definitely. After having to listen to Dylan’s complaints that it was too cold, too loud, and her feet hurt, I decided that not only did I no longer care if I got into USC, but I would’ve given up my entire Martin Scorsese library of movies just to not have to deal with her anymore. How Asher put up with her was beyond my comprehension. Maybe he wore invisible earbuds.

  “How much longer?” she called out from behind me for the second time in two minutes as we trekked up Sunset toward Brentwood as cars whizzed by. Because we were in the residential area, there weren’t even sidewalks—just narrow shoulders. Every time a car rounded the bend I was sure we were going to be toast.

  “I don’t know . . . five more minutes?” I called back. The truth was, my feet were hurting as well. Not that I’d need them if I were roadkill.

  “You said that five minutes ago!” she retorted.

  That was the thing about L.A.—as a rule of thumb, everything was twenty minutes away from wherever you were. Since we had been walking for about fifteen, I thought it was a safe answer. However, what I didn’t realize until that moment was that everything wa
s twenty minutes away by car—not foot.

  As we turned a corner, I saw the bright shining lights of a Mobil station. I had never been so happy to see a gas station in my life, even when Mom and I were driving to Scottsdale, Arizona, to visit my grandparents and I had drunk so much water I thought my bladder was going to explode and we were on a stretch of the 10 freeway where there’s nothing for miles.

  “Omigodomigodomigod!” I heard her yelp. Thinking that she was as excited as I was to see that we were almost at our destination, I just kept walking until a few moments later she screamed “JOSSSSSSHHHH!”

  I turned back to see her flat on her butt holding her ankle. “Ouchouchouchouch,” she moaned, looking like a bad actress in a fifth-rate horror movie.

  “What happened?” I sighed as I walked toward her.

  “What do you think happened? I tripped on some stupid rock and broke my ankle.”

  I looked at her foot, which looked fine to me. “Can you wiggle your foot?”

  She moved it a little, wincing with pain. “Yeah, but it kills.”

  “If you can move it, it’s not broken. It’s probably just a slight sprain.”

  “Sprained?! How long is it going to be sprained?” she asked, nearly in hysterics. “Will it be better for Fall Fling? It’s got to be better for Fall Fling. I’m not showing up in, like, flip-flops or something ridiculous like that!” She started to cry. “What if I can’t wear my silver Christian Louboutins?”

  I had no idea who or what a Christian Louboutin was, but it certainly wasn’t the time to find out. “Okay, let me think of the best way to handle this . . . why don’t you wait here and I’ll run to the gas station and get someone to drive back here and pick you up.”

  “Don’t you think we should call an ambulance so I can get to a hospital?”

  I wondered if Urbandictionary.com had a picture of Dylan under drama queen. “As long as we get some ice on it soon, I think you’ll be okay. Plus this is a dead zone with no cell reception.”

  “You can’t just leave me here by the side of the road!” she said.

  “Well, what are my options? Carry you?”