So, on the last day of my life I woke up at 7:30 a.m. and promptly took Peaches over to the vet. The vet had told me the day before that it was just a matter of time before the obstruction cleared so I was to stay with her and soothe her pain. I was nuts over poor Peaches. She had been wailing all night and I had gotten no sleep carrying her around the apartment like a parent who walks their baby around the house until it stops crying. Had it been a slow day (not even taking into account that it was my last day), I would have just stayed home from work to take care of her, but I was working for myself and I had a job to do so I had no choice but to leave her at the vet until after Stan’s party. I could tell that Peaches didn’t want me to leave her, and I started to cry right in front of the vet.
“You take wonderful care of her,” the vet reassured me. “She’ll be fine here.”
“She’s like my child,” I cried. “I don’t think I’ll be able to think about anything else but her for the rest of the day.”
“Call as much as you want,” he said.
So I did. In between shopping for Lloyd and Kate’s Hawaiian vacation wardrobe, I called the vet every hour on the hour to see how my dog was doing and, as we all know, the poor girl had that obstruction the entire day.
At about ten that morning, I was in Lloyd and Kate’s bedroom hemming a Tory Burch sequined beach top for Kate.
“I look so fat in this,” the five-foot-eight, 115-pound Kate complained as she looked at herself in the mirror.
“You do not look fat in this. I swear, the day I let you go out of the house looking like a hog, first of all, that’ll be the day, but, second, I’d fire myself for that.”
“Well, see what else you can find and get back to me, okay?”
“No problem,” I told her in a way that really sounded like it was no problem, but it really was a problem.
“Are you coming back with something today?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, taking a look at my watch. “I saw this great top at Barneys. I can pick it up later today before Stan Mitchell’s party.”
“Great, we’ll go over together.”
Okay, so now I had that top to think about as well as the other things, and I still had to go down to the airport to get those darn sneakers since I was now totally committed to going to Stan’s party. It was about noon when I left Kate, and I was having lunch with some agents about adding them as clients. I was meeting them in Beverly Hills at one and that allowed me just enough time to swing by the vet and visit Peaches, who was stoned on some pain-relieving drug.
“Look, I would know better than anyone in my kind of work that clothes really do make the man,” I told the agents at lunch as I took a sip of my Diet Coke. “All you need is some guy from your office to show up at a meeting in a cheap suit and that’ll be all people are looking at, trust me. I know, I’ve seen it before. I propose that you hire me as your office’s personal shopper, and I promise you, you’ll be the best-dressed agency in Hollywood.”
“If you can do for our office what you did for Stan Mitchell and Lou Sernoff and Lloyd Kerner, we would love to have you on board,” the agent in the Zegna suit agreed, extending his hand.
That was awesome. I left the lunch a little richer financially, and with a date with one of the guys for that Saturday night. (I wonder if he heard I died? I hope he didn’t think I stood him up.)
At about two thirty, I knew I still needed to get to Barneys to pick up that beach top for Kate and then go down to the airport to pick up those darn sneakers, but I also needed to run to Lou Sernoff’s office and drop off some jeans I’d had hemmed for him. As I was calling over to the vet to check on Peaches yet again, Penelope called from New York.
“Did you ever send me that Cacharel jacket?” she asked.
“Oh my god, no,” I said. “I’m so sorry, I’ve been crazy this week.”
“Are you crazy busy today?” she asked. “Do you think you could FedEx it? I want to wear it to my breast cancer luncheon tomorrow.”
“Pen, I’m nuts today. Don’t you have anything else?”
“No, Al, I don’t. I really wanted to wear that jacket.”
“Fine, I’ll run to FedEx.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Am I still your best friend?”
“Yes. Can you imagine ending a friendship after twenty years because of a jacket?”
“Love you, Al,”
“Love you, Pen.”
Okay, so that was another monkey wrench in my day. I had just enough time to run back to Barneys, pick up the top, run to Tory Burch and return the other top, then run to my apartment to pick up Pen’s Cacharel jacket, and then run over to FedEx and send her the jacket. Then I would drive down to the airport, but I still had to pick up Lou Sernoff’s jeans and bring them over to his office, and, wouldn’t you know it, his office was in Santa Monica, which could not have been more out of my way if I tried.
It took two and a half hours out of my day to find a parking spot at Barneys, pick up the new beach top for Kate, return the old one to Tory Burch on Robertson, then run to my apartment, grab Pen’s jacket, dash to FedEx, ship the jacket, and then drive down to Santa Monica, stopping on the way at Denim Doctors to pick up Lou’s jeans.
“These jeans are too short,” Lou said when he tried on the hemmed jeans. “You think you can loosen the hem by Stan’s party tonight?”
“It’s done,” I said, grabbing the pants and jumping in my car.
It was 4:47 according to the clock in my car by the time I got to the airport to pick up Stan’s shoes. The customs office was closing at five and the only place I could find to park was in the United Airlines terminal when I really needed to be down at the US Airways terminal so I had to run as fast as I could in my goddamned brand-new Stephane Kélian leather boots, which I ended up scuffing (not that it matters now, but boy did it piss me off at the time). I bumped right smack into some family that wasn’t looking and plowed their luggage cart into my toe.
The line at the customs office was about fifteen people deep. Now, as you know, normally lines piss me off, but since I had to let the hem out of Lou’s jeans, I did that while waiting in line. In between, my cell phone rang twice:
“Hey, it’s Kate. You know, I was just thinking, that Tory Burch top was really cute. Did you return it? Do you think you could pick it up again?”
“No problem,” I told her, which couldn’t have been further from the truth.
“Hey, it’s Pen, so forget about sending the jacket. I found something else to wear.”
“Next!” the customs lady shouted to me from behind the glass partition.
“Just one more second,” I shouted back as I yelled into the phone at Pen. “No, it’s already sent! You’re wearing that jacket or I’ll have to come to New York and beat you,” I shouted into my phone so everyone within earshot of the customs office at LAX told me to please be quiet.
“Ma’am, we’ve got other customers.”
“Pen, I gotta go,” I said—the last words I would ever speak to her. I didn’t even say good-bye.
“Ma’am,” the woman behind the desk shouted again, “we’re closing up here.”
“Just one more second,” I said, pulling the last of the threads out of Lou’s hemmed jeans.
“Ma’am, we’ve all got our problems. Now, where’s your form to receive your package?”
By six I was back at Lou’s house, handing him the jeans.
“Do these make me look cool?” he asked.
“Lou, the day I let you walk out of this house looking uncool is the day I fire myself.”
“All right,” he said. “By the way, you’re going to Stan’s party tonight, right?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there. I just have to run by the vet to see about my dog and then I have to get over to Lloyd and Kate Kerner’s to get her a beach top for their Hawaii trip. Oh shoot, I have to go. I have to run to Barneys and return something and then run to Tory Burch to pick up something. I’ll see you ton
ight,” I told Lou.
Now, if you’ve ever been in Los Angeles traffic in a hurry, especially if you’re heading from Santa Monica into Beverly Hills, you know you might as well take a gun and start shooting if you want to get there in a hurry (kidding). I don’t think there was anything that pissed me off more in that world than Los Angeles traffic, and I have to say, if there’s anything good about dying, it’s that I’ll never have to drive in that traffic again.
“Come on!” I screamed as I flipped the bird at three separate people and beeped my horn at five more. “LEARN HOW TO DRIVE, ASSHOLE!” I screamed to another two.
By seven o’clock I had missed returning the Barneys beach top but got the saleswoman at Tory Burch to stay until I arrived to pick up the top I’d returned earlier.
Peaches was sleeping when I went back to the vet, so I left her there and told them I’d pick her up when I got out of Stan Mitchell’s birthday party.
By the time I got to Kate and Lloyd’s it was eight thirty and they were dressed and ready to leave.
“Did you even shower?” Kate asked me.
“I haven’t had the time,” I told her, looking down at my J Brand jeans and the black sweater with the neck that exposed my shoulder for that nice hint of sexy.
Everyone and everyone was at Stan’s party that night at Jones. I had dressed Stan in a black cashmere sweater and a black Theory suit.
“Are you sure this is black?” he asked when I first saw him. “It looked a little blue in the car.”
“It’s black,” I said, kissing him hello. “I’d fire myself if I ever screwed up your colors.”
For the first time that day I found myself relaxed as Lou Sernoff handed me my first Grey Goose martini of the night.
“This is for the jeans,” he said, kissing me on the cheek.
There were too many people to talk to. Don’t you love that feeling when you go to a party and you know so many people that conversations start and end with, “Let’s catch up when things calm down in here,” as someone else makes their way over to say hello.
I threw back another Grey Goose martini as I laughed with Peter, my Barneys buddy, had my third as I talked to my new agent clients, and by the time 11:00 p.m. rolled around, I was leaning my head on Kate’s shoulder, who was leaning her head on Lloyd’s shoulder, who had fallen asleep amidst the throngs of people shouting and drinking and cheering.
“I gotta go soon,” I moaned to Kate. “I gotta go and get Peaches from the vet.”
“You’ve been so worried about her all day,” she said.
“I know, I’m so stressed over her.”
“Alex,” she said, “I’ve been wanting to ask you something.”
“Sure, what’s up?” I asked her.
“Well, how do you do it?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“How did you get your life?” she asked me. “I mean, I can’t do anything. I can’t even go shopping for myself, and you seem to do everything so effortlessly. This is the first time I’ve ever seen you stressed out about anything.”
“Effortlessly?” I asked her. “Are you kidding me? Everything is an effort. I wake up every single morning with this pain of angst in my heart that I’m not going to succeed in anything. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.”
“Well, you hide it really well,” she said. “I mean, you were working in the shoe department at Barneys and you turned that into a business of your own. How does a person begin to do something like that? I can’t even begin to think about what I want in a career.”
I had to stop and think about that for a second.
“I don’t know, I guess when you’re faced with realizing that no one is going to do it for you, you just have to make it work for yourself.”
“So, is it fear that makes you succeed?”
“I think that’s part of it,” I told her and then I stopped. “No, it’s not fear, I think it’s more than that. I think it’s really wanting to make yourself a better person. I don’t mean to get all philosophical or anything, but now that you’re asking me, I think it has more to do with making sure that angst in your heart won’t be there another morning.”
“So, it is fear.”
“No, it’s not fear, it’s more . . . it’s knowing that you’re being the best you’re able to be.”
“So, is there anything missing from your life?”
“Are you kidding?” I asked her. “Everything is missing from my life.”
“So what’s everything?” she asked me.
“I don’t know,” I told her. “I’ll let you know when I find out.”
“You know, I just said to Lloyd the other night, ‘Why doesn’t Alex have a great guy in her life?’ Have you ever had a serious relationship?”
“Well, yes,” I started to say as I began to tell her about my engagement to Charles but then decided against getting into that whole thing. “But, no, I wasn’t ready. It just wasn’t the right time for me.”
“Are you ready now?”
Again, I had to stop and think about it.
“I don’t really know,” I told her. “Yes, I think I’m at a point in my life now where I could be in a relationship with someone, but it would have to be someone who would give me the freedom to think for myself. I just don’t think I’m done doing all the things I need to do.”
“I get that,” she said, nudging Lloyd, who had since fallen asleep in her lap. “I just wish I knew someone for you.”
“That will come in time,” I told her.
“And that’s what I admire about you,” she told me.
“I don’t think I’m one to be admired,” I told her.
“You know what it is, Alex,” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders, “you just don’t see it,” she said.
I was too drunk to drive by the time I was ready to leave the party. I knew the first thing I had to do the next morning was return that beach top to Barneys, but I also wanted to pick up Peaches that night.
“Do you have your ticket, ma’am?” the valet asked me.
Just then, a cab pulled up. I remember thinking at the time how crazy that was. I mean, cabs just don’t pull up in Los Angeles. You have to call for that kind of thing.
“You need a cab, lady?” the female cab driver with the bad brunette dye job asked me.
“Uh, yeah, but I need to make two stops,” I said, getting into the cab as I told the valet I’d pick my car up the next day.
“Hard day?” the female cab driver asked me.
“I don’t even know where the time went,” I told her.
“That’s the best kind of day to have,” she said and I agreed.
Peaches was still stoned out of her mind by the time I collected her from the vet. I placed her on one side of my bed as I got into it on the other and left my jeans and sweater on, which, as you know, I’m so happy I did.
As I fell asleep that night, I could only think of one thing: that conversation with Kate. One, Kate was out of her mind. Two, on the other hand, what was it that Kate saw about me that I didn’t? What did she mean, “You just don’t see it?” Why couldn’t I ever just relax? Was my life really that good, the way she looked at it—or was it the way I looked at it, an existence fueled by this insane desire to make things right even though I probably never would have known what “right” even was?
It’s funny because now that I think about it, life was good. What the heck was I trying to prove, and what would it have taken in the end for me to feel better about the way I lived my life?
I had gone from being a girl who had no idea what she was doing to someone who actually had a life in this world (or that world).
I guess it’s the kind of thing, though, where you don’t realize what a good time you had until the party is over. I had great friends. I had a great job. I loved what I was doing with my life. Why didn’t I see it?
“I gotta get myself a boyfriend,” I thought to myself as I fell asleep. This was the last thing I remember thinking.
>
At four o’clock that morning, I was awoken by Peaches whimpering beside my bed. She was whimpering there for a good forty-five minutes before I finally got out to take her for the walk. I still feel bad about that. Peaches is such a good, sweet, wonderful dog. You know that feeling, though, when you’re sleeping and nothing else in the world matters, even if your dog is being so generous despite her own painful bowel obstruction as to hold it in until you get up to take her out?
Obviously, I did take her out. I was thrilled that I had on what I was wearing. It felt good to be outside in the middle of the night with the cold air on my face, and maybe I was still a little drunk, though I don’t think so, but I felt this great exhilaration to be out there all alone with Peaches. Everyone else in the world was asleep and we had the whole place to ourselves. There were no cars, that I saw, coming down Fairfax when Peaches’s obstruction cleared.
“You feel better now, girly girl?” I asked her as we started to head back to my apartment.
And that was that. That was the last thing I remember saying as I bent down to pick up Peaches and give her a hug. That’s when I saw the lights of the MINI Cooper come out of nowhere.
If you had told me then that this would be one of the best days of my life, I would have told you that you were crazy. I wouldn’t have thought about it that way at all. That day was full of stress. It was full of work and thought and wondering and worrying. When I look at it now, though, it was just the way it should have been.
The Ten Best Days of My Life Page 19