Gold Diggers

by Tracie Howard

  “Sure.” Maximillian was like a spectator at Wimbledon: He didn’t know which way to look, to his left or to his right.

  “So, tell us all about yourself.” Gillian leaned back and pulled a brown European cigarette from her bag. It didn’t matter that it was illegal to smoke in New York bars; Gillian never abided by normal rules. She lit the cigarette as it dangled from her highly glossed lips.

  “What do you want to know?” He leaned back, too, quite the cool customer.

  “What do you do, for starters?” Gillian wasn’t interested in him at all. He wasn’t her type—too pretty. She simply felt like stirring the pot a little bit to see what spice she could add to the brew simmering before her.

  “I’m an attorney.”

  “Where are you from?” Paulette jumped in now.

  He swiveled in her direction. “D.C.”

  Maximillian took a sip of his champagne, not at all affected by the bare bulb dangling just overhead. “Is it okay if I ask a couple of questions?” He directed this question to Paulette, who leaned back, boobs propped up, waiting for anything he had to say. “Shoot.”

  Unfortunately, she’d have to wait a little longer. He turned to Lauren. “You’ve been awfully quiet. Tell me about yourself.”

  “What do you want to know?” Lauren asked, coolly.

  “Anything you want to tell.” A coy smile toyed with the corners of his mouth. He’d just turned his game up a notch.

  “I think you have enough to deal with already.” Lauren was not about to volley on the same court as everyone else; mixed doubles weren’t her sport. She preferred playing center court, all alone. She recognized the handsome man from the Uptown magazine photograph, and remembered his name because her mother had made such a big deal of him when she called after seeing his picture, so the least she could do was get to know him. But sitting around with three other women all vying for his attention was not the way to do it.

  “Excuse me.” Gillian slid out of the booth, allowing Lauren to exit. She walked away and never looked back. If she had, she’d have noticed that his eyes never left her, leaving Reese and Paulette speechless. He also took the opportunity to excuse himself, then joined Lauren at the bar.

  “That bitch,” Paulette and Reese both said in unison. Innocent Lauren had just executed The Italian Job, the title of the brilliant movie about a double-crossing thief who stole the loot from fellow thieves.

  Gillian took a leisurely puff of her filterless cigarette swallowing an amused smile, then expelling a whirl of smoke toward the ceiling, making two perfectly formed smoke rings. “It takes two to know one,” she noted.

  Reese sucked in her cheeks and flipped her hair dismissively, and Paulette, following suit, flung her weave too. The hair tossing was followed by a look that would stop an African elephant. “Ain’t that some shit?” Paulette muttered as she reached for her glass of champagne.

  FOUR

  Four years later, a lot had changed for each of them, with the exception of Gillian. Lauren and Reese were both married; Paulette had transformed About Time Publicity into a major force in PR; but Gillian was still scraping by on secondary roles on and off-Broadway, so there was no grand marquee beaming her name, and the prospects for one weren’t looking so good.

  “I’m moving to L.A.,” she announced unceremoniously as she and Lauren sipped port downstairs at Pravda late one snowy February night.

  “I realize that you don’t like snow and cold weather, but don’t you think that’s a bit drastic?” Lauren teased.

  When Gillian didn’t laugh, Lauren sat her drink down, swallowing this sudden turn. Being an art connoisseur, she considered L.A. to be a cultural wasteland, and couldn’t understand why anyone would willingly live there. “You can’t be serious.”

  “It’s not as if I’m setting New York on fire, and I’m not getting any younger.” Now that she was twenty-seven her modeling days were over, and acting wasn’t exactly working out the way she’d planned. This move to L.A. was her last-ditch effort to save her career.

  “Maybe you just need a new agent,” Lauren offered.

  “I’ve been through three in the last two years.” Just talking about her trials and tribulations made Gillian crave a cigarette. She’d kicked the nasty habit a year ago, but her cravings had intensified recently. “I’ve gotta try this, or else give up altogether. Maybe I should get a nine-to-five like everybody else,” she said despondently.

  Lauren hated to see Gillian so down. She knew that her friend had been concerned about her career, but had no idea that things were so desperate. It was so unfair for Gillian to have to struggle for parts; she was by far the best actress of their generation that Lauren had seen. The last thing she wanted was for her to give up, which meant that Lauren needed to support Gillian’s decision and not just think about her own loss. “A nine-to-five is out of the question. But if you must go, we have to at least send you out in style, so why don’t I arrange a little party with the girls?”

  “There’s not a lot to celebrate.”

  “Of course there is. We will celebrate your imminent success. You will take L.A. by storm!”

  The next weekend they all gathered at Soho Spa, where Lauren had booked them all services for the entire day. In between manicures, pedicures, body exfoliations, deep-tissue massages, and facials, they had a specially catered champagne lunch and celebrated the new chapter of Gillian’s life.

  “Here’s to the big screen!” Lauren said, raising her glass for a toast. Though she was sad to see Gillian go, she was also excited for the bright future that she was sure awaited her. Reese, on the other hand, couldn’t understand why Gillian didn’t just find a rich man and marry him, rather than wasting all this time on a career that seemed destined to fail.

  Paulette toasted, with a smirk buried beneath her smile. What made Gillian think that she was so special that Hollywood would fall to its knees upon her arrival?

  “I know you’ll be a huge success,” Reese lied.

  “I hope so,” Gillian said.

  “You know I’ll do anything I can to help,” Paulette said. She’d recently opened an L.A. office, and had agreed to let Gillian stay at her L.A. apartment until she got settled.

  “I predict that the next time we all get together, it’ll be in L.A. to celebrate Gillian’s first feature film,” Lauren said.

  “From your lips…” Gillian said, raising her glass to her own.

  A week later Gillian sat ensconced in one of Delta’s DC-10s, which was packed with the worst kind of traveler: the tourist. She begrudgingly settled into her coach window seat, quietly praying that the harried-looking woman next to her would have the strength to control the rambunctious toddler who sat squirming to her left and the infant in her lap for the five-and-a-half-hour transcontinental flight from New York to L.A.

  Gillian stuck her iPod’s earpieces firmly into place, anxious to block out the rest of the world, especially the rebel state next to her. While listening to her neosoul and R & B play list, she questioned her choice to abandon her fledgling Broadway career to go running off to La-La Land in search of fame and fortune. The notion was such a cliché—and a bad one at that. She tried convincing herself that she hadn’t just dropped everything to chase a fragmented dream. No question—on Broadway she had proven to be a rare talent, one of a few young African American actresses who effortlessly communicated the essence of a woman—any woman, not just a black woman. Her portrayals were free of color, intense, and profoundly moving. People who’d seen her performances often likened her to a younger Angela Bassett. After winning critical acclaim for her secondary role in The Color Purple, Gillian had been convinced by the show’s producer that she should give Hollywood at least a year. Her mother’s opinion was that the decision should be based solely on which move would lead her closer to marching down the aisle with a rich man. After all, the papers that had provided her mother, Ime
lda, with her millions were not diplomas, awards, stocks, or bonds, but marriage licenses—in fact, several of them.

  Imelda von Glich, born Imogene Patterson, had made marrying up the food chain a profitable career. She was one of the original gold diggers, mining her fortune long before most black women were even aware of the term. Her first husband, Gillian’s dad, Arthur Tillman, was a good deal for a poor, uneducated seventeen-year-old, because at least he had a steady job and the promise of a pension, albeit at the lumberyard in Waynesboro, North Carolina. Imogene was pregnant with Gillian before her eighteenth birthday, and named her daughter after the heroine in one of the many Harlequin paperback romance novels that Imogene passed the day reading whenever she wasn’t spending Arthur’s meager paycheck in the one dress and hat shop in town. He didn’t complain too much, because she was by far the best-looking woman in the county, even after birthing a baby.

  After becoming pregnant with a second child, one day Imogene just up and left. Arthur never saw her—or Gillian—again. Within a month of her unscheduled departure a prosperous local attorney also left town, headed for New York City, where Imogene met up with him soon after her abortion. From those shaky beginnings she never once looked back. Four husbands later, not only had she gone through many millions from increasingly larger divorce settlements, but her latest husband, a baron from Europe, had also contributed the title of baroness to her lengthy but impressive marital résumé.

  After careful consideration, Imelda’s advice to Gillian was simpler: Go to L.A., quick and in a hurry. Her rationale was even simpler: If you’re an actress you’ll have a higher profile, and therefore find it easier to land a solid starter husband. This sort of talk had always been unsettling to Gillian. Even as a child she was put off by her mother’s ruthless pursuit of money and status, but as an adult Gillian was coming to realize that it was a dog-eat-dog world, and the only way she could ensure her own survival was also to pursue both money and power.

  Though Imelda had made a nice run of it, her most recent husband was proving to be as tight as her latest face-lift with his money, and she’d used much of her own from previous husbands as seed capital to flit around Europe in search of her next one. Three years earlier, during one of her flush periods, Imelda had given Gillian fifty thousand dollars, telling her to not to spend it all in one place. So Gillian had no illusions of being taken care of by her mother or the woman’s husband, and without siblings or family she was literally alone in the world and would have to fend for herself. Living in New York, even with roommates, and income from modeling and acting jobs, had sucked away most of her reserve. Only ten thousand dollars remained in her coffers, so it was time for drastic measures; hence the move to Los Angeles.

  Gillian’s other problem was that she hadn’t dated seriously in years. It wasn’t for lack of attention. She was a stunning woman, but not in the classic sense of the word. She was very tall at five-foot-ten, and had sharp, angular features covered by a smooth mocha complexion that was luminescent. Her hair was soft, curly shocks of dusty brown that she pretty much let grow wild, to her mother’s dismay. Most men were intimidated either by her height, her avant-garde fashion sensibility, or her keen intellect. A blushing Barbie doll she was not.

  The guys outside of the arts who approached her—the corporate types—were much too boring. The thought of being indoctrinated into the world of nine-to-five working stiffs, lumbering through life like a preprogrammed zombie, was too much for her to bear.

  As for the creative types, the experience was always a crapshoot as to whether they were bi, gay, down-low, or simply sexually confused. It was way too much to think about. One conclusion she’d drawn from the dating game was that dumb women had a much easier time getting a man. Just look at Lauren, whom she had grown very close to over the last four years and loved like a sister. She had single-handedly won the Max contest that Paulette and Reese had also entered; sure, she wasn’t dumb, but she was naive. Lauren had book sense, but when it came to life her brain was on remote control, and her mother was pushing all the buttons.

  And then there was her former roommate, Reese, who was attractive and smart as a whip. She was the complete opposite of Lauren: She pushed her own buttons, and other people’s too, all in an effort to get whatever it was she wanted. It wasn’t beyond her to play stupid just to lock a man down. At the end of the day her victims rarely knew what hit them. Though it was touch-and-go for a while, she ended up maneuvering Chris down the aisle before he realized that she’d manipulated everything from their first meeting to her “accidental” pregnancy, which was by far the oldest trick in the gold digger handbook.

  She was suddenly jarred from her meandering thoughts by the loud wailing of the infant who squirmed in her seatmate’s lap. The woman shifted the child from shoulder to shoulder, patting his back in an effort to soothe him. The crying came to an abrupt stop when a thick mass of gooey spit-up projected from his mouth, landing with an unceremonious plop right onto Gillian’s silk pullover.

  By the time the plane bounced to a stop at LAX, Gillian was ready to jump out of it, and her own skin. The kids had cried, kicked, screamed, and squealed nonstop from one coast to the other, while their brain-dead mother displayed an uncanny ability to totally ignore the raging tornadoes that swirled around her. Gillian had been forced to hunker down in her coach seat and slowly simmer. When the perky flight attendant opened the door to the cabin, Gillian couldn’t get off the plane quickly enough.

  Standing at baggage claim waiting for her Louis Vuitton luggage to tumble down the conveyor belt, Gillian felt a fierce craving for a nicotine fix. She’d been trying to cut back for several months now, and so far had gone from ten cigarettes a day down to six, but after the unnerving flight and her general trepidation about the move to L.A., a serious backslide was on the horizon. When her bag finally appeared she snatched it up and headed for the door. The pricey luggage was a gift from her mother that had been purchased under duress. They had been traveling to Spain together recently, and Imelda couldn’t stand the idea of Gillian’s ratty duffel bags tagging alongside her spotless four-piece set.

  Once outside in the bright Los Angeles sunshine, Gillian lit up a tar stick and sucked in the nicotine like a junkie taking a long-overdue hit of crack.

  “Gil. Hey, Gil, over here.”

  She looked up to find Paulette yelling in her direction as she pulled her expensive convertible CLK 500 up to the curb. Gillian couldn’t help but smile. In some ways things were so much more civilized here in L.A.—even for Paulette, who would never be confused as a poster child for civility. People actually came to the airport to meet you. In New York no one did. Whether you were arriving from Boise or Bangkok, you were usually sent a car service or forced to ride with a non-English-speaking cabdriver to your destination. She looked up to the sky and blew smoke toward the clouds before squashing the half-smoked cigarette onto the pavement. She’d make up the other half later.

  After loading up the Mercedes’s small trunk with Gillian’s two bags, Paulette headed down Century Boulevard to the on ramp for the 405 with the top dropped and the wind whipping through their hair as she dodged in and out of lanes.

  Gillian reached for her seat belt. “You should put yours on, too,” she advised.

  “And ruin a perfectly good outfit?” Paulette quipped. She wore a cream linen blouse that was opened one button too many, and a pair of black hip-hugger slacks that never should have been sold to a woman who wore size-twelve pants. Paulette had always fought—and usually lost—the battle of the bulge, so her weight fluctuated as erratically as the stock market. If she was extremely happy or extremely sad, she’d eat more and gain weight, so the only time she kept pounds off was when her life was a snore, which, thanks to her flair for drama, was almost never.

  “Suit yourself.” Gillian buckled up and glanced down at her own puke-smeared top, momentarily flashing back to her trip from hell.

  The s
ky was movie-set blue with perfect special-effects wispy white clouds artfully arranged. As Paulette picked up speed, shifting with freshly manicured hands into fourth, the wind blew through Gillian’s tangle of curls, tossing her hair like a salad, while the radio blasted Snoop and Paulette yapped on a mile a minute about the latest A-list actor signed to About Time Publicity. Paulette had caught her big break when Gillian referred her to an actress friend who blew up after being nominated for—and winning—an Oscar for best supporting actress. After that stroke of luck, business really took off, so Paulette opened her L.A. office and began shuttling back and forth between the two coasts.

  Between manically shifting gears and erratically changing lanes, Paulette gave Gillian an earful of advice about how she could become the African American Jennifer Aniston, as if anyone with a valid black card would want to be. Gillian couldn’t help but smile. There was something unreal and surreal about being in L.A. It was hard not to sip from the glass of happy juice that everyone seemed to share. The sun and silicone conspired to make any problem fixable; the solution always seemed as simple as another take or a different camera angle.

  Gillian allowed herself to relax and succumb to the intoxicating drug that was La-La Land. By the time they pulled up to Paulette’s building on Olympic Boulevard and entered her one-bedroom apartment, the irony of her friend’s owning a car that cost a small fortune while renting a tiny apartment hadn’t escaped her. In any case, she was grateful that Paulette had offered her the sleeper sofa at no charge until she could find a place of her own.

  Paulette flitted about the bedroom, frantically changing clothes again and again, searching for something smashing enough to wear to a “must-attend” industry party they were invited to. Though a glass of wine and a heavy nap were more to Gillian’s liking, Paulette convinced her that making it in L.A. was like a lesson in skydiving: You just had to close your eyes and jump in.