Everyone In LA is an REDACTED

by Sarah Fuller

  The reason I won’t eat alone at a restaurant is that I care about other people’s feelings, as hard as that is to believe. I always feel bad when I see someone eating alone, and I don’t want others to feel that way when they see me dining by myself. I usually make up a story as to why the people I see are dining solo, and it’s never a pleasant one.

  Oh, I bet that man’s wife died, and this was their favorite restaurant. Oh, my gods! It’s probably their fiftieth wedding anniversary, and she died just a few weeks short of it!

  I have been tempted to ask the lonely diner if they wanted to join my table, because watching them stir their soup and look around the bustling restaurant was too much for me to bear. Why yes, I’ve once again made this about me.

  Once I was in the club, by myself, I strode through the smoky place, trying not to look as uncomfortable as I felt. Packs of ladies and herds of men stood around, all looking ready to pounce on the prey they stalked.

  Usually, if I were with my girlfriends, I would chat with them while people-watching. However, if you don’t have someone to talk to while looking at people, you’re just considered a gawker.

  What did I expect to come out of going to a club by myself, I suddenly wondered, as the unease built in my stomach. Was I looking for Mr. Right here, amongst the cougars and rich kids? Was I just looking for a good time? But if I wanted that, I could have gone home and downloaded a time management game, which was destined to deliver fun. For some reason, there’s nothing more thrilling for me than to play games that have work-simulated tasks with no tangible rewards. I’m sick like that.

  As I strode up to the bar, I realized why I was at this club. It was about finding confidence. I’d thrown myself into the deep end, knowing it was overdue. If Hot Produce Guy walked up to me that night, I couldn’t just brush him off. I kept telling my girlfriends that the timing wasn’t right to talk to a guy, but there was no better place than at a club. They were made for exactly that.

  I ordered a glass of wine at the bar because hard liquor, especially tequila, goes straight to my head. Then I wake up in the morning and wonder where the blanket to the hotel bed is and why there is a fistful of Mardi Gras beads on the bedside table. That was in Las Vegas, though, and this book is about how everyone in LA is an asshole, not how everyone in Las Vegas is brain-dead.

  “Can I buy that drink for you?” a guy asked beside me.

  I looked up, grateful that I was already making friends. Then I deflated inside. I have a type. Everyone does. I’ve dated men of various shapes and sizes. Brunettes, blonds, redheads. Different races. This guy was definitely not my type. He was good-enough looking, but just not for me.

  I smiled meekly. “No thanks. But I’d love to cheers.”

  There! I’d done it. I’d said no.

  Somewhere in the backwoods of Texas, my mother was cursing me, having witnessed me turning down a free drink in her crystal ball. But I didn’t want to owe this guy anything—not a conversation, my attention, or anything else. And I also didn’t want to give him the wrong impression.

  I was taking my power back, even if it seemed like it was in an insignificant way. Money is power; we should never delude ourselves into thinking otherwise.

  I lifted my glass, and the guy did the same, and we clinked glasses.

  “I came to the club by myself,” I reported to him, yelling into his ear to be heard over the loud music.

  He nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

  “But I’m a girl, and I’ve never come to the club by myself. We come here only in protected packs.”

  He leaned back, looking me over with a creepy stare. “You must be looking for some action tonight.”

  I shook my head and gulped my wine. This was harder than I thought. “No, I’m looking to redeem myself after a really bad date earlier tonight.”

  “Giiiiiirl,” he said, “you came to the right place. I can show you a good time. You wanna dance?”

  I really didn’t. I pressed my lips closed. I didn’t have to be nice to everyone who asked me out or asked me to dance. I didn’t have to subject myself to unwanted attention just not to hurt someone’s feelings. Not understanding that was how I ended up going out with Skyler all those years ago. And why I didn’t break up with him sooner. I cared more about preserving his feelings than my own.

  “You know what?” I began, “I really don’t want to dance, but thanks.”

  Ha-Hah! I’d said no, and this guy wasn’t crying from my rejection. This is getting easier. I looked around the club, which was starting to fill up with people.

  The guy finished his drink, not at all looking deterred by my rejection of his offers. “Well, we can just talk. How about I get that next drink of yours?”

  I would need another glass of wine soon…

  “Thanks, but no. What I actually need is your help here.”

  “Girl, I can help. What do you need?”

  A group of guys that were my type had entered the club, one of them locking eyes on me.

  I took a step back from the guy I was talking to and smiled. “What I need is a wingman. Can you do that for me?”

  “Ouch!” the guy cried, shrinking back. “Wingman? I offer to buy you a drink or do whatever it is you need, and you reduce me to wingman immediately. Who does that?”

  A part of me wanted to cave. Laugh and tell this guy I was joking. Take him up on his offer to buy me a drink and probably spend the next six years trying to let him down easy.

  Instead, though, I pushed my shoulders back and stood taller. “I do that. You’re an attractive man, but not right for me. I know what I want, and it’s over there.” I indicated with my head. “The job is yours if you want it. Be my wingman, and I’ll be yours. I’ll help you get any honey in this club you desire.”

  “Except for you, right?” he asked, like double-checking for prosperity’s sake. His large brown eyes swelled with hope like I might have changed my mind in the last few seconds.

  I hadn’t.

  “I’m not really available,” I said plainly.

  Standing up for what I wanted, or in this case, what I didn’t want, didn’t make me an asshole. It made me a champion to my true desires. Why settle when I could have Joey from high school or the guy on the far side of the club who looked a lot like him?

  The guy beside me gave me a curious stare, like trying to figure out what species of strange female I was. “If you’re not available, then why are you here?”

  “I’m trying to work on it. This is my attempt.” I extended a hand to the guy and said, “I’m sort of bad at this. How about you give me some pointers as my wingman?”

  “And in return?” he asked, looking skeptical.

  I drained my wine glass. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

  Chapter Ten

  Karma is Also Awesome

  One day, my ex-boyfriend posted something on Facebook that made me peel back from the computer with unbridled relief that I’d cut that train wreck loose. I then sat back and watched as the mob of angry Facebookers gathered their pitchforks and flaming torches and went after him. I didn’t take joy in watching him be roasted, but it solidified my belief that I’d made the right decision when I mustered up the courage to break up with him.

  There were a lot of problems with the relationship, which is why I avoided him for weeks until he finally got the hint and broke up with me. That’s usually how I deal with problems. Real mature, right? Chiefly, the problem was that our moral compasses pointed in different directions. Okay, let me be honest: I don’t think he has one—or maybe it’s completely off—but who am I to judge? He is a Taurus, though. Just saying.

  He does have many other great qualities. I’m not one to completely put down my exes. I did choose them in the first place, so what does that say about my judgment, if they are horrible people? In this instance, I’ll say he’s a talented person with flaws, which I uncovered only later and that I couldn’t overlook. Still a good person, just not the right one for me.

  Somewhere
out there, David Tennant is waiting for me to overlook his flaws; like the fact that he can’t sleep in and therefore gets up extra early to squeeze me fresh orange juice. And also that he can’t stand to finish his frozen yogurt and therefore always gives me that last bite. And that he gets bored just watching Netflix and needs something to do with his hands, like rub my feet. Damn you, David! You might be flawed, but I will love you anyway. I will see past your imperfections.

  My ex-boyfriend had made a public statement about money that made him look like a power-hungry entrepreneur. This was a quintessential topic where we differed, but he was in finance, so…

  I tried to look at this from my profession as an author. Libraries get my books to readers, but I don’t make as much as an author. However, I don’t need to make a dollar off every book I sell. Scoring the loyalty of the reader is much more valuable. And also, I’m a firm believer in doing what’s right because it’s the correct thing to do, not to get some reward. Having libraries doesn’t just make sense to the Earth, which is wrestling with all our over-consumption, but also makes sense to the community, which needs books from all avenues: ebooks, paperbacks, used paperbacks, and audio. Libraries enrich communities, and more than once, I’ve been known to leave my paperbacks on the shelves of one of these institutions, hoping it would make it into the rotation of books checked out by readers. I figure my books are like crack. Get them hooked on the first one, and you’ve got them for life. Yes, I’m a drug dealer.

  I am getting to a point, I promise.

  The other day, I took Eleanor to Target because I wanted to buy a lot of shit I didn’t need. I was about to park when I saw something in the parking space. It may shock you, but I didn’t run over the object. Instead, I parked my car perfectly. Apparently, the parking gods were looking down at me.

  I got out of the car and looked closer at the object I’d seen when parking: a wallet.

  I picked it up, and Eleanor starts yelling, “Don’t steal, Mommy! That’s not yours!”

  I rolled my eyes at my sweet, innocent child as onlookers gave me cautious glares.

  “I’m checking to see who this belongs to,” I told her.

  I held up the wallet to the people around, asking them if they’d lost it.

  No one had.

  I continued to look through the wallet.

  “Why are you going through that?” Eleanor asked.

  “I’m trying to see if I can find information on the person who lost it,” I said.

  “Why not just turn it in to Target?” Eleanor asked.

  “Because they are going to simply put it in a lost and found bin and not make any effort to find the person it belongs to.”

  “So?” my little sociopath said.

  “So, if it was my wallet, I’d want to know right away where it was,” I explained, reading the guy’s ID. “This guy, Chris So-and-So, could be putting a hold on all his credit cards right now. That’s what I’d be doing, and it’s a pain in the butt.”

  Eleanor shrugged, starting to get antsy for our Target shopping spree. I’d promised her we’d buy The Greatest Showman—a musical we’re absolutely obsessed with—on DVD. We have the choreography down pat.

  And if you’re wondering if I mean Blu-ray, I do not. I don’t know what Blu-ray is. I am the one person who still has a DVD player, and I’m damn proud of it. When I was married to George, he kept asking when we could get rid of it and upgrade. But why upgrade when ancient technology works sort of just fine?

  When we divorced, George bought a giant entertainment center with all the bells and whistles. But guess who got to keep the Wii that had all the leveled-up characters? That would be me.

  “I think I can find this guy on Facebook,” I said, pulling up my phone and searching for the Chris whose wallet I’d found.

  Sure enough, Facebook provided a profile for the gentleman immediately. Damn, social media is either going to be the death of us all, or it will save our very lives.

  I fired off a message to the guy while Eleanor danced to The Greatest Showman music in her head.

  “What did you say?” she asked as we started for the entrance.

  “I told him that I had his wallet, and he’d get it back if he paid me for it.”

  “Mommy!”

  My child doesn’t think I’m funny at all. She knows that mommy writes books that people read for entertainment, but to her, my jokes are lame.

  “What did you really say to him?” she urged.

  “I told him I had his wallet and that I would return it to him,” I explained. “He’s not far from here—only about thirty minutes away, according to his driver’s license.”

  “But, Mommy,” Eleanor began. “We have the dinner party! You’re supposed to make a cheeseball.”

  That’s right. One of the reasons I was at Target was to get the secret ingredient for my mother’s cheeseball. I have another confession to make: I cannot cook. I once tried to sauté cucumbers, thinking they would end up like squash. They ended up in the garbage.

  I seriously loathe my cooking, as does my gourmet friend Samar, although she’s sweet about it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve slaved away at the stove to impress her, only to fall short of her expectations. Samar can throw three ingredients in the Instant Pot with a pinch of curry, and voila, she has a fucking thali platter with twelve different dishes. I just knew if I made my mother’s famous cheeseball, I’d finally give her something that would tantalize her taste buds. Then she’d stop encouraging me to “just get frozen stuff from Trader Joe’s” on the evenings I hosted the dinner party.

  I come from a long line of distinguished southern chefs. My aunt was a chef and editor for Southern Living for years, and my grandmothers apparently created a ton of the most iconic Louisiana recipes, which one of them wrote about in her weekly newspaper column. I, however, have failed on more than one occasion to make white gravy. Do not tell my relatives; their opinion of me will sink even lower. I can just hear them now: ‘No wonder she moved to the West Coast. Those people don’t even know how to fry chicken properly.’

  Anyway, one of our main objectives at Target that day was to get the secret ingredients for the cheeseball. And socks. How does my kid go through fucking socks like the women at the Pilates studio go through Alo pants?

  “We won’t be late,” I told Eleanor. “Or we will. It doesn’t really matter. We have a wallet to return.”

  She agreed a bit reluctantly, her hopes centered on the cheeseball.

  My child doesn’t like anything with melted cheese, which is good for my ass. Otherwise, I would have eaten a ton of pizza over her lifetime. For reasons unknown to me, she turns her nose up at pizza, cheeseburgers, and nachos—which is the gods’ way of helping me, I remind myself every time I wish she’d go halfsies on a plate of quesadillas. However, Eleanor fucking loves my cheeseball. It’s the right kind of cheese for her.

  I checked my phone again, curious to see if the Chris guy had responded about his wallet. He hadn’t. I then waved to the falconer as we strode into Target.

  Why yes, I did say that my Target has a falconer. Doesn’t yours? He’s there every week with his birds, doing his service to keep the pigeons away. This Target is much too civilized to have sharp spikes on the light poles and roof to keep the pests at bay. Instead, they hire a falconer, because how do you keep the seagulls away? You bring in the big birds. By the way, seagulls are fucking assholes. Like the biggest ones in LA. There’s one in Malibu who still owes me a fucking turkey sandwich… I was hangry the rest of the day because he stole my lunch.

  By the time we’d picked out the secret ingredients for the cheeseball (which, no, I’m not divulging), Wallet Guy hadn’t responded.

  “Looks like we’re driving this wallet over,” I said to Eleanor as we loaded into the car.

  “But we’re not going to have time to prepare for the dinner party,” she whined.

  “And yet, it will still work out,” I explained. “The right thing to do is to return this wa
llet.”

  “Do you think he’ll give us something in return? Like a reward?”

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter.”

  “But we’re going to be late for our own party,” Eleanor reasoned. “I think it matters.”

  “There’s a law that operates in the universe, baby,” I began. “It’s called the tenfold law. Whatever you do, good or bad, comes back to you tenfold.”

  “So if we steal the wallet, then…”

  “Bad things will come back to us tenfold,” I finished her sentence.

  Eleanor gave me a doubtful look from the back seat. “I don’t know. How can you know for certain that if you do good or bad, it will come back to you?”

  I shrugged. “I just sort of know.”

  We drove out to Ventura County where the owner of the wallet lived. His teenage son was working on something in the driveway when I pulled up. He was cautious when I asked about his dad, like I was some hussy checking on his whereabouts because he’d stood me up on a date. However, the kid’s worries evaporated when I presented the wallet.

  “Hey, Father’s Day is coming up,” I told the boy. “Why don’t you get him a wallet that doesn’t fall out of his pocket?”

  “Good idea,” the kid said, holding up the wallet with a smile.

  We returned home with enough time to make the cheeseball and heat up the Trader Joe’s appetizers. The dinner party was a success, and for the first time ever, Samar said, “I’m going to need the recipe for this cheeseball. It’s simply divine.”

  Fat chance of that, I thought with glee. I may not have a lot of family loyalty, but I know better than to leak my grandmother’s secret recipe. Strange voodoo shit would come back to haunt me.

  After everyone had left, Eleanor and I were cleaning up. This is a good time to note that I never have any cash on me. Ever. Like most, I’m too reliant on credit cards. And my daughter… well, she’s seven, and I don’t give her an allowance yet because I’m “mean” and expect her to earn it by doing more than her regular chores. When she turns eight, I plan to construct a list of tasks I’ve been putting off for her to do to earn money—shit I totally don’t have time for, like dusting the baseboards and alphabetizing the library. Kids who get money for making their beds are learning nothing; you’re raising assholes who are going to want a tip for doing their fucking jobs later in life.