Concierge Confidential (3 page)

In other words, she looked
fantastic
. You sell the sizzle, but you eat the steak. She wasn't there to
be
a concierge. She was a trophy playing a part, just like The Setai wanted. While she was there, greeting members and taking requests, me and all the other concierges in my office would be working around the clock to make sure the work actually got done—which it did.

Calvin Pace had his party, and everyone who was supposed to got in. Mrs. Armstrong got her croissant every day, the flat kind (not the rolled kind) with the almond paste. I had them brought in from the Financier Patisserie on Cedar Street; as far as she was concerned, they simply continued to appear as if by magic. The members' requests were being taken care of: somebody wants to be invited to the
Playboy
table at a Kentucky Derby fund-raiser party that's completely sold out.
Done
. People constantly ask for reservations for Maialino, Kenmare, and Locanda Verde.
No problem. What time would you like a table?

That's because when you want a concierge, you probably don't want Party Girl Who Hangs Out at All the Hotspots, or a Charming Foreigner with the Ritzy Accent, or a Gorgeous Model/Actor with the Magazine Hair. Your best bet might be the forty-five-year-old who looks more like a landlord than a doorman, who got his start thinking that he was going to be the next big Hollywood movie mogul.

2.

Lady Liberty

The door was locked, and I didn't have the key.

The Liberty Agency was a small office inside a quaint, exposed-brick building. But for the fact that it was in Westwood, California, it could have passed for a New York town house. I remembered it perfectly from the job interview; now if only I could get in. “Hi, I'm Glennis's assistant,” I told them downstairs. “I think you have a key for me?”

The secretary nodded and passed it to me. “Is this your first day?”

“Yeah.”

“Good luck!”

I went upstairs and let myself into the office. Even though it was a just a small boutique agency, and even though it felt very cozy and quaint, it was still Hollywood. There wasn't a lot of celebrity memorabilia, but it still had the
feel
. Scripts were stacked up on the desk. The wicker wall units looked like they were from some magical far-off place, like Bali. On the wall there were photos. Sheens—Charlie and Martin—smiled in every direction, and Estevezes, too.

Glennis had her own inner office, and there was a desk outside it for me. Or so I gathered. I walked around, practically on tiptoe. Crime scenes didn't get as much as reverence as I gave to the clutter.

Then the phone rang. I looked at it for one second, wondering if I should answer it. “Glennis Liberty's office,” I said, not even bothering to say my own name.

“Hey there,” she said.

“Hi!” I was ready for her to tell me which scripts to read so that I could help her decide what the next Sheen movie should be.

“I need you to go into my office. The third shelf down, on the bottom. I need you to take my curlers out. Put a half a cup of water in them and plug them in for me.”

Before I could say anything, there was a dial tone.

Okay, I could do this. I found the curlers and took them off the shelf.
Water. Where's the water?
I didn't even have a cup. There was a mug on Glennis's desk.
Can I use it? Would it be all right to get the mug wet?
I took the mug to the bathroom, filled it up with a half cup of water, poured it into the curlers, and then plugged them in. They started steaming and churning.

I sat down, being careful not to touch anything else, while I waited for her to show up. A few minutes later, the phone rang again. “Glennis Liberty's office?” I said, still tentative.

“Hey, who's this?” It was Charlie Sheen.
I am on the phone with Charlie Sheen.

“This is Glennis's assistant, Michael Fazio.”

“Cool. Are you new?”

“Yeah.”

“Glennis there?” he—
Charlie Sheen
—said.

“No, she's not.”

“All right. Well, I'll try her later.”

I hung up the phone.
Oh my God,
I thought to myself.
I'm so in the
biz
!

Soon Glennis arrived. She looked like an older Ralph Lauren model, tall and slim with aviator frame glasses and shoulder-length blond hair. She had the momentum of a Tasmanian devil, all frantic energy and bags everywhere. “Hey there,” she said, as she passed me to go into her office. She went inside and shut her door. She wasn't mean, but I expected that there was going to be a
little
love.

I sat. I waited.

Twenty minutes later she buzzed me on the intercom. “I need you to come to my office.” I opened the door. I don't know why I was surprised that she was sitting at her desk with gigantic electric steam rollers in her hair.

“These are the breakdowns,” she said, handing me an envelope. “Go through these every morning and look for projects that you can submit our clients on.

“Get familiar with everyone we have on file in this cabinet. we've got a DP, an editor, a sound guy, and see what you can do with Ivan Kane or Pamela London. We need to get them in front of more casting directors.”

What about Charlie and Martin?
I wondered.
What are
we
doing with
them
?

“Okay,” I said, excited. I opened up the envelope and went through it. The breakdowns were like want ads for TV shows, listing whatever creative and technical positions were needed at the time. I began fishing through the files, trying to figure out what the hell a “DP” was.

“I've got a ten o'clock appointment,” Glennis soon told me. “I'll be back!” Her hair ready to go, she left the office in the same kind of fury in which she'd come.

Then, Charlie called again. “Hey, is Glennis there?”

“Oh, you just missed her. Sorry!”

“Oh, damn. So, going to be an agent?”

“I'm keeping the options open, but yeah, I think it's the right place to start before moving into production one day.”

“Cool,” he said, hanging up.

I went back to learning the breakdowns, trying to put two and two together. After a couple of hours Glennis came back. “You didn't put my curlers away,” she said.

“I'm sorry. I didn't realize you wanted them put away,” I told her, just wanting everything to be okay.

She brushed away my apology. “I need you to get me lunch at Hamburger Hamlet. I want you to get a cheeseburger, have it cut into quarters, and have each of those pieces put on its own bun. Medium rare.”

“Sure,” I said. I could feel them rolling their eyes over the phone when I gave them the order. They knew Glennis well at that point and knew exactly what she wanted. They used to have their version of sliders called “baby cheeseburgers” on the menu, but they had long since discontinued them. Glennis didn't need to know that little detail. The mission was four baby burgers, no matter how it happened. It was the '80s and it was Hollywood, and everybody had their own food quirks—especially at such an industry-frequented place.

I brought the burger back to the office and stood there, not really knowing what to do with it. It was four buns with little pieces of meat, just like she wanted. Glennis was on the phone, but vaguely gestured at me to get her a plate. I brought in the food and put it down in front of her. She vaguely gestured for me again, this time for me to sit down. For fifteen minutes I sat and watched her on the phone. “Why didn't you tell me Charlie called?” she immediately said when the call was over.

“Uh…” He hadn't
specified
to tell her that he had called. I'd thought that we were all part of this big happy machine here, and he was just content to check in to see if she was there. That's when I realized that maybe I wasn't in the biz, that this wasn't a tea party—and I had to figure out how to take better care of Glennis.

Glennis gave me a look that said “
Hello,
is anyone home up there?” Suddenly, Charlie didn't matter. From that point forward, I did everything I could to avoid ever ever
ever
getting that look again. I was a quick learner, and my new goal was clear. As long as she was tended to, my instinct told me, everything else would fall into place.

Now the service bug was in me.

The curlers became a morning ritual. I always plugged them in first thing when I got there in the morning. One day she was late, and the curlers turned off. I went, got the water and restarted them.
I
get
it,
I thought to myself with pride.
I get how to make this lady tick. She's going to be so happy now
.

Every day, I busied myself with the breakdowns and submitted candidates. I started to get good at understanding the roles. I'd tell Glennis how many people I submitted and give her all the phone numbers. She had what she needed, and she had it because of me.

Whenever Charlie came in, he'd go into her office and shut the door. I could hear them talking and I could smell him smoking. I just sat behind my desk with my electric typewriter, dying to know what was going on in there.

As he left one day, Charlie pulled me aside. “I've been putting out my cigarettes in her coffee mug,” he told me. I knew that, of course. I was the one who had to clean them out. “Do me a favor. Get some joke ashtray, something really tacky. I want an ashtray in that office tomorrow.” He handed me a twenty-dollar bill and left.

I stared at the money and thought about what to do. I could have gone to the drug store and gotten any old ashtray. But the service bug that I had discovered in me had only grown stronger.
What can I do that will just blow him away?
I wondered.
What will make him see—make them
both
see—that I'm creative and fun?

After work I went up and down Melrose, for hours. I went to thrift stores. I went to supermarkets. I went to disgusting old antique stores. I went all over, trying to find the exact right ashtray. Forty dollars later, I wound up buying four different ones so I could make the right choice.

The winning selection was a plastic snow globe with a little Hollywood mountain in it and everything—and in 3-D! I waited for Charlie to come in, glancing at the door whenever I heard the slightest sound. Finally, he arrived. “Here you go,” I said, handing the ashtray to him.

“Cool.”

But from the way that he looked at me, I knew that I had gotten him the right one. Yes, I had spent my own money. Yes, I had wasted my own time. But I showed him that I'd go the extra mile and I showed him that he could count on me.

Now that he knew that he could rely on me, Charlie took it up a notch.

Many Monday mornings, the phone would ring. “The Liberty Company. This is Michael.”

“Oh,” said the girl on the line. “Oh, I'm sorry. I think I have the wrong number.”

“No problem.” I hung up and waited for three seconds, until she called back. They always called right back.

“Is
Charlie
there?” she said.

“No, he's not. Can I take a message?”

“Can you tell him that Susan called?”

“Of course,” I told her.

“Thanks!”

He walked in not long after. “Susan called,” I told him.

He stared at me blankly.

“You know.
Susan
.”

He tried to remember what and who he did over the weekend. “Oh yeah!” he said, laughing. “Right. Oh, I forgot my bag at Hamlet. Could you go get it?”

It was five minutes away, so I just ran it. “Has Charlie Sheen left something here?” I asked the host.

“I don't know. I don't have anything.”

“Where was he sitting?”

“Over there.”

There were people in the booth he had been in, with a small paper bag scrunched in the corner. “I just need to grab that,” I said to them. As I left the Hamlet I couldn't help but notice that the bag was unusually heavy. I opened it up. Inside there was something wrapped in packing paper, like it was going to be shipped. I gasped.

Charlie Sheen had left his gun at Hamburger Hamlet.

I carried it back by my fingertips, scared that it was going to spontaneously discharge.
Is he weird?
I asked myself.
Where has this gun been?
I had gone through a million questions by the time I had returned to the office—but I asked Charlie none of them. Good service means that you don't ask why, even when someone tells you to go get their gun.

THE MASTER MENTALITY

A friend of mine who worked for Martha Stewart had an experience that illustrated our plight. His name is Robert. Nobody calls him Bob—except Martha does, always. He was frantically running out to grab lunch one day—frantically, because he could never leave his desk. Without an umbrella, he sped down the street in the pouring rain. “Bob!” he heard. He turned around and saw that it was Martha in her town car.

Martha motioned him to come over. “Hold on,” she said, “I just need to finish a call.” She finished her conversation while he stood there in the torrential downpour. She wasn't being mean. She wasn't enjoying watching him get wet, while he was on the street and she was inside her car. She didn't think lowly of him. Quite the opposite: he was her everything. It was just like, “I need you … but in a second.” Any healthy person with self-esteem would've said, “Lady, open your fucking door and let me in! I'm getting soaked here.”

But Robert had the service bug. And part of the bug meant standing there, waiting until Martha was ready for him. There wasn't any need for her to apologize. After all, she didn't really do anything wrong. Robert's position wasn't even in service. But he, too, had the service bug and he wasn't afraid to serve.