JENNY LOPEZ HAS A BAD WEEK (3 page)

‘He does?’ I opened my eyes to see her deadpan expression.

‘No. Of course he bloody doesn’t.’

‘Bitch.’

We ate our ice cream in silence for a while, making as much headway as possible before it started to melt. It was super-hot for the time of year but I was fine with it. I could handle a lot more heat than Angie. Between May and September, she pretty much always looked as if she was on the verge of passing out.

‘Have you put the ad on Craigslist for a roommate yet?’ She changed the subject successfully. ‘You can’t afford to keep that apartment on your own. Especially if you’re not working.’

‘Well, Debbie Downer, no, I haven’t.’ Our friend Vanessa had been renting the spare room in the apartment formerly known as ‘our place’, but now it was just me. Cue violins. ‘I was really hoping someone would turn up, like a friend of a friend or something? I’m terrified I’m gonna end up with the Craigslist Killer as a roomie.’

‘I think he was mostly operating out of Long Island,’ Angie reasoned. ‘Although we are relatively close to Grand Central, so the commute wouldn’t be too bad for him.’

‘True.’ She made a good point. ‘I’ve always been so lucky with friends or friends of friends, you know?’

‘Or complete strangers who just arrived in the country?’

No reply necessary. Just a look.

‘Excuse me?’

A heavily accented voice disturbed my death stare. But I didn’t mind. When I turned to see who was so rudely interrupting my non-verbal smackdown my eyes hit one of the hottest guys I had ever seen. At crotch level. Skinny black pants ran into a slim-fit pale denim shirt, the top two buttons unfastened to reveal a tastefully tan chest. A chest that was connected to a neck that was connected to a breathtakingly pretty face. A face shaded with jaw length, silky, silky blond hair.

‘Oh,’ I heard myself say out loud. Angela nudged me hard in the ribs. I dropped my ice cream. The man smiled. I believed all of these actions to be related.

‘Excuse me, I am sorry to interrupt.’ The sun shining through his almost white-blond hair did nothing to persuade me he was in fact not a god. ‘I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation and I had to jump in.’

‘Had to?’ Angela hadn’t got the memo about super-hot guys never being suspicious in any way.

‘Yes.’ He missed her sarcasm, thank god. ‘I just moved to New York from Sweden. I’m a model.’

I turned to smile at Angela with eyes as big as saucers. Happy, happy saucers. ‘He’s a model,’ I repeated.

Regardless, the model went on. ‘My name is Sigge and, so far, I haven’t really met anyone other than the other models in the apartment I’ve been crashing at. But I hear you’re the person to come to for friends when you’re new to the country?’

It wasn’t the best pick-up line ever, but damn it, the boy was only a model and he was working with what he had.

‘Yes, sir.’ If this was my karmic gift for getting my shit together after Angie’s big Jeff announcement, I was fine with it.

‘She’s the best,’ Angela confirmed. ‘New York’s finest tour guide and roommate.’

‘You’re looking for a roommate,’ Sigge nodded. ‘This is what I heard when I was coming out of the nail salon. I am looking for somewhere to live.’

Ahh, maaan. Hopes dashed. Heart broken. Everything falling into place. Dude needed a place to live, not me by his side, forever and ever.

‘Anyway, could I have your number?’ He asked. I tried not to show how badly I wanted to get up and punch karma in the balls. Not cool, karma, not cool at all.

‘Sure.’ Scribbling my cell down on the receipt from the ice-cream place, I handed it over with as much of a smile as I could muster. ‘I’m around Friday if you want to come over then?’

‘Friday is perfect,’ he replied. Seriously, I was so the New York welcome wagon. Except, uh, that didn’t sound ok. ‘And I am so sorry, I did not get your name?’

I closed my eyes and smiled politely. ‘Jenny. Jenny Lopez.’

Awkward pause.

‘Like the pop singer!’ He tucked the number into the back pocket of his pants. ‘She is one of my favourites.’

‘Yeah. She’s great.’

One day, when I was the new hipper, hotter Oprah, I would destroy the producers of
American Idol
for resurrecting that woman’s career. Doesn’t matter how cute you are if every time you introduce yourself to a guy they immediately compare you to
People
magazine’s most beautiful person on the planet.

‘I am so glad I got my manicure here today.’ He leaned down to kiss me on both cheeks. Forward, but still, if we were going to be roomies … ‘Friday.’

‘Partyin’ partyin’ yeah,’ I sighed.

As soon as Sigge’s perfect ass had disappeared around the corner, Angela burst out laughing.

‘Oh maaan,’ she said, in between fits of hysteria. ‘You’re really going to move in with a gay male model who cares more about his cuticles than you do?’

‘I care about my cuticles,’ I pouted, reviewing my manicure. ‘And what makes you think he’s gay?’

Aside from the manicure, the fact he’s a male model, a lover of Jennifer Lopez, and that when he walked off down the street every gay man in Williamsburg checked him out?

‘Do I really have to dignify that with a response?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it because he’s really gay?’

‘That’s probably it.’

‘Maybe I could turn him?’

Angela gave me the look. ‘Not even you, gorgeous.’

She eyed my ice-cream casualty on the sidewalk and handed over the remains of her cone.

‘I really did think the universe had come through for you,’ she said. ‘When he said hello, I nearly wet myself. Tall, blond, tanned. Too handsome, obviously, but still. It was like you’d manifested the man.’

‘Cosmic ordering,’ I agreed. ‘Note to self for next time. Must specify, not gay.’

‘It helps,’ she nodded. ‘It helps.’

I crashed through my apartment door the next morning after my run, and threw myself into the refrigerator. It was hot as balls outside and it wasn’t even nine a.m. Pulling out my earbuds, I dropped my iPhone on the counter and my ass on the couch. I would never be one of those girls who loved to work out – every step was agony for me – but, as my mom liked to remind me, it took the right kind of bait to catch the right kind of fish and there was a whole heap more bait in NYC than there were fish. And so I ran.

My list of chores for the day was unbelievably long and so, instead of even looking at the pile of laundry in the corner, the dishes that needed doing, the cheques that needed mailing, I grabbed my laptop and rested it on my not-quite-as-flat-as-it-could-be belly. Tomorrow I’d run another mile.

Sigge the Sex God was coming over to look at the room on Friday evening, which gave me thirty-six hours to get the place into some sort of viewing order, but if he was coming from a model apartment, populated exclusively by Derek Zoolanders, I was probably OK as is. Just a quick wipe around and a spritz of air freshener, the place would be a palace. But still, I couldn’t rely on him taking the place. Or me wanting to give him the place. The ladyboner part of my brain rejoiced at the idea of a half-naked man-stud wandering around the place, but the potential spinster section was warning me that having the world’s hottest gay in my apartment while my vajayjay remained retired, was not the best idea I’d ever had. I might as well get a cat and some sensible shoes and just accept defeat.

And so to Craigslist.

‘What am I supposed to write?’ I asked the computer. It whirred a little in response but, really, it didn’t have anything helpful to say. It never did. Instead of putting up my ad, I read a couple of others. Everyone had a relaxing, cosy room to rent. Which my bullshit translator read as dark and small. This was too hard. And besides, if I left it long enough, Angie would totally do it for me. She was the writer, after all. I was the do-er. The planner. The action gal. I was much better at browsing the Bergdorf’s website than I was at finding a roommate. Man, Brian Atwood made some nice shoes. I did miss styling. Shopping for free? Amazing. Even if it was shopping for other people.

‘Speaking of shopping for people … ’ I muttered. Online dating. Everyone was doing it, right? It was no big deal? I pulled up OK Cupid, the site I’d heard most of my friends talk about and entered in my search criteria. There was no box for ‘not an asshole’ so I was on my own with that filter. Huh. Just from the photographs, I could tell why they didn’t offer the ‘no asshole’ checkbox. Because every guy on here was a douche. Any second now I was going to come across Brian Williams’s picture.

‘Asshole … ugly … short … ugly and short,’ I said out loud, scrolling through profiles. ‘Short ugly asshole … OK … OK … dumb looking … can’t spell.’

It was like shopping online for guys but with zero quality control. If you wanted designer duds, you went to the Barneys website, not Forever 21. But online dating? There was everything in here, from Prada to Payless. How were you supposed to choose? But still, it was better than doing what actually needed doing …

Twenty minutes later, oprahlopez2011 had a live profile. The photos were cute, my answers to the dumb-ass questions were brief but fun (‘on a Friday night I am mostly … ’ – surely anyone who could answer that without sounding like a total loser wouldn’t be using an online dating site) and now, to wait. Only, waiting wasn’t something I was good at.

‘How hard can this be?’ The computer still didn’t answer. Ass-hat. ‘I just message them and they message me back?’ I really had to get a goldfish or something, just so I had a living entity to direct my banter at.

‘Height, six feet minimum.’ It was time to take destiny into my own hands. Let’s see what this baby had hiding away. ‘Hair, blond. Age, thirty to thirty-seven. No kids, likes kids, athletic build, sign, Aquarius, and income, one hundred thousand dollars minimum.’

Like OK Cupid was going to have anyone who matched these criteria.

Oh. Oh my God. Sweet baby Jesus in the manger.

Suddenly, my dream man appeared on screen. Just one look into his baby blues and I was lost in a fantasy of Hamptons summer houses, candy-striped pinafores and two cute kids, gambolling around the garden. Did kids gambol or was that just lambs? Whatever, it was instant. I was in love.

I had met my future husband. And his name was AJJ78. A brief perusal of his profile suggested he wasn’t a psycho, he had a healthy distaste for the whole online dating thing and he didn’t have any douche-bag flags flying, i.e. he didn’t at any point suggest that Ayn Rand had changed his life. This guy had to be worth a message. Or a wink. Just because the idea of someone winking at me in the street would make me
run and hide didn’t mean I couldn’t bust one out here, right? I mean, if it was a valid option? And so, with one very fast, before I regretted it, click of a mouse, it was done. I, Jenny Lopez, had virtually winked at a man.

There was no going back.

A few hours, a short nap and two tacos later, my phone trilled on the kitchen counter.

‘Hey, Erin,’ I tried to keep the sleep out of my voice. ‘What’s up?’

‘I’m calling about tomorrow,’ Erin did not sound even faintly fatigued. Erin sounded all business. ‘I’ve emailed over the call sheet for the event and the number of your driver?’

‘I have a driver?’ This whole gig was sounding better and better.

‘Sadie Nixon has a driver,’ she replied. ‘And you have Sadie Nixon.’

Oh yeah. The demonic supermodel spawn of Satan. Allegedly.

‘And I’m to do what? Pick her up, get her to the show, get her out of the show and ditch her again?’

‘Precisely.’

I really couldn’t see what the big deal was.

‘And just invoice me your day rate when you’re done,’ she said. ‘And any expenses. Sadie doesn’t usually carry cash.’

‘Who does she think she is? The queen?’

‘Pretty much,’ Erin confirmed. ‘Listen, Jenny, I know you can do this, I know you’re not dumb but I cannot, cannot emphasize enough how important it is to me to have this walking clothes hanger in the right place at the right time, do you hear me?’

Jesus, she was more on edge than she’d been at her first wedding. Way more chilled out than at the third, though.

‘I hear ya, chief.’

Yeah, I might have saluted into the mirror.

‘It’s a new client for me and it’s a client I need to keep. They’re not going to stick with me if I lose their top attraction, are they?’

‘Erin, relax,’ I wanted to reassure her, but she was past it. ‘This is important to you, I get it. I won’t fuck it up.’

‘She’s just … ’ Erin searched for the right words. ‘I’ve worked with her before and Jenny, I can’t tell you. She was such a difficult bitch. And that was pre-supermodel Sadie. There’s no way fame and money have made her a better person.’

So, this wasn’t looking quite so appealing all of a sudden. But still, a driver.

‘I worked with tons of tough clients in LA,’ I lied. ‘Honestly, honey, you think it’s easy being a stylist in the carb-free land of the size zero? We’re gonna be just fine. I’ll pick her up, I’ll tell her how great she looks, we’ll do wheatgrass shots, I’ll keep her off the coke and deliver her in one piece.’

‘Don’t joke about the coke.’

‘Keeping her off it or making sure she’s got it?’ I wasn’t sure what the protocol was with supermodels right now. Personally, I didn’t need to pay a hundred bucks for an inflated sense of self-esteem and crashing misery the next day. I could just knock back a couple of dirty martinis and then check Jeff’s Facebook page for the exact same effect, but the models? Sometimes, they expect you to look the other way. And I’d lived with a hooker. I was an expert at looking the other way, even if I didn’t like it.

‘If she even alludes to taking anything stronger than a Red Bull, you stop her,’ Erin ordered. ‘In fact, I don’t even want her on a Red Bull. I don’t want her on anything harder than green tea. You hear me?’

‘Green tea, got it.’

‘On your head be it, Jennifer Lopez.’ Erin resigned herself to her fate. And not a minute too soon, my ‘call waiting’ buzzed in my ear. ‘I’ll see you at the venue tomorrow.’

‘Y’ello,’ I flicked from Erin’s call to the call waiting. ‘Jenny speaking.’

‘Hey, it’s me,’ Angela replied. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Oh, the kitchen’s on fire and my leg is hanging off but apart from that? Sure.’

‘JENNY.’

‘Fine, I burned some toast and cut my leg shaving. But you keep freaking asking.’

‘Whatever.’ Angela sounded just as resigned to her fate as Erin. ‘What are you doing tonight?’

‘It’s three p.m. and I’m about to eat a grilled cheese.’ I looked over at the slightly dubious two-week-old loaf of Wonder Bread on the counter. ‘And I already ate two tacos. I’m going to be a heifer.’

‘Step away from the sandwich, we’re going out.’ Angie didn’t sound nearly as excited as she should. ‘Alex got you a date.’

‘And it’s you?’ I was understandably confused by the ‘we’ part of her last sentence. ‘And he’s OK with that?’

‘It’s not me, you arse. It’s a boy.’

‘What boy?’

‘What happened to you not being picky?’

‘Touché.’

That statement was of course made before I met my online prince charming.

‘Just be at Hotel Delmano at eight.’

Ooh, nice. I liked Hotel Delmano.

‘And don’t wear stupidly high heels, we probably won’t stay there.’

Oh.

‘It’s like fifteen dollars for a cocktail,’ Angela defended herself against my silence. ‘I’m unemployed and dating an impoverished musician.’

‘You’re freelance and he’s loaded,’ I argued. ‘Fine, whatever. I’ll meet you there. This guy’d better be awesome.’

‘He’s a music producer.’ She sounded quite proud of herself. ‘Alex met him while he was doing that soundtrack stuff for James Jacobs’s new movie and they’re apparently best friends now. He’s just moved back to New York from LA, like you. I thought you’d be a good match.’

‘Sounds good,’ I admitted. ‘OK honey, I’ll see you there.’

‘See you later,’ she signed off.

Five hours to make myself fabulous. I flopped back down on the sofa. There was so time for another nap.