The Gift Bag Chronicles (9 page)

I’m just gathering up my bag, bulging now with four days’ worth of trades to read, or at least scan, when my cell phone goes. Ah, finally. The errant boyfriend calling to apologize. I burrow down into the bag for it and check the number. Oscar. Oh, God, do I have the energy for this?

“Hey,” I say, clicking on as I head out the door, snapping off the lights. “I’m just leaving, literally. Nothing like putting in a full day after flying across the country.”

“Great, meet me at Tokio for sushi and a debriefing.”

“Oh, God, I can’t take that much irony right now. That Asian chick in the Elvis costume stopped being funny the first time we went there. Besides, I have a date with my TiVo.”

“Did I tell you I’m working on a prototype to turn TiVo into an anatomically correct man? I figure I’ll make a fortune.”

“Yes, you will, and you can tell me all about it — tomorrow.”

“Come on, I need someone to listen to me complain about my day. I promise I’ll make jokes about Jennifer.”

“I thought Jennifer rescheduled.”

“She did, but that doesn’t stop me from making jokes about her.”

“Yeah, well, don’t you have about a million blondes on speed dial for this express purpose?” I say, reaching the elevator and hitting the
DOWN
button.

Oscar gives a little snort. “Yeah, but it’s not like I want to talk to any of them.”

“Oh,
talk?”
I say as the elevator glides open. “I thought you said you needed someone to
listen
to you.”

“Okay, Nora, you want to bring little Asta and meet Nick for a martini or not?”

“‘Not,’ honey,” I say, stepping into the elevator. “At least not tonight.”

“Am I missing something here?” I’m heading west on the 101
, bound for “The Wedding of the Month” according to
InStyle
. Which really means something a lot less glamorous: driving my five-year-old Audi on the jammed Ventura Freeway, blinding sun in my eyes, cell clamped to my ear, and working up a sweat in my black Jil Sander sheath.

“You mean the exit?” Steven says. “It’s Las Virgenes. You’ve done it a million times.”

“No. I mean what meteorologically challenged fool plans an outdoor wedding in L.A. in September?”

“We do,” Steven says. “Or, technically, our client did. And as I recall, none of us tried to talk them out of it.”

“Well, one of us should have,” I say, staring at the temperature gauge on the dash. 105. “It’s so hot, I’m scared to get out of the car.”

“It’s a dry heat.”

“That stopped being funny the first summer I lived here.”

“Look, you’re still in the Valley. It’ll be cooler in Malibu. I mean, it’s not like the wedding’s in the desert.”

“For the record, it’s not Malibu — I don’t care what the invitations said — it’s Calabasas, which might as well be the desert,” I say, spying the exit sign up ahead. “Besides, I’m at the Malibu exit and it’s still 105. I’m taking that ranch off our site list.”

“It’s one of Oscar’s favorites,” Steven says.

“No, it’s one of Colin Cowie’s favorites, which only proves he’s totally clueless. I don’t know what Oscar was thinking. It’s a ranch
house
miles from the ocean up a dirt road with a few goats and llamas behind a split-rail fence. Who seriously thinks that’s a ‘working ranch’?”

“Our client does, and honey, you’re getting all worked up about stuff we can’t change now. Call me back when you’re in a better mood,” Steven says and rings off.

That could take a while, given work lately. Ever since I got back from Philly, it’s been one thing after another, so that Charles is the least of my worries. First it was Andrew and
C
magazine and the whole “we have to make changes” crisis call. Then there was the crisis with the
TV Guide
gift bag when MAC decided
not
to be a sponsor because suddenly it was a conflict with
E.W
.’s Emmy party — like they couldn’t have figured that out weeks ago — and we had to beg,
beg
Revlon, who aren’t even regular advertisers with the magazine, to cough up some new lip gloss, which they did, but only after a big wrangle with the publisher over free ad pages in exchange. It was getting so bad that we almost wound up using some new brownie mix from Pillsbury in the gift bag because they
are
a regular advertiser and are dying to “increase their Hollywood presence” — you could hear the screams around the office when
that
was announced as a possibility. We actually spent a week, a
week
, negotiating with Pillsbury to see if they could
bake
the brownies — we offered to take care of wrapping them in glassine bags tied with red satin ribbons imprinted with
the company’s logo — instead of just dumping the tacky envelope of mix in the bag.

And then there was the ongoing crisis of Jennifer’s wedding. You’d think it was another of J.Lo’s weddings. Jennifer’s hysterics about the gift bag garter ribbon finishes over Labor Day weekend was the least of it. Ever since I got back from Philly, everything — from the wedding’s theme and color scheme to the caterer to the flowers to the garters — had been approved, disapproved, reap-proved, and ultimately replaced. Sometimes more than once. Miramax’s Oscar party is less of a hassle; all they ever cared about was The List, and given that everyone wants to be seen at a Miramax party, it was never a problem.

Even though I managed to avoid the majority of the meetings, leaving Oscar and Steven to deal with Jennifer directly, there was one production meeting I did attend where (1) Jennifer spent an hour debating the number of walnuts that would be on the salad plate (answer: seven); (2) she spent another hour debating whether the chocolate cigars in the gift bag with the garter and the miniature version of the wedding invitation framed in silver plate and all the rest of the swag should be white, dark, or milk chocolate (answer: one of each), and is there a soy milk chocolate we could use? (answer: no, but the USDA is working on it); and (3) she spent a final hour agonizing about the amount of light filtering through the orchid petals in the centerpiece arrangements (answer: new “more transparent” flower arrangements). Even Oscar looked ready to open a vein after that one.

And it’s not like this is the only thing on my calendar. Between the Emmys, the fall movie premieres, the holiday movie premieres, followed by the holiday parties, then Sundance, the Golden Globes, the Oscars, not to mention the endless product launch parties for our corporate clients, which include Kia — ever try to get an A-list celeb to turn up in a
Kia?
— my days are nothing but a blizzard of meetings, and my nights — well, I never thought
I’d say this, but honestly, if I never see another red carpet, I’ll die happy.

And of course now all this pales in the face of the biggest event of the season —
C
magazine’s holiday gala. After Andrew’s call to Charles, followed by many, many rescheduled lunch dates, they finally met at Michael’s two days ago. The upshot, negotiated over two hundred dollars’ worth of lamb chops and mineral water: the magazine’s Christmas party — the last event on their current contract with us — will be a test,
my
test, for keeping their business.

“Think of it as the usual end-of-contract haggling,” Charles had said when he called to give me the news. At least he wasn’t on speakerphone, even if he was still acting like I’d screwed up somehow and he was having to help me set the planets back in orbit. “Nothing you can’t handle,” he said. “Besides, Patrice is going to be the point person on the event — she was at the meeting too — and she’s really great.”

Great
. After three years of killing myself for them, I now get to jump through hoops just to preserve the status quo. Personally, I just think it’s a way for them to renegotiate their fee, which is already down around the “honorarium” level. One notch above the pro bono work we do for our nonprofit clients, like the Brittany Foundation, a grassroots animal rescue and adoption group. I can hear
C
already: “Gee, we’re the second biggest fashion publisher in New York, but
we just can’t pay you any more.”

Excuse me, but when did it all get so hard? What with slashed budgets and personnel cutbacks, it’s all become about doing more with less. Magazines, advertisers, studios, everyone’s cutting back, and it just makes everyone even more tired and tense than they were before. And that’s saying something in Hollywood.

Now I’ll have to worm my way back into Andrew’s good graces by his new gatekeeper, Patrice, and her boy wonder, Jay Reed. Officially, they are the magazine’s new West Coast team, but talk about a learning curve. Jay is the L.A. bureau chief, one of those
nervous, preppy, blond gays — “a sweater gay” as Steven puts it — a
C
-lifer who was promoted from a senior editing slot back in New York. Like most New Yorkers, he knows next to nothing about L.A. except what he’s read in magazines. In town for less than a month, he’s managed to hit all the clichés — a convertible, tennis lessons, and an apartment with a view of the Hollywood sign. Gilligan is Steven’s official name for him.

Patrice has her own issues. One of those Brits of indeterminate lineage and intelligence but healthy self-regard, Patrice had joined that recent wave of expat English who found their own country lacking and emigrated to the U.S. to seek their fortunes convincing otherwise savvy magazine editors that they, born and raised in the Home Counties, had the inside track on America. Patrice, who had been passed around half a dozen magazines as an executive assistant, finally landed in Andrew McFeeney’s lap, where he promptly promoted her to be the magazine’s new entertainment editor. Given that she’s been in America several years now and has yet to see a decent dentist, plus all the hair extensions, Steven has taken to calling her The Beast.

Still, if I’m to save the
C
account, I have to find a way to work with them, and starting now.

Or rather tomorrow. Right now, I have to focus on Jennifer’s wedding. I check the time. Not even 3:00
P.M.
The wedding doesn’t start until 5:00 and will go on for hours, even if Jeffrey Hawker — famous for crashing his shiny red Harley the network gave him as a gift last year to celebrate his two hundredth episode
of Taskmaster
— is back on the wagon. I have
hours
of work ahead of me. Hours of work in a black wool dress, mules, and 105-degree heat. I redial Steven.

“By the way, where are you?” I say, heading up Las Virgenes into the dust brown Malibu hills.

“I’m here,” Steven says. “At the ranch.”

“You’re already
there?
Why didn’t you say so? How hot is it? I need to be prepared.”

Steven says something I can’t hear.

“What’d you say?”

“I said, I don’t know.”

“How can you be there and not know how hot it is?”

“Because I’m too scared to get out of the car.”

By the time I lurch the Audi over the series of potholes that pass for the ranch’s private drive, the temperature gauge still reads 105. Obviously nothing is going to change until the sun goes down. Which won’t be for hours. I’ll just have to cope with aspirin and water. Even the goats and llamas and, wait, is that a camel? — when did the ranch get a camel? — look like they’re about to faint in their paddock.

As usual, I’m so early the valets haven’t arrived, so I park myself next to the row of catering vans, HFS Cooking and Catering. They’re Oscar’s regular caterer, run by one Mr. HFS — aka Hot Fat Slim, or Hot Fat to his friends — a former minor league pitcher turned cook who Oscar found in a South Central rib joint. Apparently what Hot Fat used to do with curveballs is nothing compared to what he does with meat. Ever since Atkins became the rage, Hot Fat is the go-to caterer of choice. As I pull in next to the vans, I spot Oscar’s old Jeep Grand Wagoneer, the faded red one with the wood paneling, parked down the aisle. Steven’s Mercedes is nowhere in sight. Maybe he gave up and fled.

Steeling myself, I open the car door. The screech of saws and a blast of oven-hot air hits me — oh, God — and I quickly slam it shut. At this rate, it’ll take about thirty seconds for my little chic Jackie O ensemble to wilt. I reach in my bag for a clip and twist my beautiful sixty-five-dollar blow-dry not including tip into a knot at the back of my head. Just to give it a fighting chance. I wish I’d thought to bring another outfit to wear until the guests
arrive. Like a sundress and flip-flops. Oh well, too late now. I take a deep breath, open the door again, and step out into a puddle of dust. Great. Now I have a nice coating of dirt on my black suede sandals. Might as well go barefoot at this rate.

Shaking off the worst of the dust, I pick my way over the lawn toward the ranch house and the site of all that sawing. Actually it’s two houses — a large stone main house and a smaller guesthouse, with a covered walkway in between. Technically, it’s not a bad spot for an event. With the two houses there’s tons of room for guests, tons of room for the tents — in this case two, one for the ceremony and another for the reception — and God knows, acres of parking. Besides, half a mile up a dirt road and with no visible neighbors, it’s ideal in terms of privacy. The only access is by air, and Oscar’s already got the sky filled with the giant white helium balloons tethered around the grounds to keep helicopters and airborne photographers at bay. Even the
Star
won’t buy an aerial shot of a celebrity wedding if it looks like you’re just trying to follow the bouncing balls.