Read The Rock Star in Seat Online
Authors: Jill Kargman
Dear love, for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dream,
It was a theme
For reason, much too strong for fantasy,
Therefore thou waked’st me wisely; yet
My dream thou brok’st not, but continued’st it.
—John Donne
C
ue the Roy Orbison music! Just kidding. No
Pretty Woman
primp montage for me—yet. I had to see how my meetings went. But I was a working girl—not in the Hollywood Boulevard kind of way (I’d probably score all of twenty-five bucks, if that), and I had shit to do.
First was the security firm. Four huge black guys explained how they would work the valet and press areas plus red carpet and “step and repeat”—the annoying but necessary billboard with our logo behind the velvet ropes where the celebs would “step”—pose, often hand on hip—then repeat, for the paparazzi. As Clarissa explained how her girls would deal with clipboard lists along with security, my phone buzzed with a text. Finn.
“You like Indian?” he’d written.
“I could eat human flesh if it had tikka masala sauce on it,” I zapped back.
Moments later: “LOL.”
Victory! I made Finn Schiller laugh. LOL. Dyingdyingdying. I would break bread with my idol. Naan, apparently.
The next buzz came an hour later.
“Done—taking you to one of my favorite spots, Electric Lotus.”
“Sooooo psyched!” I wrote back. No sooner did I hit send than I felt like a world-class doof. That’s what my sister and I called dopes. I was a doof. No: I was queen of the dooves. That’s the plural of
doof
. Our other favorite was “gormph.” But that’s only for doof-ish
guys,
and the plural is not gormves but gormphs. You can make up your own rules when you make up your own words.
Then, for the next couple hours, nothing. Pas de vibration. I felt like a foolish idiot middle-schooler checking incessantly. I was in a meeting with the stationer, a hundred-year-old letterpress in Los Feliz. Normally it would be an environment that turned me on—Pantone color wheels, paper samples, industrial machines that would press our killer logo into the cardstock—but instead my mind was adrift. I nodded as if attentive as I reached my arm into my muslin tote with a silk-screened Kelly Bag on it and retrieved my fluorescent yellow–covered iPhone for a peek. Nada. Fuck! What the hell was wrong with me! I had a boyfriend! Wylie was my family. Why the hell was I compulsively checking to see if this guy—no, this rock star—was writing me! I must be delusional. I was losing my marbles, officially, I drank the Kool-Aid, morphing from cool cat into loser plebeian fan in my four phone-checks.
I walked out of the lot of the press back to my car, shaking my head to myself. Hazel you fucking loser idiot. Snap out of it! I thought of Cher in
Moonstruck,
hoping a momentary slap could actually beat the desire out of me. As she found . . . no such luck. I got in the hot car and rolled down the windows. And then: Cosmo’s moon appeared from behind the curtain of clouds. My phone buzzed just as my soul buzzed, tipsy with excitement.
I opened the message. “Sorry I’ve been MIA this pm—laying dwn some trcks w/ the guys. Can’t wait to see you tnight.”
Crack highs couldn’t possibly be better. Elation. Nervously I texted back “me neither.” And then another: a smiley face.
I pulled out of the driveway with a shit-eating grin beaming brighter than my fluorescent headlights, wondering what the night would have in store.
I have too many fantasies to be a housewife.
I guess I am a fantasy.
—Marilyn Monroe
I
t was nearing six. Meetings finished, I meandered in a daze into the early evening, like my body was an avatar controlled by remote as my real self lounged around, eating bonbons, dreaming of Finn. His music played in the car and in my head during meetings. His voice accompanied me into elevators, garages, up the steps to a front door, as if perched above my head in a cartoon bubble, all-caps reminders of clever things he said or little witticisms he rattled off with the ease of breathing.
After my last work thing—a tech run-through with the sound and lighting guy with Clarissa in a crappy vegetarian joint I’d seen on
Entourage,
I asked to be dropped off at Kira’s mother ship—Beverly Hills. Whenever I visited L.A. I felt more at home on Vermont—in Silverlake or Los Feliz. But Ki and my parents preferred Rodeo Drive. I happened upon a swank salon so I wandered in, hoping to get a quick blow-dry. A little primp wouldn’t kill me, right? Shit, I just never played those girlie girl games, no beauty binges, nary an Alicia Silverstone shopping spree at the mall. But Finn made me feel like a girl, not the cool tomboy the guys at work liked me for, or the normal slobby Hazel who Wylie waited for at Urban Outfitters, but a real girl. Femme it up, Kira said. Ally Sheedy, here I come.
Bingo, they had an opening. I put on the robe and was offered tea as a “washing technician” scrubbed my scalp with intoxicating apple cider–infused shampoos and cream rinses. I got it. This shit was actually fun and enjoyable. They even had a footrest for my outstretched gams.
I exited feeling like a million bucks. I hoped it wouldn’t get addictive, I could get used to this, like my sister with her weekly standing appointments at Frédéric Fekkai. I drove back to my hotel where I tried to figure out what to wear, eventually settling on my same jeans but this time a slightly more feminine white lace blouse with piping of black velvet ribbons around the short sleeves. It was Edwardian granny-chic but remained a tad sexy, due to my black cami underneath. I exhaled in front of the mirror. Less is more, I thought. Especially ’cause Finn was used to Hooters Girls and the like. Better to be myself. Better to be demure. Better to keep him guessing.
“You look beautiful,” he said as I hopped in the passenger side as he stood next to the open door.
“Oh, thanks,” I replied, blushing a little.
He got back in the car and gunned out of the driveway, flying down the streets in his small Porsche. Normally it was what Wylie and I called an SPC, Small Penis Car, but somehow Finn had a Get Out of Jail Free Card because he was an actual rock star whereas all other douche bags who drove expensive sports cars were merely trying to look like one.
“I love L.A.,” I said, staring out the window. “I don’t know why everyone in New York L.A. bashes for sport.”
“Well, it’s not as sophisticated, for one,” Finn said. “I love living here but I have this insatiable urge to travel. I hate staying in one place for too long. I must’ve descended from nomads or something; I’m one of those people who just needs to be on the move. Especially if this is my base. I miss Europe too much. Asia.”
“I could see that. If it’s just sunshine and convertibles forever,” I replied. “Daisy Dukes, bikinis on top.”
“That part’s not so bad,” he joked with a wink. “But even I know there’s a dark side here if you look for it. And you don’t have to look too hard.”
So weird! I’d thought that exact thing before a million times.
“My theory has always been that New York admits to its dark side in its weather and gray pavement and people on top of each other,” I explained, surveying the lights. “Whereas there’s just as much of it here but it’s all sunglasses and cherry red cars and boobie implants, but it’s smoke and mirrors. There’s just as much competition and relentless drive, it’s just cruising beneath the surface, which makes it creepier. I do like how New York wears its edge on its sleeve.”
We drove the opening credits of the
Entourage
strip complete with tacky signage and dizzying downward views of orange-lit lights and rooftops as far as I could see.
“That is a very good theory, New York is more openly hostile and then you’re happily surprised when people are nice and warm, whereas here you think of it as friendly but there’s just as much hostility,” he said. “If not more. Someone pats you on the back but they’re pissing down your leg.”
“I just think of
L.A. Story
where all the weatherman has to do is shove up some magnetic suns with shades on. Sun! Sun! Sun!” I said in a singsongy mock-happy voice. “But I love the rainy days. People here freak like it’s fucking acid falling on their hairdos.”
“I love when it’s cold here. I fuckin’ hate sweating my balls off. But I hate freezing them off, too.”
“Yeah, well. I can see that. If you didn’t grow up with seasons. I mean, even I’m dreading going back to my coat and scarves and hats and Rudolph nose.”
“How long are you here until?” he asked.
“I leave tomorrow,” I lamented, suddenly. “But I’m back again in two weeks and then for the event two weeks after that. I’m sooo excited to see this space of yours.”
“Should we go now or after dinner?”
“Whatever you want!”
“I’m starving.”
Yay, I was, too. Desperately.
Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.
—Carl Gustav Jung
W
e went inside the dimly lit restaurant where he got a hero’s welcome from the staff and a corner nook, where we were seated on the floor on these cool pillows. It sounds weird but was actually cool and foreign and felt like we were on some kind of trip. Which I was.
We talked about other places in the city he loved, including some trendy tapas bar. He loved the mini paella cakes.
“Oh, I thought you said topless.” I laughed, almost spitting out my papadum.
“I know, it always sounds like that!” He chortled. “Someone should actually open a topless tapas bar. Called Topless Tapas.”
“Oh my god, that’s genius! Let’s totally open that!” I squealed. “We would mint money!” Not that he needed it.
“We’d love another bottle of wine, please, Anju,” Finn asked the pierced waiter. “We have to come up with fun dishes and cocktails for our menu. Put the cock in the cocktails,” he said. “Like Mojitoesucker.”
I almost spat out my Rioja. “Okay, this is hilarious. This is big time. Move over, Hooters!”
“So where do you like to eat in New York?” he asked.
Fuck. Okay . . . here was a perfectly organic, opportune time to introduce Wylie.
“Um, well . . . my uh, boyfriend is a personal chef, actually—”
“Oh, well that must be nice,” he said. I couldn’t read his face but he seemed blasé about Wylie’s existence. “So you don’t even have to leave the apartment!”
“Well, we do, still, but he cooks at home a lot, too. He, um, actually has one client, this hedge fund family on Fifth Avenue, that is so into his food that they want to invest in a restaurant for him with some big New York restaurateurs. So, it looks like that might happen pretty soon, but it’s not, like, definite or anything.”
“Well, ask them how they feel about a nudie Mexican chain. I think our idea has legs. Long ones.”
“Yeah, and boobs.”
“Here’s to our business venture,” he joked, raising his newly poured glass to meet mine.
I felt calmer and happy; Kira was right; it felt good to get out there—not that he would ever think of me as anything other than the lap-barfer from the airplane. We giggled over new Topless Tapas menu offerings, and the mood was light and even straight-up fun. It’s not like I ever lost sight of the fact that I was drinking with my idol, but there was a sweetness and pure fun that infused our pillowed perch. Was I becoming friends with Finn Schiller?
He ordered a second bottle of wine and we clinked refilled glasses as the food came. And nothing I’ve ever tasted had ever been so delicious.
One supreme fact which I have discovered is that it is not willpower, but fantasy-imagination that creates. Imagination is the creative force. Imagination creates reality.
—Richard Wagner
S
ated and slightly tipsy, we drove off from the dinner, and I thanked him for such a lovely time.
“It’s not over yet, I have to show you my special secret lair for your big party.”
We cruised toward the mini-skyline of downtown Los Angeles, which was obviously dwarfed by comparison to my hometown but stood like an imposing metropolis when cut and pasted against the teeny-tinily scaled local architecture. A few minutes later we pulled down a street that didn’t look very Angelino to me. It was exactly what my mind’s eye had fantasized about—huge warehouses with tons of windows, an industrial, edgy vibe with an urban brick-built strength. We got out of the car in front of the most amazing of the buildings and walked inside the huge antique metal sliding door.
“Holy shit,” I marveled. The ceiling had to’ve been fifty feet high, all the interior had been gutted from the days of chocolate bars past.
“Veruca Salt, eat your heart out,” I said, gaping at the massive space.
“It’s fuckin’ cool, right?”
He walked me across the cavern of gray moonlit space over to the windows where a metal spiral staircase to nowhere hung above us.
“You could put a DJ up there,” he suggested. “Just bring in some machine or forklift and he can spin from the loft.”
“Infuckingcredible,” I marveled. I saw it all unfold. The lights, the crowd, the jaws falling to the paved floor in unison. The promotion.
“What about press, is it okay to have all the—”
“Absolutely. Whatever you need.”
“Really? Finn . . . this is so perfect, I couldn’t have dreamed up a better location for this—”
“Good, it’s yours, then.”
“We’re honestly more than happy to compensate you.”
“Please. Now
I’m
gonna barf. It’s fine.”
“Okay,” I said, looking down bashfully as I got a good glance at his hot Edward Scissorhandsian leather fencing jacket. Breathe, Hazel.
I watched as Finn’s eyes narrowed as he caught sight of the antique locket around my neck. Finn reached over and barely dusted the skin on my collarbone with his fingers as he lifted the heart-shaped mini-diptych.
“
H,
” he said, simply, after deciphering the extremely calligraphic thus virtually illegible letter engraved on the surface. As he held it delicately in his left hand, he took his right index finger and gently ran it over the curves and seraphs of my ornate initial, following the gentle tracks of the burin, then looking up into my unblinkable eyes. “It’s just beautiful,” he said, studying it.
“It was my grandmother’s,” I stammered. “I was named for her.”
“What’s inside?”
“Uh . . . nothing, actually.”
“Nothing?” he said, lifting his eyes from the charm to meet mine.
“I know, it’s weird,” I admitted with a shrug. “I didn’t really know what to put in it, so it’s just empty.”
To my utter shock he slowly leaned down toward his hand, and as my lungs were unable to squeeze out the CO2, he put his lips to my locket. He kissed it. And in doing so thieved about five beats of my pulse. He stood back up and looked at me with his searing blue eyes.
“I’m not allowed to kiss your mouth, so I’ll kiss your heart.”
Lightning bolt chucked down by Zeus himself electrified my entire being. In that moment, as he let my necklace gently fall from his fingertips back to my clavicle, Finn pressed the pause button on my entire respiratory system. I could barely gather the thoughts let alone the words to make their way to my tongue, so my hand simply found itself taking his. I gave it a doting squeeze then turned away toward the door. “We should go,” I said as my pulse shot through the cavernous ceiling. “I have an early flight.”
“All right, H.”
“Sorry,” I offered, not quite knowing why.
“No need to be,” he said, with a warm, sincere smile. “Anyway,” he added. “You’ll be back soon enough.”