Okay, it was pretty funny.
Now, there's something you should know about living in Los Angeles. If you only have one friendâin this case it was Danaâ it is without a doubt the loneliest place on earth. I know I said earlier that you only need one good friend in your life, but that doesn't mean you don't sometimes wish you had more.
First of all, remember that eighties song that goes “nobody walks in LA”? It couldn't be more true. No one walks, and if you do, as I found out, people stare at you from their cars like you're some kind of derelict. No one bothers to even slow down when you've stumbled with grocery bags that have torn open and fallen onto the street, and you become like that Frogger video game, weaving from moving car to moving car trying to pick up your scattered six-pack of Diet Coke cans. The closest I ever got to a helpful human being was the soccer mom in the minivan who screamed, “Get the hell out of the street before you get yourself killed!” Ha! Should have listened to her.
I did try to meet people in those first few weeks. Thing is, there's no watering hole where if you start going on a regular basis everyone knows your name. It's not like they don't have bars and clubs and things, but as Dana said, “You can't go by yourself, you have to go with a group of people.”
“So, how do I meet a group of people if I don't go to these places?” I asked her.
“It's kind of a catch-22, I guess,” she sighed as she left for work one morning.
The glamorous life I'd envisioned turned out to be as normal and lonely as it could be, and I never even saw a single movie star.
Finding a job turned out to be even more of a fiasco. Dana was an assistant to a producer at Paramount Studios. My first thought was that I'd find a job like she had. It seemed like an obvious fit; after all, these film people would love that I moved out to California because of
The Grapes of Wrath
. Dana hooked me up with a great interview for a job as an assistant to a director. When I went into the interview, and started spewing some of my favorite movies, he had no interest.
“Yeah, yeah, but can you handle Excel?”
“I can excel at anything,” I told him. “Just put me to work.”
Truth was, my father's fear that “you aren't capable of doing anything” was turning out to be true. I couldn't get a temp job because I couldn't type and couldn't master a phone system to be a receptionist. I worked for one day at a law firm and was asked not to come back because I wasted five reams of paper trying to figure out how to use the copy machine. I went home that night and spent the money I'd made that day on Band-Aids for all the paper cuts.
Every night, during my first month in Los Angeles, I just cried.
After signing the lease for my apartment and buying a used Saab that was missing a backseat and leaked transmission oil and brake fluid, the money that my mother had slipped me was down to $800. For the first time in my life, I understood the value of a dollar. I was surviving on a diet of ramen noodles and cheese popcorn. My body was turning into one ball of carb mush.
“I think you should just move home,” Pen told me. “Tell your father that he was right, you can't take care of yourself, and start working in his office again.”
“How can I tell him I was wrong?” I cried to her. “He'll never respect me.”
The one fortunate light in all my sorrow was that the apartment I found was just a few blocks away from the Beverly Center mall. The apartment faced another building, so it had no light, and the guy who lived next door smoked so much pot that it seeped into my apartment, which made me even more paranoid since I was sure it was making me stoned. Needless to say, the Beverly Center mall would become my refuge. Something about Gaps and Banana Republics made me feel more at ease, a home away from home; like an embassy that helps you if you lose your passport, the Gap is right there to comfort you with comfy cotton T-shirts and jeans.
There was one shop, however, that I was continuously drawn back to. This shop was the catalyst for one of the best days of my life (the seventh best day in this essay).
Every time I'd come home from a bad interview, or if I was sad because I couldn't get an interview at all, I found myself heading into the Beverly Center pet shop, Pet Love. Pet Love is a pet store that sells dogs and cats and birds and rabbits and an occasional guinea pig or mouse. All of the animals, with the exception of the rabbits and occasional guinea pigs, who had their own freestanding wire pens in the middle of the store, were housed in these glass cages. More than any other store in the mall, the place was always packed with people tapping on the cages at the little Chihuahuas or chocolate Labs. (Even though signs on the glass instructed people not to, I think it's a human instinct. Who could possibly walk by a cute puppy in a cage without tapping on its window?)
Anyway, there was one particular pup that struck me. She was this tiny miniature beagle. I don't know what it was, the way she looked at me, like she always knew me every time I went in to tap on the glass cages. Her little brown eyes would suddenly perk up when I walked in. I loved the way she wiggled her brown coat with the one white circle on her back. It wasn't that other people weren't looking at her, she was the cutest little thing in the place, but it was like she knew me in some way. (Did she?)
One Thursday night, sitting in my sparse apartment after being turned down for yet another job at one of the movie studios, I started to think about that little dog in the cage.
I needed a new life. She needed a new life. I knew I needed a couch and a table and chairs to eat breakfast. I needed some new clothes to interview for jobs. There were a lot of things I needed but only one thing I really wanted, and when you think about it, which would you rather get with your last $800âsomething you need or something you want?
So with the last $800 I had, I went to purchase the little miniature beagle.
As I walked in, there was this girl, my age, trying to stuff my little dog into a Fendi dog bag.
“If she fits,” the woman wearing too much frosted lipstick told the salesperson, “I'll take her. If not, I'll take a look at the teacup poodles.”
“That dog's not going to fit in there,” I told the girl, reacting quickly. “That bag is too small. Get a teacup poodle.”
“No, she'll fit,” she grunted, stuffing Peaches's butt into the little bag.
That's when this little beagle looked up at me with those big brown eyes that made me fall in love with her in the first place. She
so
did not want to be in that bag, and I knew it. She just looked at me with those eyes that said, “Get me the hell out of here.” Suddenly, nothing was more important to me than getting that dog.
“She doesn't fit,” I told the woman, like a friend. “You'd be better off with a smaller dog, maybe one of those teacup poodles. I hear beagles have psycho personalities anyway.”
“I heard that too,” she said, “but this dog is so cute.”
“Trust me,” I told her, taking the little dog from her, “get a teacup poodle. They're cuter. I only wish I could get a teacup poodle.”
“No,” she said, taking Peaches back from me, “everyone has teacup poodles. This one is different.”
“Beagles will ruin your life,” I told her, taking Peaches out of her hand and back into mine. “My cousin had a beagle and the thing ripped her place to shreds.”
“You know,” she said, trying to take Peaches from me again, but this time I held firm, “I know what you're up to and I saw her first.”
“I don't think so,” I said as I searched for a salesperson. “Can someone ring up this dog for me?”
“I saw the dog first,” the woman shouted at the approaching salesperson.
“No, I did. I've been coming in here for a month for this dog.”
“Give it to me before I rip it out of your hands!” the woman screamed.
“Try it and I swear I'll deck you so hard you won't even know what hit you!”
“Ring her up!” I shouted, throwing my wallet at the salesperson.
“I hope the dog pisses all over your apartment!” the girl said, storming out of the store.
So I bought the dog and I named her Peaches, which I've always regretted. Later on, I wished I had named her something better, like Euripides or Shakespeare. You know, something a little more intellectual sounding, something with a little more substance so I wouldn't be yet another dumb twentysomething girl with a dog named for a fruit stuffed into a Fendi dog purse, even though I couldn't afford a Fendi dog purse or any purse for that matter. Well, at least I didn't go with Princess or Queenie or something even dumber.
“You bought a dog?” Dana soured when I presented the latest addition to my family. “That was a dumb move. You hate to get up before noon, how are you going to get up and walk a dog?”
“I'll get up,” I told her. “If I have to get up, I'll get up.”
“I don't think that was the best course of action you could have taken right now,” my mom admonished. “Maybe you could give it back.”
“Mom, if anything, the dog is helping me get acclimated,” I told her.
“Alex, you've never taken care of anything in your life.”
“The dog is no problem,” I lied. “She's the sweetest thing around. I can't wait for you to meet her.”
“Yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp, yelp,” was all I needed to hear, a thousand times a day, to figure out that they were right. My apartment was starting to have the distinct odor of urine, and how could such a little thing shed so much hair? She ruined not only my Christian Louboutin velvet sling-backs but my favorite Juicy sweats, the Pucci bathing suit top I'd stolen from my mother, one pair of earrings I was sure she'd swallowed (which, before I found them mangled, cost $300 in X-rays at the vet to prove otherwise), and, it kills me to even think about it, the velvet fringe dress I bought with Pen on the night of the Plaza Hotel fifth-best-day/nightmare fiasco.
I had bought a book,
Dog Training for Dummies
, and after instructing her over and over to “sitâSit, JUST SIT ALREADY!” she never sat once.
Finally, one night at about three in the morning after my landlord called and said Peaches was disrupting the building yet again, I gave up. It took me a half hour to figure out that she was barking at a moth that had gotten stuck between the window and the screen after I'd closed it for the night. I knew that I couldn't handle Peaches anymore.
“It's not the end of the world, you just can't handle having a dog,” Pen told me on my cell phone as I came back from yet another interview for a job I did not get. “That's not a put-down, it's just what is,” she said. “You made a mistake. I'm not saying you won't be able to take care of a dog at some point, but not right now.”
“I know, you're right,” I told her. “I'll give back the dog.”
I had one piece of mail, my credit card statement, which came to $2,000 and none of that was for clothes or shoes or any other miscellaneous items, it was all food for Peaches and things I really needed like food, soap, shampoo, and gas for my car. As I entered the apartment, I saw that an upper closet shelf I'd stuffed with the last of my clothing that wasn't ruined had fallen in an avalanche and there was Peaches gnawing her way through the last of it.
“Damn you!” I screamed at Peaches as I ran over to the pile.
So now I had no clothes, no money, and this dog that was making everything worse. That was enough for me.
I picked up the one thing Peaches hadn't ruined, the dog crate she came in, got her into my car, and took her back to Pet Love.
“Hi,” I said, holding the crate. “I need to return a dog to you. I'm sorry, this was a mistake.”
“Which dog is it?” the saleswoman asked, looking in the crate.
“She's a little miniature beagle. I bought her about a month ago,” I said, showing her the crate.
“We don't take dogs back after thirty days. Do you know the exact date of purchase?”
I didn't know the exact date. Peaches had eaten the receipt.
“Can I ask why you want to return the dog, ma'am?”
“Well,” I paused as I started to cry, “I just can't take care of her.”
“There are shelters where you can take the dog.”
“Will they find another owner for her?”
“I can't guarantee that, but at least she'll be in more capable hands.”
I suddenly envisioned this little dog in one of those shelters. What if no one took her? I couldn't begin to think of the consequences.
“Listen, there was a girl I fought to get this dog. I think she ended up getting a teacup poodle. Maybe you can find her number and ask if she still wants her?”
“Oh wait, you're the girl who fought with that other girl?” she said, laughing. “Hey, Pedro,” she said, calling over her fellow worker, “this is that girl who fought with the other girl for the dog! She wants to return her.”
“Damn! All that fighting and you couldn't take care of the dog,” Pedro laughed.
“Well, it's not that I can't take care of her,” I said, humiliated, “I'm just going through a really hard time.”
“And you can't take care of the dog? You wanted her so badly. You used to come in here all the time.”
“I know, and I made a mistake.”
“You girls who come in thinking these dogs are just going to be cute and sweet. You girls just don't realize it's a responsibility.”