Almost Royalty: A Romantic Comedy...of Sorts (35 page)

“You’re half way through your Improv class at The Groundlings, right?” I said. The waiter laughed and walked into the open kitchen.

Frank, taking a deep breath, pulls something out of his pocket.

“When I saw you in Group, I realized that I had made a big mistake,” said Frank, “so I got this for you.”

He pushes something across the table to me in a small, square, black box, which looks like something I once wanted so much.

It can’t be.

It better not be.

I’m afraid to open it.

“Open it,” said Frank, “it’s for you, just like you wanted it.”

“Frank…”

“Please open it,” said Frank.

But I already know what it is.

I open it.

Ooof.

I suddenly feel like I’m in hour five of a
Twilight Zone
marathon showing on a major holiday, like Christmas Day, right after the Wim Wenders version of
Nosferatu
starring exceptionally weird Klaus Kinski, or something equally strange, like that fabulous version of
Dracula
starring Frank Langella.

“One carat, set in platinum, with as few inclusions as I could afford,” said Frank, “and here’s the report that they gave me.”

He gives me the GSA report.

I look at it.

A VS1 rating.

Not bad.

“Oh, Frank,” I say. “Frank… it’s… beautiful. But I can’t take this.” I push back the ring box.

“No. Take it. It’s for you.” He pushes the ring back.

“Look, when I saw you in Group, I realized something I’d been thinking for a long time: I really, really screwed up.”

Something every girl dreams of hearing.

“You’re a good person. A very good person. With some weird habits.”

Not exactly what the girl dreams of hearing, the missing part being the garden-variety comment/‌lie—“You’re so beautiful, I think of you night and day.” But the girl is still listening.

“I love you and want to be with you. You were nice to me. At least you always tried to be.”

Nice… nice. What? The girl dreams of hearing, “You complete me… You’re my soul mate… You rock my world,” not something you say about Becky, the girl who sat next to you in math class and loaned you an eraser when yours wore out.

“Yeah, but Frank, I doubt that Roberta is going to give you the thumbs up on this decision. I mean what about, “I have so much work to do?”

“Forget Roberta. It’s my life, not hers.”

“And there were those other problems…”

“I’m ready to make a commitment. So, also, I promise to do 50 percent of everything. And because you’re an attorney, I wrote it down.”

Frank hands me a piece of paper which he has written, “I promise to do 50 percent of everything. Agreed and Accepted, Frank Jamieson.”

“Oh, Frank.”

“Do you want me to have my signature notarized?” he says.

“Look, this is so sweet but…” I push the ring back.

Frank hands me a piece of paper with some dates on it.

“I’ve written the dates which I think would be good dates to get married on. I’m partial to June or October, but why don’t you choose a date that you would like. And remember it has to be before the end of the year. And take the ring.”

He pushes the ring box back.

It’s 2:10. If I really hurry, I can make it by 2:30 to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium where the
Faces of Tomorrow
competition is being held.

Of course, that presupposes that you believe the L.A. mythology that you can get anywhere in L.A. in 20 minutes.

“Just think about it,” said Frank. “OK?”

“OK.” I take the ring.

“I have to go,” I say just as the waiter arrives. I fish out my credit card to give to the waiter.

“It’s OK, Courtney,” says Frank. “I remembered my wallet.”

A change. Interesting.

I stand up to leave.

“But you haven’t eaten a thing,” said the waiter, sounding more like he was reading a line from a Eugene O’Neill/‌Chekhov drama, projecting to the back of the theater, rounded vowels, head up, chest thrust forward, but instead standing smack in the middle of the Westside of L.A., “just like every woman on the Westside.”

“You’re a bit over-trained and over-qualified for this line of work,” I say to the waiter, gathering my things and jogging out that idiotic revolving Copper Pan front door, the one that never stops.

The
Faces of Tomorrow
competition was held in the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. It was a place where Jefferson Starship, Cream, and possibly the Moody Blues had played in the early ’70s, back when the clubs on Sunset—Doug Weston’s The Troubadour, The Roxy, The Whisky, Gazzarri’s on the Strip, and later Madame Wong’s—were places that you could discover something from some homemade garage band: an intensity, a passion, a voice with something to say even if it was “
We don’t want our parents’ life.”

The kids in those homemade garage bands didn’t know that coming out here from Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia to “make it” in the music industry was a crazy dream; that some might not, and 20 years later while still “chasing the dream” they’d manage a cheese shop as “their day gig” and have kids, a mortgage and a bad marriage with their former lead singer.

But now, the music industry had been flooded with useless Harvard/‌Wharton MBAs, who were ruining the music industry, turning it into publicly traded businesses with
shareholders
that needed profitable quarters. It was a time when the music industry demanded product: girls or boys with minimal talent,
absolutely nothing to say
, shells, lumps of clay, finding them after a run on
kiddie cable shows
and bringing them to the fashionafia who made their hair straighter, their noses smaller and did away with their flabby stomachs, fat thighs and big butts.

The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Rock Gods had once played in the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium during a time when they had advocated anarchy, ending the war, overthrowing the government, speaking the truth even if no one wants to hear it, thinking their children with their unconventional names and their
genius
fathers might be the force of the future, never thinking that sometime after they were gone their children might not embrace their revolution, might lose direction, and might find themselves on network talent shows not as the talent, but as judges. No one would ever say, “Why are they judges, they’ve never done anything but be the kids of Rock Gods?” But everyone would think it.

But this is barely a rock venue now—Santa Monica Civic. It doesn’t hold enough people to turn the enormous kind of profit requiring 50,000 people for some corporate favorite like The Stones, with their T-shirts and beer mugs. And now, because it’s 40 years later and the guys are all looking at 65, they just plop out another version of “Brown Sugar” or “Satisfaction,” right after that puff-piece/‌love-fest interview on
60 Minutes
runs.

Now there are foreign policy evenings with speeches by former presidents and secretaries of state, desperate to make some money after their years in government.

“How you doing?” I say, sliding into the seat next to Jennifer’s.

“OK,” she says.

I doubt it. Last night Marshall went to assemble his things for the competition. He couldn’t find the T-shirt or jeans he planned to wear.

“Jennifer,” he said, “where did you pack my things?”

I gave her a look. She ignored me.

“Just a minute,” she said. She ran into the bedroom where he was.

“I know I packed them,” she said.

“Where the hell are they?” said Marshall.

“I’ll find them, really, I remember packing them.”

“Damn it,” said Marshall, “you forgot to pack it. You’re just afraid to tell me.”

“I swear I didn’t,” said Jennifer, “it’s here somewhere.”

“It’s people like you—incompetents—who are holding me back. This is all that I needed you to do, and you can’t even do this.”

And that was my cue to walk into the room, where I found Jennifer crying.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“It’s a disaster,” said Marshall. “I don’t have clothes. I’ll have to drop out of the competition.”

“I have a friend around your size,” I said. “I’ll call him.”

“I’ll never win now. It’s all her fault.”

“Shut up, Marshall,” I said. “Jennifer has done everything possible to help you. We’ll get you a back-up T-shirt and shorts, and then we’ll keep searching for your things.”

“But now I’m too upset. I’m not in the right frame of mind to compete.”

“Then don’t,” I said. “It’s your choice. But next time take responsibility for your own things. She’s not your servant.”

And later, after Josh was on his way over with several T-shirts and jeans, Haggis came back from the store with “products” that Marshall needed for the competition: a laxative—“I mean, Marshall, I can see those Nachos sitting on your stomach” and a diuretic—“Too much water weight—you look like a girl who’s getting her period.”

“What’s the point?” said Marshall. “Jennifer forgot to pack my clothes.”

“Aah, Marshall,” said Haggis.

“I mean, that’s all I asked her to do and she couldn’t even…”

Jennifer continuing to cry.

“Uhh, Marshall,” said Haggis, “remember? I…”

“…competently…”

“Marshall, we put your clothes in my car yesterday. So you wouldn’t forget them at the last moment. Remember?”

He didn’t even apologize. Not a look, a glance, or an “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t even apologize.

And Jennifer? She just sat there. Crying.

In the program that they gave out, it appeared that there were about 25 candidates in the male model/‌spokesperson category—the program listing height, weight, hair/‌eye color—and age. Twenty-five guys (their boyfriends—past, present, future, in the audience) all under the age of 22.

And Marshall.

Most of them skateboarding, snowboarding, rock climbing, bulked up natural athletes, young girlish baby faces, the flush beautiful face of someone still a child with the body of an adult, that first moment, the first face making the transition from child to adult still excited about the possibilities of what they hoped for but didn’t know would never ever happen.

The M.C., a refugee from a successful TV moment of the late ’80s hoping to be recognized as a star—like maybe Arsenio, Donny Osmond, or that guy who shaved his head and played that tough cop.

“Ethan is 18 years old, six foot two tall, a surfer…”

The boys in the audience whoop it up for Ethan as all the other young, innocent beauties parade their wares. Ethan gets a 9.7 for body, a 9.8 for face, and an 8.7 for presentation. Clearly, Ethan, who raced through the walk like someone trying to escape his own fart-trailer doesn’t know a thing about working the ramp, but the judges—a former child star back from rehab who played the best kid in the family in a mid-80s family sitcom, a former model now divorced again making another tired run at “models who act,” and a former athlete who won six Olympic gold medals at some point, but must have the same plastic surgeon as Joan Rivers because he now looks like a Mary Kay Cosmetics saleswoman from Indianapolis—they sense his potential.

I looked over at my friend Jennifer. A good person, a loyal friend, smart, reliable. A good attorney. Educated. Kind. Nice. And pretty. Wasn’t that enough?

“Jeremy is 17 years old, six foot four tall, a starter on his high school varsity basketball team…”

A lot of love for Jeremy, some wise-cracking guy in the audience yelling, “Come to Mama, baby.”

9.5 on body, 9.4 on face, 9.0 on presentation.

“You know, Jennifer,” I said, “I want to support you in whatever you want to do. But Marshall? Is it his money?”

“Wouldn’t that make me shallow?” said Jennifer. “To want him for his money?”

“You and every other woman in America,” I said, “but at least I’d understand it. Kinda.”

“Well, he doesn’t have any money anymore,” she said.

“Randy is 20 years old, six foot three, a nationally ranked snow-boarder…”

“Sold! I’ll take ya, baby,” yelled the wise-cracking guy, who was dominating the audience judging, a category not necessarily wanted by the promoters, the M.C. growing a little edgy.

9.3 on body, 9.2 on face, 9.0 on presentation.

“What do you mean? What about all those stock options?” I said.

“They’re under water,” she said. “Their exercise price is higher than their current price per share. So he’d lose money if he exercised the options now.”

“Didn’t he exercise any options when the market was roaring?”

“Nope,” she said. “He was waiting for the NASDAQ to hit 4000. And then he was laid off. Like most of Silicon Valley.”

The NASDAQ was now being over-sold into submission, plummeting through every support level, finding no bottom.

“So what is it?” I said. “I mean, the sex can’t be great because you two don’t sleep together.”

“Frederico is 21 years old, six foot four, a competitive ballroom dancer…”

“Baby, you already danced your way into my heart…” yelled the wise-cracking guy, the M.C. by now having given up.

9.8 on body, 9.9 on face, 9.9 on presentation. A contender.

“I don’t see you doing so well,” said Jennifer. “I mean, where’s your fabulous husband?”

A good question. Of course, there was Stefan, I mean Steve. And Frank.

“I don’t know how to answer that question,” I said. “But maybe it’s not about having a fabulous husband. I mean, if you have to change every fiber of who you are just to be with someone, how is that going to work?”

“I could do that.”

I knew she could. She had worked two jobs through college and managed to graduate summa cum laude. She had gutted her way through being an associate in a notorious sweat shop of a New York-based law firm and managed to keep her focus and stay partner track in securities litigation. She and Kevin had not bought a condo, they had bought a building, in an area of San Francisco so dubious we once considered them urban pioneers. But they had refurbished the building and each had close to a million dollars in equity.

And then I knew: Jennifer’s competence had come back to haunt her.

“Of course you could,” I said. “But it’s not whether you could. It’s whether you should. Let me just make myself perfectly clear. Marshall is a pig and he treats you terribly.”