Hidden Bodies (13 page)

“Yeah,” I say, realizing the weight of what I have done. Nobody made shirts for
CandaceBenjiPeachBeck.
Those people don’t have fans. In trying to assassinate the
invisible, elusive Amy, I have killed a
celebrity
. The others I killed faded away the way grandparents recede into the old photos or pets just disappear. A famous person never
disintegrates from the collective consciousness. Henderson is on TV, on T-shirts.

Dr. Nicky Angevine is constantly trying to get out of prison and his sister-in-law has a website trying to raise public awareness, proclaiming his innocence. The American public doesn’t
root for a shrink who cheated on his wife with a patient.

But they do root for the comedian who set them free, who told them it’s okay to be narcissistic, to be a permanent guest.
Me, me, me
. It would be nice to have something alive to
hold on to right now, something to love me, something with a beating heart that I can feel, something to be with me as I sit here, in hell, trying to figure it out. “Am I right or am I
right?” I say aloud.

But there is nobody here to answer the fucking question and this is why people have small dogs, why they trap them in their efficient apartments, because sometimes you need another living thing,
you need eyes on you, even if the eyes belong to a fucking Pomeranian.

THE
people who
make it in Hollywood
throw their new money north, up in the hills where they settle in mansions, where they can look down on
everyone. But no matter how big you get, how high your house is, you can’t escape from the rats
.
Rats climb; they’re mobile. They aren’t bunnies. They don’t have a
biological drive to burrow.

Amy is a rat, scrounging, the kind of girl who bats her eyelashes on her first day of work and wants to know where the
Alice in Wonderland
worth a million dollars is. So of course Amy
met Henderson at Soho House. I was wasting my time on Craigslist, at Birds. She got here, she got the fuck out of here, closer to 90210, to Soho House and that wealthy Westside dick she wanted so
bad. And no doubt she’s still out there looking for it; that Peter Stark shirt is all ratty by now, but I bet she’s still wearing it.

The traffic is hell and my driver just moved here yesterday so he took Sunset.

“You maybe want to take a left, get on Fountain?” I ask the driver, the kid.

He winces. “I’m really not good with left-hand turns and we have to make one when we get there.”

Even this kid who just fucking moved here has that
me me me
disease and I let it go. At least I have an in. While the club is private, they do have
events
that allow common
po’ folk like me to stream in. Today, for example, there is an audition for an indie film. The casting call is ridiculous, second person cuntiness:

The driver turns on his blinker and I get a pit in my stomach. The idea of seeing Amy after all this time is mind-boggling, to think of her, midhunt for rich dick, or possibly here auditioning
for this movie, trying to be
mother and child.
Bite me.

I emerge from my Uber and I do not take off my sunglasses and I move past the security guy and he doesn’t flag me. I am in the elevator. I made it. Three slinky Scandinavian girls pile in
with me and they are giggling and they are my ticket so I smile.

“Good morning, ladies.”

The tallest one doesn’t blink. “Are you an actor?”

“No,” I say. “I’m an agent.”

They giggle more. The doors are closing but we are bombarded by two guys who
are
agents, smug, loud Muppet men.

“I told him to fuck off.”

“You told him to fuck off.”

“I fucking ended that.”

“Before it began.”

“Before it existed.”

“Before it was in the womb.”

“Before it was in my
dick
,” says the alpha, also in his sunglasses. He nods at the women. “Ladies.”

They explode into giggles. The one who spoke to me looks at him. “Are you an agent too?”

“Not right now, honey,” he says. He looks her up and down, then looks me up and down. He returns his gaze to her. “If this guy is telling you he can make you famous, believe me
when I tell you he’s lying. His shoes can’t make anybody famous.”

The elevator doors swing open and we are at another roadblock. There is a meager-eyed man at the desk. He recognizes the two fuckers from the elevator and greets them, deferential. The main one
whistles with his fingers.

“Hey, Paco. My shades ever show up?”

The obsequious servant hangs up the phone and apologizes for failing to find the shades, for failing to find the people capable of finding the shades. He apologizes for being on the phone and he
apologizes for the stairs being slippery and he apologizes for holding the man back from his meeting and he apologizes again for not having the shades. The sluts in front of me watch the assholes
disappear up the marble stairs.

The desk slave sighs and looks at the girls. “Do any of you have a membership?”

“No,” the lead one answers as she shakes her head. “But we have the password for the audition. For the movie.”

He groans. “What is the password?”

“Aniston,” she says.

He waves them on and asks them to take the elevator instead of the stairs. He looks at me. “You’re a guest?”

“I’m a victim,” I say. “My girlfriend is sick with aspirations of becoming an actress, meaning that she left me this morning to come here and audition, which makes me
evil for not following her along to support her.”

He laughs. “They’re upstairs in the main hall.”

“Okay if I stop by the bar for a drink first?” I ask.

He nods. “Just say that Ricardo okayed it. I have to admit that I’m sick with aspirations, too,” he whispers, and fakes a cough. “Alto. Dancer. Epic stud.”

I laugh and it feels good to be
that guy
laughing with the servant as the doors open again and more guests arrive. I leave the blue walls and the art and begin my ascent on the marble
stairs.

On the second floor there are lanky beautiful people lounging self-consciously, stomachs sucked in. I go onto the terrace and see all of Los Angeles and it looks good from up here. There are
small, clean love seats and small, clean people sitting in them. There are beautiful
old novels
on small shelves.

This is the path to Amy, I know it, but she isn’t seated at the bar, sipping a
mojito
, and she isn’t mulling over dessert, and she isn’t marveling at the flowers. I go
back inside, where there is a line of doors off a long hallway. I try the first one. It opens, and the lights are out but a woman is sitting in an overstuffed chair facing a monitor. She is barely
visible beneath a cashmere blanket and her Beats headphones.

“Hello,” I say, but she doesn’t hear me.

She is bigger than Beck but smaller than Amy and I hate the way my mind puts all girls between those two. I try again. Louder.
Hello.
Nothing. I step toward the girl and I’m close
enough to see the monitor she’s watching so intensely. A girl is auditioning for something on the screen. Ah, so this is the girl
in charge
of the auditions.

“Hello.”

Still nothing. I step closer and now I see her tanned feet, bare, naked, crossed at the ankles. I see her cotton candy hair and my heart beats faster. I know her. It’s the La Poubelle
candy girl who took my water.

Running into the candy girl when I was looking for Amy. This is fate. I touch her shoulder and she sees me. She gasps. There was a study that said all relationship dynamics are determined by the
first interaction. Ours is this: me scaring her.

But she is laughing. She gestures for me to sit and I do.

Her toenails and fingernails are painted iPhone white—Amy’s were painted nothing—and her hair is gathered at the top of her head, falling, a ballerina. She shifts and the
blanket slips and her legs are honey brown, more buttery soft than Beck’s, tauter, more defined than Amy’s. The girl onscreen finishes reading and the candy girl pulls a yellow legal
pad out of her notebook.

She writes:
?

She holds out the pen and I wheel my chair closer and it’s that time before you’ve fucked someone and every single movement is penetrative. My body is all dick. I take the pen. Our
fingers don’t touch. Not yet.

I write:
I’m looking for someone.

I hand her back the pen. Our fingers still don’t touch.

Who?

She has fat diamonds on her earlobes. I take the pen and this time our fingers touch, barely.

That wouldn’t be fair. She’s auditioning.

A security guard barges in. She waves him away. It was that easy. She saved me. She is the boss. She motions for me to stay.

I owe you a water.
☺

So she remembers me too. I write:
La Poubelle.

She writes:
Yes.

I write:
Yes.

She picks up an extra set of headphones and I move my chair even closer and there is sex, so much sex, inside everything she does. Amy and I bantered. This is hotter. This is purer. She
scratches her elbow and I want to slap my fifty dicks against her elbow. She sneezes. I write:
God bless you.

Thank you.

My turn:
I’m Joe. You?

She licks her lips
. Hi Joe. I’m Love.

There is heat generated by our legs, parallel, our forearms, close. I write:
Love?

She covers her mouth with her hand.
My parents are crazy. It’s a fun name though. Like any name after a while. You grow into it and your name is just your name. But then yes.
It’s weird, being love. Hello, narcissistic asshole, right?

Love is funny.
Hello, narcissistic asshole.

She smiles and it’s on, a spontaneous nonverbal blind date. I crack jokes. Love takes pictures of my jokes about the actresses and texts them to someone. A waiter comes. I write down my
order:
cheeseburger medium well fries grey goose soda.
Love bites her lip and looks at the waiter and makes a peace sign.
Two.
She is an easy, breezy, beautiful CoverGirl. I
actively promise myself that I will not think of her as healthier than Beck and more fun than Amy. I won’t let old, broken down, dead, bad, thieving love be in the same room with new, sweet,
honey-legged Love. I am here, now.

She snaps her fingers and points at the monitor. I continue to make Love laugh and when the waiter comes back with our burgers. I reach into my wallet and Love reaches over and grabs my arm. She
shakes her head no. She signs for the burgers and I crack up when it occurs to me that everyone knows that sex is better when you’re in Love. She sees me laughing and she writes one word:
Pervert.

She doesn’t look away when I stare into her eyes
.
Amy would have hit me or squirmed or made it all into a cynical joke. Beck would have pouted and brought up something boring like
the etymology of the word
pervert
. But Love’s eyes remain fixed on me and I know. She’s a pervert too.

I
don’t believe in love at first sight. But I do believe in electricity, the way it can recharge you. I am healing. When Delilah texts, I write
back:
Went away for a couple nights, visiting my uncle.

Love picks up a container of Ice Breakers Ice Cubes gum. She pops the lid and offers the box. I open my palm, expecting her to tip it so that a cube rolls into my hand, but she writes:
U can
put ur hand in my box.

Everything would be perfect if she had used
you
instead of
u.

I reach into her box and I pull out a piece of the gum. I have learned from our notebook exchanges that Love is a producer on this movie. She is working with some guy, the guy she keeps sending
my jokes to. I tell her that I came by to look for my neighbor who is nervous about her audition.

Love does that thing girls do when they like you, where they find out you’re single and they can’t smile and look at you at the same time so they stare at the floor and their cheeks
turn red and their eyes crinkle and
yes.

I write that my neighbor is
really tall. Blond. Did you see anybody like that?

Confident Love shakes her head no
. We’re looking for someone more petite. I don’t remember any tall blondes, no remarkable ones anyway. Do you have a picture of this
girl?

I shake my head.
But it’s fine. It doesn’t matter anymore.
Her grin widens.

All first dates come to a brutal, nasty end and ours does when a voice blasts into our headphones. It’s a man. He is loud and fast: “Forty to Love, Forty to Love. Checkity checkity
breakity breakity.”

I write:
Is that your boyfriend?

She laughs. She shakes her head no.

That was it, my answer, my prompt, my cue, my
yes.
I yank off my headphones and Love does the same. I kiss her. She kisses me back. It is the warmest kiss of my life. Love’s mouth
is Soho House, velvet and marble,
members only.
I don’t try for anything more than this and I pull away first. She says hello to me, and her voice is at once pornographically
suggestive and judiciously blunt, like she has been on trial, been recorded, part of that generation that was instructed to
use your words.

She shakes her head and laughs. “It’s so weird to hear your voice when you haven’t heard it for a while.”

She’s right and I’m laughing and she smells so damn good.

“Come meet my brother,” she says. “He’s the one who wrote the ridiculous fucking casting call, but you know, he has a vision.”