I’ve received two electronic communications since I landed.
One is from Harvey: Wow! You have perfect credit! Most people who move here have horrible credit!
It is my destiny to know people who abuse punctuation. The other one is from Calvin: We have a Blu-ray so bring any movies you wanna watch during shift.
You aren’t supposed to watch movies in a bookstore and I get into a cab and the driver taps the address of Hollywood Lawns into his GPS and I wonder if Amy took a cab or a shuttle. I wonder when the wondering will stop. I hate this part of the split, when that girl just lives in your head. I need to get laid and we take La Cienega and the city gets glitzier as you go north and I see women in nighttime dresses walking around in the day, like this is okay. I see homeless people like from Down and Out in Beverly Hills and I see the Capitol Records building and my heart quickens when we reach Franklin Avenue—Amy, Amy, Amy—and when I emerge from the cab I step into dog shit.
“Fuck,” I seethe. My head pounds, the sun, the excessive vodka.
The driver laughs. “People in LA, man, they like their doggies.”
Hollywood Lawns looks like the building in Karate Kid and the dogs trapped in the small hot apartments bark as I walk up the stairs. The for rent sign beams: month to month. I wonder if Amy lives here, in this very building. You never know. She is just the kind of lying transient who would gravitate toward this; her sublet in New York was week to week. I should have known then, but your dick makes you blind.
Harvey looks older in person, waxen, arched eyebrows. It’s hard to look at him and I let him talk to me about his act and I agree to get drinks with him. He tells me my apartment is on the first floor, right by his office, and I brainstorm future excuses to avoid time with him. He warns me about ridiculous shit. “One thing you gotta know about the ’hood, newbie,” he says. “This isn’t New York. You can’t be jaywalking. They will ticket you and those tickets will add up.”
“I knew LA was an anti-walking city but that’s fucking ridiculous,” I say.
Harvey smiles. “You sound like me when I see Joe Rogan on TV. Downright ridiculous. Am I right or am I right?”
Conversations about Joe Rogan are not a part of my life so I don’t encourage him, the way you don’t laugh at a child who swears. “Hey,” I say. “I saw the sign outside. Do you get a lot of people moving in all the time?”
“World’s full of dreamers,” he says. “Do you have friends looking?”
“Yeah,” I say. And this is where I have to tread lightly. I don’t want to say that I’m looking for Amy Adam because then, when she disappears, I will be a suspect. I am careful. “I know this girl looking,” I say. “But she wants a share.”
Fact: Amy has never had her own place. She’s a leech.
Harvey nods. “If I had a nickel for every hot babe who moves in here to sleep on the couch and pay half the rent . . .” He shakes his head. “I’d be able to paper the walls with nickels! Am I right or am I right?”
Harvey introduces me to another guy in the building, Dez, entitled, thug-light. He lives on the first floor too, and he looks like an extra in an Eminem video circa 2000. Dez has a dog, Little D, and some advice for me.
He looks at me hard. “Do. Not. Fuck. Delilah.”
I nod. “Word.”
I need someone like this on my team, someone fluent in California ’90s moron douchebag language who no doubt has access to Xanax and various narcotics.
Harvey digs up the keys to my new home and tells me that Delilah is just sweet and friendly and I know this means desperate and slutty and he says a lot of the guys in the building are crass. “It’s kinda like I’m the talk show host and everybody comes into my office to work out their bits,” he says. Why must everyone want to be Henderson? “So you come by anytime, work stuff out. It’s like a Seth MacFarlane vibe in here, ya know, Broseph?”
“Sounds great,” I lie.
“Am I right or am I right?” he asks, as if he has a contract with himself to spew out his own catchphrase at least twice an hour.
My apartment smells like rotten oranges and chicken and it’s full of pink furniture, girl furniture. The former tenant Brit Brit moved out suddenly, against her will.
“Her parents showed up here all upset,” Harvey says, turning on a pink bubble-shaped lamp and illuminating a Kandinsky poster. “She spent half the money they gave her on a nose job and the rest on nose candy and then she wound up in a hospital cuz her nose bled.” He shakes his head and pats the hot pink futon. “I know there’s a joke in there. Funny things come in threes. I’m gonna find it, I swear. Anyhoo, the good news is you scored, Broseph. The futon, the chicken in the freezer, the TV, it’s all yours. Her parents wanted us to dump it.”
At least I don’t have to go to IKEA. “Great.”
Harvey picks up the trash can. “I know one thing you don’t want is old chicken. BRB, Broseph!”
It’s the first almost funny thing he’s said. I pull a Rachael Ray knife out of the new knife block on the counter. These are useful, sharp, though I wish the handles weren’t orange. I flop onto the futon and the cover is stained, Sriracha and semen. That taped-up Kandinsky makes me miss New York. I miss sex. There is a knock at the door and then a girl barges in. She is like one of the girls I saw on the street. Full makeup and a bandage spandex dress that’s one size too small. She is hot but not as hot as she thinks. I want her on my team, possibly on my dick.
“Relax,” she says. “I’m Delilah and I’m just here for the blender.”
I almost tell her that her nickname is Don’t Fuck Delilah, but she is talking too much for me to get a word in edgewise. She is late to work—gossip reporting—and she lives directly upstairs—apologies for noises you hear in the future, the walls are paper thin—and that fucking coke whore promised her a blender. She’s opening the closets, slamming them.
Delilah is full of rage. Maybe she knows there is a building ordinance against her vagina. She points at the Kandinsky. “Technically that’s mine too,” she says. “But I think you’ll appreciate it. You look like you might even know who that is.”
“Andrew Wyeth,” I say.
She nods. “Nice,” she says. “Brit Brit had no idea who that was. Did Shut-Up Harvey tell you about her?”
Everyone has a nickname. “A little,” I say. “Sounds like a sad story.”
Delilah tells me that Brit Brit came here to act and wound up hooking. “She would go to Vegas with guys and come back messed up,” she says. “And she kept trying to get me to go with her, talking about how amazing these guys are and how you don’t have to pay for anything and you stay at the Cosmo and have the time of your life.”
“Hmm.”
“Exactly,” she says. “So I pack a bag to go with her. I mean, I know I’m not actually going but I wanted to see them all at the airport in case there was anyone famous in there, anyone I could write about. And at the airport, in one breath, she’s like, ‘Oh, by the way, you have to fuck at least two of them but you get to pick which two and it’s not bad I swear!’”
“So which two did you pick?” I ask.
“Ha,” she deadpans. “No. I told her I was gonna call the cops and her parents if she got on the plane.”
“And did you make those calls?”
“Hell no,” she says. “She flew back the next day and I picked her up and took her to Baskin-Robbins and let her cry.”
I go to the kitchen and find the blender in the cabinet above the fridge. She looks me up and down. “So do you have a name?”
“Joe Goldberg,” I say. “Do you?”
“I told you,” she says.
“I know,” I say. “But what’s your real name?”
“Ugh,” she says. “Melanie Crane. But not anymore. Melanie Crane is the girl who fucked up her master’s in journalism by falling in love with a married guy at the New York Times.” She shudders. “That feels like a century ago. That’s what I love about LA. It’s all new. I’m an undercover reporter and a
ghostwriter now. It’s possible here to literally leave your past behind.”
They all think this, these girls—Amy—that they can leave your past behind. Don’t they know it’s not that simple? It’s not the past if it’s not finished.
“You should give me your number,” Delilah says as she cleans the blender. “I get so many invites to parties. You can be a plus one sometime, get off the block.” She points at me. “Warning: You have to get off the block. People live here and they go to Birds and La Pou over and over again and there is so much more to this city.” She sighs. “I mean it’s important to get out there.”
She explains that Birds is a bright, friendly dive bar and La Poubelle is a dark, hip French bar and that everyone in the Village skews one way or the other. I am reminded of the Office episode where B. J. Novak says he does not want an identity at work. And then he burns a pizza bagel and he has one: “Fire Guy.” I am not a Birds guy or a La Pou guy, but I type my number into Delilah’s phone. I may need her.
Delilah laughs. “I am being a bit of a hypocrite,” she says, and I wonder if people in LA think out loud about themselves the way New Yorkers do quietly, in our heads. “I mean, I go to Birds almost every night and I even have a tattoo inspired by this song they play there. But the thing is, I go late night, after I’ve been other places, you know?”
She bends forward and rolls up her dress and encourages me to come closer so I can see her leg—close shave, self tanner—and there are words engraved on her inner thigh. Journey lyrics. As if they need to be on her thigh after they’ve been used in The Sopranos and Glee and every bar in America.
“I know it’s lame,” she says and she pats my head, ordering me to stand. “But you can’t live here unless you believe.”
Delilah is almost special, and it’s a hard thing for a girl to be, not beautiful enough to be beautiful, not smart enough to be smart. Amy has it easy; she’s taller, hotter, smarter. There’s something so unsure about Delilah and she would never be friends with someone like Amy, who gets to cross her legs and eat blueberries with her greasy hair. Delilah is a girl who tries. Amy is a girl who takes. At the end of the day, trying is better. I know that now.
There’s a quiet moment where Delilah and I could run away together and our dynamic would be set: I would inspire her to let go of the aspirations that are holding her down, marking her body. She would get me off Amy. But I want revenge and Delilah wants her blender. She waves. She goes. The end.
I download Journey. I picture Delilah’s thigh pressed against my face and I jerk off on my pink futon. Afterward I shower and put on jeans—I refuse to wear shorts—and a T-shirt. I throw away Brit Brit’s food (diseases, cocaine residue) and I stop by Harvey’s office. He is taking a selfie and the trash can he didn’t bring back is sitting there. This is so different from New York. I could go months without seeing a neighbor in my old building. But Harvey’s office is a glass box. Everyone here wants so badly to be watched, noticed. And the upside is that the desire to be watched is a blindfold. Harvey doesn’t even notice me as I walk by the door and begin my hunt for Amy.
9
THE self-serving sociopathic greedy little bitch wouldn’t go a fucking day without her superfruits, so my first destination is the neighborhood grocery store, the Pantry. But this is not a grocery store. It’s a modern art museum, part neon, part busted fender metal, and part repurposed wood signs. The floor is spongy and the font on the price tags is curly and the lighting is nonfluorescent. The music is louder than it is in a normal grocery store and the songs are all over the place, a true mixtape—Donny Hathaway and Samantha Fox and the Everly Brothers and DMX—and I Shazam it all because I want a record of this.
This is a grocery store if Cameron Crowe made grocery stores and the lighting is good, dim and clubby. Every aisle has a funny name. There’s an aisle of books (BEFORE THEY WERE MOVIES), snacks (BAD THINGS ☺), spices (ROSEMARY & THYME), and processed cakes and cookies (SCRUMPTIOUS EMPTY CALORIES). The pet food aisle is jamming and that’s called UNCONDITIONAL LOVE and the baby food aisle is called SEMI-UNCONDITIONAL LOVE.
Most of the girls here are like Amy, tall and scraggly with messy hair and baskets full of superfruits. This is where I’m going to find her. I know it. But I don’t find her in the organic produce section (because me) or the section of cheaper produce (because rent). Fatboy Slim’s “Talking ’Bout My Baby” comes on and when the hell do you hear that in a grocery store? I don’t think you could ever get annoyed in here and maybe I could like LA, or at least this one part of it.
The flower section (I’M SORRY/I LOVE YOU) is a desert and maybe nobody loves anybody in LA. There are orchids and roses and then I see violets, more electric and purple than the ones I got for Amy.
A little rotund Mexican woman in a pale blue smock smiles. “They are painted, sir.” She laughs. “God doesn’t make these.”
Of course He doesn’t; these flowers are the botanical equivalent of breast implants. I thank her and move on and everyone in here is so happy.
My phone buzzes. Six consecutive texts, all of them images, all of them from Delilah. I open them one by one, screen grabs of invitations to Hollywood parties, complete with home addresses, parking instructions, corporate-sponsor logos, and dates and times. One of these parties is at Henderson’s house. Henderson! I will kill the broken part of my brain that wishes I could tell Amy about this. I text Delilah: Thanks. I’ll let you know.
She texts back: Have fun with Calvin. ☺
I stop moving. This isn’t right. I didn’t tell her where I’m working. I type: Huh?
She writes back: We’re buds. I saw him on the way to work. He’s cool. Have gun!
She deliberately left the typo so she could text me again ten seconds later: Have gun. Ha. FUN. I love autocorrect.
Ugh. I don’t write back to Don’t Fuck Delilah. I walk to freezer burn, the aisle where they keep the single people servings and the yuppie flash frozen vegetables, and standing there in front of the premade meals is Adam Scott. It’s my first celebrity sighting and I fucking love him in Stepbrothers and Burning Love and Friends with Kids and my palms get damp and maybe I really am becoming an Angeleno because this actually feels important to me.
And I’m not alone. An aspiring actress is looking at him while typing into her phone and so is a dorky guy holding a pack of frozen asparagus. A couple of high school girls giggle and take a picture of him and that’s when it hits me. The good thing about social media and celebrity spottings is that the net is cast wide, all over the world, twenty-four hours a day. Facebook isn’t enough; I need to use all of it.
I pull out my phone and download Twitter and Instagram and it’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. CandacePeachBenjiBeck don’t touch this because this is me surprising myself, doing something I never thought I’d do. I follow Adam Scott on Twitter, then search for his name. Sure enough, people have tweeted and apparently Joshua Jackson and his unfairly pretty girlfriend are also here.
Omigod literally just saw Pacey #dawsonscreek #pantry #ilovela
How hot is Adam Scott? He’s so hot the frozen foods are all melting at the grocery store right now. Not saying which one. #Greedy
Diane Kruger is too pretty. #notfair #celebritysighting #cantijustgetgroceries
LA, where you can’t get groceries without feeling like a #loser #pantry #adamscott #joshjackson #dianekruger #ihaventbookedanythingin4months
I look at the counter and there he is, Joshua Jackson. He’s laughing. He’s close. People here aren’t just shopping for overpriced fruit, they’re looking for celebrities, just like I’m looking for Amy. I approach a guy unloading peaches. “Bruh,” I say, because I’m going native. “No offense, dude, but are they serious with the prices?”
“I know,” he says. “Dude, don’t tell ’em, but I’m all about Ralph’s. The one on Western. You can buy like, fifty burritos for five bucks.”
“Yeah,” I say. I lay my trap. “My girlfriend, though, she’s supposed to go to Ra
lph’s. But then she comes here and blows all my money on berries and Wolfgang Puck. She swears she doesn’t but we work opposite schedules so I can never catch her.”
He laughs. His name is Stevie and he’s an actor slash drummer and he asks what Amy looks like. “Stone cold fox,” I say. “Long blond hair, blue eyes, she always wears random college shirts and denim cut-offs and big bright sneakers. You can’t miss her.” Zebras stand out in the grass and she is nothing like the LA cunts in their maxi dresses or their I-don’t-have-a-job-and-I-just-sweated-a-lot outfits.
He says Amy sounds familiar, especially the sneakers. “When did you think you saw her?” I ask.
The wheels are turning in Stevie’s chemical-addled brain. He holds up a hand. “Dude,” he says. “She was in here like three days ago with this other chick and they were drunk and eating blueberries and I was like, ‘You ladies gotta pay’ and they ran.”
Yes. “Who was the other girl?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I mainly saw yours,” he says. “She was fine.”
Stevie and I high-five and he wants to text me if Amy comes around. I tell him no, that’s cool, but he’s got his hands full here, I see that. But he insists. He’s bored as fuck and he can totally snap a pic of Amy on the down low.
I test him. “Seriously, bruh?”
He nods. “Word.”
“To the mother,” I confirm, surprised that there’s no irony at play. We exchange numbers and I fill my cart with Rice Krispies and milk and Wolfgang Puck salad and deli turkey.
When I am cashing out, the woman smiles, giant. “Ray and Dottie send their love.”
“Who?” I ask.
The Botox mom in back of me awws. “You are too cute,” she says. “You’re new. They’re the owners,” she says. “That’s a Pantry thing. Ray and Dottie send their love.”