The Liar, The Bitch and the Wardrobe Page 8

  “It’s here if you, um, want it.”

  Stefano flipped over the clipboard that was on my lap. He took a film canister from his pocket, tapping out some powder. Maybe he was comfortable cutting up in front of me now that I had already seen him do it. “Cut this up for me, would you, babe?”

  Not wanting to show my awkwardness, I took out my wallet and removed a movie rental card. I proceeded to create six white lines. Stefano took a bill, snorting three of the six lines. He then held the bill up to my face.

  “Oh, no, thank you.” He moved the bill closer to my face. “No, really, I’m good, thanks.”

  “We have an edit that’s going to take all night. If you work for me, you need to keep up with me . . .” I looked at him with uncertainty. I felt pressured to participate but images of the “Just Say No” buttons the student council handed out in junior high flashed in my mind like sirens. He put his hand with the bill on my knee and gave me a tickle. “Come on, relax a little. Work should be fun!” I was happy that Stefano was being so friendly toward me, but I was not comfortable with his suggestion. He was my boss, after all. He turned away from me with a shrug, finished off the three lines himself, and ignored me for the remainder of the ride.

  chapter ten

  When at Home

  Back at the house, Stefano quickly changed into a swimsuit and cannonballed into the pool. I checked the time. Ten o’clock. Not bad. If the proofs were there in fifteen minutes, I would only be an hour late, two tops. I ventured into Stefano’s office, discovering the drawer Roman had told me about. I took out two loupes and two grease pencils and laid them neatly on the dining room table. Afterward, I poured Stefano one of his detox juices. From the kitchen, I watched him dive into the deep end of the pool.

  My cell phone began to vibrate. Mom and Dad. Not until then did I slow down to consider that I hadn’t spoken to them in over a week.

  “Hey Luce! Are you still alive? We haven’t spoken in so long!” my mother began.

  “I know. I’ve been working so much!” I sighed.

  “Working? I’m so sure. Tell me, how many times did he send you to Starbucks today?” she mocked. How I wished that I hadn’t told them in great detail about my job. I thought that they would be proud of my work ethic and willingness to start at the bottom. Instead, they were upset that I was “disrespecting” the degree that they afforded me by selling myself short. Either way, my mom loved to hear about the glittery things. “So, what movie stars have you met this week?”

  My father immediately interjected, “Do you get health benefits?”

  Without giving me a second to answer, my mother went on, “We’ve been telling everyone about your adventures in Hollywood with Stefano Lepres . . . Of course, we don’t tell them that you are practically changing his diapers, but you know . . .”

  My father continued, “Without health insurance, you’re in trouble if you get sick or injured. You need to think about this, Luce . . .”

  “I’m still technically working—and yes, Mom, working. In fact, I was . . . promoted to second photo assistant. I am no longer running errands and doing minion work. In fact, I am about to sit down to edit the selections for Italian Vogue right now.” I didn’t know why I was saying these things, but once I started I couldn’t stop. “We shot Drew Barrymore for W Magazine on Tuesday, did a music video for Rihanna on Wednesday, shot the new Balenciaga ad campaign on Thursday, and Vogue wrapped about an hour ago . . .” I paused and grinned, registering what I had just said. I felt lucky to have been part of all that—regardless of my role. I chose to ignore my mother’s snide remarks and reveled in knowing that she was eating her words. True, my big promotion was a big fat lie, but sooner or later it wouldn’t be.

  There was a knock at the front door. Balancing the phone between my neck and my shoulder, I signed for the box of prints before taking them into the house, all the while continuing the conversation with my parents. “We’re not offered insurance on the job. I’ll look into getting some on my own.” I placed the prints on an entry table, separating them into piles. I set the date detox smoothie to the side on a gold coaster. “I promise I’ll call you over the weekend, okay?”

  As Stefano reentered the house through the French doors, he picked up his drink and headed up the stairs. “I edit in the living room, not the dining room. The dining room is for dining, not living.”

  I hoped the universe hadn’t let my parents hear his nonsense. After a long silence, my mother spoke. “Alright, Lucy. Have fun!” I hated when my parents told me to have fun as if I were away at summer camp. I had a real job to do whether they recognized it or not. And, whether it was true or not. Dammit.

  As I transferred the setup to the living room table, Stefano returned clad in a gray terrycloth robe carrying a platter adorned with a buffet of pills and powder. Sitting down next to me on the couch, he began to thumb through the contact sheets. ”May I?” I asked, referring to the extra loupe.

  “Be my guest.” We sat beside each other, admiring the images. They were even more magnificent in print than I had even imagined. The giant mammoth looked as if he were racing through a jungle and the model was a sensual creature barely able to contain the beast. It was amazing!

  “You may also imbibe,” Stefano offered as he pointed to the array of drugs.

  “I . . . I’m off to my best friend’s birthday party after this, so I can’t.” I figured I might possibly evoke a sense of guilt in my boss knowing he was keeping me from my plans. I could not miss Julie’s party!

  “Really, Lucy?” He gave his signature eye roll to me and snorted a line. “You need to decide if you want to stay in this family. Don’t be so judgmental—I mean, look at us, we are on top of the world! The best in our industry! You could truly be a part of it if you would stop acting like it’s you against us.” Stefano resumed indulging. “Even earlier today . . . we were having a ball on set while you were sniffling in the corner over a shot list.”

  After I got over the fact that he called me by my real name and acknowledged that I had created a shot list, his words began to sink in. He had a point. I was keeping myself away from the rest of the crew. How bad could coke really be? Liz successfully ran the studio and she was obviously doing well. Cocaine didn’t appear to be hurting her, and she was becoming someone that I looked up to, professionally. On the flip side, how good could coke really be? I mean, I had been able to keep on the straight and narrow all my life thus far, even “just saying no” only a few hours ago . . . Why give in now? As if reading my thoughts, Stefano continued, “You remind me of Lushy when she started out. That girl had no clue!”

  Was this my opportunity to finally fit in? Had I just gone for it in high school and drank the freaking beer instead of water, would things have gone better for me? I was tired of thinking, What-if? If there was ever a time to just go for it, this was it. I held out my hand. “When in Rome.”

  “When at home!” He warmly patted my back as I leaned down and sniffed my first line. A burning sensation spread across my face, numbing and tingling as it seeped through. When the burn subsided, I did another line and later on, another. My mouth got increasingly dry and no matter how much I drank, I couldn’t quench my thirst. The surge of energy that I anticipated felt more like a restless, anxious type of feeling. It wasn’t the best feeling in the world, yet for some reason my body just kept wanting more, more, more. I can’t quite explain it.

  We worked as a team as we went through the edit and shared the coke. Our dynamic changed that night. Don’t get me wrong, I was still Stef’s slave. But partaking in drugs did bring us closer. I knew I was compromising everything that I was all about, but if this is what it took to be part of the scene, I was going to do it. And really, it didn’t seem that bad.

  “Those models are so stunning,” I said with obvious envy.

  “I prefer Eastern Euro models. The ugly-pretties, I call them.”

  “Ugly-pretty?” I tittered, thinking he was being funny.

  “Yeah,
like you.” His voice remained flat.

  I lifted my head away from the loupe. “Like me?”

  “Yeah. You’re nothing special now but with the right hair and makeup, the proper lighting and some retouching, you’d be stunning too.”

  I was dismayed by his brutal criticism and used the restroom as an excuse to leave the room. Once inside, I checked myself out in the mirror. Did I have supermodel appeal? No. Was I completely misfortunate? I didn’t think so. I made a mental note to start wearing more makeup. I glanced at the clock on my phone. Shit—eleven o’clock. Following a grunt of frustration, I sent Julie another text. Still working! I AM SORRY. Promise I WILL be there. After I’d sent it, I wondered how upset she was at this point. She hadn’t replied to any of my texts. I felt like the worst friend ever, but what could I do?

  With resignation, I returned to the editing process. Rounding the hallway, I stopped dead in my tracks, gasping in horror. He was asleep! I flung myself to Stefano, shaking his arm. “Stefano. Wake up, Stefano!” I hollered, to no avail. He did twitch. Well, at least he wasn’t dead, right? Racing back to the kitchen, I called Roman.

  “He’s what? The man hasn’t slept since the eighties! How did you let this happen?”

  “I don’t know what happened . . . He took some pills. . . .”

  “What pills? Colors! I need to know colors!”

  I raced back to the living room and eyed the remnants of the drugs. “There were more of these white ones before . . . It says 12.5mg AMB.”

  “Oh, fuck. Ambien CR, 12.5 milligrams. We are so fucked. No, YOU are so fucked. YOU let this happen! Fuck, Lucy!”

  “Roman . . . don’t freak out. He’ll sleep it off. I’ll have him edit when he wakes up. The edit will be at the Four Seasons by nine like I promised. You have my word!”

  “Sleep it off? Listen, Seattle girl. Our boss man just took enough sleeping pills to put down one of those whales you Northwestern folk like to sit around and watch from your igloos or whatever. He’s down for the count and I have every right to freak out!” Roman hung up the phone.

  I would wait it out. Several hours passed while I read every book on the coffee table. By then it was 1:00 a.m. I admitted to myself that Roman was right. Stefano was not going to wake up anytime soon. Sitting down next to Stefano’s seemingly comatose body, I turned my attention to the contact sheets. I thought, you know—I could do this. Was I not his biggest fan? I knew Stefano’s work like the back of my hand. Hadn’t I been studying him for years? It was the obvious choice. I would edit the shoot myself. I picked up a loupe and went from frame to frame. Some frames were out of focus and others too dark. Swallowing hard, I picked up Stefano’s limp arm and placed a red pencil between his fingers. Sliding the loupe around, I found a striking image, then dragged Stefano’s hand around it. I aided him in drawing circles around my . . . well, his selections. At least this way he was sort of editing it. Albeit unconventional, I was finally assisting in the actual photo process! For Vogue nonetheless!

  Every so often, yes, I would do another line of blow. That stuff kept me awake and I was convinced that it saved the edit and my job.

  At 7:00 a.m, after working all night, I delivered the edit to the Four Seasons. Returning to my apartment, I parked in the lot but was too tired to negotiate the stairs to the lobby. I fell asleep in the car. It was the first time I had closed my eyes in over twenty-four hours.

  Nearly three hours later, the buzzing of my cell phone jolted me awake. I answered with a hoarse voice. “Hi, Liz.”

  “Babe, you sound like a hot mess! Roman told me what happened last night. I don’t know how you pulled it off, honey, but Camille is beside herself! She’s rapt with the selections and is very happy! You should be proud of yourself, little Luce. We can’t figure out how you woke him up and got him to edit! Bravo! Get some rest, darl. You deserve it!”

  “Thanks, Lushy.” I didn’t even bother to reach for my phone when it fell under the seat.

  With a slight smile of victory, I fell back asleep. My friends would understand.

  chapter eleven

  The Greatest Show on Earth

  I sat on the cold cement floor of the studio with a laptop, flipping through pictures of Julie’s birthday party that had been posted online. I wished that I could have been there. I knew that I should have been there. The silver lining was that, judging by the pictures, everyone looked like they had had a ball. At least I was able to secure the venue, if nothing else. Our shoot had wrapped about twenty minutes prior and I was waiting on James to pick me up for an early dinner before he’d have to catch a flight back to Seattle. As luck would have it, on James’ last day in town, Stefano would be spending the later half of the day at the spa. I was caught up in the images and hardly paid attention to the buzz happening around me.

  “Somebody needs to take her home,” Liz stated, matter-of-factly. “Not it.”

  “Not it!” . . . “So not it!” . . . “Dude, not it,” echoed the sounds of several coworkers.

  I looked up to find everyone staring at me. “What?”

  Liz raised a glittered nail and pointed behind me. “That.”

  I half turned my body around and couldn’t believe my eyes. Adriana Darling, a twentysomething trust-fund titan turned model, known for her class and composure, was found flirting with a potted indoor tree. She stroked the trunk and tickled the leaves while swaying back and forth. We had just finished shooting her for a “Got Milk” campaign. She still wore the frothy mustache smeared across her upper lip. Her angel white hair was beginning to fall out of the updo she wore during the shoot.

  Roman joined the group showcasing three empty bottles of booze. “This should explain the display of dendrophilia.”

  “Bloody hell! You put all that booze in her dressing room? She weighs less than my eight-year-old niece, Roman! Are you crazy?” Liz steamed.

  “Am I crazy? Excuse moi, am I the one fondling a fucking fern? It was on her rider list—it’s not like I had a choice . . .”

  “You’re right, you’re right. Well, you’re going to have to help Lucy take her home.” Me? I couldn’t possibly stand James up for the second time this weekend. I considered suggesting that we call her a car service. “It’s strange that she showed up here alone because . . .” Crash-thump-thud! The sounds interrupted Liz and demanded everyone’s attention from across the studio. We all dashed to the fallen tree.

  Roman tossed the bottles into a wastebasket. “This place is a fucking circus!” he hollered on his way to help the others lift the tree upright. Adriana lay on the floor with a goofy grin, her milky mustache and ruby red lipstick smeared around her mouth in a clownlike fashion.

  Liz seemed annoyed. She started clicking away on her BlackBerry, presumably to find directions to Ms. Darling’s home. “Maybe we should sober her up?”

  I asked, “How do we do that?”

  “As if I would know . . . I’ve never actually tried to get sober before. Maybe a glass of milk to coat her stomach?”

  We looked around at the seemingly endless supply of milk. She was, after all, the latest ambassador to the brand.

  “Intolerant . . . am . . . I,” the pretty girl piped in. We leaned in toward her.

  “What was that, Bozo?” Roman teased. Liz elbowed his rib.

  “I’m lactose intolerant,” she lifted her head to say before letting it fall back down.

  Of course.

  * * *

  I greeted James at the studio entrance and we shared a great big hug. We were the only people around in jeans and plain T-shirts and it felt like home being close to him.

  “Show me around your digs!” James referred to the studio.

  “Real quick, I’ll give you a run-through, but we have to drive someone home in their car then swing back around with my coworker to get yours. Is that okay?” I didn’t want to tell him that we didn’t have a choice.

  “Whatever you need to do . . . I’m in your world now.”

  He had no idea. I quickly walked
him through the studio and introduced him to a few work friends. He was impressed. “Wow, Lucy! You are really here! I am so proud of you . . . You really did it!” He put both hands on my shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “Is that Adriana Darling?” We turned our attention to the fern whisperer, who was now turning her charm to a suit of armor—a prop that had been used in a recent shoot.

  “Yes, yes, it is. And we are taking her home. Welcome to my world, James.”

  Adriana was far too incoherent to direct us to her own home, so we decided to take her to her parents’ place, a virtual Hollywood landmark that Roman could direct us to. He and James rode together, while I drove Adriana’s Porsche with her passed out in the passenger seat. The Darling Estate was nestled in the prestigious Holmby Hills, not far from the Playboy Mansion. As we neared the residence, an increasing number of luxury cars lined the streets, making it difficult to get to the parking-lot-sized driveway. An attendant held up his hand and motioned for Roman to roll down the window of his Prius. They exchanged words before the attendant came up to the Porsche. I politely smiled as he peeked into the passenger seat and recognized Sleeping Boozy. Her right leg was up and out the window, the left falling to the opposing side. The attendant handed me a piece of paper that read VIP PARKING, which I placed over her lap.

  I followed Roman up and around the dramatic driveway circling a fountain adorned with angels.

  “Fucking fuck!” Adriana shrieked as she came to. She flipped over the vanity mirror and attempted to clean herself up. She dug into the middle console and pulled out a powder puff and compact. While dusting her forehead and hollow cheeks, she spoke to me for the first time. “My parents are having their annual . . . Save the . . . Something event . . . Fuck! I forgot! I can’t walk in like this . . . I’m on the absolute cusp of being cut off as it is . . .” She covered her face with her hands and shook her head side to side. Her attire was less than appropriate. I could just imagine how her parents would react.