hair that looked almost black, and kind chocolate brown eyes.
‘Hi.’ He moved toward me. ‘David Kagan, nice to meet you.’ As I introduced myself, I took note of his direct nature and air of extreme confidence.
‘So how did you get roped into working with Green?’ David asked.
‘Green–oh, Steve?’
‘Yeah,’ he smirked, patting Brooke’s shoulder, ‘that guy’s a real piece of work. Gotta love him.’
‘Are you–do you work together?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, I’m one of the lowly assistants at this firm,’ David joked. ‘So, a makeup artist–a creative girl, huh? I like it.’
‘And she’s really good too…’ Brooke half-whined before turning her attention to me. ‘I really want you to come on the tour with me…I love my makeup, and especially my hair.’ She looked back at David, batting her doe eyes like a little girl before saying softly, ‘Will you please tell Steve that Jackie’s the one I want?’
Anything you want, princess,’ he said as she stood from the chair. ‘Now get out there, they are waiting for you on set.’
Wearing robes almost identical to Brooke’s, the actresses commissioned to play her friends stood patiently inside the sound stage. There, three pink, candy-colored walls had been erected to create Brooke’s bedroom, where a white shag rug, oversized queen bed, and window shades painted to look like a cloud-covered sky completed the set.
‘Now remember ladies,’ the director yelled out before cueing the music, ‘the pillow fight is a sport and an art form, keep that in mind. And make it sexy!’
His comment caught me a little off-guard, considering that it was supposed to be a simple slumber party scene that featured BFFs doing things like eating pizza and making prank phone calls. But what really took me by surprise was when the girls dropped their robes, which I had naively assumed were costumes. This has to be a joke–Brookes so wholesome! So innocent!
Clutching large white feather pillows, all three girls kneeled on the bed with Brooke positioned in the middle, facing the camera. The blond to her right, who looked way too old to be playing a high school student, was wearing a pink soft-cup bra with double ruffles and a magenta satin bow paired with matching bottoms. A double strand of fake pearls was draped around her neck and on her feet she wore pink bunny slippers. The girl to her left, who thanks to her dark skin appeared ageless, wore a retro-inspired lace-up halter camisole and garter skirt with scalloped lace edges and contrast piping. Brooke’s ensemble, even though it covered more skin than the others, was perhaps the most shocking. Certain aspects of the two-piece outfit–the top’s puffed sleeves and the lace ruffles that lined the boy shorts–looked very cutesy, almost childlike. And at the same time, accents like the bold leather trim and lacing screamed seductress. My eyes suddenly focused on her chest, which swelled beneath the sweetheart neckline of her top. Even though it made me feel like a creepy old man, I stared in shock, and so did everyone else. What had Robert done to her?!
‘That top looks a little small,’ Steve barked from the sidelines.
‘Well, it’s the biggest size we have,’ Robert answered in a tone plagued with annoyance. Signaling toward Brooke’s mysteriously perky chest, he scoffed, ‘Unfortunately there’s not much I can do with those things now.’
Before I even had time to mull over Robert’s biting response, a production assistant whizzed my way, tossing a bottle of baby oil at me.
‘She needs to glow! Make her look sweaty,’ he barked.
After drowning her in oil, I plopped down on a chair off set. David took a seat next to me, somehow able to ignore the fact that the shoot had turned into what looked like a soft-core porno flick.
‘Be glad you’re not on the business end of things…ugh,’ he said out of the blue, taking a sip of the bottle of water in his hand.
‘That bad?’ I asked.
‘It has its ups and downs, just like everything in life, but out here it’s nonstop. It wasn’t this crazy in New York.’
‘Did you just move here?’
‘When my old boss decided it was finally time to retire a few months back, he felt bad leaving me without a job so he called up a friend of his out here who was expanding his client list and the rest is history. It was pretty hectic at first. I’d never even been to L.A. before and there I was, moving across the country to work for a guy who really puts a lot of pressure on himself and his employees–I feel like I’ve gotten the hang of things now–but it’s shown me that even a veteran like Steve has to continually prove himself out here. But, he’s good at what he does…’ David paused for a moment before turning back to me. ‘Oh yeah, the job is yours if you want it.’
‘What job?’
‘Brooke’s tour dates with the Emerson Brothers…you’re interested, no?’ David raised an eyebrow. ‘I talked to Steve about it–and when I say talk, I mean that he waved his hand at me and nodded while on his BlackBerry.’ He laughed, waiting for my response.
‘Oh really? Wow, I thought she was joking…’ I said in disbelief as I watched Brooke break into song, the two other girls trailing her every move. She had seemingly morphed into a different being–one bursting full of energy and boasting an undeniable sex appeal.
‘So…do you want it or not?’ David asked again.
‘Yeah. Of course, that would be great,’ I muttered. It wasn’t that the job prospect didn’t interest me, it did. But at that moment, I was fully intrigued by the anomaly performing in front of me. The young woman on the video monitors wasn’t the same naive girl that had just been sitting in my makeup chair while I piled fistfuls of synthetic hair a mile high on her head. She wasn’t the same girl who chomped her bubble gum obnoxiously or snorted when she laughed too hard. And she certainly wasn’t a girl who would use a word (if you can call it that) like ‘serendipident.’ This was a girl with total power and control. Brooke flowed through each directed step–dancing for a few seconds before turning back to swing her pillow, which burst open with feathers on every take, at her girlfriends.
It was pretty late by the time the director finally called ‘cut!’ As the lights went down, prompting a team of assistants to begin attacking the feather-filled stage with brooms, Brooke sprinted back to the dressing room, grinning from ear to ear. I began packing up my belongings, which were scattered everywhere, so that I could go home. I peered over at Brooke who, standing in the corner surrounded by dancers (her besties, as she called them), had erupted into a fit of giggles. I smiled as I scanned the mess of hair clinging to her scalp. It was a strange coincidence, I thought suddenly, recalling an old art history course I’d taken, that she had compared herself to Cleopatra earlier in the day. The Egyptian queen was known to use her melon-shaped hairstyles and wigged headdresses to enhance her power and fame. And maybe Brooke wasn’t just the dumb gum-chewing, pageant princess she appeared to be. Tossing her head back with laughter, Brooke looked beautiful. She looked like a star. Maybe she wasn’t as innocent as she would’ve liked everyone to believe.
I don’t know anything about music.
In my line you don’t have to.
–Elvis Presley
Two weeks later, stuffed inside a snug North Face ski jacket, I boarded a flight to Albany, excited to join the tour with Brooke. Steve had booked the three of us on a later flight, first-class tickets for the both of them, coach for me. I didn’t mind–in fact, I had expected as much–but as I boarded the plane, trudging toward the back with an armful of magazines and a large carry-on, I heard a voice cry out: ‘Where y’all going?’ Turning my head, I spotted a