shiny silver Mercedes sped by at an alarming speed and pulled onto the sidewalk in front of me, nearly obliterating me.
Perfect. Could this day get any worse? A young, good-looking guy wearing army fatigues and a rhinestone-skull T-shirt exited the coupe, slamming the door and shouting at his cell phone.
He stopped screaming as I passed him.
“Hey, are you a waitress?”
I looked down at my uniform.
“No. Yes. Well, I mean, I …” I stumbled for words.
“You either are or you’re not, it’s not a hard question,” he demanded impatiently
“Okay, yes,” I said.
“Stay there,” he ordered.
“ANDREW!” he yelled.
A man in a chef’s coat walked out of a restaurant and approached us.
“Look, I found you your waitress, so stop crying. FUCK! Do I have to do everything around here?”
“Does she have experience?”
“How the fuck should I know?” the man barked.
Andrew sighed and said, “Come with me.”
We walked inside a restaurant, which was filled with frenetic energy: the construction workers—drilling, pounding, polishing; the designer in midtizzy because he ordered powder-pink peonies, and not soft pink, bartenders stocking the bar, and the waiters doing side work. “Our soft opening is tonight,” said Andrew. “We’re short-staffed and construction isn’t even finished.” He wasn’t complaining. He was just worn down.
I followed him into a beautiful vine-covered courtyard, an oasis amid the chaos. We sat on a wooden bench, and he began to grill me.
“How do you know Reardon?” he asked.
I assumed that Reardon was the terrifying man with the silver Mercedes.
“Um, he almost hit me with his car,” I answered,
Andrew laughed appreciatively. “Sounds about right,”
“How long have you been in L.A.?” he asked kindly
“About thirty-six hours,” “I said.
“From where?”
“Colorado.”
“Something tells me you don’t have fine dining experience.”
“My mom taught the manners class at my school, and I’m a fast learner,” I offered.
He laughed.
“Okay, Colorado, I have a feeling I’m going to regret it, but we will give you a shot.”
“What’s your policy on VIP’s?” I asked.
“It’s Beverly Hills. Everyone is a fucking VIP,” he said.
“So hypothetically, if a gross, perverted old man tries to solicit you, do you have to wait on them?”
“I’ll throw them out on their old ass,”
I smiled. “When do I start?”
From the outside, Boulevard, the restaurant where I’d just been hired, looked dark and mysterious. When I walked in, I saw the young Hollywood set lounging on suede ottomans and leather banquettes. I felt as if I were crashing a private party.
I arrived thinking it would be like the other jobs I’d had. I would receive some training and then start, but that wasn’t the kind of place Reardon Green ran: it was sink or swim in his world. Everyone was rushing around, nobody had a second to answer a question, and I was constantly in the way. I stood in the middle of the whirlwind and took a deep breath. It appeared I didn’t have any tables assigned to me yet, so I started doing laps around the restaurant clearing plates and refilling drinks. I placed a lemon-drop martini in front of a woman I recognized from some show on television.
“Oh, actually, can you bring me the whole lemon?” she asked me.
She turned to her fellow diners. “I like to cut it myself—just to make sure it’s really fresh. You see them sitting out there in those plastic bins covered with flies.” She shuddered and the whole table shuddered with her. Of course, then they all wanted to garnish their own drinks now. I was sent off to find an orange, a lemon, and a lime.
The walk to the kitchen took me past tables full of celebrities and socialites, and I tried not to stare at the A-list faces I had seen in magazines but never in person. As I pushed through the kitchen doors, the noise of the dining room receded behind me.
The kitchen had its own sound, a symphony of orders and acquiescences, the clink of plates, the thud of heavy iron pots, and the hiss of meat hitting a pan. Andrew was screaming at the sous-chefs and hurrying plates to go out to the tables. I rushed through it all and made for the fridge, trying not to bother anyone or get in the way. In my hurry, I turned the wrong way and found myself in a supply closet where Cam, one of the owners, was leaning back against a mountain of paper towels with his pants around his ankles. I stopped dead in my tracks. This was by far the most humiliating moment of my life.
“Sorry!” I whispered, still frozen in my tracks.
He smiled at me, affable and completely unembarrassed.
“What’s up!” he said. “Wanna be in my movie?”
He pointed toward the security camera on the ceiling and widened his boyish grin, raising his hand for me to high-five him. The girl who squatted on her knees in front of him giggled. I did not want to insult him, so I gingerly leaned over the girl and quickly slapped his palm. Then I fled as fast as I could, my face burning with embarrassment.
What had I signed on for?
A WEEK AFTER I STARTED WORKING at the restaurant, I went to a party with Steve. I was standing and listening to everybody talk about the pilots they were shooting and the scripts they were writing, feeling very much like an outsider, when a pretty girl grabbed my hand.
“Who cares?” she whispered in my ear. “Let’s take a shot!”
She was dressed head to toe in designer clothes, carrying a bag that was worth more than my car. I followed her into the kitchen. Three tequila shots later, she was my new best friend.
Blair was a party girl, but she was down-to-earth and kind, and she seemed not to have a care in the world. She was the heir to a peanut butter fortune, and her family had houses all over the world, including Beverly Hills, where she had spent her childhood before being shipped off to a fancy private school in New York.
A couple of young girls walked into the kitchen, and Blair flinched. I recognized one of the girls from a popular MTV reality show.
“Oh shit!” Blair said, grabbing the tequila bottle with one hand and my arm with the other. She dragged me into a bathroom down the hallway.
“I hooked up with that girl’s boyfriend and she caught us. She wants to kill me!”
I started laughing as she tipped the bottle back and took a swig. We spent most of the night in the massive marble bathroom, laughing and taking shots, talking about our lives and our big plans for the future. I told her about my living situation—because in a week I wouldn’t have one. Steve had laid down the law.
“Oh my God! Move in with me!” she squealed. “My apartment is gorgeous, you will love it. I totally have an extra room.”
In one drunken night, hiding in a bathroom from a scorned reality star, I found a new comrade and a place to live.
That was L.A. You just never