How to Meet Cute Boys (11 page)

I bandaged Ash’s thumb. He leaned down to inspect my work.

“No kiss to make it feel better?” he said.

“Grow up,” I said.

“Never.” Ashton smiled. He has perfect teeth.

“So,” he said. “I was thinking falafel.”

This was something that always bugged me about Ash. He worked at a start-up electronic music label and couldn’t really afford
to go someplace nice. I got that. But the lack of romance … It made it seem like dinner was just a nod to convention before
we swapped bodily fluids.

“Don’t you think we could go to a real restaurant this time?” I asked.

“What’re you
talking
about? Falafel is the
shit
.”

“No, it’s just shit.”

My remark was uncalled for—I was surprised I’d snapped like that—but still. I grabbed my purse and stuffed my keys, lip gloss,
and a twenty-dollar bill inside. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just, why can’t we, you know, make a real plan for once. Even
if we both paid, we could go somewhere …”

Ashton looked genuinely hurt. Even his dark hair, which usually stuck straight up, seemed to wilt. He told me he’d sit in
a trash can with me if that was what I wanted to do. It made me feel so guilty I wanted to scream.

This was how I ended up sitting at Falafel King trying to be gung-ho about eating a pita stuffed full of fried balls and dripping
with a mayonnaisy sauce. The place only had counter service so I had to keep getting up. I got a napkin, sat down, then realized
I didn’t have a fork. I got the fork, sat down, and discovered I’d finished most of my diet Coke. I got the diet Coke, sat
down, and found that my napkin had fallen on the floor. Adding to the up-down-up-down ambience was a nearby trash can piled
high with the remnants of other people’s dinners. The garbage smelled exactly like what I was eating. And it didn’t escape
my attention that I’d been worried that Max was too young for me, while here was Ashton, who was my age, yet he still preferred
restaurants that served on paper plates.

Oblivious, Ashton launched into a story about some party he’d gone to with his friend Dezi, a DJ at a club on Sunset. I didn’t
like Dezi because he never remembered me and he called everyone “bro.”

I pretended to listen. The last time I’d seen Ashton, I’d been talkative and flirty and had some pink in my cheeks. Sure,
it was just the promise of no-strings-attached sex that put it there, but it was
there
. Now all I could think about was Max. I was worried that by now he’d decided I was too old for him, and he’d never call me
again.
Maybe I need true love,
I thought.
And all the excitement, insecurity, and self-loathing that only true love can bring
.

Ashton said, “Do you have any friends you can set Dezi up with?”

“What?” I was back on planet earth.

“Dezi.”

“No! I mean, I don’t think so.”

We ended up back at my place on the couch, where I pretended to enjoy another one of Ashton’s Crazy-Night-Out-with-Dezi stories.
When it was over, he slid his hand up my thigh. I shifted away.

“I think I have a headache,” I said. I couldn’t believe that lame excuse had left my mouth.

“Take some Tylenol.” He was now kissing my neck.

“I’m too tired to get up.”

“I’ll get it for you.” His hand was back on my leg.

“You know what”—I pushed his hand away with a little more force than I meant to—“I want to just go to bed. Alone.”

I could see confusion in his eyes, and, maybe, some slight hurt somewhere deep down.
He knows I’m cheating on him,
I thought, which made no sense, since we weren’t going out. But I also felt like I was cheating on Max, which also made no
sense, because I didn’t even know if I was ever going to see him again. “Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “I just feel off today.
Okay?”

“No, I understand.”

Ashton got up and smoothed down his pants. I looked away—his erection was incriminating. “You go snuggle up in bed, get some
sleep, and I’ll talk to you soon.” He gave me a kiss on the cheek and rumpled my hair. Then he let himself out.

The second I heard his steps going down the stairs I ran to my answering machine.
I’ve acted in good faith,
I thought.
Surely there will be a call from Max on my voicemail, rewarding me for being such a loyal future girlfriend
. But there was no message.

I took off my new shirt, the shirt I despised, and wondered if there was any way to reattach the tag. Well, of course not.
I wondered if there was any way to reattach Ashton to my lips, because if I felt lonely before, now I’d fallen into the pit
of despair.
Maybe I can call Ash on his cell and say I’ve taken an Advil and feel much better,
I thought.
Or maybe I can tell him the truth and he’ll come over to console me
.

Maybe not.

“What am I doing?” I asked Freak. Who opened his eyes drowsily from on top of the television, where he sleeps because it’s
always warm. He mewed softly, and fell back into his own dreams.

“Um. What was it like to work with Wes Anderson?”

I was sitting on the stone-walled patio at Orso, a power-lunch location for agents from the William Morris Agency and execs
from New Line, trying to conduct a captivating interview of Chandra McInerney, star of
Waiting for Godard
and
Minimall
. My tape recorder was whirring on the table between us, my notepad was in my hand, but I was failing miserably. It had been
almost a week since the night Max and I had found out our mutual ages and I still hadn’t heard from him. I was distracted
to the breaking point. Meanwhile, Chandra McInerney was hardly the kind of person you’d want to look vulnerable in front of.
She had a multimovie deal at Miramax, designed a clothing line on the side called Gummy, and graduated from Brown. She talked
like Missy Elliott even though she was a freckled blonde with stick-thin arms, a ski-slope nose, and a girlish gap between
her two front teeth that sent male film reviewers into paroxysms of ecstasy. I’d see her at parties now and then—usually surrounded
by a crowd so hip they looked like they were cast at a model call—and it seemed like she’d be popular and stylish even if
she weren’t famous. Of course, in L.A. it’s considered very uncool to slobber over celebrities. When you see them all the
time—at the supermarket, hiking in Runyon Canyon, shopping on Sunset Plaza—you cultivate this idea that, deep inside, they’re
just like the rest of us. But then you get near someone like Chandra and realize they’re not like us at all. I was completely
terrified of her.

Chandra ignored my question. She looked me up and down and said, “Girl, do you know your hands are shaking?”

“They are?”

“You need protein, muthafucka.” She snapped her fingers and a waiter, who’d been ignoring my repeated requests for a glass
of water, miraculously appeared. Figuring protein couldn’t hurt, I took Chandra’s advice and ordered the chicken. She asked
for a salad and a bottle of mineral water.

“Two glasses?” the waiter said pointedly. I realized he hadn’t brought me any water because I didn’t ask for the bottled kind.
I nodded meekly.

“You could be coming down with something.” Chandra narrowed her eyes at me. “Why don’t I just give you the quotes, mkay?”

I was so flattered by her attention, I threw journalistic integrity out the window and actually heard myself saying, “Okay.”

“Okay. Here’s the thing, G. I want to keep doin’ small movies, because that’s the only way to stay on top,” she said. “Like
viral marketing. I’m a
virus
. I have to spread slow. Don’t want to blow up too fast. If I do, the public will reject me the same way they rejected P.
Diddy, mkay?” She paused for the waiter, who was back with her salad in record time, and continued. “On my love life?
Fuck
my love life. My last boyfriend was off the hook—he was an alcoholic and a fuckin’ slob. Homeboy was good in bed, knowwhatlmsayin?
But I practically checked myself into a fuckin’
hospital
when I found out he was fucking my best friend.” She paused, stabbed at her salad, took a bite, and continued. “On my lawsuits:
Yeah, I sue.
So sue me
. You fuck with me? I got an entire
law firm
at my disposal, so fuck
you
.” Paused, stabbed, chewed. “On my fashion line: I don’t talk about that. That has nothing to do with star-power crap and
everything to do with keeping it real, mkay?” She sat back. “That enough for five hundred words?”

“Um, yeah. That should actually do it.” I looked at my notes. “And Wes Anderson?”

“He’s a fuckin’ genius, what do you think? Girl, you’re turning green.” Chandra rummaged in her purse, pulled out an industrial-size
bottle of stinking yellow vitamins, and thrust the tablets toward me. “Take these,” she said, lighting a cigarette and inhaling
deeply. “They’re organic.”

But before I had a chance to swallow the pills or take a bite of my chicken, which had just arrived, she was standing up.
“Franklin, yo girl’s got ADD, knowwhatImsayin? We out.”

Chandra was already saying good-bye to a group of execs two tables over when I realized
We out
translated to “Interview over.” I paid the check (seventy-five dollars for a lunch I didn’t get to eat) and followed her
outside, half convinced I wouldn’t even get to say good-bye. But Chandra was waving at me to get in her customized Range Rover.
I slid into the passenger seat, and she said, “Pay the man will you? I’m outta cash.”

Movie stars never carry any money.

I handed the valet a five, and Chandra peeled out and headed up Beverly. In between rolling calls on her cell she told a story
about the time she thought she had a life-threatening disease. My ears perked up, because the Whip is always telling us that
readers love anecdotes about celebrity illness. But it turned out it was just an ulcer. A very
serious
ulcer, Chandra emphasized, that, she said, “coulda fuckin’ fucked up my whole digestive system.”

“You have health problems?” I asked.

“Girl,” she said. “You have no idea.”

I didn’t know we were going to Yellow until she pulled into a spot outside.

When Chandra walked through the door of the boutique, everyone stopped for a barely perceptible moment to look. Then they
made an obvious attempt not to notice her. Chandra, in turn, arranged her face into an expression of tolerant oblivion. It
was like watching two different species interact on
Animal Planet
. Chandra introduced me to the store’s owner, as her “favorite new fuckin’ person in the whole world,” and I was thrilled.

While ladies-in-waiting picked out different clothes for Chandra to try, she pulled me into the dressing room so we could
talk. I couldn’t believe I was standing there looking at Chandra McInerney in her Cosabella underwear! I remembered how Max
had said he got a glimpse of Heather Graham’s breasts that time, and I couldn’t wait to tell him about my new best friend.
That is, if I ever got the chance.

Chandra tried on various outfits, and I made a conscious effort to maintain eye contact, so it wouldn’t seem like her being
almost naked was making me uncomfortable. On the blurry sidelines of my vision, I could see she was as skinny as a model—collarbone
jutting out, ribs countable—but she was even shorter than me, like she shrank. Most actresses are shrunken—the mummies you
see at the natural history museum. Sometimes they eat so little their heads look too big for their bodies (something that
gives Kiki the heebie-jeebies), their forearms get hairy from all the extra testosterone in their system, and their teeth
get soft. But clothes look
so good
on them. While she changed, Chandra crowed to the owner about some “fuckin’ hot” clothing designer they both knew. I wanted
to find a way into the conversation, but before I could, she said, “Girl, I gotta split, but you can get a ride back with
one of the girls here, mkay? I have a meeting at the Peacock.”

She meant NBC.

With a superfast wave of her arms that made her look like someone out of
The Matrix,
Chandra was dressed and storming toward the exit before I’d even picked up my purse. Halfway out the door, she shouted back,
“Peace, dawg.”

I was assured that one of the buyer’s assistants would drive me back to the restaurant so I could get my car. The girl in
question didn’t even try to get a conversation going, obviously thinking I was just some groupie. I guess she didn’t see when
Chandra programmed my number into her cell.

I was transcribing the tape from my Chandra interview when the phone rang.

“Hello?” I said.

A voice said, “Hey, wanna go see Jon Brion on Friday?”

“Who is this?”

I knew who it was. But I was being passive aggressive because there really isn’t anything else to be after a week’s gone by
and you haven’t heard from the guy you’d spend every minute of every day with if it were up to you.

“It’s Max.”

“Oh. Hey.” I said it like I’d been doing so much more than calling Kiki up every morning, noon, and night and saying things
like, “Just in case you were wondering, day five, hour one hundred and twenty. No call.” (She’d say, “Repeat this to yourself
five times: ‘I am an attractive woman who’s friends with celebrities and has much better things to do,’ and call me later.”)

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I said, just to be disagreeable.

He said, “Hey.”

The pause started to stretch itself out. Then it made itself comfortable and took a seat.
Then
it started browsing through a magazine. I waited for him to fill the silence with an apology for not calling, or, perhaps,
the requisite excuse about being really busy. But Max said nothing. For a moment I thought I could hear him typing something
in the background.
Is this guy actually dicking around with his computer while he’s on the phone with me?
I thought, suddenly so irritated I wanted to chuck the phone at the wall. But then a little voice in my head whispered,
Don’t blow this. You’re not prepared to blow this
.