Live Fast Die Hot (5 page)

I stared out at two grungy-looking paparazzi standing near the valet. They waved to a Hollywood tour bus filled with sunburnt white people in visors.

“I don't have any of those things,” I said to Debora, trying to bring her back down to earth.

“Uzo got a Céline from Beyoncé for her birthday. My birthday is next week. I'm about to be fifty! That's a big birthday.” Debora let the information hang in the air as a waiter walked over and handed Jason the check. “You're only fifty once, after all,” she said, as if you're other ages more than once.

“Oh, I think I wanna order something for later.” Debora looked at us innocently. She told the waiter she'd like the lobster pasta and another order of shrimp toast to go. Jason shot me a look, then gave the waiter his credit card.

“You've got one of them Célines, though…” Debora said. She'd clearly been digging through my closet while I was out.

“It's a knockoff,” I shot back, defensive. “I got it in Turkey. Jason, tell her it's a knockoff.”

“It's a knockoff,” Jason said, handing me Sid and excusing himself to the bathroom.

“I actually have a fake Birkin, too,” I confessed under my breath. “I got it from my guy Elan here in town. I just can't justify spending all that money on real bags. I don't care about them enough.”

Debora looked at me, shocked. Her jaw hung open. I could see bits of macerated shrimp waving at me between her teeth. “You carry a fake bag?”

“Well, yeah. Sometimes.”

The truth was I loved fake bags. They provided me with all the respect and credit that comes with a real bag for a fraction of the cost.

“I could NEVER. Debora don't break for fake!” She threw an arm in the air for emphasis.

Debora and I walked with Sid out toward the valet. The paparazzi were still waiting, to Debora's satisfaction. She giddily applied lipstick and grabbed Sid from my arms. I smiled at the two broken men with beat-up jeans and telescope lenses as they scanned my face through their mental database, coming up with absolutely zero reason to take my picture.

“Weird. They aren't shooting us.” Debora shrugged, disappointed. “When I was with Hollice people basically attacked us for photos.”

I felt a pang of defeat in the pit of my stomach. I knew Debora was judging me.
I
was judging me. Just then, Jason appeared and the men sprang into action.

“Quick, Debora! Go hold his hand!” I heard myself say. “Give him a peck on the cheek! See if he'll dip you!” The words poured out of my mouth. It was as if the Holy Ghost had inhabited my body, only instead of speaking in tongues I was speaking in Kardashian.

Jason gave Debora an awkward, obligatory hug, then jumped into the car, rattled. We didn't speak about the incident until later that night.

“I couldn't disappoint her! She wanted it so badly. Uzo bullies her and makes her feel like she's not a high-profile-enough baby nurse, it's just not fair!” I said, like a mom talking about her overweight teenage daughter.

Jason looked at me in disbelief. “Do you hear yoursel
f
? ‘High-profile-enough baby nurse'? What does that even mean? She's here to take care of our kid. She's lucky we even take her out of the house.”

“Jason! That's racist!”

“Racist? I don't care what color skin she has. We aren't here to improve her social status.”

“Yes, we are!” I said, realizing the absurdity only after the words had come out.

In my heart, I knew Jason was right, but I couldn't help myself. Debora was Patrick Dempsey from
Can't Buy Me Love.
She was Rachael Leigh Cook from
She's All That.
She was the DUFF from
The DUFF.
I related to her feelings of inferiority. And I felt it my duty to transform her into the coolest girl in school.

Later that night I rocked Sid to sleep while Debora sat in the kitchen eating her ninety-five-dollar lobster pasta. When I walked out, she stopped me.

“So. I thought about what you said and…I wanna meet your dealer.”

“I—” I hesitated, wondering which dealer she was referring to and how deep she'd actually dug into my closet. “Elan?”

“I prayed about it and I think you are right. Gonna start out with a fake Birkin and work my way up. Hang on.” Debora held one hand to my lips while the other went to her ear like a Secret Service agent. “Uh-huh, yeah…Okay…Yup. I understand.” She nodded as she looked off into space, having a conversation with nobody.

Part of me wished Jason were in the room to see her communing with the Lord. The other part of me was relieved because he would have undoubtedly noted that Debora was a better mime than me.

“The Holy Ghost is on board. He wants me to have black caviar leather with gold hardware. Can you take me tomorrow?”

“Umm…”

I really didn't want to take Debora to see Elan. In recent months I'd become convinced that I was going to be arrested for buying illegal merchandise from him. I even deleted his number from my cell phone, contacting him only through my friend Adele, who I didn't really care what happened to. But Debora looked desperate and vulnerable and I had a way to help her. I could give her a gift Hollice couldn't provide. It would almost be cruel not to, I reasoned.

The next morning, I called Adele and asked her to set up a meeting with Elan. Adele bitched and whined, less because she minded and more because those were the only noises her mouth was capable of making.

“Why do I have to do all this stuff for you? I'm not your assistant.”

“I know. If you were my assistant I'd never feel comfortable taking this much advantage of you.”

Adele told me she'd call Elan and call me right back. When my phone vibrated two minutes later, I picked it up without looking at it.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” a vaguely familiar voice said.

I looked at the caller ID. It was Hollice.

“Hollice! How are you? Sorry, I thought you were somebody else,” I said, trying to recover from the awkward pause.

“I'm gonna be in your neighborhood next week for a meeting and I have a gift I wanna drop off. Does Monday work for you?”

“Yes! That sounds great.” I paced around the kitchen, looking for something to stress-eat.

“Cool. Text me directions and I'll swing by around noon. I can even bring lunch.”

I graciously accepted and told her we'd speak soon. After I hung up, I took a deep breath, then swallowed a half wheel of Brie. I reminded myself that Monday was a week away and that anything could happen between now and then. Maybe Hollice would have to cancel. Maybe my poodle, Mr. Teets, would get hit by a car. Maybe I'd need an emergency hysterectomy.

Seconds later, Adele called back and told me Elan could be at her work in thirty minutes. Desperate for a distraction, I ran upstairs and threw on a pair of sweats. Sid was asleep on Jason and I asked if it would be okay if we left them alone for an hour. I explained that I had some errands to run and I needed Debora to come with me. A woman might have questioned my motives, but a man tends to accept whatever you tell him if you talk about it fast enough. Jason didn't even raise an eyebrow as I spewed a bunch of nonsense about Gelson's having a sale on kohlrabi, and needing to find an eco-friendly dry cleaner, and the myth of the vaginal orgasm. He nodded and sipped his coffee, counting down the minutes until I shut up.

Debora was ecstatic as we got in the car and headed over to Adele's work. My child was only weeks old and already I'd gone back to work; however, this time it wasn't for myself. I was working for my baby nurse.

We arrived to find Adele waiting outside on a patch of fake grass in front of a large sign that read
OCEANA APARTMENTS
. She was a leasing agent at the West Hollywood complex (situated nowhere near the ocean), and I'd met her eight years prior when she overcharged me for a one-bedroom with a street-facing bedroom window. Over time we became close friends.

I chose not to write about Adele in my first book because we were in a massive fight at the time. I forget the details of the feud, but I think it originated with me using the back of one of my earrings to lance a cyst between her boobs while she was driving. Normally, I'd be afraid to divulge so much information about a friend, for fear that they might hold it against me later when they saw it in print, but the cool thing about Adele is that she doesn't read. I mean, yes, she
can
read. But she chooses not to because she lacks the attention span. In fact, she still thinks she was mentioned in my first book, so if you happen to see her, please corroborate that story.

Adele was a voluptuous girl with a head of blond spiraled ringlets that framed her olive cheeks like a lion. She was a Jewish American Princess whose Bat Mitzvah theme was “Shopping at Neiman's.” At sixteen, her parents bought her a white Volkswagen Cabriolet with the license plate
TOY4ADY
. When she turned forty, her father finally stopped footing the bill and cut her off financially. With a mountain of growing debt and a wallet full of maxed-out credit cards, Adele had no choice but to sell all her legitimate fancy bags and shoes to her dad's new wife at a fraction of the cost. Once strongly opposed to the idea of fake bags, Adele reconsidered when her means dried up. Now she was not only Elan's toughest critic, she was his best client.

After our introductions, a cream-colored Toyota pulled up. Elan, an older Israeli dressed like Panama Jack, got out of the car.

“Jenny. Long time no talk,” he said coquettishly.

I introduced Debora and told Elan to show her all the fake Birkins. He opened up his trunk to reveal a sea of boxes and bags all labeled in Japanese. Reaching into a canvas sack tucked in the far-back corner, Elan pulled out a beautiful black Birkin knockoff.

“It has the authenticity card, the mini-lock, the leather tie,” he said. Debora tried the bag on, smiling from ear to ear.

“I love it!”

“It's great, right? Adele? You agree?” I looked over at Adele, who'd crawled inside Elan's trunk.

“I want the new Chanel Boy Bag, but these don't look good enough,” Adele bitched, as if the bags' shortcomings were Elan's fault. “Do you have any Givenchy Mini Pandoras?”

“Adele! Get out of the trunk. You don't need another bag,” I barked.

Knowing I was right, she pried her fingers free and crawled out of the trunk sheepishly, like a child who just got scolded for opening someone else's birthday gifts. Debora handed her potential purchase to Adele, who held it to the light and scrutinized it closely. “Yeah, it looks good. You should get it.”

With Adele's diva stamp of approval, Debora was sold. She paid Elan several hundred dollars cash and we bid him farewell. Adele returned to work and we headed back to Jason and Sid.

The whole ride home, Debora kept peeking into the box at her new purse, worried it might disappear if she didn't check in on it. Everything was right in the world. Debora was filled with joy and I got to be a fairy godmother. If this didn't tip the scales in my favor as “Best Boss Ever,” I didn't know what would.

For the next few days, Debora's Birkin sat untouched next to her bed, balanced on her Bible.

“Gotta fake it till ya make it!” became her new motto. I asked her whether she'd told her friends about the bag, but she insisted she hadn't. Every time I checked in on her, I'd find her on the Hermès website.

“Did you know they make a raincoat for the bag? I just bid on one on eBay.” Debora moonwalked across the room, pushing her hands up at the ceiling in a “raise the roof” fashion.

I didn't know anything about a Birkin raincoat, but I found it charming that Debora was so invested in decking out her new purse. Like a little girl with a fancy new doll, her excitement was contagious; I couldn't help but indulge her.

“You need to get a scarf now to wrap around it.”

“Yaaaasss! I gotta get me a scarf. Maybe something purple.”