The Starter Wife (48 page)

Clarissa had set her sights on Aaron not long after dumping Sean Penn.

She hadn’t really dated Sean Penn. However, Aaron Mason, of the Mason Department Stores, the largest midlevel chain in the South, idolized Sean Penn. Aaron, an SMU film school grad, was a nascent producer, new to Hollywood and its ways. Clarissa had discovered him tripping off the bus (in this case, out of his 2002 Bentley at valet parking in front of the Ivy). She always had had a thing for handicapped men, and finding one who happened to be driving her favorite luxury vehicle was enough to make Clarissa, confirmed atheist, a Sunni.

Clarissa had dated all kinds of men with various afflictions—they ranged from dyslexics to a blind Moby-knockoff singer for a techno band to a wheelchair-bound Emmy-winning screenwriter. Clarissa had found herself, unfortunately, in like-plus with the screenwriter: she had enjoyed wiping spittle from his face, she had treasured his incoherent affections.

But a screenwriter? And a television screenwriter at that? Clarissa was only twenty-eight (she insisted); she was not ready to give up the brass (platinum, Tiffany) ring quite yet.

Aaron’s affliction was a clubfoot. Clarissa watched him like a tiger eyeing a fatted wildebeest as he made his way from his navy Bentley up the ziggurat-like patio steps of the Ivy to his awaiting table, where three men with chubby egos yelled obscenities into tiny cell phones.

The limp cinched the deal.

Their romance was short; two weeks longer, it could have been called “whirlwind.” Clarissa squired her prized cabbage to parties from the graffitied, Ecstasy-laden banks of Silverlake to the gilded, coke-encrusted shorelines of Malibu. Aaron could not have known what hit him, though he may have known (as we’ll later learn) that Clarissa had slept her way, without mercy, regret, mourning or conscience, through Greater Los Angeles. But he could not have known that she lied about her age, religion (Episcopalian at the Bel Air country club, Jewish at Hillcrest), mating habits, hair color, plastic surgeries, level of education, her mother’s nose job, her upbringing, her downfall, her rehab stay(s), the number of pregnancies she’d experienced—three—without an actual birth, and that she lied to anyone at any time for any reason.

At least, in the beginning, he could not have known Clarissa was a sociopath-in-training, as common to L.A. as envy and palm trees. He could not have known, emerging from the relative norm that is suburban Georgia, that sociopaths are even more prevalent in Los Angeles than in Washington, D.C.—and more celebrated.

And here, Clarissa Alpert was very celebrated, indeed.

Prologue, or How This Whole Mess Got Started

10:42
P.M.,
New Year’s Eve. The following was being scribbled onto a Le Domaine cloth napkin:

January 1, 2003, Wish List: Men I, Clarissa Alpert, being of soundish mind and incredible (aux natural!) body, would like to acquire this year:

1. Bruce Springsteen (too old, married, children [ugh], probably happy. Level of difficulty: 9+)
   
2. Peter Morton (rich, Hard Rock (Planet Hollywood?)restaurants, etc., divorced … rich, rich, rich, engaged. Level of difficulty: 6)
   
3. Ted Field (rich, heir, ext. rich, likes tall, skinny, beautiful blondes. Who are 18. Who have proof of being 18. May be difficult: 10)
   
4. Graydon Carter (ink-hasn’t-dried-divorced, dozen or so kids). Powerful, underlined. Semi-British accent—yummy AND peculiar. Level of difficulty: 8+—P.S. Prefers classy girls with exquisite taste … UGH.)
   

Clarissa Regina Alpert was making up her yearly to-do list. Lists, she knew, were important to the goal-oriented life; writing them imbued focus and direction. She had learned this lesson from an ex-ex-ex …
ex
boyfriend bartender/actor/stuntman with a permanently curled lip who learned it from a Dianetics course at the giant, Smurf-blue Church of Scientology (which he’d joined to meet Tom Cruise, John Travolta, or, at the very least, Jenna Elfman, better known as “Dharma”).

Clarissa tried to learn one tidbit of knowledge from every man she’d ever dated; though she was never a great student of school or life, she happened to be the Valedictorian of Men.

She had written her “Man List” every year, on the New Year, since she had turned eighteen (twenty-one). Most of her waking minutes were spent in the company of girlfriends, but this was one tradition Clarissa saved for her own company; planning her future demanded her full and immediate attention.

She scribbled on, using Larry the Waiter’s chewed pen. She was on her third Kir Royale, and work was to be done …

“You a screenwriter?” said a voice. Male. (No one in Los Angeles who appeared to be a writer could be anything but a screenwriter. Poets and novelists, much like vampires, hate the sun. Even if it’s shrouded behind a smog burkha.)

A gorgeous “hairless” was standing in front of Clarissa. “Hair-less” or “Leos” or “Preschoolers” were terms Clarissa and her girlfriends used for men under twenty-five.

However, Clarissa looked not at his unmarked, eager face, but at his shoes.

They were not Prada. They were not Gucci. They were not even Kenneth Cole.

They looked suspiciously like Hush Puppies.
Vomit,
Clarissa thought.
Sherman Oaks studio apartment, music industry mailroom—or worse, agent-in-training
…

“You may leave,” Clarissa said, and went back to her mad scribbling.

“Excuse me? You don’t even know—”

“Go. Away. Now. Take your ball, go on …” she said, with the warmth of an injured cobra.

Poor boy; he looked shocked. He almost frowned, but, unused to the expression, settled for a pout.

He made the mistake of trying to talk again.

“Look, I’ve eaten at your table,
comprendez-vous?
Not interested.” Clarissa cut him off.

“Bitch.” But he used the invective under his breath; the Leo was afraid.

Clarissa emitted a proper bobcat hiss, her precisely bonded teeth briefly displayed.

Back to the list. This year, the list had taken on greater importance.

“Think, Princess,” she said to herself. Clarissa checked her watch. She had many, many girlfriends but they weren’t to be trusted with her secret list. Much as she loved and adored them, why should she give her friends any ideas? However, she had promised to meet up at the Playboy Mansion (Silicone Valley, Tits Central, Home of the Free and the Laid) with her girls later. There was much fun to be had there among the cheesy food, the failed sitcom stars, the dank, infamous grotto that reeked of semen, desperate laughs, and cash, and then, the endless river of gorgeous women, so many they had to be bused in, and all so aggressively beautiful that ugliness itself became a welcome commodity.

But right now, there was work to be done.

5 …

5. There has to be more than four.

Clarissa thought, out loud, “Have I dated everyone on the bicoastals?”

Larry the Waiter came by again, lanky as a rubber band. “
Si, oui,
affirmative—that would be a yes in any language,” he said, and set down another champagne cocktail. Without having to be asked.

All men,
Clarissa thought,
should be gay waiters.

“You should know, Mother,” Clarissa agreed.

Clarissa wrote a name down.

“Larry the Waiter knows all, Miss All-That-and-More. You’ve been sliding in here since you were legal.”

5. John F. Kennedy, Jr. (rich, good family, married [unhappily?]. Dead. Level of Difficulty: … 8)

“Correction. Before I was legal.” Clarissa loved Larry the Waiter. He was gay, smart, bitchy, and bald. A yummy combo.

“Listen, honey, if you don’t land one of these jumbo jets soon, I’m going to tie a yellow ribbon around your head and declare you a national emergency.”

“I’m not interested in landing just any foolish rich man. Where’s the sport, I ask you?” Clarissa said. And then she added, softly, “There’s a small part of me that wants to fall in love.”

Weddings, babies, children, young mothers in SUVs, young fathers with rolled-up shirtsleeves, old fathers in wheelchairs,
Clarissa was surrounded. Her world had grown up around her, and she was determined not to be left at the station labeled “She Was So Cute, Remember?”

Clarissa shook her head like a wet dog. She thought maybe she had reached her alcohol limit.

“Uh-huh. Which part would that be?” Larry the Waiter looked at her list and declared it “Sold out. This isn’t the nineties.”

Clarissa looked down the names.
Was he right? Gay waiters are always right.

“Look, Sweetness. Do you want to end up here in ten years with fake lips and helmet hair toasting a guy with half a pancreas?”

Clarissa looked at him. “Not Clarissa. I’m not going to end up like a retired Breck girl.” They stared down at the end of the bar. Two Clairol blondes in their forties, their lips wrapped tightly around numerous collagen injections, their noses a matched set of early-eighties ski slopes, were laughing with practiced hilarity at something an older man with spotted hands and a gut spilling out over his elasticized waistband had managed to spit out.

Clarissa noticed that one of them had a rip in her nylons. She noted the scuffed shoes.

Clarissa was all too aware of this tragedy; it was her own personal Clarissa Regina Alpert nightmare. Los Angeles was known as the land of broken dreams (blah, blah). Saunter on your Jimmy Choos into any of the better restaurants—the standards, Spago, Mr. Chow, Nobu, Ivy, Chaya, Giorgio—the tyros—the House, Lucques, Chadwick—and there was always the table Clarissa avoided like the plague (or retail … or J. C. Penney … or Estée Lauder foundation), the table that was either closest to the bathroom or the kitchen, the one with the two women, 90 percent of the time overblonde, with delicate, oval faces that looked good when …

When.

They would eat their salad (“appetizer size, please”) in tidy forkfuls and engage in the appearance of conversation that both were too tired for, and if you didn’t watch closely (as Clarissa did, for she couldn’t help herself—how many get to see their future so clearly?) you wouldn’t notice that they didn’t share eye contact, that they didn’t laugh. That they got up to go to the bathroom at least three times, and they walked slowly, heads up, face set, knowing this,
this,
was no longer a dress rehearsal; that they always ordered three glasses of house chardonnay but never dessert.

That they were watching your table, watching you watching them. Running their eyes over you like a truck.

And you didn’t blame them.

Clarissa shivered. She had to get married before the end of the year. Her timeline was clear: she would be twenty-nine (thirty-two) in November; she and her lucky husband would have two children within four years; she’d be divorced by forty and still hot (thanks to Dr. Drew Franklin of the Beverly Hills Triangle) and living the good life while the nannied, tutored, personal-trained kids attended out-of-state boarding schools.

But if they fell in love, well … Clarissa wondered about the odds. She’d been in love once. Had she already used up her chits?

A plan. Clarissa always had a plan. (Important Subplot: Her father, the Horrible Teddy Alpert, was threatening to stop paying her rent. This meant two things: (a) Clarissa would have to get a job. Impossible, because, as she told her father, “I am my own full-time job”; leaving: (b) Clarissa would have to get a husband who had a job.) Also, Clarissa felt she was, at her age, walking around with an expiration date on her head.

The waiter took Clarissa’s pen from her frozen hand and wrote these words:

6-10: AARON MASON.

He wrote it in all caps, as though the name were bigger than the sum of itself.

“Who?” Clarissa looked at him, hazel eyes widened with curiosity, greed … and hope.

“Your last hurrah. Read your trades, Missy Miss.”

Clarissa drove her convertible BMW (the preferred driving instrument for young hot women with acquiring minds) to the all-night newsstand at Fairfax and Third and bought copies of the
Hollywood Reporter, Variety,
and a couple music trades, though she loathed anything having to do with the music industry. After she told the ancient cashier to keep her change in order not to touch his hand, she didn’t bother waiting to read the papers. She sat in the open air of her driver’s seat as homeless people beckoned.

“Quarter for a song?” a black man with aging dreads asked.

“I’ll need more than that,” Clarissa said. Clarissa loathed reading under the best of circumstances (in her defense, she did enjoy
Vogue
and
Cosmopolitan
and sometimes
Marie Claire,
when it didn’t get all “intellectual”); she needed to concentrate.

He was taken aback; he thought he’d heard wrong.

“You want me to pay you?”

“Look, Frank Sinatra, Jr., okay, I’ll give you a dollar to walk away from here
without
singing.”

He took it.

And Clarissa found her man: Aaron Mason had bought something called the “underlying rights” to something called
The Gay Divorcee,
an old Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical (
Ugh. I hate old musicals,
Clarissa thought) for $1.5 million, paid to the inheritors of the original play—

“One-point-five mill—!” Clarissa exclaimed. The number gratified her, then made her angry that someone would spend so much money on something that wasn’t even in color.

Aaron explained, in the article, that among the things he loved growing up, “the lonely scion of a Forbes 500 family” (the reporter’s words), was old musicals. And his very favorite was
The Gay Divorcee.

“I adore old musicals!” Clarissa said. And then proceeded to the twenty-four-hour video rental store on the Strip, a place frequented by blow hounds on a bender, garden-variety insomniacs, and porn addicts. She instantly forgot about the Playboy Mansion and its gaudy clarion song.

Clarissa Alpert had homework to do.

Clarissa’s mom was taking a dump in Clarissa’s own bathroom; Clarissa hated this because waste moved through Clarissa’s mother’s body and came out the other end with little molecular restructuring: If she ate corn, out came a cob; if she ate carrots, deli salad it would be; if she ate steak (she rarely ate steak, or anything with more than 150 calories a serving, for that matter), out came a Hereford.