Chapter 1
It wasn’t about the money…
You’ve heard that one, right? Yeah, it’s usually a crock of shit. Whenever someone else says that, you know it’s about the money. But, really, with me… I swear, it wasn’t about the money. Hell, I knew where to go if I wanted an endless stream of cash. No, even worse, it was about a guy. Pathetic.
Easy money's nice, true. I love the sniff of a cushy payoff as much as the next gal. But I didn’t need it. I’d been broke for nearly five years, and no one did penniless with more style than me. I had my little… routines.
It was the week before Christmas. Los Angeles was frying in a record December heat, so I laid out by the Mondrian Hotel pool on Sunset Boulevard. I roasted in a bikini and sipped my Macallan 25 when I felt a cool shadow loom over me.
“Hi, miss. Another drink? I’m Chelsea. I’m covering Paulette on her break,” the shadow said. It was the poolside waitress. She was all bubbles and smiles, none-too-bright. New.
“You’re blocking my sun, Chelsea,” I said.
“Oops. Sorry,” she said, stepping to the side. I saw why she got the job. Killer body. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Three oiled up guys across the pool were watching every bounce of her tits.
“You got a fan club over there.” I said.
“They run a production company in Beverly Hills,” she said, impressed.
“Is that so?”
“But they said Beverly Hills is too old and stuffy. They consider this their office.”
“The Mondrian pool?”
“Isn’t that amazing?” she said. “They do all their business here. And they said they could tell I’m an actress.” She sounded naïve enough to be proud of it.
“Did these guys offer you an audition?” I said.
“Not yet. Fingers crossed,” she said. She winked at me.
“Where are you from, Chelsea?”
“Ohio. But L.A.’s home now.”
“Ah.”
“How about you? From L.A.?” she asked me.
“Boston.”
“I didn’t get your name,” she said.
“Austin,” I said.
“Austin? Cool name,” she said.
“It's just a boy's name. My parents were idiots.”
“I like it. It's catchy. Austin from Boston.”
Too catchy. I couldn’t believe she didn’t recognize me. Any second now, she would give me that all-too-familiar, “Wait… not the Austin Wellington?”
“What do you do here in L.A.?” Chelsea said.
“Very little,” I said.
I studied her face from behind my sunglasses. Her pure, ignorant face was blank. Clueless. True, it had been seven years since my last public incident. And I’d switched coasts, changed my hair with a cut and bottle, and deepened my tan.
The shirtless producers waved Chelsea to them from across the pool.
“I’ll give you two minutes to decide. Be right back,” she said to me.
I grabbed her wrist. Easy, but firm enough to stop her in her tracks. Lowering my sunglasses, I looked her in the eyes.
“Don't give me two minutes. I’ll just settle the bill. And give you something… Lesson One: watch your back here. There are a lot of sharks in the water, and they’ll take chunks out of you if you let them. And if this is home now, stop calling it L.A. You sound like a tourist. We say Los Angeles. You got a sweet disposition, and that’s grand. But don’t lose ‘Ohio Chelsea’ because ‘Los Angeles Chelsea’ meets some rich, Russian car thief who wants to fly her to Paris and do lines off her ass.
Lesson Two: those greaseballs waving you down over there? They’re not Beverly Hills producers, they’re douche bags. You know how I know? They’re as tan as me. Anyone running this town has the complexion of a piece of paper. Real producers aren’t at the Mondrian pool, they’re having a lunch meeting three minutes from the lot, in the middle of their fifteen hour day. Whatever these guys say, you respond, ‘Sounds good. Let me get your numbers.’ Then you throw those numbers away at the end of your shift. When you get home, borrow an index card from your screenwriter neighbor. Write ‘Only Trust Myself’ on it and stick it on the wall next to that vision board you brought from Ohio. Look at it every morning before your hot yoga class. Keep that in mind and you'll do fine.”
Chelsea smirked and snorted out a sarcastic laugh. “Uh, yeah. I know all that.”
“You do?” I said.
“Look, I’m an actress, a performer. I’m on all the time. Here at work, I act like the hayseed who’s taking in the big city with wide-eyed optimism. Those guys over there? I’m working them.”
“Working them.”
“Right. They obviously got money. I’m going to let them spend it on me. They’ll take me out a few times, buy me drinks, get me high, and then I move on to the next bunch.” She pushed her breasts around to make them more tantalizing. “But thanks for the motherly advice.”
“I’m thirty,” I said.
“Older sister then? But don’t worry, sis. I’m cool,” she said.
“You’re cool. All right, sis, then I’ll just take the check.”
She handed it over. Five hundred and eight dollars.
“You’re covering the other server, right?”
“Uh huh,” she said.
“Will you see any of this tip?” I asked.
“Twenty-five percent,” she said.
“Then I better be generous. I like you. You’re on the fast track here. How’s two hundred bucks for you and Paulette sound?”
“Now you’re speaking my language, sis,” she said.
“Just put it on my room,” I said. I handed her the Mondrian’s guest hospitality card.
She winked at me again. She took the long way around the pool so her greasy fan club got a look at the goods.
Lesson Three: I took an Uber home and wondered when Chelsea would figure out I’d given her someone’s room card I’d picked up in the ladies room. They probably deducted my bill out of her paycheck but I did her a favor. She needed to learn this isn’t Ohio, girly. We play the game rougher in Los Angeles. And no one knew better than me—sometimes we learn our lessons the hard way.
I got back to my cute little West Hollywood bungalow, and couldn’t wait to shower. I took my time washing the suntan oil and Sunset Boulevard grime off my body.
I stepped out of the bathroom and opened a dresser drawer. I cursed myself. I had given my last twenty dollar bill to the Mondrian pool boy to set me up with a good spot. I’d been so eager to drink copious mid-morning Macallans for a mere twenty and was so proud of the cheap investment that I’d forgotten that I had earmarked that twenty. I was out of two things: groceries and clean underwear.
Groceries could wait, but not the underwear. Chafing from going commando makes me cranky. So I put the grimy bathing suit back on, along with my least ripe-smelling shirt and jeans on over it, stuffed clothes into a cotton sack, and headed back out for the laundromat.
On the walk, I checked my bank balance through my phone. Three dollars and eighty-five cents. With a fifteen dollar monthly charge looming any day.
No problem. When I had nothing but pocket lint and change, I could focus. I knew what to do. I had been much worse in my mother’s vast Beacon Hill mansion. My life in those days was one long trip-and-fall down the proverbial stairs. Though I admit, I missed the dry-cleaning.
The laundromat was hot and steamy. It was full of service women lugging other people’s filthy clothes. My West Hollywood neighborhood was full of apartment renters who hired cleaners and housekeepers, but couldn’t afford a washer/dryer. Bad math.
I watched the cleaning women dump their loads into the hot cauldrons. Most of these ladies were Guatemalan or Mexican. A couple of them looked up when I passed. I smiled at them. They looked tired and happy, the payoff of working hard. I remembered that look on our domestics back in Boston. Ours weren’t Latinas, though. My mother hired strictly Caucasian servants. She suspected Latina women stole, so she kept the staff white. I never said a word to her when I found out WASPy Miss Murphy had been ripping us off blind for decades.
I sat down with my stuffed laundry sack and picked up a three-year-old Us magazine from the coffee table. My stomach lurched when I opened it. I feared I’d see one of my old mug shots, staring up at me with a caption, “What Ever Happened to Austin Wellington?”
My pondering of the past got interrupted by a brash blonde in her early twenties, shouting into her cell’s speakerphone.
“Hang on a sec,” she blasted into the phone. She pointed to one of the large drum washers, and said to the cleaning woman loading it, “That’s my machine.”
The cleaning woman struggled to put an English response together, but Blondie cut her right off. “I don’t care, I’m here every week. That’s the machine I use. You gotta find another one, comprende?”
The Latina woman didn't seem to comprende, but the bitchy Hollywood blonde cowed her into switching washers. The Latina beamed a polite smile as she did it, but Blondie was already back to her shrieking match on the cell. Then she roamed out of the hot laundromat, leaving us lesser-thans to our labors. Most twenty-somethings didn’t have the attention span or patience to wait for their wash cycle to end. Which worked perfect for me.
I put my Us magazine down and headed to Blondie’s washer with my sack of dirty clothes. I popped the lid of her washer, took her clothes out, and threw them, dripping wet, in a nearby wheeled basket. I put my own clothes in her washer and restarted the cycle.
On my way back to my Us magazine, the Latina who’d been shoved aside stared at me. I smiled at her and sat back down to wait for my clothes to finish.
Whenever I did this laundry game, I smiled, thinking of how my mother would react. I could still conjure up her smug expression when I had moved out.
“You will be sorry,” she had said, drawing out and emphasizing each word. “You’re not built for poverty. You’ll beg to move back. And when you do, I will make you finally live by my rules.”
That was over five years ago, and I was doing just fine. Independent. Most get there at twenty, so I’m ten years behind the normal curve, true. But most twenty-year-olds didn’t grow up with my debilitating money.
A few magazine articles later, my phone nearly vibrated itself off of the table. Nikos calling. Nikos Louganis was the latest guy I was banging. He looked like you’d expect a Nikos Louganis should. He was drop dead gorgeous and built like an action figure. I could have taken a bite out of his body.
And then he'd open his mouth and say stuff. He had a brain and mouth for print ads, but he was unabashed in putting his thoughts out there. A great quality—unless they’re not very bright thoughts.
Most of these thoughts were around fame and celebrity. He was obsessed. He never admitted it, but I knew that’s why he had pursued me. I wouldn’t have called myself famous—I’d achieved my notoriety only because everyone loves to watch rich people flame out. I’d become such a public debacle, I’d managed to get myself blacklisted from Yankee Stadium. Nikos had been drawn to me like a moth to flame.
We may have started up from his bizarro star-fucking fantasy, but I don’t do anything, or anyone, I don’t want to do. He had his good qualities. He was a dynamo in bed and wasn’t chatty—he usually napped afterwards. But besides that, he treated me nice. He cared. And he had this vulnerability to him. A genuine, good guy in Los Angeles? That’s like finding a four-leaf clover.
Plus, those washboard abs.
“Hey, you done yet?” I asked as I picked up the phone. I knew where he was—the gym. His top priorities were the gym, sex, and then everything else.
“Who’s this?” the voice asked. It wasn’t Nikos.
“Didn’t you just call me? You tell me,” I said.
“I’m a friend of Nikos,” the voice said. “He left his phone here. The screen just says ‘Babe’.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s how he’s got me in his phone, huh?”
“Are you?”
“Am I what? A babe? Heads have turned.”
“No, I meant are you his babe?”
“I’m no one’s babe. I wake up and decide who I want to hang out with. It’s a day-to-day thing.”
“If you wake up tomorrow morning, will you tell Nikos he left his phone at my place?”
His voice was like a masculine butter. He could have been coming out of my radio speakers.
“Who’s this?”
“A client,” he said, cagey.
“You don’t want to say?”
“I mean, I only know you as ‘babe’. How do I know I can trust you?”
“With your name? Your secret’s safe with me.”
He laughed. “Just tell him Hal Brinkley’s got his phone.”
“Will do, Hal Brinkley.”
“I’m hanging up now,” he said.
“You’re so polite. Go ahead. Hang up.”
“Nice chatting with you… babe,” he said. Then, as he forewarned, he hung up.
Instead of flirting with Hal Brinkley on Nikos’s phone, I should have been looking for someone’s dryer to steal. Next thing I knew, I heard the blaring speakerphone return, with Blondie holding it. I hadn’t expected her to come back before the wash cycle ended. Everyone has iPhone timers now. They really mess up my jam.
She padded over to the washer. I watched as she opened it and stared at my clothes. Confused, she checked the washers adjacent. Then she went back to our washer, and picked out a pair of my wet jeans, baffled. I headed over.
“Those are mine,” I said.
“But this is my washer,” she said.
“It was empty when I got here,” I said.
“No, it wasn’t. Not at all. These should be my clothes,” she said. All the while her speakerphone companion interjected with stabs of ‘what’s happening?’ ‘someone took your washer?’
“Well, are those your jeans?” I asked.
“Definitely not. These are, what? Ross Dress for Less?”
“Where do you get your jeans?” I asked.
“I only have Sevens,” she said.
“Hmm. Are those Sevens over there?” I asked. I pointed to her waterlogged pile I’d left in the wheeled basket.
She hung her phone up. “What the fuck? Did you move my clothes, you crazy bitch?”
“That would be crazy. Why would I do that?” I said with a plaster face.
“Then why are you in my washer?” she asked.
“It's a mystery, sweetie,” I said.
She was pissed. Enough to take a swing at me. I looked at her hands—no rings, no problem. I got ready to hit back.
Then her face morphed, and she said, “Wait. Oh, my God. Are you—”
“No, I just look like her.”
“I didn’t say—”
“I know who you mean. I get it all the time.”
“Come on. It’s you, right?”
“Wrong. Listen, do we have a problem, or—”
“No, it’s cool. Totally cool. Keep the washer,” she said. She had that macabre, star-struck look.
Right on cue, the washer buzzed the end of the cycle.
“I’m done with it now anyway,” I said. I leaned over and took the clothes out of the washer. I heard Blondie’s phone. Camera shutter sound. She was snapping pictures of me.
I didn't stick around to find out where those photos would end up. Twitter, Instagram, or worse. I dodged out of there with my damp clothes.
Back at home, I hang-dried them on every piece of furniture I owned.
My phone vibrated on my bedroom dresser, underneath a waterlogged T-shirt. Nikos’s name came up on the display again.
Blondie’s camera phone had soured me. I picked up the phone and said, “Hey, Hal Brinkley, he’s not here. Listen, someone just pissed on my day. I gotta go.”
“Austin?” Nikos said.
“Oh, hey. I thought you were someone else,” I said.
“No, I’m me.”
“I thought you’d lost your phone.”
“My phone? No, it’s in my hand.”
“I meant earlier.”
“I was with you earlier.”
“In between.”
“Oh. In between, I left my phone at a client’s,” he said.
Clever boy.
“Get over here,” I said.
“Who did you think I was?” he asked.
“Your client. Hal Brinkley. He called to say you left your phone.”
“He told you his name?”
“So? Who is he?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you when I see you,” he said. “Hey! Guess who I saw at the gym? Ryan Gosling.”
“Who’s that?” I said.
“Who’s Ryan—Jesus, babe. You really need to watch the news now and then.”
“TMZ isn’t the news.” I asked.
“I gave him my Twitter and Insta, in case he wants to watch my workouts.”
“Your workouts? People watch those?”
“I have followers, Austin. They want to see what I’m doing.”
“For chest exercises?”
“It’s lats today, babe. And yeah. That’s what I’ve been saying. You have to get on social media. I post workouts, tree trimming tips, celebrity sightings—”
“I’m not on that Instagram thing, am I?”
“… Would that be a problem?”
“Big problem.”
“Then no,” he said. “But whenever you’re ready, it’ll boost my followers—”
“Right. My triumphant return to public life. Forget it. Now are you coming over or what?”
“Yeah, I’m almost done. Two more sets of lats,” he said.
“Hurry up and get your lats over here. I’ll help you shower,” I said, and hung up.