Comedy of Erinn, page 21
OK, I am not like Mimi. Mimi would curl up and die at this point. I must remain cool.
She tried to think of a simple way to explain that this was just not done. This was America! This was commerce! Hearing Mimi’s voice niggling in her ear, she thought, This is a negotiation. I must remain breezy.
Nothing came to mind.
“I have done a wrong thing?” Massimo asked.
“Well . . . uh . . . yes . . . being with someone else’s idea and then selling it . . . for no money . . . to someone else is not a good idea,” Erinn said, trying to keep her voice steady. Massimo’s grasp of the English language seemed to come and go rather conveniently, she thought, but then reprimanded herself. Of course his English would slip during heated conversations. Her Italian was nonexistent at this point!
“But I will get another job with this new show now! Cary will make me a . . . come si dice . . . a person who plays . . .”
“A contestant . . .”
“Sì. And I can now pay rent. You can now be a producer. It is a good thing!”
“But can’t you understand? It was my idea.... There is money involved.”
“Money is like a pie. You eat it up a piece at a time and then . . . there is no more money. So, money, she is not important.”
Could Massimo be so innocent? Erinn wondered. He really did not seem to understand that he had done anything wrong. And it did mean that he would be able to pay rent and that she would be a producer.
And it did mean that Mimi hadn’t stolen her idea. Although why Mimi had been in her place at all remained a mystery.
And most of all, it meant that Jude was innocent. He hadn’t called, but then she had not contacted him, either. Well, she thought, I will rectify that!
“You’ll have to move back to the guesthouse,” Erinn said.
She wasn’t sure how she was going to sort through everything, but there had to be a cap on breezy.
CHAPTER 25
Erinn hadn’t worried about contacting her sister. She knew their mother would be on the case and Suzanna would wait until she got an “all clear.”
It was barely nine in the morning when Mimi barged into the house. Nine in the morning for Mimi was practically the middle of the night for anyone else. Erinn was returning the Italian plates to their rightful place in the china cabinet when Mimi plopped down at the kitchen table.
“I’m not speaking to you,” Mimi said.
“You’d be amazed how remarkably at peace I am with that,” Erinn said as she continued moving the china.
“Seriously, Erinn, you’re pretty low on the professional food chain to pull a diva act,” Mimi said.
“What diva act?”
“Disappearing like that,” Mimi said. “This is not New York in the eighties.”
“You know something, Meems? Your ‘not speaking to me’ needs work.”
“I had to do some really fast damage control.”
Alarms went off in Erinn’s brain. This was not good—she just knew it. She looked out the kitchen window and could see the guesthouse. The door was open, which meant Massimo was around. She stopped putting the dishes away, clipped a leash on Caro, and took Mimi’s arm.
“Let’s get some air,” she said.
Mimi let herself be led out the door, but cautioned, “Fine, but these are new shoes and they are already killing my pinkie toes.”
“We’ll just go over to the park,” Erinn said.
They settled themselves on a bench looking out at the Pacific. While the cat still wouldn’t actually walk on the leash, it was a way to take him to the park and insure that he wouldn’t get away. Sometimes with cats, Erinn thought, you take what you can get. She plopped Caro onto her lap, stroked his fur, and felt herself relaxing. She loved looking out at the waves. They were, indeed, pacific.
Erinn, my dear, you really can be pretentious.
Mimi sat with her arms folded across her surgically enhanced breasts, making an uncomfortable-looking shelf on her chest. Except for the excess boobage, Mimi looked remarkably like an angry child. Erinn wondered how Mimi ever got anyone to take her seriously as a hard-bitten agent. She was obviously such a kid at heart.
“So . . .” Erinn prompted. “Damage control.”
Mimi’s years as a paranoid industry insider kicked in, and she swiveled her head around to make sure no one was listening to them.
“Well,” Mimi said in a husky whisper, “when you took off like that, everyone was frantic. I mean, Carlos and Gilroi didn’t even get to say good-bye. And Cary was apoplectic. She wanted to talk to you about her new show. She thought you’d be a great addition.”
Erinn had been so upset, that she didn’t even think about how her retreat to New York might have looked. Perhaps she needed to be grateful to her agent. She had obviously gone the extra mile. But then she remembered . . . no one had tried to contact her. How upset could anyone have been? She posed the questions to Mimi, who looked at Erinn as if she’d gone simple.
“That was the damage control part. As soon as I heard, I came over to your house and got your e-mail contact list. I told everyone you’d gotten a last-minute assignment in Lapland.”
“Lapland?”
“Yeah . . . it’s way the hell north and freezing and—”
“I know where Lapland is.”
“Of course you do. I forgot that you know everything. Anyway, it sounded like they probably didn’t have e-mail or cell phone reception in at least parts of Lapland, so that’s where you went. I sent a ‘I’ll contact you when I get back from my trip’ mass e-mail . . . so if somebody e-mailed you, they wouldn’t worry.”
“Very enterprising,” Erinn said.
“I knew you were not going to look at e-mail or answer your phone while taking one of your trips on the bipolar express.”
“Am I that predictable?”
“I knew you’d ask me that. Anyway, just for insurance, I came by a couple times and did some troubleshooting. I made a file with all the correspondence in it. You’re in the clear, and you can get back to people when you feel like it. I suggest you start with Cary, who seems to have a job for you.”
“But what about Celebrity?”
“I hear they’re in financial trouble,” Mimi said.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it. There was an article about me.”
“Yeah, I got a copy of that at the agency. Well, I think it was just a big fat coincidence—somebody must have seen you on the street or something and thought it was worth reporting. Weirder things have happened.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“The good news is, it proves people are still thinking about you, and we can use that to get you more money next negotiation. The bad news is, that article almost blew your Lapland cover. Luckily, most TV people don’t read Celebrity.”
I do, thought Erinn. And I’m . . . or I was . . . a TV person.
Erinn looked out over the water. She knew Mimi was telling her the truth. It certainly explained why she hadn’t heard from anyone. And it appeared she was going to have to straighten out some very important details with Cary. However, she was sure that could all be worked out—especially with her pit bull of an agent in the mix.
Now the only mystery left was Jude. Erinn was itching to get back and see if she had any e-mails from him. She did wonder why Jude hadn’t set Cary straight about the lighthouse idea. As if she were reading her mind, Mimi said, “Jude was completely freaking out. He didn’t believe for one minute that you went to Lapland.”
“Why wouldn’t he?” Erinn asked indignantly, but calmed down when she remembered she hadn’t been, after all, in Lapland.
“Well . . . I guess he would have heard of any productions going on in Lapland . . . he’s pretty clued in. But that isn’t the point. The point is, he’s called me a hundred times asking about you.”
More alarms went off in Erinn’s mind.
“Why would Jude be calling you?” she asked.
Mimi started twisting her hair around her finger. The gonging in Erinn’s head was almost deafening.
“I am your agent, aren’t I? Who else would he call?”
Erinn’s writer’s instinct kicked in. The agent-client bond might account for one phone call, but not hundreds. Erinn granted that Mimi was pretty theatrical in her own right and tended to exaggerate, but even so, it probably meant Jude had called at least three times. Erinn stared hard at Mimi, who was still twisting her hair, so Erinn knew she was right—Mimi was lying.
“Want to try again?” Erinn asked.
“Hey,” Mimi said. “You’re the one who disappeared into thin air! Why am I suddenly the one being cross-examined?”
She wondered how Mimi could possibly be successful at negotiating. The woman was so transparent. Erinn regarded her agent, who looked as if Erinn were about to pounce on her carefully constructed sand castle. For a moment, Erinn took pity on her, but then snapped back to reality. She pounced.
“I will give you to three to start talking,” Erinn said.
“Oh, please! You sound like my mother.”
“One . . . two . . .”
“OK, OK, I give.”
Mimi stopped fiddling with her hair. Erinn shielded her eyes as the sun continued to climb.
“You are not going to like this, so brace yourself,” Mimi said.
“Consider me braced.”
“Jude’s a client.”
Caro sprang from Erinn’s lap as she leaped to her feet. Mimi grabbed the leash as Caro started to formulate that he might be able to make a run for it.
“What?” Erinn said.
“I said you should brace yourself!”
“I was braced. This goes beyond bracing! When did that happen?”
“Well . . . he’s been a client for a really long time.”
Erinn sat back down. She stared at the sun-baked wood of the bench, which was beginning to show signs of wear. The wood had split in several places, and Erinn could see the pathway through the cracks.
“How long?”
“Long . . .”
“Mimi!”
“OK . . . OK . . .”
Erinn could hear the resignation in Mimi’s voice. The whole story would now come out. She waited, adjusting her posterior over the fissures in the bench. She was resolved not to let any cracks show.
“I’m waiting,” Erinn said.
“Jude has been a client for a couple years. He works fairly regularly, but he has some long periods of downtime—like everybody in town. Especially these days. He told us that he wasn’t sure if he was going to stay in Los Angeles or not.”
Erinn felt her pulse race. Jude might leave Los Angeles? Stop acting like an adolescent, she chided herself. Now that she knew Jude had not betrayed her with Let It Shine, she was hoping to speak with him. Then it struck her—that’s what his note was about. Cary had told him about Let It Shine, and Jude wanted to warn Erinn that somehow her idea had been stolen! She chided herself. Let’s be honest, she said to herself. You’re hoping to reconcile with him. Although she wondered—to what end? Mimi did say that Jude had called a hundred times, though. Maybe Mimi wasn’t exaggerating . . . and if she wasn’t, well, a hundred times is a lot of phone calls. Erinn decided to think positively.
“So you got him a job on BATTLEready!” Erinn said, ready to forgive all. “You’re his agent. You got him a job. That’s what agents do.”
“Well, actually,” Mimi said, “it isn’t that simple.”
Erinn’s eyebrows shot up. She knew she had to stay calm if she wanted to hear the unvarnished truth, so she tried to keep her face as impassive as possible.
“I’m listening,” Erinn said.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Mimi said, putting her face in her hands.
“More important, I don’t know what you were thinking, so why don’t you tell me?”
“Jude was threatening to leave town. He was going to try his luck in . . . oh, Austin . . . or some godforsaken place that nobody has ever heard of. He had just gotten a notice that his rent was going to skyrocket and I . . . I . . .”
“You sent Jude to rent the guesthouse?”
“Well, you needed a tenant. I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone,” Mimi said without looking at Erinn.
“Wait, wait,” Erinn said, squeezing her head. “Suzanna said it was her idea to rent out the guesthouse.”
“Well . . . we sort of came up with the idea together.”
“When? How? Why?”
“Suzanna and I have gotten really close. I have a lot of meetings at the Bun, and we . . . you know . . . have sort of bonded on what a train wreck you are.”
“I’m so happy for the two of you.”
“So we came up with our plan to help you along. We figured that she should pitch the idea to you, since you have trouble with me being an authority figure and all.”
“What about the ad in craigslist?”
“There was no ad.”
“Mimi, that’s insanity. What if I had checked?”
“You? Check craigslist? Ha!”
Erinn was thunderstruck. Beyond thunderstruck, she thought, but could not think of a word that conveyed such emotion.
“This makes no sense. What about the other people who came to look at the guesthouse?”
“They were just clients I knew were looking for a place, too. I’d made such a big deal about you needing a tenant, that once I sent Jude over, I figured I had to keep going, or you’d get suspicious,” Mimi said. “Plus, your mother was really into the idea of getting you some extra income without hurting your pride.”
“My mother knows about this?”
“Yes. And you want to hear something funny?”
“More than you can imagine.”
“She said that Suzanna would never be able to keep this a secret. And here I am, blabbing and spilling my guts. So funny.”
“Proditio!” Erinn said, walking to the edge of the cliff. She turned on her agent. “That means ‘betrayal’ in Latin.”
“Would you mind following along in English? This is hard enough without you playing the martyr.”
“Oh, so now I’m the one at fault.”
“I’m not saying that. I’m only saying that if you weren’t completely pigheaded about everything this situation would never have played out the way it did,” Mimi said. “It was an intervention, only you weren’t there.”
“This is still a story without an ending,” Erinn said, quoting Rick in Casablanca.
Erinn thought of Gilroi, who would catch the reference. She felt a pang of wistfulness and missed the shared camaraderie, but she forced herself to concentrate on Mimi.
“There isn’t much else to tell,” Mimi said.
“How did Jude and I end up together on BATTLEready!?”
“How the hell should I know?” Mimi said. “Cary hired him. You think I can just pick up the phone and get somebody a job? What do you think I am, a miracle worker?”
“No . . . I think you’re an agent.”
“Oh! Yeah,” Mimi said, and giggled.
Erinn couldn’t resist asking, “What is Jude doing now? Is he going to Austin now that BATTLEready! is over, or does APE have”—she tried not to think about it as “her show”—“something else for him?”
“He’s not at APE.”
“What?”
“He got a job at another company. Doing a show on cougars. You know—older women, younger men.”
Erinn, you’re an idiot, she thought. You ran out and ignored him. How long did you expect him to care?
Maybe she should just let Jude recede into the past. Perhaps that was best for everyone.
Another thought struck Erinn.
“And Massimo? Did you send him to the farmers’ market? Was that a set-up, too?”
Mimi snorted. “No, sweetie. You found that gem on your own.”
“What could you possibly have against Massimo?”
“I’m up to speed—Suzanna has told me all about him.”
Oh, yes, my unbiased sister.
Erinn and Mimi were both silent as they watched Caro chase a leaf around the bench. Erinn looked back at her house and toyed with the idea of retreating—of not pushing the conversation any further. But as hard as she tried, the past few weeks on BATTLEready! had changed her, reawakened her to the world. She didn’t really want to return to her old ways, shuttered against life, but she knew there were some things she was going to have to face in order to move on.
Unfortunately, Mimi knew about those things, too.
“Put the damn cat back in the house and I’ll treat you to lunch,” Mimi said.
“That’s OK,” Erinn said. “I think I’m having lunch with my sister.”
“Oh, really?” Mimi said. “I was just over there, and she didn’t mention it.”
“She doesn’t know.”
CHAPTER 26
Erinn and Suzanna looked over their menus at the Veranda, the beautifully appointed bar in the Casa del Mar Hotel by the sea. Erinn couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in the hotel. Even though it was in her neighborhood, the prices had been out of her range for years. Erinn looked contentedly out the window at the Santa Monica Pier, which could be seen from the big picture window in the bar.
Sharing glasses of white wine, the sisters left each other to her own thoughts. Erinn looked around the room. The Casa del Mar Hotel was built in 1926 during Prohibition and catered to the glamorous Hollywood community. The hotel was rumored to have had a special relationship with the police, who would tip off customers to stash their booze before a raid. The hotel hung on to its glory through the thirties and early forties, but when it was commandeered by the U.S. Navy as a rec center for enlisted men, the property went into a nose-dive. By the late nineties, the hotel’s history included a stint as a rehab center, and it had garnered a respectable if still down-at-the-heels reputation as a Pritikin Longevity Center. Erinn had always loved the building and was thrilled, at the turn of the twenty-first century, to find the hotel fully restored to its 1920s grandeur. It was just a shame that her money started to run out just as the hotel was reopening its doors.
Erinn tried not to think about those days. She thought about how she had slowly lost touch with the world—and created a sad, solitary life. She saw with complete clarity how she had almost repeated the same mistakes all over again. But Jude had not betrayed her, and while Massimo might have sold her series out from under her, it was an innocent mistake.
