I Never Signed an NDA, page 2
A few minutes later, Belinda, teetering blissfully between slumber and sleep, was roused by a quiet knock on the door, Jasper’s melodious voice waking her entirely as he quietly announced, “It’s time to go, boss.” Extricating herself, she gently stroked Rose’s unicorn-covered head and stood, drinking in her child momentarily before tiptoeing out of the room on her bare, pedicured feet.
Jasper, yawning, stood waiting halfway down the narrow, picture-covered hallway. Wet dark curls brushed the shoulders of his Gucci knock-off sequined bomber, and the familiar and comforting smell of Le Labo Santal filled the air. Belinda inhaled his scent and, as always, immediately brightened.
“Brave of you to want to look at his mug every day,” he whispered, his handsome face grimacing as he pointed to a small, framed picture of Belinda’s shirtless ex-husband strumming a vintage guitar.
“It’s for Rose. Why do you think it’s down there at her eye level?”
“I’d be throwing eggs at it myself, but single parent medals for you. Rose looks like you made her all by yourself, by the way. Not one hint of him. Those dreamy hazel eyes and lush lips. Good job, really, because he’s kinda douchey to look at. No offense. You couldn’t find a framer pic with some clothes? Did he wax? That’s some smooth, tanned skin right there.”
“Rose has his curls, and anyway fuck off, Jasper. I’m trying to remind her she does, in fact, have a father—even though his only real involvement was in her conception,” replied Belinda tersely as they walked stealthily out of the hallway. Silently closing the door, she rubbed her eyes and asked, “Is Paola here?”
“Yep. In the kitchen, looking knackered, just like us. Doing laundry already! You don’t deserve that woman. I mean, it’s basically the middle of the night.”
“Oh, don’t I know it,” Belinda agreed, engulfed by panic about the mounting cost of Paola’s hours. She took a deep breath, feeling guilty for snapping, and, switching gears, pointed to his platform Doc Martins.
“You, with your fabulous Cuban genes, never look knackered—and I’m loving the new footwear; you’re so elevated this morning, Jas!”
“No shame here, boo. I am a proud 5′ 11″ hunk in these 4-inch freebies, reveling in how the height-blessed feel daily. But I can see from the view up here that you need to brush your hair. It’s giving me dirty sex vibes.” He reached over and affectionately smoothed her tangled bleached mop as she, in the poshest version of her British accent, shrieked, “As IF!” She mimicked retching. “No sex until I’ve reached step 1200 of my narcissism recovery program. On the bright side, I finally have an effective skill with men—avoiding them.”
“HA, avoiding narcissists, that’s FUNNY! Maybe you can figure out a way to not fuck one, but we both know you’d have to quit your job if you developed a full-blown aversion.”
Sighing, Belinda perched on the arm of her grey tweed couch, inhaling the charred aroma of last night’s fire. Slipping into the sneakers she’d kicked off on getting home, she did her best to ignore the untidiness of her cozy, mid-century lounge-cum-overspill office. With her anxiety fully triggered, she could barely cope with her racing thoughts. Will Lara need more shoe choices for the Oscars lunch on Monday? Duh… She shook her head. Of course, she will; there aren’t enough shoes in the world. Her face flashed angst as she wondered what country Rose’s dad was shagging his way through now. Still Greece? She mentally congratulated herself for finally thinking of him as Rose’s dad, not her ex. It was a method she was working on in therapy, one of the attempts to keep her blood pressure low. Fuck, the pressure of the Oscars is probably gonna send that number right back up, making a mental note to find her home blood pressure monitor. The way everyone’s behaving, I should probably buy one for all my clients … Speaking of … did Calvin FedEx the peach gown Jasper found for Janie? Maybe it arrived in the middle of all the Elle shoot samples? Shit, were there enough boxes? Did all the couture looks from Paris get through customs? Jasper must have double-checked? Who would blame him if he hadn’t, though? There’s only one of him. He deserves some sleep and a big raise, but how, with this ridiculous mortgage? Maybe Rose’s dad will send money this month? Pay his credit card debt, for once. STUPID, you are stupid; of course he won’t, he never does. Why did I pick him? Fucking musicians. Will Chloe blame me for the Bebe Klein dress she’s contracted to wear to the premiere? She’s not a kid—she knows I don’t have that power. Oh god, is Rose okay? Is she going to end up notorious on a teen reality show because of my work?
Oh god, STOP! Belinda wailed inwardly as she finished tying the laces of her second silver Air Jordan sneaker. Standing up, she stumbled over a discarded Jimmy Choo pump. “Enough!” she whispered, clenching and unclenching her fists. Pick one worry, Belinda, you crazy bitch. Just one. After considering for a few seconds, she bent over and picked up the pump. “Hey Jas, do we have enough shoe options for Lara?”
“As I said yesterday morning, and on the hour for the whole day, we could stock the Saks shoe department and then some.” Intuiting the return of her edgy energy, he changed tack. “Annnnd, moving swiftly on. I’ve loaded the car with all the garment bags for Chloe’s fitting. I’ll switch them out with the Elle photo shoot samples when we come back. All the samples you prioritized are present and correct. So many we’d need a tank to transport them all at the same time. Our new intern is on a yacht in Palm Beach with her family this weekend; it’s the dog’s birthday or some shit. She’s back on Monday. And I’ve got your purse because you left it in the car last night, not because I’ve been rifling through your house. Assuming the Celine is this hour’s purse of choice?”
“Very funny, Jas. Actually, the Lanvin one they gave me last week would be better with my outfit, don’t you think?” She looked over, seeking his approval. “That Celine tote is massive; I used it yesterday to try and look businessy—not that it helped.” She shook her head, shuddering, recalling the feel of the frozen office and the matching demeanor of Alma Astley.
“Gurl, you are so cranky this morning. Did you have coffee yet?”
“No time—I’ll grab the Lanvin and a banana and meet you in the car.”
“Hrmph, please don’t diminish our fabulous moving office with such a basic label, Belinda. Coco has feelings!”
“Most of the successful people in Hollywood are failures as human beings.”
—Marlon Brando
A Birkin & a Body
Police witness interview: Savannah Bass
Third assistant to Alma Astley. 6:52 am
“Yes, we’re ready. Thank you, sergeant.” Detective Ortiz put her iPhone down on the enormous polished-metal table and walked—coffee in hand—to the door, flicking up the switch that instantly turned the spotless glass walls cloudy and opaque, lending privacy to the chic, starkly furnished white boardroom. “Now, if only I could find the thermostat,” she muttered, pinching blood back into the tip of her freckled nose and turning to Cheryl. “Someone’s bringing Savannah Bass down now—she was still in the restroom. Also, the M.E. and C.S.I. teams
just arrived.”
Cheryl nodded, staring out the window, chewing on an energy bar she’d found in her jacket pocket and ignoring the panoramic view west from Beverly Hills, which ended majestically where the ocean merged into the sky. Instead, she thought carefully about Alma Astley’s dead body, meticulously running over each detail of the scene upstairs.
“Are you sure you wanna take the lead on this? No disrespect, boss, but you just got here and this town, especially Beverly Hills, is a whole ball of crazy.”
“I’m good. I prefer just to dive in”—she yawned, screwing up the bar wrapper and shoving it in her pocket—“but thanks, Ortiz, and for chrissakes, do you have a first name?”
“Look, boss, think of it as my first and last name, like Prince or Shakira. Might tell you one day, if you actually stick it out here in—as the tourists call it—‘the City of Angels,’” she snorted and added disparagingly, “Like an angel would live here. Those pretty wings would just fly on by and fly away cos they already know—like you will one day—that it might look like heaven, but it’s the demons who flock here.”
Cheryl shook her head. “You got no faith, Ortiz, and what’s with all this tryin’ to get me to hate on LA? You tryna get my job or something?”
“Well, yeah, obviously,” Ortiz rolled her eyes, “but it ain’t my faith that’s the problem. I’ve seen it before—you East Coasters don’t do well here; it’s a rollercoaster of love and hate. Mostly hate for the first couple years. I’m jus’ tryna help! Jesus, I was born here, and I haven’t fully decided how the ride’s gonna end.”
Cheryl smiled wryly and flipped her off. She liked her new partner. Ortiz’s nihilistic assessments of LA had the opposite effect, rapidly endearing Cheryl to the town. Eager to get started, she was pleased to see a tall, willowy blonde in a sharp cream—probably cashmere—coat stroll into the room. Could she be any more vanilla? Cheryl thought, looking down at her own dry, brown hands. Only the rich and confident can pull off that level of stain risk. “Good morning, Ms. Bass,” said Cheryl before introducing herself and Ortiz. “How are you feeling? Must have been quite a shock.” She spoke gently, gesturing for her to sit and putting her muted black iPhone in clear view on the silver table. “I’m just gonna record this, okay?” She sat down in the chair opposite her, smiling sympathetically.
“Yaaaa, sure. You can call me Savannah, and shock is, like, an understatement. I’ve literally never seen a dead body before.” She paused, still standing, and shuddered. “My mom maybe, questionable whether that woman has a pulse.” Her voice, a slow vocal fry, was almost expressionless.
“Of course,” Cheryl replied, suppressing a smile. Savannah was unintentionally comical. She ran through her other first impressions: strong top notes of an expensive scent with base notes of vomit and peppermint. Her body language was privileged and blasé, yet her beautiful, smooth face twitched periodically. Her eyes were intermittently alert, but mostly, her expression seemed indifferent.
Savannah unhurriedly sat down, heavy gold bangles jangling on both wrists. The expensive-looking camel purse she tossed onto the adjacent chair looked familiar to Cheryl. She tentatively identified it as a Birkin, helped by the marathons of KUWTK her sister always had playing in the background of their Boston apartment.
“You like it?” Savannah asked, following her gaze. “My mom gave it to me to carry to work. Yawn fest. A Birkin—What am I, like 30?” She pulled out her camel-cased phone and, using the reverse camera as a mirror, wiped a touch of smudged mascara from under one blue eye. Those eyes are the only colorful thing about her, Cheryl observed. “Oh god! LOOK at my face. Can I fix my makeup while we talk?”
“Well … sure.” Cheryl looked at Ortiz, who merely raised an eyebrow.
“Thanks. I look awful.” Savannah pulled out a small black bag with ‘Makeup’ helpfully stitched on it in white and arranged a line of glossy products in front of her on the table. Taking a slim gold pin, she secured her sleek, white-blonde hair into a low bun and, selecting a Tom Ford tube, squeezed a dab of beige onto the back of her hand and started dabbing her face expertly, using a sponge egg. “What do you need to know?”
“Firstly, Savannah, you arrived at work at 5:30 this morning. Why so early on a weekend?”
“Oh. Alma sometimes comes in on Saturdays, especially since she’s been staying at the Bev Hills.”
“The Bev Hills?”
Surprised, Savannah looked up from contouring her right cheek: “Yaaaa, the Beverly Hills Hotel. She’s had a permanent suite there for about two months. I don’t hear that much, what with my desk being downstairs in the dungeons, but, like, people have been whispering about trouble with the hot hubster.” She shrugged and started contouring her left cheek. “Ask Dustin—her first assistant—you know who he is?” Cheryl nodded, then glanced at Ortiz, who was clearly just as fascinated as she was by Savannah’s elaborate makeup routine. “Anyway, he literally knows all the personal stuff. Simp. Like he’s—he was—her total kiss-ass lapdog—”
“And why did she want you here so early?”
“Oh my god, it’s literally so dumb. Like some Boomer or Gen X—whatever, just old—power ritual.” She looked up briefly from her mirror to roll her eyes. “They like to believe it’s to make you tough and a problem solver, but like, it’s pretty obvious, well, to anyone with, like, a brain, it’s just bored tragics disrespecting to get their geriatric kicks. Like, don’t they know they’re supposed to leave the ladder down, not literally kick everyone coming up in the head? I don’t think they can even spell woke.” Cheryl nodded solicitously, encouraging her to continue.
“Like, the rule is that I, the lowest assistant, always have to be at work before Alma. It would basically be fine if I ever knew what time she was coming in—it could be 5 am, it could be 10 am. She doesn’t share that info.” She rolled her tongue inside her lips and moved on to painting her professionally sculpted nose. “I also have to make sure her favorite gold cup is on her desk containing a boiling hot double shot of Black Ivory Coffee, you know, the one that’s literally made from elephant poop?”
“But, whaa—How?” said Cheryl, floundering, before quickly regaining her train of thought. “How do you figure out what time to arrive and when to make the coffee?”
“It’s crazy delicious, actually, all the best Michelin-starred restaurants have it. I tried it. Who wouldn’t?”
Me, thought Ortiz, suppressing a retch.
“And getting it hot is easy. As soon as I arrive, I like, make the espresso in the hospitality kitchen. When security—posted outside waiting—see her car turn into the parking lot, they text me, and I blast it in Dustin’s hidden microwave. Alma thinks it’s a filing cabinet. She would—would’ve—fired me on the spot if she found out I did that to her precious coffee. I don’t know how Dustin got the microwave past her, but he probably worked it because he literally lives off two-minute noodles. Tragic.”
Spot the emotion. Tough one this, Cheryl thought, watching her closely. “Anyways, every morning, I wait up on the penthouse floor until it’s time to position her drink, then I go downstairs as it’s super important that I’m gone before she gets up to the floor. Like, having to set eyes on a lowly assistant would turn her to dust. Oh, my bad, that’s like tasteless. Then, I just answer the phones and await orders. I might only have seen her three times since I started here, and one of those times, she was dead. What?” She paused as she observed Cheryl’s speculative expression. “It’s not like what she has me do is hard. I graduated cum laude from Duke.” She yawned. “And, honestly, I get all my best social media likes while I’m waiting for her. Because I post stuff so early, it’s giving that I live in New York. Which is iconic, obvs.”
Cheryl, absorbing this, paused for a few seconds to watch Savannah thickly penciling in one eyebrow, then continued, “So, if you don’t know what time she’s coming in, you have to get here—”
“Yaaaa, that’s right,” Savannah moved to her other eyebrow. “I have to get here, like, really ridiculously early. Occasionally, I, like, risk it, sleep in, and arrive at 7:30. It’s like ‘might get fired’ roulette. Sometimes, when I’m super bored, even I think it’s entertaining. My besties love it, but then that’s because they find my having a job soooo hilarious. I mean, those guys could never—”
“I see,” interrupted Cheryl, “and you choose to work here because?”
“It’s how I get my allowance, and Mommy dearest won’t release the first lump sum of my trust fund next year if I don’t. I’m gonna create my vegan beauty line with it. I’m really focusing on organic foundation for all skin tones. There isn’t nearly enough out there for women of color. I’ll send you guys some samples if you like, or is that, like, bribery? Your skin color really is gorgeous, Detective Cheryl, and your weave is excellent, too, love a shoulder-length bob. You are totally hot for a cop. You might wanna reconsider brown as your color, though—too matchy. Do you photograph well? I’m thinking of using normal girls and gays for my line to keep it, like, totally real.” She pouted, lining her lips with a nude pencil. “Basically, my mom pays me to work here. Alma hired me, like, as a favor. I actually don’t know how much AARDA pays me—our family business manager deals, obvs—but I think it’s a pittance. I Uber-Eats Alma’s other assistants’ lunch most days, not that they ever thank me, because poor things (and I mean poor, like literally broke)—they do this voluntarily. Why on earth anyone would put up with this shit and not get 25k a month is, like, beyond me.” She shrugged, sharpened her lip pencil, and returned it to the bag.
Ortiz, blowing her cold fingers warm and seeing Cheryl stunned into silence as she did the math, took over. “So that’s how you came to find the deceased at approximately 5:40 am?”
“Yaaaa.” Savannah filled in her lips using a lip brush and NARS neutrals lip palette. “On Saturdays, I’m supposed to check her office when I arrive since we leave before her on Fridays. Not that there is ever anything on her desk—like, it’s always empty. Super strange. No paper or photos. Not even a pen. It’s more like a museum than an office and always freezing. Anyway. I went in, and I, well—There she was.” She stopped applying her makeup for the first time and gagged slightly. “It’s so weird. I, like, never vomit, not even when I once, like, accidentally ate a real hot dog. Do you know they’re made with blitzed bones and fat? GROSS.”
“Anyway, back to the deceased,” said Ortiz gruffly, sprinting past this unwelcome insight into her favorite food.
“But please, take your time,” Cheryl added. “Would you like some water?”
“No, I’m totally hydrated.” Savannah put down her lip palette. “It was so surreal, she was kinda hanging—well, you saw her—over the stair railing, blood on her head, with her leg sticking out at a really weird angle. She was in pink, right? Like, I didn’t dream that? She was wearing a pink top and pink socks? Like I said, weird. No way she’d wear pink. Are you sure it’s really her?”
