Party Girl_ A Novel - Anna David [43]
“You got it!” she exclaims, standing up and reaching out to pump my hand. “Congratulations!”
Landing the job right then and there wasn’t something I’d bargained for, and being given keys to Holly’s house, her grocery list for the week, and the name of her dry cleaners without ever meeting the woman herself was likewise something I hadn’t quite anticipated. But I’m so high off of the ego boost of getting the first job I interviewed for—a job off the UTA job list, no less—that I decide not to let any of this bother me.
I chain-smoke as I drive to Holly’s house in Carthay Circle, but when I get to the address I’ve written down on Imagine letterhead, I think I must be in the wrong place. It’s this barf-colored tract house, not exactly the kind of place I’d think a producer for Imagine would live. Inside, the floor-to-floor carpeting and low ceilings are, in fact, so reminiscent of the first apartment I had after college that it actually makes me feel like where I live isn’t all that bad. But she probably owns this, so it’s a good investment, I tell myself as I try to ingratiate myself with her growling, unpleasant dog.
I grew up with golden retrievers and like dogs in general but Doberman pinschers, I realize as I nervously let Tiger out of his cage, sure are big, mean, stern-looking things. When Karen had asked me if I knew how to walk and “take care of” a dog, I’d nodded vigorously because I figured only an idiot didn’t know how to deal with dogs and besides, I’d grown up with dogs my entire life. But the dogs we’d had just ran freely around the neighborhood, where people didn’t seem to use words like “leashes” and “pooper scoopers.” All too late, by the time I’d already gotten to her house, I realized this chick was expecting me to pick up the dog’s shit. Artists have to make compensations along the way, I tell myself as I slide a leash on Tiger and lead him outside. Brad Pitt, I seem to recall hearing, dressed up in a chicken suit and handed out El Polo Loco flyers when he first moved to town.
So I take Tiger around the block, marveling over the fact that walking a dog isn’t as much fun as it sometimes looks like it is when I pass people doing it in Runyon Canyon. Of course, the depressing, utterly unpopulated streets of Carthay Circle don’t exactly make for impressive scenery. And Tiger isn’t, of course, a very furry, warm, or even especially cute animal. It feels, actually, more like walking a sort of surly, serious old man than walking a dog, and I’m utterly convinced that I’m somehow doing it wrong. Does it hurt them if you pull on their leashes? Tugging Tiger along, I imagine accidentally snapping his neck and having to explain to a tearful Holly that I just didn’t know you were supposed to let dogs lead.
When I put Tiger back in his cage in the kitchen—is it normal to keep dogs in cages? How come we never did that with our dogs at home?—I realize that my enthusiasm for my new life is flagging. I need to treat myself to a little of my stash, I think, as I glance at the vial I’d remembered to put in my purse before I left for the interview.
Even though I’m obviously the only one there, I slip into Holly’s bathroom to lay some coke on my hand and snort it up. I know this is the wrong way to start working for you, I silently tell Holly as I snort. But making me pick up shit and keeping your dog in a cage is wrong, too.
Feeling inspired again, I decide to do a little more, then bid Tiger good-bye, lock up, and realize that I’m not up for doing Holly’s grocery shopping or picking up her dry cleaning just now. Karen had, in fact, told me I simply had to do it “later,” and she hadn’t specified whether “later” meant later today or simply later in the week. With the coke now flowing fully through my veins, I decide that I need to do something for me, and that painting the closet would really be a way to embrace this new turn my life was taking.
So I start driving toward the paint store on Beverly. I’d never really fancied myself someone who was capable of doing things like painting.