Party Girl_ A Novel - Anna David [45]
After walking Tiger and depositing him back in his cage, I decide that I’m not only going to write my script in a month but also paint that damn closet. Back home, I pull the paint and brush out and just start slopping the stuff on the front of the closet. Too late, I realize that I probably should have taken my clothes out before I started painting and also remember that you’re supposed to lay tape around the area you’re painting so that you end up with a straight line. Ah, well. After removing most of the clothes and tossing them into piles on the ground, I decide that I like painting—something about dipping the brush in this mess and then using that to change the way the closet door looks is quite soothing. And I’ve always loved the smell of the stuff.
I’m obsessing over the paw prints that one of my cats has tracked through the unpainted bottom part of my closet when the phone rings. Because of the clothing piles all around, I have to toss the paint brush into the can and then dart through the piles like an army recruit on a training course before I can even glance at caller ID and decide if I feel like answering. I see that it’s Karen from Holly’s office and get the phone just in time.
“Hello!” I all but sing into the receiver, realizing too late that my hands are covered in gray paint, which is now decorating what used to be a pink phone. I’ve done more coke than I ever could have imagined was possible in the last couple of weeks but the only impact this seems to have had on my job with Holly is that I’ve stopped picking up Tiger’s shit. The residents of Carthay Circle, I’ve decided, can sully their shoes in it every day for all I care. But I’ve been almost obsessively checking in with Karen, reporting on completely fantastical interactions Tiger has allegedly been having with a neighborhood basset hound, chatting about how adorable the animal is and just generally trying to sound the way I think a brilliant, soon-to-be famous screenwriter should. Part of my act involves never letting on that I have caller ID and thus making her believe that I always answer the phone like I’m as cheerful as a midwestern schoolteacher.
“Amelia?” she says. “I have Holly for you.”
I can’t believe it. My first interaction with the woman who’s become sort of larger-than-life—with her dog cages and assistants who hire assistants and barf-colored tract house—in my mind.
“This is Holly Min,” she says, and for a second I’m confused. Am I calling her or is she calling me? Everything has seemed so surreal lately, like it’s all coated in a thin layer of gray paint, that I keep finding myself confused like this.
“Hi, Holly,” I say with exaggerated cheer. “It’s great to finally hear your voice.”
“Oh, you, too,” she says. “Listen, do you have a minute to talk?”
This is what I’ve been waiting for—the conversation where we discuss how I shouldn’t be doing her errands and picking up her dog’s shit but, in fact, writing screenplays that she can produce or, at the very least, having coffee or drinks or lunch with her. Yet the timing of this seems strange, since she couldn’t possibly be aware of how special I am yet.
“I understand from Karen that I’m paying you $10 an hour to walk Tiger,” she says.
“Yes.” This is not how I expect the conversation to start but I hide it well.
“And are you walking Tiger for a full hour?”
“Well, no.” I know as soon as it’s out of my mouth that this is the wrong answer. Why the hell am I afflicted with this ridiculous instinct to tell the truth at the most inconvenient times?
“That’s what I wanted to discuss,” she says. “I was thinking…if I’m paying you $10 an hour to walk him and you’re, say, only walking him for twenty minutes, then you’re being paid for forty minutes of time that you’re not earning.”
My right nostril runs and I wipe it. “But you live twenty minutes from me, so even if I walk him for only