Secret Celebrity

chapter five

I met Jennifer. In a sentence, she's an H and D girl. Hint and deny. I know a lot of girls in Hollywood like her. They love to hint about some famous guy they're friends with or were friends with. Or are sleeping with or did sleep with years ago. Some will even go so far as to mention the movie he was in back in the seventies. Some will even say it was a big movie. About a boxer. And that it won an Oscar. They'll admit that there were many sequels. And if you say, "You mean Rocky. You mean Stallone," they'll say, "No, no, no." Hint and deny. It's a way of flying with the A-list without actually having to show the boarding pass you don't actually have. Jennifer wasn't name-dropping Sly. She wasn't exactly name-dropping at all. But she was carrying the latest issue of Rolling Stone with her and kept saying, "My friend is in here this week."

We (Jennifer, William, and I) were at the Coffee Bean on Sunset. You could cast the next "Friends" clone from the crowd hanging around there. So many Lisa Kudrow and Matthew Perry wannabes. As well as a real working actor in his twenties. No name came to mind but his face was familiar because he had a small part in one of WB's highly promoted prime-time teen dramas. There were also a few misfits in the mix. A man in his forties who'd brought his computer and sat there gulping coffee and working on his (let me guess) Hollywood dream. As well as an older man wearing a suit and carrying a gym bag. He shuffled past us before hunkering down at a table in the back.

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William had arranged this meeting by telling Jennifer I might be able to give her a job on my documentary. "And what job might that be?" I'd asked. He also jokingly played the guilt card, arguing that I owed him since he'd gotten me some good Internet leads on Richard Gault. I would have done it anyway because I considered William a friend. I'd also recently started entertaining the theory that success demands a certain amount of discomfort, and I guessed that this girl would be good practice. From everything William told me I figured she'd take me out of my comfort zone by reinforcing the very values I was struggling to overthrow. I imagined her to be the kind of girl who could be at a table, seated across from the person who had just discovered the cure for cancer, and her opening remark would be: "I love scientists. I hear Russell Crowe might play one in his next movie."

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"What page is 'your friend' on?" I asked.

"I can't tell you that," she giggled. She did have a great giggle. It made you want to giggle, too. That's the thing about these girls. They generally operate with high levels of contagious energy.

"It's not Leonardo, is it?" William looked concerned.

"No," she said. And this time her denial seemed authentic. "But," she added, "I did meet him once in New York. At 'Bond Street.' I love him. He's sweet."

My guess was that she was one of those L.A. girls who overused the word "love". Second only to "the" in frequent usage.

"You spend a lot of time in New York?" I asked.

"I've got lots of friends there," she said. "Friends everywhere." She looked across the room, trying to catch an eye of the twentysomething working actor.

"You're a friendly girl," William commented dryly.

"Yes, I am," she said, flirtatiously touching his arm.

Oh God, William, I thought. What are you doing? Of course I could see what he liked about her. She was young and, though not gorgeous, she was attractive with dark curly hair and lively blue eyes. She also had the kind of body that could wear a twenty-five-dollar dress from The Limited and look as good as a supermodel wearing D&G. But inside that package was a Scrappy poacher. She'd poach anyone's territory. She'd poach your guy, your bestfriend, your contacts. Anything that one way or another would bring her closer to celebrity limelight. This girl was on a mission.