ME:…
I wonder how to respond, but there’s no time. She’s fast.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: This is Kathi Kannon from the discount bin at Barnes & Noble.
Holy shit, I think, and eke out:
ME: Hi.
Fucking boring loser.
KATHI: I urgently need teeth splinter barfs.
ME:…
I’m racking my brain. What’s she talking about? Am I dreaming? Then I think, Oh, wait.
ME: Toothpicks? You need toothpicks?
No response. I wait, but still nothing comes.
Panic! I hurl myself out of bed and whip open a blackout shade, the sunshine blinding me for a moment. I eventually see my body come into focus in the dirty mirror hanging on the back of my bathroom door. I’m a mess, my hair, my clothes—I’m still in the same outfit I wore yesterday, my depression lately manifesting itself in the pointlessness of washing either my body or my wardrobe.
I reread her message: I urgently need?
I roll around the options in my head. Maybe she’s having a luncheon and, like, Steven Spielberg is asking for a toothpick. Or maybe she’s got, like, Brad Pitt’s kids over and they want to make some art project and she’s humiliated that there are no supplies. Or maybe she just ate corn. Is this the final test for whether I’d make a good assistant: Do I understand her? Is she timing me? Can I drop everything for this?
I resent it.
And I accept it.
Therapista calls this duality.
My head is spinning, my inner world in turmoil.
Hey, Siri, I want this. I want to impress her. This time, I want to be perfect.
I rush to my car. I shoot her a text:
ME: On my way!
KATHI: Cackle Crumpet Cleaners
ME:…
KATHI: Hellscafoldspuntar
ME: I’m so confused what do you mean?!
KATHI: Horble twat
ME: Do you need more than toothpicks? I’m at the store.
KATHI: Bap
ME: What’s Bap?!
KATHI: Gate code is 2625 spells COCK!
Cue sweating, heart beating, blushing.
I’m dashing.
I’m thinking, Her gate code is COCK?!
In Whole Foods on the way to her mansion, I’m buying every kind of toothpick—wood, plastic, assorted colors, mint-flavored, the kind with a point at one end and a flat rounded edge at the other.
I glide through the checkout line. I don’t even linger long enough to get the change.
My Nissan Sentra is hitting every pothole in a race to the finish at her front gate, my radio utterly confused by all the rattling of wires. My keys are jingling in the ignition, aided by Mom’s locket, which I hooked on to my key ring, neighboring my car key and house key, my efforts to add memories of Mom to my daily life. She’s here with me in that little tattered old encasement, as I rush to meet my fate. I’m imagining the sports guy had this same test yesterday, and I want to beat his time.
I approach that magical address, 1245 Beverly Canyon Drive, the numbers stuck onto a common, unassuming mailbox, 1-2-4-5, as if the number 3, a digit fetishized in physics, space, time, religion, was just dropped, and all the other numbers onward throughout infinity are forced to shuffle forward, as if here at this address, the boring old order of common things is unneeded, unwelcomed. As if this place changes things.
That gate.
That keypad.
That code!
The front door, unlocked, unsafe.
No one is in the living room aside from Mateo the Moose, resting comfortably above the roaring fireplace, and little leather Emperor Xi and his friends, enjoying the dancing lights from the disco ball above. The animal portraits on the far wall stare at me, oddly encouraging. As I look at the painting that resembles Sean Penn, I’m thinking, Hi, again!
I hear something to the left.
I bolt past the dining table and into the kitchen. It’s bright and feels surprisingly homey despite being huge. The stove is an industrial six-burner; there are two massive refrigerators covered in pictures and funny postcards; pots and pans are hanging over a marble-top island. The floors are a whole new expanse of wood planks painted lavender with tiny murals of dangerous plants in random spots, all labeled in yellow writing with their species and common name: Toxicodendron Radicans (Poison Ivy); Oleander (Nerium Oleander); Papaver Somniferum (Opium Poppy).
A thin older woman is asleep in a breakfast nook. Asleep or dead.
I walk up to her. “Hello?”
“Oh, hi, yeah,” she says, jolting up, like she’s been awake the whole time. She’s cheerful but frail. “I’m Agnes! I have a brain tumor!”
“Hi,” I say, still in a panic and not sure how to respond. “I’m Charlie.”
“I’m the housekeeper and cook and whatnot,” she says, flipping her hair back behind her shoulder.
“Nice to meet you. I’m the new assistant, I think.”
“Oh, the guy from Louisiana, huh?!”
“Yeah,” I say, looking away, a slight shadow of shame piled on top.
“No, no,” Agnes says soothingly, kindly. “Be proud. Louisiana is a good thing. I’m from Louisiana. Shreveport. Kathi likes Louisiana people. Her ex-husband was from Louisiana. My whole Louisiana family works for Kathi. Worked for her for years and years—cooks, housekeepers, grass cutters. Yes, sir.”
I can’t help smiling ear to ear. Maybe my being a poor and unqualified, undeserving Louisiana boy has actually been an asset this whole time. Maybe this makes all of Perris somehow worth it. Is that another act of wizardry here at this estate, with fireplaces in the summer, birds chirping in the middle of this big city, electrified serenity in the thick of Hollywood—up is down, wrong is right, absurd is magical, Louisiana is cool? This place is transformative indeed. Is everything here just better?
This place changes things.
“Hiring someone, that must have been a tough decision for her,” I say.
“Nah. Kathi was struggling with which one of you to pick and she eventually just was like, ‘I guess the Louisiana one.’”
I’m thinking, Well, whatever works.
Agnes stands and starts to shuffle toward me. She’s tall, with a body that looks like that of a former model, albeit somewhat bent and crooked here and there. She appears to be wearing disproportional designer clothes—plaid gray slacks that hang loosely from her hips and a colorful silky blouse made for a much smaller, shorter person—perhaps all hand-me-downs from Kathi. On her feet, no shoes, simply faded black socks that barely stabilize her on the shiny wood floors as she closes in on me, a stranger in her galaxy.
Agnes shakes my hand. “I’m eighty-three years young,” she says. “I’ve worked for Kathi her whole life, since she was a little girl. I took her to all her school events and her first acting job and to the hospital seven times for overdoses.”
My eyebrows raise and my mouth opens; words are slow to come, but eventually I say: “Glad to be part of the team.”
“Not a big team. It’s just you, me, and Benny,” she says. “Benny is the handyman who doesn’t seem very handy, if you ask me. It always looks like he’s just pretending to work, but what do I know? Anyway, I think he lives in the shed because he has nowhere else to go.”
“I think I saw him during my interview with Kathi.”