“The fuck you did,” Kara gasped.
“I did.”
“Okay, so let me guess. He came and talked to you, and then you got all awkward and blew it, right?”
“You got it,” sighed Nicola, walking to her room and pulling her door closed behind her.
After brushing her teeth in her tiny bathroom, she got into bed. Just as she was drifting off, Kara tapped on her door.
“Two things,” she whispered.
“What?” groaned Nicola.
“One: Did you get his number? And two: Is he into black girls?”
Nicola dragged the other pillow over her head.
“Good NIGHT.”
“Is that another painting of Michael Jackson?”
“No, it is clearly Prince,” Nicola barked. “And it’s CRAYON.”
CHAPTER 6
THE ONLY PARKING SPOT NICOLA could count on in West Hollywood was in the open-air garage beneath the nondescript concrete-box building on Third that housed, among other things, the headquarters of Huerta Hernandez PR. It was still early. The summer heat hadn’t set in, and the sky was still discernably blue, having not yet surrendered to the smog.
She was glad she had moved up quickly out of the ranks of Gaynor’s intern army—who were mainly young Colombian women she recruited at her church who were not interested in PR—but despite her promotion to assistant, Nicola was still saddled with the job of bringing her boss coffee each morning. She walked out to Beverly Boulevard and headed to Starbucks, to procure the enormous five-shot espresso skim latte that would turn Gaynor into a chattering lunatic for a half hour. At least.
Armed with the latte, and a drip coffee and pastry for herself, she returned to the building and buzzed for the ridiculous elevator. Only in LA would you find an elevator and a perpetually locked fire escape in a three-story building. Arriving at her floor and juggling two coffees and her purse and laptop, she stupidly hoped that the front door to the office would be unlocked.
Gaynor’s shiny Mercedes had been in the spot next to hers, so she was probably inside. None of the other girls ever bothered to arrive before eleven a.m. She rattled the doorknob. Of course, the door was locked.
Carefully bending in half, Nicola deposited the coffees, purse, and laptop on the floor and fished out her keys in the darkness. All the blinds were drawn, and rows of empty desks flanked the hallway that went past the conference room and ended at Gaynor’s door. Small lightbulbs illuminated the word HUERTA on said door, and provided the only light in the office.
Perhaps Gaynor had taken a taxi to an appointment or just left her car there overnight. Maybe Nicola would have two hours to herself to do a little detective work and see if there was any fallout from Billy’s Vegas misadventure, or any photos online of Seamus talking to her at the party. She hoped that neither had happened.
Holding the door open with her foot, she picked up her belongings and transferred them to the small table in the reception area, which was strewn with carefully placed magazine covers featuring some of Gaynor’s clients.
Gaynor was one of Hollywood’s most feared publicists, and she represented some of the world’s biggest actors, all of whom she had started working with at the beginning of their careers, and had defended like a wolf ever since. “My clients don’t do scandals” was her favorite catchphrase. Of course, in reality, it was all they did.
Nicola picked up her coffee and the little pastry in its brown bag and began walking toward her desk at the other end of the room. Her dreams of some quiet time were destroyed by a sudden, gravelly bark, which her brain took a second to translate as “COFFEE!”
Nicola jumped, hot splashes of coffee scalding her hand via the tiny hole in the plastic lid.
“Fuck!” she exclaimed, putting her cup on her desk and going back for Gaynor’s. Opening Gaynor’s door slowly, she saw a massive shock of black hair on the desk, like a wig dropped from a great height. The wig started to rise, and Nicola realized it was Gaynor herself. She had been sleeping at her desk, her unruly mane of overly processed, blue-black dyed hair working as a blackout curtain as she slept.
“Buenos días, Nicolita,” groaned the wig as it rose from the table.
“You sound like shit,” said Nicola.
“COFFEE!” the wig barked.
Nicola set the rocket fuel on her boss’s desk. Gaynor was now upright, though her hair was still over her face. In one dramatic move, she used her right forearm to snake under the hair and drag the whole mess to approximately where it belonged, on the back of her head. Her eyes were still closed, and her eye makeup had slipped about a half inch from where it began its night.
With her eyes closed, she reached for the Starbucks. Nicola moved it closer to her hand, and Gaynor grabbed it, holding it to her nose and inhaling its fragrance deeply.