Before breaking the news of the impending divorce to his wife, Bruno came to us to find out how much it would cost him. Although he could have gotten the same advice for a cheaper price from any of our lesser-profiled competitors who catered to the rich, if not-so-famous, Bruno, like so many others who worshipped at the altar of celebrity, needed desperately to believe that his life mattered to the general public, and was therefore worthy of Steel-strength confidentiality.
At one point, after yet another grueling day of poring over his convoluted tax returns, Bruno invited us over to the club for some drinks. Rather than offending the client, I went along to The Cinnamon Lizard for just one drink, and then made my escape on the premise of an early appointment with my personal trainer. Honestly, I hadn’t seen that much purple neon lighting since the weekend I spent in Atlantic City. The next morning Jonathan informed me that our client’s real name was in fact Eugene Bronstein. A good Jewish kid from the tree-lined suburbs of Massachusetts, Eugene had moved to Los Angeles to reinvent himself after the collapse of his career as a stockbroker and the failure of his first marriage to his high-school sweetheart.
Emboldened by all those shots of Jim Beam, Bruno had decided to brag to Jonathan about the sophistication of his entrepreneurial operation. He gave him a personal tour of the two-story building that housed the most popular of his three strip clubs, located just off Sunset Boulevard. Below street level there were two additional floors, containing an X-rated bookstore, private lap-dance suites, bachelor party rooms, six-person showers surrounded by one-way mirrors, peep shows and even a carpentry shop where Bruno’s artisans built and repaired the peep show booths on site. None of these ancillary sources of income, it turns out, had been mentioned anywhere on Bruno’s tax returns.
According to Jonathan, their conversation had turned (as I’m sure that it so often does amidst flying G-strings, plentiful rhinestones and women whose breasts refused to shake when they did) toward religion. Being Jewish himself, and a devout temple-goer, Jonathan knew what he had to do. Somehow, before he arrived at work wearing the same suit and reeking of smoke and other people’s misery the next morning, Jonathan had managed to help a drunken and reluctant Eugene Bronstein see the ungodliness of trying to bilk Claudia out of her share of his empire.
Over the next few weeks, we worked out a private settlement that took good care of Claudia while sparing Bruno the ugliness of having to report anything new to the IRS. Yes, we were in the business of secrets, and the final one that I had to keep in the Bronstein case was the one belonging to Jonathan. It was his opinion that his big-man reputation simply couldn’t withstand the hit of his having convinced someone to do the right thing. And in a way I saw his logic. So I had taken the fall for Jonathan’s conscience, claiming to be the one who had forced Bruno to make an equitable arrangement. And I made a lifelong friend in Claudia Bronstein (the proud new owner of their house in Palm Springs, along with the third largest strip club in Hollywood) in the process.
“I still can’t believe that guy calls himself an entrepreneur,” Jonathan mused from the couch a half hour later.
“Meaning?” I looked up from my books on case law.
“Meaning—” he lowered his voice and glanced at the door to make sure that his pesky sense of morality would remain between the two of us “—in my opinion, a real entrepreneur is someone who makes something from nothing. Like my dad, who used all his savings to build an import business from scratch. He’s the perfect blend of an inventor and a salesman. But with Bruno, it doesn’t apply. He didn’t have to invent or sell anything. People are hardwired to want sex with ridiculously beautiful women, and to be fascinated with depravity, especially in this town. How much of an accomplishment is it when all you’re doing is essentially turning the lights on at the crack store to make it a little easier for the junkies, who were already looking to find it? Sure, he diversified into related businesses, but he never had to sell anything to anyone that they didn’t already want and kind of need.”
In order to keep some semblance of idealism alive within herself, a girl in L.A. has to search for signs of integrity in most men with the resolve of a drug-sniffing dog. Jonathan was one of the good ones, I had long since decided. And my resolution made it so much easier both to work with him and to recognize as a fact how influential in the upper echelons of the local legal community I had no doubt he would one day become.
“Okay. But he’s pretty damn proud of himself. As proud as I’m sure wife number three will be…just as soon as she turns eighteen and decides to apply for a job at his club, that is.”
“That guy doesn’t have much to be proud of.” He half laughed, turning his attention back to his work. “Take it from a junkie.”
O
KAY, SO IT’S NOT A DIRTY LITTLE SECRET IN THE
“N
O OFFICER,
I have no idea how that horse managed to dress itself up in full bondage gear and climb into a vat of Jell-O”
sense of the phrase. But still, my obsession for the horoscope section of the otherwise godawful celebrity rag,
Pucker,
always made me feel a little dirty.
So in the end it turns out that my father was right. Family is the truest testament to the concept of karma, since they always get so much farther under your skin than anybody else without even trying. And that much irritation can only have been built up over multiple lifetimes. Case in point…Even though I hadn’t spoken to her in a week or more, I was thoroughly resenting my mother’s potential satisfaction at the mere thought of my resorting to the horoscopes for advice before I had even checked my weekly copy of
Pucker,
which Cassie left for me in a very nondescript-looking envelope on her desk every Friday afternoon. She referred to the magazine as my dirty little secret because she knew that despite my vocally vehement protests to the contrary, no one at the firm would ever believe I wasn’t reading it for the celebrity gossip.
But when you live your life surrounded by celebrities, you quickly find that you have about as much interest in their love lives as you do in their opinions on your love life. Which is to say, none. Once you have seen them standing in line behind you at a Starbucks at 11:00 a.m. on a day when their stylists, hair and makeup people have presumably gone simultaneously AWOL, it’s hard to muster any real interest in who they might have woken up next to. Unless of course you’re the one that woke up next to them.
I’m far more interested in who I’m sleeping with
, I’d often told my cousin Sheila, who never believed me.
Either way, after work I headed for the parking garage, climbed into my car and locked the door behind me. As I flipped to the page containing my horoscope, a small slip of paper floated out onto my lap. Inside the slip of paper was a single peacock feather.
Of all the weird promotions,
I thought…before clicking on the light and noticing the words scribbled on the paper:
It’s shaped like an eye, get it? It’s like an amulet. Shut up and put it in your wallet! Love ya, Cassie.
Laughing, I tossed the feather and note onto the passenger seat. Then I got back to scanning
Hayley’s Horoscopes,
praying for something that might relate to me and Raj. After weeding through the useless bits about how some planet is rising in some sector of my chart, and how many years it’s been since it did that, I finally got to the specifics. But aside from a warning about unintended consequences for any capricious actions I might be considering this month, it offered up little in the way of help. So I switched to Taurus—Raj’s sign. It read in part:
Watch out for an upcoming eclipse, dear Taurus, which will occur in the second week of the month, and most likely affect your home and romance sectors. The planets are intent on misbehaving this month, making it difficult for you to be sure of the intentions of those around you. Trust me when I tell you that this disruptive influence is not only positive, but also necessary for many of you. The frenzied social calendar which will preceed the eclipse will set the stage for a much-needed examination of your romantic priorities, and those of your partner. If you’re stuck in a romantic rut, cosmic AAA is already on the way! If your partner has been misbehaving, it might be time to trade them in once and for all. Keep reminding yourself that, while things may start out difficult, they will soon begin moving in the right direction, and you will find your love life in far better shape than ever before.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. If the universe and Hayley were conspiring to pull Raj and I apart, then they weren’t gonna get us without a fight. I dropped the magazine, shifted into Reverse and slammed on the gas…only to have to jam down the brakes a split second later when an angry woman in a fast-moving SUV honked me back into the moment before zooming by in my rearview mirror. Had I hesitated, I would definitely have slammed into her driver’s side. I held a hand to my chest and hung my head to try and regain equilibrium. After catching my breath, I opened my eyes to fixate on the peacock feather watching me from the leather seat beside mine. Feeling like a child who’d decided to run away from home to her tree house on the night of the biggest snowstorm of the year, I looked both ways, sighed and reached for the feather. Folding it into three pieces, I tucked the feather inside my wallet, fastened my seat belt, and then ever so timidly backed my car out of the space.
“That torso is not a toy!”
someone yelled at me through the phone at roughly 8:00 a.m. the following morning.
Sliding my Sleepy Time terry cloth mask away from my eyes to let in his voice along with the ambient light I replied: “Excuse me?”
“Is this Monica from Steel Associates?” a person who sounded a lot like an English butler asked, and then spoke to someone else,
“How did she get a hold of a mannequin inside the dressing room?”
“Maybe,” I replied, fearing the worst.
“My name is Arthur Wood, and I am the Director of Private Client Services at Barneys New York in Beverly Hills…
Madam, please refrain from abusing my staff!
…and your client, one Mrs. Lydia Johnson, has caused a bit of a situation at our store this morning.”
“A situation?” I sat up, picturing her trying to set the place on fire, and wondering what that might have to do with me.
“Yes, let’s call it that. And we do not have the means to sedate her without calling the police, which I am sure you understand would alert the media. You are the only person she is willing to speak with. She has barricaded herself inside of a dressing room, and…
Stop that immediately! Mrs. Johnson!….
She just threw an iced coffee at my sales associate’s head, soiling an entire rack of two-thousand-dollar
Badgley Mischka
gowns in the process! Look here, we are accustomed to accommodating the wealthy and…err…particular, but this abuse has simply gone too far. I will have to insist that you or someone from her team come here and collect her
immediately!
”
Less than twenty minutes later I was tossing my keys at the valet and being ushered in via the secret entrance reserved for the uber-important at Barneys off of Rodeo Drive. As a courtesy to the rich and truly bratty, high-end Beverly Hills retailers routinely arranged private shopping hours during which “Special Clients” could browse their stores in peace. It was a perk intended to spare certain clientele from the prying eyes of paparazzi, who could make millions just by reporting their bra sizes or affinities for brand names which they might not officially be endorsing that season. The retailers’ return on this effort, of course, was the insane amount of money that celebrities would drop in their stores in a single visit. But Lydia’s psychosis was too much to take, even for them, and now it was my problem.
Awesome.
Lydia, it seems, had called Mr. Wood frantically at 7:00 a.m. that morning to demand a visit to the jewelry department in preparation for a public appearance later that evening. When she arrived, she was belligerent. She insisted on donning numerous precious necklaces and rings at the same time, and then she started sobbing uncontrollably, refusing to take them off. Gasping through the tears, Lydia had suddenly become completely paranoid. She darted up the escalators toward the second floor, keeping the salesgirls at bay with creative sword work from the pointy end of a hat rack she had swiped along the way.
“She’s run out of things to throw at us,” Wood explained, smoothing his hair back as we hustled to the dressing room. “And at least her yelling has finally subsided. Perhaps she lost her voice. Still, we are meant to open to the public in a little over an hour, and we need her out of here before we can begin the damage control. Can you manage that?”
“I’ll try, Mr. Wood, but with all due respect, she’s not my child.” I did my best to stare past his upturned nose and into his eyes. “We all work for them, don’t we?”
“I suppose we do.” He unclenched and patted my arm. “Mind yourself in there, Madam. And let me know if there is anything else you’ll require. She’s already sent one of my salesgirls to hospital for some stitches across the forehead.”
I paused to consider whether Lydia’s retainer with Steel covered emotionally fueled assault.
“It was the new golden-snakeskin, four-inch Versace stiletto,” he said before looking away. “She had about as much chance as any top model’s personal assistant during detox.”
“I thought she was just having a tantrum,” I said. “I didn’t realize she hurt anyone. I’m so sorry.”
“As am I. Three inches to the left and that heel would have caught me in the eye,” he thought aloud. “No matter. There are at least fifty plastic surgeons within ten miles…We won’t be pressing charges.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “But we will be expecting Mrs. Johnson to take advantage of our personal shoppers in advance of her next album release, so that she may remain off-site.”
“That seems reasonable.”
“Well, then, I’ll leave you to it.”
I grabbed a white silk scarf from a nearby Hermès display, walked lightly toward her dressing room, braced myself and put my ear to the floor.
“Don’t shoot, Lydia.” I waved the scarf under the door in an attempt to make her smile. “It’s Monica. If you’re willing to let the jewelry go unharmed, I’ll promise to talk to the D.A. about sparing you jail time. I’ve negotiated lots of hostage situations before, and I know that we can work this out.”
A sniffle, but no reply.
“Lydia?” I said a little louder. “Lydia, I’m coming in there unless you can give me a good reason why I shouldn’t.”
These were the more interesting moments of my job, and sometimes I wished I could have shared them with people outside of the firm. Because who would’ve believed that belly-crawling underneath the door of a changing room in the DKNY section of Barneys Beverly Hills before the rest of L.A. awakened on a Saturday morning had anything whatsoever to do with the practice of law?
I slithered over the plush carpeting (which was far softer than any sweater I owned) and into the cubicle (which was larger than my bedroom). Lydia was sitting on the floor cross-legged opposite the mirror, absentmindedly examining her split ends. Her hair made mine (which had not yet been brushed) look professionally done; however, her teal-green Juicy Couture track-suit had seen better days, and she was in truly desperate need of a facial. Or Proactiv. Or a vat of cover-up.
Imagine how much money I could make right now with just one snap of my camera-phone,
I thought, cursing my morals to hell.
Clinging to her wrists, neck and ears were at least three million dollars worth of emeralds, diamonds and pearls in necklace, choker, bracelet, ring and chandelier earring form. There was even a pearl-encrusted tiara threatening to slide off her head. Over years of working with people surrounded by yes-men, I had learned that the best way to get them to do something was to let them talk first. So I sat up, settled in beside her, folded my hands in my lap and waited.
“When I was fifteen, my boyfriend Angelo Damiano gave me a necklace for our one-month anniversary,” she began a few seconds later, while fingering the emeralds imbedded in a platinum, chain-link bracelet on her wrist. “It had this one really tiny emerald hanging at the bottom of a
mad-thin
five-carat gold chain. I swear I had to use a magnifying glass to find it. And it was probably just a chip of green glass, anyways. But it was the most beautiful thing in the world to me back then. I never took it off. I even slept with it on.”
“Lydia,” I pleaded, covering her hand with my own. “Things will get better. You had a fight, right?”
“You don’t get it.” She shook her head. “I trusted Angelo. I believed in my man back then. No question. It was me and him against the world. Things was simple. I miss that.”
“So this is about your high school boyfriend?”
“It’s about Cameron. I know he’s cheating on me, Monica. I just know it.” She stood up and confronted herself in the mirror. “But the messed-up part is that I don’t know if I really know it, because everybody has somethin’ to say. They all want to put in their two cents. And the media just wants to rip us apart.”
“That’s terrible, Lydia, but it’s also a fact of public life.” I borrowed a line from the boilerplate Steel Associates speech. “I’m here to help the two of you make sense of things, privately. But I still don’t understand why you’ve locked yourself in here.”
She turned to face me, her chandelier earrings shimmering at me as an echo of the gesture. “You have any idea how humiliated I am?”
“Oh, don’t even worry about that. There’s no paparazzi within five miles of the store. No one even knows you’re here, other than the staff and me.”
“It’s not that, Monica. I’m not humiliated that people will find out. I’m humiliated because I don’t even know if I trust my own instincts anymore, much less my man. There’s just too many people in this relationship, and there have been from the beginning. Me, Cam and everyone else in the world. I don’t even know who I can trust…they called my agent and my ‘best friend’ from my phone before they called you, Monica, I heard them. And they both saw my name on caller ID and didn’t even answer their phones. My divorce lawyer is the only person who would take my call. So why would I trust my own husband, or anyone else?”