They're Not Your Friends Read online

  Mike squeezed his eyes shut and forgot about health and happiness and prayed for California. If they moved to California, everything would be better. “California,” he’d whisper, clenching his hands together. But instead of a transfer, his father eventually had a heart attack and died. Mike always believed it was his fault—he had prayed for California instead of his father’s health.

  Soon Mike became too cynical to pray for anything. But now, as he stood out in front of the citadel he had striven to breach for most of his organized, goal-oriented life, his thoughts turned to this forgotten prayer. Perhaps it was time to veer off course and follow the scent of citrus and jasmine and the rustling of palm trees. The dreams of his youth, before he became practical.

  He and Mr. Cat would pack it up and head out to Los Angeles. A friend of a friend who worked at Personality’s New York bureau told him the L.A. bureau was hiring. He could get a job there easily, the friend assured him.

  So he crammed his life into luggage—his clothes, his computer, his portfolio of articles—the whole time keeping one ear cocked to the phone, hoping for a last-minute job offer or Liz’s change of heart. He called his cousin, Pete, who needed a place to live, and persuaded him to take over his yearlong lease. A few days later, he and Pete stuffed his beat-up Saab 900. Mike would have to drive with his head tilted.

  There was no room for Mr. Cat.

  And Mike knew that even if there were room for the frail, albino, old man of a cat with horribly matted fur, he probably couldn’t survive the journey. It wouldn’t be fair. Mike scanned his friendships to determine the appropriate place to leave Mr. Cat but came up empty. Mr. Cat was too frail, too nervous for his slacker friends who still thought they were in college. There was only one person who would be appropriate: Liz.

  Just days ago, after they broke up, they had fought over Mr. Cat. Mike argued that the feline was technically HIS because it lived in HIS apartment. Liz said that maybe he had forgotten, but she had fed and brushed him and changed his litter box. Mr. Cat rubbed up against Liz’s legs, not his. Mr. Cat meowed for Liz, not him. She was right, Mike knew. He couldn’t even remember changing the litter box. But if she were leaving him for someone else, at least Mike would get the cat. He didn’t relent.

  “I had Mr. Cat at my place. He’s mine. You can have supervised visitation,” he had choked out before she slammed the door.

  He said good-bye to Pete, propped Mr. Cat on his lap, and drove to Liz’s redbrick apartment building on Bank Street. Mr. Cat purred quietly as Mike petted his warm, pear-shaped head. Mike felt his throat closing up on him and he breathed deeply. Don’t get emotional. It’s only a fucking cat. He had only wanted it because Liz had wanted it.

  He carried Mr. Cat up the three flights to Liz’s apartment. He concentrated on his legs climbing the stairs, the smell of lamb cooking in someone’s apartment, a scratchy Muddy Waters record on a stereo. He knocked on her door, an idiot’s smile plastered on his face. A guy opened it. “Huh,” Mike said, his smile abandoning him as he leaned back to check the apartment number. “Did Liz move?”

  “Ah, no.” The guy stuck out his hand. “I’m Kyle.”

  “HI, MIKE,” LIZ said. Then her eyes filled with excitement. “Mr. Cat!” She picked him out of Mike’s arms and nuzzled him.

  Mike felt as if all the oxygen had been punched out of him. “Mr. Cat is having difficulty adapting to my late-night bacchanalia. He’s asked for a more stable environment.”

  She laughed, then studied him.

  Mike sighed. “I’m moving to California and I don’t think Mr. Cat could handle the trip. I was wondering if you’d take him.”

  “Mr. Cat? Of course, of course. California?”

  “Yeah,” he said. His eyes locked with hers, waiting, but she stared back at him silently, her eyes welling with tears. And he flashed back to that night, a few months ago, when they heard an anorexic Mr. Cat crying in an alleyway. Even though the feline had black rings around its eyes, ratty fur, and fleas, the woman who had decided she didn’t love Mike picked Mr. Cat up and stroked his filthy fur.

  The memory was enough, and Mike’s eyes rimmed with tears. He concentrated on palm trees, beaches, orange groves, Hollywood parties. He wished Liz had been cruel or evil, but she had only been honest. She was in love with someone else. A straggly-looking guy with a wispy goatee. Another stray. He didn’t look like much, but at least he didn’t have Mike’s problem. And who could blame her? Would he have stuck around?

  Tears slipped out of his eyes and he shut them and pressed on his lids, trying to squeeze out the remaining drops. He wiped his face with the back of a hand.

  “I’m sorry, Mike. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  “I’m just going to miss that stupid cat.” Mike swatted the air with his hands. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got a long drive ahead of me.” He petted Mr. Cat’s sunken cheeks. “You take care, Mr. Cat,” he whispered. “I’ll miss you.” He kissed the top of Mr. Cat’s head.

  “I’ll take good care of him, Mike.”

  “I know. I know. I’ll send you a postcard.”

  California

  ADYKD2♥

  CHAPTER 4

  LOTTIE LOVE NEEDED HER OWN PLACE. DESPERATELY. SHE WAS almost twenty-three and sharing a semi-beach-adjacent apartment with an angry lesbian who wore a piercing that looked like a doorknob dangling from her chin.

  “Your insane sponsor called again. Will you please tell her to get a fucking life?” her roommate sneered before slamming the front door to head to her inferior job as a production assistant on a movie with absolutely no one in it. So much for finding compatibility through roommatesearch.com.

  Lottie had had six roommates during a two-year stint in her Santa Monica apartment. It wasn’t her—it was them. Even though her therapist—a lipless, pinheaded woman with tiny teeth and huge gums—said Lottie had a classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality that prevented her from having close friends, Lottie knew better.

  “Why do you think you fluctuate from being charming and likable to being this other person intent on scaring people away? Is it your fear of intimacy?” Lipless asked her again and again.

  Lipless was originally from somewhere in Middle America—Ohio or Iowa or Oklahoma, a place that began with a vowel—so she didn’t understand. Los Angelenos are whimsical. People come and go—it’s just the nature of the place. Kim, Roommate #1 and a good college friend, returned to Seattle after a year of auditions and no work. She’s now teaching kindergarten. Rene, #2, became last year’s January Playboy cover and moved into the mansion. Lottie saw her clutching Hef’s arm—along with five other Marilyn Monroe wannabes—on the red carpet at the Oscars.

  Okay, so Roommate #3 was a problem. But Lottie and Julie should never have lived together. Julie grew up with tons of siblings. They vacationed on kibbutzim. So she thought nothing of rummaging through Lottie’s closet and stretching out her microminis and spandex camisoles or raiding the fridge and devouring Lottie’s yogurts and low-fat string cheeses and Diet Cokes. As an only child, Lottie had never learned how to share. She’d write her name with a black marker on her food. She’d hide her clothes under the bed. It didn’t matter. Julie would sit at the kitchen table dripping Lottie Love’s Dannon Lite onto Lottie Love’s Fred Segal tube top. After three months, Lottie couldn’t take it anymore.

  “I so hate to do this, but Tyler and I are going to try living together,” she told Julie.

  So Roommate #4 was her boyfriend, Tyler. They moved in together, after dating for three months, for all the wrong reasons (the departure of #3, the need to pay the rent, his nine-inch personality). Tyler, a director’s assistant, was a complete slob. He never washed a dish, never took out the garbage, and never cleaned the toilet seat.

  “I can’t help it if I take atomic dumps,” he’d say proudly.

  She dumped him after a week.

  Lottie lived on her own for two months before a vacant checking account mandated Roommate #5. Lottie had met Brook
e at Pilates. One day, during fruit smoothies at Jamba Juice, Brooke mentioned that she needed a place to live. Lottie thought it was karma.

  “I couldn’t need a roommate more,” Lottie said.

  “I need to tell you something about myself. I hope you’re cool with it.” Brooke studied her for a few seconds. “I’m born again.”

  Lottie thought about this and smiled. How nonthreatening, she decided. She’d never have to worry about Brooke stealing a boyfriend or binging and vomiting all over the carpeting.

  “I’m so fine with it—as long as you’re completely fine with the fact that I couldn’t be farther from being born again. I’m so like unborn in the worst sense of the word.”

  Brooke said she was fine with it, as long as Lottie didn’t mind if she occasionally had some friends over to talk about religion. But soon Brooke started using their pad as Conversion Central. Sunday was Bible Study. Monday was the meeting for WAWOC—Women as Witnesses of Christ. Tuesday was Salvation Testimony night. Wednesday was Coffee and Fellowship night.

  It didn’t bother Lottie. She was usually out covering events for Personality anyway, so she rarely had any interface. Even when she was around, she found the meetings kind of entertaining. There was always plenty of drama. And she learned that most born-agains—at least in L.A.—had really sordid pasts, so there were some great stories, full of kink and drugs. It didn’t even bother Lottie when Brooke tried to convert her. “Your life is meaningless and empty,” she’d say.

  “And I couldn’t be happier about it,” Lottie said. “You guys always seem to be crying.”

  “That’s only on Salvation Testimony night.”

  But then after one Bible Study night, Lottie walked in on Brooke screwing Lottie’s latest boyfriend. “I thought sex before marriage was illegal for you guys,” Lottie yelled.

  “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

  “Well, get your weak flesh outta here.”

  “Accept Christ as your personal savior and forgive.”

  That night she went online and found #6, a man-hating lesbian who spent all her free time watching the Food Network because she got horny watching women cook.

  Lottie decided to stay out of the kitchen.

  SO THERE. NONE of it was really Lottie’s fault.

  Lipless didn’t understand any of this. Instead she suggested that Lottie come more than once a week. “We need to begin intensive therapy and figure out what’s at the core of Charlotte Love’s personality fluctuations.”

  “Lottie.”

  Lottie understood the real reason Lipless wanted to see Lottie more often. The woman hadn’t been laid in decades and Lottie’s recent exploits aroused her. She wanted to know all the details about Lottie’s job and the recent side benefits. Lottie imagined her therapist enjoyed telling friends, “I’m counseling someone who fucked Marlon Lang.” To Lipless, Lottie was better than any soap opera.

  Lipless lowered her half-glasses and stared at Lottie through eyes that were red rimmed from fatigue after too many years of listening to people’s problems. “Perhaps you should reevaluate the qualities you’re looking for in a man. Don’t you want someone who’s kind, sensitive, sharing? Don’t you want someone who doesn’t just take and take? Being with a celebrity should not be enough for you.”

  Lottie smiled weakly and nodded her head, making a note that this was it with this moron. She couldn’t imagine being with anyone but a celebrity. She’d be better off saving her cash for her own apartment instead of wasting it on this useless therapy. Then she could scream, “YOU’RE NUMBER ONE” at the top of her lungs without a roommate pounding on her wall and cursing her out and telling her the next day that not every guy she bangs can be number one. What does a doorknob-wearing diesel dyke know anyway?

  Besides, Marlon Lang really was number one. Lottie’s could still feel adrenaline coursing through her body when she woke up after her first night with Marlon.

  “So do you think you got good enough quotes from me? When’s the photo shoot? If I sound stupid, make the grammar right,” Marlon said as he uncoiled himself from Lottie and the sheets.

  “Sure, but I may need to interview you some more,” Lottie said, narrowing her eyes at Marlon as he emerged from the bed, naked and buff.

  Marlon raised his eyebrows and smirked. “I have a lot more to say. Big things. Really big things.”

  “Oh, I know. I’m still aching from all the big things you told me last night.”

  “Do you think all the big things I had to say could get me on the cover of Personality?”

  “It’s possible. But I might have to hear some more big things first,” Lottie said, surprised by her boldness. “My editor really trusts my instincts? I’m like so about to be promoted to an ABC—that’s associate bureau chief, which is like lit-rully unheard of for someone my age. I’ll talk to him today and tell him I think you’re the Next Big Thing. I’m sure that will be enough to convince him. I like practically run that magazine.”

  Marlon grinned at her. “We’ll do something again, soon,” he said. “We have so much to, well, discuss.”

  He handed her a piece of paper with a cell phone number on it. Lottie smiled. Another card in her pink Rolodex.

  MARLON CALLED THE next day. On their first official date, they ate at Katana (Ryan Seacreast stopped by to say hi) and drank at Sky Bar. They were whisked inside without waiting on lines. They were given a quiet table with an obsequious server. A hushed, reverent silence followed them, it seemed. “That’s Marlon Lang,” she heard them murmur, adding, “Who is she? An actress, probably.” Cameras flashed at them. “Marlon, over here, over here,” paparazzi yelled. “Come on, Mr. Lang, just a flash of those pearly whites, over here.”

  Lottie loved every minute of it. She felt as though she had accomplished something wonderful, although she didn’t know what it was. No matter, the light was on her. People noticed her. She was having more fun than she had ever imagined.

  But then Blind Love and Other Handicaps flopped. Marlon’s acting was called “wooden and painful.” “I’d rather watch paint dry than Marlon Lang act, because at least paint eventually dries—but Marlon Lang will never be able to act,” the L.A. Times said.

  “What do the critics know? They are all actor wannabes,” Lottie said. “Did you ever read the reviews Marlon Brando got when he first started out? It makes your stuff sound like praise.”

  Lottie made this up. She had no idea what they had said about Brando. But Marlon was inconsolable. He smashed his fist into a plaster wall at Lottie’s apartment. He picked up a wooden chair, lifted it over his head, and hurled it to the floor. It exploded into a pile of splinters. She cringed. It was her roommate’s.

  “You want to know the truth? Do you? I’m not named after Marlon Brando.”

  “Of course you are, everyone knows that. I even read it in the L.A. Times.”

  “I made it all up. My real name is Arthur. Arthur fucking Mooney. Can you believe it? Maybe someone with a name like Artie Mooney should be a carpenter or a cabdriver. It’s so ordinary. Artie. Little Artie Mooney with the asthma and the lisp. I thought I could show them all. Instead, I’m ‘wooden.’ I’m ‘painful to watch.’ I’m the laughingstock of Hollywood. One reviewer said I was as believable as Lassie playing Jesus Christ.”

  Marlon stared at Lottie as if suddenly remembering she was there. “Lottie, you’ve got to swear that you’ll never tell anyone my real name. You better promise. Promise?”

  “I so promise.”

  The next day, Lottie turned in a story on Marlon, the Next Big Thing. But it didn’t matter; Vince wasn’t interested.

  “I admire your ambition, Lottie. But you’ve got to learn how to manage your time better. This guy doesn’t seem to have staying power. He’s just a flash in the pan. When you’re in the business as long as I’ve been, you get these instincts. But hold on to your notes. If he dies of an overdose one day, you’ll be in charge of the reporting.”

  That night Lottie cooked Mar
lon linguine with clam sauce, but all through dinner she kept hearing Vince’s voice.

  Flash in the pan. Flash in the pan.

  She didn’t expect to feel this way. She thought she’d be able to console him. Instead, she couldn’t imagine having sex with him. How could she tell him he’s Number One when his movie didn’t even register at the box office? She hated herself for being so shallow. But she grew up knowing about the other side—where the light of Hollywood didn’t reach. And she didn’t want to regress.

  Clam sauce dripped down Marlon’s chin—a look that just yesterday Lottie would have found endearing, but today it repulsed her. He chewed with his mouth open, his tongue coated in a paste of linguini and saliva.

  Flash in the pan.

  “So when’s the article coming out?”

  Lottie squeezed her eyes shut.

  Flash in the pan.

  “What is it?”

  Lottie kept her eyes closed while she tightly gripped the chair arms. “They’re not going to run the article.” She flinched, as if staving off a blow.

  “Huh?” Linguine flew out of Marlon’s mouth.

  “My editor said he wanted to wait for your. . . well, next, umm, mov. . . ie. Then he’ll run something on you.”

  Marlon stood up, grabbed his bowl of linguine and slammed it against the wall. Damn. Her roommate’s bowl. Pieces of noodle stuck to the wall and shards of china were everywhere. “Even you don’t believe in me. I thought you thought I was this great actor. Number One.”

  “I do. It so wasn’t my decision. It’s my editor’s. I have nothing to do with it.”

  Marlon tugged a fistful of his greasy hair. “You probably told him that my name wasn’t even Marlon.”

  Arthur “Marlon Lang” Mooney grabbed his leather jacket from the back of his chair and headed to the door.

  “Don’t go,” Lottie said, but her voice sounded flat and unconvincing even to her.

  Marlon turned toward Lottie, his face red and his temples pulsating. “How can I be wiff thumbone who doethenth think I’m great?” He shook his head violently and saliva slid out the sides of his mouth. He walked out the front door, slamming it shut.