At least they didn’t arrest me…

Thankfully, Chloe does get me out of this mess. She tells the “I told you so cop” that it’s her fault; she’s the one who told me to set up all the candles, etc. I think this is awfully nice of her, considering the fact that she did not tell me to leave burning candles unattended (even the matchbook had warned me about that) — and also considering the fact that she is taking my side, not her husband’s.) The annoying cop keeps asking if she’s sure she does not want to press charges. Shut up, already, I think. She’s sure, she says.  

Chloe then motions Dean over, but he refuses. I ask her if I should go apologize to him again. She says no, as he needs some time to cool off. “He’s trying to work on his anger issues,” she also throws in. I’d be angry, too, I think, if some assistant burned down some of my bedroom and my beloved Joe DiMaggio photo (or, in my case, Justin Timberlake poster (I was going through a phase)).  

Chloe says I should just get my stuff and have the rest of the day off. I say, “Happy Anniversary” again as I go to my car…  

I start my car, drive further up into the hills, pull over, and cry. I feel awful. I am a bad, bad assistant. How will Dean ever forgive me? Finally, my best friend calls, asking when I’m getting out of work. I tell her I’m out… maybe forever. I go meet her and cry some more, feeling sorry for my excuse of an assistant life… or a life of any sort, for that matter.

 * 

Later that night, Chloe texts me and asks me to meet her the next morning to “talk about everything.” Um… okay. 

I meet her at a local café, where she proceeds to lay me off. “Just temporarily,” she says with a smile. “Dean just needs some time to cool off.” (Guess last night wasn’t enough, I think to myself; and, again, I don’t blame him.) Fuck, though. I have rent to pay. I can’t borrow money from my nice, Midwest family… again. How will I even explain this to them? “Mom?… Hi… Ya know that personal assistant job I got a couple weeks ago?… Yeah, that one… Well, when I was out buying condoms for my boss… Yes… condoms… ultra ribbed… yes, I know what a condom is, Mom… Yes, I’m still going to church… No, I’m not having sex before marriage…” Um… no. Guess I need to find another job… fast.

My boss’s bedroom is on fire — and it’s MY fault

Where was I…? Right – setting my boss’s bedroom on fire. He just stands there, while his wife comes and gives me the biggest hug ever. (Maybe she’s not as bad as I had previously thought.) At the same time, my boss still just standing there like a statue, looking at his burned bed frame and once- pristine autographed Joe DiMaggio photo, firemen burst in, telling us to get the hell out of there. By this time, the sprinklers had done there job, but I guess the firemen feel they need to do their job, too. 

My boss stays with them as Chloe and I go out for some air. Cops keep coming up to me, asking a thousand and one questions at once. I am too overwhelmed to answer them (not to mention too overwhelmed with wondering how the f*** I got myself into this mess of a job in the first place). I see Dean off to the side, talking to some other cops and motioning to me every other word. Fuck. What could he possibly be telling them?! 

And, then, one of the cops comes up to me… the same one from last week, who had accused me of trying to break into my boss’s house. “First breaking and entering, now arson,” he says to me as he takes out his cuffs. WTF? I look at Dean, who just looks away, as I hear Chloe telling the cop that it isn’t how it looks, then looking at me and saying not to worry — she’ll get me out of this. (Just like she got me into this, I wonder?)

The other cop from my last criminal “incident” – the one who had warned me that this job of mine was crazy – stood to the side and gave me an “I told you so” look. Lot of good that does me now, buddy… I cannot be cuffed again… I start to move away, but it’s too late. They cuff me…

Still decorating my boss’s bedroom for sex…

So, as we learned last time, I am screwed either way – if I continue decorating my boss’s place for the surprised anniversary sex he and his wife will soon have… or if I stop decorating for a while and go buy them the condoms my boss’s wife insisted upon (so she does not get pregnant again and lose her size two figure; her words, not mine – see previous blog entries for more).  

I toss a few more rose petals on the satin sheet-covered bed, light a few more candles in addition to the others, and decide to run down to the local 7-11 for the condoms (the “ultra ribbed” ones, remember). I have exactly forty-eight minutes until their expected arrival… 

I get to the 7-11… they have sheepskin, and ribbed, and flavored… but no ultra ribbed. Damnit. The guy behind the counter suggests a neighboring 7-11 (What? Do they have less ultra ribbed sex there, I wonder?). I decide not to risk it and opt for the local Rite-Aid, instead… which isn’t exactly “local,” I might add. By the time I get there, I only have thirty-three minutes before my boss’s impending arrival… 

Luckily, Rite-Aid has everything I need – and more. I’m so relieved to have found the right condoms that I throw in a can of whipped cream, too (on me, not their petty cash). As the fifty-ish female cashier rings me up, she gives me a wink (this is the first time I get embarrassed, as I had gotten so wrapped up in my “ultra ribbed” find, I had totally forgotten what I was buying; and, unfortunately, it wasn’t even for me). I smile sheepishly, hoping she won’t tell my mom (my poor, super-Catholic mother would die).  

I get back to the house with twenty-one minutes to spare… phew. I am good, I think. That is, until I walk in to hear a loud piercing sound. It sounds like the smoke detector. Did Spring or Summer make it go off by making Smores on the stove again, I wonder (which is an obvious ploy for spoiled-rich-kids-needing-attention, by the way)? But, unlike last time (as their old assistant had told me, since the girls hadn’t tried that trick on me yet), the noise was coming from upstairs.  

I dart up the stairs, condoms and whipped cream in hand, I might add, and find the detector that’s beeping. It’s the one in the hallway. I hop up on a nearby table and start smashing it with the can of whipped cream when I see it… smoke, billowing out of the bedroom. What the… 

I jump down and am about to open the bedroom door when I suddenly have a flashback to fourth grade. Is it good – or bad – to open the door? Isn’t letting more oxygen into the room bad? But fuck it, right? This is my millionaire boss’s bedroom we’re talking about… I open the door a crack and it zooms open (the open window helped). I see ash where lovely rose petals once did lay. Black, black ash all over the place. Fuuuuuck. As well as melted red and pink candles and their wax stuck to the carpet. Great. How did they even get onto the floor? I guess the open window had something to do with it. I look at the ceiling — shouldn’t the sprinklers have gone off by now? I mean, what’s the point of having all these amenities if they’re not even going to work…?  

As I survey the room, thinking this is the coup de gras and not knowing what to do next, the overhead sprinklers start to finally work. I start laughing, looking up at them, never having envisioned taking a shower (with clothes on, no less) in my boss’s bedroom. I shake my head in disbelief – do I keep laughing, or should I start crying? Yes, I should start crying. I look at the clock – eleven minutes to go… 

“Avery, what the hell is going on?” I hear. Shit. It’s Dean. My boss. And, next to him, his wife, Chloe, who had me arrange all this stuff in the first place. Not knowing quite what to say – I wasn’t even here when the fire started, remember – I say the first thing that comes to mind. “Happy Anniversary?” I mutter in a rain-soaked-dog-that’s-just-gotten-his-muddy-footprints-all-over-the-new- carpet kind of way. They just stand there, staring at me. And, now, I really do start to cry…

Decorating my boss’s house for sex…

I wake up to my alarm and all I want to do is go back to bed. But it is after 2 p.m. now (by the time I snooze a few times) and Chloe had texted me to start arranging everything by 3. 

I start to remove the flowers from my tub. I put on more Band-Aids from the damn rose thorns than you can imagine (I even had to run to the corner store to buy more). I make twenty-six trips from my bathtub to my car (yes, you read that correctly – twenty-six).

Finally, at almost 4 p.m., I arrive at my boss’s house. (Transferring flowers from my tub to my car takes longer than you’d think.) Chloe has whisked Dean away, so I am free to decorate their house with rose petals and azaleas for the next two hours.  

She tells me to look in her lingerie drawer (the third drawer from the bottom in her second (of three) walk-in closets) for a detailed list of where to toss each petal. I don’t know what’s weirder – setting the scene for my boss’s night of sex with his wife… or going into my boss’s wife’s lingerie drawer (and with her prompting, no less). But I do as I’m told and find all kinds of contraptions in there (like leather bras – how do you even get that on – or keep it on; it seems so uncomfortable – and those fur-trimmed handcuffs you see in the window at Hustler but wonder who actually buys them; now we know). Does she do this kind of stuff (like when she pulled down her underwear the other day, remember?!) just to get a reaction from me? Hmm.  

I turn on the stereo and drag all the flowers inside, oblivious to the puddles of water from the melted ice that trail my every move around the house. It’s like I am in Hansel and Gretel and the drops of water are my breadcrumbs; only, this fairytale is much, much worse.  

About forty-five minutes into decorating their bedroom and Jacuzzi tub with flowers and candles (she left a bunch of these in her lingerie drawer, too), I get an urgent text from Chloe, asking me if I got the condoms. Shit. I forgot… I guess I should leave and run down the street for them, although she wanted me to leave the candles burning for at least at hour, so their scent would be fragrant enough by the time they get home – and I haven’t even lit them yet (and I am running behind, due to all my alarm-clock snoozing before).

So I light a few candles as I debate whether to get the condoms now… or finish “decorating” first (which, oddly enough, is kind of fun; I start to wonder if I could quit this personal assistant job and become a “sex decorator,” instead). If I am gone too long and they come back early, before I’m finished decorating, I am screwed… and if I do finish decorating and they get back early to screw sans condoms, I am screwed… Hmm… Any thoughts?

I GUESS buying flowers is “personal”…

If you’ve been reading my blog regularly, you know that I’m a personal assistant to a TV producer/director (Dean) in the great (or not-so-great) land of Hollywood. Only, today, his wife (Chloe), is my boss, not him. (Who knows where he is…) The below is a continuation from last week…

Chloe just texted me about the flowers: tulips, roses, azaleas, and poppies (“If you can find them”). She wants all red and pink; how cliché. She wants me to get at the flower mart at 6 a.m., but how will she know if I’m late? I’m not supposed to be at their house ‘til ten, so I decide to sleep in. Besides, after yesterday, I deserve it, right?… Absolutely.   I finally get up a bit after seven and head downtown. If you’ve never been to downtown L.A., you’re not missing anything… except a lot of weird people selling drugs as I get out of my car, double – then triple – check that I locked my car doors. Then, paranoid, I decide to park someplace else, perhaps on a street where I won’t be bothered by drug dealers selling “candy” and “X” before eight a.m. This takes over forty-five minutes… It is about eight when I finally enter the flower mart – and it is amazing. Any kind of flower you could possibly want to put in a vase (or Jacuzzi, as is Chloe’s preference) is there. I am in awe… and then Chloe calls. Do I answer? I should have been done by now… I decide I don’t want her to hear the ambient noise around me and let my voicemail get it.  She leaves a message saying that I probably went back to bed (and that she doesn’t blame me) and hopes the flower-buying went well and that I should not come to the house until after 2 p.m. WTF? This is great, yet not – WTF am I going to do with all these flowers? But let’s look at the bright side — at least she didn’t find out I hadn’t even bought them yet… I go back in and start picking out different bunches of flowers from my list… To spend five hundred dollars means a LOT of flowers. How am I even going to get them all back to my car? Hmm. I have about two hundred dollars’ worth when I learn that they have no more pink tulips… or red roses. This must be some kind of joke, I think. “You should have come at six,” a male Chinese vendor tells me in his broken English. “But—“ I start. “Six o’clock,” he says again. FUCCCCCCCK. Now what? “How about yellow?” he says. Last time I checked, yellow is nowhere near red, so I say no. He tells me to come back tomorrow for red ones. I say tomorrow is too late, cursing myself for having slept in. “Just tell them we ran out,” he says. If I had a normal boss – or boss’s wife, in this case – this would be a viable option. But it’s not.  I walk around, seeing if any of the red and pink flowers left even resemble roses or tulips… Nope. Shit.   A nearby vendor, after trying to talk me into getting fuscia roses – you know, the spray-painted, bad Vegas wedding kind – finally makes me a list of local flower shops to go to for red roses. I buy the $267.39 worth of tulips, roses, and azaleas I did get and go on my way. I stumble around the streets, trying to remember where I parked (guess I didn’t have enough coffee). I swat the drug dealers away with my bouquets, saying, “No, I don’t want any ‘X,’” far too many times for the early morning hour that it is.    I drop off the flowers in my 100-degree car and head to the barely legible flower shops on my list… Two hours later, I have gone to ELEVEN shops. Holy fuck, am I tired.  I add the $232.61 worth to my car and call it a morning. A few of the flowers from the mart look like they’re in bad shape, but maybe I can do some botanical CPR on them later. It’s a little after 10 a.m. now and I have nearly four hours before I need to be at my boss’s house. What’s a girl with a backseatful and trunkful of flowers to do? Should I buy coolers and ice them? But I don’t have any money left for coolers. Why didn’t I think of this yesterday? I’m sure Chloe and Dean have more than enough coolers in one of their five garages… I stop for some jugs of Arrowhead and a pair of scissors. I make makeshift vases for the wilting flowers, positioning the bottles carefully in my backseat, lest they spill. I then race home - as though I am racing to the E.R. to save these poor tulips’ lives - and decide to do what any economically conscious person would do… I take them to my apartment’s bathtub. Only, I get home to find the elevator out of order. Are you f’in kidding me?  I go downstairs. As I start to remove the flowers, I realize the backseat of my car is soaked (guess my vases weren’t so good, after all). I make over a dozen trips up four flights of stairs to my bathtub, dropping off armful after armful, cutting my fingers on dozens of roses in the process. At this point, I want to lie down in the bathtub with the flowers. I then realize I forgot the ice. Fuck and double fuck. Shit. I tell them to hang on for their lives and leave again…  

I get home with two dozen bags of ice, ten pounds each (I couldn’t imagine carrying the twenty-pound ones up all my flights of stairs). I ice the flowers, add some cold water, and take pictures of the insanity that has become my poor bathtub. It is about noon now, so I set my alarm and go lie down. And, just think, I get to do this all again in a couple hours when I take them to my boss’s house…