“Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow”

After the photo shoot, my next task was to go develop all the pictures at a one-hour place, so she could look through them over the weekend. Guess how many pictures there were… eight-five? A hundred and fifty? Three-hundred and eighty-seven! Luckily, digital cameras are around; can you imagine what a waste of film that would have been otherwise? (I know this sounds mean, but come on; 387 pictures?!) I get the 387, 4”x6” photos developed and hand them off to Chloe; she looks happier than I’d ever seen her. She tells me she’ll see me Monday morning.

On Monday, she hands me her favorite fifty three. Yes, only fifty-three. She wants 8 ½” x 11” ones made of these, “So I can decide which one I like the best,” she says. The rest, she wants me to make a collage of, get framed, and put up in the office she and I share. So if we subtract fifty-three from three hundred and eighty-seven, we get three-hundred and thirty-four pictures… of herself. I laugh to myself (and only myself) and do as I am told…

The framing of all the snapshots alone costs nearly a thousand dollars. I love how people spend oodles of other peoples’ money. Such insanity. Her poor husband. And she hasn’t had an audition in weeks… She sends me to the grocery store (for everything from sugar-free ice cream to organic chives) as she goes through the fifty-three headshots with the magnifying thingy she insisted I buy for her, just like the ones real photographers use.

I come back to find that she has chosen her ten favorite photos (after telling me how difficult it was to choose). One of them is the photo where she’s hanging upside-down from the monkey bars, remember? (Combine how funny that is, in and of itself, with her ridiculous-looking hair extensions, and you’ve got a real winner. By the way, I should mention that her hair extensions have not gotten any better looking since last week; she still looks like a drag queen… I suppose wearing less make-up would help remedy this, but that’s a whole other blog entry.)

Then she tells me that she has a new project ready for me. (Yippee!) She wants me to make fifty, 4”x6” photos of each picture and use them as postcard invitations for a party she’s having… for her new hair. Yes, she wants to have a “Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow” party, complete with my writing that in calligraphy on every invite. I can’t wait… I remind myself it’s better than buying her and Dean condoms… and better than accidentally setting their bedroom on fire… and leave with the stack of pictures in an envelope under my arm.

The eighty-thousand dollar hair…

I quickly got back into the plank pose… or tried to, at least. “Fake it ‘til you make it” kept running through my head as I tried to balance the best I could. “Um… okay,” I said in response to Chloe telling me I would be her assistant for a while. “I have a million and one things to do today,” she said, “so you can have the day off.” I drove here for this, I wondered? I immediately lost my pose again and fell face-down into the grass again.  

I stood up, wiping the random strands of grass and dirt from my face. I wanted to say, “Are you sure?” but I reminded myself that when you offer something to someone, there’s a chance they will take you up on it. And the truth was, I wanted another day off. “Okay, thanks,” I said as I started to walk back to my car. “See you tomorrow at seven,” she said. But tomorrow’s Saturday… Already, this doesn’t look good… And I know, I know… you all warned me… 

* 

The next morning, I meet Chloe at seven-fucking-o’clock in the morning. I know I should have questioned it, but a job is a job (and I was too young and naïve then to know how to say no to people in the ‘biz, for fear of getting fired; which, again, I know would have been better than getting up at dawn on a Saturday). 

She texted me to meet her at some French-sounding hair salon. Okay. They weren’t even open; a janitress let me in. “Avery, there you are!” she exclaimed. She was sitting in a chair, getting her short hair shampooed. What am I doing here?!

“Do you like my hair, Avery?” What?? “Yeah,” I say. WTF am I supposed to say to that? And, even if I don’t, how do I tell her that? “How ‘bout on a scale of one to ten?” she says. For Pete’s sake, I think. This is absurd. “It’s super cute,” I say. “I really don’t like rating things, but I’d say a nine-and-a-half for sure.” I can’t believe I’m even having this discussion… no less, at SEVEN FUCKING A.M. 

“Well, I’m about to make it above a ten,” she says. Then, as if on cue, the shampoo girl stops shampooing and her hairdresser walks in, holding long strands of blonde hair. Down-to-your-waist long. I jump back a bit, wondering why he has someone’s hair in his hand without the someone. It’s not a wig, though it’s definitely hair. “Italian,” he says in his French accent. “Feel.” He holds the hair out to me.  

I just look at it. It’s like someone asking me to pet their cute little kitten… but I find this kitten really gross. Repulsive. Chloe gives me a look, insisting I feel it. I do. “Nice,” I say. “Raphael, let me,” she says. He brings the hair over to Chloe, where she pets it like the kitten it should be. She is much more excited about this than I. Is she on drugs? If not, maybe she should be. 

“They’re Italian extensions,” Chloe says. How do they differ from American ones? “Dean’s always liked long hair, but he’s never seen me with it, so I decided to get these and surprise him. Why wait?” Yeah, I think to myself. Why wait? Why be like a normal person who does wait for their hair to grow out? 

Then Jacques, Raphael’s right-hand man, comes out, holding extensions in a more reddish color. “The strawberry, madame,” he says, holding them out to Chloe. She proceeds to pet them, too, and wants me to, as well. I try not to roll my eyes as I pet… If only my friends could see me now… living out my Hollywood dream… 

During the petting zoo (a zoo in so many ways), Chloe continually asks me which strands I like best, and I tell her (which basically means agreeing with her, as she has a way of making you do so and downplaying everything you say until you see things her way). She decides to go with the strawberry blonde ones. Horray! (Meaning, I could care less; I still resent that she can’t just wait for her hair to grow out. Besides, don’t extensions always look fake, anyway?! I mean, everyone’s going to know her hair didn’t grow down to her butt overnight.) 

I spend the next several hours (far too many to keep track of) watching Jacque and Raphael and a team of other people extend Chloe’s hair. I read every hair magazine (twice). I go get her lunch at the café next door. I return, read all the magazines again. I know I nod off a few times, too, but luckily the magazines were a good buffer between my closed eyes and Chloe’s open ones.  

When it’s all done, I see Chloe gloating in the mirror, loving her new look. I, on the other hand, am horrified: she looks like a drag queen. I am sure I cannot tell her this… It looks like she’s wearing a wig a man would wear on Halloween in West Hollywood. How much did this procedure cost Chloe, again? Fortunately (or unfortunately, as the case will soon be), I soon find out: $80,000. $80,000?!?! She could have paid off my student loans… and then re-enrolled me in college again. I am going to be sick… 

The next few days are spent with Chloe posing all over the yard, my taking pictures of her and her new hair. In one, she draped herself over the Jacuzzi… another, she hung upside-down from the girls’ monkey bars (I was surprised she’s so flexible at her age; must be all the yoga). She had turned into the model she had never quite become (at least not for a living, even though she claimed she used to be a model in Utah… hmm).  

Between flashes once, Dean walked through the yard on his way inside. Chloe screamed out for him not to look yet. He didn’t, but he and I exchanged a look — and I thought he even smiled. This is the first contact we’d had since the fire. Better a glance than nothing, right? He gave me a thumbs-up and kept going until he got into the house and never looked back. I wish I could follow him, then exit the front door and drive off, back to the Midwest. But I didn’t.  

I’m still thinking about the eighty-thousand dollar hair… the hair that brings a whole new meaning to “bad hair day” and all the bad hair days that lie ahead for Chloe… and for me, to have to look at it. And I wonder how “surprised” Dean will be…

Promoted… or demoted??

As much as I hated to go back, about fifteen minutes later, I found myself driving over to Dean and Chloe’s house. I’ll see what they have to say, I thought… and maybe make some ground rules as to what I will and will not do as part of this job anymore (assuming they are taking me back). Or maybe I should just quit… life is too short for the crap they want me to do, right?? In between picking Spring and Summer up from school and getting berated from the other moms about their inappropriate outfits… buying my boss’s wife condoms… and accidentally setting my boss’s bedroom on fire, I don’t know how much more I can take – especially for the meager $500 a week they’re paying me. Don’t personal assistants usually make more? And if I quit, who will pay my rent…? 

I found Chloe in the yard, doing strange yoga poses (or what I imagine was yoga). “Avery!” she called to me as I got out of the car, wondering how awkward it would be to see Dean again… “Over here!” she yelled. I went over to her, her head now facing the ground as she spoke to me, which was funny for several reasons, though I tried not to laugh. “So Dean and I have been talking…” She stuck her head up for a moment now, then changed poses, so she was now lying face-down on the ground, her face sticking up, and her feet on her head (it hurts just thinking about it; in yoga-speak, I think this is called the “locust” as my yoga instructor friends later told me). I nodded. “And I told him we’re going to double your salary.” Um… so maybe I’m not quitting just yet? “Okay,” I stammer out, shocked… but then immediately wonder what more I will have to do for them… will it be double the work? Or double-y hard?

Before I could decide, Chloe went into another pose, this time lying on her back as though she were dead (the “corpse pose,” I later learned; convincing, I have to say). I wondered if she was okay. I was about to ask when she started to do some loud breathing exercises. “Chloe—“ I started. “Hang on,” she said between extra-loud breaths. I stood there for what seemed forever, until I finally sat down.  “Why don’t you join me?” she said. “I’m not much of a yoga person,” I replied. “Not yet,” she said as she sat up and put me into some strange position (the “tree pose,” I later learned) as she got into a similarly odd position (the “warrior”). I don’t know why so many people like yoga… this KILLS. These positions are supposed to feel good?! I could just imagine my mother asking me what I did at work today and I say, “Yoga.” I guess it’s better than telling her I was out buying condoms… but still. Plus, where was Dean? “If you’re wondering where Dean is, he had to go to set.” How does she read my mind like that?! “One of the PAs is helping him out for a while,” she added. Lucky them, I thought to myself.

She then helped me get into the “plank pose,” which looks like I’m about to do a push-up… but harder. How long do I have to stay like this, I wondered. She got into the same pose, not even flinching. I really am out of shape…  

“So you’ll be working for me for a while,” she said… I immediately lost my balance and fell on my face… even though all I wanted to do was go into the corpse pose… for good.

After being laid off…

So I just got laid off. Part of me is relieved, yet part of me wants to cry. Who the fuck is he to lay me off, I think… and using his wife as a messenger? Pathetic.  

I guess I didn’t say anything after Chloe gave me the news, because next thing I know, she says, “Avery? Are you alright?” I tell her I’m fine, though it sounds like I am about to cry. And I do (just a couple tears, but still). How embarrassing. I just feel like such a loser, getting fired from this job that is awful, anyway. It’s not worth crying over, I think to myself. (I know that’s what my friend’s therapist would tell me; my friend Amy always gives me her therapist’s advice and I try to apply it to my life, since a therapist is the last thing I have money for — though probably the first thing I need right now; that, or my college guidance counselor… although she sure didn’t steer me well in regards to Hollywood). I should be crying out of happiness, not out of rejection.  

Chloe hugs me, saying, “It’s just temporary.” I mutter back, “I know,” through a few more tears. “I really am sorry about what happened, Avery,” she adds. I hope she is. She gets up and, just like that, is out the door. She doesn’t even do the glance-back. Ah, well. 

I decide to make a list of what I want to do out here… and what I don’t want to do. What I can do quickly for money… and what I won’t do quickly for money. 

Some of the “can do” things include:

-Type (i.e., temp).

-Waitress (although, in L.A., it is near impossible to get a waitressing job, even with my years of experience in the Midwest).

-Pet sit.

-Baby-sit.

-Plant sit. (Plant sit?!)

-Too many other ridiculous ideas to mention here… I decide to do none of the above and sleep through the next three days, instead. And is it ever nice… And the good thing about sleeping the day away is that it’s free – you don’t spend any money. Although I guess it actually ended up costing me money… for those were three days of not working. But when you add up the money I saved on not buying groceries… it almost comes out even. 

On my fourth day of unemployment, I forget to silence my phone and, around 9 a.m., it starts to ring off the hook. Thinking it must be my long-distance mother (she always forgets about the time change, “I’m two hours earlier, Mom”) – who else would call so obsessively – I pick up. And, yep, you guessed it – it’s Chloe.  

“Avery? Is that you?” she says. (Don’t you love when people say that, even though you both know damn well that they called your phone, so who else would it be?!) “Yes, it’s me,” I say. “Good. What are you doing around 9:30?” she asks… I decide not to say sleeping, smile that I am wanted (like when a guy still wants you when you no longer want him), and tell her I’ll see her at the house then… and she promises to leave the door unlocked this time. : )