Tales Of A Drama Queen

Chapter 4

Monday. Would prefer to remain wallowing in self-pity, comforting myself with treacley Facts of Life reruns and family-size pizzas, but I’m afraid to appear as encroaching houseguest. Normally, I’d go shopping to kill time, but I need to conserve my monster stack of cash—my credit card companies have all fallen victim to some sort of computer virus. Technology. Just goes to show you.

I muster myself into a feel-good outfit and head downtown. Window shopping is just as satisfying as buying.

Except Santa Barbara didn’t used to be such a retail Mecca. When I was growing up, there were three local boutiques, the best of which specialized in sequins and appliqué. Now there’s Nordstrom, Bebe, Aveda and Banana, plus a Gap and Limited for when you need a single strap tank for the week that it’s in. Across the street is Bryan Lee (très L.A.), and down toward the beach are vintage shops catering to girls half my age—but I still manage to find a YSL suit I can squeeze into.

Fleeing temptation, I escape into the newish Borders Books, grab a Vogue and settle into a purple velvet chair.

A feature on Antonio Banderas takes a while to get through—kept having to pause and take deep breaths. Maybe my new man should be Latino. There are lots of Latinos in Santa Barbara. Suspect they are good family men, too.

I turn to the last page, “The Ten Best Satchels in America,” and compare them to my ratty old Coach tote. Everyone else is carrying satchels this year. Not tatty ancient totes. I want Vogue’s number one pick—the Fendi. It’s only $1,650. I wonder how much I’ll get paid at my new job. Louis billed three hundred an hour, last I checked, which was years ago. Surely I’ll make enough to afford a simple handbag.

I return Vogue to the rack and grab Cosmopolitan. I haven’t read Cosmo since college, but I’m single now. This month promises “A Dating Diary,” “How to Perfect Your Stripping Skills on Virtual Boy-Toys” and some advice I could really use: “Land That Man, Ace Your Job and Look Your Sexiest Ever.”

Standing in the check-out line, I read “Ten Girlfriend Goof-ups” and discover I’ve girlfriend goofed in every way. I could have kept Louis if I’d cooked hearty dinners, wore sexy underwear, feigned interest in his work and allowed him time “in his cave.”

“I can help who’s next,” the cashier calls. He’s California cute, with dark hair and a tan. That’s one thing about Santa Barbara—it’s packed with beautiful people. Dumb, but beautiful. I know. I grew up here.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” I ask Surfer Boy as I hand him the magazine.

“Uh, yeah.” He looks nervous. “That’ll be $3.79.”

I dig in my repellent, prehistoric, possibly-infectious Coach tote for my wallet. “I’m doing a survey. Does she cook you hearty dinners?”

“She makes pot roast sometimes.”

“Uh-huh.” I give him a five. “Does she wear sexy underwear?”

His eyes light up.

“Give you time in your cave?” I ask.

“Huh?”

“I don’t get that one either. You think you’ll ever break up with her?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “No doubt.”

See? Cosmo is wrong. All the peek-a-boo bras in the world wouldn’t have saved me and Louis. Which means it’s not my fault. It’d be Louis’s fault, but he’s clueless. That only leaves one person: The Iowan Floozy. I consider throwing Cosmo in the trash, punishment for misinformation, but decide against. Floozy probably has perfect stripping skills. I need a virtual refresher.

Chapter 5

A five-day crying binge, interrupted briefly with bouts of piggery and compulsive TV watching, and I’m ready to look at apartments.

I make several appointments for walk-throughs, feeling like the heroine of my own Lifetime Television movie. Against all odds—puffy eyes, bloated ankles, damaged brain cells—Elle Medina finds herself an apartment. But can she find love amid the rubble?

No. But she can sure find rubble. Thirteen apartment impossibilities later, and I’m back where I started.

“You wouldn’t believe these places,” I tell Maya one evening before she heads to work. We’re in the bathroom. I’m sitting on the toilet, downing a beer. She’s applying makeup.

“Like what?” she asks.

“Like a shack, with a toaster oven for a kitchen, mildew in the bath and heinous red carpet. Guess what they’re asking.”

She shrugs. I tell her she needs more eyeliner.

“I don’t know,” she says. “$700?”

“No, they want…well yeah—$700. It’s insane. Remember that set we built for the school play?”

“We didn’t build a set. We built one doorway.”

“That doorway was architecturally sounder than this place. I’d pay $700 a month for that doorway and be getting a better deal.”

“It was a nice doorway.”

“Then I saw a fantastic place in Hope Ranch.”

“Oh?” She lifts a brow. Hope Ranch is home to Santa Barbara’s nouveau riche—the old riche live with Oprah, in Montecito.

“A guest house. Beautiful white couches. Landlady wearing JP Tods. The ad was a misprint—they want $2,600 a month. Then there’s the place that smelled like cat pee, and the one where I’d have bathroom privileges. Since when is sharing a bathroom with two teenage boys a privilege? And all the places that won’t rent to you if you’re unemployed—which I’m not, I just don’t happen to have a job. And the places that won’t accept dogs and the—”

“You don’t have a dog.”

“Not yet.”

“Ellie…” she says, washing her hands and leaving the bathroom.

“Well, how can they hold my future dog against me, but not give me credit for my future job?” I follow her to the front door. “Seriously, I don’t think I can find a place.” I point to the mess I’ve made of her living room. “I may be permanently ensconced.”

She looks slightly alarmed. Possibly at my vocabulary. “Maybe you need a roommate. Then you could afford something better.”

“I don’t know, living with a stranger. It’s too bad you don’t have an extra bedroom here.”

“Yeah,” she says, as she closes the front door behind her. “Too bad.”

That evening, with Maya at the bar and Perfect Brad working late, I decide to clean their apartment. Because I’m a good houseguest. Plus, if I clean I can snoop in their drawers.

I do the kitchen before the bedroom, to establish my noble intentions. But washing dishes by hand always makes me think. If my world had flashback wiggles like in old movies, they’d pop up every time I did dishes by hand.

I wasn’t flashing back to falling in love with Louis: walking hand-in-hand on a cherry-blossomed path at the Jefferson Memorial, going on our first real date to Emily’s, greeting him in an apron and stilettos after he took the Bar (See? I used to be a Cosmo girl!). No, I was thinking of that shack-landlady, her hollow voice reverberating in my memory, “first, last and security…first, last and security.” And she wasn’t the only one, it seems everyone requires obscene amounts of money before they let you move in. I’m not sure my monster stack is going to cover first and last…and security? I wish.

I dry my hands and call my mother.

“Hi, it’s me,” I say, when she picks up.

“Me who?”

“Me, your daughter, Mom.” She never recognizes my voice. Sometimes I make her guess who it is. She got it right on the first try, once.

“Elle, thank God. I was worried. I got your message. I don’t understand. I called yesterday and Louis told me you’d already left. Santa Barbara? You’ll be back before the wedding, won’t you? I’ve already made my plane reservations. I still don’t—”

“Mom.”

“—know what I’m going to do about the hotel. The cheapest one you suggested charges one-fifty a night! That’s too expensive. Why can’t I stay with—”

“Mom—”

“—you and Louis. I won’t be in the way. You know the store takes every spare penny, and I—”

“Mom! Listen to me.”

“I am listening, darling. What do you think I’m doing?”

“Louis and I broke up.”

“Yes, that’s what he said. But I already made my plane reservations. The tickets, darling—they’re nonrefundable. I told the girl—”

“Mom—focus, please!”

“Well, you and Louis have broken up before.” Which is utterly untrue. She thinks that because we weren’t speaking after the Mizrahi couture incident, we were broken up. “It’s only pre-wedding jitters. You’ll just have to go back and make up.”

“It’s a little late for that. He married someone else.”

“He did what?”

“An Iowan.”

“He married an Iowan? When did he—how did he?” She pauses for a fraction of a second, which means she is truly shocked. “Well, are you gonna kick her ass back to the corn fields?”

Mom watches a lot of daytime TV. I often wonder what her New Age customers would think if they knew. She owns a crystal and herb shop in Sedona—she moved there when I went to college. She gives off an Earth Mama vibe, and a lot of her customers come in to ask for advice. Little do they know that the wise and evolved spirits she’s channeling are Montel Williams and Jerry Springer.

“Mom, I haven’t even met her.”

“Well, maybe you should. I was watching Ricki Lake this morning—you know she’s lost weight again—and there was a woman on who’d never confronted her mother when she stole her brother’s girlfriend…”

And she’s off. Why do I bother? She always makes me feel like this. Like the people on Judge Judy are more important than me. I don’t know why I called, why I—oh, right. Security. As in deposit. She marks up those crystals four hundred percent.

“Mom! Louis dumped me, and I’m living on Maya’s couch, and I don’t have an apartment or a job or a car or anything. I don’t care about intergenerational love triangles.”

I must sound desperate, because she actually responds. “Oh, Elle, honey. You should have come here, where I could take care of you.”

I feel my eyes water. “Yeah, I sh-should have…”

“I would’ve made you scalloped potatoes and Boston cream pie.”

I wipe my nose with the wet dishcloth. “B-better than chicken soup.”

“Hop on the next plane, darling. The red rocks here cure everything. Broken hearts included.”

She sounds so sympathetic, I’m almost tempted. Cake and sympathy and reversion to childhood. But it wouldn’t be like that. Ten minutes after I got there, everyone would know it was my fault that Louis married someone else. Which it wasn’t. And she’d rope me into her shop for horoscopes and palm reading; she decided when I was eleven that I had the Gift, even though I always thought Capricorn was the bull.

“In fact, I wrote a letter about that to Oprah,” she says. “She should do her show from here. In Sedona. For the healing energy. It’s a nexus, Elle—and Oprah’s a wise woman, like the wise women of old, imagine if she tapped into the—”

“Mom!” I cut in. “I need to borrow some money.”

Silence.

“I didn’t realize how expensive things are, when you don’t have any money. And my credit cards…well, Louis was going to pay them off after the wedding. But now…”

“Are you in trouble with credit again?”

“I am not in trouble!” And I’m not. Because I’ve moved. How are they gonna find me in Santa Barbara? “I just need a little cash.”

“You’re welcome to stay with me,” she says. “The café next door is looking for a busboy.”

“Thanks, Mom. But couldn’t you at least…”

“Why don’t you try your father?”

Bad sign. She never mentions him. Her friends in Arizona think I was an immaculate conception.

“You know how Dad is…”

“I do know. I saw a segment on Jerry Springer about deadbeat dads, and just because your father never missed a payment doesn’t mean he’s not a deadbeat. There was this man, a yacht repairman, something with yachts, maybe a designer, I don’t know, and he had seven kids—well his wife did, but he said only one of them was his—but she said at least four of them—”

I hang up, mid-story. That’s just ducky.

Chapter 6

So crossing off “apartment” on my little list isn’t so easy. But a car’s a car. Unless the license plate says 666 or there are dismembered body parts in the trunk, you get what you pay for. Besides, I think Maya’s getting a little sick of carting Brad to work every day.

I’ve decided a Passat is the way to express my new self. Elegant, but not flashy. High-quality, but not ostentatious. That’s the New Elle.

The VW dealership is downtown, and it’s where I make my first new Santa Barbara friend. Bob, the car salesman. He’s instantly smitten with me. I can always tell. And truth is, he’s not bad. I mean, he’s a used car salesman, which is hardly a Prince Charming job. But he’s tall enough, and has a good smile and nice eyes. I fill out a form—which, I notice him noticing, includes my home phone.

I decide that when he calls, I’ll tell him I just want to be friends. Because that’s the sort of thing the New Elle does. No reason to jump into a relationship with the first cuteish guy to come around.

I tell Bob I’ll settle for the bottom-of-the-line GLS model, but he says everyone who bought one wishes they spent a little more for the GLX.

Well! I love it when a salesperson gives you their personal opinion. It means they like you. We start in a Black Magic GLX with black velour interior. A quick drive, and Bob and I know it is too masculine for me, so we take the Mojave Beige with beige velour interior for a cruise to the beach.

“You look good in it, Elle,” Bob says.

“It feels a little soft,” I say. “Like I’m a soccer mom, Bob.” Bob. Bob. It’s a funny syllable.

I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll be happy with a Passat, when I see it across the lot. Silver. Curvy. Beautiful.

“That’s the W8,” Bob says. “Top of the line. Eight cylinder engine, leather interior, sunroof, five-CD changer…”

The minute I sit in it, I know. I’m like Goldilocks. This one is just right.

It’s late, and the dealership is closing, so I give Bob my information and he promises me he’ll put a deal together tomorrow morning. He smiles, and I mentally rehearse: I really like you, Bob, but I just want to be friends.

When I get back to Maya’s I check my little list:

Apartment. Not living in moss-walled shack or sharing toilet with teenage boys, so I’m ahead of the game.

Man. Will reject Bob with grace and tact. Apparently the streets of Santa Barbara are paved with eligible bachelors.

Car. Gorgeous Silver Passat! Will be stunning with new, employed-Elle wardrobe, and new, Antonio-Banderas-looking boy toy. It’s a W8, too. I like the sound of that, but must remember to ask Bob what it stands for.

Job.

Job.

Job…

The problem with my employment history is I have none. My mom sold real estate while I was growing up, and made tons of money, so I never got an after-school gig. It wasn’t until she bought her vitamin-and-runes store that she started getting tight. Plus, my dad sent her money for my upkeep when I was a minor. Now I’m a major, and I’ve never had a job.

Well, there was a brief period the summer after my second year at Georgetown. My roommate, Angela, convinced me it would be fun to join the team at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Virginia. I got hired as Martha Washington in a historical reenactment, while Angela got stuck with wench duty at one of the taverns. After two weeks, the administrators decided the public preferred a white-haired Martha to a young bride, and I was ousted by a retired flight attendant. I was a better Martha, though. At least I refrained from pointing out the emergency exits to George. Angela kept wenching while I slunk back to Washington. That’s when I moved in with Louis. I spent the rest of the summer womanning phones for EMILY’s List, but that was volunteering, not employment.

I’m home alone, halfheartedly scanning the want ads, when it hits me: What I need is a starter job. Preferably a starter job that pays well. And that’s not too demanding. Like, say, being a bartender. The neat thing is, I have this friend who owns a bar. Maya has to hire me, right?

“I need help,” I say when Maya answers the phone at the bar.

“What? The remote stopped working?”

“No, it works fine.” I click off Entertainment Tonight.

“So what’s the problem?”

“This job-hunt thing…”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t quite know how it works.”

“Oh. What part don’t you understand?”

“Um…” I look at the paper. “Take this one, for instance. Development Director wanted for World of Goods, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sending relief supplies to countries in need. Qualified candidates will have demonstrated experience managing others, working with board members, facilitating meetings, monitoring budgets and in all aspects of development.” I give Maya a moment to take it in. “What is development, exactly? Developing what?”

“It means fund-raising.”

“How hard can that be? It’s just asking for money. I did that all the time with Louis. It pays forty thousand a year. And it’s in tune with my values.”

“Louis ever find out how much of his money you were giving to the ASPCA and NOW?”

“Not yet—pledge cards don’t come ’til the end of the month. Anyway, World of Goods also gives you a housing stipend.”

“I suppose that’s what attracted you.”

“A little,” I admit.

“They offer a company car, too? That, a company charge card and a company boyfriend, and you’d be able to cross everything off your list.”

I make a rude noise.

“Forget anything with the word ‘director’ in it, Elle. Do you know how to type?”

“I know all the letters are on the keyboard and you push them to make words.”

“How did you get through college?”

“Hunting, pecking and oral presentations.”

“So secretarial, and basically all office work, is out. What else appeals?”

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. “What I need is something that uses my natural charm and vivacity. Dealing with people, you know, in a sort of social setting.”

“Prostitution won’t work for you, Elle—you’d hate the dress code.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I have demonstrated experience as a mistress.”

“Don’t even start. Seriously. What do you like?”

I decide against saying alcohol, and instead go for the real truth. “I like shoes. Maybe I could design shoes.”

Maya doesn’t say anything.

“I like people. And animals. You know how I like animals. Maybe I could be a vet or something.”

“You know who became a vet?” she says. “Anna Van der Water.”

“Yuck!” Anna Van der Water is this creepy girl we knew in high school. She wore cheap plastic barrettes in her hair—before Drew Barrymore made it cool—and her calves were bigger than her thighs. “Anna Van der Water, a vet. You know, I think maybe she was smarter than me.”

“I. Smarter than I. And are you kidding?” Maya says, loyal to the end. “Twice as smart.”

I hear glasses clinking at the bar, and am wondering how to get the conversation moving in a maybe-you-can-work-here direction when she says, “Listen, why don’t you come down and have a drink. My treat.”

See? A little patience, and it falls into your lap. “I’m kind of busy,” I say. I don’t want to sound desperate.

“Elle,” she says.

“Be there in twenty minutes.”

The bar’s located a block off State Street on one of the lower downtown side streets. There are no front windows, just a closed door with the name of the place in neon over it.

Shika.

The bar has never done well, and I blame the name. Well, it’s one of many reasons. It means “drunk” in Yiddish, I guess, which is Mr. Goldman’s little joke. (He once explained it’s actually “shiker,” not “shika,” but he went phonetical. I like Mr. Goldman.) Problem is Shika looks Japanese, and people find it disconcerting when they expect saké and rice-paper screens, but get photos of old Jews and every conceivable flavor of schnapps.

Inside, two men perch at the bar. Mr. Goldman is one of them, and the other is a man a decade older, dressed to kill. Other than them, and Maya behind the bar, the place is empty.

Maya offers me a margarita as I give Mr. Goldman a hug.

He doesn’t look good—his health has been bad since Maya’s mom died—but it’s still good to see him. As Maya mixes the margarita, we chat about my return to Santa Barbara, and my apartment and job hunt. I keep waiting for Maya to jump in and explain that I’ll be working at the bar, but she plays it coy.

Mr. Goldman and I cover the weather in Santa Barbara vs. D.C., and our conversation dwindles to nothing. So I turn to Maya. “I was thinking about my career. I think I’d be good in a service-industry-type position.”

She looks skeptical. “You’re more served than serving, Elle.”

“I’ve served!” I protest. “Does the name Martha Washington mean nothing to you?”

Maya explains my previous employment to her father and the other man, including some details I don’t remember telling her, and I realize maybe this isn’t the best time to discuss the bartending job.

“How about this?” I say. “I’ll start my own magazine, like Oprah. I’ll call it E.”

“Like the Entertainment network?”

“Oh, no. Well, I can’t call it Elle.” This stumps me. The best thing about the magazine idea is calling it E. I like the letter E. Plus, it has the bonus benefit of standing for e-mail and other electronic stuff: very now. “How about L—just the letter L.”

Maya makes the “L is for Loser” sign on her forehead.

Enough said.

“Want another margarita?” she asks.

I look down, mine is somehow empty. I have a flash of genius. “Let me make it,” I say. “I’m a whiz with blended drinks.”

“I usually just mix them,” she says.

“See that’s where you’re wrong. Where’s the blender?” I eagerly pop behind the bar.

All I want to say is: I know the top was closed firmly before I turned the blender to pureé. Must have been some kind of malfunction. Anyway, it was just a couple ice cubes and strawberries. And Maya was standing too close. A pity she was wearing white, that’s all.

Chapter 7

The next day, desperate for an apartment, Maya (who’s in an uncharacteristic tizzy: probably fighting with Perfect Brad) persuades me to relax my standards and see a place in…Goleta. The ad promises a “one bedroom charming garden paradise with fourteen-foot ceilings,” and the price is too good to dismiss—$650 a month.

“But it’s Goleta!” I wail. A suburb fifteen minutes north of Santa Barbara, teeming with strip malls and big box stores.

“There are nice parts of Goleta,” Maya says.

“Where?”

“People like it there,” she replies, vaguely.

“Who?”

“Oh, stop being such a snob, Elle, and look at the place.”

Well, it does say “garden paradise.” I will be the consummate country party hostess. Fabulous friends, whom I’ve yet to meet, will escape the city late Friday night to my oasis in Goleta. I’ll serve negronis and martinis—anything but margaritas—and prepare fabulous fresh meals from my kitchen garden. Olive trees and lavender will dot the rolling hills, and all for the pittance of $650 a month!