I’m thinking, Thank you, Kathi Kannon. Thank you for my new life, my new lifestyle.
5
My new office is a mansion. Oppressive lighting gives way to streams of sunshine from stained glass. Newsroom noise of police scanners is now silence, save for Beverly Hills birds chirping and squirrels chatting. Hey, Siri, I want to relax, relish, enjoy this new me. I want to slow down, destress, and be my best, calm, less-suicidal self. And so far, so good. The first week of my new lifestyle with Kathi Kannon is surprisingly simple. Being a celebrity assistant is glamorous, fancy, easy.
I sort Kathi’s pills into a daily pill caddy.
Tap, tap, tap.
I bring Kathi her soda. I open it, pour it over ice.
Fizz, fizz.
I wield Weight Busters cereal, the small oat circles rolling around inside, the cellophane bag making that familiar sound in my hands.
Crackle.
And this becomes my little, luxurious life.
Tap, tap, tap. Fizz, fizz. Crackle.
I’m still feeling like an outsider, an observer, but no worries. I’m new. Feeling like an insider perhaps takes time. For now, I watch Agnes sleep in the dining nook all day. I wave to Benny pretending to do yard work. Kathi stays to herself, mostly in her bedroom, occasionally walking past me to the kitchen. I ask, “Can I get you anything?”
Smiling, she shakes her head no.
I get the sense I have to prove myself worthy of entry into the real inner workings of the world’s kookiest country club. But I don’t really know. I’ve never been a celebrity assistant before. I’ve never even known a celebrity assistant before. I don’t know what this job is supposed to look like. I want to help, and so I do what I know how to do: follow directions.
Tap, tap, tap. Fizz, fizz. Crackle.
Monday, I get a text:
KATHI: Nano-blap! Please find the nearest and dearest and dopest cobbler-arama. My fave-of-the-flave shoes have torn—rudely ripping themselves from my pointy loin at dinner of a fortnight ago—and the septic sight of my tepid tinkle toe gloriously appearing at the table nearly caused Frank Gehry to choke on his baby sheep dinner blox and think of all the lies people would say about me and him were he to die in my weeping moist embrace etc.
Translation: Get her shoes repaired, and I do.
Tap, tap, tap. Fizz, fizz. Crackle.
Tuesday, I get a new task. We’re in her bedroom. She asks me to get her cell phone.
“Sure,” I say. “Where is it?”
She looks up at me, sucks in a draw from her e-cigarette, and exhales, “In a toilet at Barneys.”
And off I go to a luxury department store, to the lost and found, and up to a suspicious but handsome concierge who hands me a familiar cell phone. He says it was discovered not in a toilet but simply, mercifully, beside one. It’s now wrapped in white tissue paper, tucked in a fancy black Barneys shopping bag as if it’s a scarf or wallet. “My regards to Miss Kannon,” he says.
Tap, tap, tap. Fizz, fizz. Crackle.
Wednesday, I get the plea for advice:
“Which porno should I send James Cameron for his birthday, Cockring? Assablanca, Black Loads Matter, or Good Will Humping?”
Tap, tap, tap. Fizz, fizz. Crackle.
Thursday is an adventure:
We’re at an eye doctor’s appointment so Kathi can get new glasses. She fills out the doctor’s standard questionnaire and hands me the clipboard. “Will you give this to the receptionist, Cockring?” I take the form and read over what she wrote as I pass it to the front-desk clerk. We share a smile as she reads:
NAME: Marcia Gay Harden
ADDRESS: Hell
HEIGHT: Negative
WEIGHT: 600 pounds
REASON FOR VISIT: Sexual
Tap, tap, tap. Fizz, fizz. Crackle.
While Kathi sleeps the day away, I’m sitting in one of her Parisian chairs, her medications strewn about on the coffee table, waiting to be sorted and filed into the next day’s pill container. I wonder about this place, a home that tabloids have lauded as being ground zero for legendary parties over the years. Did Madonna mingle here? Am I sitting where Anjelica Huston once sat, resting on the edge of the chair so she could lean in and hear some scandalous story being told by Warren Beatty? Which one of them left their drink on the coffee table too long, forever marking it with a circular stain that would give a curator a heart attack—a drink stain on this antique table! Alas, there is no curator here, just a sleeping celebrity, a dying kitchen helper, an unhandy handyman sleeping in the shed (allegedly), and me, a perfect stranger tasked with sorting the medication that keeps film icon Kathi Kannon alive and functioning, mostly. This could be the most important job I’ve ever had.
From Kathi Kannon’s backyard, I call Jackie, my former news boss.
“What do you want?!” Jackie asks. This is how she always answers her phone. She’s likely in the middle of managing live shots, keeping a newscast running, and has little time for me and details of my life.
I can hear my father screaming at me: DON’T QUIT ONE JOB UNTIL YOU HAVE ANOTHER! And in this rare case, I took his advice. When I got the job with Kathi, I put in for my two weeks’ vacation at the TV station. Jackie balked at me taking all that time in one swoop, but she gets it, she relates to needing a break. She knows it’ll be a nightmare to fill my shift whether it’s one hour or ten days. I wanted to stay in her employ, to keep a two-week buffer in case the Kathi Kannon thing didn’t work out, in case something went sideways. But now it’s clear to me that I’ve got this, that I’ve got Kathi, that we have each other. I no longer need the deadweight of TV news. I can finally quit.
Holding the phone to my ear, I hear Jackie breathing and the bustle behind her, I hear her typing on her keyboard—never a moment’s rest in a newsroom. I feel no sense of loss, no sense of missing out. I’m at a mansion, looking out at palm trees and dick sculptures. In my other ear, the free one, the one not assaulted by the phone and noise of the newsroom, I hear Kathi’s world—birds, the garbage water fountain, the calm of the wealthy of Beverly Hills.
“I’m not coming back, Jackie,” I say.
“Why not?”
“I’m starting a new life,” I say, a swell of pride filling my chest, my eyes almost watering with tearful relief, finally being free, finally feeling ownership of my life. “I have a new job. I’m a personal assistant to Hollywood royalty. It’s great and it’s a fresh start for me and—”
“Yeah, right,” she says. “In Los Angeles? Nothing stays fresh. See you back in a few weeks.”
“No, no,” I argue. “I’m done. I quit. I’m through working in the middle of the night, through working those depressing graveyard hours! I’m better than that! And I’ll prove it!”
Silence on the line. I finally rendered her speechless! I look down at my phone. She hung up. But joke’s on her. I won’t be back.
Hey, Siri, quitting that job feels just as good as I’d always hoped.
My Kathi Kannon workday starts at ten-thirty A.M. and ends around six P.M. It’s strange driving back to my apartment after my shift, during a time when I was previously in bed, weary and miserable from a life consisting of sleeping away prime hours of my youth. My keys jingle a bit more merrily—Mom’s locket adding to the medley—as I drive past restaurants and cafés filled with people hanging out, having dinner and drinks with their friends. I pass by a mall bustling with people shopping and gawking. How much life did I waste working that overnight shift? Why did I stay so long? WE ALL HAVE TO DO THINGS IN LIFE WE DON’T WANT TO DO! Good old Dad, always in my mind with a cliché I don’t want to hear.