“Assisting is the worst,” West says drunkenly.
“The worst,” Crooner confirms.
I rattle the ice cubes in my little glass and signal the bartender for a third drink as the mostly familiar faces at the table all turn and look at me, cueing me to add my nugget to their storied heap. I’m quiet for a beat too long.
“Who do you work for?” Jasmine’s dad asks me, leaning forward again, into my space, seemingly eager to hear what I have to say, a gentle smile on his lips, a living cliché of a warm father engaging with his daughter’s friends.
The bartender arrives in a blink and I take a sip. I eye the faces ready to swallow some of my usual stories, but the easy crowd-pleasers don’t pop to mind; nothing pops to mind.
I open my mouth to speak to Jasmine’s dad, and I’m feeling like a child again, some kind of young student facing a favorite teacher, desperate to impress him. In a strange way he does remind me of my own father—his advancing age, his cellular vulnerability—but he’s a shadow of my father, a faulty copy, for the qualities defining this guy—kindness, curiosity—are absent from mine. My dad would never, and has never, traveled from Perris, Louisiana, to see me in Los Angeles. The suggestion he would ever want to meet or engage with my friends is laughable—even more absurd that he would want to entertain someone I’m dating, or was dating, like sweet Drew. My father would never listen to me and my stories about work with curiosity and care. He’d never reserve judgment or opinion. His reactions would be swift and brutal. His disgust would be immediate and pervasive, starting first in his eyes and spreading to his forehead, the squinting, the peering down and into me. Then his cheeks rise and his mouth grimaces; he turns away from me—he degrades me as not even worthy of his countenance. His mouth opens and he spits some rash opinion or worse—
DON’T YOU DARE! I hear my father screaming at me, so vividly, as if it was yesterday. DON’T YOU EVER TALK ABOUT WHAT GOES ON IN THIS FAMILY!
Or, in that family, the Kathi Kannon family?
I’m thinking, Maybe don’t talk about Kathi Kannon anymore.
I take another sip of my drink. Another. Another. I smile coyly at Jasmine’s father.
DON’T YOU DARE!
I think of how to rid myself of Dad’s curse, the aftertaste of my childhood, Dad’s monologues not so easily dismissed.
As my fellow assistants spill the beans on their employers’ lives, alcohol swirling in my mind, I hear my father screaming at me not to speak out, not to share secrets, not to trust these people with Kathi’s life. My dad’s voice in me: Who is Jasmine? Do I even know any of these people? Who is her father? Who is this guy asking me these questions? Do I know him? Do I know any of them well enough to trust them with stories harvested from my livelihood?
“Well?” Jasmine’s dad asks, turning back to me, leaning closer to me.
DON’T YOU DARE! surges the shout of my father, some revulsion reaction inside me, making me distrust—no, hate—this man in front of me, the things I want to tell him, the things I want to tell my real father.
And I drink.
The first time my father yelled “DON’T YOU DARE!” to me, Mom was still alive, sitting quietly with me in the living room while he railed, angry that I had mentioned to a neighbor that we couldn’t afford a family vacation. “WHAT HAPPENS IN THIS FAMILY STAYS IN THIS FAMILY! MY BUSINESS IS NO ONE ELSE’S BUSINESS!”
I get it now, looking back at that one moment of many, realizing his humiliation, his reaction. But I now also understand this is the language of an abuser, someone who fears truth, someone who harbors shame. And at what cost? Rage because of economics and employment and assemblage of coin that’s more or less out of his control? Therapista says boundaries are an act of selfishness, that the fewer our boundaries, the more honest we are, the more we all see one another, the more united we become, that sharing our secrets is true intimacy. But I wonder if my father could convince her otherwise—his powerful voice and throbbing jugular make very convincing arguments. His point lives inside me, seared there, following me and defining and occupying the voices, the home of my childhood, of my adult apartments, of my current employment.
“Charlie must be feeling shy,” Jasmine says, shooing away my silence.
“No,” I say, shaking my head, scrunching my toes inside my shoes, shoving my glasses back on my face, clenching my stomach tight, darting my eyes to the bartender, waving to get his attention, and shouting to him, “Could I get another drink over here, please?”
“Slow down, turbo,” West jokes. I laugh along with her, painfully fake and slow.
I turn to Jasmine’s dad. “I work for Kathi Kannon,” I say. “Star of stage and screen and People magazine’s Worst Dressed list,” I mutter, my familiar quip, always popular at parties, first dates, jury duty. I add, “I help her. I love her.”
“I love her mom,” Jasmine’s dad says. “Have you met Gracie Gold?”
“It’s ‘Miss Gracie,’” I correct him as the bartender brings over my fourth drink. I want to grab it out of reflex, like the cool guy in a movie, like some basic popcorn flick set on a college campus where I’m wearing a tweed sport coat and we’re all chatting about something—maybe poetry—and the bartender brings me more Truth and I’m in the middle of a punch line and just before I deliver it, I swoop to the bar and grab my new glass and take a sip and then, boom! Punch line! Laughter! Praise!
But I snap out of my daydream and look down at the full drink already in my hand, to the new one now on the counter across from me, a reminder that I’m moving too fast, acting too thirsty, getting a tad drunk.
“Kathi’s been in the news lately, no?” Jasmine asks, prompts.
“None of that’s true. They’re gonna publish a retraction. Honestly, Kathi is great,” I say, eyeing my drink, putting it down on the bar, retreating from it. “Kathi and Miss Gracie are really great. I have no complaints.”
“Oh, please,” Crooner says.
“When we first met Charlie,” Jasmine says, “he was a bit of a chicken with his head cut off. But he’s getting the hang of it all now. He even dresses better.” She nods to my body and my Kathi Kannon cardigan, shirt, pants, belt, shoes.
“I’m wearing clothes that Kathi bought for me,” I say, adding playfully, “She’s remaking me in her image and likeness.”
“Yikes, be careful,” Jasmine’s dad says.
My head cocks, some instant and immediate reflex that surprises me, though nothing has ever felt more natural than to defend Kathi. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” he says. “You know, just, she is an admitted drug addict, right?”
My eyes open wide and I take stock of the room. Jasmine avoids eye contact, and the silence reminds me I’m alone; I’m as alone as Kathi Kannon. “She is not a drug addict. How dare you?”
“She has said publicly over and over she’s a drug addict,” he says.
“Dad—” Jasmine says, trying to stop the train.
“She’s not a fucking drug addict now!” I yell. I stand. “She’s trying so, so hard, okay? You don’t know her! You don’t know how hard it is!”