“I’m hopeless with maps,” she says. “Besides, it will be more fun if you come.”
So three days after she lands in LA, I chauffeur her from audition to audition. Daisy is naturally skinny with just the right amount of curves, and she is very blond, like she was bred on the farmlands of Kansas, a look that happens to be in high demand right now at castings. (Well, really, it’s always in high demand.) She goes out for guest spots on two teen shows, a small read for Quentin Tarantino’s newest, and more commercials than I’ve auditioned for all year. If it were anyone else, I’d hate her. Actually, it occurs to me, as I sit in the car at an expired meter so I can argue with the meter maid if she circles around, that Idohate her a little bit, but she’s Daisy, and one day, if asked, she’ll drive me around to my own set of auditions. I try to meditate as I wait: I’d attended a freebie class on the beach last week run by a celeb guru. I was kind of hoping to meet someone famous who might decide to be my best friend and help me forge connections of my own, but also I thought maybe I’d learn something too. To help me quiet my mind, to still my unfulfilled ambition. In the car, I breathe in and count to seven, then breathe out and count to seven over and over and over again, but then Daisy raps on my window, and my eyes fly open, and I’m as I was before: listless, annoyed. Jealous, if I’m really being honest with myself.
“You OK?” she asks, sliding on her seat belt, undoing her rubber band so her hair spills effortlessly over her shoulders like in a shampoo commercial.
“Yeah.” I put on my blinker to head up Sepulveda to take the back roads toward the Valley, hoping to beat traffic. “All good. All fine. Just tired.”
“Hey, I’m not getting any of these, you know that, right?”
“Of course you are,” I say. “And I want you to.”
“Well, I’m not. I mean, I’ve sucked it big all day.”
“You don’t have to say that. You don’t have to make me feel better.” I fiddle with the dial on the radio.
“I thought that you were fine.”
I sigh. “It’s not you. It’s me.”
“You were the best one of us at school, Tate.”
“That doesn’t matter out here.”
She quiets, losing herself to the view out the window.
“Were you meditating just now?”
“I refuse to answer on the grounds it might incriminate me,” I say.
She chokes on her laugh. “What the fuck? You’ve been out here for, like, a year, and you’re meditating? Whatever happened to the fuck-all bartender from NYU I knew and loved?”
“That fuck-all bartender was just an act, you know that. When have I ever been fuck-all anything in my life?” I come to a stop at a light. “Also, I took a class with Lily Marple’s guru. And you know that she’s nearly the highest-paid actress right now? I mean, it must be working.”
“Eh, I know someone who knows Lily Marple’s agent. Said she’d give a blow job to anyone who asks.”
“Shut up.”
She shrugs. “It’s true.”
“Jesus, I’m so fucked.”
“No, dear, not that, just a blow job or two.” She starts to giggle, which spirals into an uncontrollable fit of howling, crying laughter, and soon I’m laughing so hard I can barely keep the car in my lane.
“Hello, Hollywood! Daisy is here and she is prepared to give blow jobs!” I scream out the open air of the convertible until I realize that we’re actually in front of the audition building, and I jolt into a parking spot. “I take that back!” I shout. “Daisy is here, and she is the most professional, qualified actress I know!”
Daisy reins in her laugh until it sputters to a slow chuckle, takes three deep breaths, and then flips open her compact mirror. Her eyeliner has smeared, her cheeks are blotchy from the hysterics.
“God, I look like hell. Also, I’m wiped; I don’t think I can deal.”
“Comeon, Daisy, get out. Don’t be late.”
“Can’t. Don’t make me.”
I put the car in park. “Daisy, seriously, this is forThe O.C.That’s, like, real shit, real exposure. You can’t be too tired for that.”
“I am. Jet lag.” She groans, then tilts her head toward me and smiles. “Besides, I’ll never get the part. It’s for a bad girl with, like, tattoos. Not the blond all-American.”
“Well, they wanted to see you.”
