Chore Whore Page 7

  “I don’t. But thinking about his recent attempt at being an arsonist kept me up. Is Esther here?”

  “No, but Liam’s here. Esther’s walking the dogs. I’m surprised you didn’t see her on the way up.”

  “I wasn’t exactly looking for her. . . .”

  I pick up my cardboard and pencil and head out of the foyer. “I have to go measure the loo. If you need me, you know where I’ll be.”

  Liam and Esther’s home was originally two very big 1950s ranch-style houses. The present huge living room is where both backyards butted up against each other. Ebony polished hardwood floors are topped by “Gauguin sunset” orange walls with “wainscoting” of imported Tahitian woven fibers. The entire place has been converted into a Balinese work of art. All four fireplaces have been covered with thousands of seashells.

  The bathroom with the missing tank lid is approximately the size of my living room. The shower/bathtub combination is lined with massive boulders shipped in from Hawaii. Water comes out of a hidden showerhead and simultaneously tumbles down a waterfall of rocks. It always reminds me of a television commercial that shows a woman shampooing her hair in a waterfall.

  Esther had the former bathroom completely demolished to create this tropical island paradise, but insisted on keeping her high-volume, old-fashioned toilets. I thought perhaps she’d have a real bush hidden behind a wall where you could squat and do your business as you would in nature. But no!

  I set to work balancing the cardboard on the toilet tank and trying to sketch it from underneath to achieve the most accurate shape. I’m suddenly aware that the room has darkened slightly. Looking up, I see Liam resting casually against the doorframe. He is clad in the plush terry-cloth robe he acquired from the Phoenician Spa and Resort in Arizona.

  I have worked for Liam for nineteen years, ever since he was voted one of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors by Premiere magazine. When he hired me, Liam was a young, handsome, white-hot producer for Columbia TriStar Pictures. He had a success record as long as the line of women queuing up to be the one he chose to marry. He dated frequently, had his heart broken a time or two and kept up the search into his early forties.

  One time I tried to fix him up with a movie producer at Twentieth Century Fox who later went on to produce knockout plays on the West End in London. He was crazy about her, but she was too powerful in a field he considered his territory. Then I tried to set him up with Veronique LeMay. They never dated because Liam was intimidated out of his skin after he spoke with her one time. Not only was Veronique the hottest sex symbol of the day, but she spoke three languages fluently and was interested in producing . . . another territorial problem. I wonder if Liam goes around his office building peeing on the foundation to mark what’s his.

  Liam runs his hands through dark curly hair that is quickly becoming streaked by gray.

  “Should I even ask what you’re doing to my toilet?”

  “Sketching it.”

  “Sketching it? It was rumored that Rauschenberg stayed here at one point, but I didn’t realize his artistic vibes were here. Is there a particular point to sketching the toilet tank?”

  I struggle to keep my lines contiguous.

  “Well, the goal is to have you a replacement lid by the time the party starts tomorrow so Al Gore won’t have to wonder why water’s splashing out the back.”

  Liam shakes his head in bewilderment. “Another one of Esther’s projects, right? This and the bedroom doors? Are those getting replaced before the party? I think those are more important than a toilet tank lid.”

  Esther pushes past Liam and bolts into the bathroom.

  “Honey, don’t bother her, she’s doing exactly what I asked her to do. A little late, but she is getting it done,” she says in a harsh, scolding tone.

  She stands over me, then helps by holding down the cardboard as I finish. I jot down her reproach in my mental notebook to play over again when I feel like berating myself. If I find a lid, I’ll be a hero. If I don’t, Esther will work this one for a few months. I can hear it now.

  “How much is the lid going to cost to replace?”

  Liam is my only client who is as cost-conscious as I am. Before I can answer, Esther jumps down his throat and practically pulls his testicles out via his windpipe.

  “What do you care how much it costs, Liam? It’s a toilet lid. A porcelain toilet lid. Not gold-plated. Not lined with rubies. Jesus, Liam, you’re getting on my nerves about this money issue. It’s a necessity. Don’t try to worry Corki about the cost. You two are disgusting the way you play into each other’s issues about money. Leave it alone. It’s not healthy.”

  As Esther pushes her way out of the bathroom, I quietly gather my stuff, wondering if emasculating a man in front of his assistant is “healthy.”

  “It shouldn’t be more than ten dollars,” I whisper to Liam. He nods his head without looking at me.

  Liam and I both remember a childhood of suffering from having less than we needed. Our clothes were hand-me-downs. He ate way too many meals that starred Top Ramen and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. My mom made more soup by adding more water.

  Esther was raised with unimaginable riches. Each child in her family had her own governess and rarely saw Mother, because she was out spreading herself thin hosting charity events (much as Esther does now). They even more rarely saw Father, because he was in Mexico running his three toy factories. He was ahead of his time in realizing where the cheap labor force was found, so he basically relocated there, leaving his family in Beverly Hills to lead a money-laden but parentless life.

  When Esther grew up, she went through her entire trust fund in two years by traveling the world, first-class. She lived by day with the poorest in Nepal, India and Thailand so she could feel as if she were poor and surviving off the land just like them. However, at night, she returned to her posh, four-star hotel room, where she bathed, and slept in fine linens. When her money ran dry, she came home and was able to hit up Mother and Father. Esther’s Republican-to-the-bone parents financially subsidized her in a three-bedroom, one-million-dollar home near the beach as she eked out a “modest” living working on Bill Clinton’s campaign for the presidency. With spasms of pain, her parents supplied her with a Volvo rather than the BMWs her sisters received.

  When Liam met Esther at a political fundraiser, they fell instantly in love. They were married within a year. While he pulled himself up and over the top, earning millions per year, Esther worked very hard at spending each and every dollar to secure the lifestyle with which she was familiar.

  · · ·

  I pause in the foyer and peek into the kitchen, where Shelly is cleaning the dogs’ feet. Esther stands at the kitchen counter with a bottle of Xanax in one hand and a Diet Coke in the other. I watch her knock a couple of pills to the back of her throat followed by a huge gulp of soda.

  I clear my throat so they know I’m there.

  “Okay, I’m done and am on my way to the toilet graveyard . . . actually, it’s a mass grave for toilets that couldn’t afford a proper burial.”

  “Whatever it is, just make sure you find a lid exactly like the one that was there. It shouldn’t be that hard,” Esther says.

  Liam walks in and solemnly pats my shoulder as I open the front door. “Good luck, little soldier.”

  From the gray, peeling exterior of the plumbing supply house, and the buzzing emanating from the faded neon sign hanging above the door, I assess it as being a downscale version of the super-expensive La Brea Avenue store Liz’s Antique Hardware. At Liz’s, everything interior-hardware-related, from the 1960s or earlier, has been cleaned, sorted and catalogued.

  I enter and push my way through the throngs of butt cracks belonging to plumbers leaning over pipes and elbows on display. I get in line behind a burly, unshaven man, suspecting I’m the only novice in this store. Impatiently, I check my watch. It’s a quarter to ten.

  Finally, it’s my turn. I put my cardboard sketch up on the counter and explain
my toilet dilemma. Without so much as a word, the man points to a dirt-encrusted, oily door that I’m afraid he intends for me to touch and go through. I use a Kleenex to push it open.

  I had no idea how close my joking with Esther was to the truth. This is indeed a mass burial ground for toilet lids. An entire wall, from dirt floor to three feet above my head, is piled with precariously stacked toilet lids. Shorter stacks are in front. I have no idea where to start except to rule out the black ones. I need white, the most plentiful color. Only trouble is, the lids are so deeply covered in filth and the lighting is so bad, I have no clue what is pink, tan, yellow or white. I am the sole human occupant in the dim toilet crypt. I see rat paw prints and hear some type of vermin movement when the door slams shut.

  I use my Kleenex to dust off a place to set my purse. I stupidly wore light-colored jeans and a yellow, long-sleeved turtleneck. What was I thinking?

  A store clerk opens the door. “You finding everything okay out here?”

  I try not to whimper.

  “No, I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Well, if we weren’t shorthanded, I’d help you, but I can’t. I suggest you start right there at your feet and pull each toilet lid out and measure it. I see you brought an outline of your lid, so you’re way ahead of the game.” He shuts the door and leaves me.

  I don’t feel ahead of the game, I feel overwhelmed. I pull the first impossibly heavy lid off the pile and measure it against my sketch. No match. As I pull the next one off, I set it down too hard and it cracks.

  An hour and a half later, I’ve gone through six 3-foot piles, a total of fifty-two lids, and have made exactly zero matches. My clothes are black, my hands are filthy, my hair has spiderwebs and undoubtedly a few spiders in it, my back hurts, and I’ve killed so many bugs I’m starting to question my own karma. I see a mouse run behind the pile and have to stop digging. This was never in my job description. I’m sure of it. I get out my cell phone and open it.

  “Esther home, line two.”

  Shelly answers. “Schwartz residence.”

  My voice quivers.

  “Shelly, I am buried knee-deep in other people’s crappers and I’m filthy from head to toe. If there were an earthquake right now, I’d be killed instantly by falling toilets. Is Esther there?”

  “Yeah, hold on.”

  Esther comes on the line.

  “Hello,” she says nasally.

  I explain where I’ve been for the past hour and a half and Esther laughs. I’m up to my waist in toilet lids and filth with a good chance of getting hantavirus from breathing in mouse feces and she laughs.

  “Esther, can we just use the toilet lid from the guesthouse for the party since I suspect no one is going to be hiking up the hill to use that bathroom?”

  “God, Corki, had you thought about that to begin with, you wouldn’t be in this mess, would you? Good idea. I’ll have Shelly bring it down.”

  Esther hangs up without saying goodbye. I punch my telephone’s “end” button, shove it in my purse and throw my purse over my shoulder. I angrily push the door, not bothering with my stupid Kleenex, and march past the plumbers, who fall silent upon looking at my disarray. I stare down an employee.

  “Sir, do you have a restroom I can use to clean up?”

  He points to another door, equally greasy, equally grimy and equally gross. I push it open, take one look and instantly figure out that even in my present state, I am cleaner than the room. The sink is so foul that I decide to disinfect everything from now on when I have a plumber come to the house. I walk out, disgusted.

  It’s eleven-thirty and I haven’t even gone grocery shopping or started cooking for Lucy’s picnic. Out on the street, I pour my bottle of drinking water over my hands. I rub them together, climb into the backseat of Betty and close the door. Betty’s back windows are tinted limo black, so I’m able to change in privacy.

  Right on Pico Boulevard, a main thoroughfare running from downtown Los Angeles to the beach in Santa Monica, I pull off my sweater. Hunching down in my bra, hoping to hide myself from prying eyes looking through the windshield, I scrub myself with Blaise’s emergency wet wipes for backseat food disasters. Then, turning my sweater inside out, I put it back on.

  With no time to waste, I hit the road. The Whole Foods market on Crescent Drive in Beverly Hills seems to await my arrival with a parking space open. I throw my bag over my shoulder and rush in, trying to look confident while inside I’m crumbling with embarrassment. People pass me, stand back and stare as other shoppers grimace and then smile politely.

  Quickly gathering all the food I’ll need for Lucy’s picnic, I get in line. Stepping in behind me is actress Rae Dawn Chong, Tommy Chong’s daughter. I smile at her and hope she doesn’t recognize me as Veronique LeMay’s assistant. We met a few years back at Veronique’s hillside home.

  In spite of my funky appearance, Rae Dawn sweetly says “Hello,” and I say “Hello” back. She looks at me, trying to figure out where I might possibly fit into her memory banks. Am I the one who stands at the exit of the bank drive-through with a cup in my hand? Am I the one curled up, covered with newspaper, who sleeps in the doorway over by the Chinese restaurant, Chin Chin’s on Sunset?

  The grocery clerk, who has helped me at least three hundred thousand times, smiles blankly as if she has absolutely no idea who I am. Just as well because I don’t want to chat, I just want to hurry and get out of here.

  The cashier clears her throat. “Ma’am. Your total is $183.33. Will that be cash or charge?”

  “Cash.”

  I put my purse on the counter and pull out a lime-green Hermès wallet, a Christmas gift from Lucy. The women in line stir as they strain to see how much cash the derelict with the Hermès wallet has. I try to select two one-hundred-dollar bills and accidentally bring out nine hundred dollars in petty cash along with it.

  Oops!

  The young clerk bagging my groceries screams and backs away. Dang, girl, it’s not that dramatic. Everyone in line inches away from me, including Rae Dawn. As I awkwardly move to gather up the bills, my line disperses and I am given lots of room. I just want to leave. I put my hand out for my change, and the grocery store clerk freezes, her eyes pinned on my purse.

  Now I’m getting upset.

  “What is wrong with you people?”

  I follow the clerk’s line of vision, scream and jump back. A family of giant, toilet-dwelling beetles are crawling from my purse. They look like wide-bodied cousins of the Malaysian Three-Horned Scarab beetles I saw in Blaise’s book on insects. I scream again. With horror and embarrassment, I snatch my change and receipt and run from the store with my purse, the portable bug bus, and groceries in tow.

  At Lucy’s home, I gingerly step into her bathroom and see what a true wreck I am. I’m a little hesitant about using any bathroom in her rented house because all four have walls decorated with padded, pure white silk fabric. For this plush luxury, the owners insisted she leave a huge deposit for cleaning. I consider washing up in the laundry room.

  As I peer into the mirror, I better understand the reaction of the people at the market. In addition to spiderwebs in my hair, I pick out a couple of twigs and leaves. I don’t recall being in the vicinity of a tree, so it’s anyone’s guess how they got tangled there. Not only do I look off-kilter with my sweater turned inside out, my nails are also neatly edged with filth.

  After a birdbath in the sink, I put a towel around my torso and go to Lucy’s room to see if perhaps she has some old shirts of Jock’s folded away in a drawer. Lord knows I won’t fit into any of Lucy’s size-two clothes.

  Opening her bedroom door, I see her entire nine-foot-long window covered in a huge Confederate flag. Chills go down my spine as I wonder just what the heck Lucy and Tommy Ray have been up to. Have they been playing out that past life as slave and master with a location switch from Atlantis to Alabama? I’m prepared to see a lynched Negro and some slave costumes in the closet. I open the closet door tentatively
and find some fancy cowboy boots I know do not belong to Lucy. It doesn’t seem to me like Tommy Ray is moving slowly.

  I pull out the bottom drawer of the bureau and rifle through the clothes. There on the bottom I find an extra-large shirt that will do the job. Unfortunately it has the word INSECTOIDS splashed across the chest.

  As I slip it over my head, I remember how Concepcion almost got fired when Lucy moved into Jock’s house. Concepcion, who thoroughly loved Jock’s previous wife (movie star Teri Tulane), kept wearing T-shirts from Teri’s amazing array of movies in front of Lucy. Lucy, who was obviously threatened by this, put her foot down and said, “If Concepcion continues to wear Teri’s shirts, she can find somewhere else to work.” Apparently, Concepcion’s paycheck won out over her loyalty to Teri. Suddenly, her tees were pure white or, not surprisingly, shirts from one of Lucy’s films.

  I started prepping at twelve forty-five P.M. and have been cooking, chopping, stirring and cleaning up my Southern cuisine for over four hours. I have scrubbed splattered oil off the walls so Alejandra won’t have to clean up after me, but I can’t get the odor of fried chicken out of the house.

  I had every intention of being true to the South, but the black-eyed peas end up laced with coconut, my Jamaican grandmother’s influence too strong to resist. For the buttermilk icebox pie, I obtained the recipe from the Satsuma Tea Room in Memphis. That should make Tommy Ray happy. The potato salad has cornichons instead of sweet pickle relish, and the road snacks are rounds of chèvre rolled in rosemary, young Manchego sheep cheese from Spain and loaves of rustic bread. I put cut-up pineapple and peaches imported from South America into the cooler. Perhaps Martha Stewart has inspired my Southern cooking as well.

  The adage that it never rains in Southern California has sprung a leak. The clouds are full again and it’s pouring. As I drive through the wet streets, I picture Lucy, Tommy Ray, Dave and Bubba sitting in the SUV, windows closed, trying to hold back their flatulence from the black-eyed peas. I can almost guarantee Lucy won’t ask for black-eyed peas ever again.