Chapter Two Curt
Chapter Two
Curt
J ane had decided to wear her new Chanel suit because she was heading to a job at the mansion of a bachelor tech-bro in Bel Air and wanted to look businesslike to forfend against any flirtation or passes.
Generally speaking, men were easier clients, but they did have some liabilities.
Occasionally, Jane worked solo, but usually she was assigned a partner, which she didn’t necessarily mind: a partner could serve as an empathetic punching bag if a client became belligerent while desperately trying to cling to useless stuff.
Today she was paired with Lindsey, who would inevitably be in jeans and a T-shirt.
The contrast between their attire would speak volumes; also, the Chanel was a good reason to ask Lindsey to do anything that might involve getting dirty.
It was uncanny how well Kelsey’s Chanel fit her.
It was what used to be called a power suit, and Jane was indeed feeling empowered—yet just thinking of this self-help-y word, even in the privacy of her own car, made her blush.
She reassured herself that both the scent and the shadow of Kelsey would dissipate soon enough.
Jane pressed the Ring doorbell on the gate to Curt Sperling’s Bel Air mansion, unsure if this hulking mash-up of Spanish colonial and neoclassical Italian looming incongruously close to the curb really qualified as a mansion. Clearly, it desperately wanted to be one.
As anticipated, Lindsey wore jeans and a T-shirt, attire that essentially proclaimed, I am here to work for you, I am not afraid to get my hands dirty.
Lindsey was petite—just over five feet tall—and voluptuous.
With her wedge of short hair, dyed an unnatural white-blond, and enormous saucer eyes, she reminded Jane of a cartoon character, and her affect accentuated this: not only did Lindsey’s voice sound like she was constantly quaffing helium, she was consistently, relentlessly cheerful.
Sometimes this irked Jane; other times she wished it would rub off on her.
Lindsey was adept at offering profuse exclamations of pleasure and/or adoration, usually by deploying different inflections of the word “cute”: one cooed, one squealed, one breathless, one breathy.
It reminded Jane of her brief study of Chinese, in which a single syllable could have myriad meanings depending on the tone.
Right now, Lindsey was admiring Jane’s outfit.
“Oh my god, that’s sooooo cuuuuute! Is it new? Is it real Chanel?”
“It’s vintage. Got it resale. Total bargain.”
“God, I always look like such a slob next to you.”
Jane searched for something to say that was truthful but not insulting.
“Hey, what you’re wearing is so much more practical.”
Just then, a willowy young woman opened the door and waved them in with the impersonal friendliness of the gorgeous.
“Hi, guys, I’m Trista. Let me show you where you’ll be working today.”
Trista was probably an aspiring model/actress who slummed part-time as Curt’s assistant.
Curt would be flexible and let her go out on auditions when the occasion arose.
Jane wondered if apart from being eye candy, Trista’s duties might also entail giving Curt a little sugar whenever he had a sweet tooth.
Men loved having stunning women around as accessories.
It was irksome. What did Curt need an assistant for, anyway?
He had sold his startup—something to do with customizing animojis and then developing memes using them—to Facebook a few years ago for hundreds of millions of dollars.
The inanities that could mint billionaires these days!
But even an idle billionaire apparently required an assistant.
He might be incubating innovative social media ideas to pitch to venture capital—“Let’s saddle up and ride a unicorn! ” His kind always were.
Jane and Lindsey followed Trista into the interior of the house, which bore no relationship whatsoever to its frenetic exterior: it was spare and modern, decorated almost entirely in black and white.
The colorless palette had the effect of foregrounding the monumental art pieces hung throughout the cavernous rooms. Most were amorphous color field paintings, ersatz Rothko, with a sprinkling of Basquiat-influenced pieces that would not be out of place on the side of a freeway overpass.
Jane tried to find one painting she liked.
Lindsey paused by one of the graffiti paintings that depicted a giant horny bunny. You knew it was horny because of what it was doing with a carrot.
“So cuuuute!” she uttered, somewhere between a squeal and a coo. She had range.
“Yeah, it’s a Markus Wellenberg, I think,” Trista said offhandedly.
Lindsey shrugged—this name meant nothing to her. Jane didn’t know who he was, either, but clearly, he was a fraud.
They filed into Curt’s bedroom. This felt like a trespass. An organizer typically would only enter an inner sanctum like this when the person to whom it belonged had invited them in.
“So do you guys want anything to drink? We have, like, whatever you want—Monsters, Red Bulls, kombucha, Nespresso, pressed juice, water....” Enumerating the beverage options seemed to fatigue Trista.
Jane pulled a bottle of water out of her bag. “Brought my own.” Lindsey, on the other hand, requested a kombucha and a water and asked if she could get a Nespresso later on.
“Of course, whatever you need.”
“Thanks so much, Trista!”
“No problem.”
Ugh. No problem— with its tinge of recrimination from the implication that there could even be a problem—had replaced you’re welcome .
“Excuse me, Trista—do you know what Curt wants us to do?”
“Um, not specifically. I think just organize?”
Trista had an implacable calm, a nonchalance that bordered on hostility.
“And he’s okay with us going through all of this personal stuff without him in the room?”
“Oh, I don’t think he cares. I mean, you know, he’s not really a stuff person. And he’s hardly ever here; he likes the place in Malibu much more.”
Jane persisted. She did not want to fly blind.
“Did he give you an indication of any problem areas?”
“No. I mean, honestly? His girlfriend is the one that hired you, and I think she wants some of her own space in his space, if you know what I mean?”
Jane knew very well. Oh boy. They were standing in a minefield.
Curt’s closets weren’t disastrous, just disorganized.
Like most men, he wore the same few articles of clothing over and over; lots of stuff looked brand-new.
As they emptied his closets, Lindsey prattled on about her latest boy trouble.
She had just downed her third demitasse of rocket fuel, which she said she needed because she hadn’t slept well and was hungover.
Now all that caffeine was coursing through her, unleashing endorphins and torrents of verbiage.
“Kyle is not my boyfriend, we just fuck sometimes and we like to binge stupid TV together. He’s so cute, you know?
But we went to this party, and it’s like—are we here as a couple?
So he started flirting with this really gross girl with extra crispy curls, and I was like, Lindsey, you cannot be jealous!
You don’t even want this guy! Do you..
.? It’s hard to figure all this stuff out.
I mean, a friend of mine is gender fluid and into polyamory.
How do they have time to do anything other than deal with relationship dramas? ”
Lindsey was getting a master’s in marriage and family therapy, and Jane wondered how that might work out. It wasn’t so much about the blind leading the blind, but did she have the capacity to stop talking and really listen to a patient?
“I mean, what do you think, Jane? Should I not fuck him anymore? I know it’s bad for my self-esteem.”
“What do you need self-esteem for?” Jane asked, half-seriously.
Lindsey guffawed. “You are so funny!” She paused. “You’re joking, right?”
“What I mean is that you need to find your self-worth independent of any relationship.”
“So true. But easy for you to say. You’ve been with Teddy for like what, ten years?”
“Oh god, no. Three.”
Three years could seem like an epoch. Life before Teddy, life after Teddy.
“How did you guys meet?”
Jane thought back to the night she first met Teddy. It was at a house party full of young up-and-comers in the entertainment business, a frenetic blend of networking and inebriation.
She was with her best friend, Anna, who thrived in these environments, an expert at low-key flirting, inane small talk, and getting just drunk enough.
Jane met Anna soon after she moved to LA, when they both were working as assistants at the same high-powered talent agency.
Anna was almost six feet tall in heels and had a mane of wild, curly hair and a throaty, infectious laugh.
She was from Connecticut but would tell people that “I lived in Connecticut, but I grew up in New York.” Anna did, in fact, possess the unmitigated assertiveness and candor stereotypically attributed to New Yorkers, so she intimidated many people, but Anna and Jane had bonded almost instantly.
It was Anna who first spotted Teddy sitting with some friends by the firepit.
“That guy over there is checking you out.”
Jane took a discreet peek. Teddy seemed, well, average in many ways: average height, average build, average looks, but she felt attracted to him for some reason. It might have been his goofy smile and the mirthful gleam in his eyes, discernible even at a distance.
But more likely it was Anna he was checking out.
She had large breasts, real breasts moreover, a novelty in Los Angeles.
Not that authenticity mattered; men seemed to love implants just as much, maybe even more.
In any case, Anna chose her outfits to showcase her impressive organic attributes and, predictably, men noticed.
“Jane, don’t be such a loser, come on! He was totally checking you out. He’s cute! Let’s go.”