Someday, Someday, Maybe (17 page)

“Yes! I mean, wait—what do you mean?”

“Well, I keep expecting to understand show business better, but it’s still so confusing to me. Like, Russell Blakely is this huge star, right? And at first I thought everything he did was so interesting and special, and I laughed so hard at everything he said because he honestly seemed like the funniest person I’d ever met, and everything about him was better somehow, like he was more than regular, like he was a person, but from another planet or something. But the longer I work for him, the more I see he’s just this guy, this very unusually gorgeous, extremely muscle-y guy, who’s sort of funny, and sort of smart, but who’s a regular person who married the girl he dated in high school and doesn’t seem to know how he got here. He seems totally baffled by his success, and he’s always asking my opinion about things, like his wardrobe or whatever, and I’m wondering if he’s forgotten I’m just the P.A. on my very first movie ever. He hasn’t been in a grocery store in three years, he told me. Someone goes for him. Someone does everything for him. And he seems miserable. He reads everything they write about him in the magazines and he gets so upset. When work is over and his wife is back in L.A. he doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself, and he goes out with guys from the crew who aren’t even really his friends and they get drunk and it ends up on Page Six. I keep thinking someone should be helping him in a different way, or there should be some sort of manual for him. Because he just doesn’t seem to be enjoying any of it.” Jane shakes her head sadly.

“I would enjoy it,” I say. “I think.”

“Yeah, I think I would, too,” says Jane. “But who knows?”

“Who knows,” I agree, draining the last sip from my glass. “Oh! One more thing, from last night?”

“Yeah?”

“Apparently, we’re not supposed to wash our jeans anymore. The wardrobe lady told me. We’re only supposed to dry-clean them.”

“What? That’s insane.”

“Yep. We’re supposed to buy jeans really tight, as tight as we can squeeze into, so all the fat gets compressed into as little space as possible. Then we want the fat compression level to stay that way for as long as it can, right? Well, washing jeans makes them softer and baggier, and lessens the fat-compression quotient. Therefore, dry-cleaning is the only answer. Isn’t that terrible news?”

Jane shrugs. “It sounds expensive, but I don’t think it’s necessarily ruining my outlook on civilization.”

“But c’mon. Don’t you agree, dry-cleaning is so unfair?”

“Why?”

“It’s like, the clothes charge you for wearing them.”

Jane stares at me blankly. “How are the clothes charging you?”

“Clothes that have to be dry-cleaned are already the most expensive clothes. Then it’s like they’re charging you another three dollars every time you wear them.”

“Regular clothes charge money to clean them, if we’re looking at it that way. Regular laundry costs money, too.”

“But not as much. And you can do regular laundry yourself. Dry-cleaning is like this secret society you’re not allowed into. No matter what, you’re at their mercy. You can have a Ph.D. in anything, but you still can’t dry-clean your own clothes. They’ll never tell you how. No one’s ever even seen what the machine looks like. Think about it. There’s a reason they keep the actual dry-cleaning apparatus hidden behind all those racks of hanging clothes. They don’t want you to crack their code. They won’t let anybody in. Not anybody. Even rich people. You know any rich people with dry-cleaning machines in their house? Exactly. Even they still have to pick it up and drop it off like everyone else.”

“I’m pretty sure they have people who do that for them. Also, in New York they deliver.”

“But still. The dry cleaners own you. You’re at their mercy. Clothes that have to be dry-cleaned look down on you.”

“Is it the clothes who are to blame, or the dry-cleaning professionals themselves?”

“Chicken or the egg, my friend.”

“This new dry-cleaning conspiracy theory reminds me of your fear of ironing.”

“This is nothing like my fear of ironing, although ironing is another secret society that doesn’t want you to know what’s up. Do you know anyone who can tell you why the ironing board is shaped that way? How does it help me that it’s the size of a surfboard? Why is an ironing board so hard to fold? Does it want me to leave it standing up in my room for days? How am I supposed to do sleeves on that thing? Never mind collars.”

“You know what you should do with that shirt you’re struggling to iron?”

“I know, I know. Send it to the dry cleaners. But I’m afraid to go to our cleaners now that Mr. Wu has seen my commercial. He keeps asking if he can put my head shot up on the wall. You know how that back wall is covered with head shots?”

“Of course. I think it’s cute. Why not just give him one? He’s proud of his customers in the neighborhood.”

“But haven’t you ever noticed, out of all those head shots, there’s no one famous, no one even vaguely recognizable?”

“That’s not true—there’s—”

“Besides him, I mean. Besides that one very famous person, who I doubt has ever actually been to Mr. Wu’s.”

“You think Mr. Wu forged a famous customer? You think Mr. Wu autographed a picture of someone famous himself? Where would he have gotten the picture?”

“You see them on the street sometimes. I don’t know, I’m just saying it’s occurred to me. Because other than him, that one very famous person, do you recognize anyone else on that wall?”

“Well, there’s that cast photo from
Cats
with all the people in their cat costumes … I don’t recognize them individually, but as a group they seem authentic.”

“But besides the somewhat believable cats.”

“Wait—yes—there’s that actress—my mother loved her—she was on that detective show in the sixties, what was it called …?”

“
The Uniforms
?”

“Yes! That! Paula somebody.”

“Paulette Anderson.”

“Yes! So that’s one more actually famous person.”

“Jane. Paulette Anderson has been dead for at least ten years. This is what I’m saying. I’m afraid being on that wall is some sort of bad luck. Like, if I give Mr. Wu my head shot, I’m doomed to obscurity.”

“Better obscurity than death. Better obscurity than
Cats
, for that matter. And what if that picture he has isn’t a fake?”

“Well then, I guess I’ll either end up dead, unknown, a cat, or Bill Cosby.”