fifteen minutes of fame

It’s the day of the party, and im in charge. Im telling people where to plug in speakers, how much more ice we need, when the candles should be lit, where the books should be stacked. Martha Ramos is getting her hair done, but she’ll be back soon. she is tall and lithe and grey, and she wears two big turquoise rings on side by side fingers. Every time she walks into the room my heart chokes a little, not because she starred in my favorite childhood movie, the 3rd top grossing film of all time ever, and has never had to work a day in her life since. but because shes a star, shes what you hope stars are. She has a book of alice munro’s short stories by her impeccably made bed; she isn’t married; she has kiehls products in her bathroom and wears slip on leather shoes that look like she fashioned them by herself from the hide of a wild animal, but you know and she knows that they cost multiple hundreds of dollars and still she only wears them while driving; she keeps calling me daphne, which is infinitely better than my real name and when you shake her hands they are ice cold and slippery. She has just bought an old artists commune in santa monica, which consists of 5 pastel colored wood huts and one two story house with a garage on the bottom and wraparound balconies on top, balconies that overlook the sputtering ocean. In the center of the circle of cottages is a long anorexic lap pool surrounded by her colorful, strange, messy garden.
“all around the edges,” I say to one of the people she has hired to help. “as many as you can fit.”
the man who I think im in love with, who is also a ridiculously famous writer, is having a party tonight to celebrate his new book. I work for the publishing house, and they soon realized that though I cant edit, I can make things pretty. He is friends with Martha ramos, though I don’t know how. I imagine them running into each other in Cambodia on the patio of a warm café, saying “oh, you! You’ve created something eternal and breathtaking and, for all artistic purposes, perfect! Me too!”
she comes back from getting her hair done and says she needs to rest. She pulls the curtains to the walls of windows in her bedroom, which overlooks the pool, and tells me not to wake her up. She also tells me I can shower and change in the guest bedroom, and that I can make myself at home. The party starts in three hours.
The caterers, two guys who look twenty and who are dressed in painfully hip clothes, arrive with hardly anything. Theyre cute, and about my age, and im intimidated.
“um, hi…im supposed to be helping. So….”
“no its cool, we work here. We’ve got everything we need.” One of them says. Hes wearing a motley crue shirt and pin striped pants and he hoists himself up on the countertop.
“ok, great. Well…” im grabbing my fingers and twisting them, which is what I do when im waiting for someone to say something.
“we stocked her fridge.” He says. “its what we do.”
“really? Fun”
“yeah,” the one wearing a pink elvis shirt says. “the times magazine wrote us up. we stock peoples kitchens and cook for them and shit. Get paid shitloads” he opens the refrigerator and twists the top off a beer.
“wow. Congrats. Im going to…um, go check on everything. See you around, let me know if I can help.”
Theres nothing left for me to do. I count the candles. One hundred and twenty four.

The sun sets and the candles are lit and the food is set out and im wearing all black and heels and Martha walks out of her linen lemony room and squeezes my shoulder and says “here we go!” and the night could end, my career which hasn’t begun could end. It’s the only moment like that ive had, when, really and truly, everything’s right.
Im busying around, arranging the food on the white christmas tree light lined patio attached to the kitchen. I can tell the caterers are tipsy, or maybe high- their eyes are a little swollen and their voices are smoother. We’ve become friends over the past few hours, joking about the guest list, full of music video directors and Pulitzer prize winning authors, all the bourgeoisie (their word, which caused an uncontrollable splurt of laughter from me and the inevitably pot calling the kettle black conversation). Ive told the bartenders where to set up, ive fetched things for them and ive checked on the 124 candles every five minutes, and now they arrive.
Martha is standing by the pool in her burgundy floor length linen dress, which shes wearing with flipflops, holding a glass of white wine in her right hand as her left arm supports her elbow, and talking to someone. she looks like a bow, hollowed out, her hair loose and brushing her speckled shoulders. When the famous writer, the point of this night and the man who makes me feel queasy every time he steps into the office, enters with his short blond wife, who always smiles but never shows teeth, who stays by his side like an ampersand, Martha raises her wine hand and says yee haw.
He is tall and has dark hair, his face is a little too pushed forward, as if his features were about to jump off. He isn’t attractive, necessarily, but after staring for years at the tiny morsel of him on the back of his book jacket, seeing him in person created the best kind of attraction, the kind that comes from waiting. Hes wearing jeans and a white t-shirt and a black blazer, and you can tell from the way he moves, this is true every time he moves, that he wasn’t born cool. He wasn’t one of those kids who knew what to say and what to do and how to avoid anything except popularity. He thinks about it, you can tell. He straddles the fence between being completely above it all, the praise, the cult following, the articles touting him as the new Kerouac, and completely yoked to it.
The band starts to play on the balcony above the garage, and im told by Martha to go man my station. My job is to sit outside and check people off the list, and if they haven’t paid their $250 im instructed to collect it. The proceeds, of course, to his charity. Jonathan Lethem, Karen O, spike jonze, sean wilsey, aimee mann, nick hornby, Amy Sedaris—I am the first one, other than the eager valet boy, that they see.
I sit at my little card table that Martha and I found together in the wood shed behind the garden. “this’ll do!” she had said, sweat beading on her upper lip.
It starts to slow down and Martha peeps her head out of the ivy-covered door to her estate and tells me I can come in and enjoy. Everyone’s pretty much here anyway.
I make it upstairs to hear the last of his speech.

Its two in the morning, and Martha ramos, now in silk pajama pants and a robe that looks like its woven out of hemp, is licking the salt off her fist before taking a shot of tequila. She is sitting cross legged on the floor in front of a giant glass table. The famous writer who makes, I think, even Martha nervous, is sitting on her stiff couch, next to his blond wife. She is smiling like she always is, leaning into him with her bangled arm around his. He knows who I am, but every time we have to interact I suspect he doesn’t so I start off with,
“hi, I work in the office…I just-”
and every time he cuts me off with “yes, I know!” with so little frustration that it makes me want to hug him and say thank you! Or say, theyre right! You really are this gentle giant, this person who is larger than life but who’s still here, living it. But instead I always just say, “oh, ok, well wilkins needs you to sign the waiver.”
And that’s what happened tonight, as I was trying to scoot past him around the corner of the shallow end.
“hi,” he had said, “thanks for everything, it looks great!”
“oh, thank you!” and then I added, as quickly and as coolly as I could, “I really enjoyed the book.”
It was then that he looked at me, for the first time, and saw what I had been afraid he had seen all along. We had met before.
It was the first fundraiser for his charity, years ago, during a summer when I read page after page in book after book and walked around the city and made friends with strangers. I went alone, in was in a warehouse underneath the BART tracks, and got drunk quickly off the wine he was pouring everyone. And then-
“I had a dream about you.”
He looks around, looks busy. “really?”
I nodded. “yes.”
“what did I look like?” he asked
and so I told him the truth, that he was a very, very old man in my dream.
He smiled the smile his wife smiles, the insincere, worried one, and began pouring for a person next to us who had heard the conversation and looked at me sideways, warily. I was the first of many to come, of many people saying something in hope of some sliver of truth from him, some witticism, some promise that who he was in book could be touched, talked to, felt. And im not sure if everyone since has reacted the same way, but I went into the cold, sharp bathroom and cried.

And now, three years later, I am taking tequila shots with him on the lap of an overly trendy caterer and trying to avoid the judgment I feel seeping from every person who is too famous to have me still hanging around this late at night.

The famous writer who worries that it was all a dream to begin with, the night that a young girl saw the face of him in 50 years, stands up uneasily and starts to walk to his car with his wife. He says, “im too drunk to drive,” and she smiles because she knows she will anyway. And the caterers stand up and start cleaning and Martha, still sitting, says,
“daphne…” her eyes are bloodshot, like a stars’ at 2 am should be. “don’t leave honey. Just stay in the guestroom, you shouldn’t be driving.”
And I say ok, and pick up her messy chocolate cake plate to bring to the kitchen.

I am putting on pajamas that she has lent me when I hear her voice, outside the window, calling the name she has lent me. I walk to the living room, and see her, standing naked by the pool, surrounded by 121 burned out candles and 3 still lit.
“just watch me, honey.”
And I stay by the open window, and watch her swim.