Her hair, still damp, was easy to slick back. She wound it into a smooth chignon and admired it for two seconds in the mirror. Earrings. She needed something in her ears for that pulled-together look. She found one faux pearl and slid it into place before TJ began yowling for his breakfast.
“All right, all right,” Cassie complained, slipping the other earring into her pocket. She would put it on in the car. She grabbed her purse and hurried down the hall to their tiny kitchenette, smelling coffee the entire way.
“Caffeine. Please.”
Jolene handed her a full mug. Cassie took a few quick sips of her roommate’s heavy-duty Brazilian blend to rev up her insides before grabbing her travel mug and transferring the coffee to it.
“Would you feed TJ?” she asked Jolene. “And who’s the guy I danced around in the hall with this morning? Naked, by the way. Both of us.”
Jolene thought a moment. “Howard Something? He laughed the loudest at my jokes last night. I had to bring him home.”
“When are you going to stop dragging strangers back to our apartment, Jolene? One of them could turn out to be a serial killer. We could be murdered in our beds. Or robbed, at the very least.”
Her roommate snorted. “We’d have to have something worth stealing.” She eyed Cassie. “You look good, Cass. What’s up?”
Cassie rooted inside her purse, looking for a tube of lipstick from Nordstrom’s that she’d been saving for a special occasion. The color would make her mouth pop and give her the final bit of polish she needed.
“Manny thinks I’ve got a dental appointment this morning but I’m going to interview for a job at Merriman Smith.”
“Hmm. Sounds like a law firm.”
“They’re a new entertainment agency. Several agents from top agencies defected and started it about two months ago. Tell me you’ve heard of them. It was all over the trades.”
“If you land a job with them, you can sign me as a client,” Jolene suggested. “I’m sure they rep comics. I’ve got to get another agent, Cass. Manny isn’t doing it for me anymore. Not that he ever did.”
“It’s an interview to be an assistant, Jolene, not an agent.”
“You were a casting agent before.”
“That went nowhere. Like every job I’ve worked since I hit California as a starry-eyed, eighteen-year-old. Even being Manny’s administrative assistant has done nothing for my career. He pays me squat, he has no good clients left—present company excluded—and I know he’s snorting again. Caught him at it twice this week alone.”
Jolene took a sip from the mug she’d poured herself. “Shit. I knew he was high when we talked yesterday.” She removed a can of cat food from the refrigerator and took off the plastic lid, dumping the fish stew onto a plate.
As Jolene started to set it on the floor, Cassie warned her. “TJ likes it microwaved. He refuses to eat cold from the fridge food unless it’s interesting people leftovers, like orange chicken or pepperoni pizza.”
“Spoiled beast.”
Cassie finally retrieved the lipstick and glanced at the microwave clock. “Yes, he is. Gotta run. Later.”
She raced to the parking lot of their apartment complex. Her aging Honda Civic sat innocently, waiting to give her trouble. Cassie begged it to start as she got in, pushing aside fast food wrappers and empty water bottles.
“Today would be a good day to start on the first try,” she announced to the fickle car. “Today is the beginning of the rest of my life. Today, I finally arrive in Hollywood.”
After three false starts, the Civic kicked in. Cassie backed out, praying the car would get her to her appointment without dying. She pulled out into the heavy traffic, something she’d never gotten used to in her nine years in LA. As she drove like a maniac, she thought about how everyone back in Waco, Texas thought she was living the good life with a Hollywood address. They had no idea how dilapidated most of Hollywood really was. Sure, urban renewal had kicked in a few years ago and parts of the area were spruced up so the tourists would have something to take pictures of, but for the most part, Hollywood was a sad, tired section in the City of Angels.
She glanced at her gas gauge as she tossed a piece of sugarless gum into her mouth to kill the coffee aftertaste. At least she had three-quarters of a tank. Plenty to get her to Merriman Smith. She began humming to herself. The