months ago. Is there a gay Mafia? I was beginning to believe the rumors when my head-speak was quickly silenced by my gossip radar.
I tapped the technician sitting beside Danny. “Is camera 22 rolling? There are two figures in the bathroom. Looks like they’re whispering. Might be something good. Should we check it out?” I turned to Naomi while pointing at the monitor.
Camera 22, the bathroom mirror camera, was picking up two shadows. The lights were off, and there was whispering.
“Of course,” Naomi said. “Dagmar’s on her phone, just playing with her hair. Go for it.”
The technician pushed a bunch of buttons and the screen for camera 22 lit up in black and white reverse—infrared. He cranked the volume. We all leaned into the great wall of monitors to listen to the conversation.
“I’m tired of it,” the female voice said.
“It’s not a big deal,” the male voice said. “He’s European.”
“But he smacked your ass,” she said.
“It was an accident,” he said. “Snookums, don’t worry. It’s okay. Nothing’s going to happen. Now, let’s go before they call us to massage out their toe jam. A-holes.”
Oh my God, it’s Snookums and Sarcasm from the bus—the couple whose noggins nearly got a lap dance on the ride up here. They were part of Team Heirs’ entourage of assistants. Who knew?
“Well, that was meaningless,” Danny said, reaching for a tin of Olestra Pringles from the craft service table. “Let’s see what Dags is up to,” Danny said, chasing his phony chips with a Diet Coke. “Turn up the volume in the bedroom.”
After an hour or so of the assistants unpacking, massaging, acquiescing, cowering, and otherwise doing what they do, Dagmar rose from her bedside slump and told them all to leave, as if she were the Ice Queen, insisting, “Be gone with you,” and they all turned to stone. Naomi said goodnight shortly after that, leaving Danny and I to brood in each other’s company.
I couldn’t help but notice how a promotion had changed him—he no longer had a string of compliments for me—not even a “cute sweater” comment or three. With nothing to say to each other, we both silently stared at the monitors and reveled in an insider’s look at the other side of life.
Dagmar and Dominic’s room was adorned gaudily in creamy silks and sheepskin. Their bedposts dripped of solid gold, and the wardrobe furniture was bejeweled in aquamarine and sapphires. It was even more lavish than I’d imagined when I secretly pictured myself in a “Freaky Friday” moment of cosmic justice, actually living her life as Nice Queen Dagmar, not Greedy Queen Dagmar.
“Hey! Hey, you!” Dagmar said, waving her finger into a camera lens, hidden within a horse statue. “Can I get some caviar?” she whined. “We were told we’d have food, and this corner store fruit basket is not cutting it. . . I know you heard me.”
Danny looked at me as if he had just shat his drawers. “I think this is your deal,” he said, mouth full of petroleum oil potato chips, pointing at me. “You’re the producer.”
“Okay,” I said, reluctantly. “She’s just a girl. Right?”
But Dagmar was more than “just a girl.” She was an oil heiress from the castles of England transplanted to Beverly Hills. At 20, she had more money than God, with the clout to boot, and somehow she’d amassed the support of half of Hollywood. It had all started with her Saturday morning cartoon about fighting crime in her private jet and pink unitard—she and the glam-girls primping, shopping, and busting ass on behalf of a better world. Then she parlayed that success into a voice-over as the perky pet poodle on Hollywood’s latest blockbuster animation movie, and, presumably, the sequels to come. And now she had her own reality show, flaunting her everythingness, with cameras, producers, me, hanging on her every self-centered move and word.
I slid out the door, into the hall, and knocked delicately on Dagmar’s door, wondering how it was possible that a 20-year old woman, a fellow chick, a sister (if I accessed my inner yogi), could have me trembling. Maybe it was the fact that the entire thirty million dollar production was resting on her cooperation. Maybe it was the fact that I had never spoken a word with anyone as famous as her—Lucy didn’t come close. Maybe it was because I’d bought into the hype.
It was that last thought that brought me to my senses. I took a deep breath and vowed to remember who I