More Muffia (The Muffia Book 2) Page 8

  “The Muff posse will come over and shut ’em down.” Jelicka volunteered all of us to assist in busting the naughty neighbors. It seemed like Kiki had already consulted Maddie, who said she was looking into the legalities and warned us to wait before doing “anything too crazy,” which included Rachel’s wanting to dress up like a porn star in hopes of entrapping somebody. Kiki seemed calmer when she was finished, happy to feel like she wasn’t alone—which she wasn’t.

  Maddie told us about the guy she met from Scotland who, she insisted, while glancing at Jelicka, was “too new to even discuss, so I don’t know why certain people feel compelled to talk about him.” She claimed to have no personal knowledge about what a Scotsman wears or does not wear under his kilt—much to Sarah’s disappointment and mine— but if Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander books were to be believed, it was nothing.

  Vicki, who was no stranger to foreign guys, having been married to a Spaniard, wished Maddie luck with the Scot before segueing into her various film projects, including the Muffia project, and telling us about becoming a mentor for a teenage girl named Solange, who was getting out of foster care. We all thought she was incredibly generous and noble but worried it might be too much, as Vicki was still supposed to be avoiding stressful situations. Jelicka began her turn in the roundy-round talking about what kinds of jobs she might get now that her divorce was final and she had to go back to work. She gave us a full report on Cougarlife.com—the cubs were cute, but the cougar was getting bored—and she thought she might be getting stalked just like Paige. Unlike Paige, however, if Jelicka was being stalked, God help the stalker.

  “Does anyone else think Paige might not be here for a different reason than the one she gave us?” Jelicka asked. Talk of stalking and Paige must have triggered that question.

  We stopped, glancing around at each other for understanding.

  “Like what?” asked Sarah.

  “Like, do you think she might have, oh say, had her eyes done?”

  Maddie frowned. “Where do you come up with this stuff?”

  “I think it happened,” Lauren said. “At least the part about the stalker—Paige’s stalker. I don’t know about yours, Jel. But I’ve seen Paige’s a few times when I dropped Gavin off for his tennis lesson.”

  “You’re starting ’em young,” said Kiki.

  “You did too, Kiki,” said Lauren, probably referring to Troy’s sax playing. “These days, if you don’t have your kids doing something extra-curricular really well by the time they’re fourteen, you can forget about getting them into a decent college.”

  “Agreed, but why would Paige lie about the reason she wasn’t coming?” said Maddie. “Especially considering she’s never missed a Muff meeting.”

  “Right. She would have told us,” said Vicki.

  “She’s actually kind of an oversharer, which makes it all the more odd,” I said. “Remember when she told us about peeing on her friend’s horse?”

  Sarah’s jaw dropped. “Really? I must have missed that. What did the horse do?”

  “She was riding this horse,” I said, “and suddenly she looks down and the saddle is completely wet. She looks around, can’t figure it out, and suddenly she realizes it’s her. And she’s not just leaking—the floodgates have opened, and she didn’t even feel it happening.”

  “It’s a common problem after childbirth,” Lauren said. “She just needs a bladder sling.”

  “A bladder what?” Jelicka raised her brows, though due to Botox, they did not raise very far.

  “Bladder sling,” said Maddie. “It rhymes with bling, Jelicka.”

  Vicki pointed the camera at Jelicka, who said, directly to the lens, “Who knew?”

  “They go in and sort of lift up your bladder into a, well, into a sort of sling thing,” Lauren explained. “I’m going to need one, too, so we were discussing doctors. The good news is, once you get one, you stop peeing at inopportune times, like whenever you laugh, cough, or take too big a breath.”

  Jelicka didn’t seem to follow. Plastic surgery, she understood. Any kind of surgery where you couldn’t see a visible improvement to your looks—that was a waste of time and money.

  “I told you when I had my eyes done,” said Vicki. “But for me, it was a medical necessity—because of my Nordic folds, which are hereditary and can eventually interfere with vision.”

  It’s always struck me as funny how some people who undergo cosmetic eye surgery claim it’s a medical necessity, blaming something called Nordic folds—extra large folds of eyelid skin—for their future failing vision, even when they have absolutely no Scandinavian blood.

  “I tell you all about my Botox injections,” said Jelicka. “Is that oversharing? I’d just call it sharing.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about that,” said Sarah. “The Botox. Do you like it? Not that I can afford it.”

  “It’s so cheap now,” said Jelicka. “These days you can get it done at a foot spa.”

  Madelyn leaned toward Sarah. “You don’t need it—especially not from the Vietnamese lady who does your pedicure—nothing against the Vietnamese.”

  “Some dentists are offering it, too,” Jelicka said.

  “Foot spa—dentist—you can probably get the guy behind the meat counter at Ralphs to work on your face,” said Maddie.

  “Not that it’s a good idea.” Jelicka delivered this line to Maddie, with whom she was clearly having some sort of tiff. The rest of us carried on, pretending they weren’t. “You just have to go to an artistic type person who knows where to stick the needle.”

  “I plan on telling you all when I get a facelift,” Lauren said. “But if it looks horrible, you must, must promise to be totally honest with me. I don’t want to turn into one of those women who keep on having procedures and have no idea how other people see them.”

  “For the record,” said Rachel, “I’m never having plastic surgery.”

  A few of the older Muffs groaned at this proclamation. At almost thirty-three, Rachel was the youngest and, as such, the least in need of any facial “maintenance.” Most of us thought she’d change her mind in another ten years.

  “Your statement has been duly recorded,” Vicki said. “And when you have something done, we promise we won’t say ‘told you so.’ ”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Jelicka, giving Rachel a gentle push. “Kidding. I have no horse in this race either way. It’s not like I own stock in Allergan.”

  She knew too much about this stuff.

  With that digression over, it was my turn and, as wowed as everyone had been about Kiki’s porn-making, next-door neighbors, when I told everyone about Picturegate, they were astounded. Nobody they knew so intimately had ever been…well, in essence, blackmailed. Hearing that I had three weeks to fix it or get canned, made everyone furious and adamant that I must fight the injustice done me with everything I had, and they vowed to assist in any way they could.

  By this point in the evening, however, we all needed to get going, so a Muff sub-committee agreed to meet me the following night to help hammer out a game plan.

  “Who’s next?” Lauren asked, as we began packing up to go. “I feel a little lost without Paige here to guide us. I’ll go see her this week and see how she is.”

  “Hold on.” Rachel reached for her laptop. “I think I have her list.”

  “It’s gotta be my turn,” said Vicki.

  “I haven’t hosted in years,” Jelicka chimed in.

  “Me neither,” Lauren said. “I haven’t hosted since Max Tivoli.”

  “Well, you’re all wrong.” Rachel slapped the laptop closed. “It’s Quinn. Any ideas for a book?”

  At that moment, I didn’t have a clue what to choose. Of all the Muffs, I think I stress out the most about choosing what we read because I’m the most fearful of picking something people won’t like. There’s just not enough time in a life to spend it reading bad books—which, in the Muffs’ case hardly matters since, even with great books, they rarely read them.<
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  “Is it too much for you right now?” Sarah said, sensitive to my situation. “Somebody else could go, and we can come back to you.”

  I looked at their expectant faces. With everything I had going on, it was understandable they’d be concerned there might be one too many things on my plate. But I felt happy to have positive distractions. “I’m good. Just give me a couple days.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Early the next evening, Madelyn, Jelicka, and Lauren met me for an emergency strategy session at Firefly, the popular Studio City bar/restaurant with the close-cropped-vine-covered exterior, which gives the place the appearance of a giant chia pet.

  The three of them sat opposite me, each holding one of Chef Jason Travi’s themed cocktails, speechless after listening to my woeful tale, which I’d fleshed out from the “highlight reel” version of the night before.

  “I’ve been thinking about changing careers anyway,” I said, hoping to wipe the shock off their faces. Leaning back in the plush, velvet-upholstered banquette, I picked up my drink. “This just forces my hand.”

  The alcohol soothed away the stress as it went down—granted, not the healthiest way to unwind, but it’s all I had at that moment since swearing off sex with married Steven. It was true—I had been thinking about changing jobs; for years, if I was honest with myself. But until I said it out loud, my idle musings hadn’t gained any traction. Now that my departure from Talent Partners might be imminent, I needed feedback about what I could do to fight the threat, but also to prepare for what might happen if I lost the battle.

  “What would you do?” Jelicka said, aghast. “It’s not as if jobs like yours are easy to come by. Then again, I’ve been out of the labor force so long, I’m not qualified to do anything.” She took a long pull from her bourbon-infused Orange Bomb with egg white foam while gazing longingly at the attractive twenty-something bartender. “Except Cougardom.”

  Lauren’s gaze drifted over to the bartender. “Oh, my; he is hot!”

  “Being a cougar doesn’t pay,” said Maddie, who was behaving like she had additional information. “I know because I mediated a case, that’s all. Disappointed cats all ’round.”

  “But sometimes those little cubs are sooooo much fun.” Jelicka smiled wickedly.

  “So you told us,” Maddie said. “In great detail. You also said you were tired of it.”

  “Just a little.” Jelicka smiled.

  Lauren gestured to the cute bartender. “Did you...?”

  “Not that cub there, no; but I have indeed,” said Jelicka. “And they’re well worth the price of dinner.”

  Clearly, being a cougar was not a sustainable pastime, but Jelicka’s previous career as a sometime screenwriter had arguably never been a real job, either. Selling scripts in Hollywood— no matter how good they are—has always been a crapshoot and has, for the most part, pretty much been a career relegated to young, aggressive males with a penchant for action and violence. This is not to say that women can’t succeed, only that the business is run by, and primarily caters to, men and boys. Now that Jelicka, a female, was going through a divorce and was past the age the entertainment industry considers viable to begin with, none of the Muffs liked her chances of going back to screenwriting. Even at the peak of her success, she never made more than enough to get by. And now her love for the finer things in life—leaving aside her addiction to Botox, Restylene, and her Audi A8—ensured she’d have trouble going back to her struggling “poor-me” writer lifestyle.

  This point would have been driven home when Lena Dunham walked in, entourage in tow, but fortunately, I was the only one of our little group to see her. Dunham, known for creating the HBO series “Girls,” is one of those writers, arguably not even particularly talented nor doing anything to advance the stature of women, whose early efforts met with instant—and to me inexplicable—commercial success. This always irritates people who’ve been slaving away for years, not that that was Jelicka.

  “Cougardom is also dangerous,” said Maddie. “But let’s get to your job prospects next, Jel. Right now, let’s focus on saving Quinn’s career.”

  “No need,” said Jelicka. “I’ve decided to get my real estate license.”

  “That’s a great idea,” said Lauren, generally a glass-half-full sort of person, but now she just appeared relieved to be off the subject of boy toys.

  “I don’t know if getting a real estate license is ‘great,’ but what the hell, right? People need houses.” Jelicka once again lifted her cocktail. “L’chaim.”

  She and Lauren clinked glasses while I repeated, “L’chaim,” after which I took a large gulp of my pomegranate margarita. Mmm, l’chaim indeed!

  “L’chaim, already. Now let’s get back to actually living that life we’re drinking to—” Madelyn turned back to me. “Do you have a plan?”

  I put my drink down. “Sort of. If Jamie fires me, I was thinking I might become a personal manager for a couple of my clients.”

  “Which reminds me,” blurted Lauren. “I need to talk to you about Viggo Mortensen.”

  “Hello...?!” reprimanded Madelyn. “Can we stay on topic?”

  “Hold on, Maddie, just one more thing,” Lauren said. “I have this other idea, about a way to find out who sent the pictures, but I have to run it by George. That’s it; that’s all I wanted to say.” She picked up her drink and sat back.

  Maddie glanced around the table. “Anyone else want to say something; comment on a hottie at the bar or the new line of Spanx?”

  We sipped our drinks, not wanting to rile her further.

  “Sorry,” she said. “But can we try to focus on Quinn first and her own ideas about what she might do if they fire her? You can ask questions, but just hold your suggestions until after. Everyone will get a chance to talk.”

  Gotta love Maddie. She’s tough when she’s on a mission, and right now the mission was me. She rarely had an evening off from the duties of raising her budding fourteen-year-old daughter, Lila, and I was grateful she’d made the effort to join us. This evening, Lila was under the care of her dad—Maddie’s ex, Brian—which could be the reason for Maddie’s shorter-than-usual fuse.

  “Okay, so say you become a manager; what happens if your clients stop working? Then what?” Jelicka asked.

  “Then I gotta get a new new job.”

  Lauren hrumphed. She never needed to work, so she was not the most reliable opinionator on the subject of gainful employment. As far as most of us could tell, she’d married her prep-school sweetheart—who just happened to be heir to America’s foremost beer dynasty.

  “Any other ideas?” asked Maddie, taking notes.

  “I could start a sort of speechy-lecturey sort of booking agency.”

  Maddie wrote that down.

  “Sounds vaguey,” said Jelicka giddily, clearly getting tipsy. “Sorry.”

  Madelyn threw her a look. “All options open. We’re brainstorming.”

  “It would be the kind of thing where I’d arrange for people—you know, actors, athletes, ex-presidents—to appear at events. I’d book them to talk at annual meetings on the lecture circuit—that kind of thing. Think TED, but smaller, and no YouTube,” I clarified.

  “Wouldn’t there be a lot of competition?” Lauren asked. “I just know that from researching for the Alzheimer’s benefit.”

  “I am SO looking forward to the benefit,” Jelicka said. “Will there be some eligible bachelors—?” She caught herself. “Er, excuse me—my mistake. We’ll table that for now.”

  Maddie rolled her eyes indulgently and turned back to me.

  “Yes,” I said, apropos the glutted field of booking speakers. “There will be competition. But think about how many speeches are given every day at corporate retreats, meetings, society luncheons, schools, old folks homes. I think there’s room for a new specialized agency.”

  “I like the idea,” said Jelicka. “These days, people can’t seem to get enough speeches. No matter what they’re about—saving the wo
rld, bug anatomy—doesn’t matter. I watched a TED Talk about procrastination. Boom, a million views! What do they call it? Oh yeah, viral. And guess what? There’s no cure.” Jelicka laughed, slapping the table. “Cheers!” Then she picked up her Orange Bomb and knocked it back.

  I glanced at Maddie, concerned if this was Jelicka’s first or second drink. She instantly got what I was thinking and leaned toward me. “I’m driving.”

  “Why are speeches so popular all of a sudden?” Lauren asked. “Every single day, somebody sends me a link to somebody yammering on about something. Do you think it’s because when other people are speaking, we don’t have to?”

  “That would never work for the Muffs,” Jelicka said. “We all want to talk—well, Sarah not so much.” Her words were beginning to sound garbled.

  “All right, we agree speeches are currency.” Maddie turned back to me. “But let’s get back to the task at hand. Any other ideas?”

  “I have a little money saved, so I thought maybe I’d do something totally different. Go back to school; study landscape architecture maybe, or cooking. Also, sort of related to all this—I signed up on NowLove.com. Maybe all my problems will be solved by meeting a rich guy.”