Chapter One: It's Now or Neiman's
Desi fumbled with the keys at the front door of her house in Culver City, barely able to balance the bags of groceries she held in her arms. The wind was coming at a slant, right in her direction (of course), causing her to be pelted relentlessly by hot drops of smog-infested water that seemed to fly at her with a sense of purpose.
They said it never rained in southern California.
Well, whoever they were, they lied.
Today the rain was coming down with a vengeance, spewing upon her out of the heavens with a fierceness that seemed deliberate in its intent. It was September 20. Officially the last day of summer.
How appropriate, she thought. Everything today was apparently the last. The last of the summer. The last of her luxuries.
The last damn straw.
That is, if things didn't change. And soon.
She normally kept her thick hair blow-dried straight, but the rain caused it to revert back into its natural, loose-bodied curl. Now her dark brown shoulder-length hair was sticking to her face and neck, a clammy mess that didn't help the muggy feeling she'd been awash in all afternoon as she drove around in the post-lunchtime traffic and sun. She'd avoided the freeways, but La Cienega had been jammed, and so was Sepulveda. Even as she made her way on Slauson, cars were backed up. People were moving at an absolute crawl.
Despite the rain, she'd been driving with the windows down, and her body was hot to the core. There was nothing she could do about it. She couldn't turn on the air conditioner in the car. No way could she afford to burn up her gas like that. These days, she had to make the dollars stretch as far as she possibly could.
As she stood at her front door, her bulky brown purse slipped off her left shoulder, which, in turn, caused her to lose her balance with the grocery bags, which were already weak because they were made out of paper and soaked all the way through. Desi always chose paper over plastic. At least it was biodegradable, recyclable, something. She'd been in California a long time now, and subscribed fully to the idea of living a clean life and leaving behind a clean world.
She stumbled, trying to recover her balance, but the bags gave way altogether. The lush, tender, rose and yellow late-summer peaches rolled loosely onto the porch, the fuzz picking up dirt like fresh Velcro. Already fragile, only hours away from being classified as overripe, they bruised instantly.
The peaches were followed by the big green bell pepper she'd spent far too many minutes picking out. The jicama, cucumber, plum tomatoes, and fresh cilantro all hit the porch with a smack, and the fresh-baked loaf of sourdough bread, a treat for herself, fell top down in the muddy puddle that had gathered beneath her feet. The bread had been wrapped in paper. As the driving rain pelted it further, it became a nasty mess.
A box of Gardenburgers bounced on its corner, rolled down the front steps, and landed flat on the sidewalk, the rain smattering an angry tune against it. At that exact moment, a frog decided to leap over and claim the box as its home. It perched itself square in the center.
Desi just stared at it, the crowning insult on a miserable day.
She pulled her purse back up on her shoulder, slipped the key in the door, kicked it open, and then began the harried task of gathering up the scattered food. Two of the peaches were damaged beyond consumption. She collected everything else in her arms as best she could and tossed them inside the front door.
Desi gave a quick glance over her shoulder. She decided to let the Gardenburgers be.
She closed the front door, kicked off her shoes, and walked into her living room.
Desi collapsed in her burnished leather armchair, the one facing the front door, and surveyed the wet groceries on the floor in the foyer.
Well, there was nothing that could be done about it. She'd have to make do with the food. She wasn't about to go out and waste more money, especially when she didn't have much to use, let alone waste. There wasn't much left, other than her savings, and that wasn't a whole lot. Just a couple thousand dollars. She hadn't yet begun to dip into it. She swore to herself she never would.
Desi hadn't started on her credit cards yet either. That was definitely the no-no zone. She'd had an ugly episode with her credit cards when she first arrived in LA. She had stupidly lived off of them for the first few months, confident that she'd immediately get well-paying work in the industry. Everybody back home was always telling her how beautiful she was, how she looked like a movie star, so it was no worry for her at all.
She used her credit cards for the cheap motel she stayed in when she first arrived, she used them for groceries, gas, car repairs, headshots, clothes, acting classes, everything, with a fervor and mindlessness that she hoped to never see again.
The cheap motel turned out to be not so cheap after all. While the weekly rate wasn't bad, there was a charge every time she picked up the phone to make a call, local or long distance. The charges for the calls quickly mounted, until the phone expense was greater than the actual motel rate.
Desi also quickly learned that LA was full of women, black women, who looked like movie stars. Women out of work. It was a well-known fact that Hollywood had little place for actors of color. Not in general. Desi figured she'd be an exception, blow up overnight and make megabucks, and then be able to effect change and open doors for other people of color. That was her first Hollywood lesson: She was no exception. And these days, other than a Denzel here, a Will Smith there, and an Eriq LaSalle on television, there were very few exceptions. There certainly weren't any black women out there commanding eight-figure salaries, and those making seven could be counted on one hand. Whoopi. Angela. Whitney. That was about it.
On the Latina front, Jennifer Lopez was able to command big bucks. These days, however, as her hair got blonder and blonder, she looked not so much Hispanic as she did a white girl with a tan. Which made it easier for Hollywood to accept her and place her in roles. Pretty soon they'd be pretending she was white. Something that was much harder for them to do with a black woman.
Desi canvassed everything to find acting work. She read Backstage West, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, and any other trade magazine or rag she could get her hands on. At one point she had three agents that she operated between, none of whom helped her book anything. She mailed out unsolicited headshots to casting agents, but received no responses. At night, she hung out at restaurants and clubs known for their celebrity clientele, in the hopes of being discovered. She found out about auditions on her own and showed up, stunned at the staggering number of beautiful black women who were all trying out for the same roles. Not one callback ever came. Her desperate pursuits always turned out the same.
Nothing. Not one single gig.
In the process, Desi the ingenue, newly disillusioned, spirits sagging, and without any offers for industry work, accrued, in her first two months in LA, over fifteen-thousand-dollars' worth of debt, with no income to offset it. Long before she got any real work, the creditors were hovering and harassing her around the clock. It had been a horrible experience. She swore to herself that it would never happen again.
Things were tight now, but it wasn't as bad as that situation had been. There were no creditors hovering. She didn't panic every time the phone rang. At least, not because she was afraid there'd be a creditor on the other end.
She'd been anticipating the phone ringing, and, even though it might bring good news, she also knew the good news wasn't necessarily good news for her
