but this abuse has simply gone too far. I will have to insist that you or someone from her team come here and collect her immediately!”
Less than twenty minutes later I was tossing my keys at the valet and being ushered in via the secret entrance reserved for the uber-important at Barneys off of Rodeo Drive. As a courtesy to the rich and truly bratty, high-end Beverly Hills retailers routinely arranged private shopping hours during which “Special Clients” could browse their stores in peace. It was a perk intended to spare certain clientele from the prying eyes of paparazzi, who could make millions just by reporting their bra sizes or affinities for brand names which they might not officially be endorsing that season. The retailers’ return on this effort, of course, was the insane amount of money that celebrities would drop in their stores in a single visit. But Lydia’s psychosis was too much to take, even for them, and now it was my problem.
Awesome.
Lydia, it seems, had called Mr. Wood frantically at 7:00 a.m. that morning to demand a visit to the jewelry department in preparation for a public appearance later that evening. When she arrived, she was belligerent. She insisted on donning numerous precious necklaces and rings at the same time, and then she started sobbing uncontrollably, refusing to take them off. Gasping through the tears, Lydia had suddenly become completely paranoid. She darted up the escalators toward the second floor, keeping the salesgirls at bay with creative sword work from the pointy end of a hat rack she had swiped along the way.
“She’s run out of things to throw at us,” Wood explained, smoothing his hair back as we hustled to the dressing room. “And at least her yelling has finally subsided. Perhaps she lost her voice. Still, we are meant to open to the public in a little over an hour, and we need her out of here before we can begin the damage control. Can you manage that?”
“I’ll try, Mr. Wood, but with all due respect, she’s not my child.” I did my best to stare past his upturned nose and into his eyes. “We all work for them, don’t we?”
“I suppose we do.” He unclenched and patted my arm. “Mind yourself in there, Madam. And let me know if there is anything else you’ll require. She’s already sent one of my salesgirls to hospital for some stitches across the forehead.”
I paused to consider whether Lydia’s retainer with Steel covered emotionally fueled assault.
“It was the new golden-snakeskin, four-inch Versace stiletto,” he said before looking away. “She had about as much chance as any top model’s personal assistant during detox.”
“I thought she was just having a tantrum,” I said. “I didn’t realize she hurt anyone. I’m so sorry.”
“As am I. Three inches to the left and that heel would have caught me in the eye,” he thought aloud. “No matter. There are at least fifty plastic surgeons within ten miles…We won’t be pressing charges.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “But we will be expecting Mrs. Johnson to take advantage of our personal shoppers in advance of her next album release, so that she may remain off-site.”
“That seems reasonable.”
“Well, then, I’ll leave you to it.”
I grabbed a white silk scarf from a nearby Hermès display, walked lightly toward her dressing room, braced myself and put my ear to the floor.
“Don’t shoot, Lydia.” I waved the scarf under the door in an attempt to make her smile. “It’s Monica. If you’re willing to let the jewelry go unharmed, I’ll promise to talk to the D.A. about sparing you jail time. I’ve negotiated lots of hostage situations before, and I know that we can work this out.”
A sniffle, but no reply.
“Lydia?” I said a little louder. “Lydia, I’m coming in there unless you can give me a good reason why I shouldn’t.”
These were the more interesting moments of my job, and sometimes I wished I could have shared them with people outside of the firm. Because who would’ve believed that belly-crawling underneath the door of a changing room in the DKNY section of Barneys Beverly Hills before the rest of L.A. awakened on a Saturday morning had anything whatsoever to do with the practice of law?
I slithered over the plush carpeting (which was far softer than any sweater I owned) and into the cubicle (which was larger than my bedroom). Lydia was sitting on the floor cross-legged opposite the mirror, absentmindedly examining her split ends. Her hair made mine (which had not yet been brushed) look professionally done; however, her teal-green Juicy Couture track-suit had seen better days, and she was in truly desperate need of a facial. Or Proactiv. Or a vat of cover-up.
Imagine how much money I could make right now with just one snap of my camera-phone, I thought, cursing my morals to hell.
Clinging to her wrists, neck and ears were at least three million dollars worth of emeralds, diamonds and pearls in necklace, choker, bracelet, ring and chandelier earring form. There was even a pearl-encrusted tiara threatening to slide off her head. Over years of working with people surrounded by yes-men, I had learned that the best way to get them to do something was to let them talk first. So I sat up, settled in beside her, folded my hands in my lap and waited.
“When I was fifteen, my boyfriend Angelo Damiano gave me a necklace for our one-month anniversary,” she began a few seconds later, while fingering the emeralds imbedded in a platinum, chain-link bracelet on her wrist. “It had this one really tiny emerald hanging at the bottom of a mad-thin five-carat gold chain. I swear I had to use a magnifying glass to find it. And it was probably just a chip of green glass, anyways. But it was the most beautiful thing in the world to me back then. I never took it off. I even slept with it on.”
“Lydia,” I pleaded, covering her hand with my own. “Things will get better. You had a fight, right?”
“You don’t get it.” She shook her head. “I trusted Angelo. I believed in my man back then. No question. It was me and him against the world. Things was simple. I miss that.”
“So this is about your high school boyfriend?”
“It’s about Cameron. I know he’s cheating on me, Monica. I just know it.” She stood up and confronted herself in the mirror. “But the messed-up part is that I don’t know if I really know it, because everybody has somethin’ to say. They all want to put in their two cents. And the media just wants to rip us apart.”
“That’s terrible, Lydia, but it’s also a fact of public life.” I borrowed a line from the boilerplate Steel Associates speech. “I’m here to help the two of you make sense of things, privately. But I still don’t understand why you’ve locked yourself in here.”
She turned to face me, her chandelier earrings shimmering at me as an echo of the gesture. “You have any idea how humiliated I am?”
“Oh, don’t even worry about that. There’s no paparazzi within five miles of the store. No one even knows you’re here, other than the staff and me.”
“It’s not that, Monica. I’m not humiliated that people will find out. I’m humiliated because I don’t even know if I trust my own instincts anymore, much less my man. There’s just too many people in this relationship, and there have been from the beginning. Me, Cam and everyone else in the world. I don’t even know who I can trust…they called my agent and my ‘best friend’ from my phone before they called you, Monica, I heard them. And they both saw my name on caller ID and didn’t even answer their phones. My divorce lawyer is the only person who would take
