Without my Dictaphone.
I was so going to be late.
After the fantastically professional start to my morning, I made it to Toast with some dubiously applied blusher, a smudge of mascara and about three minutes to spare. According to my itinerary from the delightful Cici, Toast was a ‘very LA brunch spot full of very cool people.’ The implication of course being that I was very much not one of those people. And she was right. Fragile-looking waif girls dressed in skinny jeans, Ugg boots and The World’s Biggest Sunglasses were stacked seven deep around a relatively ordinary looking café at the side of a relatively ordinary looking road. Maybe even slightly skanky road. It certainly wasn’t the glamorous LA I was expecting. For the want of an approved outfit and a size zero figure, I stuck on my sunglasses and strode past the tables full of girls pushing food around their plates.
‘Hi there, welcome to Toast. Do you have a reservation?’
There was a girl on the door with a clipboard. Of a café. On a Sunday morning.
‘Hi, erm, yes, I do.’ I scrabbled around in my beautiful handbag (at least that looked as if it belonged, even if I didn’t) for the bit of paper that I’d rammed back in there during my scramble out of the cab. ‘I’m a little bit early…’
‘We’re very busy, if you don’t have a reservation…’ Door Girl looked me up and down in a not particularly flattering fashion.
‘No, I do, it’s under someone else’s name—James Jacobs, maybe? I’m meeting James Jacobs. It might be under The Look, as in the magazine?’ I tried my most charming smile. It did not help.
‘Sure, honey. James Jacobs,’ she said. I really didn’t like the extra-long pause between the words ‘James’ and ‘Jacobs’. I waited until she took a grudging look at her list, then raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow so high that it was practically lost in her highlights. ‘Oh. You’re Angela Clark?’
I nodded and smiled again, trying not to look like a smug cow. Bwah ha ha ha.
‘OK then, if you’d like to follow me? We’ve saved James’s favourite table. He’s not here yet but can I get you some coffee?’ Scary Door Girl transformed into Lovely-Door-Girl-slash-helpful-waitress and I wondered if I hadn’t just been a little bit paranoid. Maybe, just maybe, she was human after all.
‘That would be great. Cream and sugar please,’ I said, sitting down at James’s favourite table, which was thankfully hidden away in a corner at the back of the café, inside and away from the crowds.
Door Girl frowned. ‘Cream and sugar? Sure…’
Maybe I wasn’t imagining it. Surely as the only person there that couldn’t possibly be a relation of the Olsen twins, they ought to be welcoming me and my ability to ‘do dairy’ with open arms? Jesus, no one else sitting in that place had eaten in a month.
Everything on the menu looked delicious but my appetite had vanished. In just minutes, I’d be meeting James Jacobs. The James Jacobs. Who needed cinnamon pancakes and sliced bananas when you had six foot four of sex god coming to see you for breakfast? That was if he turned up. I had been three minutes early; he was now seven minutes late. I took out my newly acquired BlackBerry, playing the ‘I’m waiting for someone’ game for everyone to see. Scrolling through the messages, I looked for something from Alex. He hadn’t called me back. And what was it, two in the afternoon in New York? That was so not on. Shouldn’t he be pining for me by now? I tapped out a text message, deleted it, tapped out another, deleted it before settling on the perfect breezy ‘missing you’ message.
‘Hey you, having brunch at Toast, yummy. Miss you A x’
I frowned at the sent message icon. Truly, I was a writer for a reason. Words were my tools. Tools that I wouldn’t need to be using if my celeb didn’t arrive soon. Nibbling on a piece of bread that the increasingly suspicious-looking Door Girl had set down in front of me, I weathered another forty minutes of sympathetic glances, not-so-subtle whispering and three cups of coffee before my phone rang.
‘Hello?’ I answered the unfamiliar mobile number in a heartbeat.
‘Hello, Angela? This is Blake, James Jacobs’s assistant?’
‘Oh hi, I’m at Toast, am I in the wrong—’ I started.
‘Yeah, James isn’t coming? His flight was delayed and he can’t make it?’ Blake continued.
‘I—are you asking me or telling me?’ I was a little confused by the way all of Blake’s sentences ended in a question.
‘He’s totally sorry and we’ll call you later with a new meet-up address? Bye.’ And he hung up.
Door Girl was on me like a hawk. ‘James isn’t coming?’
‘Ah, he can’t make it.’ I waved my hand airily, as though I was stood up by movie stars so often that it barely registered on my radar.
‘So just the check?’ The piece of paper was already in her hand and I could see she was itching to slap it down and fill my table with some Lauren Conrad-alike lettuce nibbler.
‘Just the check,’ I nodded. Bloody movie stars. I should have had the pancakes.
‘I can’t believe that asshole didn’t show,’ Jenny said as we tore down West Third Street in the ridiculous red Mustang convertible that I had told her not to rent but now sort of secretly loved. What I most definitely did not love was Jenny’s driving. She had chosen to confess that she hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car since her last LA excursion years ago, and it showed. As if driving in LA wasn’t scary enough.
‘I called Mary and apparently it’s not a big deal,’ I said, clutching my seatbelt tightly. ‘Apparently celebrity schedules are “fluid”. I’ll catch up with him later.’
‘I can’t believe James Jacobs is so unprofessional. I’m kind of heartbroken.’ Jenny whirled around a corner and through a red light. No matter how many times she told me you could legally turn on a red signal, I still closed my eyes. ‘I think you’re in need of retail therapy, honey, and I am the Dr Laura of retail therapy. I’m taking you to the best shopping in LA.’
‘I’m sure he had his reasons, but since you’re offering,’ I said, envisioning a Pretty Woman-style storm of Rodeo Drive, laden with stiff cardboard bags. ‘Let’s do some shopping. Show me some swank, Jenny Lopez.’
‘OK, here we are,’ she whooped, pulling into an underground car park.
‘But we just left the café.’ I was puzzled. We couldn’t have been driving for more than two minutes.
‘So?’
‘Well, where are we?’ I pushed up my sunglasses to take a look around in the dark. Rows and rows and rows of cars. I suppose it was Sunday, it made sense for people to be at their church. ‘Wouldn’t it have been faster to walk?’
‘Jesus Christ, they ought to throw you out of the city.’ Jenny squinted in the low light and swung the car recklessly across two empty spaces. ‘What did I tell you about people never walking in LA?’
‘And this is it? A shopping centre?’ I just could not believe it.
‘The Beverly Center, honey.’ She scrabbled around in the glove compartment. ‘This is the mall in LA.’
We could have been in Milton Keynes. ‘A shopping centre?’
‘Hey, did I rock up to LA with like, two T-shirts and a ski suit?’ she asked me. ‘No. But you did, so you need to do some shopping. So hush up and get your ass into Bloomingdale’s.’