Free Psychic Junkie by Sarah Lassez Page B

you’re so overjoyed that you could throw a party and send out a newsletter. And, if truth be told, that clerk will forever be one of the few who knows your true age. So trained is an actress at keeping her age a deep dark secret, that some of my friends genuinely have no idea how old they are and must call upon rusty math skills to come up with a number they will never ever speak aloud.
    And it wasn’t just my career that was telling me I was old. Even my mother got in on the fun, informing me one day that it was okay, she was coming to terms with the fact that she’d never have grandchildren. It seemed that the hill I’d thought I’d been approaching was actually a cliff, and it was only a matter of time until my unemployed and single self was falling through the air, about to land in a place called Too Late.
    Gina too was enduring single life, vowing never again to date a man who referred to Guinness as Vitamin G, and together we shared our fantasies about fleeing the city and moving to a place to which beauty queens, models, and the female prize of every small town didn’t migrate each year. (There’s no shortage of pretty girls out here, a fact of which the men in L.A. are damn well aware.) One day, we decided, we’d move to a place where a man would open a restaurant’s door for you because he was polite, not because he was using those seconds to scope the room and determine who was who and which table would be the most advantageous. In this new land we’d find not only love but also a one-bedroom house that didn’t cost a million dollars simply because it was in an area where the sounds of gunshots were a bit more distant.
    But there would be no moving. All predictions pointed to my taking on this town and beating it at its own game, so the love I decided to concentrate on was that of acting. I didn’t need a man to act. I didn’t need a man to be successful. I’d simply get a part on the next hit show and buy myself a cute little silver Bug, a Spanish-style house, and a Chihuahua that would bounce around and periodically go for dips in my infinity pool. From there would come the guy, because men are drawn to confidence and a girl who’s got her shit together. And, my God, if I had the Bug and the job and the house, then I’d have my shit together and I’d be happy and who wouldn’t want to be with me? I’d radiate all that good stuff that draws men in like moths. Yep, my new plan was to trick love into finding me.
    Unfortunately, it wasn’t that easy. Hollywood is where dreams go to shrivel up and die—the town itself being the ultimate unrequited love. Though I focused on my career, my career refused to focus on me. Audition after audition yielded nothing but more and more miles on my car (a death trap Del Sol I’d bought with the insurance money) and an increasing confusion on my part as to why people were stubbornly refusing to see me as the starlet I should be. And, to add to my delight, I was fired from my agency. It was devastating, but I still don’t think they ever really knew who I was. All I had left was my manager, Holly, who continued to stick by me through thick and thin…or thin and thinner and thinnest. God bless her.
    Upon discovering the small, insubstantial role of a French girl in a movie called Until the Night , Holly immediately called the director and tried to sell me for the role.
    “Actually,” I was told he said, “we were thinking of Sarah for one of the leads.”
    I can only imagine Holly fell out of her very expensive ergonomically correct chair. At the very least her jaw dropped. This shift in conversation would be much like if Holly had asked someone to do her a favor by hiring a friend as an errand boy, only to hear the words “Actually, we were thinking of making him vice president.” It turned out the director was a fan of Abel Ferrara’s The Blackout , a film I’d done that hadn’t been a financial or critical success but that had garnered a fan base of