Lisa was having such a great time at the Noho that she barely wanted to leave to meet Robby. The beautiful cheerleaders fawned all over her. A few of them were virgins, most were not, but Lisa had snared an adult TV star. Wow! They all knew they were prettier than the skanky nerd, but Lisa clearly had something they did not and they wanted to know her secrets. As a result, she was put on a pedestal and revered as the queen of cool.
But Lisa didn't have any secrets. She had lucked into her situation -- she had come very close to dying because of it -- but she wasn't about to tell them that.
"Just be yourself," was all she could think of because that was what Dr. Joe had always told her. "No one will love you if you pretend to be something other than who you really are. Even if they fall for your act, eventually you're going to have to let your guard down. But if a boy doesn't love you for who you really are, he'll figure it out eventually, and he'll be gone the moment he's onto your act. Then you'll have spent a lot of time and effort on bullshit that proved worthless. So start the whole thing off pure."
"Aaaaaaah," sighed every cheerleader that hovered over her.
"Unless you only want him for sex in which case I say, go girl!" kidded the virgin.
And all the cheerleaders laughed delighted with their new idol.
The boys, on the other hand, were slightly distrustful of the homely girl because of the way she had destroyed their teammate -- Mitch hadn't shown his face since Lisa accused him of attempted rape. They couldn't help wonder what was so special about this babe that a rich grown-up TV star would give up everything just to fuck her. Their only guess was that she must give great head.
And with that realization, the bulk of them dropped their loyalty to their teammate and headed on over to the cavalcade of cheerleaders and potential prom queens that surrounded the TV star's fiancee, and began to make their moves on her.
Yet three of the members of the Husky team found this repulsive. Mitch was their friend, Lisa was skank, and they were going to be there for their buddy one way or another. Of course, being merely a tackle, a kicker, and a second-string safety, they knew they didn't have a chance at Lisa's movie-star head anyway. So when the star players went to suck up to Lisa, these three paid their bills and went off to find their friend.
It was the greatest day of Lisa's life. She realized that she had said that several times since her second suicide attempt, and she meant it each time. Now she had cheerleaders and football stars hanging on her every word, and she simply couldn't conceive of anything improving upon that.
But when she told her new friends that she wasn't going to go to Royalties for her date with Robby so she could spend time with them, the girls would not hear of it. Things like "dates with Robby" were precisely why they all suddenly admired Lisa so, and in their catty way, they each knew that her newfound popularity stemmed from that.
The boys would have preferred her to stay, but the "oohs" and "aahs" from their potential fucks made them realize that they must once again play the sensitive male. Therefore, they, too, encouraged Lisa to go meet Robby.
So all-in-all, the girls and the boys, in trying to help their new friend as best they could, called her a cab and demanded she show up at the ritzy joint.
She arrived at Royalties by seven-fifty-five -- five minutes early.
The place was unusually plush for L.A., whose trendier restaurants tend to be sparse and barren. The carpet was a deep reddish-brown, and original classic art covered every nook and cranny of the room. The cutlery was sterling silver, and each chair was reminiscent of the throne of Queen Elizabeth herself.
I can't tell you which celebrities were there because of their shameful, childish behavior. (My lawyer's advice.) All I can say is that Julia Roberts WASN'T there, but the likes of her were. Cruise and Pitt weren't there either, but leading men of their ilk were. James Cameron and Cameron Crowe weren't present on this night, but the Hollywood directors each most respected were.
Claude, the snooty maitre d', made Lisa wait till eight-oh-one before seating her, even though Robby's table had been ready for twenty minutes. As Robby had expected, Claude made absolutely no attempt to pass along his message. It was the Frenchman's way of punishing Robby for treating him like an errand boy. Perhaps Clint Eastwood could treat him with such disrespect, but certainly not a nobody like Rockman.
Lisa couldn't have felt more out of place as she waited. She was wearing her best party dress and she was well aware that, compared to the chic designer labels all around her, she looked like she came out of some 1950s high school prom parody. She could tell the other patrons were whispering about her, asking one another if she was in fact "Rockman's girl." She recognized many of them, and she could tell that those she didn't know were equally important.
By the time Claude escorted her to her cramped, tucked away table by the kitchen door, she was glad to be out of the limelight and invisible once more.
It was around that time that the owner arrived, whom I will continue to call "le Monsieur" because it amuses me. le Monsieur had heard rumors that Robby was in trouble, but he had paid no attention to them and wouldn't allow anyone to speak ill of his dear friend in his presence. Still, it was impossible to have lived through that weekend without having seen at least one picture of Robby and Lisa together -- even if only for the few seconds before turning the page of the newspaper or flipping the TV to the next channel.
So like everyone else in the joint he recognized Lisa instantly. He grew furious that his new maitre d' was giving his dear friend such a shoddy table. He demanded that Claude move Lisa to a better seat, throwing in just a few French swear words to emphasize his outrage. Claude grew ever more resentful of Monsieur Rock-man for putting him in this predicament with his employer, but the maitre d' nonetheless did as he was told.
Lisa told Claude that she was fine where she was and that she didn't want to move. But the maitre d' was under orders, and barked at her to move "tout de suite!" She responded with great haste as if Claude were her very own high school French teacher.
She couldn't stand the looks and whispers stemming from the crowd of stars as she moved across the room, and grew to hate the attention even more as she sat down in one of the most coveted, visible tables in the joint. She considered smiling back at them in her desperate attempt to be tinselly-correct. But when she'd try, they'd turn away from her the moment she made eye contact, as if they hadn't even seen her at all.
It was ten past eight and Robby was still nowhere to be found. She started to wonder if he was actually going to show, or was this simply his sick revenge because she had once accused him of rape?
She considered leaving but knew that would simply bring even MORE attention upon herself. So she buried her head in her menu and wished that she were dead.
When the waiter showed up, she ordered a Cosmopolitan. She had no idea what it was, but she had seen the glamorous ladies of "Sex and the City" order the very same thing. She prayed to God the waiter didn't ask her for ID because she didn't have any, and her prayers were answered. Most of the staff had heard le Monsieur chew out Claude for his treatment of the child bride. As far as the waiter was concerned, Lisa would get anything she wanted.
She had had wine a couple of times on Thanksgiving, and plenty of beer with boys who had wanted to get into her pants, but she had never had anything of this caliber. She drank it quickly, and immediately ordered another. Then another. By eight-thirty, she was pretty toasted, and even angrier with Robby for humiliating her so. Even if she decided to leave now, she didn't think she had enough money to cover her high-priced drinks AND a cab-ride back to the Valley.
So where the FUCK was the big fuck?
That was when Gloria sat down to join her. She could see that Lisa was livid, and the agent knew that she had timed it perfectly.
"Hello, Lisa," Gloria said as she sat down with the increasingly angry girl. "I'm Gloria Abrams. Robby's agent."
"Hello," Lisa said suspiciously, slurring her words ever so slightly.
"Are you ready to order?" asked the agent. "I am. Robby and I come here all the time, so I know exactly what I want."
"Where is Robby?" Lisa asked.
"I'm sorry," the agent began. "He won't be coming tonight."
Lisa could only look back up at the agent through a film of tears.
"But he said he would," she said sheepishly. "I said I might not, but he said he would for sure."
"I know," Gloria said sympathetically as she took the girl's hand. "That's what he does. He gets coked up and cheats on his wife with a young girl and promises her the moon. Then he sobers up and goes back home, and I get stuck explaining it to her. I'm so sorry. So, would you like to order, or would you rather I take you home now?"
"But we never did anything!" Lisa cried to the agent.
Gloria was more than surprised at this response, but she knew she had plenty of time to make sense of it later. It was just another piece of the puzzle in Robby's story.
She had been on the set when Robby was arrested for his alleged double-homicide, and he seemed utterly confused by it.
"Who the hell are Tavers and... who?" he had said, totally perplexed. "Don't let these bastards in my trailer!" he had yelled to his lawyer, presumably to make sure the police didn't find the cocaine that was undoubtedly there. But Gloria knew from experience that cocaine, with all its evils, didn't make you stupid. If Robby had something to hide, he never would have said such a thing. For some reason beyond the young agent's present understanding, Robby WANTED those cops to search his trailer and find the drugs. On top of that, Norman had called the charges "trumped-up" WHILE grabbing the arrest warrant out of the detective's hand -- long before reading it. How could he have known that? At the time she thought it was lawyer shit, but now it only added to the mystery.
And then there was the D.A.'s twenty-minute interview on the six o'clock news. Gloria had watched Theresa Chavez's spewing just moments prior to Robby phoning her. The assistant D.A. spent two minutes discussing the murder charge, then eighteen condemning Robby for juvenile rape. Theresa never even mentioned statutory rape, just the violent sexual attack of a minor. It didn't make sense to the young agent, and now Lisa's objections made it all even more confusing.
"I swear, we never did anything," the pimpled girl continued. "So he had no reason to do to me what you're saying he did. It HAS to be something else! Where is he?"
But until she could figure it all out, Gloria was simply going to stick with her plan to get the homely teen-ager out of the picture.
"I've heard this so many times before," said the agent, ever so sympathetically. "Sometimes he doesn't even have to fuck you young girls. Sometimes the mere realization that he can is enough."
"You mean he--"
"He's a big, fat middle-aged jerk, Lisa. I'm his agent so I just have to go with it. But if you want my advice, go back to your football player boyfriend and forget all about him."
"It's not fair!" she screamed oblivious to those around her. "HE PROMISED!" she yelled even louder as her fists pounded on the table, knocking over her most recent Cosmopolitan which fell to the ground in an explosion of shattered glass.
The Hollywood elite tried their best to turn away, but it was like not looking at the accident that kept you stuck in traffic for an hour, like not looking at the cleavage of a beautiful woman in a low-cut gown. As much as they wanted to be classy, they just couldn't help themselves.
But Claude and the waiter were on her in seconds.
"Another Cosmo?" asked the waiter in a bad attempt to seem casual.
"Is there a problem, mademoiselle?" asked Claude in his best attempt to nullify the situation.
"No," Gloria answered quickly. "We're okay."
"No, we're fucking not!" insisted the teen-age girl, who then stood up and addressed the crowd. "You can all stop pretending. I know you know who I am, and I know you're all looking at me, you fucking hypocrites! But this is your lucky day. Because I'm going to tell you the truth about this fucking Robby Rockman!"
That was when Gloria realized that she had gone too far. Lisa alone knew what really happened between her and Robby up on that mountain, and Gloria had inadvertently pushed the girl into spilling the beans for all to hear. Even if Robby hadn't done anything wrong, as Gloria believed, it still didn't mean Lisa wouldn't restate her original rape accusations, or make something up totally anew. It could ruin Robby forever, and Gloria simply couldn't have that.
"It's okay," said Gloria. "He wants to see you. I was just testing --"
"Shut up, agent-cunt!" Lisa shouted, utterly out-of-control.
Then she turned back to the crowd.
"Here's the truth about your fuckin' Robby Rockman, according to me," she continued. "Y'all ready?"
*** Up Next: "As The Restaurant Watches" ***
The main characters in this e-novel are fictional and are not intended to portray or resemble any actual individuals, whether living or dead (except for Jeff Abugov who is a real screenwriter, director and producer.) Although certain real people and companies are mentioned in this e-novel, all of the events are fictional and are not intended to portray or resemble any actual events.
Copyright © 2015 Tinseltrash, Inc.