Everyday Psychopaths Read online

  ***

  After our run, B wanted a Pinkberry, a non-alcohol indulgence I had no problem with.
She donned her oversized shades and I parked the Ranger Rover something like 50 meters from the frozen yoghurt place on a sun-streaked Santa Monica Boulevard. Before heading out, I looked around for paparazzi. To my relief, there were none to be seen, but they were prone to pop-up anywhere at anytime like some evil “jackass-in-a-box”. I was just about to walk out when, from the bottom of her cracked confidence, B unleashed: “You'd fuck me wouldn't you? If I was single?”

  Now what this had to do with frozen yoghurt, I’ll never know.

  “Yes, I'd pop your Pinkberry if that’s what you’re talking about. Anyone would, you’re smoking hot.”

  “Thanks, Darryl. Don't you ever quit on me, okay?”

  “I promise,” I said out of necessity, but it was a promise I knew would be hard to keep.

  There was not much of a line in the Pinkberry which was good, because I smelled like locker room and I didn’t want to disgust the other customers. The young freckled man behind the counter repeated my order of one Watermelon and one Salted Caramel and gave me a wide smile. For a second I thought he was cross-eyed.

  When I was back in the car, B dug into her Pinkberry like she had been on a month long Survivor-diet. I have always appreciated women with healthy appetites and I gladly watched her shovel it in.

  B of course noticed my big eyes, “What are you looking at? You’re staring at me like I'm miss Piggy!”

  To which I smiled and said, “I just like to see a woman eat.”

  “Is that a black man’s thing or what? I thought men wanted women who doesn’t eat, doesn’t talk, fart flowers and who never let anything out of the anus, just into it.” B took one more spoon, rolled down the window, threw out the cup and said, “Let's go home, okay?”

  “Yeah, let’s go before they arrest us for littering.” I replied drily, turned the key and drove off.

  On the way home we sat silently in the car, I tried to eat my Pinkberry while managing the steering wheel and B was next to me, lost in her own head.

  Back at the mansion, she headed off to shower while I went to my office and sat down by the antique desk that A got from some celebrity estate for a ridiculously large amount of money. I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes. I felt a heavy weariness set in and knew I was in desperate need of a vacation. Assistants rarely rest and it had started to get to me, much like celebrity life had gotten to B. Since I started working for her, I had lost contact with most of my friends and I’d rarely been in touch with my parents. Work, and the glorified world that came with it, had consumed me and I was starting to pay the price.

  I probably nodded off for a good twenty minutes, before I was kicked to life by my iPhone dancing on the dark wood. The display read “Julianne”.

  Julianne was one of those women who had decided to compensate her less fortunate physical appearance by being a ruthless workaholic, determined to put all men down a peg-hole or ten. She had rat-colored hair, a thin mouth and a plank-formed body to go with her sharp, ear-cringing voice that penetrated all sound, and she was the last person I wanted to talk to at that moment. Still, it was my duty to take the call.

  “Darryl,” I said, praying she would be in a good mood, but I of course knew this wasn’t the easiest time to be B’s agent, so I expected hell.

  “This is one of the biggest fucking PR disasters in Hollywood, Darryl. My phone has been ringing constantly, everybody wants something from her, interviews, statements, appearances, the works but she’s refusing to pick up the goddamn phone.”

  “You know she wants all communication to run through me, I’ve told you that before, Julianne.”

  “I don’t get it though, why should I have to go through you? I’m her agent.”

  She should have known there was no point in arguing about this, B held firm that I was the messenger and her filter to the outside world.

  “But why is it so urgent to reach her now? She’s in no mood to talk to anyone and I don’t see how going on Letterman would make anything better at this stage.” I tried to be as firm as I could. You needed to with Julianne.

  “This is exactly why I need to talk to her! I’ve actually started to think that we can spin this in our favor and use the attention to something good.”

  This is why she was one of the best agents - she saw opportunities everywhere.

  “So you’re saying she should come out and talk about her problems and in this way redeem herself?” I said, skeptically.

  “For once you hit the nail on the head. She needs to take advantage of the publicity, otherwise there is a risk she’ll have a tainted image forever. She should talk about how she’s battling alcoholism as a result of a tough childhood or whatever the hell she’s drinking for. I think we could go for the Oprah book club too, I have some formidable ghostwriters ready to start typing as soon as I give the green light. This doesn’t have to be a disaster, but instead a great chance to connect with her fans, show her true, vulnerable self and come out on top. How is she feeling by the way?”

  This was a rare show of emotion from Julianne. Maybe she had worked on what she needed to say to sound like an empathic and normal human being.

  “She’s okay, considering.”

  “So can I talk to her? I have loads of calls and e-mails I need to return today. If we get started now we can really flip this shit. I know we can!”

  Julianne was frighteningly good at her job, but also frighteningly bad at reading people. The chance of B going on a talk show at this point in her life was pretty much zero and in a way I felt sorry for Julianne for not understanding this. But you can’t blame her for seeing only dollar signs either, it was in her job description.

  “I’ll talk to her about her options and I’ll tell her to call you when she’s ready. But right now I think she just wants to rest. I’m pretty sure she’s not keen on going on TV to talk about a drinking problem she has hard time admitting to herself. She’s really fragile right now.”

  “Rest is for losers, Darryl. The only thing you should focus on keeping her away from is the bottle, not the spotlight. Hope is not lost if we act fast.”

  “I’ll promise to bring that up when I see her. Thanks.”

  And Julianne hung up on me without saying goodbye.