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You can feel how fast Los Angeles runs after a vacation somewhere like Hawaii. No sooner have Simone and I been seated at Bossa Nova that we have a waitress hovering over us.
"Are you ready to order?" she asks us right away. Simone already knows what she wants. They both look at me like I'm brain damaged when I peruse the menu. I finally settle for the mozzarella bruschetta and Simone picks up right where she left off in the conversation.
We're talking about a guy she recently stopped seeing. The guy—let's call him Brett—does PR for a major hotel, is sexy, smart, and amazing in bed. The problem? He takes forever to return Simone's texts and calls. OK, maybe not forever. But in a world where we're always plugged in and used to receiving information as it happens, a couple of days might as well be forever.
"I like him so much, he's amazing," Simone says. "But I already have another date on Saturday night and a coffee date on Sunday. Why shouldn't I? I called him on Sunday and he texted me back—didn't even call—he texted me back on Wednesday."
"Did he mention what kept him?" I ask.
Simone scoffed. "Work thing."
I sipped my coffee.
No one needs to read He's Just Not That Into You to know what "work thing" means. We've all done it. The crazy thing is that we all know it only takes two seconds to call or text someone back to let them know we're swamped, because we've all managed to squeeze the time to do it, no matter how busy we are—when we care enough about the other person. And though we all know this, we still all say it as though it makes perfect sense, as though work really takes up every second of the day and the night, and when people tell us this, we never confront them.
We rarely buy it, but we're complicit. Maybe it's because we don't want anyone calling us on our fib. Maybe it's because we're saving it, just in case someone we really like feeds us the line, so that we can try to convince ourselves it's true. You know, just this once.
The waitress appears with my bruschetta and Simone's salad.
"Have you told him you expect a faster turnaround in his responses?" I ask Simone.
"Who doesn’t?" she responds. It's true.
"I think you should call him and tell him you're disappointed in him for lagging and that he needs to make it up to you. Tonight." I smile mischievously.
"I deleted his number," Simone tells me, taking a bite of her spinach salad.
Deletion is the ultimate act. To an ADD generation spoiled by how easy it is to store data to the point we no longer memorize anything, deletion is tantamount to annihilation.
"Gone," Simone says. "I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to be the idiot that keeps calling. You get one get out of jail free card and that's it. I won't wait by my phone. I refuse."
Less than three miles north, our mutual friend Lisa was still hiding at L'Ermitage where she'd checked in four days before to convalesce after a powerful new peel left her looking like someone had put a flamethrower to her face.
"I'm going out of my mind!" she screamed when I returned her call a few hours after touching down. "I've been here for days and I have no idea what else I can do. I have answered every single e-mail in my inbox. I've cataloged all my photos. I've gone through every single song file in my iTunes library to make sure it has the correct album cover image, year, track number—everything. I'm going absolutely insane."
"Honey," I told her. "Go home."
"I can't! I would just die if The Boys saw me like this."
The Boys are her neighbors. Lisa has the particular Los Angeles blessing (or curse, depending how you look at it) of living next to six actors or models. Never mind that the six of them live in a one-bedroom apartment, have only one car among them, hardly look a day over twenty-three and are quite possibly gay—they're beautiful. And, according to Lisa, beautiful men must never see you looking ugly.
"You can't see me," I told her then, "so I want to let you know that I'm rolling my eyes so hard, I'm afraid they're gonna get lodged in the back of my head."
So there was Lisa: slim, fit, tan, blonde. Gorgeous, except for her face—for now, anyway—and trapped in her
