Read Online Oh! You Pretty Things by Shanna Mahin - Free Book Online Page A

shoots and salon appointments and painful auditions where I gamely tried to act like I was enjoying imaginary bowls of pudding. My mother stood in the back of the room in her Guess jeans, mouthing the words that turned to lead when they passed my lips. The memory still brings the blushing snakes up my neck.
    My mother believed in Scientology and Rolfing and expensive haircuts. She believed in bad karma and good tans. More than anything, she believed that if I booked a movie or TV show, her life would fall into place. So she kept dredging up auditions, which inevitably ended in halfhearted choruses of “We’ll be in touch” from as early as I can remember until the month before my fifteenth birthday.
    That’s when she got me a big break, the kind of once-in-a-lifetime chance that changes everything. That’s when she put me in front of Trent Whitford, a critically acclaimed director whose movies rarely make much at the box office, yet he still gets mentioned in the same breath as Kubrick and Scorsese.
    There’s a lot of shit that ensures that Donna will never make the short list for Mother of the Year, but this is the one thing I still can’t get over.

Twelve

    T he second week of my trial period starts rough. There’s a new girl at Starbucks; she looks confused when I place my order, and I feel a queasy tremor of dismay. I really hope she understands that
bone dry
means she has to wait until the milk has settled in the metal pitcher before scooping only the foamiest of foam into the cup. Yep, that’s my life right now.
    Tyler is full of quirky charm, but he’s also becoming increasingly particular by the day. And it’s not only about coffee anymore. He’s decided that all he wants to eat are diced, fresh mangoes for breakfast and handmade artichoke ravioli for lunch, which I sauté in clarified butter and sprinkle with fresh thyme picked from the terra-cotta pots artfully jumbled beside the carport.
    At least it gives me a chance to shine.
    â€œI’m so sick of 17th Street Café,” he said last week when the fries were too limp, even though I’d had them packaged separately and to prevent condensation opened the Styrofoam clamshell during the ten-block drive to the house.
    â€œThis,” he said, holding aloft a wilted example for my inspection, “is disgusting.”
    â€œMmm-hmm.” I was giving him about 30 percent of my attention. With the remainder, I was laying out neat rows of pictures I’d taken the afternoon before at several Melrose antiques stores.
    Fries momentarily forgotten, he flicked his gaze across the glossy images and heaved a sigh.
    â€œWhat?” I said.
    Tyler extended his little finger and pointed down the rows of three in rapid succession. “Fake, fake, hideous. Not what I asked for, mediocre, probably fake. Not bad, ooh, really fake, annnd . . .” He picked up the last photo to study. “Not even Biedermeier.”
    If he was right, then half the fancy stores on Melrose Place were selling fake antique furniture at escalated prices, which I highly doubted, but still. He certainly knows his shit. It didn’t even matter. The point was that I’d failed. Or at least felt like I’d failed. Or maybe there was a moving target and I wasn’t even sure what success looked like anymore.
    Tyler glumly waggled a fry at Zelda, who launched from her perch on the Roche-Bobois sofa that has become the bane of Tyler’s existence.
    â€œYou know what I’m in the mood for?” he said. “Ravioli.”
    I leaped into the void left by my Biedermeier debacle. “I can do that! I made fresh pasta all the time when I worked for Wolfgang.”
    â€œReally?” Tyler perked up. “You can do that?”
    â€œAbsolutely,” I said, even though the truth is I worked for Wolfgang for less than six months, mostly as a secretary. Still, sometimes they’d let me in the prep kitchen