I was in LA a couple weeks ago for a day to pitch Showtime the story for what hopefully is going to turn into my new TV show based on the book. I always stay at the same funky little European feeling West Hollywood hotel. It has little kitchens and feels like an apartment so I feel like I'm in NYC. They know me well and treat me nicely and it's inexpensive so it's my home away from home.

I had a couple hours until the meeting so I went up to the roof to sit by the pool and work on my book. There was a very white Ohio looking business man with his long pants rolled up to be makeshift shorts, a couple rocker wannabes nursing hangovers and a thick leather tanned white haired middle aged gent with gold bracelets and necklaces who I've seen up there every time I visit. I don't know if he lives in the hotel or what but he seems a cool character.

I went to the far end of the deck which has sweeping views of LA in every direction except north and plopped down in a chair in the sun, wanting to catch a little tan as I worked. I put my self esteem machine on the table and positioned it so the light, which hopefully would be red and blinking soon was visible just over the left hand edge of the page I was reading.

I read for a few minutes, checking for the light very forty seconds or so, when suddenly, I heard a woman's voice over my shoulder.

"Excuse me. Hi. Sorry to bother you," she said in a silky voice. Now when in NYC, those words illicit one knee jerk response and one knee jerk response only, "Sorry. I don't have any." Whether a female or male voice, we're so inundated with grifters, beggars and crackheads we just are conditioned to say, "No." If our radar quickly picks up a tourist or a fellow New Yorker genuinely in need of help, then of course we stop our lives to give them the help they need, but we can pick up in intonation alone the authenticity of the questioner instantly, whether facing us or over our shoulder on a pool deck in Southern California. But LA has a unique phenomenon which is endemic to their habitat...the Supermodel homeless lady. Because of the warm climate, the homeless ladies don't get beaten down and torn apart as quickly and can masquerade as normal Supermodels fooling even the most seasoned New Yorker such as myself for twenty seconds or so.

This girl was sexy, blonde and wearing a CAA baseball cap and jeans. A slim Supermodel body and a gravely, I've-been-up-all-night-at-a-famous-actor's-party vibe.

"Yeah?" I replied, taking her in like the Terminator with all those computer sonar things like a computer screen on the inside of my forehead sizing her up fast. In case I was wrong and she could be my wife, I didn't want to dismiss her right away but my sense was she was up to something.

"My cell battery died and I was wondering if I could just use your Blackberry to make a local call. It'll just take a minute." She flashed a ripped piece of paper which possessed a 310 number on it as evidence of her story. Mistake number one. If I was going to ask to use your phone, I wouldn't try and convince you I was for real by showing you the number. That's trying a bit too hard. But it seemed such a benign request. I looked her in the eye, she seemed okay, a little rough around the edges and closer to forty-five then twenty-five but something just didn't feel right. I paused, looked at her jeans which were a little dirty, but that's in so who knew... but then I looked at her hands.

Dirty fingernails. Busted. Supermodel homeless lady.

"I'm sorry. I'd rather not."

"That's completely okay, I understand." Confirmation. A real Supermodel would have been annoyed and pissy that I turned her down. She gave in way too easily. She left and started setting up camp on one of the lounge chairs over by the tan white haired guy. I went back to reading, glad I had made the choice not to give her my phone so what, she could call someone and they'd have my number so they could steal my identity or whatever? Smart move, Schaef.

After five minutes went by, I nonchalantly turned around pretending to be looking for, who knows, anything but checking up on the Supermodel homeless lady and she seemed to be gone. The chick on the lounge chair where I thought the SMHL was looked like a blonde Jackie O. Fancy gold bikini, slammin' twenty year old body and Gucci shades. She just didn't have the vibe of the SMHL at all. That can't be the same girl?... Can it? Maybe I had wildly misjudged her in my jet lagged pre-Showtime nervous stupor. I looked next to this woman and there were the dirty jeans and CAA cap. Yup. It was the same chick. Wow. There was definitely more to this story.

The tan white haired guy got into the act.

"Would you like a wine cooler young lady?"

"Thank you. That would be great." She got up and joined him at an umbrella covered table like mine on the other end of the pool where he had a thermos of wine coolers he brought with him. It was 11am. Nice.

"I'm Frank Debenetteto," he said in a thick Brooklyn accent.

"Ally."

"A pleasure Ally," and he kissed her hand. This was gonna get good. I went back to pretending to read instead of pretending to not look at them. After some chit chat, she excused herself from Frank, grabbed her purse and hotel towel she had gotten on the deck and passed me on her way to the Jacuzzi which was past the pool and slightly hidden down a few stairs at the end of the deck. She was the only one over there. She turned on the jets and then conspicuously hung her towel over the railing obscuring everyone's view of her in the Jacuzzi. There was no reason to hang the towel there other than wanting to conceal whatever she was going to be doing in the hot tub. Was she going to get naked and jerk off or wash her hair? Supermodel or homeless lady? I carefully leaned to my left and tried to peak around her towel through the iron bars...

To be continued...

Posted by Eric Schaeffer at 2:19 PM

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