Party Girl: A Novel by Anna David Read Free Book Online

if acting was going to be in my future, it would come to me because I’d been discovered like Lana Turner. Then I’d be able to have an assistant deal with the stalker-type calls from Chris. A fabulous party is probably just what I need.
     
    As I’m getting dressed for the party—the one little black dress that doesn’t seem to attract the piles of cat fur that the others do, arch-abusing Jimmy Choo’s—I remember that I still have a stash of Alex from last weekend tucked into an envelope in my sock drawer. I’d forgotten all about it before Gus’s get-together, and the sudden realization that I have some coke feels like the best epiphany I’ve had in weeks, if not ever. It will be a perfect pick-me-up for the event , I think. Just the added boost I need to be the schmoozing powerhouse journalist of Brian’s dreams.
    I grab the envelope, which contains coke inside one of Alex’s infamous Lotto tickets—his signature coke-holder because everyone in L.A., even the Mexican drug dealers, has to add an ironic twist to everything—tap the powder out onto a CD case, and use my Gap credit card to chop it up on my coffee table. I start to roll up a dollar bill before remembering that I’d recently bought straws in order to avoid trying to pay for things and having all my bills emerge from my wallet folded a billion times and sprinkled in white powder.
    Grabbing the package of straws, I slide one out, cut it in half, and snort the four lines quickly, feeling the drip down my throat and excitement coursing through my veins.
    One of the cats jumps up on the table and starts swishing her tail over the CD case that still has a thin layer of coke on top of it, enough for a small line. In my more paranoid moments, I think that my cats know that I’m doing coke, and are hell-bent on keeping Mommy from cracking out, but right now I get that she just knows that I’m intently focused on something that doesn’t involve petting her or opening cans of her food, and she wants to know why. I pick her up and place her on the floor, but she jumps back onto the table and knocks the CD case completely over, scattering bits of the powder into the off-white carpet. I feel crushed by this disaster and utterly convinced that everything I do always ends in this kind of catastrophic disappointment, and there seems to be only one way to cushion this realization.
    When I pour out my next two lines, I decide that I’m going to make them extra thick but I make them so thick that they essentially kill my entire supply. I light a cigarette and lodge it into the silver Vanity Fair ashtray that I swiped from a book party at Kelly Lynch and Mitch Glazer’s house.
    I feel infused with somewhat manic energy and suddenly decide that I should spritz on enough Marc Jacobs perfume to give off just a whiff of it, transfer the contents of my frayed brown bag to my fake Frada nighttime one, and get out the door within the next three minutes. But between the spritz and the purse transfer, it occurs to me that I’ve done enough coke now to have to be concerned about a comedown, which—if I’m to trust my powers of estimation combined with my body’s consistency when it comes to drug reaction—should occur sometime after appetizers are being served . I’ll just have to drink my way through it , I decide. I only call Alex when I’m partying with friends so I certainly won’t be paging him to come meet me at some phony Culver City event.
    If I were to do that, it would mean I had a problem , I think, and remind myself that I’m acting like an amateur and I’m perfectly capable of doing a little coke and then going to an event. “I wouldn’t be so paranoid if I didn’t have these thoughts,” I say out loud, but then realize it’s the other way around.
     
    My paranoia has developed legs and possibly arms too by the time I valet my car. I try to shrug it off as I approach the bar with faith that a screwdriver will bring me back to “happy buzz”