The English Assistant

A benefit of Mr. Los Angeles’ job is that it reliably provides us a regular salary and health insurance. A benefit of mine is that it sometimes produces invitations to Hollywood parties. It was at one particularly nice such affair not long ago that Mr. Los Angeles found himself so busy about the noble pursuit of ogling Helen Mirren that he spilled a portion of his designer dessert across the lapel of his made-to-measure tuxedo jacket.

Photo by Emily Studer on Unsplash

“We’ll have to have it cleaned,” he said when we got home. “There’s a dry cleaners in Beverly Hills that specializes in stuff like this, and it’ll have to go in as soon as possible before the stain sets in.”

He nodded at me: a price that conventionally employed Americans pay for their regular salary and health insurance is that they must spend a great deal of their working week sitting in offices doing whatever it is that people sitting in offices do there.

“You’ll have to drop it off first thing on Monday,” he said.

Although my ragtag European writer self is not required to travel to an office for work, this does not mean that I spend my own working week reclining on the sofa nibbling on bonbons.

“I have a deadline on Monday, you selfish jackass,” I snapped sweetly. “I’ll take it on Tuesday instead.”

“You never think of anyone but yourself, you entitled princess,” he raged devotedly.

“Because if I don’t, no one else will, you egotistical bastard,” I snarled adorably. “Want to watch a Get Smart episode before bed?”

“Sure,” he said, and so we did.

On the Tuesday morning, I bundled the injured jacket into my car and drove it to the fancy dry cleaners in Beverly Hills. I did not add my own dress because, while the fancy dry cleaners is reputedly excellent, it is also far from cheap; and, while I won’t claim that I had been altogether indifferent to the presence of Idris Elba at the weekend’s celebration, he had not arrived until my own dessert had been safely consumed, and my attire was thus relatively spared.

“Ah,” said Martha at the dry cleaners, inspecting with the knowing eye of the sensei of Hollywood laundry the imprint of imported Belgian chocolate and hazelnut raspberry coulis. “Somebody went to the party at the weekend.”

“And somebody had a very good time there,” I agreed, laughing: Martha was smiley and wearing a wedding band and looked like one who would engage in woman to woman banter. “As you can tell.”

Martha laughed back.

“They do enjoy their desserts,” she confirmed. And rolled her eyes in sympathy. “And now it’s your job to make sure the stain gets out, right?”

“Right!” I said. “He wanted me to bring it yesterday because he was worried the chocolate would set in, but I told him I was too busy. I had to be quite firm about it.”

Martha shook her head.

“They want you to do it all at once, don’t they?” she said.

“All of it!” I snorted: it was good, I thought, to have a fellow wife to commiserate with. “It’s like he thinks I have more hours in the day than he does!”

Martha laughed again and shrugged resignedly.

“I don’t know what goes on in their heads sometimes,” she sighed. “But don’t you let him make you feel bad about this, OK? We can get the stain out, no problem. I can have it ready by Saturday.”

“Good,” I said. “And he can damn well come and pick it up himself. I’m taking Saturday off!”

“You go, girlfriend!” said Martha, and I exited the establishment with a skip in my step and affection in my heart for women everywhere who toil under a happy union with a card-carrying alpha male.

On the Saturday, as advertised, Mr. Los Angeles packed a thermos of coffee, a chicken sandwich and his passport, and drove himself to the cleaners to pick up his jacket.

“The man from the party,” Martha greeted him, with respect: Mr. Los Angeles cuts an imposing figure at any time, and the event at which he had spilled his dessert had been a particularly upscale and exclusive one.

Mr. Los Angeles tipped his hat in acknowledgement: for reasons known best to Mr. Los Angeles and possibly his mother, he accepts all forms of admiration as neither more nor less than his heaven-appointed birthright.

“The very same,” he congratulated her.

Martha nodded.

“Your assistant brought your jacket in on Tuesday,” she said.

Mr. Los Angeles, who had worked hard that week, decided that it would be entertaining not to correct the supposition.

Martha raised an impressed Beverly Hills eyebrow: in the curious hierarchy of Hollywood, to have a personal assistant who comes from Europe somehow confers greater status than merely to have a personal assistant who comes from America.

“She’s English, right?” she said.

Mr. Los Angeles chuckled his manly chuckle.

“I’m guessing her accent gave her away,” he suggested.

“It certainly did,” Martha chuckled back.

They both chuckled together merrily.

“I have the jacket right here,” she said, then. I’m imagining she pinkened a little as she handed it over: it is a particularly nice jacket which the man with the English assistant had worn to the particularly upscale and exclusive Hollywood party. “And I think you’ll see that we’ve dealt with the stain quite thoroughly.”

“You have indeed,” said Mr. Los Angeles, inspecting it.

Martha beamed.

“Your assistant was anxious about it,” she said. “We had quite the talk. She hadn’t managed to get it here till Tuesday, so she was concerned that the stain might have set.” She nodded proudly. “But as you see, she needn’t have worried about a thing.”

“She’ll be relieved to hear that,” declared Mr. Los Angeles.

He took the particularly nice made-to-measure tuxedo jacket – which, since we’re on the subject, had been a birthday gift from his lowly English assistant after she had been paid really quite a lot of money for the German rights to a book, and which he had had the opportunity to stain with imported chocolate dessert at the particularly upscale and exclusive Hollywood party because that same English assistant had invited him to join her there as her plus one – bade a charming farewell to a dazzled Martha, and drove home.

Where he not only repeated to his English assistant the entirety of the conversation, but also expected her to be as amused by it as he had been himself.

As my friend Martha says, I don’t know what goes on in their heads sometimes.