big-league Hollywood creative type, effervescent in Italian designer garb. I half-felt people might stop me for my autograph, as if they could read my mind or know what I’d accomplished in little under a week.
“Yo! Yo, pretty lady!”
“Huh?” I searched for the voice.
“Show a little love,” the bearded man said, shaking an empty tin partly hidden beneath a pile of grimy clothes.
So the picture on the ground was a little different than the one in my head. Instead of adoring fans with gushing accolades, I had Hobo Harry mooching change. Just as well. Ballet flats and an Abercrombie hoodie didn’t exactly scream television tycoon, even if that was precisely how I felt.
In a matter of a weekend, as in last weekend, I had gone from part-time TV reporter in drizzly Vancouver to full-time Hollywood producer in the land of perpetually beaming sun. They had hired me on Friday, after a month of occupational purgatory, when I’d constantly wondered whether I’d be relegated to mid-sized-market mediocrity, or sent to play with the gods of big-time television. Fate, God, Zeus, Oprah—whoever is in charge—picked the latter. It went like this: “It’s a go. You’re hired. We need you, like yesterday.”
Hyperventilating, I packed my car that afternoon, bee-lined it south on Saturday, drove through the night, and arrived late Sunday. I began work on Monday, and met the team on Tuesday. By Wednesday, we had bonded. By Thursday, we had outlined the season. And today—Friday—my heart rate still in the stratosphere, we’d do our first real shoot, in Beverly Hills no less.
The homeless man shook his cup. “Yo, lady, I charge rent. If you’re moving in,” he said with a wink, “we better talk.”
“Whoops, sorry.” I jumped to the side. Monsieur Hobo was a flirt and, by the looks of it, a real estate tycoon too. At more than a million bucks a quarter-acre, his was the choicest real estate in the country—beachfront Santa Monica.
I fished around in my bag and found some loonies at the bottom. “Here you go,” I said. “I think the dollar is on par right now.”
“Canadian, eh?” he said.
“Can you tell?”
He jingled his cup. “The big coin with the duck gave it away. You an actress?”
“Ha, that’s funny. An actress. No, I’m a TV producer.” I liked the sound of that so much, I had to say it again. “I produce reality TV.”
“Huh?”
“Well, it’s like a serialized documentary, only, you know, a little fluffier. It’s pretty cool.”
He nodded, which was my cue to continue. “Ultimately, I want to produce long-form documentaries on more meaningful subjects, or be the next Diane Sawyer. But for now, I’m just happy to be here. I mean, it’s LA, after all. And, and,” I said with great drama, finally having an audience besides my mother, “I’m working with Lucy Lane. Heard of her? I’m her new producer!”
A black convertible BMW, sliding into the curb, interrupted our conversation.
“Hey, Canada, hop in or we’ll be late for your first big shoot,” Rose shouted from the driver’s seat, taking a pull from an extra large Big Gulp.
“That’s my AP,” I said to my homeless buddy as I trotted off toward the car, triple shot Americano in my grip. “Got to run!”
“Stop by anytime.” He waved me away with a weathered paw.
The tires practically squealed as Rose drove north for San Vicente.
“Slumming it?” she said sideways. “You might be a snowback, but you can do better than that,” she laughed.
I smiled cautiously. “Snowback?”
“Yeah, like wetback, only colder.” Her ring-tone began pounding out an electronic Lady Gaga as she slapped my knee. “Kidding, Blondie. Don’t be so sensitive. Whazzup, Corinne?” she said animatedly into the phone, driving and talking and gulping and laughing.
Rose was a card—gruff and sarcastic but also fun and homey. Her body was apple shaped and she wore a short 1920’s hairdo, with pin-curls that looped around her square face, and she loved to cook, talking ad nauseam about soufflés and persimmon pies. For some reason, she had taken to calling me my home country’s namesake, and when performing for others, butchered it into “Janada.” That would be Canada with a “J” for Jane. When that didn’t work for her, I was simply “Blondie.” None of which bothered me. In fact, it was refreshing—skip the niceness and, like family, go straight to sarcasm. Rose was just one of the women who in five short days had become my new world.
I felt as if I had been warped to the moon. Beyond landing the job of