“She says she’s excited about moving, but we don’t believe her,” Kerry added.
“We’re wondering if you can just ask her to stay at your house as kind of like a groundskeeper while we try and get her a new apartment. All the kids are chipping in and we can afford something, but we don’t want her to leave in the first place, because we’re worried she may not come back, especially since she’s asking for a gun.”
For the record, my aunt is exactly the type of person who would drive off into the woods and shoot herself. She is not even sixty, but has nine children, three grandchildren, and a pain in the ass of a husband whom she can’t afford to divorce—so they just live apart and don’t speak. She is my mother’s sister, and she told me when I moved to LA that if I wanted to make it in show business, I was going to have to drop some weight. She also let me live with her for a year until I could afford my own apartment.
“Well, we can’t let her do that,” I told my cousins. “She may never come back.”
“We already suggested that she be your groundskeeper, but she said she doesn’t want any more handouts from you. She feels like a loser.”
“But what if we make it a job?”
“She said she will not move in with you. She claims she really wants to go on this road trip.”
I picked up my phone and called my Realtor, Anne. I told her we needed a house in the Valley, and being that it was Sunday there would be plenty of open houses.
“We’re going house hunting!” I exclaimed in delight, hanging up the phone. Finally, the tides were turning.
“Well, we don’t really need you to buy her a house,” Molly said, exchanging nervous glances with Kerry.
“No, Chelsea. That’s a little ridiculous. We are happy to pay for an apartment,” Kerry agreed.
“No, I’m in the mood to house-hunt. Let’s do it.”
“This is perfect. Chelsea has two margaritas and wants to go house hunting. I’m not going to miss this for the world,” Shmitney announced.
“You want to make a bet?” I said. “You are on probation! You are not coming anywhere with us, and to be quite honest, I’m not sure our friendship is strong enough to survive this.”
“Well, then, I guess now’s a good time to tell you that I had the key the entire time, but I didn’t want you to freak out.”
Molly jumped up and pinned my arms to my side while Kerry and Shmitney sat hysterically laughing.
If I wasn’t at the Hotel Bel-Air in plain public view, I would have choked her, but instead took my iPhone and smacked it into the side of my own head.
“You are infuriating,” I said, as menacingly as I could with Molly sitting on top of me.
I ordered some margaritas to go, paid the bill, and Molly, Kerry, and I drove to the valley.
This is the house we found that day, and my aunt moved in thirty-five days later. She never went on that road trip, and we never gave her a gun.
Later that night while I was online responding to some of Gina’s suitors, I got a video from Shmitney of her urinating in my driveway the night of the Emmy party when she came back to my locked house and stole my car.
SHMITNEY’S VERSION OF EVENTS
So I get to Chelsea’s house at like 2 a.m. Her door is locked and my key is inside. I decide not to knock because Chelsea sleeps in a white ’80s Cross Your Heart bra, and I’m too tired to process that right now. I also just really want to get out of there because Chelsea’s house is a hazard. She has two-ish dogs: Chunk, who’s become a complete asshole since he got a million Twitter followers; and Jacks, who just had surgery and has a cone on his head… and sometimes another one who looks like Falcor on crack. When they run to the door it’s like the zombies from the
Thriller
video are coming at you. Other possible dangers include Chelsea’s lesbian roommate, who is very strong (I learned that the hard way) and snakes in her driveway… some real and some imagined by Chelsea.
Basically, I just want to get the fuck away from this house of cards that Chelsea calls a home.
My car is blocking in her other cars, and the only car that could be liberated from this mess is the Bentley. On an optimistic whim I check to see if it’s unlocked. Not only is it unlocked, but the key is in it. This is either a trap or a miracle.…
So I took it. I’m from Washington, D.C. Where I come from, if you want someone else’s car, you take it.
I wake up Sunday morning with three missed calls from Chelsea, two of them FaceTime invites because she has no idea how to work her iPhone. When we finally connect, she yells, “I’m trapped in my house and I need a margarita!”
First of all, it’s noon. And second of all, we know Chelsea is a Luddite, but to not be able to make her own margarita is just pathetic. The only thing sadder than needing a margarita at noon is not being able to make one yourself. Especially considering the fact that her fridge is stocked with Skinny girl Margaritas. She can’t even make a
premade
margarita.
The problem is that Chelsea has been infantilized by having assistants for so long. Everything is done for her, so she doesn’t know how to do anything herself anymore.
For example, in her fridge she has clear Tupperware containers of cut-up fruit and vegetables, and they’re labled with little signs that say
PINEAPPLE
and
WATERMELON
, etc. I started getting really worried about her when I realized that she can’t even figure out what pineapple looks like.
So I tell her I’m on my way over, because honestly, I’m worried about her safety. If you think Chelsea is a danger to herself drunk, you should see her sober. I rush over to her place to find her, middle finger blazing, waiting outside of her house, angry and moist. It becomes abundantly clear that this is the longest Chelsea has waited for anything in years. She was reading the newspaper, yet another sign that she can’t do anything herself. She thinks people still get the news from newspapers. In the past forty-five minutes she had been humiliated by getting splashed with mud, being asked for a photo by someone who didn’t even know who she was, and—to honor the comedy “rule of threes”—my puppy got out of her car and instantly peed on her foot. Which Chelsea probably thought was pineapple.
She also claimed to buy someone a home that day, but knowing Chelsea, she accidentally went to the Valley, got drunker, and bought a house so she wouldn’t have to drive back. By the way, Chelsea still has an AOL account.
A week later, Kerry, Molly, and I surprised my aunt with her new house—one of the best days of my life. My aunt was in tears when she asked me if this meant she now had to be nice to me.
“No!” I said, jumping up and down, bawling. “You never have to speak to me again.”
With that chapter over, it was time to focus on Gina’s love life. I received several responses to Gina’s profile on her new dating site. It became a bit annoying when my phone would go off every time someone “winked” at her. The problem was the men who were responding. All the responses I had gotten regarding Gina’s new online profile revealed a common theme. Every guy was on a boat, some with handlebar mustaches, some without, but all holding large fish on fishing poles.
I sat there for a week trying to convince Gina that all these men were going out of their way to catch fish just to woo her because that was in her profile, but she didn’t budge.
“I’m not going out with a man who has a handlebar mustache. Why do they all have facial hair? Did you write that I wanted that?”
It was a fair question, especially since many of them were actually bald. So in an honest attempt to double-check my work, I logged back on to her profile to see if I accidentally put “bald” under Likes. I then discovered that I had signed Gina up on a fisherman’s website: Seacaptaindate.com. Whoopsie.