. . .
Here’s the thing about House of Pies. The pies there are fantastic, maybe the best in the West. But the food is almost inedible. I knew this, because in my early twenties I had actually tried everything on the menu in an attempt to see if anything, anything at all was palatable, and after much unappetizing research, I had come to the conclusion that nothing was.
But the pie was great, and every night House of Pies attracted a diverse crowd from all walks of life.
When we arrived, the place was almost filled to capacity with college kids, hipsters, and a black actor whose name I could not remember but who I recognized from a late-eighties sitcom.
We found a booth. I ordered coffee and pie and watched with a completely straight face as James ordered the chicken breast.
He looked around the place with his eyebrows raised.
“This is interesting,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, looking around myself. “It’s not a faux diner like most places in L.A.”
“Faux diner?”
“Yeah, you know. Most diners in L.A. kind of look like movie sets. Retro, but clean and done up in great colors. This place keeps it real. Ugly fluorescent lighting. Ugly mint green booths. It’s not faking the funk.”
He grinned. “Faking the funk. I haven’t heard that one in a while. What part of Mississippi are you from again?”
I smiled. “The bad part. The part that made me leave and come here.” I said it in a tone of voice that I hoped let him know that I wasn’t open to any more questions on this particular topic. “Why are you in Los Angeles anyway?” I asked, changing the subject.
He folded his hands on top of the table. “So you didn’t do all your homework.”
“Look, James, I know who you were. I used to keep up with the Farrell family back in the day, but I stopped Googling you guys over four years ago.”
“What made you stop?”
I shrugged. “I went to college and I figured out that I had better things to do with my life than tracking the Farrells.”
My coffee came just then, and I was grateful for it. Putting cream and sugar into it gave me something to do with my hands, which had taken to trembling underneath the table. Being this close to James and talking to him so candidly, my poor nerves didn’t know what to do with themselves.
James watched me prepare my coffee. “My sister Tammy actually used to be the West Coast ambassador for the Farrell brand, but a few years ago, she went through a pretty bad breakup and wanted to move to New York. Farrell Cosmetics asked that either I or my other sister, Veronica, come out to Los Angeles to represent the brand at events. At the time I was engaged to an actress who had a series deal out here.”
Erica London. I knew all about Erica London. She had happened before I got my mind right in college and stopped obsessively reading everything that had to do with the Farrells. “Yeah, I read about you two in Celeb Weekly. It didn’t work out, right? ”
James shook his head with a rueful smile. “No, we didn’t work out. She called off the engagement.”
I could see that it still pained him to admit that.
“But you came out here anyway?”
“I needed a change, and now that I’ve been here four years, I really like it. Great weather. Great job. Who could complain?”
Four years. I couldn’t believe that James Farrell had been so close all of this time. Los Feliz wasn’t even five miles from where I lived.
And I was also having a hard time believing the line that he was trying to feed me about his job. “So you like using your fancy Ivy League degree just to go to parties all the time?”
He shrugged. “Well, you have to admit, getting paid to attend events is a pretty sweet gig. Gusteau could have cut all ties with us after they bought the company, but they kept both my sisters and me on. I guess we got lucky.”
I took a sip of my water. “I wouldn’t call that lucky.”