Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls Read Free Page B

to only be used when she called me, and this is a small rebellion on my part. Garla doesn’t pick up on rebellions though, big or small. She has no need for them.
    I decide to ask if I can be her paid assistant, because she probably will not say yes or no, and I can just interpret it as yes. If anything, by quitting my job and hanging out with her more I will get additional goodies I can eBay, and Garla’s schwag pays several times more than my current employer.
    I strike when we are in the back of a town car on the way to a designer’s private shoot. Garla is stretched out on my lap with her muss of blond hair hanging down over my knees. Her hair is softer than my shaved legs.
    “Garla,” I say, “I’m going to quit my job and be your assistant. You don’t have to pay me hardly anything. I don’t make very much as it is.” There’s a pause and she hands up a tiny golden comb to me, I presume for me to begin brushing her hair with. I also presume this means “yes,” is a quid pro quo gesture. I call my boss right then on the Garla-phone and quit as loudly as I can without seeming hostile, just to try to burn the event a little deeper into the ether of Garla’s memory.
    The shoot goes well. Afterwards I take her glasses of chilled vodka that look like refreshing water and we have a look at the pictures, which are beautiful. We leave with giant bags of expensive clothing that we didn’t pay or ask for.
    I am feeling more visible by the second. Perhaps, I think, I should move into Garla’s apartment. That way I’d always be there to do whatever she needed, and there wouldn’t be all the Garla-phone calls in the middle of the night; she could just yell or do a special grunt. Although Garla never needs to yell. Everyone is already paying attention.
    Except the next morning, she doesn’t answer my calls, and she doesn’t call me. This goes on for another week and a half. I sulk like a real model. I don’t eat and I drink lots of vodka and I cut my own hair in the bathroom with dull scissors and then regret it, and the next morning I think about going to a really expensive salon and having it fixed except I don’t have the money for that, especially now that I have no job. For that, I need Garla.
    This is the root of my pain. I had convinced myself that she needed me, when really, anyone could and would do what I did: follow around a gorgeous person and get gifts and call outrages by name for what they are. How did I lend any type of panache to that role? Looking in the mirror at my botched home haircut, I realize that my new expensive clothes still look nerdy because they don’t fit me right. They never will.
    When the Garla-phone finally lights up and makes its synthetic music, it’s like an air-raid siren. I’m paralyzed with fear but angst-ridden from loneliness and desperation. “Where have you been?” I scream. “We agreed I’d be your assistant. I quit my job! I haven’t seen you for like ten days!”
    “Vodka head,” Garla explains. I want to pretend like nothing is wrong. “I’m not a bad assistant. I’m a good assistant, which means I need to be where you are, and help you with things.”
    “Later, a party,” she says. I can hear happy screams in the background and their shrillness stabs into me. I know those screams belong to completely impractical people, and I hate them for it. “When?” I ask, “How do I get there?”
    I stop by a nearby bar to have a few drinks alone before going up to the party. It feels good to sulk over a glass in public. How could I have let my guard down so badly? Before Garla, I had been all-guard. Before Garla, I would’ve seen Garla coming. My pre-Garla life suddenly seems like an amazing thing; I hadn’t even known what I was missing. As I walk out of the bar and look up near the balcony I’m headed to, I can actually see Garla. It makes me feel creepy but I stand there and watch for a while anyway, until the two of us seem like strangers. Under the