In which I stick my foot in it

On the appointed day I dressed myself smartly in black trousers, a black blouse, and a thirties style bowler hat, bitch red with a big red satin rose on the back. I thought it was an homage. Ms. Davis should have thrown me out immediately on grounds of the hat alone. She did not. She showed me around the apartment. It was a beautiful suite of rooms on the top floor of a historical-looking apartment building in West Los Angeles. Oscar surveyed the room from the mantle piece. A large oil painting of a young woman towered over me near the front door. I asked if it was her daughter.

"Yes," she said. "That's the one who wrote the horrible book about me."

I swear to you I did not know at that moment there was such a book. I cringed for a moment waiting again to be thrown out.

"Did you read that book?" she asked.

No, Ma'm," I said like a Southern child caught in a small domestic crime.

"Don't call me, ma'm. Never call me ma'm. You must always address me as Ms. Davis, understand?"

"Yes, ma'm, Ms. Davis, ma'm, uhh sorry - Okay?"

She looked at me for a moment searching for some sign of intelligence and moved on.

"If you're going to work for me, you will have to read my biography." She handed me a book titled, "This and That."

"You must also wear something more conservative, can you manage that?" she said, eying my hat.

"Yes, ma'm, Ms. Davis," I said.

"Good. Then be back here on Wednesday morning at nine o'clock."

She showed me to the door and I fairly ran home to my closet, wondering what on earth I was going to wear. In my world the clothes I was wearing were very conservative. Remember, it was the mid-eighties. I spent my evenings in heavy metal hell-holes on Sunset Blvd. wearing cheap lace and torn jeans. My hair was an angry ratted mess of hairspray and bottled bleach. I was considering various tattoos. I called my mother at work in a panic.

"Mom, can I borrow some of your clothes?"

"No," she said, recalling the bonfire in my room. But she did take me to Nordstrom's to find something to wear. I ended up with a serviceable brown dress, black belt, and low-heeled black shoes. Now I would fade quietly into the wallpaper; if I ditched the fifty pound earrings and half a can of hairspray.