I heard from Ruth, my erstwhile boyfriend’s mother (and my surrogate mother and neighbor), that she was expecting a young guest. Rumor had it the girl was my age. I got the feeling Ruth wanted me available, though she never framed it that way. But she knew how friendly I was and probably assumed I’d show the “British” girl around.
I was an out-of-work actress with no life whatsoever. The day she arrived, I threw on my new 70’s roller-boogie-disco skates and headed down to introduce myself. “Hi,” I said in my overly friendly, Welcome-to California, not-really laid-back at all kind of way. Hard to ignore my neon blue and yellow roller skates in place of proper shoes, the different colored bobby socks, clashing with all the other colors adorning me, namely the electric-blue-shimmer-spandex pants. Think Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu. Lisa, the girl from London, must have thought central casting had put out a call for a quintessential Hollywood actress type. Welcome to L.A. Let me show you around!!!!
And I did. We missed nothing. Went with my dad to Nate n’ Al’s for deli and wonderful old Jews coming onto her. Day trips to Malibu beach. She looked like me, or rather had very similar taste. We bonded over many like-minded things. Lisa had fantastic style, gorgeous with her naturally dark, curly, perfectly ringleted hair. I’ve paid fortunes for perms that failed to make me look like Lisa. The most beautiful blue eyes. A Jacqueline Bisset type. Lisa wore sleeveless shirts sporting some serious-looking, mysterious scars at her shoulder down to her elbow. And I was so impressed with how she rocked those scars, never covering them and comfortably exposing them. Made them sexy, like maybe I wanted some groovy scars like that. The story was she got them in a gnarly car accident. Pins, rods and all.
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