Uganda Be Kidding Me Read online

  I walked back down the driveway and back to the corner I had been assaulted on to survey Gina’s future paramours. The men responding weren’t exactly winners, and every one of them had facial hair and was holding a fish. I thought it was impressive that in the time I had created Gina’s profile, these guys had managed to go and catch a striped bass. They were seriously trying to impress her, and even I had to have compassion for them.

  My phone rang again, and this time it was Molly. “Is she there yet?”

  “No. She’s been saying she’s coming for three hours.”

  As we were talking a red SUV turned on my street, zipped past me, and then turned around and headed back in my direction. Once in front of me, the car stopped and the driver turned the engine off. “Oh, shit.” Someone was going to shoot me right here on the streets of Bel-Air. I froze. I couldn’t believe I was going to get shot right on the corner of my street while innocently reviewing a dating site. I put my hands in the air and waited to be shot in the face.

  A woman got out of the car, and a nine-year-old got out of the passenger seat. A family shooting spree.

  “I’m so sorry,” the woman said, as she closed her car door. “I really hate to bother you, but we live up the street and I promised myself I would never do this, but my daughter’s a huge fan. I would never normally do this. Would you mind if I got a picture of the two of you?”

  I asked her daughter what her name was. She told me her name and then asked me what mine was. I glared at the mother as I took my glasses off and fake-smiled. This woman had just used her innocent daughter in a ploy to get a photograph with someone on the E! network, and she wasn’t even Armenian.

  Once our photo shoot had concluded, I lifted the phone back up to my ear.

  “Are you on the street?” Molly asked me.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not really sure.”

  “OK, I’m on my way,” she told me. “Go back to your house.”

  “I’m going to end my friendship with Shmitney when she gets here,” I told Molly as I followed her instructions and headed back toward my house.

  The next text from Shmitney sent was this: “I have Ramona in the car. Can she stay at the house with your dogs?” Ramona was Shmitney’s new pit bull puppy and—a nightmare. What white person gets a pit bull? On top of that, she had taken the dog to a vet earlier in the week and found out that Ramona was possibly half Great Dane. Only I would have that luck, so I didn’t believe her when she told me that, either. This fell right in line with her tall tales of being a drug-addled teenager in recovery.

  Her bringing Ramona over meant that I would be walking down my driveway once again. My driveway is like a miniature version of the stairs at Machu Picchu.

  This is how I was sitting moments later when Shmitney pulled up, laughing riotously:

  “How do you drive this beast?” she yelled out my car window, trying to pull up my driveway, lurching the car forward and backward as she waited for the gate to open.

  “That’s not really the point,” I told her, punching in the gate code. “The point is, it’s Sunday, and every Sunday, I go to Hotel Bel-Air for brunch and have my margarita there. Today is Sunday, and I don’t want that dog in my house.”

  “And how is it possible that you don’t know how to make a margarita?” Shmitney yelled.

  The half Great Dane/half pit bull dog jumped out of my car and onto my driveway, and lunged toward me. I couldn’t run from the dog fast enough because of the steepness of my driveway, so I ended up falling into the embankment between my driveway and my gate. This was exactly where I had seen the snake in my driveway a year earlier. Shmitney was filming all of this on her iPhone while hysterically laughing.

  Ramona wouldn’t stop licking me while also gnawing on my hand that was trying to push her away from me. Shmitney’s dog was just as much of a lunatic as she was. I hate that dog.

  Shmitney had put the car in Park, and she stood at the side of my driveway filming me at close range. I finally was able to get myself back up on my feet with no help from her. I pushed her out of the way, got back in my car, and drove it up my driveway, since driving up my driveway happens to be one of the few things I excel at. I went inside to my backyard and closed all of the doors I normally keep open for my dogs when I’m not home. My dogs will easily attack an intruder—as long as they’re not sleeping.

  I told her I didn’t think her dog would survive in my backyard and that I didn’t trust pit bulls.

  Then Ramona peed on my boot. I didn’t change this time.

  We met my cousins Molly and Kerry at lunch at Hotel Bel-Air, where Shmitney and I proceeded to argue about what had taken place that morning and whose version of events were accurate.

  “You have no idea what I was dealing with,” she told my cousins, explaining that her friend she had taken to Spin class was in AA, and apparently freaked out when she heard she’d be having brunch with me.

  “I’ve got one alcoholic who’s in recovery and one who needs a margarita,” Shmitney told them, holding her hands to her head. “I felt like I was on the set of Sophie’s Choice.”

  “My mom’s going on a road trip,” Molly announced, taking off her sunglasses.

  “And she asked us to get her a gun for protection,” Kerry interjected.

  “Wait, what?” Shmitney asked.

  “Oh, dear.” I took a sip of my margarita. “What’s her problem now?”

  “Well, she says she’s out of money. She’s sold all of her furniture, and the lease to her apartment is up,” Molly informed me.

  “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 hys