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me.”
    “Told you? I thought you ordered it.”
    “Courtney.”
    “Get real,” I said while rolling my eyes.
    “Frank and I were working on—well—you know his issues regarding commitment.”
    “What did he say?” As if I didn’t know.
    “Courtney, you know I can’t talk about this,” said Roberta while giving me a disapproving look.
    “Oh. Of course. Confidentiality,” I said, hoping not to sound sarcastic.
    “But
you
gave him the ultimatum,” said Roberta, hoping to make me uncomfortable.
    I took a sip of my blueberry tea. “Decaf or regular is an ultimatum to Frank.”
    “Well yes, he does have a lot of work to do.”
    I sensed that I was getting into dangerous territory, but decided to push it.
    “You think?” I said with a big smile.
    “I don’t like cynicism. It makes our work so difficult.”
    I looked at Roberta and gave her my most serious look. “I take responsibility for it.”
    Roberta looked pissed. “Well, why the sudden ultimatum?” she asked. “You might have worked things out.”
    “Yes, after the next Ice Age. Look, I didn’t see kids, a house, and a golden lab named ‘Thor’ in our future.”
    “No one does,” said Roberta. “It’s not 1975.”
    “Yeah. Well, our marriage would have been a horrible, horrible mess.”
    “Welcome to life,” said Roberta.
    Maybe I’d made a mistake. I know that Frank was never going to marry me. But he wasn’t really awful. He didn’t beat me or anything.
    I was on a blind date with Josh, “a hot item,” because my actress/‌Chinese herbalist friend, Halley, had set us up. I was a little unsettled about the whole thing, especially when Josh didn’t pass my first requirement.
    “He’s single, right?” I asked her.
    “Almost.”
    “Almost single?” I said.
    “He’s separated—they’re planning to divorce,” said Halley.
    “That’s a hot item?”
    “Courtney, he’s employed, tall, thin, under 40, and has hair. I’m giving you a crack at him,” said Halley, with the same enthusiasm I had heard people use to describe their rent-controlled ocean view apartments in Santa Monica.
    He sounded suspicious to me.
    “Yeah. Why don’t you date him?” I asked.
    “I did. We’re just friends now,” she said.
    “Uh huh. Why just friends?” I said.
    “Because he can’t help my career and he’s not rich… enough.”
    Josh and I were at the hipster Berliner Café, my current Come-To-Jesus spot. When my clients had screwed up so enormously that even Olympic backpedaling wouldn’t save them, I’d take them to Berliner Café to fire them, or force them into an act of contrition.
    Today there was a table of three women—so thin—around 6 feet tall and 110 pounds, all angles, collarbones, hip bones and cheekbones. They were clearly addicted to dieting. Or something.
    In the northeast corner table was a tiny Asian woman with 24-inch, platinum blond extensions who occasionally pecked at her laptop, but mostly chatted on her cell phone. Her conversations were loud and migraine-inducing annoying.
    And of course, there
he
was. The short greasy guy with a three-day stubble and dirty blond hair: The Star—of course the male action star, the feral Celebrity Royalty of the moment—with about 20 extra pounds on his famous butt.
    The Star was sitting with an even shorter nervous guy who looked like he had just graduated from the Ray Stark Producer’s Program at USC. I guessed the shorter guy to be an agent’s assistant who was assigned to run errands or babysit The Star. The assistant had styled himself in the agent-fashion of the moment: Lew Wasserman glasses—horn-rimmed, big and black—a shaved, bald white head and a $200 Macy’s suit.
    I wondered—why was it that the male action star of the moment was never a millimeter over five feet six inches tall? The Star got nervous when he thought that I was looking at him. Please. Did he really think I was going to call the paparazzi when he inhaled a piece of German chocolate