Screams and Gunfire in the Background Provide a Leitmotif
So I’m sitting with a dog in my lap, picking off ticks and crushing them on the desk top with an empty coffee mug . The phone rings and it’s one of those computerized female voices. Will I accept a collect phone call from…
A real voice comes on the line, a squeaky little girl voice: “Paris Hilton.” Then the computer again: Will I accept the call?
It must be the guys from the Wednesday night poker game. “Yes!” I bark at the computer.
“Bill? It’s Paris Hilton.”
It sounds exactly like her. The guys have gone to great lengths with this joke.
“Listen, Paris Baby, you brainless twit, I’ll take a ham and swiss on pumpernickel with lots of mayo and hold the pickles. A bag of potato chips. And a Corona. Tell the idiot delivery boy not to crush the chips. And make sure the Corona is cold for a change.”
“No, really. This is Paris. It’s no joke. I’m me.”
“How naive do you think I am?”
“And I am not a brainless twit. That was a very hurtful thing to say.”
“I’m supposed to believe Paris Hilton is calling me collect from the L.A. county jail?”
“Yes. It’s the real me.”
“Prove to me that you’re calling from jail.”
“O.K. I’ll hold he phone out into the hall.”
‘Mommy said you could be funny’
At first, I couldn’t be sure what I was hearing. But then I heard loud banging sounds like metal clashing against metal. Then screams, followed by the unmistakable sound of gunfire, great booming thunder echoing in a confined space.
Paris came back on the line. “Did you hear that?”
“Gunshots?”
“Yeah. Scary, isn’t it? Makes me deaf. Something’s going on down the hall.”
“Maybe the paparazzi have breached the cell block walls and the Screws are making a heroic last stand.”
“Hey! Mommy said you could be funny sometimes.”
“Mommy?”
“My mother. She gave me your phone number.”
“Your mother has my cell phone number?”
“She probably paid someone to get it. She said I need a disinterested person to give me advice. She’s read some of your stuff.”
“In the interest of full disclosure, Paris, I’ve made fun of you, ridiculed you on numerous occasions.”
“So? Everybody does.”
“Did you really tell Barbara Walters that you’re dropping the dumb blond act?”
“Yes.”
“So, you’re not dumb?”
“Honestly, I think I’m fairly smart.”
“On a scale of one to ten, with one a fence post and ten is Albert Einstein, where are you?”
“Albert Einstein?”
“A famous genius scientist.”
“A seven, a solid seven.”
Call off the graduation party
“Why me for advice?”
“Mommy said, ‘Bill will probably have some wise things to say. Listen to him.’”
“Wise ass, at least.”
“Mommy said that when you’re famous it’s hard to find somebody who will tell you the truth.”
“The truth? The truth is a fickle mistress who rides many horses.”
“What?”
“Listen, Paris. You want advice? Tell your father to call off the prison graduation party.”
“But I like parties.”
“Parties. They’re your problem, Honey. Give up the parties.”
“That’s where I see all my friends.”
“Paris, Dear. Didn’t I read somewhere that you never graduated from high school?”
“Yeah.”
“And never went to college?”
“So?”
“So go to college. Get a degree. Make something of yourself. Party girl is not a profession.”
“I once thought about going to Yale. It’s a very sexy name for a college, don’t you think?”
“Your family could probably get you into Yale.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Ask your grandfather to give Yale a couple of hundred million.”
“Million what?”
“Dollars. Ask him to found Yale’s new Institute for the Study of Applied Narcissism.”
“I’ll ask him when I get out of here.”
“Call collect and ask him now.”
“He doesn’t take collect calls.”
In the end, I don’t think I made much progress with her about getting some education. We agreed that I would accept any future collect calls and she would reimburse me after she got out of the slammer.
Where I did make some progress during the call was with the dog’s ticks. Six tiny smashed carcasses were lined up on the edge of my desk.