So 5 Minutes Ago

1 Down the Rabbit Hole Before dawn and already I'm off to a bad start. But then I could have guessed as much when I forgot to close the window last night and got jolted awake at 5 a.m. by the sprinkler system rattling to life. Sometimes, depending on my mood, if I can be said even to have a mood at 5 a.m., the sound of running water can be reassuring. Like a stream or a bath being drawn. But this morning it sounds like nothing so much as a bursting pipe. A taunt to my inability to bring anything to heel. Not my job as a senior publicist to some of Hollywood's lesser celebrities at DWP, a legendary if fading publicity agency. And certainly not Los Angeles, where Iraised in Philadelphia's custardy Main Lineinexplicably found myself three years ago. My house with its dyspeptic sprinkler system is the least of my worries. For one thing, it's Thursday, which means the dual reveille of sprinkler and garbage truck. Just when I'm drifting off again, the city's sanitation department begins its weekly assault, grinding along the street running below my modest but nonetheless desirable rental in the hills, followed by a second, noisier pass by my front gate. "Thursday," I groan, rolling over to peer crankily at the bedroom wall, which looks, in the dim, coffee-colored light, like it could stand a paint job. Thursday. Another weekend fast approaching with no plans unless you count a screening Friday night and a meeting with a stylist on Saturday. Maybe I can fill the hours looking at paint chips or something. Thursday, I realize with a thud, the kick of adrenalin as my heart lurches back to its usual wracking pace. This isn't just any Thursday with its annoying staff meeting, everyone sitting around waiting to carve one another up over nonfat vanilla lattes, but the Thursday of my big client meeting. With Troy Madden. Troy Madden. I haven't even signed him yet and already he's a problem. Actually, Troy is the problem, which is why he's in the market for a new publicist. Someone to solve the problem of his just-back-from-court-ordered-rehab career reentry. Someone lower down the food chain. Someone like me. Which is why I'm taking a meeting with him in aboutI roll over and attempt to focus on the silver-plated clock on my bedside tablesix hours. With a sigh, I kick off the duvet and slide my feet to the sisal carpeting, which I notice, irritably, could stand replacing. Staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, I mentally clock the distance I have to travel to go from how I look nowan overworked, underachieving single woman in her early thirties who could use a haircut and a boyfriendto the kind of polished, savvy professional I'm supposed to be a few hours from now. Nobody looks their best at 7 a.m., no matter how many models were photographed in tangled bedsheets and dirty hair during the Slept-in Chic phase, which, if I have the chronology right, followed the Heroin Chic phase. I have Italian sheets, but they do little to erase the fact that 1.) I hate my job even though I'm frighteningly good at it, 2.) I hate my life because everyone thinks I have the most FABULOUS job and no one wants to hear anyone complaining about mopping up after stars, and 3.) I went to bed too latewhich meant I had my requisite two glasses of white wine too lateafter a screening, another relentlessly unfunny De Niro comedy that just makes you want to kill yourself. Now, bleary eyed and grouchy, I have to come up with a game plan before my meeting with Troy this afternoon. Actually I should come up with a plan for the rest of my life. Like, what happened to my goal of becoming a top magazine editor by age thirty-five? Or my marriage? LikeDe Vries, Hilary is the author of 'So 5 Minutes Ago', published 2004 under ISBN 9781400061389 and ISBN 1400061385.