“A nose job.” She crunched down on the Lifesaver then twisted open a bottle of Perrier and chugged half of it down. “I hope your feelings aren’t hurt.”

Hurt? I couldn’t have been happier. I’d wanted a nose job ever since Beth Lowenstein had shown up in eighth grade transformed into Christie Brinkley, but my father was dead set against it.

“You’re perfect the way you are,” he’d say.

Clearly, he’d been wrong. Now, I was old enough to decide for myself, but financially, I’d still need his approval.

“If I get the bob, will you get me a job?” I joked.

Penny popped another Lifesaver into her mouth. “Oh, little doll,” she spoke warmly, “Don’t you know? You were signed the day you were born.”

“Daddy, I need a nose job.”

“Me too.”

“I’m serious, Daddy.”

“Jackie, forget it.”

“Daddy, you don’t understand! My agent thinks I need it. To get hired. For work.”

“Work?” Now I was speaking his language. “Why didn’t you say so.”

With a check from Daddy and a referral from Rita Sanderson, off I went. Two weeks later, with my nasal cavities packed with cotton and pharmaceutical cocaine, Dr. Bergoff broke my nose, shaved away the Goldstein bump, and refined what he termed my “bulbous” tip so that it sloped, ever so slightly, toward heaven. After the swelling had gone down, I went to a photographer for headshots.

Penny examined them and shook her head.

“What’s wrong now?” I asked her. “Cheekbones? Chin?”

“I can’t put my finger on it,” she muttered, tilting my pictures this way and that.

“My hair?”

“It’s too—”

“Curly?”

“Ethnic,” she proclaimed.

I jumped into my Rabbit convertible and drove to my father’s office. “Penny wants me blonde.”

Another signed check and off I drove to Jose Eber. All I needed now was a bigger pair of boobs.

Those would come later.

EXT. FRANKLIN APTS

HOLLYWOOD HILLS

DAY

1988

“Jackie baby, don’t bogart!” Nicole poked me in the leg.

She had taken to calling me “Jackie baby” ever since I’d gotten an agent.

“Quit calling me that.” I handed her the joint.

At nine o’clock in the morning, it was sizzling poolside, the hottest day of the summer. Nicole and draped ourselves on deck chairs, drinking pina coladas and smoking pot, celebrating. I’d gone to my first ever audition and landed a job on the daytime soap, Circle of Life. I had never had a job. Not even babysitting. Since high school, I had been living off an allowance from Daddy with the proviso that I attend acting classes.

“Do you even own an alarm clock?” Nicole smirked. She kept running her fingernails back and forth across the plastic weaving on the lounge and the sound was driving me crazy.