Tommy shrugged and turned to leave, my pun totally going over his head. I had a feeling the shirt would find a home in Tommy’s closet.

“Jesus Christ,” I murmured to myself when the door was closed. Being a writer on a show was tough, but making a judgment call like that was easy.

Glancing at the clock, I hunched back over my laptop, back to Marilyn, whose unaccounted-for hours I was transforming into an episode of the show I wrote for, Flesh and Bone. I knew the Marilyn story inside out, because when I first moved to Los Angeles and got a job out of college, I was a second assistant to a major recording star who was obsessed with her. Being the second assistant didn’t mean I got to travel with the star on private jets or shield her from the crazy fans who would sleep on the pavement outside her hotel when she was touring. Instead, I did things like buy her tampons, pick up the mess when her dog had an “accident,” and make sure her soy milk was sugar-free. She was convinced sugar would zap her energy levels. I always got her the soy milk with sugar and just told her it was sugar-free.

Every morning I’d fetch her latte before rushing up to her glass mansion at the end of one of the bird streets above Turner’s Liquors on Sunset. She did Bikram Yoga every morning for ninety minutes and I had to be there when she was finished. The routine was always the same. Walking into her private yoga room, I was always knocked flat by the 110-degree heat. Then I was enveloped in the over-whelming smell of sweat. I tried not to think of it as BO or I’d gag, but it was pretty pungent. She would walk toward me with one hand outstretched, the other wiping down her soaking wet body with a 500 thread count towel.

Weighing the Starbucks Venti cup in her hand, she’d gauge through the recycled cardboard cup if the temperature was just right. If it was too hot, she’d make me hold the lid until it cooled off and then hand it back to her so it could seal in the perfect temperature. If the latte had gone cold, I’d have to rush down the hill for a fresh cup.

When I placed the order at Starbucks, they’d ask me my name, and my employer always told me to say “Norma Jean.” I could have said my name, but she didn’t want to see “Dani” scrawled in crayon on the side of her latte. “Norma Jean,” my recording star, didn’t want me to use her real name, because she thought the barista might know it was for her and spit in the cup when no one was looking.