Lost In Pacific Time

I tapped my black Louboutin clad foot on the floor. It wasn’t just any floor, it was shipped from Belgium, oak floors, repossessed from an barn over two hundred year olds and cost me twenty thousand dollars. I wasn’t really sure if it was worth it, of course if I was trying to convince one of my clients I’d say “of course its worth it, its one of a kind” but these floors weren’t in a twenty million dollar Malibu beach house, they were in my office. Floors were one of those things that get overlooked, sure you could get similar flooring from IKEA for a dollar a square foot but it wasn’t about the wood in the floors, it was about the fact that you could afford to drop twenty grand on something that you cover up with coffee tables and couches. When I first came into Los Angeles I never thought I’d be one of those people who bought into status symbols but I guess with my yellow crocodile Birkin bag, black Bentley, and twenty thousand dollar floors I had become one of those people.

A knock on the door caused my sight to drift up from the floors and at the double French doors. Jasmine, one of my three assistants, seemed to be the cause of the knock. “Ms. Li? I have your mail.”

No matter how many times I told her that we were all adults and could refer to each other with given names, Jasmine always called me Ms. Li, not Amber, not Ambrosia, Ms. Li. “Thanks, Jasmine just put it over there.” I said gesturing to an empty spot next to my fuchsia Macbook. I finished some online furniture shopping from Neiman Marcus, I was pretty sure they had a store somewhere near here that sold furniture but I (a) didn’t have time to actually find the store (b) would probably get distracted by the clothing and beauty department (c) didn’t trust my assistants with choosing the right pieces.

I shut down my computer and began sorting through the mail, envelops in one hand and a chocolate chip muffin in the other. It wasn’t a huge stack of mail, but I wished it was, I always found hand written letters to be a lost art. There’s just something so thoughtful about every word because of the fact that you have to start over when you screw up instead of hitting the erase key. I flipped through the junk mail but I nearly dropped my muffin when I saw who the last envelope was from: Killarney Secondary, Vancouver, B.C.