Intelligentsia

The Intelligentsia on Sunset Boulevard is a coffee shop every bit as pretentious as its name makes it sound. It’s not pretentious in the slick, corporate, hypermodern way, but in the old-school, lowkey cool, hipster manner.

I cross the street to the red stucco building that houses—or rather, is—the coffee shop, following behind a buxom white girl who wears her hair in a bob and has a collection of gold bangles dangling off her left wrist. She makes a sudden stop by the patio outside, holding her left hand up to her mouth, the sudden jangle of the bangles an irritant to my ear, and mouths no fucking way to herself. She whips out her phone and snaps a photo of Tiffany Najbreit sipping coffee alone at a table, a bodyguard standing just behind her.

I head into the coffee shop and join the short queue, taking in the blue-white geometric decor and the various types perched on the high stools lining the bar area.

“Order?" the barista asks.

He looks out the window, distracted, in the general direction of Tiffany Najbreit.

“A ristretto,” I say, and he nods, setting off to make the coffee.

I walk out into the mid-afternoon sun a minute later, carrying my cup of steaming coffee. Pretentious, this place might be, but the aroma of their coffee is nothing short of perfect.

I cross the patio, and conversations slowly hush as people realise that I’m approaching the table.

I place my saucer down on Tiffany’s table, and am halfway to pulling out the chair when I feel the bodyguard’s hand on my back. I swear I hear the click of a dozen camera shutters.

“Let him be, Elias,” Tiffany says, giving me a dazzling smile as she sets her cup down back on the table.

“Ma’am, this is the man who—“

“I know, I recognise him too,” Tiffany says.

The bodyguard backs off then, returning to his place behind Tiffany’s chair, but he stoops down low and whispers something into her ear first. She nods and gives him a smile, saying: “I understand. Thanks!"

“Hey," I say, finally sliding into my chair. “How’ve you been these last few weeks?”

The bodyguard, from his place behind Tiffany’s seat, gives me a look that says Really? You’re sitting at a table with Tiffany Najbreit, and that’s the best you can come up with?

I could do better, if circumstances were any different, but I need to communicate with her in the midst of a dozen attentive ears, some of which will be recording for this conversation to be played back for Father’s careful inspection. So I keep the question open ended, and let Tiffany say what she needs to.

“Smooth sailing,” she says, coasting a hand through the air. “I’ve been on set for Lightly, we’re almost done shooting! I’ve just got today off. How about you?”

“In the studio, mostly, and then some time in the gym too,” you say. “Nothing big.”

I take a sip from my ristretto, subtly flexing as I do so. It’s damn good coffee.

“Oh? Looks like somebody’s been getting big to me,” Tiffany says, raising an eyebrow above her sunglasses.

“Just getting back into the habit,” I shrug, though inside, the compliment is felt through and through. “It’s nice to be settled in a single city again.”

Just then, I notice a chubby eight-year-old hovering by the table, a marker in his hand.

"Hey there,” Tiffany says, smiling and waving at him.

He looks up anxiously at her. His mother, standing a few feet back, has her phone up, an excited expression writ on her face. Tiffany gestures for him to come closer, and he hesitantly steps forward.

“You want me to sign something?” she asks him warmly.

He nods his head, and then pulls the Dodgers cap off his head, offering it to her.

“What’s your name, love?” she asks him.

“An… Antonio,” he says. His eyes are so wide.

Tiffany picks up the marker and scribbles something on the side of the baseball cap.

“Now, you be a good boy and ask your mom if she wants a photo,” Tiffany says, patting him on the back. He hurriedly walks away, and Tiffany laughs, saying: “Don’t forget your cap!”

He comes back, picks up the cap, and then scurries back to his mother, clutching the cap tightly. He whispers something to her quickly, and she shakes her head. Tiffany waves over at them, and the mom looks shocked for a second, clutching her son tightly by the shirt, and then she rushes over to our table.

“Oh my word, thank you so much, thank you so much,” she says, pulling out her phone and glancing admiringly at Tiffany.

“No, thank you,” Tiffany says, leaning close to the woman for the selfie.

The woman makes some last second adjustments to her hair, and then snaps off a couple of photos.

“Thank you so very much,” the woman says, and then she practically skips over to her child, the two of them walking away.

“Best part of the job,” Tiffany grins at me.

“I couldn’t do it,” I admit. “Spent too much of my life purposefully avoiding the limelight.”

“You're not going to be able to do that for much longer,” she says, nodding to the side. “See that guy with the DSLR? Freelancer who sells to all the gossip rags. Like it or not, your picture is going to be on the front page of something tomorrow.”

And I would hardly have it any other way, I think, but instead, I present a frown and scratch my chin.

“That doesn’t bother you?” I ask.

“I don’t just let anyone sip coffee at my table,” she smiles. "Yeah, it’s cool with me.”

“Um… hi!” a high-pitched voice says from my side. It’s the buxom white girl I walked in here with.

“Hey!” Tiffany says, smiling at her.

“Are you busy? I thought, if you were okay with it, if I could get a photo…”

“Of course! Want my friend to take it?” she asks, pointing at me.

“Oh… uh… yeah, sure,” she says, handing me her phone.

I give the two of them a cool smile and a countdown, and then snap off a couple photos, passing the phone back to the girl.

“Thank you!” she practically squeals.

“My pleasure,” Tiffany laughs, and then the white girl slowly walks away, glancing back at us over her shoulder, as if unable to believe her luck.

Another person’s showed up by the table now, followed by a couple and then another guy behind them, the apprehension around approaching Tiffany broken.

I take photos for each of the people in the queue, chatting with Tiffany on the side.

“The Lightly shoot’s been going well then?” I ask after passing back a film camera, of all things, to a guy with hair longer than Tiffany’s.

She makes a face at me, saying: “Good, but… things could be better?”

She smiles at the next lady waiting for the photo, waving her onwards, and then leans over the side of the table to whisper in my ear: “Eric can be a real dick, you know?”

“Eric Simonds?" I whisper back, unable to quite believe my ears.

Eric’s the other co-star of Lightly, the big rom-com that’s supposed to come out the end of this year, and he’s Tiffany’s on-again-off-again boyfriend. He always comes across as well-spoken and kind in his interviews, but with Hollywood, well…

A dick Tiffany mouths at me as I receive yet another phone to take what seems like my hundredth picture of the day.

“What’s he done?” I ask, curious.

“Thanks, you look great too!” Tiffany says to the woman she just took a photo with, and then she turns back to me, rolling her eyes. “So many things. You wouldn’t believe it. Just last week, he—”

She gets a phone call then, and checking the number, picks it up. “Sorry, my agent!”

She listens for a while, nods, asks: “Right now?”, frowns a bit, nods some more, and then says, “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

Tiffany gives me an apologetic look and says: “Sorry, last minute thing, got to talk to some execs.”

“No worries,” I smile back at her. “But you should swing by my studio some day, yeah? I can show you around, give you an exclusive look at some of the pieces that I’ve been working on."

I pass her a namecard, which she tucks away into her purse.

“You can count on it,” she smiles to me, and then she’s off, leaving me to deal with the queue of disappointed people who most certainly were not looking for a photo with Claude Ashworth.