brentwood's finest

James drove a wide, faded copper Cadillac with a shiny mud flap girl silhouette planted firmly across the grill. The vanity plate read MR SLIM. A hint of gray appeared on his jaw when he didn’t shave, tracing a pepper-flecked line to the diamond and gold dollar sign stud poking through one ear. A navy baseball cap hid his sepia-toned scalp. As head of security for Brentwood Gardens Shopping Center he arrived on site by 7 a.m. every day. He unlocked the gates to the outdoor mall nestled against the mansions and dry brush that trailed up into the Santa Monica Mountains. If no other maintenance task required his key James rode the escalator up a flight to the Daily Grill to grab a paper and a small coffee. He then positioned himself on a bench in the bougainvillea-lined center of the mall, his head obscured by section A of the Los Angeles Times and one of his long legs folded perpendicular to the knee of the other to reveal a grey athletic sock. He glanced up from the Times when I rushed by each weekday at 9:57 a.m. balancing my store key with my coffee tumbler, water bottle, and bags of customer requests from my company’s Marina store. He always threw me a wide grin and an enthusiastic, if inexplicable, “Hey Roxy Baby!”

When I interviewed at the perfume and gift shop, on the ground level of the Brentwood Gardens center, I did not pay much attention to the other tenants. The mall looked the same as when it had when I had run up the escalators in leggings and leotards at 13, out of breath and late for ballet class. I noticed no changes from the days when I ditched eighth period to linger over Chinese chicken salad at California Pizza Kitchen and smoke cigarettes on the benches in front of Ron Herman, trying to impress the cool older salesgirl whose dad owned the eponymous boutique. As a high school senior, I arranged to meet E, Internet boyfriend #2, in person for the first time at that same second-floor C.P.K. on a quiet fall Monday for a round of wine and spinach appetizers. At 22 I took the job that included blending custom perfumes and making gift baskets.

There I met James, who stood at least six foot six and was skinnier than Snoop Dogg. His waist seemed to start at my chest, its slenderness accentuated by a narrow black belt supporting a jangling fistful of keys. He had a blonde young wife from Australia who designed jewelry and dreamed of recording an album. I rarely caught a glimpse of her except when she came to visit James and browse the annual half price sale on Louboutins and Jimmy Choos at Madison. The couple walked arm in arm as they toured the mall’s tiny circular promenade; they always stopped by my jewelry counter to try on vintage enamel heart jewelry. After clasping the chain she swiveled around to ask “Slim” if he liked it. He always did.

James read the Times through the Sports section every morning and then stood around in the sun with his hands in his pockets, surveying foot traffic and chatting with the dark-haired Prudential real estate boss from the third floor. Occasionally James retreated to the TV-equipped second-floor office to escape the sun, where he put up his feet and continually checked the pager management gave him.

The mornings crawled by in the mall. I longed to see a grandmother in True Religion Jeans and a Da Nang tank, desperate for Bat Mitzvah gifts, or a new mom in need of an expensive-looking, unscented hostess gift for her husband’s boss & wife—a gift that won’t clash with the recipient’s unknown home décor. After an hour passed with no customers I even yearned for a New Age Pilates addict with a designer perfume she wanted me to clone, or at least a return to process. Instead tourists in twos and threes wandered through the door in need of directions and confused, non-Brentwood residents stopped in to inquire about parking validation or the French shop that closed in ’01.

In the stretches of time between customers I stared blankly out the window, lost in thought while dusting window displays or filling 1oz sample bottles with China Rain lotion. James’ lanky figure caught my eye midmorning as he rode the escalator down to check in with the valet. On his way back up he dropped by for the free M&Ms we kept in a glass bowl next to the register.

James had worked at the mall for over 25 years. He checked the subterranean parking garage for cracks in the predawn hours as aftershocks reverberated from the 1992 Northridge earthquake and he descended from his early-afternoon second-floor vantage point to stand outside my store every time we had more than three or four browsers.

Most security issues at the mall involved the occasional homeless man looking for a quiet corner to smoke crack. Occasionally a graver threat emerged. James told me that next door, Ice Accessories had been held up in an armed robbery and that if anyone ever messed with his girls, he’d give it to them. Six months later another armed robbery occurred at Ron Herman and the owners invested in a private security guard. I thought James would be insulted but he approved, given the pricey clothes and casual, open atmosphere of the shop. Not long after that incident I noticed that the metal chains on the $400 Morphine Generation tank tops at Theodore were for security purposes.

I breathed relief at the hordes of skinny blonde carpool moms in Hard Tail yoga pants that poured in between 12 and 2, demanding 2 soy candles in every scent possible and 8 reed diffusers, all gift-wrapped and labeled. During these hours James could also be called on to give Sammy a hand when her caretaker couldn’t get the wheelchair and the stuffed shopping bags in the elevator. One day a bleach-blonde, puffy-lipped divorcee wearing fur came by with her six kids to pick up a gift basket that her father had pre-ordered, James whispered across the register that the woman always tried to spend on her father’s credit card, even at age 40, causing other shops much chagrin about reversed credit card transactions. We weren’t to charge a thing that was not pre-authorized, he told my coworker and me, no matter how much she whined. After letting her three-year-old twins run wild while she tried on necklaces, the customer implored me to add on a $56 Rigaud votive and a $172 tourmaline necklace, I shot James a questioning look and he picked up her bags, jokingly offering to give her a hand to the car until she herded her kids out the door.

“What’s up, Roxy Baby?” James asked me as we sat shoulder to shoulder outside smoking on the bench in the first lull of the late afternoon one day.
“Not much.” I responded. “What are you doing this weekend?”
“Looking at cars,” he answered. Three days later the in-house car wash service scrubbed and vacuumed his old Cadillac for the last time. The next day a shiny black ’05 Cadillac sedan took its place in the stacked parking spot closest to the south elevator.