Trashley: Part Fourteen
Ask for Carlos
While Ashley was taking care of my dog, plants, and home, a crime producer was digging up information on her and her family in the LexisNexis database. She couldn’t find much on Ashley, it appeared she had paid a service to wipe out her personal information, which is what criminals do when they’re applying for jobs that require a background check. All we found was her birth certificate, an additional last name, and proof she was legally married. We couldn’t find any ties to Pasadena, where she said she grew up. Or proof she was associated with MIT or Denver University — neither as a student or professor. We disovered her family had a string of debt and unpaid bills in all the places they’d lived.
I was so intrigued. I knew they’d moved around a lot, but now things started to become more clear. They would live somewhere for a year or two, not pay their bills, and start over again in a new city, where they get new jobs, rack up more debt, and then move to a new city. Over and over and over. Ashley’s family felt like the punchline to a Jeff Foxworthy “You might be a redneck if…” joke. I wasn’t judging them, I was just observing. Plus, I love a good Grifter story. It started to make more sense why her parent’s idea of a vacation was going to Luke Bryan concerts in Vegas and Cancun.
Despite what we were finding, I still liked Ashley for the most part. And she started being nicer to me, probably sensing I was pulling back. She reserved a camping spot at the Ventana in Big Sur for my birthday, which would be shortly after I returned from Spain. We put together a list of meals to make at our campsite and a list of podcasts and playlists to listen to on the drive up to Big Sur. That’s the Ashley I wanted, the one who would accompany me on adventures and plan fun trips before exploring with me.
But that wasn’t always the Ashley I got.
“Lauren, I don’t mean to scare you, but something strange is happening at your apartment,” my neighbor Gabby said one day when she called me on set. “I think there’s something over the windows.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. My windows are one of my favorite things about my place. They’re big and allow in a lot of light, my plants fucking love it.
“Well, the last few times I’ve walked by and your place it’s completely black. I can’t describe it exactly, but it looks like your apartment is a black hole, with no light coming in or going out.”
“Weird, I’ll ask Ashley about it. She didn’t say anything to me about the windows.” I thanked Gabby for the heads up and called Ashley.
“Hey, what’s going on with the windows? Gabby just called and said my place is blacked out or something.”
“Oh, I got black out curtains because it’s too bright in here, and you know I’m sensitive to the sun. It’s also impossible to play my PlayStation during the day.” Ashley said. “They’re easy to take off, I just stuck them to the wall with velcro.” What in the redneck hell? It was barely above duct-taping a towel to the ceiling and using it as a curtain. I couldn’t imagine my place completely dark. The light was what made it so charming.
“The plants need light, so can you just make sure the curtains aren’t up that much?” I asked. Ashley agreed. She never did anything like a normal person, and maybe that’s one of the reasons I liked her, she kept me on my feet.
I hadn’t heard anything more from Cecelia, and I never responded to any of her messages. But I still checked her Twitter multiple times a day. A lot of her likes were articles about dealing with cheating spouses. I felt like maybe she was sending me smoke signals about Ashley, and I didn’t know what to do. All I knew was someone was lying, either Ashley’s ex-wife slash current-wife, or Ashley and her entire family. But it seemed impossible that her family would do something like that.
Cecelia had accused Ashley of lying about being a Physicist and MIT Professor, and I couldn’t get that thought out of my head. I don’t even care about school. In fact, I hate school, which is why I dropped out of college. I don’t value education. I value wit, and I always knew that’s what I wanted to do for a living. You don’t need a degree to be witty, just like you don’t need a degree to be a librarian or a pharmacist. Just watch a few Ted Talks, purchase a MasterClass subscription, and save yourself four years and a lifetime of debt.
One morning as I was getting ready to head to the control room, I got a text from Ashley saying she had to go to Santa Barbara to get her car tire fixed. It didn’t make sense for her to drive all the way there, but she insisted she couldn’t get an appointment at any of the Tesla service centers in LA. How? LA is the land of the Tesla. I remembered she had mysteriously set her Hinge location to Santa Barbara a few months earlier, claiming to catch someone who was catfishing her friend. I had never heard anything more about that, but my intuition told me something was off. I called the Tesla shop in Burbank and asked to make an appointment. They had lots of slots available. Then I looked in the Tesla app to make sure Ashley did actually have an appointment in Santa Barbara, and that checked out. I didn’t say anything to her, I almost wanted to catch her in a lie.
I watched Ashley’s car driving up the 101 and park at the Tesla service center. It was there all day. What I couldn’t tell was if it was parked in the service station or the lot next to it. I checked the app again: she had canceled the appointment. She was getting sloppy. I told my co-workers I thought Ashley was going on a date in Santa Barbara, and showed them the evidence. There was definitely something shady happening. And I found out Ashley didn’t take Perci with her, she ditched him with Gabby all day.
Ashley called me to say she was leaving Santa Barbara and heading home, and that her tire was fixed. Okay, sure, I thought. I would have been shocked if Ashley had gone on a date with someone, it would be too bold of her. Plus, she was lucky to have me, and if I broke up with her she would be the only one devastated.
”Why did you cancel the appointment?” I asked.
”What do you mean? I didn’t.”
”I looked in the app and it said you canceled the appointment. And it feels like you’re lying to me about something,” I said.
“I’m not fucking lying to you about anything!” She squealed. “Stop accusing me of lying! I’m not a fucking liar!”
“Then why does the Tesla app say you canceled the appointment?”
“I don’t know, but you can call them! They’ll tell you I was there and they’ll show you proof! Go ahead! Here’s their number, ask for Carlos, he’s the one who fixed it!”
The number came through and for a second I considered calling. But then I thought maybe she was telling the truth and I didn’t want to accuse her of lying, especially if she wasn’t. So I didn’t call the Tesla place, and I apologized.
“I’m sorry, I think I’m just exhausted and hungry and overheated,” I said. “I just felt like something was off, but I’m glad it’s not.”
The next day we were back to normal. I was still running on hardly any sleep and the water in my hotel room was ice cold and the food was inedible. I hated the Canary Islands and I still had another month of production.
Ashley had checked the mail for me and it was just the usual, junk, my car payment, but then, something exciting: my check had come in from Ashley’s company! It had been on the back of my mind that I might be getting a check for thirty grand to write five tweets, but I thought it was probably too good to be true. I thought Ashley offered it and then forgot it.
But she sent me a photo and it appeared real. I was shocked.
I told her she could deposit it into my business account and sent her my information. There was no way, I thought. No way a company would pay that much money for five fucking tweets that would take me half a brain cell to write. She put the money in my account. And when I looked online, it said the transaction was pending. I rolled my eyes, I felt stupid to believe this check might be real.
The next day I logged into my account.
It had gone through.
It cleared.
It was real.
”So when do you need these tweets by?” I asked Ashley.
”No rush, you can just do them when you get back,” She said.
“Are you sure? I feel weird getting a check like that and not doing anything for it.”
“Yeah, I’m sure, you just can’t spend any of it on me, for ethical reasons, obviously, since you are my girlfriend. They can’t know we’re dating, so when I set you up with our social media person you just need to say we are business associates.”
”Aye-aye, Captain.” I remembered she said this was a quarterly check.
You know what, maybe this Ashley girl wasn’t so full of shit after all.
And now she has access to your banking. Maxwell Smart voice: "it's the Old Nigerian Princess trick!"
Oh my god noooooooo......