Watered-Down

When I took a job as a personal assistant to a model/actress, I thought my workload would be arranging schedules and meetings and tending to dry-cleaning.  

My name is Cassie. I’m 5’5, colored like a graham cracker and everything, including my eye-matching chocolate brown hair, is on the thin side. Thus, I have never thought of myself as a weight-lifter. But I have made it my mission to do at least three days of weight-training a week for my job. Now, why would a personal assistant to a model need multiple weight-training sessions, you ask? For the ridiculous amount of water I have to lug around. The first time I did a grocery run from a list Kenneth gave me, I almost passed out from exhaustion! Lifting case after case of water into the cart, then checking out, and having to lift them into the car and then unload them back at my boss's place. And when we traveled, there had to be a case of water in the trunk and back seat and any other water she wanted along. Loading and unloading, multiple times everywhere we went.  

I never before realized how superstitous people in the public eye are; they each have a ritual or obsession that their entire world revolves around. And my employer, Andea Montral’s, was about water.  

I was employed because Andea’s water needs became too much for her agent, Kenneth, to handle alone anymore. Kenneth is a little older than Andea and me, with short, kinky black hair kept short and his skin was the color of a perfect cup of coffee; just a little hint of cream for smoothness. His eyes were black but black like velvet not piercing obsidian. His overall soft features made him approachable. If Andea was a drink, she'd be a tall latte. Her hair was very short, just a soft brown layer perfectly shaped around her scalp. It really let you see that her hypnotizing green-hazel eyes were perfectly set above a cute nose and sharp cheek-bones. What it didn’t let you see was her obsession with water.  

Actually, it was about water in relation to her zodiac signs. Kenneth told me that that has been the case ever since Andea had seen a professional astrologist during a stint of unfortunate events.  

The astrologist had done a ‘birth chart’ (whatever that is) for Andea and she learned that she was not a Leo or at least not Leo alone. Her birthday had been dubbed the 23rd of July BUT she was born sometime just before/at midnight. So she was, according to astrology, technically a Cancer with some Leo traits. Andea also apparently learned about her ‘rising sign’, Pisces, and her ‘moon sign’, Scorpio. I had only heard of a person having one sign but whatever. All of her signs were water signs and the astrologist told her that was important to her soul and universal being to be associated with water as often as possible or everything is the cosmos would be out of whack for her. Andea quickly went over the deep end with the information. She now had a whole bunch of water-pouring rituals for every situation. She had to carry aquamarine crystals and have them around her all the time. And of course, she had to have loads of access to water to drink. Drinking as much water as Andea does means I have to keep her toilet paper stocked too. Good thing she had this water-revelation after the peak of the pandemic. But at least it was working for her.  

Andea lost weight that had she had been trying to lose for a while and she was much healthier and energetic. She informed me she had so much more clarity and insight too. Her mind had become so sharp and she was remembering so much more! And she had a better rapport and access to jobs and gigs; all thanks to her consistent water-rituals. 

Kenneth privately told me that he suspected it had more to do with Andea no longer drinking 1-2 bottles of wine a day. Who knows?  

What I know is that I looked like a crazy end-of-world prepper person when I went to the store. My cart was always filled with the multiple sizes of packs of water, individual water bottles because Andea needed alkaline and distilled and ph.-balanced water to drink. Giant jugs of mineral water were all precariously-pyramid stacked too.  

The cashiers always joked “Expecting a drought?” And other shoppers would ask “Are you going a trip to the desert?”  

I always just gave a light laugh and smile without replying. Because me saying ‘No, Haha. I just have to have a lot of water in case my employer suddenly needs a ritual douse to cleanse her aura” would cause them to call the local institution and say they found an escapee.  

And that’s only one of the weird-water-ritual things Andea needed. Because it’s not just getting water that Kenneth delegated to me, it was also memorizing all the rituals Andea insisted she needed and keeping her stocked on all the other stuff the rituals required too.  

If she was getting full-body photographed, she had to have a shower with dried eucalyptus hanging in the shower and then be rinsed with mineral water, all while being surrounded by cleansed aquamarine crystals. After every event of any kind Andea claimed she needed a ritual bath. That meant I would have to run water in her garden tub and sprinkle all-natural Epsom Sea salt in the bath and light blue candles. I also had to make sure that either way Andea relaxed in the tub, there was a water bottle within reach. 

 And right before any hair or makeup session, Andea would lean back while I poured ‘moon water’ over her face. Moon water is when you let water sit in the light of a full moon. So yes, that means part of my job is to check when there’s going to be a full moon and make sure jugs of water were in place in Andea’s yard to get...moon-enriched. I-I don’t really understand, but I’m paid to do it.  

She also requires that her feet get cleansed with distilled water carefully poured over her feet before and after any runways or shoe-modeling gigs. I mention ‘cleansed’- that means I have to take a wad of weird leaves called ‘blue sage’ and light it over whatever needs ‘cleansed’ and that...does something to somehow clean it. The leaves don’t catch fire though; it makes a smoke like incense. It doesn’t even smell bad; I just don’t think I’m paid enough for the humiliation part of the job. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to be on set with glamorous models and photographers watching me waft smoke from a bundle of leaves 360 around a jug of distilled water? Not to mention the times when I’ve run into friends or family members on the downtown strip and they catch me coming out of a store called “The Witch Den” carrying a giant box.  

Once, my Aunt Etta called and demanded I go to church with her because I needed the dark spirits expunged from my soul. And let me add that it didn’t help my case at all when I tried to explain that I wasn’t practicing black magic, I just had to mass order sage bundles for my employer to have cleansed water for her feet.  

As aforementioned, I don’t even try to explain that if anything even slightly goes wrong, Andea would demand an emergency aura cleanse. I used the sage to cleanse her crystals right then as well as a jug of mineral water and pour it over her to cleanse away the negative energy that she must have absorbed.  

Over all, it’s an interesting job and I like both Kenneth and Andea, even if she is weird, she’s very nice. I get to travel and see the glam-side of things. I have no idea how I’m going to translate some of my job experience on my resume. I am pretty sure it would befuddle even the best resume expert on how to professionally explain ‘moon water making’ and ‘fast aura cleanser’. But that’s in the, hopefully, far off future. 

And for now, I’ll just go with the flow.