A Day in the Life of Eve Babitz (If She Were Around Today)

Morning, Los Angeles

A bottle of San Pellegrino and a pack of American Spirits sit on the windowsill, catching the early light. Eve wakes up at 10 a.m., her silk robe slipping off one shoulder. Her phone is buzzing with missed texts, mostly invitations to gallery openings and dinners at places that don’t have menus. She scrolls through her notifications lazily, lighting a cigarette and thinking about what not to do today.

Breakfast (Kind Of)

Breakfast is espresso from a mismatched cup she found at a flea market and half a croissant that’s been sitting on the counter since yesterday. She arranges both on the kitchen table next to an open copy of Just Kids, purely for the aesthetic. She won’t actually read it—she just likes to underline things.

Mid-Morning Chaos

She spends an hour on Instagram, uploading a blurry Polaroid of her living room and a caption that reads, “home is where the ashtray is.” Her DMs explode. Someone asks her to collaborate on a zine. Someone else invites her to a warehouse party in Silver Lake. She replies to none of them.

Afternoon Errands (Sort Of)

Eve throws on vintage Levi’s and drives to the Getty, not to see the art but because the lighting in the gardens is perfect for photos. She ends up spending 45 minutes taking selfies and forgets to actually go inside. On the way home, she stops by Erewhon for overpriced kombucha and a single chocolate-covered date.

Creative Hour

By 4 p.m., she’s back at her apartment, sitting on the floor with her typewriter. She’s supposed to be working on an essay about the absurdity of modern dating apps but ends up writing a short story about a woman who falls in love with a man she meets while buying cigarettes. She’s not sure if it’s fiction.

Sunset Cocktails
Eve meets a friend at the Chateau Marmont, where they split a bottle of rosé and people-watch in the courtyard. She doesn’t recognize half the celebrities anymore but pretends she does. Someone asks if she’s working on anything new. “Always,” she says, smirking.

Evening Escapades

Dinner is sushi with a man who won’t stop talking about his screenplay. Eve tunes him out, focusing instead on the perfect shade of red lacquer on her nails. After dinner, she convinces him to drop her off at the Dresden, where she runs into three people she hasn’t seen since the last disaster of a party at her place.

Midnight Musings

Eve gets home around midnight, kicks off her heels, and sprawls out on the couch with a glass of whiskey. She lights another cigarette and flips through her journal, rereading what she wrote earlier. “Not bad,” she mutters, before falling asleep to the hum of the city outside her window.