IN EXCESS

OK, so you wrote a screenplay, took out a one-year lease on a Range Rover, bought a car phone and maxed out your plastic buying the right clothes to make you look the part of a Hollywood player, but the appointment book’s still empty. You might want to give Shelby Goodman a call. She can provide you a party site with the proper 90210 address essential for completing the image, even if it’s only for one night.

“I simply give my home to the host and/or hostess for the occasion. I stay out of sight,” says Goodman, an interior designer. “The guests have the run of the house.”

For prices averaging $85 to $175 a person, Goodman, who calls her party biz At Home, will attend to the entertaining details for everything from one-on-one deal-making luncheons to black-tie affairs and friendly family back-yard barbecues. All without letting on that she is the real owner of the 5,500-square-foot gated house, complete with pool and four flower gardens. Her clients have a variety of reasons for renting the home--privacy, convenience, intimacy--and if anyone is trying to pull off a con, she doesn’t want to know.

“They all have agendas and this is a means to an end, but they don’t tell me and I don’t listen to the conversations.”

But, she adds, “It’s all about one thing: impressing people.”