Sugar Time

by Jane Adams

  Tory began to pant—it was hot out there in the parking lot—and I could feel what little reserve of energy I had draining away. Alex Carroll seemed to realize that; “Long day, I guess,” he said, and I nodded.

  “I’ve been at the hospital half of last night and all day today,” I said. “I really need to go home.”

  I’d already decided that if he asked for my number, I’d give it to him—not that that meant anything more than “Let’s have lunch,” but there was a definite current between us, unless I was the only one who felt it. And even if I wasn’t, I’m still not comfortable doing the asking.

  He was, though. “Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?”

  “I’d like that,” I said.

  “Me too,” he replied. We made a plan to talk the next afternoon and I drove off, wondering if he’d really call me. Just in case, I made an appointment with Douglas at Umberto’s for a haircut and with Roxanne for a manicure, although I passed on the bikini wax; there’s hardly enough there to justify either the price or the pain. I was amazed when Jessie told me a few years ago—before she got married—that she waxed twice a month. “Men expect it,” she said. “They won’t go down on you if you have a hairy pussy.”

  When the girls heard that, they were as stunned as I was. Carrie said, “When we stopped shaving our pits, let alone our legs, it was a political act. Don’t they realize that having your pubic hair pulled out to please a man is one, too?”

  Traffic on the 405 was sluggish so I returned all my phone calls—I’d made the most important ones from the hospital, Frances first and then Paul, who said he’d had a feeling Jessie was in labor, he’d been waiting to hear the good news. I left messages for Carrie and Peggy and Suzanne and Hallie, who phoned me back just as the cars ahead of me started to move. “Six feet, 175 pounds and gorgeous,” I told her.

  “The baby?”

  “No, this incredible guy who picked me up in the hospital.” I was just getting down to the specifics—that great smile and the midnight blue eyes that were practically purple—when my cell did its call waiting thing. “Call you back, it’s my agent,” I said.

  “You go, grandma!” she replied, and according to Sandro, this was just what this one was doing.

  “It’s a green light, for sure this time,” he said. “Nelly loved the rewrite, it’s a go, signed on the dotted line. They’re not even asking for a polish—said as soon as we get a director, we can go right to shooting script.”

  “That’s fantastic!” I said.

  “Not entirely,” he replied. “It’s still a one-off—they won’t make any decision about a series ‘till they see how the pilot goes. And they want it fast—shooting will start in April in Vancouver, and you have to bring it in in 28 days. So you’ve really got to move on this, Sugar—you’ve got to get a director, a bunch of AD’s, a cast, a production designer…you know the drill. You sure you’re up for this?

  “Well of course I am, what makes you think I’m not? I’ve done this before, you know, I’m not exactly a newbie.”

  “Of course you’re not, sweetheart. By the way, congratulations on the baby. I can’t believe little Jessie, all grown up, a kid of her own now…seems like yesterday she was hanging around the set of Going It Alone in pigtails. And now you’re a bubbe!”

  “Thanks for the little stroll down memory lane, Sandro. What is it? You think I’m too old to pull this off? Does Nelly?”

  He backtracked and sweet-talked, sounding as sincere as a car salesman while I half-listened, running my tongue around my teeth, searching for the site of the pain that had been nagging at me for days now—damn, it hurt somewhere in there, I just didn’t know where. My old dentist had retired—I’d have to ask Zach’s mother for the name of hers. Stacy is one of those women who treat you to an organ recital every time you ask how she is, but she’s information central when it comes to medical professionals, and the fact that her son isn’t one is the great tragedy of her life. When I met Zach’s parents for the first time, Stacy raved about Jessie—“So beautiful! So smart! So ambitious, we couldn’t be happier!” And then she added, only slightly apologetically, “I’m sure you wanted a doctor for her, or at least a lawyer.”

  Poor Zach, I’d thought, and still do. “I’d always rather eat than get sick or sue someone, and so would Jessie,” I told her. “I am totally nuts about Zach, and besides, I’ll never have to cook a Thanksgiving turkey again.”

  “Sugar, you there?” Sandro asked.

  “Yes, I’m here. What were you saying?”

  “They’ve assigned a producing team already—the guys we met in Nelly’s office, Peter and Guy, a woman, Melanie somebody, some AP’s. You’re taking a meeting with them tomorrow; they’re really fast-tracking it. I’ll call Robin, or do you want to?”

  “Robin? Why? We don’t need her at this stage—at least, I don’t. I thought you and Kyle were going to work something out.”

  “We did, we’ll give her a producing credit, she can do a lot of the shit work, the stuff you hate—dealing with Nelly’s people, keeping all the suits happy, you know. Meanwhile you get me your wish list, the director, the talent, and I’ll run them down, see who they’ll let us use, who’s available—can you get it to me by the end of the day?”

  “It’s already the end of the day, Sandro—”

  “In the morning then, first thing. And be at Nelly’s at six o’clock tomorrow, that’s the only time they can do it.”

  “Oh, shit—how late do you think it will go?”

  “Why? Don’t tell me you already signed up to take care of the baby, Bubbelah.”

  “As a matter of fact I have a very hot date with a very hot guy.”

  “Yeah? Well, tell him not to take the Viagra until midnight,” he said. “You know how these meetings go.”

  I went home, showered and changed and fed Tory, then drove back to Echo Park in case the kids needed me. I was excess baggage, though—Jessie’s doula was there, a sweet-faced girl who radiated calmness, as well as the baby nurse that Zach’s mother had hired for a month. Nobody’d done anything about the mess in the kitchen or the basket of dirty clothes on the first floor landing, so I pretended I didn’t see them either and followed the trail of blankets, pillows, books, CDs, newspapers and gift boxes from Naissance and Elegant Child up to the master bedroom. They were all sleeping—Rosie was tucked in between her parents, all wrapped up like a hamentaschen. I bent over them to inhale her sweet baby smell and her delicate little eyelids fluttered open for a second or two before they closed again. When I planted a soft kiss on her forehead, Jessie stirred and blinked hazily up at me. “Call me later,” I whispered, and backed quietly out of the bedroom. I turned at the door and looked back at them, thinking ‘thank you,’ and something that might have been a prayer, just in case anyone was listening.

  After a quick fix of caffeine and chocolate, I got out the folder of notes and emails that came in when the deal for the pilot was announced in the trades. I put a few aside and opened my journal—actually it’s a steno pad, one of the old fashioned kind with wire binding and lined pages. When I watch TV I jot down names of actors, writers, directors, and editors whose work stands out from the shit that fills so many prime time hours—the remakes of lame sitcoms with pretty, smart wives and fat, dumb husbands, the reality shows—it amazes me what people will do for their fifteen minutes, don’t they have any dignity or common sense?—and the endless variations on Law and Order. I started doing it when I was running Going It Alone; I keep it up, if only to convince myself I’m not just wasting time when I’m watching TV, I’m working. I had the previous two year’s worth of names on my computer, the ones before that on my Rolodex, a pre-tech relic like whiteout and carbon paper. Last Christmas Robin gave me one of those electronic organizers that does everything. “It’s even got a tickle function,” she told me, and for all I know, it’s got one that pinches my ass, too; it’s still in the box it came in.

  I flipped through some dog-eared, coffee-stained
cards and tried a few numbers, but I hadn’t even gotten through the D’s before I realized it was ancient history; people had left the business, moved up, down or out—their phones, which back then were all in one area code, had been disconnected, or the numbers assigned to a gas station in Burbank or a Domino’s in Century City. A director who’d worked for me once was in the Motion Picture and Television Home in Woodland Hills, and thought I was his agent’s secretary—a nurse took the receiver away from him and whispered that lately he was often in what she referred to as “another reality.” Another one was in Forest Lawn. And a few who’d broken into features weren’t interested: “But have your girl call my girl and set up a lunch so we can catch up on old times, “said one, and I agreed, knowing neither of us meant it. The pecking order is, film trumps TV, unless you’re a movie actress over 40, which is when the small screen doesn’t seem like quite so much of a comedown.

  By the time I had a list of possible directors, writers, lead actors and supporting ones, it was nearly midnight. I hoped some of the same names would be on the network’s approved list; talent with whom there were already deals in place, who had high Q scores or solid credits or the right look, who wouldn’t make unreasonable demands or be difficult to work with. But I wasn’t counting on it; I’d been out of the loop too long to know who most of those people were.

  I crawled into bed, dog-tired but too keyed up to fall asleep. There was just too much stuff in my head, names and faces and memories. Like Dan, who played Lexy’s boyfriend for a season—he was a sweet, funny, sexy Irishman whose drinking problem got too big to ignore, and the day I had to fire him he said, “Does that mean we can fuck now?” Since I didn’t think it would be a mercy fuck—I’d been attracted to him since his first day on the set—we did. Then he got sober and stopped coming around; I heard he’d married a make-up girl and moved to Tarzana. And Deanne, a producer I spent a week with once at the Golden Door, developing a script that seemed like a good idea at the time but never got picked up. She was 40 then, desperate for a husband and a baby: “Not a husband who is a baby,” she said as we lay next to each other on massage tables while skinny little Asian girls pummeled us, “which means nobody in the business.” She’d quit soon after that and started a Jewish matchmaker business, something she dreamed up after she heard about a writer who couldn’t get his scripts read because he didn’t have an agent until he rounded up some buddies who were in the same fix, got some letterhead and a post office box in Beverly Hills and joined ATA: “Now he gets three mil a picture without even paying a commission,” she told me at her baby shower; she married her second client, an orthodox accountant, and they live in Beverly Glen in a house that has two kitchens, one for meat and one for milk.

  I remembered people I hadn’t thought about in years until I saw their names in my files, especially the cast and crew of Going It Alone. After we won our first Emmy I’d taken the whole writing team and their families to Hawaii for a week—it was where I’d really gotten to know Livvy, a divorcee who had a laugh like a waterfall, red hair that corkscrewed out of her head, a promising career, two kids, a new boyfriend every other month, and a life that was a lot like mine. A few months after the trip she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer—when she died midway through our third season, having a successful TV show and making a lot of money and winning awards and being sucked up to stopped being like something I’d gotten away with and started being a job.

  The hits just kept on coming but I absolutely had to get some sleep, so I gave up trying and swallowed an Ambien. Just before it kicked in, I remembered how Alex Carroll had looked at me; I slid my hand between my legs, but I was too tired for that, too. Besides, how many men say they’ll call and never do?

  He wasn’t one of them—the phone woke me up at noon the next day.

  “I’ve got a meeting that will probably go late,” I told him. “It happened at the last minute, it’s really, really important—”

  “That important, huh?” he said, but his voice was light and teasing, so I explained about the pilot, the awful logistics of getting something made on such a tight schedule, how my life would be crazy busy until it was done.

  He sounded genuinely disappointed. “Look, why don’t you call me after your meeting, and I’ll meet you somewhere—at least we could have a drink.”

  “It might be pretty late,” I warned.

  “It won’t be too late,” he said. “Whenever it is, it won’t be too late.”

  Hope perfumes the air like lacquer in a beauty salon, and I wasn’t immune; I didn’t come out of Umberto’s looking ten years younger, which takes more than can be done in a couple of hours and costs considerably more money, but I’d had my hair, nails and makeup done and I was wearing my lucky dress, a Diane von Furstenberg vintage wrap that was so old it was back in style again, just like me. I’d splurged on a pair of open-toed Christian Louboutin heels, and a new Pratesi briefcase, and I was as ready as I’d ever be.

  First meetings on a new show are all smiles until the knives come out. Everyone jockeys for position, putting their favorites forward, figuring out who to suck up to and who not to bother about, who they want to work with and who they have to. By the time we broke up, we’d covered budgets and shooting schedules and locations, gotten together a wish list for Amelia and Clea and the key supporting roles, and agreed on a director—I didn’t know him, but he’d done good work on a stylish FX series I’d seen a couple of seasons ago, and if he was available and we got on well together, we’d offer him the job.

  One of the execs suggested a writer who’d done two of my favorite episodes for Nip/Tuck, and Robin mentioned someone from Sex and the City who had a movie script in turnaround but might be interested; she handed me a pile of scripts, saying “There are some good possibilities in here; I’ve made notes on them.”

  I’d had a quick conversation with Sandro just before the meeting started: “We’re making her an assistant producer; we may have to give her a writing credit, too, we haven’t worked that out, but meanwhile she’ll do whatever you tell her,” he said, “How bad can that be?”

  I had plenty to keep her busy—put together an office, get phones and computers and copy machines and paper clips and people to use them, set up meetings with casting directors and location managers, and keep track of all the deadlines and schedules and details. Robin would be good at that—she was nothing if not efficient. I didn’t have to trust her—and I didn’t—but I’d be dumb not to use her, especially since I had to.

  I left the meeting with a briefcase crammed full of tapes, scripts, casting books, names, phone numbers, and a to-do list that filled the fresh new steno pad I’d put in it that morning. It was nearly ten o’clock; I hoped Alex Carroll was still awake.

  He was, and he was hungry, too, so we settled on Morton’s, not the one where all the Oscar parties are but the one at the Meridien, where he was staying. The food was better, the room less see-and-be-seen, it was on my way home—sort of—and while the idea of going up to his room afterward crossed my mind, it didn’t linger there. I remembered a conversation I’d had with Peggy once after we went to see Kathleen Turner play Martha in Virginia Woolf. We were mesmerized by the heat of her performance—she threw it off like sparks from a fire, and you could feel it even up in the second balcony, “I can’t remember when I had that kind of passion,” said Peggy at intermission. “Not for fighting or fucking. My libido has disappeared.”

  “I know what you mean,” I told her. “Mine’s like Al Gore’s ambition for the White House—he may have put it away, but if there was any need for it, he’d know just where to look.”

  But as I drove down Wilshire, I wasn’t thinking about having sex with Alex Carroll—not really. I was wondering if there was intelligence behind those gorgeous eyes, an expansive spirit as well as an easy laugh, if he was still curious, interested, interesting. If he was a grown-up, but had enough youthiness, too.

  Most men who are the right age—which is to say, a few years north or s
outh of sixty—don’t. Rebecca, who’s in my book club in New York, has fixed me up with several of them—widowers, usually, whose wives have recently died. (“Six weeks is too early, Sugar, but six months is way too late, you’ll love him, he’s a doll.”) They seem old to me, stuffy and boring and just like their fathers, or mine, anyway, except they play tennis instead of golf and drive Benzes rather than Lincoln Continentals. It’s as if the past never touched them, and the present doesn’t, either. I went out with a man named Carl once, not even a widower, right after 9-11, who said he used to want to know how it all turned out—life, he meant—but he didn’t, not anymore.

  I did, though, so I touched up my lipstick, dabbed a bit of Preparation H under my eyes to shrink the bags, and brushed out my hair. After I gave the valet the keys, I sprayed a little Vol de Nuit in front of me and walked through it to meet Alex Carroll.

  My opening line with a man is usually” Tell me about you.” It’s how Frances taught me to get a man interested. “Then it’s off to the races, and all you have to do is nod in the right places and they think you’re fascinating,” she said, long before Seventeen gave me the same advice. Frances was years ahead of The Rules, and even Cosmopolitan; she said making a man think he’s the world’s greatest lover had the same effect, although how she knew that was a question she steadfastly refused to answer.

  During my formative years, my mother delivered herself of many similar pronouncements about the opposite sex. I came to her once, confused and miserable, after I hit a home run in the last inning of the sixth grade softball tournament and David Carlson, who’d pitched it to me and on whom I had a desperate crush, walked another girl home after the game. ““Boys don’t like girls who hit home runs—you have to learn to bunt,” she told me: Like most of Frances’ dicta, it was as depressingly true then as it is today.