The F Word

by Liza Palmer

  I plug in my phone and crawl into bed. As I struggle to fall asleep, I get a text from Ellen with a screenshot of Caroline’s latest Instagram post: a photo of a silhouetted girl dancing at sunset with the quote “Not to decide is to decide” written over it.

  “Borderline,” I type back.

  “Should we have her delete it?” Ellen texts back.

  “Too late now.” I put my phone back on the nightstand and pull the covers up to my shoulders.

  * * *

  Adam didn’t come home last night. I knew he wouldn’t. As I tossed and turned, I started putting the pieces together. And the result was this giant middle finger I never saw before. Or only caught glimpses of.

  I shake my head as I wait to pull into the parking structure early the next morning. The dinners and the late nights. Is he hiding his infidelities in the cracks of a busy life? Hell, am I hiding his infidelities in the cracks of my busy life?

  I leave for work at 7:30 a.m. and don’t get home until well after 8 p.m. When I do finally get home, I make dinner and prepare for the following day: pack my gym bag, get my work clothes ready, make my lunch, and gather the ingredients for my morning smoothie. When I don’t fall asleep watching television, I crawl into bed looking at my phone until I’m startled awake when it drops on my face.

  I wave my parking permit in front of the machine. Again. Again.

  “Come the fuck on.” I press it against the machine. “Better? Do you see me now?” The machine reads, “One moment, please.”

  “Pull back,” the parking kid says. “Pull it back.”

  “It’s not—” I pull the parking permit back and the boom barrier lifts. “Going to be quite a day.” The parking kid smiles and I drive through.

  I wend my way through the parking structure, trying to find a spot and it dawns on me that Adam didn’t really try to hide his infidelities—busy schedule or no. We never had a conversation about having an open marriage, but he’s got to know I know.

  He has to know I know, right?

  I find a parking space, gather my stuff, and step into the elevator as that single question haunts me. I grunt hellos and offer distracted smiles as I walk through the office. About halfway through, I lock eyes with an intern and it’s her look of jealousy and utter fear that zooms me back to the here and now. That’s right. Just like no one here knows about the Sweaty Marble version of me, they also don’t know that my marriage is going through a rough patch. Unlike Caroline, there aren’t paparazzi taking blurry photos of Adam and Nicola canoodling at the Post Ranch Inn while their editor scours my old yearbooks for photos of me taking up an entire cafeteria table as I devour a breakfast burrito by myself. No, I can be the same Olivia Morten who inspires and intimidates, just like I was yesterday. I straighten up and smile brightly at the intern and she stutters some rambling morning greeting. This pleases me.

  “Is Gus here yet?” I ask as Ellen rounds the corner.

  “No, you would have heard swooning amongst the interns if he was,” Ellen says, handing me a coffee.

  “Thank you. I don’t know if you’ll ever come to understand how much I appreciate this coffee.” Ellen just looks at me. Shit. Wait. No. Don’t be earnest, you fool. “I’d like to thank the Academy…” I hold my coffee in my hands and look out onto a make-believe audience. “My parents who never gave up on me—well, my mom at least…”

  “Speaking of…” Ellen walks into my office and plops down into one of the client chairs. Okay. We’re back in business. That can’t happen again. No room for humanity in public relations. I follow her in. “One of those ridiculously pretentious websites that we hate?”

  “Right,” I say, settling behind my desk and booting up my computer.

  “Yeah, well—maybe we need to start liking them. One of them saw a rough cut of Blue Christmas, don’t ask me how, and said that Caroline’s performance in it was ‘Oscar worthy.’”

  “They used those words?”

  “They did.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “I know.”

  “Has it been picked up anywhere?” I ask, clicking on the email Ellen sent me about this very subject. I follow the link and sure enough, there is the offending navel-gazing website. I scroll down to find their mention of Caroline as Ellen reads the quote aloud.

  “In a film one might dismiss as the usual rom-com fluff—”

  “Is this entire thing a backhanded compliment?”

  “No … well, kind of,” Ellen says. I slump back in my chair. “May I?” She holds up her phone. I nod. “In a film one might dismiss as the usual rom-com fluff, Lang offers a surprisingly layered, Oscar-worthy performance as a woman who must come to terms with a life that’s not quite how she pictured it,” Ellen says, letting her phone finally drop into her lap. “This is amazing, right?”

  “A layered, Oscar-worthy performance,” I repeat. “Okay, this is very good, but I am going to burst our bubble for just one second and then we can celebrate quickly before Gus arrives.”

  “Go on,” Ellen says.

  “I don’t know if this is quite the year we want the scrutiny of an Oscar campaign. You get nominated for an Oscar, or not even that—you’re rumored to be in the running to get nominated and you’re expected to attend Q&As and special screenings and appearances and luncheons and junkets and round tables and festivals and at every one reporters want Caroline to be ‘Oh, am I in the running for an Oscar? Little ol’ me?’ So she has to stress being authentic and super relatable and down to earth and off the cuff.” I make sure to stress that last one.

  “Off the cuff. Eesh.”

  “Right, so if someone comes at her with ‘Mrs. Lang, how did you find and cultivate the darker aspects of this character in regards to her disintegrating marriage?’”

  “Oh, no. No no no.” Ellen stiffens.

  “It’s not like we can do anything about it, nor would we want to. I just had to say that out loud one time,” I say, taking a long drink of my coffee.

  “Understood,” Ellen says.

  “We’ll just be extra vigilant.”

  “There’s a higher gear than the one we’re already using?” Ellen asks, unadulterated fear crossing her face.

  “Apparently we’re about to find out,” I say. Ellen shudders. “Okay. First things first, we control the story as long as we can. Can you set up a call with Rachel Hatayama? She’s that Vanity Fair writer we like.” Ellen looks at me as if I’ve forgotten myself. “I know you know who Rachel Hatayama is.”

  “It’s like that coffee meant nothing,” Ellen says.

  “The greatest gift ever bestowed on me, you mean?” I cradle it to my breast. Ellen laughs. “Set up a call and we’ll offer her an exclusive—letting her know that some shit is going down and she’ll want to pick up what we’re putting down, you know?”

  “Pick up what we’re putting down?” Ellen asks.

  “Yeah, you know,” I say. Oh my god. What is happening? First the earnest over-the-top gratitude about a coffee, and now I’m some kind of weirdo goofball. Fat Me is really trying to break through today. She senses a chink in my armor and is going for it. Oh, Olivia, are you feeling low and vulnerable? Huzzah—I will make a terrible joke and then you’ll start your period in front of the boy you like! Take that! I regain myself. “But, we’re going to need the cover.”

  “But—” Ellen says, typing away on her phone.

  “I know it’s last minute, but they can post a photo and at least part of the article online before the magazine comes out.” A knock on my office door and an intern pokes her head in.

  “Gus Ford is here,” she says. Ellen rolls her eyes as the girl is unable to keep from sighing.

  “Oh, thanks,” I say. Ellen stands and begins to walk out of my office.

  “No, you don’t have to leave. I’m taking Gus on a little adventure. We’re going Halloween costume shopping for that fair I’m taking Caroline to.”

  “Genius,” Ellen says, staying put.

  “I know,” I say, st
riding out through the bull pen, last night’s events dissipating like a fog.

  Happy for the distraction, I open the door to the empty waiting room and see Gus’s lanky frame huddled over his phone, San Francisco Giants baseball cap pulled low.

  “Come on, kiddo. We’re going on a field trip,” I say.

  Gus looks up, quickly pocketing a phone that was merely a prop so no one would approach him. He’s wearing an old flannel, ripped jeans, and vintage Air Jordans. His overgrown dark brown hair flips and curls from under his baseball cap and it looks like he’s trying to grow some kind of adorable pubescent beard. Of course, I’ll get him to shave it off STAT.

  But, it’s his face. That heavenly face of his. The one he’s been trying to hide since it was slapped across every bus, every billboard, and became the face that launched a billion-dollar tent-pole-movie franchise.

  “Look, I know I’m in trouble. I just—” He tries to keep up with me as I exit the waiting room and push the button for the elevator. “I had too much to drink and was being super lame. I’m sorry, okay?” The elevator dings open and we step in. It’s thankfully empty. Gus’s earnest, yet completely hollow apology is the true hallmark of life in your twenties. It’s a decade marked by belligerently misguided proclamations announced as if they’re both bold and revolutionary. But these same bold and revolutionary pronouncements are never backed up by careful research, work experience, or other boring things like letting oneself learn and be humbled by someone who might know better. No, step aside! Here comes a twenty-five-year-old with all the answers!

  “What happened at the Marmont is only a symptom,” I say.

  “A symptom? What … what does that even mean?” He crosses his arms over his newly bulked-up chest. To me, he looks like a little boy wearing one of those superhero Halloween costumes that comes with built-in muscles. He clears his throat.

  “It’s the stained shirt at Comic-Con,” I say.

  “Oh my god, we’re back to the stained shirt at Comic-Con. That was three months ago!” Gus’s voice cracks in frustration. He pulls his baseball cap off his head and runs his fingers through his dirty, mussed hair.

  “Because that’s when this whole thing started.” The elevator dings open at the parking garage and we walk to my car in silence. Gus is shaking his head the entire time, figuring out what to say next, but trying to choose his words carefully. We load into my car. “Seatbelt.” He obliges.

  I can barely think about myself in my twenties without groaning. A decade of bad dye jobs, awful crushes, and dressing my newly thin body in trendy clothes that make me cringe just thinking about them. Whenever people talk shit about the millennial generation, I always point out that we were all assholes at that age. We’ve just done the only thing we could to survive; blocked out that whole period of our lives except for those few curated moments we’ve saved for our highlight reel.

  “Sometimes a stained shirt is just a stained shirt,” he says, as we pull out of the parking garage.

  “Listen, Freud, it’s what the stained shirt says, and that’s what I’ve been trying to make you see ever since.”

  “What the stained shirt says? That doesn’t even make sense.”

  “You were in Hall H at Comic-Con. Not because you borrowed money from your parents, shared a shitty hotel room with six other people, and took time off from a job that pays you barely minimum wage, just for the chance to sleep out overnight to maybe get a seat. No. You were flown down there, picked up in a luxurious town car, and put up at the best hotel where your every need was seen to. And you show up in a fucking stained shirt. So, what that stained shirt said to all of the people who had to scrimp and save and sacrifice to be there was that you didn’t give a shit.”

  “But, I do give a shit. I give all the shits.”

  And right there is the secret all twentysomethings don’t want you to know. Underneath all of that enraging bravado is a scared kid who doesn’t want to be an adult anymore and just wants to come home. The beginning steps of the adventure into one’s life are as exhilarating as they are lonely. It takes years to get a good night’s sleep away from your own bed at home and far too long to learn how to feed yourself in a way that’s not completely depressing. And the loneliness you feel on those nights spent by yourself in your twenties is unparalleled.

  An unwelcome slide show of my own twenties flickers in the back of my mind. The sad, heartfelt pep talks I gave myself. The series of well-decorated hovels I tried to make feel like home and the constant nagging fear that there was something unfixably wrong with me. I clear my throat and focus back on Gus.

  “I know you do. I do. I also know that you reeked of weed and your stylist had to buy some of the loaner designer shirts you tried on because you hadn’t showered in what … days?” Gus is quiet. We stop at a red light. I look over at him. He’s still shaking his head, but I can see from under his Wayfarers that he’s started to cry. The light turns green and I pull over on a small tree-lined side street.

  He takes off his sunglasses. “No one tells you that when you get famous, you’re going to get all this cool stuff, but…,” Gus trails off, completely choked up. The sobs escape from him in such waves that he looks terrified by them. “I feel trapped. I’m trapped.” I undo my seatbelt and reach over to hug him as he cries. His baseball cap falls to the floor as he hugs me back, tucking in tight. The erupting pain of Gus’s beckons my own and I tug it back like it’s a child about to run out in front of a car.

  “It’s okay … shhhh.” I rock him back and forth trying to soothe him. “Shhhh.”

  “Why am I so miserable? I have everything I’ve ever wanted,” he sobs. I knew he was having trouble, but I honestly didn’t know how much he was struggling. Gus jumped from a niche actor in a cable series to a movie star in less than one year. He went from being able to walk his dog every morning down the Silver Lake street he’d lived on for years to holing up in a new empty rental house in some soulless gated development with twenty-four-hour security that he never even had time to properly move into. My mind races. Where do we go from here?

  Gus is currently surrounding himself with a crop of dipshit star-fuckers who he thinks are his friends, when actually they just want access to the VIP section of clubs and to post a photo with him to their Instagram feed. I’m sure it was one of them who tipped off the paparazzi about Gus’s antics at the Marmont. For a price. But, he does have a solid family up in the Bay Area. Always has. We break apart and he sops up his tears and snot with the sleeve of his flannel. I offer him a tissue. He smiles and takes it.

  “I’m sorry. I really am fine,” he says.

  “It’s okay not to be fine,” I say. Gus just laughs. “I know. I don’t think I even believed it as I was saying it.” I laugh, too. It’s good to see him laughing, even if it’s at our shared crippling perfectionism. I slide back into the driver’s seat and think. He watches me. Waiting.

  “What?”

  “I think we need a new plan.” I start the car up. “Seatbelt.” He obliges. That painful slide show from my twenties taps me on the shoulder as Gus and I talk logistics all the way to the costume shop. Junkets. Filming. Push away the fear of losing Adam and being alone again. Teams of people. Expectations. Responsibilities. Don’t you dare give yourself another one of those ardent pep talks. Mental health. Breaking points. You’re not the same Olivia Morten from your twenties. Pros and cons. By the time we find parking, I think we’ve got some semblance of a blueprint for the coming months and I’m officially at war with myself.

  “First thing? We’re going to get you out of that rental agreement. That house is slowly killing you.” I beep the car locked as Gus pulls his baseball cap down low, scanning the deserted parking lot for paparazzi. “We’re in North Hollywood in the middle of the day. We should be fine.”

  “Yeah, right,” he says, picking up his pace toward the costume shop. I follow him in, willing myself to leave whatever unwelcome turmoil I’m experiencing out here in this shitty parking lot. The lot lo
oks like somewhere they’d find a dead body on one of those procedural dramas on television. A fitting place to leave the memory of my twenties, then.

  The costume shop is a giant open warehouse peppered with slightly worn mannequins in loose-fitting slutty maid’s outfits and sagging superheroes. There are a few workers shuffling around in red vests, but other than them, we’re on our own. I show him the list that Ben gave me and we get to work.

  “So, what’s this for?” he asks, pulling a fireman costume down from a rack. He turns the costume around again and again, then puts it back. He grabs another one. “How old are these kids?” I hand him the list and he scans the sizes and ages. A quick nod. He puts the fireman costume back and grabs a more authentic one as if he knows exactly what this kid wants.

  “There’s this Halloween fair for Asterhouse—it’s a foster home in Altadena—that Caroline and I are going to. We’re bringing costumes,” I say, looking through the racks for a Rapunzel.

  “Can I come?” Gus asks, not looking at me.

  “Sure,” I say, smiling.

  “Do they need me to bring anything?” Gus finally chooses a fireman’s outfit, rechecks the list for the size, and carefully drapes it over his arm. “Rocket would be over here, although this kid really is going to need a Groot.” I follow him as he walks to another part of the store.

  “I don’t know what half those words mean,” I say.

  “Rocket and Groot are a superhero team. They need each other. And it’s from a comic book. A comic book they just made into a very popular movie that you should see because this is your business.”

  “I shall do my due diligence.” An arched eyebrow. “I promise.”

  “Uh-huh.” He takes a few steps and turns. “Hey, tell Caroline I’m sorry. About, you know … what’s going down.” He starts and stops at each aisle, scanning its contents and then rushing to the next one.