They make their way to an object one might find in the Cooper-Hewitt that’s actually a couch. He’s about to kiss her when she points to a stack of scripts on a petrified redwood table that cost more than most cars.
“Are these movies?” Nikki-Nancy-Rachel asks nervously. “Like, for you to be in?”
“They’re all pretty awful.” Adam actually hadn’t glanced past the first one when he saw the title was Galaxy Warrior. Prereading scripts had been one of Phoebe’s non-jobs, anyway.
“Oh.” She swallows, eyes wide and terrified—definitely closer to eighteen than thirty. “Wow.”
Starting to feel like a lion circling a wounded zebra, Adam eases away from her, accepting that, despite all prior signs, he’s probably not getting laid tonight. “Do you wanna watch a movie?” he asks. “I have screeners—”
She’s the one who initiates the kiss, though he notices she does take a stabilizing breath before charging toward him. Hands in her hair, he can feel the bonds of her extensions. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Los Angeles glows twenty-four stories beneath them.
* * *
Four stories above East Seventy-fifth Street, in a rent-stabilized apartment with an excellent view into the apartment across the street, Sharon strips off her wet coat and dress, still shivering. She’d meant to go back to The Enquiring Sun’s Midtown office but had been so thrown by the encounter with Phoebe Fisher’s old boyfriend that she’d called in her quotes instead (the Fan-Con story is the same every year, anyway—a few fun comments to go along with photos of attendees in elaborate costumes).
She’d wanted to start on the new novel Diana from Greenlee on Hudson keeps trying to convince her to write, but heart still thumping in her chest, Sharon feels completely justified sinking into the sofa and turning on the E&E: Rising season two DVD already ginned up.
She’s probably seen the episode five times, but instantly Sharon’s engaged, feels herself relaxing.
* * *
Mid-thrust, it occurs to Adam he could conceivably be tired of sex.
He wonders why he bothered picking Nikki-Nancy-Rachel up in the first place, why he does anything he does lately. To be fair, he likely wouldn’t be contemplating any of this if she weren’t lying underneath him like a lump of Kryptonite.
Perhaps it says something about his mental state that the image popping into his head is of his mother in her pink nurse’s scrubs, her gray eyes down in the expression she has when talking about the meth heads in the Coral Cove ER. Mother image says that if he’d bothered to learn Nikki-Nancy-Rachel’s name, perhaps she’d be a more enthusiastic partner.
So he strokes a stray hair from the girl’s brow, lowers his lips to her forehead. Eyes fluttering open, she looks at him with a mix of confusion, hope, and something barely shy of contempt—she’s really, really closer to eighteen than thirty.
“You enjoying this at all?” he asks, slowing their non-rhythm to a standstill.
“Yeah.”
And he wants to tell her to go back to Kentucky/Oklahoma/San Diego, because she’s never going to make it as an actress.
Instead he nods.
Faintly in the background, some maudlin alt-rock crap whines from the sound system, and he remembers, with a dollop of disgust, that the song had figured prominently in one of the E&E: Rising series montages. He’d mentioned it in the DVD commentary.
As the world comes crashing down, I just want you around …
* * *
I just want you around.…
On the screen Captain Rowen and Cordelia Snow are still kissing in a shadowy industrial space.
On the couch a blue plastic vibrator hums between Sharon’s thighs.
On the screen Rowen pauses, holds Cordelia at arm’s length, hesitates before closing gray eyes.
On the couch Sharon points her toes, knocking off a week’s worth of newspapers and yesterday’s clothes.
Through a haze of pleasure, prickly thoughts tickle, like early indicators of a sneeze. Things like how it’s probably long past time she found another human being to do this stuff with.
* * *
Adam doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he’s got a knot in his neck, a used condom crusting on his cock, and an alarm clock that insists it’s after 4:00 A.M. Nikki-Nancy-Rachel is wrangling thin hips back into ridiculously tight jeans. If she weren’t much, much closer to eighteen than thirty, the jerky movements would be even less appealing.
“Hey.” He props himself on an elbow, works legs out of Egyptian cotton sheets. “You taking off?”
“Yeah.” She pulls on an equally sexy shirt. Her black hair may be fake, but it’s pretty in the city lights flooding through open blinds.
“Don’t go,” he says, stunned at the desperation in his voice, stunned that he reaches for her hand. “We’ll get breakfast.”
“I can’t,” she says in a way that eclipses the fifteen years he has on her.
In a series of less-than-fluid motions, she’s fully rebooted and rebuckled, and he’s in his underwear unbolting the door, kissing her cheek, saying he’ll call her, though they both know he never got her number (or name).
She’s gone before he realizes he didn’t even give her cab fare.
He picks up his discarded wineglass and finishes it off, then Nikki-Nancy-Rachel’s. Taking the bottle with him, he turns on the giant TV in what used to be the den and flips through the channels, settling on an infomercial for a skin care line.
* * *
Still wearing her hiked-up dress and Fan-Con press pass, Sharon wakes up on the sofa with the unsettled feeling of having slept the night in an unintended place. Rubbing her kinked neck, she checks the time: ten past seven. Seems silly to go back to sleep, even if it is a weekend.
A jolt of terror when she realizes she hasn’t checked her phone since last night. The sensation heightens when she pulls her cell from her purse and discovers several missed calls.
Scott Underwood, who had wanted her to move to NYC with him when he got a surgical fellowship at Weill Cornell: “Hey, Sharon, Blair and I haven’t gotten your response card yet, and we wanted to know if you’re coming. Feel free to bring a date.”
The ecru invitation is sitting in a pile of undealt-with mail, and Sharon likes to think not sending it back is forgetfulness, nothing more. She’s met Scott’s fiancée a few times, and Blair seems a perfectly lovely person, though Sharon wonders what Scott told her about all the things he and Sharon had shared in that chopped-up house on Mcmillan Street. Wonders if Scott actually wants Sharon at his wedding or if the invite is an expected courtesy. Either way, she’s sure Blair is the one insisting on the plus one.
The next message is from an unfamiliar number with a 773 area code—inhale of breath—Chicago: “Hey, Ms. Gallaher, this is Oliver Ryan from Fan-Con. You left before I could give you some notebooks you dropped.”
Phone tucked between ear and shoulder, Sharon rummages through her purse and discovers several of her notepads are indeed missing. At least two of them have interviews for a story she’s working on about toxic hair treatments at high-end salons.
“Not sure if they’re important, but if you need them back, maybe I could meet you somewhere this weekend? And, um, I’m really sorry if I upset you this afternoon.”
The message is sweet and sincere, and Sharon feels a flutter of remorse that he’s apologizing for her weirdness. Now, in the light of day and fully prepared to hear Chase’s name, it seems crazy that she sped off. She does actually need her notes and is about to call him back, when she notices one more message, this one from Kristen: “So I did find an e-mail for that actor in the NYU database, but I don’t know—”
Heart alive and wild in her throat, Sharon hits call back before the recording finishes, even though it’s not yet eight in the morning, something she forgets entirely until Kristen is on the phone, confused and groggy.
Apologizing, Sharon explains she was just excited by Kristen’s call.
“Well, like I said, there is an
Adam Zoellner who graduated in ninety-seven, but I could probably get fired for giving out his e-mail,” Kristen says—part her usual nervous disposition and perhaps a teeny bit of relish that, after years of being Sharon’s guest at press premieres and parties, she has something her friend wants. “Doesn’t this guy have a publicist or something?”
“You’re not gonna get fired.” Sharon is fairly certain of this. Kristen was a sophomore work-study student when she started at the Office of Annual Giving, and now she runs the place. “I just want to set up an interview and thought, because we knew each other from school, I should contact him directly.”
Kristen is unconvinced. “He was three years ahead of us; how’d you even meet?”
“Econ freshman year.” She’d put off economics until she was a junior, but Kristen probably wasn’t paying that much attention. “We were in the same discussion section.”
Everything clenched, Sharon pushes into the lie, wanting Adam’s contact so badly she can make this true, could give a seating chart for the class and a detailed description of Adam making fun of the professor’s ascot during an exam study session.
A little more cajoling and Kristen agrees, reads the address, which Sharon writes down on the back of an old Enquiring Sun.
“A, d, a, m, underscore, z, o, e, l, l, n, e, r, at gmail, dot, com.”
Sharon looks at the paper incredulously. “It’s Adam Zoellner at Gmail?”
“And you didn’t hear it from me. I’m serious, if anyone asks—”
“It’s the guy’s name; I doubt the FBI’s going to get involved.”
“You don’t know that.” Kristen laughs. “Well, probably.”
Sharon’s fingers are twitching to turn on her computer and write a message that could conceivably reach Adam Zoellner, but she knows Kristen has done her yet another favor, and it’s been a few days since they’ve spoken. So she politely listens to a tale about Kristen’s latest date from her latest dating Web site, and lets Kristen advise her on the Scott wedding situation. “Bring me as your guest. There may be single doctors there!”
Finally they hang up with plans for brunch the next day unless Kristen’s date goes “very, very well.”
Then Sharon is typing, untyping, and retyping a note for Adam Zoellner with a contemplation of word choice she’s not sure she’s ever employed before in all her years of writing.
It’s silly, she’s aware of that. The name isn’t super common, but it’s possible that this is some other Adam Zoellner or that her e-mail will go to an assistant or back to someone at the Saperstein Group or to a dead account no one checks. But her chest is tight as she types, and it feels important, like when she went to see the Eons & Empires movie freshman year of high school. It feels as if this is the kind of moment that could change her life.
* * *
Adam’s housekeeper is finishing in the kitchen when he staggers out of his former den in boxers at one in the afternoon. Barely looking up from wiping down concrete counters, Elena gives a shy smile and says nothing. She never says anything. Not about the girls sometimes still in his bed when she arrives or about how the only dishes she ever has to clean are wineglasses and tumblers. Of course, she may not say much because her English isn’t great.
Not wanting to watch her clean, Adam puts on a discarded undershirt from the floor, grabs his iPad, and steps out on the larger of two terraces. It’s only fifty-five degrees, and the cold feels good as he reads texts from Cecily about the E&E convention—brief heartburn of nostalgia, remembering exactly how it felt the first year of the show, when they had filled the biggest auditorium for a panel at San Diego Comic-Con.
Most of his e-mail is crap: notes from fans who cracked his top-secret Gmail address, all beseeching him to return to E&E: Rising; an NYU alumni update; spam from a bank he doesn’t use. And something labeled Interview Request that he’s bored enough to open.
Mr. Zoellner—
I am a reporter for The Enquiring Sun, a fellow NYU alum, and general Adam Zoellner fan. I’m writing an article about the 30th anniversary of Eons & Empires and was wondering if you would be available for a short phone interview.
After years of playing Captain Rowel, you must have some great stories! I can be reached via e-mail or at 646-555-1232.
Best,
Sharon Gallaher
The letter writer has typed “Captain Rowel” instead of “Captain Rowen,” and Adam wonders if she’s clueless or if it’s a spell-check mistake. Sure enough, when he types “Rowen,” it’s autoreplaced by “Rowel.” After four years of shaving his head, he can’t believe he never knew this.
After the Howard Stern debacle, Evie threatened to castrate him should he as much as say hello to a media outlet without her approval.
He’s about to delete the message when he notices a web address in the signature, sharongallaher.com.
Something about that sounds familiar, so he goes to the site.
Apparently Sharon is the author of a novel, The Atheist in the Foxhole, and has written for various magazines and newspapers. In the bio section there’s a picture of a cute-ish girl with shoulder-length hair and very big eyes. Her year of graduation is listed, and he calculates that she would have been a freshman at NYU when he was a senior. Perhaps that’s why he feels he knows her? Someone he used to see hanging out at Main Building, using a fake ID at Finnerty’s or ordering a falafel from the cart on Washington Square South?
Her site has book reviews. A few of the links are dead, but The New York Times, while pointing out that the book used “fairly pedestrian” language, claims it is “emotionally riveting and unsentimental.” Adam orders a copy from Amazon, spends the extra fifteen dollars for priority shipping, figuring he can read it on the plane to Detroit. It’s been a long time since he’s read anything other than a horrible horror or sci-fi script.
Skimming Variety and Deadline.com, he learns about actors who are actually working on real projects. One headline makes him sit up straight and go back inside for his phone: KEVIN MCKIDD DROPS OUT OF HBO’S UPCOMING CIVIL WAR SERIES.
Adam’s manager had alerted him to the project months ago and hunted down an early version of the pilot that Adam had loved. But when he’d asked his agent about it, Marty kept insisting Adam was too young to play General Grant, plus he had been committed to the Murder Island films; then McKidd had been cast.
It’s Saturday, but Marty answers on the first ring. “You’re still too young,” he says, “and they’re notorious for using their own people.”
“Tell them I’m happy to audition.” Adam feels his pulse ticking with excitement for what might be the first time in years. “Let’m know how serious I am.”
“Okay, okay,” Marty says, and asks if Adam has had a chance to look at the scripts he’d sent.
Adam reiterates how much he wants to be a part of Divided.
“Seriously”—Marty sighs—“don’t get your hopes up, buddy.”
* * *
Flights from New York to Detroit are more than six hundred dollars on such short notice, and none of the times work with the scheduled E&E dedication featuring Adam Zoellner and Cecily Beissel. But according to Google Maps, it’s only a ten-and-a-half-hour drive.
If Sharon rented a car after work Friday and drove through the night, she could get there in plenty of time for the ceremony Saturday evening. Maybe she could leave first thing in the morning and save a day’s rental.
Even as she’s pricing rental cars, Sharon doesn’t think she’s actually going to go. She doesn’t really have a story for the paper, and other than standing in an autograph line for a signed photo, it’s unlikely she’d have any interaction with Adam Zoellner.
And even if she had unfettered access to him, what does she want to happen? While at Cincy Beat, Sharon had done a whole series of pieces on different kinds of groupies, so she is aware how these things happen, even knows some techniques from her interviews. But after seven years of not screwing anything with a pulse, whether she could do it is a very
different question.
And of course there’s the more insurmountable impediment: Why would Adam Zoellner be interested in going along? Sharon’s done some research (not stalking). In a few early interviews, Adam made vague references to a longtime girlfriend, but nothing in recent years. And while there are plenty of red carpet shots of him with starlets from the Murder Island series and Cecily Beissel from E&E (Living once ran an item about a secret engagement, but for years Cecily has been with some dude from a QT show about warlocks), the only thing Sharon’s found that appears remotely personal is a series of paparazzi shots of Adam hand in hand with a tall, black-haired woman outside of a high-end hotel or apartment building—something with arches and doormen. Though Adam is clearly distracted and the woman’s face is obscured behind oversize sunglasses, it’s something about the way he’s holding her fingers—as if he needs that connection, as if he needs her.
It seems somewhat promising, at least, that the woman is a brunette, though tall could definitely be an issue.
All Sharon really knows is that, since Evie Saperstein’s e-mail, she’s become convinced she needs to go to the convention.
She’s booking an economy car when she notices the time and realizes she’s running late to meet Oliver Ryan. Checks her e-mail one more time—Groupon and Living Social offers, something from a bank she doesn’t use, nothing from Adam Zoellner (but it’s only two on the West Coast!)—then Sharon hurries into her purple coat and out the door.
Because she was the one who fled and he was kind enough to contact her, Sharon had offered to pick up her notebooks from Oliver’s place across town. But he was as nice a guy as advertised and insisted on splitting the difference. He told her his favorite coffee shop was on Madison and Seventy-third (much closer to her) and that she could meet him there. It starts drizzling on the way, escalates to a downpour by the time she’s pulling open the door to Via Quadronno.
In Some Other World, Maybe: A Novel Page 28
