In Some Other World, Maybe: A Novel

by Shari Goldhagen

  Oliver is at a little two-top table in the front, studying something in his own notebook. Seeing her, he stands and smiles.

  Pulse of panic—Chase and the Fishers’ home in Chicago—deep inhale.

  Making a sympathetic sound and saying something about the rain, Oliver pulls out a chair for her. “Let me get you a cup of coffee or something.” He flags down the waitress.

  She’d figured he would simply return her things and she’d be on her way, but the rain has graduated to blinding sheets, and all her umbrellas are safe and dry somewhere in her apartment. Thanking him, she tentatively slips off her coat and sits. Pulling damp hair from the collar of her dress, she lets Oliver order her a latte but declines any snacks or desserts.

  His notebook is actually green graph paper, where he’d been sketching something detailed and mechanical.

  “It’s an idea for a compressor,” he says when he notices her looking.

  Feeling warmth on her cheeks, she admits she’s not entirely sure what that means.

  He smiles and explains he works on engine designs for Advantage Electric, tells her he would be shocked if she did know. “It’s a really boring engineering thing.”

  Maybe the lighting is less harsh than in the Javits Center (or perhaps it’s that he’s not mentioning an older universe she sometimes pretends never existed), but Oliver is better looking than she remembers: skin golden even in late January, black glasses giving him a surprising warmth.

  She asks how he got started in the field.

  “My dad’s a pilot,” he says, quick shift of his eyes, like he’s hiding something. “I guess you could say it’s sort of a family business.”

  Perhaps it’s the reporter in her, but she wants to know what the strange look meant when he mentioned his father, finds herself asking follow-up questions, forgetting his connection to the Fisher family, forgetting why she’s here.

  It’s still pouring when the waitress comes by with their drinks. Oliver asks if she’s sure she doesn’t want something to eat, and Sharon lets him talk her into splitting tiramisu.

  They discuss The Enquiring Sun, and he jokes that he’ll give it a try one morning instead of The Daily News. He hands her back her notebooks, and she thanks him. Then he lowers his eyes, looks solemn. “I’m so sorry if I upset you the other day. I was thinking out loud.”

  “It’s not a big deal.” Sharon has never been able to articulately verbalize the compartments her brain constructed to keep her safe and guarded, even after all these years. “I … I wasn’t expecting you to mention Chase, that’s all. I sort of need to be mentally prepared for it.”

  “I get that,” he says.

  “It’s just, before he died, things between us ended really badly, and I never got a chance to fix them.” This is by far the most she’s ever said on the topic to anyone. “I guess that sounds kind of selfish.”

  “I once moved to Alaska to avoid having a breakup conversation with someone.”

  A laugh comes out of her nose. “Really?”

  “It was a little more complicated than that, but pretty much. Now that’s selfish.”

  “It’s pretty extreme.”

  “Yeah, probably would have been a lot easier to send an e-mail.”

  They talk about Hong Kong, where they both spent time. Oliver probably realizes she was there with Chase Fisher visiting his mother, but he doesn’t ask, lets her say it. They discuss Alaska and Egypt, and all the places she’d like to go that he’s seen.

  Outside, the rain has stopped, but it’s an hour and another round of coffees later when Oliver says, “I know this is really weird, but do you have any interest in getting dinner or something sometime?”

  Over the past seven years, several people besides Scott Underwood have asked her out—men at her various workplaces, guys in bars, people she interviewed—and occasionally she’d thought about accepting. Yet she never did (if she truly liked the person, she’d suggest they might be friends, but most guys weren’t interested in that option). At first not dating had been a way of containing her shock and grief and guilt. When those emotions faded, it may simply have become habit. And there was also the daunting idea that if she were to accept an invitation to dinner or drinks, it might lead to another and another, and at some point she would have to tell the guy about how her boyfriend broke up with her, got on a plane, and died.

  “I’m going to Detroit for work this week,” she says, thinking he’ll forget about it by the time she returns. “Maybe when I get back.”

  * * *

  Something poking Adam’s thigh.

  It’s the limited-edition E&E: Rising action figure, which could potentially look like him if Adam had a straighter nose and spent the next thirty-six years at the gym. Gauzy tequila-blurred memories of a girl from the bar—Donna-Dana-Jamie—coming home with him, finding the toy somewhere in his bedroom, and employing it in extremely off-label activities. He should wash it … or throw it away.

  Rolling over, he realizes Donna-Dana-Jamie is gone (should make sure his credit cards aren’t), but there’s a note on the nightstand saying she had fun with “big and little Captain Rowen,” and he should call. Her name was Sara, not even close.

  Adam sets the action figure on the table; it seems to be judging him.

  It’s seven in the morning, his head is throbbing, and he has a noon flight, but through the windows it’s the kind of unimaginably gorgeous Southern California day that makes him feel guilty for ever moping about anything, so he puts on sweats and drives twenty minutes to Runyon Canyon instead of the gym.

  City small and innocuous below him, the jog seems a decent idea the first mile of the trail—brain momentarily cleared, alcohol sweating out of his system, ubiquitous dog poop avoided. Midway through the second mile, the drawbacks of running hungover become more apparent. Just after the start of the third mile, as he’s heading down the steepest part of the slope, Adam trips over a tumbleweed, sails briefly through the air, and lands awkwardly on his left foot before wiping out completely.

  “Hey, man, you okay?” a young guy is asking. Maybe it’s that he’s hiking in swim trunks, but Adam would wager eons and empires the kid is a surfer. “Looks like you went down pretty hard.”

  “I’m good, thanks.” Even as he says it, Adam realizes it’s an entirely false statement, that his ankle has been replaced by a sack of snapped twigs and blazing fire. The Good Samaritan Surfer tries to help him to his feet, but the second there’s any weight on his left leg, Adam screams and crumbles against the surfer’s tan chest. Not his greatest display of masculinity; in fact, it could be the start of many of the Rowen/Bryce slash fiction stories he’s stumbled upon during self-hatred-driven Web searches.

  “I’m gonna call 911.” Samaritan Surfer sits Adam up against a boulder.

  Adam nods and concentrates on not puking. It seems excruciating pain doesn’t agree with him.

  A small crowd has gathered, everyone offering contradictory advice. Some douchey-looking man in new running shoes steps forward announcing he’s a doctor, and Adam recognizes him as one of the plastic surgeons from Bravo’s Hollywood Docs. Doc lays light fingers on Adam’s ankle, and Adam manages to contain his reaction to a manlier “motherfucker” mumbled under his breath.

  A petite blonde with absurd green knee-high socks turns to the girl next to her and asks, “Is that Captain Rowen?”

  * * *

  Having left at five in the morning (she could save a day’s rental picking the car up Saturday morning instead of Friday night), Sharon’s on I-80, passing through Akron, Ohio, by three in the afternoon. Plenty of time to get to the dedication at seven, probably enough to catch some of the earlier activities, and maybe even put together the story she initially pitched her editors—to justify this as work and not something else.

  From the cup holder in the console, her phone signals she’s gotten a text: Oliver Ryan wishing her well on her trip and asking if she’s still up for going out some time next week.

  And Sharon re
alizes that other than mentioning the trip to him over coffee, she’s not told a single person about it.

  Ignoring the message, she wonders if she didn’t say anything to anyone else because she didn’t want anybody to talk her out of the long drive on her own, didn’t want Kristen to offer to come and make it into some sort of girls’ getaway.

  Maybe it’s that words have power, and she didn’t want to admit, out loud, what she’s doing.

  * * *

  Perhaps it’s the cloud of painkillers, but Adam feels oddly vindicated that two bones are fractured. He’s not sure he’d recover from the spectacle of Hollywood Doc and the emergency department if he’d simply sprained something. Less exciting about his broken ankle is the giant temporary cast and crutches that manage to eat his armpits raw in the few minutes it takes to hobble from a cab to his building, where the doormen—still fat and happy from their holiday bonuses—rush over to help him into the elevator.

  His place is its usual post-Elena surgically clean state, and she’s given his signature for a package. Sputtering to the couch and propping his leg on the tree table as per the doctor’s instructions, Adam opens the box: Sharon Gallaher’s book.

  Adam likes the cover. Yes, he’s been told this is not a good tool for overall judgment, but it’s a nice matte shade of blue with an image of the Chicago skyline.

  Trying to read the first page, he finds himself hopelessly lost and can’t even focus enough on the jacket copy to get an idea of what the book is about. He sincerely hopes this is Percocet-related; he’d been a National Merit Scholar, after all. The author photo on the back cover isn’t the one on Sharon’s Web site, but it must be from the same shoot. She’s wearing the same purple coat. Her hair less windblown, she looks even more familiar.

  They probably had a class together, or maybe she’d lived in that run-down walk-up on MacDougal and Bleecker? Floor by floor, he tries to remember his neighbors. Briefly he contemplates contacting someone from college to ask, but realizes he hasn’t kept in touch with a single person from NYU—one more place from which he’s made a clean break.

  Setting the book atop the unread scripts, he flips on the TV. There’s a Law & Order marathon on TNT, and he wonders if they’ll show the episodes he did after school. All in, he’d probably had a grand total of three minutes screen time; it had been far and away the most exciting thing in his world at that point. A time when the idea of going on Howard Stern and criticizing a director, even a director of something as abhorrent as Murder Island 3, would have horrified him.

  Guilty glance at the unread screenplays as he fades.

  Pain and his cell phone wake him.

  His agent.

  He hits “Decline” and dry swallows three more little white pills from the hospital pharmacy.

  Marty’s calling the landline now, and his publicist is on the cell.

  This can’t be good. Cell phone is closer.

  “Why the fuck am I learning you broke your leg from TMZ?” Evie says, and he instantly feels that much worse. Wrestling upright, he reaches for the iPad. “I can’t do my job if you don’t keep me informed.”

  The gossip site has a few grainy cell phone pics from Runyon with the headline CAPTAIN ROWEN TAKES A TUMBLE. Praising the quick thinking of Dr. Joe from Hollywood Docs, the editors wish Adam a speedy recovery.

  “I rep rock stars, Adam. How are you my disaster client?” Evie is saying. “Were you drunk or high?”

  “I was jogging.”

  “So that’s a no?” Evie says she’ll put together a statement publicly thanking Doc and deal with the convention organizers in Detroit, which is good, since he had completely forgotten about it. Then she pauses, uncharacteristically unsure. “Want me to tell Phoebe?”

  “I broke my ankle, E, I hardly think we need to alert everyone I ever dated.” Adam barks, rattled by the mention of Phoebe.

  “I thought … never mind. Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

  Adam calls his agent, assures Marty he’ll be ready, willing, and able should the meeting with the Divided creators come to fruition.

  “They want to shoot mid-March; you’ll be all right by then?”

  In two days he has to go back to the orthopedist for a real cast that he’s supposed to wear for six to eight weeks, then a brace and a cane for another few months. “Of course.”

  “Did you get a chance to look at Galaxy Warrior?” Marty says, but changes course when Adam moans. “Don’t worry about it, buddy, just get some rest.”

  Hanging up, he texts Cecily he won’t make it to Detroit.

  SPLEEN! she immediately responds, and he sends her the TMZ link. Ten seconds later she’s calling to make sure he’s not on his deathbed.

  “This is an incredibly elaborate way to blow me off, Z,” she says, and he promises to come visit soon.

  He’s tempted to turn off all ringers and return to Sam Waterston and the parade of sexy ADAs on Law & Order, but his mother has a Google Alert set up for him, so he dials her number.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks twenty-five hundred miles away. It’s been eighteen years since he left Coral Cove, and his mother can still tell all’s not right in Adamsville by the way he says “hi.”

  “I got a little banged-up running and didn’t want you to see anything online and get worried.”

  She’s a nurse and requires a more thorough explanation, echoes the doctor telling him to keep his leg elevated and not to take pain meds without food. Then she decides he can’t be trusted at all.

  “I should come out there for a few days,” she says, and he forces a laugh, tells her he’s a grown man. “I don’t want you stumbling around all alone.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got people,” he says with utterly no conviction, blames the slippage of his skills on the drugs.

  “Baby,” she says, wrecking him the way no other person can. “You want to come home for a while?”

  His mother is someone who understands what that means. Knows at a certain moment “going home for a while” equates to never leaving again, to living in your childhood bedroom indefinitely. In all those early years of his career, when he was floundering, first in New York and then in LA, she only ever offered him the option of “coming home for a while” once—after the Goners pilot didn’t get picked up. Then he’d gotten drunk and high and done everything in his power so he wouldn’t take her up on the offer.

  He’s mesmerized that now he’s waxing dangerously close to saying yes.

  “Ma,” he says, “I’m fine.”

  * * *

  She should probably be tired from driving four hundred miles, but the whole last hour on the road an electricity races through Sharon, and she feels she’s burning thousands of calories. If she weren’t buckled into her seat, she might simply float up and fly away. As traffic thickens outside the Detroit limits, it takes all her willpower not to abandon the car and sprint the rest of the way.

  When her phone’s GPS claims she’s only two exits from the Renaissance Center, Sharon pulls off at a Shell station and grabs the cosmetic kit from her backpack. Under the fluorescent bulb, she brushes her teeth, reapplies mascara and lipstick. Sprays j’adore at her throat and wrists, slathers on deodorant, and runs a comb through her black hair—even though it’s perfectly straight and flat as always. She’d chosen the blue knit dress because it’s the exact color of her eyes, and people always comment on that. Plus, there’s enough Lycra in the weave that it hasn’t wrinkled during the long drive. Still, she straightens it and pulls back the shoulders, wishes she were taller, like the woman from the photo with Adam.

  In the mirror she examines herself with the kind of cold calculation she hasn’t used since her freshman year of college, when she determined she could look better than average if she wore heels and dresses instead of the shapeless sweatshirts and jeans everyone else favored. It’s a tactic that still seems to be working. She’s unlikely to win any beauty pageants, but there seems no reason anyone (maybe not even someone like Adam Zoellner) w
ould outright laugh at a sexual offer she made.

  Sharon had reserved a room at the convention hotel but doesn’t bother checking in. The dedication ceremony—where Adam and Cecily Beissel are slated to present Ed Munn with an award—isn’t for another two hours, but if Adam is at an autograph table or exploring the floor, there’s a chance she might be able to approach him for an interview.

  Whereas Fan-Con at the Javits Center had been a big, bustling affair, this is a much smaller event. There are only a handful of people in line to buy tickets from a lone man seated at a folding table with a metal cashbox. Through the open door of the ballroom, she can see tables of vendors with stacks of vintage comic books.

  A guy ahead of her in an E&E T-shirt makes her think of Oliver Ryan. Pinprick of emotion—guilt? regret?—for blowing off someone so seemingly nice. Or maybe it’s a different feeling, something like longing? Either way, she shoves it aside. She needs to focus on this, whatever it is she’s attempting to do with Adam Zoellner.

  Almost her turn in line, Sharon is shuffling through her purse for her press pass when she notices a black-and-white head shot of Adam clad in Captain Rowen attire with the universal “No” slash across his face: Adam Zoellner will not be able to attend is written in red marker.

  “He’s not coming?” Sharon points to the picture, as if its meaning weren’t perfectly clear, as if there weren’t still a person in front of her in queue.

  “His rep said he was in an accident,” the cashier says from behind the table. “He sent some autographed photos, though, and a statement they’re going to read at the ceremony.”

  “Thank you,” Sharon says calmly, numbly.

  Get out of this car.

  The ticket clerk is saying something about other activities, but Sharon just walks back to the lobby, out the door, and to the parking garage down the street.