Outside In

by Courtney Thorne-Smith

  “Sure.” Hamilton plopped down next to Sapphire on the bench and began massaging her shoulders. “What’s up?”

  “Alone?”

  Sapphire turned her head to look at Hamilton, and they exchanged a knowing glance before Hamilton deigned to answer his wife with a curt “Fine.” With one final sensual squeeze of Sapphire’s shoulders, he followed Kate back into their shared bedroom. “Okay, Kate, here we are, all alone. What is it?”

  “Exactly,” said Kate, closing the gym door. “What is it?”

  “What is what?”

  “What is going on?”

  Hamilton sat down on the bed with an exasperated sigh. “What is going on is that I am working out with my client. Exactly how I work out with all of my clients.”

  “You have only two.”

  Hamilton froze, his eyes locked on hers. “Nice, Katie. Really nice. I’ve spent the last three years of my life and career completely focused on you and bringing your career back from absolute disaster, and now you are trying to punish me for my sacrifice.”

  “No, I’m not trying to punish you. I appreciate what you did for me, it’s just—”

  “Just that you can’t get over your own petty jealousy and insecurity to support me in one one-hundredth of the way that I have supported you.” Hamilton got up from the bed and crossed back to the gym door, turning back to Kate before going in. “It is astonishing to me that you can’t see that everything I do, I do for you—for us. I am going to go back in to my client now, and I am going to finish her workout, and then I am going to take her out for a postworkout dinner. We were going to invite you, but now I can see that you’re not ready to behave like a grown-up. Perhaps you should just stay in and have some strained carrots and peas. Lord knows you need to eat something. You look awful.”

  Kate stood stunned as the door closed behind Hamilton. She heard Hamilton mumble something she couldn’t quite make out, followed by a full-voiced Sapphire saying, “Well, if that’s what working out gets you, I’ll take my big ass any day.” Then Hamilton mumbled something else, and Kate walked out of the room to the discordant music of her husband and Sapphire’s shared laughter.

  12

  9:15.

  9:30.

  Michael’s mornings now passed in fifteen-minute intervals. He had created a game for himself where he was allowed to look up from his computer every quarter of an hour. He was allowed to check the door, the coffee-ordering line, and the neighboring tables for no more than one minute, then he forced his attention back to his writing.

  His writing.

  The first two days of what he privately referred to as his “Starbucks-girl stakeout,” he had sat alone at a table facing the door, with only his BlackBerry for company. But he had found that he was envious of the people around him, typing away on their laptops. He’d often wondered about people who sat with their computers in coffee shops: didn’t these losers have homes? But his mornings spent stalking—waiting—had changed his perspective. The place that used to be nothing more than a quick caffeine stop at the beginning of his hectic business day now felt more like a creative community, and he wanted membership. He wanted to be one of the losers, one of the coffee-shop writers who didn’t know one another by name but nodded over their cappuccinos when they looked up to ponder a new sentence or celebrate the successful completion of a good paragraph.

  The sad truth was, he’d all but given up on finding his dream girl. He still played the fifteen-minute game with himself, but it had become more of a writing ritual than a girl hunt, a moment’s pause to search for a word or to think about the structure of a particular sentence. As his stories took shape, he found himself amazed by how quickly the mornings passed and how difficult it was to tear himself away from what he still thought of as his “silly hobby” to make his way across town to his real job. He hadn’t told anyone about his mornings spent chipping away at short stories—short stories, for god’s sake. He would have been more willing to admit to the stalking, or, if forced under torture to explain why he was typing so many words in a row, he could see himself admitting to writing something more acceptable—a screenplay for a big-budget action movie, say, or a nice masculine nonfiction book about something really important, such as making money. Writing short stories in a town where one was hard-pressed to find anyone who reads much beyond scripts (and the occasional popular novel—but only to find out if it is worth optioning as a screenplay) was folly at best, career damaging at worst. If word got out that Michael was spending so much of his time doing something that had very little chance of generating income or getting him closer to people who could generate income for his company (clubbing being a far better use of his time than creating), he would be dubbed “artistic” and promptly lose his status as a serious player. So he sat in his little corner of Starbucks and worked away on his computer, secure in the knowledge that if someone from work should happen upon him, he could quickly close his writing program and pull up something more acceptable…such as porn.

  As he was completing his 10:45 sweep of the shop, searching for the proper word to describe the nosy neighbor in his story, his eye caught sight of a familiar mop of curly hair at the exact moment that his mind caught the word that he had been struggling to find (invasive). Torn between getting the word down and getting down with the girl, he panicked and yelled, “Invasive!” in her general direction. Every head in the coffeehouse turned to look at him, including the one with the curly hair, whom he now definitely identified as the girl he had spent the last week (his whole life?) looking for. Sadly, she now probably identified him as the crazy man who had yelled “Invasive!” for no apparent reason.

  Surprisingly, she smiled at him. Out of pity, maybe, but crazy men who yell in crowded places can’t be choosy about other people’s motivations, so Michael decided to interpret the smile as an invitation and walked over to where she was standing at the end of the long ordering line. The good thing about being thought of as crazy, Michael noticed, was that people tended to give you a wide berth, so his path to “his” girl was cleared as people all but leaped out of his way.

  “Hi,” he said, trying to look sane, which unfortunately translated into a stiff grimace of a smile.

  “Hello,” said the girl, subtly taking a step back and glancing toward the nearest exit.

  “Listen,” Michael began, leaning in to whisper to her but pulling back when he noticed her recoiling. “Okay…I know that must have seemed odd.” Michael tried a charming giggle, which only seemed to scare her more. He felt his time with her slipping away as the line moved forward and decided that his only option was full speed ahead. “Okay, um, here’s the thing: I am a writer and I got excited because I found the perfect word to complete a difficult sentence and in my excitement I yelled and I scared you and I am sorry and can I buy you a cup of coffee to apologize?”

  Time stopped for a moment (an hour?). She watched him carefully, perhaps looking for any telltale tics or growls that would negate his story and support her original analysis of him as a wacko.

  “It’s just a cup of coffee,” he said, using instincts honed over years of closing deals for his clients. “Seriously, if you don’t let me apologize to you over a cup of coffee, my neurotic writer’s brain will obsess over how I frightened some poor girl by yelling ‘Invasive!’ for no apparent reason, and I won’t be able to write at all for the rest of the day, and my poor, sick mother won’t get her medication.”

  “Your mother won’t get her medication?”

  “No. Not unless you let me buy you a cup of coffee.” She smiled. She smiled. Michael held steady, willing his legs to stand firm rather than break into a victory jig.

  “So, just so I’m clear…” she began.

  “Yes?” They were next up to order, and Michael knew that the deal would close or fold in the next thirty seconds.

  “You yelled ‘Invasive’ because you are a writer who found the perfect word, not because you were warning the rest of us of an alien invasion. Is that ri
ght?”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh.” She took the final step up to the counter to place her order. “Decaf soy latte.”

  “That’ll be three sixty-seven,” said the counter guy. Michael held his breath, not wanting to push his luck but unsure of his next move.

  “He’s paying,” she said, brushing by him with a sly smile and heading over to wait for her drink.

  “Oh, right!” Michael fumbled with his wallet, handed the counter guy a five-dollar bill, and told him to keep the change in his hurry to follow his girl.

  “Thanks, man!” said the guy to Michael’s back. “That’ll be right up, Kate,” he called to the girl.

  Kate. Her name is Kate, thought Michael as he closed the distance between them. Why does that sound familiar? Why does she look familiar? Kate…Kate…Kate! He worked to hide his shock at the realization that his girl was actually Hamilton Morgan’s girl. His Kate was Kate Keyes-Morgan.

  “Where are you sitting?” she asked, her voice calling him back to the present moment. “I’ll just doctor up my coffee and meet you over there.”

  “Oh, right,” he stumbled, conscious of not wanting to lose his hard-earned uncrazy status by looking too shell-shocked. “I’m right over there by that laptop.”

  “Great, I’ll meet you there,” she said as she took her coffee from the counter and headed over to the condiment station.

  Watching her walk away, Michael could now clearly see that she was indeed his client’s costar. He should have seen it sooner. After all, he was an agent, for god’s sake—he knew all about covering freckles and straightening hair and how much smaller stars always appeared in real life. How had he missed it with Kate? Usually he could spot an actress a mile off: the need to be the center of attention, the furtive glances around the room to make sure that she was being noticed. As he watched Kate patiently wait her turn at the condiment station, bending over twice to pick up a napkin and a straw that other customers dropped and taking the time to wipe up the drops of milk that she herself spilled, he understood his mistake. She had fooled him by acting like a real person.

  Her coffee doctored, she turned around and scanned the room, looking for him. He waved and she smiled, an ear-to-ear grin on her makeup-free, freckly face. Damn it, she wasn’t acting. She was real and she was undeniably charming. Unfortunately, she was also undeniably married. Granted, her husband was a world-class prick who clearly didn’t deserve her and was probably sleeping with Michael’s own client, but she was married to him nonetheless. Pursuing a relationship with her would be morally wrong.

  “Hey,” she said, sitting down opposite him.

  “Hey,” he said back, losing himself in her greenish blue eyes and realizing that he was a far less moral man than he liked to think.

  “I’m still not convinced that you’re not crazy.”

  “Good,” said Michael, mirroring her smile. “That is the first thing we have in common.”

  She laughed. Michael thought it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard.

  13

  Kate was at loose ends. She stood on the corner of Swarthmore and Sunset, contemplating her next move and coming up blank. She knew she had to pick a direction quickly or risk looking strange to her new “friend,” Michael, who could probably see her through the window. Unfortunately, she didn’t really have anywhere to go. She didn’t want to go home to her empty house—well, she assumed it was empty. It had certainly been empty when she had left this morning, after another sleepless night spent waiting for her husband to come home. He hadn’t. He also hadn’t called or e-mailed (this time she had checked), so she could only assume that he had spent the night with Sapphire. Or that he had died in a fiery car wreck. Secretly, she hoped for the latter—it was so much more attractive to be a widow than a dumpee.

  When the light changed, Kate crossed the street, trying to look purposeful despite her absolute purposelessness. She wondered if Michael was watching her. She was a little bit surprised to realize that she wanted him to be watching her. Her hour with him had been a wonderful, bright spot in her otherwise horrible week. He had made her laugh, and he, in turn, had laughed at everything she had said. She had forgotten how good it felt to really connect with a man like that—if, in fact, she had ever felt it before. Michael made her feel funny and smart and interesting. It had been years (three, in fact) since she had been with a man who made her feel like a whole person instead of a pet project. And it was the first conversation she had had in a long time with someone who knew her as simply “Kate,” without the baggage of “Kate Keyes-Morgan, television star.” The joy of having an actual conversation with someone without her persona interfering made her realize how deeply flawed her fantasy of fame had been.

  She remembered the exact moment that she had decided she wanted to be famous. She had been in the sixth grade, sitting home alone in front of the television, eating the standard parents’ night-out dinner of Kraft macaroni and cheese, and watching Olivia Newton-John in Grease. She had felt so much genuine love and admiration for the gorgeous actress that she was sure that Olivia could feel it through the screen. I want that, she thought. I want to be loved that much. Twenty years later, Kate was the woman on the screen and, for all she knew, there were little girls out there right now who actually loved her like that, who sat in front of the television when their parents were out and fantasized about how great it would be to have her as a friend/confidante/mother. What she now knew for sure was that actors can’t feel the love through the screen. The great irony was that the more popular she had become as an actress, the more alone she had felt. In fact, rather than heal the self-conscious anxiety of adolescence and quell the fear that strangers were staring at her and judging her every move, fame had exacerbated those feelings…and added unflattering photographs with snotty captions.

  It wasn’t that Kate didn’t appreciate her fans. In fact, people were extraordinarily pleasant to her, but their loving attitudes often came with a price. Her first show, Girl Time, followed the loves and lives of four young women sharing an apartment in San Francisco while they worked the long hours of interns in a busy emergency room. It had been a huge hit right out of the gate. As the four insecure, overwhelmed young actresses made the rounds of the talk shows, awards banquets, and photo shoots that crowded their every spare evening and weekend, Kate noticed something: somewhere along the line people had stopped asking “How are you?” and had instead started conversations with “You must be so happy!” and “You are so lucky!” She was happy…sometimes, and she felt lucky, too…most of the time. The few times, however, that she answered honestly, voicing her true feelings of confusion or ambivalence, she was met with such profound disappointment that she stopped trying to be real and began utilizing the tried and true method of popular girls everywhere: tell people what they want to hear. Kate acted happy no matter what she was feeling inside, which supported their fantasies of how wonderful it must feel to be famous, which, in turn, allowed Kate to avoid her deepest fear: disappointing people. Outside of the overwhelming isolation and loneliness caused by her inauthenticity, the plan worked really well for everyone.

  Well, everyone else.

  Right now, what Kate needed was a plan for today. Having successfully crossed the street and marched a few hundred yards up Swarthmore Avenue in her bid to look busy and important to Michael, she was now faced with the reality that she had nowhere she needed to be. It was Saturday, so there was no work; she had already worked out (making sure not to touch any towels that may have touched Sapphire’s pink-clad, sweat-soaked body); and she had just finished her Starbucks run, leaving her with fifteen-sixteenths of a day to fill. It was days like this that she wished she had learned how to knit. Or fly a plane. She had never been a “life is too short” type of person. Life to her, even at the relatively young age of thirty, felt incredibly long. Her days had always stretched out before her, with endless hours spent waiting: waiting for her mother to come home; waiting for Hamilton to come and rescue her; wa
iting for Sam to come and get her for her next scene; waiting for someone—anyone—to tell her who they needed her to be and what they needed her to do. Her life often felt like a series of scenes from the children’s book Are You My Mother? where a baby bird approaches a bunch of different animals, hoping one of them is the mother whom he is searching for. Luckily, Hollywood was full of animals.

  Kate heard some movement behind her and turned around to see a group of giggling preteen girls hiding behind some bushes and pointing at her. It was hard to have a private, emotional moment when the rest of the world saw you as an exhibit in a zoo. The monkey at the San Francisco Zoo used to throw his feces at the crowds that gathered to stare and point at him. Dismissing that as a response almost immediately, Kate chose instead to smile at the girls, eliciting squeals, more giggles, and one “Oh my god!” before the girls fell into the bushes in paroxysms of laughter. Kate found herself laughing, too. She then turned around and headed toward her car, knowing that a nice, anonymous emotional meltdown on a street corner simply wasn’t an option for her. She would have to have her breakdown in the privacy of her own home.

  When Kate pulled up to her house and saw the shiny, red Mercedes convertible parked next to Hamilton’s Porsche, she realized that her private breakdown would have to wait for another day. She considered turning her car around and driving away, but she still had nowhere else to go, so she parked her car next to Sapphire’s and headed into the house.

  The scene that greeted her in the kitchen was not the hideous debauchery she had feared. It was, in fact, a scene that could be described only as domestic bliss. Hamilton sat at the kitchen table reading his newspaper, basking in the glow of the late morning sun and the attentions of Sapphire, who was serving him piping hot scrambled eggs out of a skillet. They were so lost in their happy tableau that they didn’t hear Kate come in. Kate was forced to clear her throat no fewer than three times before they noticed her standing in the middle of the kitchen. Hamilton didn’t even have the good grace to look embarrassed, greeting her instead with a hearty “Good morning!”