The Dissident

by Nell Freudenberger

  “Hi,” Aubrey would say. “Have they called?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You screenwriters. Living the good life…lounging by the pool.”

  “I’ve been exercising in the pool,” Phil said. “You’re hardly going to recognize me.”

  “What?” Aubrey said (to someone else). And then to Phil: “What’s the temperature there?”

  When Phil told her, Aubrey repeated it to her officemate, and Phil could hear the two of them groaning enviously together. “They haven’t even made him do anything yet,” he heard her say. And to him: “We have to start figuring out the Thanksgiving plan.”

  The Thanksgiving plan was for Aubrey to come to Los Angeles and meet his family. More and more, Phil was thinking that plan needed to be revised.

  The daily phone call with Aubrey made him feel as if he deserved some reward. Now that Cece took the Nissan Pathfinder to St. Anselm’s with Olivia and Yuan Zhao, her yellow Mercedes was available during the day. There were few things Phil liked so much as sliding into the caramel leather interior, which smelled strongly of Cece’s Aqua de Gio perfume, putting on Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense or anything by Yo La Tengo, and going for a drive.

  One afternoon, heading up Coldwater Canyon, he noticed a swinging For Sale sign in front of a high hedge. With more exposed properties, Phil always found something to prevent him from stopping, but when he couldn’t see in from the street, he could never resist taking a detour. Who knew when you might stumble upon the perfect match?

  The house on Coldwater was almost it. He had not thought he liked modern houses until he had seen this one: double-height ceilings, massive windows, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with a ladder to reach the top. The floors were dark polished teak, and from the balcony off the bedroom, you could see all the way down the canyon.

  “Are you looking for yourself, or—?” the realtor, Barbara asked. She was an attractive brunette with killer legs. She was wearing a wedding band, but Phil took the flier with her phone number anyway. The flier also had pictures of the house.

  “For myself,” Phil said.

  The realtor nodded in an approving way. “I’ve had some couples here, but to be honest with you, it’s more of a single person’s house. This second bedroom is a perfect office—what do you do?”

  It took Phil a minute. “I’m a screenwriter.”

  “Oh, perfect,” Barbara said. “It was an architect who designed it for himself—you can see that, I’m sure. Now he and his partner are adopting a child from Burma. Or maybe Bangladesh? Anyway—they need more space. And do you know, it’s only ten percent down.”

  “I’ve only just started looking,” Phil said cautiously.

  “I could show you some other things, if you’d like,” Barbara said. “But I’ll tell you—this is the best bachelor pad I’ve got. Not that it couldn’t be turned into a great place for a couple,” she added. “If your circumstances were to change.”

  Phil promised Barbara he would think about it. He was beginning to doubt that he had the resources to change his circumstances (even the prospect was exhausting), and yet, when he thought of taking his current relationship to its logical next step, there was a problem. He had always thought the problem was Aubrey; she was not quite right. She was too bossy, too demanding; her ideas about what their life should be would swallow his personality, until there was no Phil left. But when he imagined telling Aubrey that he was ready, he knew that her happiness and gratitude would overwhelm any criticisms she had of him, that he would be able to ask for anything in exchange, and she would do her best to indulge him.

  The problem was not with this imaginary, satisfied Aubrey, but with Phil himself. When he pictured a wedding, a pregnant Aubrey, a formal abandonment of his apartment in Queens (if not a home, then at least a kind of home base), something in him refused. A second Phil seemed to step out of his skin, like a human being morphing out of a superhero, and say firmly and unequivocally: “No, thank you.”

  31.

  HE HAD NOTIFIED THE STUDIO OF HIS WHEREABOUTS, AND THEY HAD promised that Steve and Keith would be in touch. It was already the first week of October, however, and Phil still hadn’t heard from his writing partners. He had looked them up on the computer in Max’s room: they had a joint Web page, which listed their extensive television credits, and the fact that they had recently sold an original screenplay, which would be produced by a major studio in cooperation with their own company: Kiss Me, Kill Me Productions. (The Web site didn’t mention the adaptation of The Hypnotist, which was probably a kind of side project that Steve and Keith were doing for a little extra cash.) According to their joint biography, Steve and Keith had met in college in New Hampshire, and subsequently spent their “entire careers” in Hollywood. Given that his financial future had been secured by a teenager, Phil was not particularly surprised to find himself now desperately waiting for a phone call from people whose “entire careers” were each less than six years old.

  Phil had a new cellular telephone, the first he’d ever owned. While he waited for it to ring, he visited LACMA, the La Brea tar pits, and the Griffith Park Observatory—all of the places he had once frequented with Cece and the children. He should not have been surprised to see the changes: the museum had added another wing, the Japanese Pavilion, and the tar pits had been relandscaped to shut out the traffic, which flowed incongruously around the prehistoric black sludge. Only the massive Foucault’s Pendulum in the atrium of the observatory was exactly the same. Phil stood above the pit in the middle of the day, surrounded by strange children, watching the pendulum make its mysterious record in the sand.

  What, exactly, defined an affair? Certainly not a relationship that had begun during a planetarium show. Not something that had started to the tune of a recorded voice—“We are approaching the limits of the solar system. We are now eight billion miles from Earth”—and a five-year-old dropping a Kleenex on the floor. Otherwise it had been an ordinary afternoon: he and Cece and the kids at the observatory, a picnic lunch in the park (sandwiches for himself, Cece and Olivia, and soggy pinwheel pasta for Max); and then the planetarium show, the four of them taking their seats in the darkened auditorium, and Phil jokingly putting his hand on Cece’s knee. This sort of flirting had become part of their repertoire several months earlier; it was a bold, but not unprecedented thing to do. Cece had removed his hand. “The atmosphere around us is four hundred and fifty degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. Bits of rock, ice, and microscopic particles of solar dust seem to float past us, but in fact they are traveling faster than the fastest vehicles on Earth.”

  Phil moved his leg so that it touched Cece’s from thigh to ankle. “Phil!” she whispered. She was trying not to laugh. Her children’s heads were tipped back on the wooden headrests, lulled by the hypnotic voice: “But most of what you see is dark: the darkest dark you can imagine, a thousand times darker than your bedroom at night, the absolute blackness of deep space.”

  As they approached the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy, Phil could see her glowing profile, the short, “practical” haircut that exposed the tremendously sexy place at the base of her neck. She was staring at the heads of the people in front of her, ignoring him. He put his arm over her shoulders, like a teenage boy at the movies, and then ran his index finger lightly around her ear. Cece turned to him, and her nostrils flared just a tiny bit, a tiny loss of control. “Even time is different here. We’re traveling at the speed of light, one hundred and eighty-five thousand miles per second; according to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, we are now officially getting younger.”

  Phil put his mouth to her ear. “It’s a lie.”

  “What?”

  “We’re not getting any younger.”

  She was rescuing something, a program or a tissue, that had fallen on the floor. The space between her sweater and the waistband of her jeans was exposed for a second; he put his hand there. She sat up, and then she did something extraordinary. She bent her head and whispered to her ch
ildren and, without looking at Phil at all, got up and began edging out of the row. It was the only time he could remember her leaving them alone, even for a second. Her children stared dreamily up. After only a moment’s consideration, Phil followed her.

  There was a velvet curtain at the back of the auditorium separating the theater from the double doors: a few feet of carpeted space. Cece’s hair was red in the light from the Exit sign.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “I can’t help it. I love you.”

  “A galaxy is a huge group of stars, dust, gas, and other celestial bodies, bound together by gravitational forces. There are spiral, irregular, and elliptical-shaped galaxies.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Cece said.

  He thought of grabbing and kissing her; one look at her face, and he could see that it wouldn’t work. Her mouth was thin and determined, as if she’d already settled on how to proceed.

  “We have to figure this out,” she said. “We have to agree, both of us.” She was like a child with a plan, touchingly sure of herself. “It can’t just be what ever happens.”

  The theater was dusty. Phil coughed, one of those inexplicable fits that came, at that moment, like a gift from God.

  “Sorry,” he choked. “Sorry.”

  Instantly her expression softened. She put her hand lightly on his forearm. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m sorry—it’s just—this is painful for me.”

  She took her hand away.

  “And I can’t sleep anymore,” he added quickly. “I’m just so tired all the time—”

  “Oh, Phil.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Galaxies radiate a continuous spectrum of energy. This energy may take the form of radio waves, X-rays, infrared, and ultraviolet radiation.”

  Cece took his hand and kissed him. There were some things you’d been waiting for so long that when they finally happened, you couldn’t actually feel them. It took a moment, like a shock or a burn.

  She pulled back and looked up at him. “What are we doing?”

  “What are we doing?” Phil repeated, just for the plea sure of using the present tense. He slipped his hand underneath her sweater, a very soft lavender sweater, and put his face in her hair. Her perfume was complicated, rich and citrusy: he couldn’t imagine ever getting tired of it.

  “Cecelia,” he whispered.

  She smiled: “No one calls me that.”

  “You are so perfect.”

  “Oh no,” she said. “Obviously not.”

  “You’re everything I want right now.”

  “Right now?”

  “Always,” Phil said wildly. “Forever.” And to prove it, kissed her a little too earnestly, without the necessary forethought or restraint.

  32.

  ALMOST IMMEDIATELY UPON ARRIVAL, HE HAD MANAGED TO MAKE HER furious with him. It was the Thursday before Labor Day, the week before his niece and nephew started school. Phil was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for Max to come downstairs. He thought Cece’s kitchen was the most peaceful place he’d ever been; he had to refrain from laying his cheek against the caramel-colored Italian marble, which gave him a pleasant graveyard frisson—how interesting that death and cooking should employ the same building material.

  It wasn’t only the kitchen, or the plush white living room, or his bungalow with its unbelievable Frankenthaler print—a purple wash with a large red splash in the center, the quiet perfection of which struck him, for some reason, like a reprimand every time he looked at it—but the familiar way the air smelled when he stepped out of his bedroom in the morning, the softness of it. Not to mention the fact that when he stepped out of his bedroom that morning, right in front of him, there had been a set of perfect tanned and oiled teenage breasts.

  The phone shrieked five times, and then he heard Cece’s voice on the answering machine in Gordon’s study: “You’ve reached the Traverses. To leave a message for Gordon, press one; for Cece, press two; for Olivia or Max, press three…” An unfamiliar female voice was interrupted by someone picking up the phone, and a few minutes later, he heard his nephew tramping down the stairs. Phil felt a funny kind of excitement; he sat up a little straighter, and then tried to look nonchalant. Although he’d sat at the dinner table with Max and even walked through his bedroom (so that Cece could show him the guest room she’d outfitted for the dissident), this was the first time he’d seen his nephew alone.

  Max came into the kitchen mid-yawn. He put a tiny, high-tech video camera down on the counter and glanced at Phil.

  “Hey,” he said, and headed for the refrigerator. He violently shuffled the contents before emerging with half a hero sandwich wrapped in plastic and a bottle of Tsing Tao left over from the dinner in honor of the dissident.

  “Hey,” said Phil. To his delight, Max sat down at the counter next to him and began silently unwrapping the sandwich. Phil felt a little ashamed of the muffin on his plate—Max was only fifteen, but he was eating such a manly breakfast!

  “Cool camera,” Phil ventured.

  His nephew didn’t say anything.

  “Is it new?”

  Max nodded.

  “Are you making a video?”

  Max took a swig of the beer and wiped his mouth with his hand. “I can’t do anything.”

  “I know,” Phil said. “I can never figure those things out. Anything electronic. Like e-mail—do you have e-mail?”

  Max stared at him. “You can’t figure out e-mail?”

  “I mean, just for example,” Phil said.

  “I can’t do anything”—Max paused and took a swig of Tsing Tao—“because I can’t leave the house.”

  “Oh,” said Phil. “Right, yeah. But I mean, if you have to be grounded, this is the place, right?”

  Max looked at him blankly.

  “I mean, it’s great here. At least compared to New York. The weather’s great, and your parents have such a great house.” Could he say the word “great” one more time? “I always thought I hated L.A., but this is—great. Don’t you think?”

  “Could you, um…”

  “Yes?” said Phil eagerly.

  “Could you, like, pretend to be drinking this beer? If my dad comes back?”

  “Oh…yeah,” said Phil. “Yeah, sure, no problem.”

  Max nodded an extremely brief thank-you; Phil was gratified. He decided on the spot that he and Max could be friends. He imagined that Max was in need of a role model, given Gordon’s distraction.

  “He probably won’t get here before Jasmine,” Max said. “She’s picking me up.”

  “Oh, I was supposed to make sure—” Phil hesitated: should he be surreptitious about the fact that he was keeping an eye on Max?

  “—to make sure I didn’t go out,” Max finished for him. “You’re not going to tell them, are you?”

  Phil looked at the clock. Cece had said she’d be back in twenty minutes—ten now. “Won’t she notice?”

  “But I’ll be gone by then.”

  The question was not, Will you tell? It was, Will you keep me from going? Are you on my side, or theirs? Who are you?

  Phil recognized the bigness of the moment: that was the trouble. It was always in big moments that he couldn’t figure out what he should do. “If you could just relax,” Aubrey often told him, “everything would work out fine.” By “work out fine,” Aubrey meant that Phil would make some firm and final career decision; they would officially move in together; they would get married and have a baby. Ordinarily, in big moments, Phil simply tried to say “OK.” Aubrey, with her quick legal mind, had cottoned on to this strategy fairly quickly. “OK, what?” she would say.

  “OK,” said Phil.

  “Thanks,” said Max.

  “No problem,” said Phil. “Jasmine is your girlfriend, right?” Perhaps he could tell Cece that he’d fallen asleep?

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How long have you guys been together?”

  “T
wo and a half months.”

  Phil sighed. “That’s the perfect time. When you’re still comfortable, but not too comfortable—” He stopped, remembering that his nephew was fifteen. Probably you could never get too comfortable at fifteen. “So what are you guys up to today?”

  Max sighed. “I might—” he began, and then took a bite of his sandwich. “Ahmite mekka mooey.”

  “What?”

  Max swallowed. “I might make a movie. With Jasmine.”

  “What kind of movie?”

  “A murder, I guess.”

  “Do you have a story yet?”

  Max looked at him as if he’d just discovered that Phil was retarded. “I just told you.”

  “I mean, beyond the murder?”

  “Oh yeah,” Max said. “You’re a screenwriter, right?”

  “Playwright,” Phil said. “That’s like a screenwriter, though.”

  “Not really,” Max said.

  They heard voices outside; a moment later, Olivia and her friend wrenched open the French doors and made a beeline for the refrigerator. They were now wearing T-shirts and shorts, and the strings of their bikini tops were tied securely around their necks. Their wooden-soled sandals made a racket on the terrazzo tiles.

  “Leftover pasta?” Olivia suggested.

  “Nothing hot,” said her friend. The skin on the back of her thighs had burned evenly: two long, red stripes. “I wish we had smoothies.”

  “Smoothies!”

  “Do you have frozen strawberries?”

  “My mom has everything.” Olivia cast a disgusted glance in the direction of Max and Phil. “We can make them in the pantry.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s a blender there. Then we won’t have to be in here,” Olivia stage-whispered. Her back was to her brother, who was doing a spectacular job of pretending the girls didn’t exist. Suddenly his sister whirled around and stared at him: “Are you drinking a beer?”

  Phil wondered if he was supposed to pretend the beer was his in front of the girls as well. He didn’t want Olivia’s friend to think he was drinking a beer so early in the day. He glanced at Max, who had put down his sandwich and was pulling the skin at the corners of his eyes: