“It’s not another whole life. It was just one night, and it just kind of happened. It doesn’t mean . . .”
“Doesn’t mean what? That you don’t love me? Are you sure? You sleep with another girl, knowing it destroyed me once, and now you do it again? What am I to think, Wade? Did I really marry one of those guys who just can’t help himself?”
“It’s not like that, it’s not me, a pervasive thing. It was just a onetime thing with maybe one . . .”
“One, Wade? I count two right now.”
“Okay, you’re right . . . two girls,” he admitted.
“And how do you explain yourself? Really, I’d like to hear.”
“Life for men is a slide show and for women it’s a movie,” he answered firmly. “For me it’s all a slide show, a quick unrelated thing with each. You are turning this into a whole narrative movie linking this action with that tendency. I swear, it just happened with her one night and . . .”
“I’m not creating narrative female drama, so don’t try to lay that or any paranoia on me here. And it’s honestly just not the girls. It’s real, Wade, what I’m feeling and seeing. It’s the constant lying, the constant covering up shit you think I don’t know about.”
“Covering up what?” he asked.
“Covering up whatever you are covering up on every level. It’s such a slam on ‘us.’ Remember that notion of ‘us’ . . . everything we always promised each other?”
“I do love ‘us.’ ”
“That’s just it, Wade. You love the convenience that us brings you. But what about me? And speaking of me, what do you bring to me by lying to me again and again? I know you have shifty things going on and I know you aren’t telling me.”
Long pause. “I’m going to skip the party,” he said. “Take your time.” He sounded both defeated and annoyed—as though I’d somehow been the one to ruin his fun night out.
“I may not come home,” I said, my voice now devoid of emotion. “Not sure yet, but I may sleep on the couch here. You’ll have to send Stacey home in a taxi; it’s getting very late. If I’m not there in the morning, give the kids some form of protein for breakfast, please; tell them my report was due and that I’m at the office. Don’t forget we agreed you would pick up the kids at noon tomorrow. It’s a half day, and Stacey has an exam so she can’t come. Remember?” It was bizarre how quickly his admission had plunged me into parenting logistics. Split-up rule number one: focus on the kids, so you don’t feel the burn.
“I got it,” he said. “Allie—”
I held my breath.
“I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean it the way you are taking it,” he said, sounding defeated and confused. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I don’t know where we go from here.” In that moment, I wished he’d said something else, something that reaffirmed our family life or his willingness to keep trying, or anything.
I gently cradled the receiver, all my preparation for this moment leaving me limp. And I hadn’t even pushed him about the illegal web Jackie had him spinning. “Neither do I, Wade, not right now, but I might know more soon.”
“What the hell more are you going to know?” he asked innocently.
“I have to focus on my work or the bills won’t get paid and I can’t get into this; it’s ten P.M. I’ll call you tomorrow. Unless there’s something else you want to say—like you’re in love with someone else, but you’re giving me the apartment.”
“Allie, stop. It’s not at that point.”
“Well, what point has your slide show brought us to exactly, Wade?”
“I don’t know. I just do my thing sometimes, I guess. It doesn’t really mean . . .”
“It doesn’t mean what, Wade?”
He didn’t answer my last question; I just heard his rattled breathing on the other end of the line. I looked around at the mess in front of me. How the hell was I supposed to finish my work with this bizarre, awkward, unfinished, hurtful conversation looping in my head?
“Wade,” I said. “I can’t do this now.”
I hung up and suddenly I was back in that mangled plane, in the snow, desperate for a protector. Was Wade just giving more of the same unsafe feeling I’d wanted to flee from? And it hit me that I hadn’t so much forged a new life in marrying Wade, I’d simply come full circle. Strange how we seek what we hope to escape.
20
Playing the Procrastinator
After thirty minutes of gritty, hard work, thirty minutes in tears on the toilet, and another thirty fuming on my office couch, it was almost midnight. I felt so many things at once—hurt, anger, failure—I couldn’t keep track. Existing in the blur had its advantages; namely, I could walk around acting like everything was okay. That strategy had expired since Jackie Malone entered my life. I reached into my bag and checked a text on my cell phone.
TOMMY: Stop procrastinating by checking your phone. You should be writing!
I dialed him immediately. “It’s the procrastinator.”
“Why aren’t you writing?” he asked. “You’ve got to send us your pages tomorrow so we have time to read them before class next week. Hope you have something in mind, because he said noon Friday.”
“Hold on.” I went and lay down on the sofa and exhaled everything out of me. “It’s been sort of a long day. I had to work on this event tonight, and there was a tough phone call I won’t go into, but I’m finally done with my real job work, and I’m going to start writing here at the office.”
“Your writing is your real job, you idiot. You want to tell me about it, about what you’re writing?”
“I don’t know what to write tonight,” I admitted, pushing away thoughts of jumping him. “Heller said hand in a big scene, and I tried putting some things down for half an hour, but I don’t think I have one in me.”
“Write your own story,” Tommy said. “Write the thing that resonates the most for you. Not passing stuff, not events that are transitory or that popped in and out of your life by chance. Write what defines you, what you couldn’t live without, the stuff that sustains you.”
What is sustaining me right now is talking to you. I tried to think about writing topics we had discussed. “Well, there was that guy James from the real-life scene by the lake . . .” I offered, squirming, rationalizing that I could turn my supposedly previous romantic obsessions into productive work.
“Did you ever get into a situation where you were skirting something, just maybe, like maybe you’re a world-class avoider?” Tommy said the last sentence with a sarcastic laugh. “I don’t know, call me crazy, but maybe you get into a situation you think you want, but then just when you are about to get it, so good you don’t even know, you push the guy away, don’t go back to his apartment, and bolt upstairs for no clear reason?”
“Tommy. It’s not going to happen between us, so stop teasing me about it,” I said loudly. “Honestly, I don’t know where to start because I want to write a completely new scene, maybe even ditch my old script.”
“It’s late,” he answered. “But I think I can help. Give me half an hour to put some clothes on and get downtown?”
“You want to come to my office?” This was not probably a good idea, but I was in no shape to deny myself. I went from exhilaration to despair, remembering the trauma of Wade’s admission. I wanted to forget the blow I’d just confirmed, but it lingered like fog around me.
“Gimme the address now.”
“Uh, 553 West Nineteenth, right on the river, next to the IAC Building.”
“I’ll bring my laptop. We can write together, and I’ll push you to do things you never thought you could do.”
“Would you please stop with the cheesy sexual innuendo? I HAVE TO WRITE TONIGHT.”
“You’re gonna write like a friggin’ genius once I get you sailing in the proper direction and you stop avoiding the obvious. It’s right there in your head. Bad cycles. Shit that holds you back. Write it down. That’s the problem in your script. You got me? Then the Act III, chasing after the s
hark, crushing the Galactic Empire, for you means chasing after whatever the fuck is going to get you out of that messed-up cycle. You’re not the first person on the planet with regrets that fuck with their head. It’ll be a great movie because people will say, ‘Oh God, I do that all day.’ I’ll be there in twenty minutes, going to race down the West Side Highway on my motorcycle.”
“Don’t kill yourself,” I pleaded.
“I think you’re in more imminent danger of that.” He hung up.
THE FOG LIFTED a just a little. Work has a way of conquering depression. I was trying to do just what Tommy said, write what sustains me, when the guard called up from the lobby. Next I heard Tommy’s voice echoing from the elevator. How was I not to fall for a guy who understood me quicker than I understood myself?
“Allie? Where you at in this cavern?”
“Oh, yeah, in here,” I yelled from my desk, trying to act nonchalant, like I wasn’t really that interested in him.
Tommy stuck his head in the doorway with his helmet cradled in the crook of his elbow, smiling a devilish grin.
“You ready to stop bullshitting yourself?” He walked toward me like he meant business.
“That sounds painful.”
He reached into his backpack and threw a bunch of Twizzlers, mini Milky Way bars, and grape bubble gum on my desk. “Serious work needs serious sugar. In my book, anyway.”
He then walked around my desk to my large white leather chair and plunked his backpack and helmet down on the floor. “Can you stand up, please? I need to sit in your chair.”
“Why, what are you . . .”
“Just do what I say, Allie. Trust me.”
I blew out a big breath and stood six inches in front of him. He sat down and grabbed my hips and pulled me toward him. His tongue first licked my belly button and then very slowly just under the top flap of my jeans. I was covering my face with both hands wondering how long I could act like I wasn’t interested. Yes, Wade had done this infidelity thing numerous times, but that didn’t mean I could or should. “Are you trying to get me in touch with what I want or something?” I pushed him back, not at all ready to indulge in anything crazily sexual with him. It felt so good, but it also felt like unhealthy payback at Wade.
“Nope.” Tommy pulled me down so I was sitting on his lap and yanked my legs over the chair arms so he could hold me close. Maybe a little closeness couldn’t hurt, maybe being drawn to someone who supported what I needed to do, what I always wanted to do—write for real—wasn’t the worst thing I could do. As he kissed me slowly, his hands reached inside the back of my pants so he could grind up against me. He was fully hard beneath his jeans.
“I guess it’s pretty clear what you want,” I said, trying to yank myself off him by pushing down on the arms of my chair with my elbows. He put my arms instead around the back of his head and kissed me harder while he explored my ass.
Just as I became so turned on that I felt I might not be able to say no to something I wasn’t at all ready for, he held my head in his hands. “Now. We are going to stop, if that’s okay.”
Even though that was the right thing to do, I had glided over to the dark side and wasn’t so sure stopping was a good idea just then.
“The reason we are stopping is simple: sugar and sexual tension will give you a combined punch to write well.” He got up, methodically, and pushed me back down into the same chair, pulled my keyboard in front of me, and made a nice neat little line of candy to the right side.
He went over and lay on the sofa as he casually rearranged his bulging hard-on. “This ain’t easy for me either. But it’s going to help you, I promise. We have all the time in the world ahead of us to do what we want, when we want. This is your office and your script pages are due in the morning. You’re spending too much time writing about the plot from six years ago. An infertile couple meets their surrogate. Hell breaks loose. It was a fun fresh idea before Sarah Jessica Parker used one for those twins. Problem is: it doesn’t relate to your own life, so it will be dull on the page.”
My cheeks burned from his critique. “Great. So I’m at square one? Thanks for coming by and blowing up years of work.”
He grinned. “For tomorrow’s assignment, just write about James and see where it takes you. Write scenes that mean something, and then we’ll sew them together. I’ll help you. Now that you’re so turned on, let’s hear about the absolute worst time you almost slept with James but didn’t. What happened?”
“Jesus, Tommy. I don’t know. That was the MO for our entire relationship until we grew up and made our choices. The best times were always the worst times in a weird way. There was a really bad scene in San Francisco.”
“Okay. For now, we’re after the longing: the tingling, painful, tangible longing that will produce scenes of great regret and then intense passion. Remember we said the longing is better than the doing. Give me some of that.”
I raised an eyebrow as I rearranged my underwear back in place from the back of my jeans. “I’m not so sure of that anymore.”
“Nope. That’s just more procrastination,” he said. “How about this: gimme an example, the worst one. Did you ever storm out on a guy, even though you wanted to fuck the guy so bad you couldn’t breathe? But your anger or fury or fear or whatever got you spooked? Think about the five senses. That’s what they told me the first day in another writing class, and it sounds corny, but it does help—get your mind working on the feel, the sight, the sounds, the smell. Let’s start with that: What did it smell like when you were at your worst, dying to get laid but, as is your MO, walked instead? In a stinky city? In a forest with the smell of pine?”
“That’s easy. It smelled like trans fats.”
A delicious deep laugh exploded over from the sofa where Tommy was lying with his messy motorcycle boots propped up on my pristine white pillow. “What the hell? Trans fats?”
“Yep.”
“From where?”
“A Jack in the Box restaurant in Berkeley.”
“Okay. Then we’re starting your fucking screenplay there.” He was so excited. “Interior: Girl in a Jack in the Box. Sipping a strawberry shake, greasy french fry and chicken tenders trans fats wafting in the air, lost in thought as she watches kids play outside in the parking lot playground on those weird-colored habitrails for children.”
“Yep. Been there. Was there.” I felt better. Maybe I could do a bunch of things I wasn’t sure I could do. Like write better. Like screw the brains out of this emotionally available, generous guy on my couch. But not now.
“Okay. Now let’s go back a little. How did you end up there?”
“I went to Berkeley to visit James at college in his tiny one-bedroom apartment just outside of town.”
“What did his place look like?”
“It was a rickety little blue house with white trim. When I got there, he was sitting on the steps with that dry California sun in his messy hair, like he’d been waiting all week for me.”
“Okay. Nice crisp sunny flashback. Then what?”
“James gave me a big hug and said, ‘Too long. Waaaaay too long.’ Then he kissed my forehead, and I knew things were going to get weird. He loved to act like we were friends all the time, no problem, but then this undercurrent would occasionally came barreling through.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know, some kind of unfinished business lingering between us.”
“Get back to San Francisco, please.”
“Okay. Back from the present to the past: I thought he might drag me into his house and have sex with me right then and there.”
“But he didn’t.”
“Nope. Instead he said he had a surprise, what he called the single coolest thing ever. So I locked my car and hopped into the Jeep with him. His body had filled out, and his hair was so sexy and messy under his Yankees hat.”
“I’m waiting . . .” Tommy said, as he made a continue motion with his hand, and then laid an arm over his eyes.
/> “I didn’t love that James could change so much in the three months since summer. His legs were more powerful and his shoulders were wider. I didn’t know that would happen, that he’d turn into a man. It made me feel so far away, even sitting right next to him. The blondish stubble on his face caught the sunlight as he turned onto the freeway. He looked like he was getting laid a lot.”
“That’s good. That’s so true,” Tommy said from under his arm. “Certain people just have a look when they are getting laid a lot. You have to put that in somehow, although a script is just dialogue so it won’t be easy, but we’ll find a way.”
“Yeah. Well, he had that well-fucked glow, and I didn’t like it one bit.”
“Then what?”
“We cruised straight onto the Bay Bridge, through San Francisco, and over the Golden Gate toward Highway 1. I checked the Jeep for evidence of another woman. I found a girlie, strawberry-flavored ChapStick in the little ashtray that seemed suspect, especially when he took it from me and slipped it into his pocket. It felt like an admission of guilt.”
“Nice detail,” Tommy said dreamily. “Great way to convey gotcha without words. Easy to use that.”
“Thanks.” I unwrapped a Milky Way and took a bite. “When we pulled into a lot marked Stinson Beach Parking, and I saw people pulling on wet suits and taking surfboards off the roofs of their cars, I was instantly furious. I hadn’t surfed since my dad died, and I told him so. He grabbed my arm and shouted, ‘You think I don’t know that? You think you’re the only person who lost a parent that day?’ ”
Tommy sat up. I stopped talking for a second, unsure if I wanted to get into the pain that James’s words had inflicted. “Go on, this is good,” Tommy said.
“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “James grabbed my arm and shouted, ‘You think I didn’t know your dad loved to surf with his boat buddies and fish and be in the water, or that he was made for the outdoors, but got stuck in some claustrophobic situation in his small fishing town? My mom did the same thing: married a guy in a nice little lonely town who quashed her dreams. You think I don’t know everything about you and your fucking history at this point? My mom, your dad chasing the rainbow, escaping the prison they put themselves in and, then, getting killed in the process? Why the fuck do you think we’re out here?’ His eyes were wet, and I know it was all about that crash.”
The Idea of Him Page 14
