The Idea of Him

by Holly Peterson

  “Well, that’s pretty heavy,” Tommy said. “The two of you chasing some joy out there that eluded your dead parents?”

  “I guess so; he was so adamant we get out there in the waves doing something my dad loved.”

  “What about sex?” Tommy asked. “Did you still feel like things were weird?”

  “Yes, massive sexual tension in the car. It was a heady mixture of the familiar and the new. He reassured me, ‘Once you get into that wave, I promise there’s no better feeling. Well, maybe one better feeling but it’s pretty damn close.’ We got out there, he tried to tandem me on the waves, both of us on the board at the same time, but we ended up falling over and over again, and it felt like the inside of a Maytag washing machine.”

  “So no salty kiss?”

  I shook my head sadly. “No, that pretty much capsized my romantic notions. I sort of hit my head, and we had to pack it in.”

  “What happened when you got back to the house?”

  I closed my eyes and began a trancelike monologue about one of the worst scenes in my memory.

  “James made fun of me all the way back. ‘You’re so graceful, Allie. Really, a natural out there.’ He laughed as he yanked the board off the back of the Jeep when we finally found parking a block from his house. A beach towel hung around his shirtless neck and I could see his windswept face and nest of wet tousled hair through the rearview mirror of my visor. I sat in the Jeep for a moment, smiling to myself about the warmth of the day. It was a stark contrast to the harsh months of winter when we had had hot sex in the same Jeep.”

  “Why didn’t San Francisco make it easy?” Tommy said, retreating to lie back down on the couch and staining all my pillows with grimy boots. “Sounds like you were already sloshing all over each other in the ocean? That’s as sexual as it comes.”

  “Because things got twisted around. First, I made a reference to dying out there together, which wasn’t really funny, since we both almost died together on the plane with our parents. Something sarcastic like ‘Yep, it was just like you promised, James. What a feeling. Total rush to almost die out there with my best friend.’ He shot me a strange look. It just came out like that, but the real problem was I turned and practically tripped over her on the steps.”

  “Who?”

  “Samantha. His girlfriend. He yelped, a jogging pace behind me, all out of breath. He must have spotted her from the curb. Everything came to a stop except my head, which promptly began to spin. I looked at James, but his face was empty.

  “ ‘Allie, Samantha.’ He held his hand toward her. He said, ‘Hey, Sam, I didn’t think you were going to be back in time to meet Allie.’

  “She turned her full-wattage California sunburned beauty on me and cooed, ‘I hope you liked my board.’ I could barely mutter a thank-you. Then she stood up and her sickeningly shapely legs towered over me. She looked right at me and said, ‘Did he tandem you? He loves to do that.’ Oh my God, Tommy, I was so pissed off, you have no idea.” She had worn rows of cool, hippie bead bracelets that chimed together as she walked toward James.

  “Was she hot?” Tommy asked. When I closed my eyes and shook my head and didn’t answer, he added, “Let me rephrase that: How smokin’ hot was she?”

  “Put it this way: she was a Southern California blond chick who looked like the hottest bohemian bikini model out there. White-blond thin long hair, torn-up jean cutoffs, a tank top that practically slinked off her braless breasts.”

  “Of course she was. Blake Lively can play her when you sell the script.”

  “Thanks a lot; now I have both the image of Samantha and the hot body of Blake Lively planted in my head.” I threw a Milky Way at Tommy. “Anyway, after the three of us had a horrible quick taco dinner, the last thing we all needed was to try to converse more, so the second we got through his door, James and I both said on cue, ‘So tired.’ After a painful round of good nights, James pointed me toward the bedroom and said, ‘We’ll just sleep out here on the futon.’ ”

  “Awkward,” Tommy said, laughing as he ate his Twizzler in a way that made me want to eat the other end of it at the same time.

  “Totally. I went into the bedroom and piled up my clothes and placed them on a tiny chair that I recognized from James’s childhood bedroom. I fought back some serious tears as I yelled out, ‘You two, I’m just fine in here!’ But I wasn’t, so I stuck my head back into the living room. They were sitting on the couch.

  “ ‘You two, just, you know.’ I couldn’t even look at him. ‘You do your thing in here. Whatever.’ I banged my index fingers together. I think I meant to convey two bodies lying next to each other in the fold-out futon, but because of the banging, it seemed like, well, exactly that. I closed the door, but when Samantha’s shower turned on, James walked into the bedroom in his sweatpants and rumpled T-shirt. He sat on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands.”

  “The prick,” Tommy said. “Did he want a three-way?”

  “No. He whispered, ‘If you had said to her “That’s so great, soooooo great” one more time, I was going to kill you. And please stop acting so fake,’ he begged.

  “I was so attached and drawn to him at that moment. I had this firm idea in my head that we were officially better in love than as best friends, but he wasn’t on board. I just hugged an Indian print pillow that smelled like cats and focused on a crack in the ceiling. He said, ‘I’m really sorry, Allie. I was so happy you were coming for a few days, and I missed you.’ He mimicked my index fingers banging together. ‘You’re telling me you want us to do “our thing”? First of all, beyond weird and awkward thing to say.’ ”

  Tommy sat up. “This is going to work really well. I like this; it’s like When Harry Met Sally, only they don’t end up together: more real, actually, and less Hollywood-y happy ending. Friendships between men and women get sexual and fucked up and awkward all the time. That’s the truth. People get possessive and jealous over their friend’s boyfriend or girlfriend having more power and figure their jealousy is actually love, but then it isn’t always. You can explore that in the script.”

  “Well, I was definitely feeling possessive that night. Of course I didn’t want him to screw someone ten feet from my head; I wanted him to tell her to go home and then make love to me. My intense feelings for him scared the daylights out of me.”

  “No shit!” Tommy yelled again from the couch, listening with his eyes closed, brownie crumbs littering his wide chest and getting ground up on my white sofa under him. “But do please go on.”

  “James as usual then put me on the spot, saying, ‘What’s your deal, Allie?’ Conveniently for him, he asked me instead of saying something meaningful himself.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “Well, I punted, saying ‘You know what, we have all day tomorrow to talk about this without a naked girl in your shower.’ Then I gave him a false smile.”

  “That must have worked.”

  My office phone rang again. It was past midnight. I didn’t want to talk to Wade in front of Tommy, but I picked it up, saying “What?!” in a bitchy tone. I heard only another hang-up.

  “Who was that? Anything wrong?” Tommy asked.

  “Wrong number. Let me get back to the story.” I tried to dive back in but felt disturbed by the clicks now on two calls: now and from earlier after I saw the SUV. “So, anyway, James in his messy college apartment bedroom patted my leg and stood up, saying, ‘I have one class at noon, but yeah, I guess we’ll have time to talk.’ He let out a huge, depressing, defeated sigh. Neither of us seemed too keen about a rushed groping session the next day in bright sunlight between his class and the time she might knock on the door and surprise us again. Before I went to San Francisco to visit James, I was definitely imagining no Samantha at all in the picture, candles, complete privacy, and all the time in the world.”

  “You’re such a romantic,” Tommy added.

  I ignored that and went on. “ ‘You’re the culprit,’ James finally said. ‘You�
��re the one who’s been’—and he slammed his index fingers together—‘with every lowlife in Massachusetts.’ I told him not everyone and that he was exaggerating.”

  I waited for Tommy to analyze that one, which he promptly did: “Okay, so you fucked random guys right and left to get the pain out of your system, only making it worse. Screwed-up strategy, but hardly uncommon. I can’t believe you and James manage to have a somewhat normal friendship now after all this dysfunction in your history. Then what?”

  “James walked over to the bed and placed both his hands on my shoulders, then sat down and cradled my head in his arms. And he said, ‘I need a signal. Okay?’ ”

  “Thank fucking God for James!” Tommy yelled.

  “The bathroom door opened and closed very loudly. I was terrified, so I smiled and said, ‘I think she’s clean.’ ”

  “Brutal,” said Tommy.

  “Yeah, brutal. I couldn’t sleep at all, listening to first their muffled conversation, then what sounded like a fight, followed by her making little mewing noises like she was trying to seduce him. Maybe she did. It didn’t matter; I couldn’t bear to face either of them again. I remember lying in his big bed alone that night and wanting him so badly my entire torso ached.

  “The next morning I bolted town before they got up and cried over my greasy egg sandwich at a Jack in the Box down the highway, the smell of trans fats permeating the air.”

  I looked at Tommy who was no longer lying down. He was sitting, rapt, with his elbows on his knees. He stood up, walked up to my desk, and kissed me slowly with his tongue circling my mouth, and one hand inside my bra, one inching down my zipper.

  After about two minutes, he came up for air, still holding my face with one hand. “I’m going to leave now,” he said, leaving me only wanting him to delve deeper beneath my clothes. “You take everything you just told me and you write that whole scene down. Don’t leave out one second of it.”

  THREE HOURS LATER, I pushed the SAVE button on a scene I had to admit I liked. Agitated by the sexual tension between Tommy and me, the come-to-Jesus conversation with Wade, the clicks on the line, and caffeine, I curled up on my couch and put my face deeply into the pillow that still smelled of Tommy’s woodsy shampoo and drifted into a dreamless sleep.

  21

  Under His Spell

  The next afternoon, after I’d pushed SEND on my screenplay scene for class, then written in the final film festival panel outline with pink, orange, and purple markers just like Murray had asked, I texted Jackie to set up a meeting once I knew Georges and the chieftains of industry would be gone. I was beginning to believe some of what she was saying to me and even wondering about her safety—if she knew about the SUV following her down the street. I didn’t know if the hang-ups on my phone line were linked to any of this, but I would ask her that too.

  WITH TREMBLING HANDS, I paid the taxi driver outside the Tudor Room. My heart throbbed with a bizarre mania, and my legs propelled me up the stairs into the restaurant I had no business being in the middle of the afternoon. Those voices, the kind that admonish the listener to rethink the plan, whispered in my head. But nothing could prepare me for what I saw.

  As I waited in the entryway, a few busboys set the tables in the distance.

  “You looking for me?” A woman’s voice traveled across from the bar to my right. “Glad you wanted to come.”

  Jackie. As usual, she was sipping her coffee as if she were lolling around a little bungalow on the Mediterranean. She smiled. “What would you like?”

  “Just a cup of tea.” I sat down and tried to get comfortable so that I could have another conversation with a woman who told me in no uncertain terms that she’d slept with my husband.

  As she swiveled around to me, I snuck a look at her tight waist Wade must have grabbed. A good-sized part of me seriously contemplated how to find a little cyanide for her coffee. But first I needed some more information . . . and her stories were becoming more credible by the day.

  “You starting to understand the connections here? You have questions? Still doubts when I look you in the eye and say I will never lie to you?”

  It was possible she hadn’t actually lied to me. I asked, “Are we in an unsafe situation or a shady situation? I really must know this.”

  She shook her head and smiled kindly. “No. I assure you.”

  “Well, I watched you leave the event last night after you poked my rib and bolted.”

  “I just wanted to signal to you that Camilla and Max and Wade are doing stuff together. And Camilla was thinking you knew all the details of the overseas accounts when she was talking to you. Doesn’t that show you—”

  “Jackie. I watched you leave. A big SUV followed you down the street.”

  “It’s nothing. I promise you.” She seemed so confident it made me feel slightly better. And just as she said that, my eyes scanned the room, and I noticed the back of a man I was starting to know all too well. It couldn’t be. “Uh, Jackie. Excuse me.” I stood up and started to walk, trancelike, in his direction.

  A man with a beefy frame was organizing wine bottles into a wood-panelled cellar near the maître d’ podium. At first I wasn’t sure, but as he picked up some heavy cases of wine, those thighs were unmistakable. I tapped his shoulder.

  Tommy turned around and laughed out loud. “What are you doing here? You should be sleeping after all that work.”

  “No, what are you doing here?”

  “This is one of the places I consult on buying good wine at auctions. You look so spooked—what, you don’t think I work at restaurants as nice as this?”

  “I just thought, I don’t know, not necessarily here with the business guys who . . .”

  “You’re acting like such a snob; you think I can’t . . .”

  “No, no, it wasn’t that. Just here is so different from the type of place I had imagined you . . .”

  “Well, I actually assist the main sommelier wine expert with good deals he might not have found otherwise. I’ve just yesterday found some great bottles at auctions for them because, believe it or not, these days, even this place is looking for great prices.” He stood up and brushed my cheek with the back of his hand and then fondled the back of my ear with his fingertips.

  I pushed his hand away. “You didn’t tell me it was here! You never once said, ‘Oh, I consult for the Tudor Room!’ ”

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Allie? Just because I worked in my uncle’s liquor store in Rockaway doesn’t mean I don’t know wine. I do know wine pretty well, and my uncle taught me a lot.”

  “I didn’t mean to insult your wine knowledge, what I meant was . . .”

  “Well, it sounded like that. You got a particular problem with this place?”

  As a matter of fact, I did have a big problem with Tommy being here, starting with the fact that Wade had charged his lunch here to the Meter magazine expense account at least once a week for the past twenty years. Tommy never asked about my husband and silence on the topic seemed an unspoken deal in our relationship since that first kiss—I had never even mentioned Wade’s name to him. I shifted back while he continued to pull me toward him. “Question is, Allie, what are you doing here?”

  I snapped my hands out of his. “I, uh, had to check on something.”

  “Check on what? Nobody’s here for dinner for a few hours.”

  “Well, I was here and I had to meet, sometimes we book meetings in the private rooms, I mean l left something . . .”

  “Nobody’s here, Allie.” Tommy looked furtively over his shoulder. “In fact, why don’t you come inside here behind the cases so I can say good afternoon properly?” He grabbed my hand, which I instantly pulled back. “What’s with you? And why are you so nervous?”

  “I just didn’t think I’d see you here; it’s out of place.”

  “Nothing’s out of place for me except seeing you here,” he whispered in my ear. “I’m done in an hour; let’s go celebrate the scene that you handed in.” I jerke
d my head back, knowing Jackie was watching. “Will you be in the neighborhood? I have to get back downstairs to do some inventory. I’m going to text you later; I need to do a little more exploration work inside those jeans of yours.”

  “Uh, I guess, maybe, sure,” I answered, still in shock as he bolted down the stairs.

  I walked back to Jackie in a stronger daze.

  She chuckled. “So you know Tommy?”

  “Please don’t tell me you know him?” I said to her.

  “I know he’s the cute part-time wine guy with a light around him everyone wants to bathe in.”

  I tried to minimize our relationship as best I could. “Yeah, it’s just so strange; he is in a class I’m in, and we work together on writing sometimes, but I barely know him at all and . . .”

  “And he’s got you under his spell.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Just looked like it. That brush of his hand on your cheek is going to tell me just as much as if he’d ripped your bra off.”

  “Nonsense!” I sat down and tried way too hard to convince her otherwise, motor-mouthing a million miles an hour back at her. “Total nonsense. I mean, I just know him from the screenwriting class, and it’s helping both of us with these messed-up screenplays and . . .”

  “Don’t sweat it. I just put two and two together.” She rolled her eyes. “That guy falls in love every week. He’s very intense.”

  “I know,” I answered. She had me. She saw him touch me, not just my cheek, but pull my hands toward him. God, how I wanted to fall into him but held myself back. I thought a lot about the conversations Tommy and I’d been having and I realized I cared a lot about what he thought about work and me. But, of course, I had to play it cool with the world-class seductress in front of me. “I mean, I know the intense part. From help he’s given me in a screenwriting class is all.”