She settled on a short white skirt, suede ankle boots and a denim blouse. The ensemble could have been cribbed from a Forever 21 catalog, but she reminded herself that she wasn’t dressing to impress other women, she was trying to please a man. She assembled her hair in an “effortless” ponytail that took ten minutes. A cross-body bag sliced her body diagonally. The strap resembled a beauty pageant sash, which seemed fitting, as she felt very much like someone about to be judged. All her parts were shaved, lotioned and tidied, because who knew where the night would end up. She reached for her keys and headed outside, a bounce in her step, not unlike a giddy schoolgirl’s.
This was the subplot of her separation, wasn’t it? It was the supporting argument she would put forward if she had to bolster her position in a court of law. She put her future in jeopardy to feel a thrill again. To not just wonder what it would be like to screw someone else for a change, but to actually do it. Nearly a decade of working in the theater world had all but taken her out of contact with straight men other than her husband. Sometimes she and her coworkers at PZA would order in salads for lunch and Cass would jump up to be the one to greet the delivery boy. Do you see me? she’d want to ask him. Do you see anything other than my new shoes?
She was excited.
* * *
♦ ♦ ♦
“WHAT DID YOU say?” Cass found herself shouting over the pulsing bass of the background music. Some type of electronica blared from a huge speaker behind her, making it feel like the nineties were crashing into the back of her skull. Substitute fountain soda for the alcohol and cheeseburgers for the spicy lamb dumplings, and she was back in high school.
“I said, the artisanal cheese here is insane,” Gavin repeated himself, shooting a spray of saliva in her direction. “It’s all locally sourced. The farm is right near this place I hike in the Palisades.” With that he popped a Gruyère onion tartlet into his mouth, washing it down with a hand-crafted beer.
It was the fourth time Gavin had said the word “artisanal” since they’d sat down. She knew because she’d started playing a drinking game with herself. It was already time to order another round.
They’d met at a small gastropub near Gavin’s apartment in Silver Lake, which was frighteningly like Williamsburg, where she’d once trekked for a PZA colleague’s baby shower. Once was enough on either coast.
“I’ve got a little hydroponic garden going in my backyard,” he continued. “I’d love to show it to you. Hard to pay it that much attention though because my business takes up most of my time. Not sure if Alexi told you, but I just did Pamela Richard’s headshots.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he referenced one of Hollywood’s young darlings. “She’s very nice. Super down-to-earth. We have the same yoga teacher.”
“Another drink, please,” Cass said to the waitress who appeared magically just in time. She had known moving to Los Angeles would mean deep immersion in the “industry.” Alexi warned her about it when she first arrived and Cass had shrugged it off. She was hardly a newbie to the entertainment world and sometimes missed the luster of it now that she wasn’t at PZA anymore. Her first year on the job, Emmet caught a bad flu, and Percy had taken her as his date to the Tony Awards. She’d air-kissed theater legend after legend that night and didn’t think much else could impress her after that.
“I like her,” Cass said. “I heard from someone over at the performing arts center that she might be doing a John Patrick Shanley play this year, which I think—”
“Lucy Biele, on the other hand, was a total bitch. Had to reshoot her four times. That’s what’s nice about working with someone like Alexi. No attitude. No entitlement. Though Biele was a bitch even before she got the CBS sitcom deal.”
It was a good thing Cass had decided only to drink at the mention of “artisanal.” She’d debated sipping every time Gavin mentioned a celebrity or cut her off, but worried that would mean getting wheeled out of the restaurant before night’s end. Thank goodness she’d decided to take a cab.
The date ticked on with more name-dropping and a conversation about gastropubs versus farm-to-table dining. All this while the scene got fuzzier, the lights hazier and the music, unfortunately, climbing even louder. She was still waiting for Gavin to ask her about Jonathan, the cat being out of the bag and all, but the way things were progressing she wasn’t in much danger of being asked to speak at all. She just needed to nod appreciatively about the beer, the food, the music, the garden and the new Sony cameras, and time would march onward, toward the point where she could start casually glancing at her watch or feign a yawn.
Gavin held up his end of the bargain in one respect at least. Scruff on his jawline gave him the sex appeal for which it was intended. His long shaggy hair, which kept flopping in front of his face in notably thick clumps, reminded her pleasantly that he was probably a good five years younger than her. And his accent—even when he was blathering on about sun salutations—persisted in its sexiness. Maybe he could be her type after all and she should rethink her exit strategy. Cass adjusted her sitting posture subtly. Shoulders back. Chest out. Legs crossed and recrossed, sending her skirt an inch north.
Gavin motioned for the waitress to return. She couldn’t imagine having another drink. The room was already starting to tilt on its axis and her speech was teetering on the edge of a slur. Dating would mean an uptick in tolerance, surely.
“Check, please,” he said, and she felt momentary relief that Gavin was finally sick of having to shout over the music. They’d take it back to his place, hopefully with no more booze.
“Where to next?” she asked, astonished by and proud of her bravado. She found herself leaning in closer to him, letting him have a peek down her shirt.
But it was her date who yawned artificially.
“Cass, it was great to see you again. But I’ve got to be in the studio first thing tomorrow morning. Let me order you an Uber.” He pulled out his cell phone and did his thing. “Two minutes,” he announced gleefully.
Outside the restaurant, Gavin planted a chaste kiss on her cheek. He didn’t even wait for her ride to arrive, just told her to look out for a black RAV4. When the car pulled up, she slumped into the backseat and rattled off her address limply to the driver, who glanced at her sympathetically in the rearview mirror. The radio was playing that same pop song she’d heard the other day when she left Gavin’s studio, or maybe it wasn’t the same, but weren’t all the Kelly Clarkson and Taylor Swift and Katy Perry songs basically all just variations of the same three chords, love ballads that could be interpreted a million different ways? This time the beat made her cry.
* * *
♦ ♦ ♦
IT WAS AFTER midnight when the Uber pulled up alongside Alexi’s Prius. She hoped her roommate was sleeping and concentrated hard on entering quietly. Key fit into lock with precision, a soft click and a push, and she was inside, moving about the small space on tiptoe. The lights were off. She set her keys on the mounted ring gently and crept toward her bedroom.
“How was it?”
From the tiny kitchen table a glowing light spilled, where Alexi sat tapping on her cell phone.
“Oh, you’re up,” Cass said, trying not to sound disappointed.
“Yep. So? Tell me everything.”
Cass shuffled into the kitchen, took the seat opposite Alexi, who looked especially precious in her tiny tank-and-shorts pajama set, her legs twisted into a pretzel.
“Truth? I should have thought this separation through more fully. I’m a bit rusty on the dating front. Gavin aside, who is going to date me knowing that I have a husband in New York? It’ll be one-night stands at best. I’ll be lucky to get back to Jonathan without an STD.”
Alexi unbraided her legs and went to the freezer, removing a small pint of organic, stevia-sweetened frozen yogurt and returning with two spoons: a Golden Girls hack executed California-style. How Cass longed for New York in that momen
t, where there wasn’t a twenty-four-hour gym on every corner. She even missed Hazel Park, where being a size eight was an accomplishment.
“Stop it, that’s ridiculous. Not everyone clicks. If you really want to get out there, if that was the point of the separation, you could try this,” she said, sliding her cell into Cass’s view and swiping her index finger back and forth over a ticker tape of photos.
“What is that?”
“You don’t know what Tinder is?” Alexi shook her head in disbelief. “This is the only way to meet someone nowadays. That Gavin date was a fluke. I’m going to make you a profile; you will get a million matches; it’s fun and probably the strongest antidote to marriage one could possibly find.”
“Sounds dreadful. I wonder if Jonathan knows about it.”
Alexi scraped the slick coating of freezer burn off the chocolate yogurt and dropped it onto her tongue.
“Do you care?” she asked, her eyebrows raised into pointy upside-down Vs.
“I don’t have a right to,” Cass responded, a vacuum of an answer. “I’m seeing him in three days when I pick up Puddles at LAX. I don’t know if we’re going to get coffee and talk or if this is going to be like my parents exchanging me in the Dollar Store parking lot. I guess I’ll follow his lead. I miss him.” Cass heard the pensiveness in her voice, watched Alexi’s doe eyes soften in response. “Things like watching him shave. He’s so bad at it, always missing patches, and I point them out to him before he heads out the door. I picture him going into work looking like he has Oreo crumbs on his chin.”
Alexi smiled wistfully.
“You’re brave, Cass.”
“Or crazy.”
“One or the other,” Alexi said, laughing. She leaned in closer to Cass, conspiratorially. “So, there was really no one else all this time? I know it’s a personal question and you and I never got to know each other all that well in college. But, and I hope you don’t mind my curiosity, when you called me, I assumed—” Alexi’s voice trailed off, and they both finished the sentence in their heads.
“No one else. I swear.”
16. JONATHAN
THERE WAS SOMEONE else. That was the ultimate irony of Cass’s assurances to him.
He’d been unfaithful to Cass.
Once. Almost twice.
* * *
♦ ♦ ♦
THE TIMING WAS terrible, he knew it.
Cass was passing a lot of blood clots, the cramps were nearly debilitating, and still her HCG level was not going to zero like it was supposed to after the procedure. She was without child and with child at the same time, a state of limbo like something from a Greek tragedy.
But he had to get on a plane and go to San Francisco to court a pension fund. A two-hundred-million-dollar investment was at stake and Winstar was so close to signing them on the dotted line for their new venture fund. Jonathan had been responsible for identifying the potential investor several years ago, and he’d consistently sent marketing materials and relevant news stories to them, called after every profitable quarter and taken several trips out west to meet with the chief investment officer in person. Finally, the trigger was set to be pulled, and if successful, it would be a career-launching move. Jonathan couldn’t wait to place the phone call to Jerry the minute he had the signed contract in his hands. Then he’d ask the PR folks at Winstar to make sure this got into the papers—the ones he knew his father read religiously. Christopher had just tried again to convince Jonathan to work for him, and hopefully this would make it crystal clear that he did not need his father to succeed. Cass knew all this.
Besides, he’d specifically cleared the trip with her. Many, many times. Repeatedly, she’d assured him that she had Jemima in case of an emergency. Her mom could be there in four hours if needed. But everything was going to be fine, anyway, so why shouldn’t he go, she said. In retrospect, he should have known she didn’t mean a word of it. When had Cass ever mentioned relying on either of her parents in any meaningful way? Maybe he had known she couldn’t very well call Donna but he’d hung his hat on the knowledge that the Wentworths were next door and more than capable of handling an emergency. Though considering nobody knew about the pregnancy, and his wife was a proud woman, he should have realized how loath Cass would be to call on them. He’d put his career and the chance to show up his father before Cass, whether he liked to admit it or not.
And so he went, deluding himself into believing it was the right thing to do, and settled himself into his business-class seat next to Conor Mathis, another associate from Winstar, and across from Marielle, the investor relations team member who was dispatched to help seal the deal. She was French, limbs as flexible as plastic straws, and what she did with her r’s was titillating. Conor, uncomfortable with silence to a fault, kept trying to talk to him about the pension fund while Jonathan was busy memorizing the pattern on Marielle’s stockings. When Conor came up for air, Jonathan found himself making bumbling attempts at conversation with her. “What are you writing?” he asked, gesturing at the longhand she was scrawling on her tray table. (Letters to her nieces in Paris.) “Did you order the chicken or the beef?” (Vegetarian.) “Are you beyond sexy?” (Yes, but that one he didn’t actually ask.) He was desperate to put the D&C and the pitiful scene in the hospital out of his mind, and Marielle was certainly making it easier.
Back at home, Cass was in bed, sentenced to a week of rest. She made it plain that the termination was happening to her alone. He got it, sort of. There was nothing more noxious than couples who announced, “We’re pregnant!” while the man drank scotch and ate sushi and the woman waddled with the weight of a basketball between her legs and downed fistfuls of Tums. In that vein, it was all the more absurd for him to claim an equal stake in their loss—or so Cass indicated. To decode his wife, he really needed one of those feelings charts in doctors’ offices for patients to explain how much pain they’re in. If Cass could just point to the proper round yellow face with the right-sized frown and the slanted eyebrows, maybe he could come close to understanding her. What was striking, he realized over the course of the flight out west, was how unfair it was that he was so caught up in deciphering how to manage Cass’s disappointment that his own feelings were completely sidelined.
Marielle was a graduate of INSEAD, the business school in France, and explained to him and Conor over dinner later that evening that she had wanted to come to New York for a bit of adventure. Did Conor think what Jonathan did? That there wasn’t a man in New York City who wouldn’t want to give Marielle just what she was looking for? She said she was twenty-six and her translucent, dewy skin and birdlike body didn’t contradict her, though her aura was a good ten years older. Maybe it was the French cigarettes she chain-smoked after the meal when they strolled down the Embarcadero back to their hotel. He knew he was flirting with her a little bit, though he crossed no lines that made him feel especially guilty. She flirted back, with a little elbow nudging and a number of hair-tossing laughs. Cass flirted with Henry Wentworth openly, and though he’d never brought it to her attention, he definitely noticed the way she batted her eyelashes at him and went in for playful jabs. His wife was entitled to feel sexy and desirable for as long as humanly possible, and flirting was the most innocuous way to preserve a sliver of one’s single identity after marriage. It was probably beneficial to the marriage. What was that expression? It doesn’t matter where you get your appetite, just as long as you come home for dinner.
The trip turned out to be a spectacular failure, professionally speaking. Their trio arrived the next morning to the pension fund offices, Marielle a perfect hourglass encapsulated in a black dress, a silver choker and ultra-high heels that forced her to take Jonathan’s arm for support. He and Conor were overly prepared and they walked confidently up to the reception desk to announce themselves. All assumed they were there for the client to make it official by signing the FINRA forms, then they would head together for a long
celebratory lunch at the ritzy Gary Danko on Winstar’s dime. But when the receptionist greeted them she said, “I’m afraid their first appointment is running late. You’ll have twenty minutes tops for your pitch. We have twelve hedge funds coming in today to present.”
Winstar had been cock-teased.
Defeated beyond measure, unable to stop picturing Jerry’s ruddy face doing his spit-yelling, Jonathan returned home on the red-eye and walked into his apartment before dawn, grateful for the chance to crawl into bed with Cass and tell her all about what had happened. He was startled when she wasn’t there. Not in the shower or the guest bathroom either. He flew down the hall to the Wentworths’ apartment, not caring that it was 4:30 a.m. Henry answered the door after five doorbell buzzes and loud pounding on the door with his fist.
“Do you know where Cass is?” he panted.
“You don’t know? She’s at Mount Sinai with Jemima. She was bleeding a shitload and called Jemima yesterday afternoon to take her to the ER.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jonathan said, and sprinted for the elevator.
“I thought you knew, man,” Henry said. “I wondered what—”
The elevator snapped itself shut before he finished. In the cab, he checked his phone over and over. There was no missed call, no message.
“Cass,” he sputtered, rushing to her bedside after negotiating the hospital’s nagging procedures (check in, check out, photo ID, sign here, insurance, insurance, insurance). She was awake when he entered, plugged to an IV and, of all things, on her iPad.
“Welcome home,” his wife said with a loaded shrug.
Jemima, who was asleep in a chair against the wall when he entered, now stirred awake.
“You’re here,” she said, in a tone that made him feel about as welcome as Nurse Ratched.
The Intermission Page 16
