Been There, Married That (ARC)

by Gigi Levangie

  “Stop!” Sid screamed, snatching the towel from her hand.

  The momoir actress grabbed a chair and huddled next to Sid. “Did I tell you my mother fucked my husband? It’s all in my memoir, out yesterday, chapter 3, page 78.”

  None of us had noticed car lights circling the sycamore, nor the slam of the French church door.

  “What is going on?!” I heard someone yell.

  Liz had Juliette in a choke hold. Karyn was backed up against the fireplace, fanning herself with a napkin.

  I scraped my dessert before looking up. Trevor Nash had materialized at the foot of the table, his mouth agape, his alert hazel eyes slowly comprehending, but the words, the words still unformed . . . maybe I should fetch his vocabulary cards?

  “Trevor!” I launched from my seat, knocking my chair backward. “Do you know Sid? Have you two met?”

  “My . . . my Warhol . . . ,” Trevor said, choking sounds emerging from his throat. I dragged a chair over.

  “Someone grab a water!” I said.

  “Tequila,” Trevor said, whimpering as I sat him down.

  “Tequila!” I yelled, and Sid made a beeline for the bar.

  “Now, Trevor,” I said, taking him by his square shoulders and looking him in the eye. “I can’t explain.”

  7: Mirage Counseling

  “Who wants to start?” Dr. Erskin, who had the appearance of an eel that lived ten thousand feet below sea level, assessed us over his wire-rim glasses.

  I was pressed into one end of his sticky leather couch; Trevor was seated at the other end, his knees migrating into the middle cushion.

  “I yield the floor,” I said.

  “Go ahead, you go,” Trevor said, pitching the therapy ball to my court.

  “You called the session,” I said, holding a gritty smile.

  Welcome to marriage and family counseling, the last refuge of marriage refugees. Trevor took a deep breath before laying out his listicle of demands, which he read from a folded piece of paper; I imagined Number Three had typed them up.

  I thought of all the couples I knew who’d tried marriage counseling . . .

  Shelly and Grover: divorced.

  “I want sex more often,” Trevor said. “This would be good for my cortisol levels. My naturopath says my adrenals are shot.”

  Terry and Michele: separated for two years.

  “I feel like I’m not being heard,” Trevor said. “Aggie just doesn’t care.”

  Mark and Liam: divorced.

  “Look, maybe I shouldn’t have relied so much on the . . . our assistant,” Trevor said, “but it’s like I was confused, you know? Like, she was more of a wife than my wife; she knows where all my best socks are.”

  Carrie and Brett: suicide/widowed.

  How about all the marriage and family therapists who were divorced, separated, confirmed bachelor/ettes? Or the Beverly Hills shrink who hired hookers to keep her marriage together? The couple that screws hookers together stays together, amirite?

  “Agnes?” The doctor stared at me, his baby mustache twitching.

  In LA, therapy detritus was like nuclear fallout—widespread and everlasting. I shook my head.

  “You seem to have an opinion,” Dr. Erskin said, who overprescribed all the best actors, directors, and screenwriters in town. More than one Oscar winner owed his overdose to Dr. Erskin.

  “Why did you laugh?” Trevor said. “See that, Doc? She doesn’t take anything seriously, not even our marriage.”

  “Did you listen to Trevor?” Dr. Erskin asked, a look of concern on his face.

  “You’re so punishing,” Trevor said.

  I was speechless, but I managed to spit out, “If I were punishing, you wouldn’t be breathing.”

  “Do you hear that, Doc?” Trevor said. “She talks ghetto.”

  “Are you sorry, Trevor, for taking a vacation with your house assistant?” the doctor asked.

  “We call her our majordomo,” Trevor said. Majordomo was the latest accessory for every “name” in Hollywood. “And I really just needed her for companion sleeping. So even though I’m totally, 100 percent innocent, I apologize.”

  “Agnes, do you hear him?”

  The AC unit whined. I shivered. I wasn’t a perfect person. I certainly wasn’t a perfect wife. I was tired all the time. I fantasized about Trevor’s (relatively painless) death. I flirted with Luis. I thought about doing jump squats on that popular yoga instructor, the Westside moms’ human trampoline.

  “Do you hear Trevor?” the doctor was asking. “He said he’s sorry.”

  I cleared my throat. “Yes,” I said. I felt like Michael Corleone in Godfather III. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. I made an enraged yet despondent Al Pacino face.

  “Are you sure you didn’t sleep with Petra?” I asked.

  “I don’t screw where I shit,” Trevor said. “I was on the yacht in the middle of the ocean and I realized I was still unhappy.”

  “You were probably seasick,” I said. “You know how you get.”

  “You know me so well,” Trevor said. “Anyway, I can be unhappy in my own bed, right, Doc?”

  “So you didn’t fuck Petra,” I said.

  “If I’m going to fuck someone, it’s going to be above the line, okay? I’m not an animal.” (Above the line in film: basically, the movie star. Below the line: basically, everyone else.) Trevor had standards. Bad ones—but still. Standards.

  “But you have to admit that you haven’t been attracted to me for a while,” Trevor said.

  I hadn’t considered my part in this breakup. Even at 5 percent, it was still glimmering and alive. He’s right, I thought. Maybe, subconsciously, I was trying to hand him over—Here, you take him; I’m up to my ears in actual child.

  “She told me you said, ‘If you can get him, you can have him.’”

  Guilty as charged.

  “That doesn’t sound like me,” I lied.

  The doctor raised his untamed brow. Did he never look in the mirror and think, Trim the hedges?

  “I like that you’re talking,” Dr. Erskin said. “Agnes, I can see what Trevor wants. Do you want to save your marriage?”

  I wasn’t sure. I wanted to be sure.

  “It’s already been at the bottom of the pool for five minutes. I don’t think life support can save it.”

  “Well, I want to try,” Trevor said, sliding his hand toward mine, his pinkie touching my pinkie like kids in a darkened movie theater. “What do you say?”

  I swiveled toward him and held his gaze, trying to read his unique computer printout.

  “I need to pee,” he said, jumping up from the couch.

  Dr. Erskin and I stared at each other for a few seconds. I heard the door to the bathroom close.

  “Is this salvageable, this marriage?” I asked. “Is there any hope of us dancing together at Pep’s wedding?”

  “There’s always hope,” he said. “I like your sweater, by the way. Your breasts are the perfect size. Just enough to fill a champagne glass.”

  He winked. I hoped he didn’t mean champagne flute, because picture those breasts. Trevor sat back down beside me, and I grabbed his hand. I recalled a conversation with Liz, when we were imagining possible future suitors. My list: Idris Elba, Warren Buffett, Obama, if he ever divorced Michelle, which he wouldn’t. (Of course he wouldn’t. She’d kill him.) That’s when Liz said it. And she was right. She was always right.

  “The grass isn’t always greener,” she’d said. “Sometimes it isn’t even grass.”

  I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but overnight, I was acting like a female cuckold, a woman scorned. I had a purpose in my life: to catch Trevor in a lie.

  It was almost thrilling. Not “Starring Matt Damon as Jason Bourne” thrilling, but snooping on my husband did speed up my heart rate. Until Trevor left me with the cunning (cunting?) Petra, I’d never played the victim card. Now that I held it in my hand (or stuffed it in my Goyard wallet), I was punching my victim card as
though after ten uses I’d get a free macchiato. Better yet, I had a get - out - of - jail - free card in case I ever slipped off the marriage wagon into the arms of a tennis pro or trainer or dazzling Brazilian valet.

  Hey, I had my excuse.

  Of course, I’d never use it.

  (Of course not.)

  “Why not?” Liz asked. “Everyone cheats in this town.”

  “I don’t want another man inside me,” I said over Shawarma and couscous at one of the eight hundred Persian places in Westwood.

  As befitting my new title, “woman scorned,” I had become that thing I used to loathe. A sneak. Now, I understood why Juliette had been driving us insane with thoughts of egregious Jordan playing the field (the field being her best friend). Would I, too, go off the deep end and land on a plastic surgeon’s table with the Rolling Stones playing in the background, my face bloodied to a pulp and my breasts the size of honeydew?

  “Have you guys started having sex again?” Liz asked.

  “Yes,” I said, properly ashamed.

  “It doesn’t feel . . . weird?”

  “You mean, do I picture him with my former confidante? The woman who helped me raise my child? The woman who helped me raise my husband right out of the house? Even though they apparently weren’t screwing?”

  “So it’s not bothering you at all,” she said. “Good.”

  “He said he didn’t sleep with Petra,” I said.

  “Men never lie,” Liz said.

  I’d been checking Trevor’s phone while he showered, and I’d wake up to check it in the middle of the night while he slept. I sniffed his neck when we hugged, a truffle pig searching for eau de strange pussy. I counted and recounted the number of condoms in his travel bag.

  (What were condoms doing in his travel bag?)

  I’d swing by his office, marching past the pretty receptionist, down the side hall into his inner sanctum. I’d morphed into one of “those” wives—rich bitches with sour faces. I’d wondered why they looked so unhappy as they’d slide out of their Tesla SUVs in their distressed jeans—the only thing distressed about their lives. What could possibly be so wrong in their spoiled, coddled existence?

  Well.

  “Trevor and I came to the conclusion that divorce isn’t the answer.”

  “It depends on the question,” Liz said. “If the question is, ‘Did your husband go on a cruise with a boatload of supermodels?’ the answer might be divorce.”

  I dug into the hummus. Was Trevor sincere? He’d apologized in the therapist’s office. He’d been behaving extra nice—almost uncomfortably so. He’d banished Petra from our home and never mentioned her name. Except for the house, the cars, the Triplets, and the credit cards, it almost felt like normal life.

  My phone buzzed. Strange number. I looked at Liz.

  “When you have kids, you answer,” Liz said.

  “Agnes Murphy,” said a voice that sounded like a warm blanket on a chilly November afternoon.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Gio Metz here,” the man said. Gio Metz was a legendary director of the old school. Drugs, sex, rock and roll, and operatic gore. “I just read your latest, The Deadlies. I want to talk to you.”

  I rolled my eyes at Liz.

  “Whoever this is, fuck off,” I said. into the phone. “Gio Metz does not read trash.”

  I hung up.

  Lucas, my book agent, called as I waited at the valet station. “Did you just hang up on Gio Metz?”

  The valet handed me my keys and opened the door. His nameplate said Tom, but his smile said Rodolfo.

  “That wasn’t Gio Metz,” I said.

  “You do realize we don’t have any traction on this book. You haven’t done any publicity. I don’t see you Instagramming or YouTubing or live-tweeting The Bachelor.”

  “Did Philip Roth live-tweet The Bachelor?”

  “You’re comparing yourself to Philip Roth.”

  “No, maybe, of course not,” I said. “I hate The Bachelor—women crying over a stranger with horse teeth. Makes my second-gen feminist skin crawl.”

  “Will you please talk to him?”

  “Gio Metz? Are you kidding? Of course.”

  “You know what? Don’t. I’ll call him. I’ll set up a lunch.”

  * * *

  “Fucking superlative,” Trevor said (vocab word) when I told him I was planning lunch with Gio Metz. I was surprised. Metz was uncontrollable, a filmmaker who veered from in-your-face classics to catastrophic flops. Trevor emerged from a safer era of filmmaking. Metz’s cronies were Scorsese and Coppola. Trevor’s era sprouted guys who got really, really mad on Twitter.

  “It is?” I was sort of hoping he’d be jealous. “I didn’t know you were a fan.”

  “I’m not; he’s insane,” he said. “But I want him for Motor City Hustle. We’ll make it a dinner. A double date.”

  Trevor had been trying to get a historic Detroit pimp project off the ground. Gio Metz was on the short list of directors. The script was a guaranteed Oscar nomination for the actor, like a syphilitic hooker role for an actress.

  “He didn’t say anything about a girlfriend,” I said. I don’t know why I said that. I do know why I said that. Because I thought, Does Gio Metz have a girlfriend?

  “Metz?” Trevor laughed. “He always has a girlfriend.”

  I checked my phone. Lucas had called me with a time and place for lunch. I didn’t call him back. The meal was already in the Trevor Hollywood machine, to be churned out the other end as something I didn’t recognize.

  For dinner, Trevor chose the overpriced tapas place with esoteric tequilas where he could get his corner table and favorite chair, facing out. When we arrived, Gio Metz’s agent, enthusiastic wearer of gold chain bracelets and fan of convertible tans, was sitting in Trevor’s chair. Markie K. appeared to be a few shots in. I’d say he was celebrating, but he celebrated like this every day, dodging DUIs like handball at the Jonathan Club.

  Trevor stood at the table, vibrating, until Markie got the message.

  “My bad. Keeping it warm for the king!” Markie said, jumping up and almost knocking the table over. Markie, with his bald pate and graying sideburns, still used the nickname his mother called him when he was six.

  After everyone had calmed down from the near-tragic seating fiasco, Gio Metz appeared at the hostess stand, wearing his signature beat-up leather jacket and his larger - than - what’s - acceptable - in - LA presence. The beard looked fuller, the smile bigger, his eyes brighter than his pictures as he approached the table. All eyes in the restaurant were on him.

  Markie had been talking about his divorce; his wife had left him for her private manicurist. “I’m bummed because my cuticles were in good shape for the first time in years.”

  “Gio! Buddy!” Trevor stood up and hugged Gio from across the table. Markie followed suit.

  An hour later, Markie was regaling us all with his near-death story, a burglary in his home, one we’d heard many times from various sources, each time the burglars multiplying and getting more and more violent. In a few months, the burglars would be rabid zombie serial killers.

  “They tied me up and shoved me in a closet,” Markie said. “I shit my pants. I’m not proud.” That part, to his credit, never changed.

  “Fantastic.” Gio clapped his hands together. “I was awaiting the denouement.”

  “They finally figured out where the rich people live,” I said, sipping my drink. “I wonder what took them so long.”

  Markie and Trevor were onto another favorite topic of conversation—net worth.

  “C’mon, he can’t be worth that much,” Trevor said. “The guy hasn’t made a hit in ten years.”

  “Real estate,” Markie said. “He still has that house in Malibu.”

  “Looks like a Mexican whorehouse,” Trevor said.

  “You need to leave.” Gio leaned over and whispered in my ear; heat radiated off his skin.

  “What do you mean?” I looked around the table. Did
he want me to leave the restaurant?

  “Leave LA,” he said. “Get out of the bubble. You’ll never write anything worth a shit here.”

  “You seem very certain of this,” I said.

  “Hollywood killed Dashiell Hammett and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Remember that.”

  “That’s why you left.”

  “No,” he said, “I left because of my fourth wife and a nasty coke habit.”

  “So, Gio, what do you think?” Trevor was asking.

  Gio laughed.

  “About the script—did you read the script?” Trevor asked, then turned to Markie. “Did he read the script?”

  “It’s a shit burger. But I’m interested in the story,” Gio said. “I’d have to rewrite it. There’s no real danger in it. No blood, no life! Where’s the heat?”

  Trevor looked stunned, then shook it off. “Fucking my thoughts, exactly,” he said. “Rewrite it, do it fast. Let’s make this stinker.”

  Gio laughed again. “Wouldn’t be the first!”

  “Who do you like?”

  “Whoever’s not a complete moron,” Gio said. “Actors don’t even have high school diplomas, most of them. But they’ll pontificate like scholars after reading one fucking book. Get me one who sells tickets and isn’t the worst reprobate in the entire fucking Western Hemisphere and we’ll make this turkey sing.”

  “Sounds good,” Trevor said.

  “What’d you think of your wife’s book, Trevor?” Gio asked.

  Trevor blinked as though a spotlight were shining in his eyes.

  “I liked it,” he said.

  “Liked it?” Gio asked. “It was fucking great.”

  “No, hey,” I said. “Not fucking great, I mean, close.”

  “Yeah, it was good,” Trevor said.

  Gio leaned forward, his nose hovering near Trevor’s face. I held my breath.

  “Trevor Nash. You haven’t read your wife’s book,” Gio said, pounding the table.

  “I read a review,” Trevor said. “The New York Times—that’s almost like reading it.”

  “It’s totally okay,” I said, patting Trevor’s arm. “Trevor has difficulty focusing.”

  “You know how hard it is to write a book, a book with pathos and humor and a great fucking ending?” Gio thundered.