The Summer Set

by Aimee Agresti

  Charlie put her arm around her mom but didn’t say more. She feared breaking the spell that had allowed her mom to offer this monumental admission. In this moment, Charlie felt understood, and that was more than enough.

  27

  I WON’T BE A SUPPORTING PLAYER TO THIS ATROCITY

  Nick paced the checkerboard floor of the legendary Savoy, trying not to appear anxious. He hoped his typical uniform—blazer, collared shirt, dark jeans—would satisfy Sarah’s standards. It always startled him how Charlie and her mother could each be so intensely intimidating in such entirely different ways.

  At last they breezed in, pleasantries and mild embraces exchanged. As Sarah led them into the hotel’s tearoom, Nick whispered in Charlie’s ear, his hand resting gently on the lark on her neck: “It’s okay, I know you were really named for the French Alps.”

  It was his way of saying he appreciated what she was doing for him, and she stopped, looked at him just a moment, with the slightest smile. Charlie had chosen her stage name—making it legal at eighteen—as a way of emancipating herself. Even though Sarah remained offended by the change in last name, Nick knew Charlie had taken great care naming herself after one of their few family vacations, when they still were a family (the Savoy being a mountain range in the French Alps). She had told him so much that summer and later on in letters, actual letters on paper, in the years before The Tempest, when she was off doing theater and her first film on the East Coast while he was on the opposite coast, taking meetings, assembling the building blocks for his directorial debut, making ends meet doctoring scripts. Back when he and Charlie were so undefined but had so much quiet hope.

  They took their seats now at a table beneath a bright skylight, near a glass gazebo that housed a piano, tender notes spilling from it.

  “I hope your meetings were productive,” Sarah said as they paged through the menu.

  “Yes, thank you, always good to see old friends,” Nick said, sipping his water. He couldn’t care less what tea to order. If he could’ve gotten a scotch on the rocks without it looking like he was completely on edge, he would’ve. “But I’m sorry I missed seeing your school.”

  “It’s really special,” Charlie said sincerely, looking at her mom.

  “Yes, indeed, we had fun.” Sarah patted Charlie’s arm across the table. “The children are going to be asking for my puppeteer, so perhaps you’ll be back again before Christmas.”

  Sarah was easily as warm as he had ever seen her. So he decided to try. “Since we’re sort of talking shop anyway,” he began, smiling. Charlie tensed up beside him, her posture straightening and her lips setting into a firm line. It was now or never. “We’ve had a fantastic start to the summer at Chamberlain, thanks to Charlie.” He looked at her, and she nodded, reluctant. “We’ve already got exciting things planned for Romeo and Juliet, which opens in just a few days, and then we’ll be starting A Midsummer Night’s Dream after that. And I thought, how thrilling would it be for audiences to see another adored Chamberlain alumna return?” He thought he had done well, but Sarah remained silent and Charlie just gazed from him to her mother. “Oh, and of course, I mean you!” Sarah’s face had hardened, her eyes steely. “And, if this is too short notice, we’re actually finishing the season with The Tempest—to have you for that would be stunning.” Truthfully, it would be much more useful to have her sooner than The Tempest, but if he had to wait, he would. “You could have any role, obviously. Not just a cameo, this time. Unless that’s what you wanted, like last time.” Sarah had been the equivalent of an Easter egg in his film version. She didn’t enjoy film work—If I wanted to be a film star, I would have been one, I did it once and never again, it never fulfilled me—she had told him back then, but she had offered to bless his project by appearing in the background of a crowd scene (requiring only one day of work), and her appearance (a close-up long enough to get attention) had succeeded in giving him cred and publicity.

  “What Nick is trying to say—” Charlie started.

  “I’m perfectly aware of what he’s trying to say,” Sarah snapped. Nick froze, felt a sudden unraveling. “Just as I’m well aware of how swiftly he has allowed his theater to wither on the vine. And you too. Both of you, completely and entirely ill-equipped to give it the lifeblood it needed to survive.”

  “What did I—?” Charlie was about to defend herself, but Sarah just cut her off.

  “I know what’s going on. News does make it over here, reviews. You took an active role in hastening the death of an institution,” she barked at Nick, and then she turned to Charlie. “And you, my darling, took a passive role—just as worthy of blame—in allowing it to happen, when all it might have taken was a season or two of your work to help it regain its luster. Do you not remember when I suggested, after that last terrible movie of yours, that you devote some time to the theater, return to your roots, recenter yourself, when Grayson passed?” This was the first Nick had heard of it.

  “It wasn’t the right time for me, I don’t see how—” Charlie countered, but Sarah interrupted again.

  “You are both too foolish and selfish to care for anything properly. You deserve each other.” Sarah gathered her glasses, her bag, stood up. “And I will not be a supporting player to this atrocity. This destruction of a man’s legacy.” Nick was sure the man in question was not himself, but Grayson. In one sweeping motion, before he or Charlie could locate any words, she was gone.

  Nick sighed, head in his hands. “That went well.” He peeked up at Charlie. “Is this a family trait, storming out of restaurants?”

  “Apparently.” Charlie tossed her napkin on the table as the server appeared bearing the tray with their tea. “I’m terribly sorry,” she said in her sweetest voice. “We won’t be needing those after all. We’ve had a sudden change in plans. We’ll just take the check, thank you.”

  Nick watched from the corner of his eye as the server leaned in. “Ms. Savoy, certainly no charge. Please come back when you have more time. We would like to treat you to a proper tea.”

  “Thank you,” she said kindly to the woman, not taking it for granted, it seemed. “I’ll look forward to that.”

  Nick glanced at his watch as they crossed the lobby. “So we have exactly twelve hours. Enough time to salvage this?” he asked, pushing through the doors back outside.

  “Did we just see the same show?” Charlie sounded defeated. “I don’t think it’s safe to even go home yet.”

  “We should’ve kept that hotel,” he sighed.

  28

  I’M NOT UP FOR A TATTOO

  In silence, Charlie guided them to the delicate steel curves of Millennium Bridge, that pedestrian walkway stretching across the Thames. When you stood in the center, as they did now, she always liked how London Bridge, Tower Bridge and the many offshoots lined up, extending over the water. They all gave the illusion of just barely holding London together, as though fastened with safety pins across the river dividing it.

  Boats of all sizes passed beneath them, and a familiar gray hung in the sky. The sun was trapped behind storm clouds, but the warmth of late June still enveloped them. In the distance, Tower Bridge had begun to open, allowing a large tour boat through, the upper deck full of passengers taking in the sights.

  “I still can’t believe you jumped off that thing,” Nick said quietly beside her, his eyes far away.

  “Not my proudest moment,” she said. “It was one of those things you do as a kid, or seventeen, whatever. To impress people. Friends. Who aren’t impressed with things like performing at the Globe. Then it turns out you don’t want friends like that, anyway. I could’ve been killed. Should’ve picked a warmer time of year. The Thames was freezing then.”

  “I think it’s always cold, like even now it’s probably just under sixty degrees,” he said. “I remember from our shoot, stuff like that.” Their Tempest had been set in present-day London and filmed here. />
  “I’ve only been back up there—” she flicked her head toward the bridge “—once since then, and I felt like they were eyeing me, like I was there to stir shit up again. But I was just there for a yoga class, up in that walkway.” She pointed to the enclosed corridor stretching across the top of Tower Bridge.

  “Of course you were,” he said, arms folded, leaning on the railing.

  “It’s a legit thing you can do,” she said. “There’s a glass floor so you can see the whole way down, like 130 feet or something.”

  “That would be the last thing I’d want to do if I had jumped in the Thames.”

  “It was very pretty up there, actually,” she said. “But generally speaking, I find yoga kind of boring.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “I’ve mostly given up on ‘inner peace.’” She shrugged, making quotes around the term. Being on stage was as near nirvana as she ever got. The past few weeks had begun to remind her of that.

  “What’s replaced yoga?”

  “Boxing,” she said, shrugging again. “There’s a place by the art house.” She looked at him a moment, needing to say this. “I’m really sorry, about my mom and what she said, everything.”

  “It’s okay,” he said heavily, his gaze still steady in the distance. “She didn’t create this problem.”

  Charlie led them back to the riverbank, the tube station at Trafalgar Square. But they let the station pass, continuing on through leafy St. James’s Park, neither of them suggesting a cab or any way to get home more quickly. The sky darkened enough for streetlamps to flicker on, and a cool breeze blew through them, threatening rain. Their pace slowed, a calm settling between them—his hand in his pocket, jacket slung over his shoulder—as she wound them through the public gardens surrounding Buckingham Palace.

  “The crazy thing is we were actually having a good day, before this,” she said, trying to make sense of it. “My mom and me.”

  “She wasn’t wrong,” he said. “What she said about me. I let this happen. I have no one to blame—”

  “But you’re asking for help,” Charlie cut in. “You’re taking responsibility. And I don’t understand why she won’t try to save something she claims to love.” A deeper disappointment nagged at her. “I know this is going to sound like I’m a pissed-off teen—again—but part of me really thought if I just came here, if I just said that this thing that was always important to her is important to me now too, then that would be enough, you know?” She shook her head, pulled her jacket more tightly around herself. “But that’s insane of me.”

  “No, it’s not,” he said. “She’s your mom. No matter what’s gone on with you two, she should want to be there. I mean, hell, you threw a mason jar at me and I still never took off my Google alert on you.” He glanced quickly from the corner of his eye with a small smile.

  “Sure, that was easier than filing a restraining order. Then you could know, roughly, where I was and avoid me.”

  “It wasn’t to avoid you,” he said.

  “Well, maybe I’ve had an alert on you too,” she said easily, pointing for them to cross the street, walk along the edge of Hyde Park.

  He looked over, a flicker of surprise, but then said, “Fascinating.”

  She gave him the side-eye, advising him not to make a big deal, that he was lucky to have gotten that much out of her.

  “And that is how I found out about your...”

  “Dip in the harbor?” She kicked a rock as they walked.

  “I was going to say ‘accident,’ but with you it could’ve been...a lot of things, but if it had to happen at all, I hope it was just an accident.”

  “It was,” she said.

  “Because you scared me, you know.” He stopped walking, faced her now, serious.

  “I’m sorry,” she said and meant it. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He looked into her eyes a moment—just long enough to seem significant, to remind Charlie for a flash what it felt like to matter to someone unconditionally—before setting off again.

  Somehow, they had been walking an hour and a half, dusk setting in. She felt the first drops of rain on her arm, and he held out his hand to catch them.

  “Just in time. Only a few blocks away.”

  She halted, even as the rain pelted them. “I don’t want to go back there,” she said.

  “Neither do I,” he answered in relief. “Your mom is fucking scary.”

  “I know,” she said. “I have...an idea.” Her pace quickening now, she took a sharp right toward Kensington High Street, away from home.

  “I don’t think I’m up for a tattoo right now. I just don’t know what to get or where, it would stress me out,” he said, as though recalling the last time she’d had an idea in a summer rain. “Not that I regret that or anything.” He put his hand to the lark on the back of his neck.

  “Relax,” she laughed. “This is entirely impermanent.”

  She had been shocked then that he had actually gone through with the lark—the bird that greeted them the morning after they had broken into the historic Chamberlain cabin and finally let things happen between them—and now even more that he’d never had it removed.

  They arrived at the strip with Marks & Spencer and H&M in record time, jogging in the deluge, their clothes soaked through. At Derry Street, they darted around the corner, running halfway down the block to a bistro. Inside the shop, a handful of tourists quietly nibbled sandwiches.

  “This looks so familiar,” Nick said, but she ignored him, not wanting to give it away.

  She grabbed a menu, seeking a girl in her twenties sweeping the floor, seemingly the only one working out front. Charlie could sense the girl trying to place her as she ordered.

  “...and a couple of these and a bottle of this.” Charlie pointed, then smiled the smile that had sealed many a deal. “And we’d like to take it up to the roof.”

  Minutes later, Charlie and Nick made their way six stories up with sandwiches, wine and explicit instructions to stay on the patio, not to leave anything behind and to be back downstairs in an hour, the shop’s closing time.

  Charlie pushed open the door onto the sprawling rooftop garden that had once played host to so many parties. Now it was shrouded in relative darkness, lit only by the nearby buildings and hazy moonlight behind thick, wet clouds, Kensington Garden and Royal Albert Hall barely visible in the foggy distance.

  The once-vibrant patio of cozy lounge furniture lay bare, save for an awning to protect against the elements and the empty bar. They sat down on the slate floor, surveying the lush green life: palm trees arched over stone paths; apple and pear trees still bearing fruit, which littered the grassy expanse; crimson roses dotting the bushes though the flamingos no longer roamed and the ponds had been drained.

  “I knew I knew this place,” Nick said, taking it all in.

  “So, technically, it closed recently, but—” Charlie explained.

  “Too bad, that was a pretty good party, as I recall,” he said, a twinkle in his eye even in the dim light.

  “It was okay,” she said, smiling at the memory of the premiere for The Tempest: its after-party, held on this very rooftop, had been their official, public debut together for anyone prone to chronicling those kinds of things. After years spent on opposite sides of the country—or the world—constructing careers, too much time and too many miles to attempt a real relationship, they had fooled themselves into believing they were destined to be the kind of friends who remained friends after a dalliance. Only to then begin secretly dating toward the end of filming The Tempest.

  After an all-night shoot riddled with problems, she had gone to comfort him in his trailer just before dawn and she had...comforted him, more than she anticipated, but he hadn’t seemed to mind. It had been four years since Chamberlain, four years of diverging paths and drifting, four years of
assuming this was friendship. And now this twist that somehow neither of them could have predicted. Still, they didn’t let it happen again until the film was officially done, after weeks on end of Nick sequestered away, editing like a mad scientist in his laboratory, not to be disturbed. When he’d finally finished, and was actually pleased, they were inseparable from the autumn release straight through until the end of the awards season the following spring.

  Their quiet stretched on, and she wondered if he was replaying that night here also, the fizzy start of things, euphoric memories that felt like vivid dreams. A calm set in, the steady rain nearly lulling her to sleep. The day had been physically and emotionally exhausting, and she only realized now that she had stopped moving.

  “Brace yourself for another disappointment,” he said as he unpacked the items they had purchased, snapping her from her drowsy thoughts. He held up the bottle of wine. “Is there anything more heartbreaking than an unopened Malbec?”

  “She said she’d throw in the corkscrew.” Charlie grabbed the bag, flipped on her phone’s flashlight to look. “Damn.” She took the bottle from his hands, gazing longingly at it. “So much untapped potential in there.”

  “Sounds like one of the last reviews I got,” he laughed, then groaned, leaning his back against the bar.

  “Can we make a pact?” she asked.

  “That depends,” he said, wary.

  “Can we, for the next—” she tugged his arm, glancing at his watch “—eight hours, forget our respective failures and not think about whatever fresh hell awaits us at Chamberlain? Just handle...”

  “The present?” he asked.

  “Exactly.” She stuck out her hand. After a moment, he shook it firmly, held on a second longer before letting go.