“Oooph,” she says, pushing me back upright.
“Excuse me,” I say, smoothing the front of my dress and trying to look nonchalant.
“Can I help you?”
“Sorry. Yes. I’m, uh, a guest here? Tonight?”
“Okaaaay,” she says, looking me up and down. “Can I see your credentials?”
“I don’t have—that is—I had them, but I forgot them at home.” She sighs, as if that’s exactly what she expected me to say.
“Well, who are you with?”
“James Franklin?” I say, hopefully.
“James Franklin, the actor?” she says, narrowing her eyes doubtfully.
“I’m—yes.”
“Like, as, his date?” she says, frowning, looking me up and down.
“Yes, I’m with him—yes.”
“But he’s in there already,” she says.
“I know. He told me—I’m meeting him.”
“You’re meeting him?”
I’m tired of everything I say to this girl being repeated incredulously, but even to me my story sounds weak. Why didn’t we go together? Why am I here by myself, feeling like I’m trying to crash a party to which I wasn’t invited?
“Yes, I’m supposed to be meeting him.”
She’s still eyeing me skeptically. “We-elll, what’s your name?” she says.
“Franny, uh, Frances Banks.”
As she searches her clipboard, I’m jostled by a couple I can’t fully see, but even out of the corner of my eye can tell are shiny and happy, and look like they belong.
“Hi, Taylor!” cries the happy voice of the shiny girl.
Taylor with the ponytail looks up from her clipboard, and her face goes from cloudy to bright, as though she just found out she was picked for the cheerleading squad. “Hiyeee! Ohmahgosh!” she gushes. “Hi, Penny! You look so beautiful.”
I know it’s her before I even turn my head, but there’s a small hope in my heart that I’m wrong, that it isn’t Penelope Schlotzsky—now Penny De Palma—who’s sparkling behind me, who’s looking so beautiful, that it isn’t Penny who’s going to see that I’m not being allowed into the party she’s breezing into, but as I turn, it isn’t Penny I recognize first, it’s her dress.
Penny De Palma and I are wearing the same dress.
Her jaw drops and she blinks quickly, as though she’s trying to get a piece of dust out of her eye. But then, a beat later, her face rearranges itself into a smile, and she holds her head high and straight.
“Franny!” she says warmly. “We’re twins! You look wonderful!”
I realize my mouth is still hanging open, and I snap it shut and attempt a recovery of my own. “Thanks! Uh, so do you.”
And she really does. The dress fits her better, and her long, straight blond hair shines in glowing contrast to the bright green silk. My hand goes to the back of my head, where I can feel the lumps of bobby pins, and I can only hope that none of them are sticking out at the moment.
“You guys know each other?” Taylor says, baffled.
“Hello, Frances, lovely to see you again,” says Joe Melville, who seems to emerge out of nowhere.
I hadn’t even focused on who Penny’s escort was, since he turned for a moment to talk to someone else, and now I’m sure I’ve flushed beet red, because my whole body feels hot. It couldn’t possibly be any worse. I’ll be turned away at the door, not just in front of Penny De Palma, but in front of my former agent, too.
“Oh, hello, Joe.” I sound like I’m reading a children’s book out loud. Is the crow slow in the snow? I’m tempted to continue, but Joe has seen someone else he knows and has already turned his back to me.
“Who are you here with?” Penny asks, looking around for my invisible date.
“I’m—well—James was supposed to meet me and I forgot my passes because I grabbed my Filofax instead of my purse, and I’m sorry I’m wearing the same thing as you, and I’m thinking I might just go home.”
I’m expecting a look of pity, an embarrassed smile, a polite brush-off. But Penny De Palma grabs my hand in hers and looks me straight in the eye.
“Nonsense,” she says. “You’re with me.”
She takes my Filofax from under my arm and thrusts it against Joe Melville’s chest.
“Hold this,” she says to him, and she pulls me past Joe and Taylor and several others who are hovering nearby, hoping for a glimpse of someone they recognize.
There’s a line of photographers on the curb facing the theater. Some must be standing on some sort of risers or bleachers, because they’re impossibly tall and staggered like a stadium audience. I hang back, letting Penny strike a pose in front of them. Flashbulbs start to go off like huge white fireworks exploding in the sky.
“Penny! Penny! Penny! Penny! Penny! Penny!”
They yell as if she’s miles away, shouting her name over and over, frantic and demanding. To me they seem almost angry, as if her pose is not what they came to see, isn’t meeting their high expectations. But Penny just smiles and giggles and waves as if they’re all old friends and they’re blowing her kisses instead of screaming hysterically. She looks back at me and waves for me to join her, and when I shake my head, she reaches out and grabs my hand.
“C’mon!”
“Penny, no, wait—I don’t know how to—”
“Angle your body so you aren’t flat to the cameras,” she says, cupping her hand around my ear so I can hear her over the crowd. “Put one foot slightly in front of the other. Follow me! Matching dresses might land us on Page 6!”
And she pulls me beside her into an empty space opposite the wall of popping flashbulbs, where a giant poster for the movie is set up on an easel. She puts her hand on her hip and gestures for me to do the same, so we’re like dancers in a chorus line.
“Look, you guys,” she calls out, tossing her hair over one shoulder. “My friend and I decided to wear the same dress tonight! Aren’t we just mad?”
I try not to squint against all the flashbulbs, and I’m trying my best to keep smiling, but my mouth is starting to shake and my knees are wobbling. Penelope pulls me along tirelessly, past the photographers and down the line of interviewers, happily telling each one the story of why we’re wearing the same dress, even expanding it as she explains how we cooked up this wacky prank and how much fun we had getting dressed together.
“My friend here, Franny, and I, we’re just crazy!” she tells the reporter from Entertainment! Entertainment! “We love daring each other to do crazy things!”
“Are you having fun?” she asks, as she shepherds me through the crowd to another interview.
“I’m—I guess so.” I’m thankful to be helped by her, but the truth is I don’t think I am having fun. “I had no idea you—you’re really famous now.”
“Oh, that?” she dismisses my comment with a breezy wave. “They yell like that for everyone. Some publicity person tells them my name. They have no idea who I am or if I’m anybody at all. They yell like that and take everyone’s picture, in case.”
Penny doesn’t seem to care, but I’m embarrassed to have misinterpreted yet another element of this baffling world.
The volume of the crowd increases, and behind me I can hear the photographers screaming, “Arturo, Arturo, Arturo!” I turn around, and there he is, Arturo DeNucci, two feet in front of us. Without any hesitation, Penelope pushes through the crowd surrounding him and sticks out her hand.
“Arturo, I wanted to introduce myself. I’m Penny De Palma. I’m a huge fan of your work.”
Arturo DeNucci seems amused by this, and looks her up and down while still holding on to her hand.
“Penny …?”
“De Palma,” she says. “Like the director.”
“You’re Italian?” he asks, looking skeptical.
“No, sir,” she says, proudly. “I’m from Tampa!”
Later, as Penny talks to another reporter, I’m bumped by an aggressive-looking man in a suit.
“I’m s
orry,” he says, exasperated, looking over my shoulder at Penny. “Maybe you can—I have Annelise Carson here, and she’s supposed to be next to talk to E!E!, but Brad Jacobsen’s people keep jumping in front of us.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, though I’m not sure if this has something to do with me.
“Well, can you—is Penny almost done, or …?”
“Uh, yes, I think so.”
“Well, but, so—wait—you’re with her, right? I mean, I saw you walking her down the line.”
“Um, I’m with her, I guess, yes.”
“Sorry, I’m sure we’ve met before, but I’m blanking—you’re her—publicist, right? Or, no, wait—manager?” He’s smiling at me, tensely, and I know his smile will fade when he realizes I can’t help him, that I don’t know any of the people whose names he just said, that I’m the last person who has any power here.
“No, I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m no one.”
28
Penelope and I get separated as the man in the suit pushes his client in front of me so she can be interviewed next. I wave to Penelope, to gesture that I’ll see her inside, but she doesn’t see me, and I’m swallowed back into the crowd and carried along for a moment by the sea of people. They’re all trying so hard to shove their way forward, wanting to get past me, to get past everyone, to get to the front of something, to get there first, that I hardly have to make any effort at all to move.
Up ahead, I think I see him. I know it’s him, in fact, from the back of his head, by the way his hair curls slightly over the collar of his blue shirt. And I’m flooded with relief to see even a part of him. I struggle to free myself from the current of people, and I finally emerge and make my way to an open pocket in the crowd, directly behind James. But when I tap him on the shoulder, he doesn’t turn around. I tap him again, a little harder this time.
“—as I said to Arturo, it’s our work, as artists—” he’s speaking to an interviewer, and he glances back and catches my eye.
“Just a second,” he says to me, roughly, then turns back to the reporter. “Like I was saying, it’s all in the connection to the story, to the world of the story and the message—”
He had to have seen me, even though there was nothing in his eyes I recognized from the way he usually looks at me. But he didn’t give the slightest smile or wink, nothing to let me know he’s even secretly glad to see me.
I don’t want to try and get his attention again, but I’m afraid I’ll never find him if I go into the theater alone. So I wait awkwardly off to the side, feeling completely out of place. I don’t know what to do with my hands, or where to look, so I keep my focus on the back of his head, as if that’s what I’ve come here to do, as if he’s some new animal at the zoo I’ve been assigned to study. I’m jostled by the crowd, but I hold my ground. I’m a rock in their ocean, the only thing not moving forward. I’m nothing much to look at, not one of the beautiful fish that continue to stream past me, only something to pass over swiftly. I’m just taking up space.
James finally finishes his interview and turns around.
“Inside,” he says stiffly, not making eye contact.
The crowd has thickened even more, and it’s even harder to make our way through it than it was a moment ago. I can see the entrance just ahead, but we’re progressing toward it so slowly, moving only inches at a time, that it feels as though we’ll never reach it. James and I almost get separated by the crowd at one point, and as I’m getting swept away from him, without thinking, I reach for his hand, feeling for his fingertips to hold onto, because I don’t want to lose him again. Our hands brush, but before I can get a grip he swats mine away like it’s a bee that might sting him, then forges ahead, hands firmly at his sides, not once looking back.
The crowd spills into the cool, relative quiet of the theater. Finally the traffic thins and we’re deposited into the lobby like something coughed up by the ocean, and I glance around, dazed.
My eyes take a moment to adjust to the darkness of the lobby, and I can’t find James, can’t see anyone or anything familiar.
“Franny?” comes a voice from the darkness on my left. “Over here.”
I’m surprised to feel James grab my hand, and I almost fall out of my shoes once again. He pulls me around the corner, behind a bank of pay phones, where he kisses me deeply, pressing his whole body against me. I surrender for a minute, then push him away. For a moment I can’t breathe properly. “Why—you,” I’m sputtering. “What the fuck?”
“What?”
“What? What? What was that? You totally ignored me. You slapped my hand away.”
“Oh, well, yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“Franny, we’re in public.”
“I know, but you invited me here.”
“Yes. To see the work. To see the movie.”
“But—I thought you invited me here as your date.”
“Yes. And here we are. On that date. You look very pretty, by the way.”
“Penny DePalma is wearing the same dress. Did you buy one for her, too?”
“Really?” he says, looking more bemused than concerned. “That’s funny. I didn’t even pick it—one of the PAs picked them out.”
“Oh,” I say, deflated, and for some reason that information makes everything worse. “So, what? I can be with you here, in the dark of a theater, but you can’t—I can’t be seen with you, or something?”
“Well, no, I mean, it’s probably not a good idea,” he says, as though it’s something that should be obvious.
“Why not?”
“Franny, it’s no big deal,” he says, flashing me a smile. “There’s just a ton of press here, that’s all. The movie’s getting a lot of coverage.”
“And?”
“And, I don’t want them crawling all over my private life.”
“Is that why you wanted me to meet you here?”
“Sort of, maybe. Arturo wanted me to have a drink with him first.”
“I thought you said there was a cast thing.”
“There was. Me and Arturo having a drink.”
“And you couldn’t bring me to that?”
“It’s—well, no. Arturo’s very—private.”
“I don’t understand all this sudden need for privacy. Why would you care? What happens if he knows—or anyone knows—you have a, a … you told me you loved me.”
“And I do. But that’s for us, that’s our space.”
I swallow hard, trying to calm down, feeling dangerously close to tears. “But you brought me to this space. To this public event. You invited me.”
“Right. I came here to promote the movie. Which is part of my job. As an actor.”
“But aren’t you also a person when you do that? An actor who also has the personal life of—of a person?”
“No, not—well, okay, I suppose at some point, if you’re part of an established—look, you’re upset over nothing. You’re being unreasonable. Honestly, I feel like you want me to meet you halfway on this thing.”
“Isn’t halfway where two people usually meet?”
“Well, in general, maybe, but tonight—this is sort of a big deal for me. It’s my night. I’m not sure you—”
“You think I don’t get it?”
“Well, no—I mean, how could you?”
I’m having trouble making sense of this conversation. James is speaking with authority, but there’s something wrong, something feels so wrong somehow. I don’t care about waving and smiling and having my picture taken with him, it’s not that, but somehow I’m getting the feeling I’m an embarrassment to him, as if he’s not sure I’m good enough. And suddenly I need to get away and think, even just for a second.
“Excuse me. I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Franny, wait.”
“I’ll be right back. Can I—will you be here, or should I meet you somewhere?”
“Yes, of course—I can wait here for you,” he says, then hesitates. “Although, I mean, it’s starting
in about five minutes. Maybe I should give you your ticket, and I’ll just see you in there?”
“Sure. Okay. I don’t want you to miss any of it.”
“Oh, I’ve seen it already.”
“You have?”
“Oh yeah, a bunch of times. They screen it for Arturo whenever he asks.”
“Oh.” I don’t know why this information hurts my feelings. Maybe it’s just that the world of things James doesn’t share with me keeps growing.
He shrugs. “I just want to see, I want to see how the audience likes it.”
“Oh.”
“But, you know what? I’ll wait. I’ll be here,” he says. “Unless—do you need more than a couple of minutes?”
“No, that’s fine. I’ll be right back. I just need to—to wash my hands, I think.”
“Okay,” he says, taking a deep breath, and I can see he’s trying not to look impatient, trying not to be impatient, while he indulges my sudden urgent need for cleanliness.
As I tiptoe awkwardly across the carpeted lobby, I feel a wave of shame. What’s the big deal? I understand why he wouldn’t bring me with him to have drinks with Arturo DeNucci. I probably would have been so shy and overwhelmed to be sitting in public with Arturo DeNucci that I would have made them both uncomfortable. I wouldn’t have known how to act in front of them any more than I know how to act in this situation. I’m just a person making a big deal out of nothing, and leaving James to wait by some pay phones so I can wash my hands, when he’d rather be settling in to watch his movie. I’ll just take a minute and pull myself together, I decide, and when I emerge from the bathroom I’ll be a completely different person: I’ll morph into someone who bounces back easily from forgetting her purse and wearing the same dress as someone else. It’ll be like Clark Kent turning into Superman, only he had a phone booth to change in, and I have a stall in the ladies’ restroom of the Ziegfeld Theater. Oh, well. We all have to start somewhere.
Someday, Someday, Maybe: A Novel Page 26