The Last Birthday Party

by Gary Goldstein

  “And how would you say your future beyond that is looking? Money-wise, that is.”

  It was hard to say, so that’s what Jeremy told him: “It’s hard to say.” He paused, considered the possibilities. “But it could be bright.” Because really it could. And he could work his ass off to make it happen.

  “Look, generally, I like to play these things safe. I’ve seen too many house negotiations get ridiculously ugly and protracted. And the only ones who really make out are the lawyers because of all the extra billable hours.”

  Jeremy took that in. “Is there an ‘on the other hand?’” He gazed at the walls of the house. He was thinking a nice sage green for the stucco with maybe a forest green for the trim. When was the last time the place was painted?

  “Now and then, the couple works out a deal on the side, then they come back to the lawyers to make it official. Compromises are made on the amount and frequency of payments, sometimes even on the total price. I’ve had clients take out a second mortgage to pay for the buyout, but I can tell ya, guy: that’s a slippery motherfucking slope.” Arvin sounded pretty Bronx-y just then. “It comes down to this: Are you a betting man, Jeremy?”

  That was easy—he was not, not really. And wasn’t that kind of his problem? But most problems could be solved if you tried hard enough, and this one was no different. He passed the grapefruit tree stump, noticed new green buds springing from it. Was there life again in his beloved tree or was it just a cruel trick of nature?

  “Yeah,” Jeremy finally answered Arvin, “I’m a betting man.”

  “Okay, then roll the dice. Talk to your ex, make her an offer she can’t refuse—or let her make you one. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Jeremy hung up, feeling like a dope for taking his lawyer’s initial advice about letting the house go and for not trying to crack this financial puzzle sooner—like, say, before they hired a realtor and almost sold the place. Okay, enough self-flagellation; time to crunch some numbers. He cut his walk short and went to work.

  It took a grand total of an hour for Jeremy to do the following: study the house mortgage; calculate how much they’d paid off versus the outstanding balance (still stupidly high after twenty-two years of payments); comb through their remaining savings, investment, and retirement accounts (more impressive in theory—it was shocking how little they’d accumulated); study the six-month sales contract they’d signed with Marjan (there was wiggle room for early cancellation); and then add, subtract, multiply, and divide to make Cassie an offer that he could even slightly manage, and that she might possibly agree to.

  His house in order, as it were, Jeremy steeled himself and called Cassie. He decided to make a sandwich as he talked to keep his anxiety in check. As usual, the more he wanted something, the more uneasy he felt; a diversion helped.

  She answered on the first ring. “Jeremy, hi!” she chirped in a voice so unusually buoyant you’d think she’d just won the lottery. It turned out, she kind of did.

  “What are you so happy about?” he had to ask as he sliced an avocado.

  “You are talking to the new in-house counsel for Moka Java!”

  “You got a new job? Already? Cassie, that’s fantastic! What’s Moka Java?”

  “Oh—it’s this new chain of coffeehouses coming to L.A. It’s a division of this larger corporation called Tiger Industries, which is based in—” She stopped to catch her breath. “Anyway, it’s an amazing opportunity, and I can’t believe it. I just found out, so you’re literally the first person I’ve told!”

  “Well, I’m honored,” Jeremy said. “And really happy for you. I know what a smart and capable lawyer you are—you deserve this.” He meant every word, even if it may have felt like he was buttering her up.

  “Wow, thank you, Jeremy. That’s really kind of you to say.”

  He folded a stack of turkey slices onto a piece of rye bread and topped it with the avocado. “So I guess it’s ‘So long, nonprofit?’”

  “Yep. I’m all about profit now—especially for me!” She laughed. “You do know I’m kidding, right?”

  “If you say so,” he joked back, but couldn’t fault her for wanting to make a better living. As Jeremy spread mustard over the avocado he wondered how much Cassie would be making and if it would affect their as-yet-undetermined question of who would pay whom alimony.

  “Anyway, I start next Monday. Offices are downtown so a bit of a hike, but I’ll figure it out. Maybe I’ll take the Metro.”

  Cassie was flying, so Jeremy had to bring her down to earth.

  “So, Cassie, the reason I called was because I’ve changed my mind about the house.” The sandwich making wasn’t slowing his speeding pulse. There was silence at the other end. Cassie was clearly formulating a response.

  Then: “Oh, I see,” she said, a bit deflated. “Okay, well, shouldn’t we just let the lawyers handle it?”

  “We can save a lot of time and money if we work it out ourselves. But honestly, I’m going to need your help.” He took a shot and added, “For old time’s sake.”

  He could swear that Cassie snorted at that, but maybe not. “I’m listening,” she finally said.

  As Jeremy finished assembling his sandwich (romaine, tomato, a smear of lentil hummus), he evenly recapped the financial state of Chez Lerner and what he felt was a fair installment plan to pay Cassie her share of its current worth. He hit her with an impressive array of facts, figures, and logic that included small monetary incentives for her long-term cooperation. Sure, his proposal was kind of seat-of-his-pants, but it felt earnest and workable, and he assumed the lawyers could clean up any messy parts. Jeremy took a deep breath as he finished his speech and awaited Cassie’s reply.

  “Let me think about it, okay?” She sounded neither sold nor dismissive, and that might have been about the best Jeremy could hope for to start.

  “Of course! Thanks, Cassie,” Jeremy answered as he carved his teetering sandwich into halves, stood back and admired its stature. “And I’ll let Marjan know we may be discussing a B plan.”

  “Let’s not jump the gun, okay, partner?” The lawyer had spoken. Fair enough.

  After they hung up, Jeremy sat at the dining table savoring his late lunch and thinking about refacing the kitchen cabinets: the wood was looking tired.

  He needed to quit thinking about renovations; he’d be lucky to afford his house payments to Cassie—if she even agreed to his offer. Meanwhile, he shuddered to think what kind of bill Arvin Box would eventually stick him with. He and Cassie needed to wrap up this divorce pronto.

  Jeremy finished watching a docudrama he was reviewing (nutshelling it: a young transgender Jewish woman harrowingly escapes the Nazis a day before they invade her native Poland) when Juliana called.

  “Are you sitting down?” she asked breathlessly. What, did she and Marjan go to the same school of bad-news delivery?

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What? Nothing’s wrong. You should be asking what’s right,” his agent said without giving him time to ask. “Paradise wants to talk to you again about your Wedding Crashers pitch.”

  “My what?” And wasn’t that already a movie?

  “Y’know, the remake you wanted to do. Of that old crime movie.”

  Oh. “The Honeymoon Killers?”

  “Isn’t that what I said?” Juliana was already clacking away on her keyboard; there was no point in correcting her.

  “So the flagpole spoke?” Silence. Clacking. Didn’t Juliana once say he was funny? “They said they were running it up the flagpole …”

  “Ah, right, okay. Well, they did, and you’re going back in to pitch to Tremaine.”

  Tremaine Taylor was the studio’s production head. He was a star player, hired away from HBO for big bucks and extra stripes when Paradise was formed. Wait till Jeremy told Zoë.

  “But they want two takes,” Juliana
told him, “one as a film, one as a limited series. Can you do that?”

  Jeremy said of course he could, though wasn’t sure he had any real idea how to put together a series. But he’d figure it out. He was jumping into the deep end, and he was going to fucking swim.

  “And by the way, it’s tomorrow at 11,” Juliana casually informed him, “so better get to work.” That was an understatement.

  Jeremy pulled the better part of an all-nighter to prepare. He expanded his outline for a feature redo of the strange tale of Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez’s 1940s murder spree, and reconfigured the sensational story for a potential six-part limited series: a two-hour pilot followed by five one-hour episodes. Working off the original movie, a copy of which he had on DVD (thank you, Criterion Collection), it broke down fairly naturally into those half-dozen chapters. But would it be as persuasive in the morning when sitting across from golden boy Tremaine Taylor? Jeremy fell asleep at his laptop before he could fully consider the answer.

  He awoke with a jolt four hours later: the time on his open laptop screen read 7:57 a.m. His mouth felt cottony and his neck ached from dozing on the hard desktop. Brushing his teeth, it occurred to Jeremy that he had never finished that film review. Never finished? More like never started. He’d jumped right into working on the Paradise pitch after Juliana called and forgotten all about his Times deadline. He now had just a few hours to prep for his meeting, make himself presentable, and get to Paradise headquarters in Culver City (thirty minutes without traffic—and when does that happen in L.A.?) with enough breathing space to feel—or at least seem—relaxed by the time he was in the room pitching his heart out.

  There was no possible way he could dash off a critique of that docudrama before he left home. He was getting a sinking sense of déjà vu about this blown deadline but, this time, decided to confront it head-on. Jeremy shot his editor a quick and confident email:

  Hi, Lucien—Hit with a surprise pitch meeting for this morning, had to cram last night, couldn’t get to the review. Can write when I return, file by 4. Cool? Thanks for understanding.

  He reread the note after he sent it and thought it sounded arrogant and dismissive—like throwing over your trusty old best friend for your shiny new one. It didn’t sit well. But it was too late now; he needed to prioritize and hope for the best on all fronts.

  Jeremy made a pot of coffee, then spent an hour at the kitchen table studying his notes for the pitch. He realized he officially knew way too much about a depraved pair of serial killers. As he was about to jump into the shower, he got a text from Cassie: “Call me when you can.” Had she decided about his offer? He was desperate to know, but the answer would have to wait until after the meeting: he couldn’t chance any more distractions. And that included thoughts about screwing up again with Lucien, who had yet to respond to Jeremy’s email.

  Tremaine was a warm, ebullient guy, way more charming than the coolly guarded underlings Jeremy had previously pitched to. He got a kick out of watching them kowtow to their boss in the same way he’d sucked up to them at the last meeting. It was the nature of the beast. He also liked that Tremaine was in his late forties, closer to Jeremy’s age and, maybe, his worldview, than the others he’d met. It guaranteed nothing, but couldn’t hurt.

  Jeremy blocked out the rest of his life for the half hour he took to recount the gory details of the Lonely Hearts Killers: the obese Martha and smooth Raymond’s ill-fated encounter via a classified ad, their unlikely romance, dastardly scheme to bilk money out of lonely widows, string of murders, arrest and circus-like trial, and back-to-back executions at New York’s Sing Sing prison. Jeremy enjoyably embellished his account for Tremaine’s benefit, mindful to highlight all the gripping real-life bits absent from the original movie that could easily flesh out a bigger film or deeper-dive TV series.

  Jeremy had the group in the palm of his hand with a level of enthusiasm and strength he summoned from a place he barely knew existed. Despite the barrage of visceral and visual gold he spun out in Tremaine’s sleek, sizable office, one obscure factoid brought the pitch home: none other than the iconic Martin Scorsese was the original director of the low-budget The Honeymoon Killers (it was his second feature film) until he was fired after a week or so for working too slowly. It left the quartet of Paradise execs, including Tremaine, slack-jawed, and gave the more than fifty-year-old movie—and its stranger-than-fiction story—instant cred. Jeremy laughed to himself: he may not be the world’s greatest writer but he knew his movie trivia, and it was serving him astoundingly well.

  Tremaine applauded when Jeremy finished, and his team instantly hopped to and copied their boss’s response. (He came off lively and sincere, the others like eager sock puppets, but it was a hugely memorable moment.) The pitch, as they say, sold in the room—the holy grail of screenwriter experiences—with Tremaine pronouncing “Let’s make a movie!” mere seconds after the applause died down. The stars aligned for Jeremy. He couldn’t fucking believe it.

  Neither could Juliana when he called her from his car after the meeting. She still mangled the project’s title, but less so than the last time. (She somehow landed on “The Wedding Killers.”) She could call it “Meatballs” for all Jeremy cared, as long as she cut him a great deal, which she assured him she would. He could have flown home without a car.

  It was 12:30 by the time Jeremy arrived at the house; there was a voicemail waiting on his cell that he’d missed in all the excitement. It was from Lucien: luckily for Jeremy, the opening date of the film he’d been assigned had just been pushed back a week, so he had plenty of time to file his review. But it would have to be his last.

  Lucien was making a decision for Jeremy: “I know you enjoy reviewing for us, and you’re a fine critic,” he said in his message. “But you have a bigger career now, and you have to focus on that. Neither of us needs to be stressed by your workload. This is your shot, friend, please take it. I’ll be rooting for you.”

  Jeremy realized he was holding on to his past, and he needed to let go. As Lucien said, it wasn’t fair to either of them. Maybe he never should have gone back to reviewing, but it had been such a part of Jeremy’s identity for so many years that he hadn’t been ready to give it up. Perhaps the same way that part of him hadn’t been ready to give up Cassie—until he finally was. And Annabelle hadn’t been ready to give up Gil or their house.

  Sometimes you have to be pushed to make the right decision and move yourself forward. Other times it happens naturally. But occasionally, the two things happen at once. That day, it all made more sense to Jeremy than ever.

  He wrote Lucien back, agreeing and thanking him for the second chance. He said he’d send in his last piece shortly and hoped they could stay in touch. It was confirmed: Lucien was more of a mensch than Jeremy gave him credit for. Maybe one day someone would say the same about him. He could do worse.

  CHAPTER

  39

  Jeremy called Cassie back, buoyed by the morning’s victory yet also bracing for her response. But it turned out to be a day of unexpected pleasures. She accepted his terms to pay off her half of Chez Lerner; her lawyer would share the details with Arvin Box, and they could finalize their divorce settlement. The only caveat: the house would remain in both their names until she was entirely reimbursed—just in case.

  “I can’t thank you enough, Cassie,” Jeremy said as he stared out the kitchen window at the overgrown backyard. He imagined trimming everything back, planting a row of citrus trees, maybe a vegetable garden. So many new possibilities.

  “If it makes your life better or easier, I owe you at least that,” she answered. “Consider it my personal mea culpa.”

  “It wasn’t all your fault, you know.” It came out like a joke, but he meant it. If there was some responsibility to be taken, he would finally take it. The truth might hurt, but it also did set you free. It wasn’t just a cliché, not in this case.

  “We rose t
ogether—we fell together. I just took action,” said Cassie.

  Jeremy turned from the window and looked around the sunny kitchen that he and Cassie once shared. “You know what? I’m glad you did. And I mean that in a good way.”

  “Me, too,” agreed the pretty girl with the ponytail who’d once stolen Jeremy’s heart.

  Jeremy hung up feeling elated yet wistful. All he wanted to do was find Annabelle and tell her the good news. To see her beautiful dark eyes and sweet smile and hold her so close that he would feel her heartbeat—and she feel his. The more he tried not to think about her, the more he missed her. Keeping his emotions in check was not the answer. It never was.

  He showered, shaved, put on his nice pitch-meeting Levis, a pressed button-down shirt, and a new pair of navy suede Pumas he impulse-bought when a Zappos ad popped up on his laptop. Jeremy then got in his car and sped off, mapping out in his head the stops he’d need to make before reaching his final destination.

  Jeremy pulled up in front of Annabelle’s house around 6:00 p.m. as the autumn sky began to darken. He didn’t know if she was even home. Her car wasn’t in the driveway; maybe it was in the garage. But it didn’t matter. He could wait. He could wait forever if he had to.

  Holding a bouquet of red, white, and yellow roses the size of a mini-fridge, Jeremy walked up to her front door and rang the bell. There was no answer. He tried again in case she was in the shower or the backyard. Still no response. He sat on the front stoop, gazing out into the twilight as the occasional car drove past, none of which contained Annabelle. Until about twenty minutes later, when one did.

  Jeremy stood as she turned into the driveway and parked. Annabelle stared at him through the passenger side window. For a moment, it didn’t look as if she would leave the car, but she finally did. Jeremy went to meet her. She looked tentative, nervous, as she crossed onto her front lawn.

  “These are for you,” Jeremy said, handing her the flowers. She didn’t take them at first, so Jeremy pressed them further toward her until she had no choice but to accept the mammoth bouquet. She said nothing, just looked curiously at Jeremy and inhaled the roses’ heady scent.