Plus One

by Christopher Noxon

  The waitress passed by again, this time giving Huck a quick shrug as she hustled by. Letting out an exasperated moan, he went over to the bar, reached over the counter, and returned to the table with a Mystic Sombrero in each hand.

  “They better not be freezing me out,” he said as he sat down. “I heard they’re doing housekeeping on membership rolls—but it’s only supposed to be agents and bankers and dweebs that get the boot. I’m a fucking creative!”

  Alex took his glass and held it up to the light. “How much of this yoyo stuff are we talking here? Because I’m not really in the best shape to take a serious trip. I’m about two sips away from crumpling into your lap and weeping.”

  Huck shook his head, took a long draw on his glass, and leaned in close. “What is so wrong anyway?”

  Alex explained as best he could, the events of the last few days tumbling out over one, then two more snifters. The kiss with Miranda. The strap. The stick. The feeling today that the fight last night was the big one, the one you never come back from.

  When he was finished, Alex reached for his water glass and shut his eyes, woozy. When he looked up and across the table, Huck had his fist propped under his chin, regarding him like a clinician considering a chart. “What did she actually say?” he asked. “Did she formally, officially say the word ‘separation’?”

  “No—I don’t know,” Alex said, running the exchange back. “This morning when she left… she said something about us ‘needing time’. But last night she did say we were ‘done’. ”

  “But no email, no note—nothing in writing?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Why? Come on. The clock is still running is why. There’s been no formal notification, no official date of separation. How long ’til the anniversary?”

  Alex felt his head swim. “Oh Jesus, Huck, this isn’t about that.”

  “Come on. You can deny it all you like, but you both know what’s really going on here. So when is it?”

  “Next March. But it doesn’t matter—she’s pregnant, remember? She didn’t get pregnant because she wants a divorce.”

  “Is that so?” Huck said. “Think about it. All the guys who take off on pregnant women—people don’t talk about it, but come on, how many get pushed? A lot. Figgy got what she wanted. And now one phone call and she’s got a nursery at the studio and twenty-four-hour childcare. You can come visit twice a week and then go home to your shitty Oakwood apartment and start dating batshit-crazy cocktail waitresses. Not a problem for her at all.”

  Alex straightened up on his barstool and put his face in his hands. The taste of the tequila was hot on his tongue. What Huck was saying—that was just Huck working out his own issues. His whole life had become a game of relational warfare—but he and Figgy weren’t anywhere near that kind of hostile territory. But as soon as he’d had this thought, a jolt of doubt shot through him. Maybe Huck was right and Figgy was already far gone. Maybe like everything else in their lives, Figgy had figured out where they were going long before he’d had a chance to get acquainted with the new scenery.

  “There wasn’t enough Paxil in the world to get me to ten with Kate,” Huck said. “But you—you can still squeak this out. I know you feel bad. You’re wading around in the muck. But I’m telling you, shake that off. Quit this whole power mope. You can’t believe how much better you’re gonna feel when you stop living your life as a fucking handbag.”

  “What? How am I… a handbag?”

  “You’re an accessory, Sherman. A trinket. A coke spoon. A hood ornament. I’ve been there. It’s crushing—you can’t live like that.”

  Alex drained his tequila and motioned to the waitress for another.

  “Look, just make nice,” Huck said. “Let her know you’re good with the pregnancy, sorry about everything. Get some sun. Relax. Go ahead and have some fun with that butcher girl of yours, but you keep that on lockdown. No matter how good it feels to have this sweet tattooed thing take off her apron for you—don’t get sloppy. You go out tomorrow and get yourself one of those prepaid SIM cards—and you pop that in whenever you and butcher girl trade recipes or whatever. You treat that second SIM with the care and respect you showed the rubber you smuggled around in your Velcro wallet in high school. Otherwise one day the wife is gonna pick up your phone, find a text from the butcher girl, and start typing away, pretending to be you. Next thing you know your wife and your girlfriend are sexting back and forth, having a grand old time—”

  “Huck, stop.” Alex waved his hand in front of him as if cutting through a cloud of noxious cigar smoke. “I’m not sexting with Miranda. And I’m not making nice with Figgy just so I can hit some magic ten. That’s… deplorable.”

  “It’s sensible, bro. Look, I didn’t make ten, but I’m gonna be just fine. You, son, you need to worry. You’re a bit part in a star vehicle. Unless you’re careful, you’ll get kicked off the movie before you join the union.”

  • • •

  The particulars of the night out with Huck were lost to Alex the next day, blurred beneath the weight of a crushing hangover, the mix of Vicodin, tequila, and Inca hallucinogens producing a monster headache. He remembered running his hands over the olive tree while staring out at the silvery sci-fi city below. He remembered Huck clapping him on the shoulder in the elevator down. And he remembered going home in Huck’s Audi wagon, the sunroof open, the radio up, his voice wailing into the night.

  All the talk about the magic ten and the rest of it—when he thought about Huck’s tutorial now, panic ricocheted around his chest. It wasn’t so hard, not thinking about it. He had other concerns. Clive’s show, his book, the kids—he was too busy living his life to worry about the ramifications of his anniversary or to plot any sort of settlement strategy.

  Still, he couldn’t help feeling like maybe Huck wasn’t so full of shit. After drop-off at school the following Tuesday, he made a stop at a mini-mall electronics shop and asked the clerk to show him how to switch the SIM card in his phone. He practiced popping out one card and inserting the second one. In a few days he could do it in a single smooth gesture. He texted with Miranda while the kids were watching TV, shooting her a message about where she got beef cheeks. She said she’d order some at Malcolm’s, then texted back with an offer to take him to a place in the San Gabriel Valley that did an amazing dessert made with mango and condensed milk.

  During the week, after dropping the kids off at school, he had long pre-production meetings with Clive about Top Dog. As co-EP, Alex had imagined his role would be supervisory, even ceremonial. But Clive had other ideas. He tasked Alex with production budgets, casting sessions, and equipment rentals. Clive even asked him to negotiate the lease on the storefront for the Top Dog gym, a cavernous space occupied until recently by a Chinese restaurant with red leather booths and flocked wallpaper.

  One night, after the kids were asleep, Alex found himself in the spare bedroom, naked save for a pair of rubber slippers. He powered up Mrs. Benjamin’s tanning bed, heaved open its metal top, and inserted himself inside. The heat of the long bulbs radiated below his skin. He pictured his flesh turning toasty and hard, shellacking him like the crust of a crème brûlée. He couldn’t believe how pleasant it turned out to be. Why had he never done this before? This, it occurred to him, is how people in his position get by. They harden their outsides, tenderize their innards, gather their strength. He pictured Figgy in her hotel suite, talking strategy with a divorce lawyer on her cell phone while Zev hovered nearby, feeding her triangles of Toblerone. No way was she not making the necessary preparations. Alex had to prepare as well. He’d remain still and calm and keep his eyes closed tight against the glare.

  Fourteen

  Alex had been holed up in the pantry of the new Top Dog training facility for six hours straight, eyes fixed on a bank of monitors. His butt hurt and the muscles in his lower back were knotted up. They were behind schedule on what was supposed to be the final day of shooting, and Clive had been AWOL since just after ten. “Yo
u got this,” Clive had said on his way out to a progress meeting with an exec at the Nature Channel. He’d promised to bring back a deal memo; Alex had begun to worry a little about their supposedly rock solid commitment and looked forward to seeing some actual documentation. “Let Nancy deal with crew,” Clive had told him. “You stay on story. Any problems, hit me on my Blackberry.”

  So far, Alex hadn’t needed to call. He was handling it. That’s what everyone kept saying—Nancy, a gum-snapping Aussie with a tight perm, couldn’t stop raving about what a “natural” he was in the dynamics of “occu-soap,” industry parlance for this particular genre of true-life workplace soap opera. It didn’t seem that complicated to him; it was all about making sure the camera was pointed wherever interesting stuff was going on. Story sense, Nancy called it. This morning in the grooming parlor, for instance, as the dogs were being prepped for a competition that would serve as a climax of the pilot, he had to physically escort the second camera guy away from Maria, the Botoxed, bejeweled owner of a bichon frise. No, Alex said, steering the cameras back toward Al and Gina. Al, the heavy-browed, ox-like guy who technically owned the operation, had a way of clamming up when the cameras rolled. Alex had spent much of the morning jogging onto the set between takes to feed him encouragement. But there was something in his big, baleful eyes—a reluctance to play along with the big charade that made you love him. This morning he’d been fussing with a lumpy, lumbering shar-pei named Blossom, fitting her collar with a fat purple bow and muttering into her ear to calm her nerves. Gina was pacing behind him, her heels tapping percussively on the concrete floor.

  “Dad, we can’t enter Blossom. She’s not ready. No way will she hold still during judging. And she looks like a hippo.”

  Al squeezed the dog’s wrinkly neck and shrugged. “She’s spunky,” he said. “And I think she looks great.”

  “I know you like her, Pop, but this is America. People in this country don’t want spunky—they want beautiful.”

  Al grimaced and took his daughter’s face in his hands. “My gut is good, little dove,” he said. “My gut says Blossom wins.”

  Gina made an exasperated huff and wriggled away. “We’ve only got one entry. If we go with Blossom, we lose. I’m getting the bichon ready.”

  Back in the pantry production booth, Nancy turned and high-fived Alex. “Gold!” she trumpeted. “We got stakes! Clive’s gonna love this.”

  Alex half-smiled, half-shrugged, unsure whether he really did have a natural talent for orchestrating reality TV or whether the bar for judging reality TV was as low as it seemed.

  He was on his way outside to catch a little fresh air when his phone buzzed. He checked the caller ID: FIGGY CELL. His eyes narrowed. She’d been out of town for close to a month now, extending her trip after a production overrun and then barely talking with him when Rosa took the kids out for a long weekend. Since then their conversations had been brief, terse and mostly focused on the comings and goings of the kids. A conversation here would be tricky—he’d decided to put off telling her about the show until they got a firm air date—but since he’d already ignored two of her messages today, he ducked outside and took the call.

  “Hey,” she said. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Here at the house.”

  “I called twice last night and three times this morning.”

  “Sorry,” Alex said. “It’s crazy here.”

  The line went silent. Alex closed his eyes and gripped his forehead. It physically hurt, lying like this. He wanted to tell her the truth, come clean about the show, his investment, all of it. But until they got the official pickup, she would just write it off as another one of her stepdad’s crazy pipe dreams, this one made worse by his involvement. He needed to prove her wrong before she had a chance to object. By the time she got home he’d be a producer with a firm commitment from an actual network (and a suntan).

  “We agreed you’d let me Skype with the kids before bedtime,” she said. “That’s why I called last night—to speak to my children.”

  My children?

  The back door swung open and one of the PAs leaned out. “They’re all set for the next scene. Clive’s looking for you.”

  Alex put a hand over the mouthpiece and flashed a thumbs up.

  “Clive?” Figgy asked. “What are you doing with Clive?”

  “Nothing. I’m just here in the kitchen. That was just Rosa—she wants to know who’s doing pickup at school today.”

  “You are, right?” she said, quickly changing gears. “They need their emergency kits—did you see that email from the principal? The one to ‘delinquent parents’? About the bag of clothes and the family picture and some kind of recording? You were supposed to turn it in last Friday.”

  Alex sighed. “The bags are in the car. I’ll swing them by the school later. I’ve just been really busy—”

  “Oh, I know,” she said drily. “It’s not like you have swollen wrists and morning sickness and a director who takes two full days to finish a single goddamn scene.”

  Alex choked back a response. She was the one who’d gotten knocked up, left town, and then extended her trip by a week. She had no right to complain; her standing in the court of misery had been revoked.

  “You still nauseous? What does the doctor say?” He knew from their online calendar that she’d had an appointment with an OB-GYN at Johns Hopkins.

  “Green tea and wristbands,” she said. “Utter bullshit. I’ve gotta scoot—talk later.”

  And that, apparently, was that. He’d wanted to ask about the sonogram. Had she found out the gender? It would be a boy, no doubt—she’d probably already chosen a name. Abraham—that’s what she wanted to call Sam. Alex had nixed it because it was too Jewy. Back when he could nix things. Back before my body, my choice.

  “Alex? Alex?” He was standing in the alley behind the gym, the phone dead at his side. The PA poked his shoulder. “Clive just showed up—you should get in here.”

  • • •

  Alex walked into the gym to find Clive stationed against a back wall, keeping watch as Al and Gina lined up four dogs in a row for a pre-competition review. Gina was in a tizzy, the veins on her neck pulsing as she wagged an accusing finger at Al.

  “They’re gonna laugh us out of the show,” she pleaded. “That dog is not competition ready. Never will be!”

  “Let’s just see,” he said. Beside him, the shar-pei Blossom lowered herself to the floor and tucked her head down, jowls spilling over her paws. “She’s different—the judges like different.”

  “No, Dad—they like beautiful. Why can’t you get that through your skull!”

  “Hold it!” The audio guy waved his arm back and forth over his head. “Sorry guys. Street sound. Truck went by—reset. Go again.”

  “For godsakes!” Gina threw up her hands and made a beeline to the makeup girl for a touch-up.

  Alex went over to Clive and lifted his palms in a gesture of “what can you do?” Clive pulled a pocket square from his blazer and mopped his cheeks.

  “It’s like a Bikram class in here,” he said. “We’re gonna need to swap these incandescents with some LEDs. Less heat. Definitely worth it for the long haul. We’ll get that in the budget for round two.”

  “Sounds good,” Alex said.

  “So—looking good? We making the day?”

  Alex straightened up. “Sure. You’re gonna love the Al-Gina stuff.”

  “Looks great.” Clive put his arm around Alex’s shoulder and pulled him in. “Having fun? Looking dynamite—color on your face, like a young George Hamilton over here. I knew you’d be great at this. We’re all set for round two.”

  “Sorry?” Alex stiffened. “Round two?”

  “Next round of financing. Get us through post, overages, reshoots. It’s all in the prospectus. Can’t be more than another sixty thou—”

  Alex pulled back. “What? I thought once we shot the presentation, the Nature Channel was stepping in—”

  “About th
at.” Clive mopped his brow with his hankie. “Talked that over at lunch today. They’ve made some changes over there. Big shakeup. New guy’s frozen the whole development slate, says he wants to develop fresh properties. He’s got some housekeeping deal with Magical Elves, and they’re doing a doggie weight-loss show—as if anyone wants to see that.”

  Alex took a second to process. What Clive was saying—it couldn’t be what it sounded like. “But the new guy—he’ll come around, right? We’ve got a commitment, right?”

  Clive shrugged. “We had a commitment,” he said. “But our guy is out. And you know how it goes with these executive shuffles—the new regime won’t touch the old guard’s stuff. Politics.”

  Alex felt the air go out of his chest. “You said this was a done deal. You told me this was pre-sold.”

  Clive pulled him back into a half-embrace. “Did I say that? No—pretty sure I didn’t say that. Anyhow, it’s just a speed bump! We’ll take it back out to market. Nat Geo and ABC Family passed, but I can take it to Nit-com in Cannes, or Reelz in D.C.—I can do like twenty meetings in a day over there, do the whole dog-and-pony show, lock down international rights.”

  Alex rubbed a knuckle against his temple. “So you’re telling me we’ve just spent—that I’ve just spent—two hundred thirty thousand dollars on a show that has… no network, no home, no interest at all? We’re all on our own? And now you want another sixty thousand?”