It actually took me an embarrassingly long time to realize she was offering me marijuana. I was shocked, until I remembered that I was in California now. It was legal.
“I’m flattered you’ve mistaken me for the kind of person who smokes pot at eleven in the morning,” I said. “But, well, no.”
Stella raised her eyebrows, but instead of saying anything, offered the pen to Kelsey, who also shook her head no.
“Are you guys sober?” said Stella. “That’s cool. I mean, I’ve been sober lots of times.”
“I’ve never been sober,” I said.
“I’m sober curious,” said Kelsey.
“Does that include ’shrooms?” said Stella, mint-sized puffs of smoke escaping from her mouth.
“I would guess so?” said Kelsey.
“I’ve never tried mushrooms,” I said. “Or any hallucinogenic.”
I felt like a missionary.
“It’s a religious experience,” said Stella, finally expelling a cloud of vapor. “Anyway, I had a vision of this enormous white bird—”
Two little girls in bathing suits ran screaming out of the house, one shooting the other with a bazooka-sized water gun. A middle-aged woman with dark hair that dangled down past her waist trailed after them, saying something that no one was listening to, not even a little bit.
“Talullah!” Stella broke in. “Do not shoot Djuna with that gun. We have talked about nonviolence. Marisol, donde did they get that, how do you say machine gun in Spanish?”
Marisol said, “Mr. Tane give it to them.”
“I will talk to Mr. Tane,” Stella said. She stood up, and Kelsey and I followed suit, as you might with royalty.
“Tane is our massage therapist,” Stella explained. I thought she might be saying Donny, or Tawny. “Also our surfing instructor, yoga master, martial arts teacher for the boys—well, you know, the girls too, theoretically. And he’s a gun enthusiast! I tell him, you can’t bring those things near me and the kids, but look what he does.” She shook her head, smiling fondly as if discussing one of her children. “Things are different in Samoa, or wherever it is he’s from.”
A young woman dressed in white emerged from the house. “Can we talk about lunch?” she asked.
Stella grimaced and shook her hands at the heavens. “I’m working, people, working!” she shouted. “You’re all going to have to start figuring things out for yourselves. Come on, ladies, we’ll take this meeting down to the beach.”
Stella took off across the lawn, Kelsey and I scrambling to catch up. She had the supernatural ability to walk faster than either of us could run. She finally stopped outside a little white-painted wooden structure that looked like a place where ponies might live. Magical ponies. She pulled open the old-fashioned barn-style double doors to reveal a garage filled with golf carts, along with surf boards, boogie boards, wet suits, paddle boards, and windsurfing equipment.
“Do either of you surf?” she said. “If Tane’s down there, he can give you a lesson.”
Another thing I wished I could say yes to.
“Another time,” said Kelsey. “We’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the pilot so we can start writing.”
“Right, right, we’re business ladies,” said Stella. “Wait there.”
She disappeared into the shed and a minute later backed out behind the wheel of a whirring golf cart. Kelsey and I climbed onto the back, hanging on tight as Stella took off, bouncing over the lawn toward the ocean. It was a good thing I wasn’t looking forward, so I couldn’t see the sheer cliff down to the water come into view, or Stella stop within six inches of it.
Walling off the cliff was a weathered wooden gate, locked with a keypad. Stella’s fingers danced over the numbers until the gate popped open. She led us down a long wooden staircase to a beach that stretched empty in both directions as far as we could see.
“Is all this your private beach?” I asked, astonished. Beaches weren’t this empty anywhere on the East Coast, even Maine.
“God, no,” Stella said dismissively. “We share it with at least four other families.”
* * *
The wind off the water was brisk and cool and the beach was in shadow, given that the morning sun was still in the east, behind the mountains. I’d watched it come up this morning, thought of Caitlin going about her day, took a picture of the sunrise and considered sending it to her, but resisted.
Stella took out her vape pen and sucked on it as we walked down the beach. She offered it first to Kelsey, who was walking on the land side of her, but again Kelsey shook her head no. Then she offered it to me. I had scored the water side and was relishing the feel of my toes in the icy Pacific Ocean. I took the vape pen. I’d smoked occasionally these past years with Josh and with Maggie, but not since I’d moved to Maine. The weed hit me fast and hard; within seconds, I was not sure I’d be able to speak cogently.
“Back to my big white bird,” Stella said. “I saw this bird, and I asked him what he thought about Younger, and he said he thought the boss should be a man instead of a woman. Isn’t that crazy?”
“Totally crazy,” I said.
“But interesting,” said Kelsey.
“I was thinking,” said Stella, “that maybe instead of a younger guy, Liza could go out with an older guy.”
“Alice,” I said.
“What?”
“The character’s name is Alice.”
Stella laughed. “Yeah, but I like the name Liza so much better. What if, I don’t know, she’s this woman pretending to be younger, who goes to work for this guy who thinks he’s too old for her, except they’re really the same age?”
“That’s interesting,” said Kelsey.
“But so not this story,” I said.
Stella stopped and looked out to the horizon, as if searching for a ship. “I think maybe the character, Liza, Alice, whatever, should be younger in the show.”
“Actually younger?” I said. I really wished I had not smoked that weed. Nothing was making sense.
“Yes, actually thirty-five-ish, playing twenty-two-ish.” She said actually as if I’d pronounced it like Dame Maggie Smith.
“Her daughter is supposed to be in college,” I pointed out. “Are we saying she was a teen mom?”
“So we’ll make the kid younger. Or get rid of the kid!”
“We can’t get rid of the kid,” I said. I couldn’t let myself imagine that, even in fiction.
“Kids can be a pain on the set,” said Kelsey.
“You know what it’s like, you’re a pro,” said Stella to Kelsey. “I think if she were pretending to be twenty-two and her boss is fiftyish—”
“You said she and the boss were really the same age,” I said. “Did you mean they’re both fifty or both thirty-five?”
“I didn’t mean the same same age,” Stella said. “I guess I have to be careful about my language around writers.”
“I know what you’re trying to say,” said Kelsey.
That was good, because I had no fucking clue.
“I can get Hugo Fielding to play the boss slash older boyfriend,” said Stella.
“Hugo Fielding, your actual old boyfriend?” I said, astonished. “I can’t believe you two stayed friends.”
Their love affair had ended disastrously and publicly when Hugo left her for Madonna. I still remembered the People magazine cover featuring Stella’s tear-streaked face.
“Hugo stays friends with all his old girlfriends,” Stella said. “He is the sweetest, most thoughtful, most generous guy on earth.”
“Really?” I said. I couldn’t imagine talking about any of my exes, even Josh, in such glowing terms. “We’re both talking about 007 Hugo Fielding, right?”
“He’s a total doll,” Stella said. “But don’t mention 007 to him. He’s trying to transcend that role.”
“It would be amazing to have Hugo Fielding in the show,” said Kelsey.
“You really think so?” I said. “That doesn’t make any sense t
o me. The guy needs to be younger.”
“Tane!” Stella waved excitedly. It was only then that I noticed the large dark man sitting astride a surfboard beyond the break line, bobbing in the waves. Between the long black hair plastered to his head, his wetsuit the same oily-looking dark color as the water, and the shade that still covered the coastline and the beach, he was nearly invisible despite his prodigious size.
“I’ve got to talk to you!” Stella called. Oh, right, the toy gun.
She ran into the surf up to her knees, still waving her arms as if she were drowning. He hopped to a crouch on the board with the agility of a frog, looked back over his shoulder, and as a massive wave built behind him, took off flying toward shore. Stella, laughing, waded out to meet him. Just this side of the breakers, he hopped off his board, Stella grabbed the other side of it, and they headed back into the surf, talking animatedly across the board as if it were a café table. They paused to duck beneath the huge waves that crashed over their heads, resurfacing each time farther out in the sea. Kelsey and I stood there with smiles plastered on our faces as if we expected that any second Stella would return and resume our discussion. But instead, Tane—so muscled you could see every bulge clearly through his wetsuit—held the board steady while Stella hoisted herself up onto it. Then she stretched out flat and began paddling as he pushed and kicked from behind.
“Are we supposed to keep standing here?” I said.
“I have no fucking idea,” said Kelsey.
“Are you mad about something?”
Kelsey, grim-faced, stared straight ahead.
“I hope this doesn’t mean the whole thing is over before it even began,” she said finally.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
Instead of answering, Kelsey kept her eyes trained on the ocean. Stella was now sitting on the board, her white silk shirt so drenched it was nearly transparent. I waved. Stella did not wave back or even glance our way.
“Maybe she had a surfing lesson scheduled,” I said.
“Maybe she’s never going to talk to us again,” Kelsey said.
Kelsey turned and walked away down the sand so fast it took me a minute to register that she was leaving. I had to run to catch up with her.
“I don’t get it,” I said to Kelsey. “What’s happening?”
But she just kept walking with her mouth set in that grim, tight line. I seemed to have already screwed up my life in LA, and I hadn’t even been here twenty-four hours.
nine
“Why didn’t she just disagree?” I said.
We were sitting in Kelsey’s living room facing each other, our feet up on the carved wooden coffee table. There were walls of glass on opposite sides of the room, one looking out over the city skyline and the other facing blue mountain peaks. Kelsey’s New York apartment had had a traditional look, filled with beige damask furniture bought when she planned to marry her banker boyfriend, Thad. That was all gone, replaced with spare pieces in white and black and gray, more architectural than comfortable. With her move to LA, her home seemed to have acquired a more casual style and sleeker bones, much like Kelsey herself.
“Celebrities don’t like to say anything directly,” Kelsey informed me. “They have people to do that for them.”
Kelsey’s hand rested on her dog, Theo—a wheaten terrier: more elegant than a Lab, sturdier than a poodle—who was curled up on the sofa beside her. Theo’s hair was the same shade of blond as Kelsey’s own.
“I couldn’t just stand there and let her change all my characters and my story,” I said. “She wanted to get rid of Josh, and Caitlin, and Mrs. Whitney, all in one stroke!”
“It was a conversation,” Kelsey said. “You let her talk and do not confront.”
“You made it sound like you agreed with everything she said,” I told Kelsey. “You totally threw me under the bus.”
“That wasn’t throwing you under the bus, that was diplomacy,” Kelsey said. “Things work differently out here. The TV business is not like the book business.”
“What’s it like, then?” I asked, in genuine innocence.
“There is a lot more money on the table and a lot more people are involved,” she said. “It’s higher stakes, which means there’s a lot more competition and a much bigger emphasis on doing what you need to do to attract viewers.”
“This isn’t about attracting viewers,” I said. “It’s about making Stella happy!”
“And making Stella happy means making the network happy means us getting more support and more money to turn this into a successful series,” Kelsey said. “Isn’t that what you want?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I don’t want to completely abandon my own story.”
“You see, that’s what I’m confused about: Is it your story or isn’t it?” Kelsey said, uncrossing her feet, then crossing them again. “If it is, then yes, what matters most is the truth and keeping the story as close as possible to the facts.”
“I didn’t mean my story, as in my personal story,” I said. “I meant my story as in my novel.”
“So it’s fiction,” said Kelsey.
“Officially, it’s fiction,” I agreed.
“But you see, that’s the issue,” Kelsey said, setting her feet on the floor and leaning forward. “If this is fiction, if this is not your story but just a story, then you’ve got to sacrifice real people and events in the service of making the best possible show. Are you willing to do that?”
“I want to make a good show too,” I said, refusing to give her a direct answer. Because really, she knew there was no direct answer. My story wasn’t black or white, fact or fiction, truth or lies. It was both, and I wanted it all: fidelity to my deeper story, while preserving complete deniability. “I just don’t see how making the boyfriend older improves the story.”
“Hugo Fielding can make the show a hit,” Kelsey said.
I shook my head. Who was my character Alice, what was Younger even about without Josh and Mrs. Whitney? Maybe they could change all these details and turn it into a better story than the book I wrote, but did I want to be part of that? Part of me wanted to get up and go back home. But if I abandoned this project, was anyone going to stand up for my book at all?
“You might be right about that,” I said, trying to be conciliatory without sacrificing any ground.
“Listen, I want to stay true to your story and also make an amazing TV show,” Kelsey said. “Can you trust me to find a way to accomplish both those things?”
“That’s what I want too,” I said, relieved that we seemed to be back on the same page.
“You know the book about writing Bird by Bird?” said Kelsey. Every writer and person who worked with writers knew that winsome guidebook by Anne Lamott, who deconstructed the writing process and advised would-be authors to approach their writing one small step at a time: bird by bird. “Well, in the TV business, that might be called Meeting by Meeting.”
“What does that mean?” I said.
“It means before we make any decisions, the next step is to meet Hugo Fielding.”
I had to admit, as ruffled as my feathers were about this whole older man idea, I was intrigued to meet Hugo Fielding, whom I had always found more attractive than I wanted to admit. Is that a gun in your pocket, James Bond, or are you just looking to fuck me?
I said that I supposed, if I really had to, I’d be open to meeting one of the world’s most famous and attractive movie stars. One meeting, and we’d take it from there.
* * *
I spotted Hugo Fielding instantly, sitting with Stella in the corner booth at the back of the Warner Brothers dining room. Living in New York, I’d seen a lot of celebrities. Some of them—Daniel Day Lewis, Reese Witherspoon—could make themselves look anonymous enough to blend into any crowd. Others—Bill Clinton, Diane Keaton—were magnetic before you even registered their identity.
Hugo Fielding was that kind of star.
For all the complaining I’d done about meeting Hug
o Fielding, my heart began to beat faster and I felt fluttering in my stomach. This guy was a bona fide celebrity, and meeting him was like walking into a movie. I’d been stunned when Maggie started screaming after I told her I was meeting him.
“I love him,” she said. “I even told Frankie, he’s my celebrity pass.”
“How could I not know this?”
“Shame,” Maggie said. “I’ve only wanted to fuck one cis man in my entire life, and he’s the same cis man who every basic bitch wants to fuck.”
Hugo unfolded himself from the booth, even taller and slimmer than he looked on-screen, or in my imagination. Kelsey and I were both wearing high-heeled boots, Kelsey’s paired with a vegan leather miniskirt while I was rocking my standard black go-to-meeting pants. Stella was dolled up in a white silk romper, but Hugo had tossed on a worn gray tee shirt and jeans. On-screen, he had a tough, macho quality, but in person his skin was as soft and pink as if he’d just come from a facial, and he seemed almost slight despite his height and his broad shoulders. His hair was boyishly thick, flecked with gray hairs at such perfect intervals they might have been hand-placed.
“I am so excited to meet you,” he said, shaking Kelsey’s hand. “I was a huge fan of your Jane Eyre.”
He inclined himself toward her as he spoke, so they were eye-to-eye.
“You watched Jane Eyre?” Kelsey said. She was trying to act cool and in charge, but I’d known her long enough to tell she was flustered.
“Of course. It’s my favorite book,” Hugo said.
Then he turned to me and enfolded my outstretched hand in both of his.
“I can’t believe I’m meeting the author of Younger,” he said. “I’m just… starstruck.”
His cheeks grew even pinker as he said this, and his hands felt warmer around mine. Or maybe my hands were getting warmer all on their own.
“I’m the one who’s starstruck,” I admitted.
“I’m in love with your book,” he said warmly. He was looking at me in wonder as if I were some magical creature, a sparkly unicorn that he’d never encountered before, yet had been waiting his whole life to find. He had twinkling brown eyes and was looking at me as if we’d just shared the best private joke. “I finished it at three in the morning. My second read, I mean. I feel like I’ve been living inside your head.”
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