“She’s a friend, yes. That’s more than I can say for you right now.”
“Oh, Lena, Cecily is just fine. I understand girls like her.”
“Girls like her? Jesus, Jake, you’re awful. You can’t just treat people like they’re disposable.”
“Lena.” He was serious now. “I know what Colin’s about. And he sees your relationship as disposable. I know he does.”
“You can’t stand to see me happy, can you?” I was crying now.
“That’s not it.” Jake shook his head.
“Then explain it to me, Jake.” I was exasperated. “Do you realize where we’re having this conversation? In Easthampton. In Colin’s house. In his parents’ bedroom, for Christ’s sake. We’re having this discussion in my boyfriend’s parents’ bed. This should not be happening.” I looked at him, dumbfounded.
He bent his head down. His voice was quieter now. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
“What?” I was confused.
“Just tell me, Lena,” he said firmly.
“Yes, I am. I really am,” I said. It was the first time I had acknowledged my feelings for Colin out loud and I felt dizzy. “Why would you ask me that?” I said, after a moment.
He didn’t answer. “It doesn’t matter,” he said finally.
Suddenly I heard voices outside and splashes from the pool. Colin and the rest must have come back from the beach.
“I think they’re back. You’ve got to get out of here,” I said, feeling my panic return.
“Yeah,” he said, getting up from the bed. “It’s definitely time for me to go.” And then Jake slowly walked away.
“Why are you whispering?”
“Colin’s still asleep. I’m in the bathroom.” I had just finished giving Tess a wrap-up of the previous night’s drama. I was too distraught to wait until I got back to the city.
“Oh, you poor thing.” Tess had taken on her maternal tone, which made me feel safe to cry.
“I just don’t understand what happened. He came out here with Cecily, he picked a fight with Colin. It was crazy. Why would he do this to me?” I said, trying to sort through the weekend’s events in my head.
“Honey, I know, I know.”
“I mean, it was like he was trying to sabotage things with Colin.”
“Sweetie, I know it was a horrible situation, but I really don’t think that’s what he was trying to do at all.”
“What? What do you mean?” What did she mean?
“Look, you’re upset. I completely understand. We’ll go over it all when you get back to the city, okay?”
“But, Tess—”
“Lena?” Colin was calling from the other room.
“Oh Jesus. It’s Colin. I have to go.” I was frantic.
“Honey? Honey, are you listening to me?” Tess’s voice was calm and instructive. “Just put it out of your mind. Everything’s going to be just fine. We’ll sort it all out together later.”
“Thank you, Tess.” I felt myself tear up again. What would I do without Tess, I wondered?
“Lena? Are you in there?” Colin tapped on the door lightly.
“Just one second.” I quickly examined my face for evidence of crying. Luckily, it wasn’t too obvious.
“Morning!” I said cheerily as I opened the bathroom door.
Colin smiled and, without a word, took me in his arms and kissed me. “Good morning to you,” he said finally.
“Is everyone up yet?” I asked, resting my chin on his shoulder.
“No, they’re all still sleeping, I think.” He paused. “Except Cecily and Jake. They already headed back to the city.”
At least I wouldn’t have to face them this morning, I thought, relieved.
“Colin, about Jake—” I started, not sure what I intended to say.
“Yeah, what is with that guy?” Colin pulled away from me.
“Well, Jake’s a complex person,” I said, choosing my words carefully.
“I would say he’s a complete asshole. I can’t believe you two are friends,” he said.
“Well, I know he was sort of…hostile…last night….” Why did I feel I needed to defend Jake all of a sudden?
“I’m just worried about Cecily, that’s all,” Colin said.
“I know, I understand. I am too, but—”
“I don’t think she needs to be hanging around guys like that.”
Guys like that? I felt my body tense. It was time to change the subject.
“What do you want to do today?”
“As if you don’t know,” he smiled at me playfully.
“I don’t know. Tell me.” I smiled back, wondering what adventure he had planned for us this time.
“I’ve got the final sit-down interview for your show tomorrow. We’ve got to start preparing!”
“Oh, right,” I said. That wasn’t at all the adventure I had hoped for.
chapter 9
The next day, when I arrived at the set for the sit-down interview, Colin was already there. He was deep into conversation with “the talent,” Kelly Karaway. I sidled up beside him, preparing to introduce myself as if we’d never officially met. Our little secret was kind of fun.
“Hello, Mr. Bates. I’m Lena Sharpe, a producer for Face to Face.”
“Oh, hey, Lena.” Colin looked up at me distractedly. He seemed on edge, nervous. I guess that was natural—after all, he was being interviewed for the first time. He’d kept me up most of the night before with a long list of questions—wardrobe questions, technical questions, facial hair questions (should he shave and look responsible and clean-cut or go for a little stubble and try to pull off the renegade, dangerous author aesthetic). I noticed a sheen of product in his hair and he wore a shirt I hadn’t seen before.
Kelly got up for another hair touch-up and I sat down across from him.
“Hey, how’re you doing? It’s going to be fine. They’re just going to shoot some reaction shots now. We’ll break for lunch and then start the interview.” I fought the impulse to put my hand on his knee. “You’ll be amazing. I know it.”
“I’m not so sure. I’m really nervous.”
“Well, I saw you were getting to know Kelly pretty well,” I teased.
“Yeah, I was trying to get some of the questions out of her, but she wasn’t taking the bait.”
“Mmm…well, I’m afraid you’re fishing in the wrong pond for starters.”
“What?”
“Kelly doesn’t have any clue what the questions are herself.”
“She hasn’t written them yet?”
“No,” I laughed. “She doesn’t write questions at all.”
He looked at me blankly.
“Oh, Colin, I’m sorry to be the one to have to educate you about the eroding ideals of journalism, but I think Kelly’s last gig was announcing lotto numbers on Channel Four.”
“Well, who writes the questions?” He was getting worked up.
“Well, I do.”
“You do? Are you serious?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I can’t believe you never mentioned this before. Let me see!” He looked frantic.
“What? Are you serious?”
I looked at his face. He was serious.
“I can’t do that, Colin. Come on.”
“Why not?” He sounded like a petulant child.
“Why not? I just can’t do that.”
“You’d rather see me fuck up then?”
“You’re not going to fuck up. This isn’t Nightline. You’ll be fine.”
“Lena, this is a really big deal for me—this interview. I don’t want to mess up. This is my first novel. Do you know how important that is?” He was more serious than I’d ever seen him before. And more vulnerable.
“I know. I—”
“Why wouldn’t you want me to do well?”
“Colin, I—”
“I mean, it’s not like I’m a war criminal or something, right?”
“Well, no…”
“Come on, Lena.” He smiled at me sweetly now.
Fragments of an argument swirled in my head, but I couldn’t quite fit them together. After all, he was right, on some level. This was a celebrity profile (or the closest thing to it when the subject isn’t yet famous). I was starting to take my job as seriously as Nadine took hers. I could see his point and I could feel his sway pulling me. I placed the interview release form over my list of questions and handed them to him together. He smiled in reply.
“Colin, if you’re ready, we’re just going to shoot some close-ups of you,” the director called to him from the control booth over the intercom.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he replied, winking at me.
I got up from Kelly’s chair and made my way to the control room.
“Well, he’s not what I expected.” Nadine was behind me now. Cheese followed, as usual.
“What do you mean?” On second thought, I didn’t really want to know what she meant.
“He’s not the bookworm I had expected. You must be having a nice time with this one.”
“Yes, he is telegenic,” Cheese chimed in. Obviously he had learned a new word.
“He’s very talented, actually,” I said defensively.
“Oh, I bet he is.” Nadine paused. “Just remember journalists must remain impartial.” She gave me a knowing look—but how could she know? What did she know?—and walked away.
A few nights later, I met Colin for drinks at the bar at the Stanhope. I always found something alluringly clandestine about meeting at hotel bars. You know, forties film noir, Bogie and Bacall, that sort of thing. And this particular one had just the right warm, hazy lighting and vintage, mahogany feel. We passed a Sidecar back and forth between us, smoothing over the day’s rough edges before we headed out for our night’s events.
Colin and I had reached the stage where we were comfortable not talking all the time. Lately we seemed to be engaging in a lot of gazing—deep, meaningful gazing. (And thus I seemed to be engaging in a lot of deep, meaningful sighing).
“How was your day?” Colin stirred me from my reverie.
“Awful. Hellish. Completely ordinary.”
“You’ve got to get out of that job.”
“I know.” We’d been through this same Q&A several times. He didn’t need elaboration to know how much I wanted out of my job. “You?”
“Well, I had a lovely day of procrastination.”
“So I’ve heard. In SoHo, I believe?”
“What?” He looked at me blankly.
“Caleb said you were headed to SoHo after you had lunch with him?”
“You talked to Caleb?” He seemed troubled by the idea. Was he jealous? How could he be jealous of Caleb? Not that I minded. A little masculine unease couldn’t hurt.
“I had to messenger him his tickets for tonight, that’s all.” I smiled reassuringly, not unaware of the bizarreness inherent in my placating another person’s insecurities.
“Is he coming?”
“Yeah, definitely. I think Grace and Gavin are coming, too.”
The night’s itinerary was a good one, even I had to admit. It was the opening night of the New York Film Festival—a black-tie, blue-blooded affair that kicked off the fall social season each year. More than two hundred carefully selected New Yorkers would eagerly spend at least two hours crammed into a hot screening room to see a highly anticipated, critically acclaimed and unbearably long film that would very likely never be spoken of again once the night was over. Essentially, it was a two-and-a-half hour excuse for a great after-party. Plus, I knew Tess and Parker would be there and I wanted to introduce them to Colin at long last.
“So, we’d better get going if we’re going to make this screening,” I said, glancing at my watch.
“What’s the movie about again?” Colin asked.
“Something involving an Eskimo family. A character study, I believe.” I paused. “You know, you keep asking me that question.”
“I know. I keep hoping for a different answer.” He smiled guiltily.
“Stop it—it sounds…edifying.”
“Mmm, yes. So, I was thinking…why don’t we just skip the screening and go straight to the party?” He looked at me mischievously.
“You’re still playing hooky—all these years later.”
“Look, people don’t change.”
“But how are we going to make idle chitchat about the film with all the other fabulous guests?”
“We’ll just go on about subtext and metaphor—no one will know the difference, I promise.”
“I don’t know…Parker will kill me if our seats are left empty.”
He paused and stared at me intently in a way that made me shift in my seat.
“You look amazing in that dress.” He was smiling at me.
“Stop it, that’s not going to work.” I looked away but couldn’t help blushing.
“Besides, this dress has been worn by at least four different women, I’m sure of it.”
“I’m intrigued. Will they be joining us tonight?” He raised one eyebrow quizzically.
“It’s vintage. Poor-girl chic, you know.”
I was particularly proud of this acquisition—Yves Saint Laurent, circa 1968. I had engaged in a triumphant bidding war with a skinny French girl at Ina (and had won, I’m convinced, because her need for a cigarette finally wore her down. Ha!). In my fashion frenzy, I had blown my shoe budget and was forced to wear a pair of Tess’s Ferragamo castoffs—one size too big, and thus stuffed with crumpled tissue at the toes. Classy, I know.
“My poor, sexy, sexy girl,” Colin said, smiling sexily.
“And you know exactly what to say.” I crinkled my toes inside my too-big shoes. He ran his fingers lightly over my hands.
“Is it working now?” He lowered his voice.
It was working.
Colin and I arrived at the party just after the first wave of guests had made it over from the screening. Everyone was polished and buffed, dermo-braised, lipo-ed, artificially bronzed, and hair plugged into place. There was the customary display of frantic cell phone dialing, bursts of over-enthusiastic conversations, and eager crowd-scanning all in the attempt to mask the insecurity of having been made to wait while the VIPs of the VIPs were ushered ahead without pause. Aside from the crowd’s generous peppering of N.Y. filmmakers—complete with pasty faces and straggly goatees (“They’re just pissed because they’re poor and pale,” as Parker would say, diplomatically), this was as L.A. as New York ever got.
Luckily I could see Parker, stationed at the door, fending off the crowd, clinically separating the connected and powerful from the very connected and very powerful. I took Colin’s hand and made my way toward her. As only Parker could do amid such chaos, she reprimanded me for skipping the screening, gave Colin an approving once-over and warmly wished us a lovely time inside. In an instant, we were propelled forward by a swift tide of party-goers and deposited inside Shangri-la.
Okay, in reality it was Lot 61—a restaurant that most of these people had been to many, many times before. But a party was all about energy and name power and this one had both in spades. I looked around the room, each banquette was like a separate galaxy with its very own orbit of power—talent agents in this corner, studio chiefs in the other, etc. Colin grabbed two champagne flutes from a passing waiter as another stopped in front of us, bearing miniature Klondike bars, pricked with toothpicks for easy retrieval.
“I’m beginning to understand the theme here,” Colin said, eyeing the polar treats. We giggled easily, aided by the succession of sidecars that we had happily consumed at the hotel.
“Oh, look there’s an igloo ice sculpture at the bar.” More giggling.
“Oh well, I guess Parker isn’t really one for subtext and subtlety…oh wait, I see Tess.”
In fact, what I did see was perhaps the most beautiful woman there, looking like an ice princess in a long, shimmering white column dress—which was only outdone by the string of di
amonds resting nonchalantly around her neck. Ah, Tess.
Tess’s arm was linked around her date for the evening. Apparently Stanley had fallen off her list—too wrapped up in some merger and acquisition matter. So Tess had diverged and made a new acquisition of her own. His name was Dalton and he was similar to most of her men—older, rich, distinguished, well-mannered, and hopelessly Waspy. I was half convinced that all of Tess’s paramours were very likely related if one traced back the lineage far enough.
“Pleased to meet you, I’m Dalton.”
“I’m Lena. And this is…”
“Hey there, Colin. Good to see you again. How’ve you been?”
“I’ve been okay, Dalt. Thanks.”
They knew each other? Obviously. But neither elaborated and something in the air between them told me not to inquire. An awkward foot shuffle and silence ensued. I felt suddenly sober.
I searched for something to fill the space. “Tess, you look so great. Is that your Dior?”
“It’s actually Christian Lacroix,” Dalt piped in.
“Well, you have excellent taste Mr…I mean Dalton.” I could feel Tess tense and I was sorry for the mistake. It was a mistake.
“Hey, everyone!” Parker had arrived on the scene, thank God.
“Is everyone having a good time?” She didn’t wait for a response. “I’m so glad! Al Pacino just stopped me to rave about the polar-bear claws. Isn’t that just the best!”
“Parker, I haven’t formally introduced you. This is Colin Bates,” I said.
“It’s a pleasure.” She batted her eyes as only Parker could.
“And this is Dalton Fulham,” Tess joined in.
“Lovely to meet you both. Now excuse me, just one second, but I need to talk to my girls for a moment.” Parker herded us away from the boys toward the bar.
“What was going on there?” I looked at Tess.
“No idea, but I don’t think we’ll be spending the evening together.”
“Um, I’ll tell you what was going on there—are you telling me that neither of you know?” Parker looked at us incredulously.
We both stared at her blankly, as we often did.
“Your date—” she looked at Tess “—used to date your date’s—” she turned her head to me “—mother.”
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