Outside In

by Courtney Thorne-Smith

  “Ow!” Kate yelped, scooting out of the way.

  Paige carefully pushed the door a little more, peeking around it nervously, afraid of what she might find. She was pretty sure it would be either naked bodies or dead bodies. Neither option was very appealing. “Kate? Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” Kate said, yanking the door open while rubbing her right butt cheek. “Except for the bruise on my ass.”

  “Oh my god!” exclaimed Paige, berating herself for leaving Kate with an ass-bruising stranger. “What did he do to you?”

  “He didn’t do anything. You rammed the door into me!”

  “I did what?”

  “You bashed me with the door,” said Kate. “I was just standing here minding my own business, and you came in willy-nilly and hurt me.”

  “Okay, slow down. Why were you in front of the door?”

  “That is a very good question,” said Kate, all but skipping into the kitchen. She called over her shoulder, “I was very busy swooning.”

  “Swooning?” asked Paige, accepting the bottle of water Kate took out of the fridge for her.

  “Yes, swooning. I got home a few minutes ago, closed the door behind me, and leaned up against it to enjoy a little bit of reminiscing about my fabulous breakfast date with Michael, when—bam!—the door crashes into my backside, injuring me terribly. I just hope there isn’t any permanent damage.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Paige. “I think most of your permanent damage happened a long time ago.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” said Kate, dropping into a chair in the breakfast nook and opening her own bottle of water. “I am one of the lucky few who made it through her childhood virtually unscathed.”

  “Okay, now I know you are not in your right mind,” said Paige, laughing. “What has gotten into you?”

  “I’m happy,” sang Kate, doing a jerky, seated dance.

  “This is you happy? Uh-oh—I think I liked you better depressed.”

  “I’m no expert,” said Kate, “but I am pretty sure that ‘liking you better depressed’ is not high on the list of qualities to look for in a friend.”

  “It would be if the author of the list had seen your little chair dance.”

  Kate dropped her jaw in an expression of shocked outrage. “I’ll have you know that I won best dancer at Middletown High.”

  “Well then,” said Paige, “I stand corrected.” Kate nodded nobly, a dancing queen forgiving an errant subject. Paige continued, “I assume that Middletown High was a school for the blind?”

  “That is a very cruel thing to say,” said Kate with an offended scoff, “and I would be very insulted if I didn’t know for a fact that I am a truly terrible dancer.”

  Paige laughed. “Just out of curiosity, how did you win best dancer?”

  “I didn’t. That was my dream, but the only thing I actually won was Girl Most Likely to Help a Stranger.”

  “That’s the saddest award I have ever heard of.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t have a lot of girls campaigning against me.”

  “You campaigned for that?”

  Kate mumbled unintelligibly.

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘Just a few buttons.’”

  “Oh dear.”

  “And maybe a poster or two.”

  Paige plopped down into a chair next to her. “That is the saddest thing I have ever heard.”

  “I didn’t say it was my proudest moment. What did you win in high school, Madam Superior?”

  “Oh, lord only knows. I’m sure I cut the assembly where they gave those things out.”

  “You cut the assembly?” asked Kate, her sincere shock making her look like the innocent fourteen-year-old she once was.

  “Oh yeah, I cut everything. I’m still not sure how I graduated. In fact, I’m still not sure that I graduated. I cut graduation, too.”

  “Oh my god! Didn’t the school call your parents?”

  “Probably, but my mom wasn’t exactly a disciplinarian. She’s sober now, but she was well into her box o’ wine most nights when I was growing up.”

  “Wow,” said Kate, unable to picture a world where calls from the school were ignored by tipsy mothers.

  “Yeah, it actually sounds more dramatic than it was. God bless her, my mom always managed to defrost a hearty meal, and every night she sat with me and my brothers while we ate it. Granted, she was drinking her wine and smoking the whole time, but that was way before anyone knew anything about secondhand smoke. I think I smelled like an ashtray my entire childhood. Wait a minute—I just thought of something. Do you think that’s why I didn’t make cheerleading?”

  “Did you try out?”

  “You know, you ask a very good question. I don’t think I actually made it to the tryout. I believe it was scheduled at a bad time for me.”

  “A bad time?” asked Kate.

  “Yes. I seem to remember that it was scheduled for three o’clock in the afternoon, which was generally the time I had set aside for getting stoned behind the bleachers.”

  “In other words, you had a scheduling conflict.”

  “Precisely!” said Paige in her best proud-teacher voice. “Were you a cheerleader? You certainly look like you could have been.”

  Kate looked at her suspiciously. “I don’t quite know how to take that. Are you insulting me?”

  “Not consciously, but who knows? My high school self was secretly jealous of the cheerleaders, which manifested in a quiet rage that I treated with marijuana. I no longer smoke pot, so if you were a cheerleader, I may have to hit you.”

  “Well, this may be the very first time I can sincerely say that I am happy I did not make the cheerleading squad.”

  “But you tried out?”

  “Oh god, yes. All four years. My mother was devastated.”

  “Your mother was devastated?”

  “Yeah, she couldn’t figure out what she was doing wrong. She even hired a ‘cheer coach’ and put me on a diet of Slim-Fast bars and carrot sticks. I was skinny, but I was so weak I could barely raise my arms, much less do a cartwheel. She cried for hours when I was cut at the tryouts my last eligible year.”

  “Did you cry?”

  “Yeah, but I think I was crying more for my mother than for myself. It was really her dream.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot of pressure.”

  Kate was quiet for a moment. “Yeah, I guess it was.”

  “Is,” said Paige quietly.

  “What do you mean?” asked Kate.

  “I just wonder how much you are still living your mother’s dream, instead of your own life.”

  “Well, part of my mother’s dream, the handsome husband part, just left me, so…”

  “How is she going to feel about the struggling writer?”

  “She’ll probably cry again and say something sensitive like ‘You know, Katie, if you had been a cheerleader, Hamilton probably wouldn’t have left you and you wouldn’t have to date a man with no future.’”

  Paige laughed. “Nice.”

  “Yeah. Well, for all we know, she may be right. Who knows where you and I could be right now if we had made our respective cheerleading squads.”

  “Probably president and vice president.”

  “No doubt.”

  “You know, I always thought I could work wonders with the White House,” mused Paige. “Just give me free reign and a few throw pillows and I could warm that place right up.”

  Kate sipped her water and looked around the charming little fifties-era kitchen. It was so perfectly Paige: warm, low-key, and welcoming. The painted wood chairs looked ancient, perfectly mismatched in their chipped and peeling shades of blue, green, yellow, and red. The windowsill was lined with old salt and pepper shakers, and the open shelves were stacked with an appealing assortment of dishes and bowls, each beautiful and unique. Kate knew she would never have had the confidence to choose the kitschy furniture that fit so perfectly in this room, unless, of course,
it had been re-created for the Pottery Barn catalog and sold as a set.

  “I like this room a lot,” she said. “I really would like to see what you could do with the White House.”

  “Thank you, but I don’t think the president and I would see eye to eye about serving state dinners on mismatched china.”

  “You could decorate other houses, though. Do you ever think about that?” asked Kate. “I would hire you in a heartbeat.”

  “Oh, that’s very sweet. I do have a fantasy of opening an antiques shop in a sophisticated little tourist town one day. I have such an affinity for things that have seen better days but are still beautiful in their own way, you know?” Paige got up to put on a pot of tea. “Everything in here comes with a story. I don’t know that all of it actually goes together in the real world, but the story it tells of my personal history of boyfriends and swap meets is perfect.”

  Kate said, “I think when I get my own place I am going to decorate it with stuff from swap meets.”

  “Hey, when you get your own place, you can do it up in all custom-designed furniture with perfectly finished wood and fabulous fabrics. Trust me, if I had an actress’s salary instead of a makeup artist’s salary, this kitchen would be a lot less kitschy and a lot more elegant.”

  Kate was a little taken aback, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean I wanted to steal your ideas.”

  “Oh, honey, you can steal the furniture if you want to. I’m just saying that you can afford to do whatever you want with your own place. It may look like this, or it may be something completely different. The only important thing is that it is a reflection of you.”

  “I don’t even know what that would be,” Kate said, suddenly a little sad.

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s not easy to figure out what you really like, especially right after a relationship where who you are got so lost in who he wanted you to be,” said Paige gently. “I mean, after my last big breakup, I spent an entire weekend clearing out roughly three hundred Laura Ashley dresses from my closet.”

  “Laura Ashley dresses?” Kate couldn’t picture Paige in anything other than her requisite True Religion jeans and low-heeled boots.

  “Oh, yeah. Right after I got sober, I met this very handsome, very successful guy who completely swept me off my feet. Within two months, he put a gargantuan ring on my finger and set me up in a gorgeous house in Orange County.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, big wow. I was so tired and raw at the time, and I was so grateful that this guy was going to rescue me from my life of toil and strife.”

  “Toil and strife?”

  “Well, working to support myself, which back then felt like a life sentence of drudgery. Anyway, he appeared like a knight in shining armor and promised to take care of me and buy me a Mercedes station wagon. All he asked for in return was that I morph into the perfect housewife and spend my days making casseroles and learning how to play bridge.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, at first I made a lot of casseroles and played a lot of cards, but then three things happened: I remembered it wasn’t 1953, they added Lycra to denim, and I realized that acting like the perfect wife twenty-four hours a day was a lot harder than working at a regular job for eight.”

  “So you left?”

  “I did. I left the six-thousand-square-foot house with panoramic ocean views and moved into the nine-hundred-square-foot palace you now enjoy.” Paige swept her arm across the room. “Seriously, though, it was the best move I’ve made. Be it ever so tiny, it is all mine.”

  “What about the guy? Was he heartbroken?”

  “Oh, lord no. He immediately replaced me with a newer, more obedient model. He was never quite happy with me anyway. Even in my pretty dresses, methodically crumbling potato chips over tuna fish and noodles, I couldn’t quite pull it off.”

  It was so hard to picture Paige turned out in long dresses and lugging Jell-O molds to church picnics. “I just can’t see it,” said Kate.

  “I’m happy to show you pictures, but they aren’t pretty—literally or figuratively.”

  “But…you’re so strong.”

  “Oh, and you are so sweet,” Paige said, smiling. “But I am just as vulnerable to all the fucked-up fantasies we’re fed from the time we are two years old. Who doesn’t want a handsome prince to come in and save the day? It’s hard to stand up to an entire culture built on the idea that a woman’s greatest value is in being taken care of by a man. It doesn’t matter how happy and fulfilled a single woman is—our society still looks at her as if she is somehow sad and incomplete.”

  “That’s depressing.”

  “Yes, and trust me, it is much, much more depressing to be in the wrong relationship than it is to be single. I am actually very happy in my life right now. Honestly? I don’t know where a man would fit into it.”

  Kate, baffled by the concept of a life without a man, said, “Do you really think you might spend the rest of your life single?”

  “I don’t know what is going to happen. What I do know is that I don’t want another relationship like the ones I have had. It scares me when I look back and see how easily I’ve given myself up, adapted myself to fit someone else’s image of who or what I should be.”

  Kate was floored. “I’m so surprised to hear you say that. You just seem so, I don’t know, on your own side or something.”

  “Do I? Maybe I’m working on the wrong side of the camera. Seriously, though, I may look strong and independent now, but god forbid I fall in love with a horse-riding chef tomorrow—I will be showing up at work in jodhpurs and a big white hat.”

  Kate laughed, but as she did she felt her earlier excitement about Michael draining out of her. Maybe it was a bad idea to get into another relationship. Maybe she was just trading one crutch for another. She couldn’t even remember if she actually liked omelets or if she had eaten one just to please Michael. Paige noticed the change in her mood and said, “Hey, what’s wrong? I almost miss the chair dance.”

  Kate worked up a small smile. “I was dancing because I was excited about Michael.”

  “And that’s great.”

  “I thought so,” said Kate, uncertain. “But now I feel like I am just jumping from one mess into another. I mean, if you can’t hold your own in relationships, what chance do I have?”

  “Oh dear,” said Paige, turning her head to the side and raising her eyebrows. “Look what I’ve done—I’ve spilled my issues all over you.” Kate managed another small smile and Paige continued. “Look, Michael seems like a very sweet guy and it sounds like he is as taken with you as you are with him. You deserve to have some fun, and—”

  “But I don’t want to lose myself in another relationship—”

  “—and I promise you, on my supersecret but still disgusting tuna casserole recipe, that I will watch you like a hawk for signs that you are morphing into a different person, okay?”

  Kate sighed. “I really would like to see him again.”

  “Good. I think you should.”

  “Do you have any more of those dresses lying around?”

  “I do, but unfortunately for you they have all been turned into dishrags,” said Paige, as the teakettle began to whistle.

  28

  Michael sat at his kitchen table, watching the sun rise over the ocean. It was a view that never failed to amaze him. If there is a God, thought Michael, He is definitely an artist.

  He wondered if God also did some writing in His spare time—you know, in between miracles and stuff—and if He did, if He would be willing to give Michael some tips on working through writer’s block. Michael had been staring at a blank computer screen for almost twenty hours straight. Well, it wasn’t totally blank; he had taken the very important step of writing “The Untitled Vivien Leigh Project” in boldface letters across the top of what he hoped would be his title page. Could it be called a title page if no story actually followed it? There were those who thought a great title was the true selli
ng point. Of course, those people had probably squeezed out an additional sentence or two.

  What he really wanted to write was Michael and Kate: A Love Story. He would definitely start with the characters’ first kiss, because it was high fucking time. He had almost kissed her when he had dropped her off at Paige’s house yesterday, but he had been too damn scared to pull the trigger. He was desperate to call her, to try to move the relationship forward, but he was afraid that every step forward would be another nail in his coffin when she found out that he wasn’t being completely honest with her. In fact, if he really did the math, the lies probably outweighed the truth, and that was a great way to win the heart of a woman whose husband had just deceived her and left her for her costar and rival.

  Not.

  His only hope, outside of Superman appearing and rotating the earth backward on its axis to turn back time so that he could tell her the truth from the beginning, was an equally miraculous Pride and Prejudice moment, in which his Darcylike machinations to save her job were so successful and romantic that she not only forgave him for lying to her, but she immediately threw herself into his arms and (please, please, please) kissed him. Of course, this being modern times, she could also throw him to the ground and make mad, passionate love to him, which, along with high-speed Internet access, was a benefit of living in the twenty-first century.

  But first, he had to focus.

  Become a screenplay. Become a screenplay. Michael focused all of his concentration on the blank screen and tried to will it to life. He so desperately wanted it to work, he half expected words to begin scrolling across the page, coming together to create a brilliant first draft of a screenplay. Brilliant first draft, he thought, shaking his head to break the hypnotic pull of the unbelievably blank screen. Now I know I’ve lost it.

  He looked at the clock and, after a quick calculation that cost him twenty precious seconds, realized he had less than forty-eight hours until his meeting with Bob Steinman. He needed inspiration and he needed it now. Looking at his phone, he wondered if help was just a call away. Dial-an-Inspiration? Dial-a-Screenplay? He knew neither one existed, but when he was through this crisis, he was definitely going to look into creating 1-900-Break-a-Block. Considering what he would be willing to pay right now to cure his own writer’s block, he would be rich beyond his wildest dreams. Of course, writers weren’t known for having a lot of disposable income, which could definitely impact the venture’s profitability. However…if he were able to accept credit cards, he could—