by Lynn Messina
Carrie insists that telling our parents is part of my recovery, and prepared for the worse, I confess all to them in one rapid-fire speech full of remorse and repentance. Amazingly, they take it in stride.
“We’re just happy to have you home again, safe and sound,” Mom says.
Dad agrees, adding, “It’s only money.”
He says it with such gushing relief I realize Carrie wasn’t looking for incriminating papers but heroin vials and dirty needles.
My parents offer to give me some money to help me get back on my feet but I refuse to take a handout, and in the end we settle on a loan with proper interest and a repayment schedule. Dad complements me on my negotiating skills even as he overrules my insistence that we go as high as the prime rate.
Over the course of many quiet nights at home eating boxed macaroni and cheese and defrosted veggie burgers, I tell Carrie everything. She listens with remarkable patience, never interrupting no matter how much she wants to. She’s an amazing listener, and I wonder why I didn’t know this about my own sister.
I explain how easy it was for Harry to play me, the one long ego stroke our entire relationship was. Some gushing praise and a few inspiring speeches and I was putty in his hands. I wanted someone to believe in me so badly because I couldn’t believe in myself that I never once stopped to consider his motives. And he warned me from the onset: “I’m calculating in everything I do,” he said the very first time we met.
Fool that I am, I didn’t listen. I soaked up his compliments like a flower starved for rain and shut out the one person who actually believed in me. Simon’s faith was as sincere as it was quiet.
Every time I mention Simon, Carrie tells me to call him. She doesn’t understand why we can’t just kiss and make up. All I have to do, she says, is apologize and he’ll forgive me.
But I know it’s not that simple. I replay that last conversation in my head and see the disappointment in his face, the sorrow in his eyes when he realized I’d confided in Harry, and know that what I did is beyond forgiveness. He’s right—I never trusted him. I put the distrust on him and made myself a victim but all along it was the other way around.
As much as it hurts, I know it’s for the best. Any apology would have to include an explanation about Harry, a detailed narrative of my stupidity and newfound poverty, and that I couldn’t bear. Opening myself up for more ridicule—I know I deserve it but I can’t stomach the thought. Far better to never see Simon again than have him know what a truly stupid, naïve, idiot newbie I am.
At Carrie’s urging, I give the Solutions contract to one of my former Hertzberg colleagues to see if I have any recourse. My prospects are dim.
“The hard part will be proving they never intended to make the film in the first place,” she says. “All the protections in place apply only if the film doesn’t go into preproduction, but their lawyer is insisting that they’re still developing the film. You might win if it goes to trial but it’ll cost you at least twice what you lost, and that’s being optimistic.”
When Carrie hears this, she rails for thirty minutes about our inadequate court system, then gives the contract to Lionel for a second opinion. Expecting nothing, I’m neither surprised nor disappointed. It’s also what I deserve for being gullible, stupid and willful.
Stiff-upper-lipped, I turn my attention to the future.
With no idea what to do with the rest of my life, I scan the help-wanteds every day. Even though I’m qualified for very little, I feel like anything is possible. I e-mail my résumé to the local hardware store looking for a bookkeeper and to the Fresh Air Fund, which needs a executive director. Neither calls.
Surprisingly, the New York Public Library asks me in for an interview for a research associate position at the main branch, a turn-of-the-century beaux arts building on Fifth Avenue. It’s supposed to be a preliminary, half-hour chat with a human resources guy, but several key people are in the building so I wind up talking to most of the research department. Their questions are pretty straightforward, having to do with organization and problem solving, and my years as a paralegal, which is all organization and problem solving, serve me well.
Forty-eight hours later they offer me the job.
Delighted, I spend my first day feeling overwhelmed by the size and the grandeur of the distinguished old institution. More than two million New Yorkers have library cards. The number is staggering, and during my first week, it feels like half of them call the research hotline with questions about obscure facts. At first I’m intimidated by the seemingly endless rows of books, but by Friday I find it comforting and heartening to think there’s so much information in the world. It, like the want ads, makes me feel like anything is possible.
The next step is finding an apartment, and Carrie and I are so focused on the real estate section, we’re both shocked to see my article in Sunday Styles. But there it is, as bold as day, a photo of me and Moxie in rough newspaper-print ink running alongside it. There’s a black blotch on my left arm that looks like the world’s worst tattoo.
I don’t care.
Carrie insists on reading the article aloud, and, listening, I expect to feel anger or regret or sadness but all I can scrape together is relief—relief that is has nothing to do with me anymore. It’s almost like Jarndyce and Jarndyce happened to another person.
At work on Monday, nobody connects me with the article. People talk about it during the morning meeting but they don’t have a clue the author is sitting right there sipping a soy latte. Although it doesn’t speak well of their investigative skills, the anonymity is just what I need. I’ve said my piece on the subject and have nothing left to add.
Relieved Hollywood is well and truly behind me, I unlock the door to Carrie’s apartment and put a pot of water on the stove to boil for pasta. I’m taking a jar of red sauce out of the fridge when I hear a knock on the door.
I pause. Knocks on the door are unusual. People always buzz downstairs first.
I put the jar on the counter, turn down the boiling water and open the door.
And there is Simon. He has the New York Times in his left hand and a huge grin on his face.
Staggered, I stand there, my hand falling to my side as I try to think of something to say. But I’ve got nothing. My mind is blank. Joy doesn’t leave room for anything but its own munificence.
Unchecked, Simon keeps his eyes fixed on me as he leans forward and brushes his lips against mine, tentatively at first, then with increasingly abandon as I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him closer. He drops the Times to the floor when he presses my back against the door, the force of his kiss making my knees weak as I steady myself against his body.
Faintly, I hear the sound of a door opening and Mrs. Skouras’s outraged gasp as she takes in the indecent scene on her threshold. She immediately slams it again.
If Simon notices at all, he gives no indication, only lifting his lips to trail searing kisses along my neck. Dizzy, I throw back my head, dimly aware that we should take this inside, where the couch is softer than the metal frame of the entrance.
But I can’t bring myself to break contact. The feel of Simon’s muscles bunching under my fingers is something I thought I’d never experience again. I know we have to talk. There’s so much he has to know, so much I have to explain. But right now it’s enough that he’s here. He got it—not the message because the article wasn’t a message but the symbolism. What it meant: the break, the freedom, the future.
Simon runs his hands down my back and under my shirt. He moans softly as he makes contact with my warm skin.
I don’t know what comes next, how his West Coast–ness will mesh with my East Coast life, but I know we’ll figure it out. He didn’t come three thousand miles to kiss me on my sister’s doorstep, turn around and go home.
&
nbsp; No, this flash of desire, seemingly ephemeral and certainly intangible, is more solid and vital than any lavish promise made by Lloyd Chancellor or Harold Skimpole or Howard Tulkinghorn. Like the city itself, they prey on hope, peddling shining kingdoms to which they themselves don’t have the keys. It’s all chimera and the misguided conviction that if you believe in something hard enough it will come true.
Faith doesn’t equal reality—Brigadoon isn’t a thought waiting to exist—and in the end there’s nothing behind you except a green screen on which to project your desires.
And yet here is Simon running his hands down the length of my back.
Of all the dreams to ever come out of Hollywood, he’s the only one that’s real.
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