At that moment, the waitress brought the Rocky Mountain Oysters. I did not want to swallow.
“Have you talked to Kate?” Bree asked Cherie. “Fabulous. Well, that would be perfect, don’t you think?” She covered the phone and said to me, “What do you think of Kate Winslet playing me in the film version of Paperback Bitch?”
“The poor girl already went down on one sinking ship,” I said.
Bree was immune to my insults. “Julie thinks it’s a great idea, too,” she said. “Do you want to talk to her?”
I was frantically waving my arms to say No! when Bree handed me the phone.
“Hello, mother,” I said. “When were you planning to tell me that you’re producing Bree’s movie?”
Cherie’s voice crackled through the line. “Did I forget to mention that, my dear?”
“You did.”
“Oh, well, whatever. Have you read the book? It’s a hoot. Very snarky. Perfect for Kate, she’s a ballsy one.”
“This is Bree, mother,” I reminded her. “Remember? The horny bitch who broke up my engagement?” I covered the phone and said, “No offense.”
“None taken,” Bree said brightly.
“Oh, you have to get over it,” Cherie lectured me. “Ancient history. You can’t hold a grudge forever. People make mistakes. Bree’s heart is in the right place, even if her vagina occasionally isn’t. Besides, I never liked Kevin Stone.”
“You weren’t the one marrying him.”
“Water under the bridge, my dear. I want you and Bree to be friends again. That’s why I got the tickets for you.”
“Excuse me? You bought the tickets?” I looked at Bree and said, “My mother bought the tickets?”
“Yes,” they said simultaneously.
“Why?” I asked my mother. “What are you not telling me?”
“Oh, you are so suspicious.” Cherie laughed, which only made me more suspicious. “Go, enjoy, take a night off for once in your life. See the show. Remember, I said you’d thank me!”
Ding ding ding. That was the sound of my warning bells going off.
“I have to run!” my mother went on cheerily. “Call me tomorrow, we’ll have lots to talk about. Ta, my dear!”
I hung up the phone and handed it back to Bree.
“What is she not telling me?” I asked.
Bree ate a ball. “Truly, darling, I have no idea. All I know is that the tickets were waiting for me at my hotel when I checked in, with a note from Cherie saying I should corral you by the throat if necessary and drag you to the show. I don’t say no to the woman who is producing my movie.”
“This isn’t just about you and me,” I said.
“I wouldn’t know, darling. Everything is about me.”
“That’s true.”
“Still hate me?” Bree asked again, reaching for a hellfire wing and licking her fingers.
“More than ever.”
She ordered another round.
By the time we left the hotel to walk to the theatre, I was drunk, and I did not hate Bree anymore. We declared a truce, at least for the evening. We clung to each other, laughing like lunatics as we dodged the crowds in Times Square. Her arm was around my shoulder. She smelled like smoke. She was dressed to kill in a glittery, shimmery dress up to her mid-thighs, and I wore the classic little black dress. We were both spilling over with cleavage and not walking a straight line in our heels. We got a lot of attention.
I don’t get out to the theatre much. My mother is right that I don’t have much of a social life. Sonny would usually pry me out of my apartment two or three times a year to see Shakespeare or something new by Kushner. I went to an off-Broadway show last September with Garrett. It wasn’t a date. Not really. We went out to dinner after the show, and he had that look in his eyes that said he approved of what I was wearing, which wasn’t much. Later, he walked me home, and I thought he might kiss me. He didn’t.
That’s my love life.
I felt Bree hanging on my shoulder. We’d gotten drunk together plenty of times in our twenties. Sometimes in New York, sometimes in London, sometimes in Frankfurt during the big book fair. We had big dreams. We talked about going out on our own, leaving our agencies, starting Cox & Chavan, or Chavan & Cox, teaming up on both sides of the Atlantic. Needless to say, her affair with Kevin Stone shelved those dreams permanently. It didn’t matter. For me, a dream is a lovely thing, but reality is a big scary animal. Bree, on the other hand, had balls.
“So you finally did it,” I murmured into her ear.
“Did what, darling?”
“Went out on your own. Started the agency.”
“Yes, I did.”
“I will deny saying this in the morning, but I’m proud of you, Bree Cox. I could never do what you did.”
“Yes, you could. You’re doing it right now.”
“No, no, if it were up to me, I’d still be in my cubicle at McNally-Brown. I’d go home every night and swear that the next day I’d quit, but I never would. I can’t make a decision. I can’t choose. I can’t commit. It’s pathetic. If Sonny hadn’t died, nothing would have changed.”
“Darling, I was the same way. We hate our ruts, but after a while, we can’t imagine living without them.”
I shook my head. The cosmos were swimming between my ears. The drinks, I mean, not the universe at large. “Balls. You have them. Not me.”
Bree held me up as I started to pitch forward. We were a block from the theatre, on 50th west of Broadway. I could see the ticket-holders lined up outside, waiting for the doors to open. It was a good thing, because I didn’t think I could walk much farther.
“My own boss had to die before I thought about leaving the agency,” Bree reminded me. “I’d probably be a bag lady in Hyde Park if Brad Pitt hadn’t come through with a movie deal for some much-needed cash flow.”
“I love him.”
“Brad’s a doll. He saved my arse, no doubt about that.”
“Any regrets?” I asked.
“Yes, he never asked me out.”
“No, no, regrets about going out on your own.”
“God, yes, darling. It was terrifying. It still is. Not that I’d ever go back. I couldn’t work for anyone else. Never again. Plus, when I make money, I keep it. That’s a perk. I like seeing my name on the checks.”
“I’m jealous,” I said.
“Of me?”
“Of you.”
If I hadn’t been drunk, I would never have admitted it to her, but I’d been jealous of Bree Cox ever since I met her. She made everything look so easy.
Bree laughed, as if I’d said something very funny. “That’s a riot, darling.”
I thought she was laughing at me, and I was annoyed. You don’t bare your soul and expect your best friend to laugh. Did I just call her my best friend? That should tell you that I don’t have many friends. Anyway, Bree saw me stamp my feet like an angry bull, and she leaned in with her hands on my shoulders until we were almost forehead to forehead. “It’s a riot, darling, because I’ve been jealous of you my whole life.”
“You’re kidding.”
“It’s true.”
“Why?”
“Oh, get a clue, Julie. You are the most gorgeous woman I know. You have that annoying hourglass figure and you weigh three pounds. You are smarter than me, you’re more decent than me, you’re way more loyal than me, and you’re as deep as an ocean whereas I revel in being as shallow as a stream. Does that sum it up for you, darling?”
I said, “Oh.”
“Yes, oh.”
“That’s about the sweetest thing anyone has said to me.”
Bree shrugged. “I know, it’s hard to believe it came out of my mouth, isn’t it?”
I didn’t know what to do, so I hugged her. I didn’t want to cry and ruin my makeup, but my eyes felt watery. I began to think our truce would last longer than a night.
We reached the end of the theatre line, where impatient ticket-holders stretched half a block from
the box office. The marquee listed REAR WINDOW in large letters. I thought about the movie: Hitchcock, Stewart, Kelly, even Raymond Burr as a bad egg before he became Perry Mason. Good movie, but as a New Yorker, I get creeped out by the voyeurism theme. When you live in an apartment like I do, you figure someone is always watching you from behind binoculars. It’s usually not Jimmy Stewart.
The line started to move.
“Thank God,” Bree said. “I really, really need to pee.”
“Did you see the show in London?” I asked.
“I did. Emily Blunt was amazing in the Grace Kelly role. But I’m a sucker for January Jones. So who’s in the Jimmy Stewart role tonight? I heard they brought in someone while Bradley Cooper recuperates.”
“I don’t know.”
We reached the theatre as the line crept closer to the door. They had oversized photos of the actors on the wall. Yes, the play had a guest actor in the lead role for a limited engagement. One month only. Final days. How had I missed it? But then, I’d been busy for the past month.
I recognized his face. It was a face I knew all too well.
“Oh, balls,” I said.
“What is it?” Bree asked, but then she saw it, too. “Oh, balls!”
There are no coincidences. This was all about my mother. She’d planned the whole thing. She is an evil genius.
I’ve asked an old friend to look you up.
I don’t want to spoil the surprise. You’ll thank me!
No, I won’t, Mother.
I’ve been engaged to two men in my life. One was Kevin Stone, and you know how that one ended. The other was an actor named Thad Keller. This was in my acting days, back when I thought I was destined to be a star. I didn’t make it.
Thad did.
He made it all the way to Broadway.
9
Thad Keller.
I met him the way actors meet other actors, on the set. You will hear actors boast about fourteen-hour filming days, but the reality is that most of that time is spent waiting to be called to the set for a few minutes with the camera going. Otherwise, you sit in makeup and costume, getting into trouble. Some actors memorize their lines, but for those of us playing “Nurse With Long Hair” (do you see a trend in my credits?), memorizing a single spoken line doesn’t require a lot of time.
“Anything you say, Doctor.”
Got it.
Back in those days, Thad and I were both struggling. I was in my early twenties; so was he. We’d snagged guest starring roles on ER, although I was more an extra than a guest star, and the camera spent more time on my backside than on my face. Thad had a real part, as a medical student paying off his debts as a male prostitute. Trust me, there were plenty of women who would have paid to be with Thad.
If I’d slept with him that day on the set at County General, that would have been the end of our relationship. He was used to trailer courtships, one day, one actress. In the sexual credits in his autobiography, I would have been “Indian Extra with Long Hair.” Not that I didn’t think about it. If Thad is anything, he is charismatic, like a young Nick Nolte, with wavy blond hair, chiseled jaw, blue eyes that have their own magnetic pole. He was as tall and physically imposing as my father. His personality was also as intense and controlling as my father’s. For more self-aware people, this might have been a warning sign about disaster ahead. Not for me. Not back then.
That first day, we talked about politics. His are liberal, like most actors; mine are inscrutable. We talked about the Los Angeles weather. It’s great; that was a short conversation. We talked about our dreams, which must be page one of the seduction playbook for men. “If a woman tells you her dreams, she’s half-way to bed.” We flirted over sushi. He put a hand on my ass; I slapped it away. A couple hours later, the hand came back, and I left it there. We kissed, wet, lots of tongue, but that was as far as it went. Maybe, if we’d had twenty minutes more, my resistance would have crumbled, but instead, I got called to the set to run my line opposite some actor named George Clooney.
“Anything you say, Doctor.”
Cut. Print. That was my day. I didn’t see Thad again when I was done, and I figured I never would.
I was wrong. Thad wasn’t accustomed to wanting something he couldn’t have, and I was the one that got away. Truth be told, we had chemistry, and we both felt it. He called me. He took me to dinner at a crab shack on the coast. He probably figured it was erotically barbaric, cracking shells on butcher paper beside the ocean. I’d suck crawfish heads, and then I’d – well, you know where I’m going with this. I didn’t. I thought about it, but I didn’t. I knew who Thad was and what he wanted. If he didn’t want something more with me, he wasn’t going to get anything.
Not immediately, anyway. Three dates later, when my own juices were dripping like butter off a lobster claw, I gave in. I’d had sex before, but this was sex. “Hang on, my hands are getting carpet burns” sex. “There’s a light switch on the wall that’s digging into my butt” sex. I learned a new word, namely “orgasm,” and I mastered it through repetition. I prayed to God, usually preceded by “Oh, my.”
The physical heat between us was fierce, but we all know what we learn about heat as children. Don’t get too close, or you’ll get burned. We were definitely in a relationship, but the best word to describe that relationship was “tumultuous.” We couldn’t stay away from each other, but we had trouble being together, at least when we weren’t naked. If that sounds a lot like Sonny and Cherie, well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I loved him. I really did. I think he loved me, too, as much as a narcissist can love another human being. He had a Bigfoot-sized ego, but I couldn’t blame him for it. Thad was going places. No doubt about it. The easy thing to do would have been to hitch my wagon to his star. For a year, I did.
He asked me to marry him, and I said yes. My mother was thrilled. My father, not so much. When it comes to egotists, it takes one to know one. I’m sure Thad cheated on me constantly, not that I knew about it at the time. You can put on blinders about such things. Hey, I didn’t think Kevin was cheating on me, either, until Bree proved me wrong.
Speaking of Bree, she was with me on and off through the whole Thad affair, too, visiting me in Los Angeles. Foolish me, I never asked whether she slept with him. In retrospect, I wonder, but I’d rather not know. She’d probably be honest and say yes, and I’d have to hate her all over again. Back then, she was my rock, watching me careen through emotional highs and lows. Thad and I were as hot and cold as a Katy Perry song, breaking up, making up, unable to stay, unable to go. I felt consumed by him. In bed, that was good. Out of bed, he was slowly devouring my identity, re-molding me like a plastic surgeon. If I married him, I realized I would forever lose who I was. Finally, the only thing I could do was cut him out of my life like I was going into rehab. Step one: You are powerless to resist.
I had to travel a long way to escape him. I went back to New York and stayed. Not long after, I gave up my acting career, too. My mother was unhappy with me. She thought I’d given up love and money, and I never could get her to understand that I’d done exactly what she’d done with Sonny. I’d chosen to find my own way.
Don’t worry about Thad. He prospered. I knew he would. He landed a supporting role in a brainy thriller that spawned two nine-figure sequels. He’s rich. He can pick and choose his roles. I’ve kept an eye on him over the years, which a therapist would probably tell me is unwise. He flits in and out of the Star Tracks photos in People with various bikini-clad models. He married once, a Hollywood marriage that hit the rocks after a year. I thought: That would have been us.
It’s funny. You’d think I would have learned something from the experience, but a few years later, I made the same mistakes all over again with Kevin. They could have been brothers, and I almost married him, too. Bree is right. Maybe I should thank her, because left to my own devices, I’m a fool when it comes to men.
Here I was a few more years later, and nothing had changed. I was still a f
ool. I was going to see Thad again, and I was already forgetting lesson one.
You are powerless to resist him.
Bree and I sat in our front row seats as we waited for the curtain.
I was holding a small note card in my hand. An usher gave it to me in an envelope as we sat down. I knew Thad was going to contact me – that was the point of this whole game – but I wasn’t expecting it to happen so quickly. I figured, intermission. Or maybe after the bows. No, Thad was never one to wait.
I read his message for the fiftieth time in five minutes:
I would love to see you again, Julie. Have a drink with me after the show.
Bree sipped her cocktail. She fingered the program and didn’t look at me as I obsessed over my note. “So, Thad,” she said.
“Thad.”
“Quel surprise.”
“Yes.” Then I said: “Was it really a surprise, Bree? Or did Cherie tell you?”
“I had no idea. None. Truly, darling, I didn’t know. This was all your mother.”
I believed her. This conspiracy had Cherie’s fingerprints on it. Even so, Bree looked uncomfortable, like a mouse in a house with seven cats. Maybe it was just the alcohol, or maybe it was something more. I know I said I didn’t want to know, but I was drunk, so what the hell.
“Did you sleep with him?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Thad.”
“What?”
“Back then. When he and I were engaged. Did you sleep with him?”
“Of course not.”
“No? What about your sexual disability? You were just as horny in those days.”
Bree put her hand over her heart. “Darling, I swear to you, the only fiancé of yours that I ever screwed was Kevin.”
I’m sure the people behind us were enjoying our conversation.
“Did he try?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Did Thad try to seduce you?”
Her face reddened to match the highlights in her hair. “Oh. Well. Sort of.”
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