by Una LaMarche
“OK, everyone owes me thirteen bucks for their ticket,” he said. We were huddled in front of Film Forum at 7:30 on a Saturday night to see Jules et Jim, a French New Wave movie from the 1960s that Ethan claimed was “mandatory viewing” to understand what he was “trying to accomplish” in Boroughed Trouble.
“What?” Diego bounced from foot to foot, his high-tops a few inches deep in snow. “You begged us to come, man. I thought this was a freebie.”
“You should pay us for having to read subtitles,” you said, your face barely visible from under an enormous faux-fur hood. “Joy even had to wear her glasses!”
“Yeah, you know, a night out in the city, I like to dress it up,” Joy laughed. She was wearing bright red earmuffs to match her bright red coat, and every time Diego looked at her I could see a change in his eyes, that shift in focus of finally spotting the person you’ve been looking for in a crowded room. It made me resent him, too, because I wanted to be able to look at you like that, not have to fight the impulse with every muscle in my frostbitten face. My old teacher Mr. Cunningham used to say that my body was just a vessel for the role to live inside. It was the kind of pompous theater-speak I hated, but it was true; an actor’s body was supposed to be a vessel, and so that night I was trying to make mine totally and completely empty.
The theater was packed, mostly with old people. By the time we got popcorn and soda and paid Ethan back in exact fucking change, it was so full that we ended up having to sit in separate groups. There were two seats open in one row near the middle, but when Ethan staked his claim, beckoning you—a.k.a. babe—to join him, you acted like you couldn’t see him and squeezed into the three-seater behind him, next to Joy. Diego started in after you, leaving me to sit next to our illustrious director, but then Ethan quickly insisted that since he might need to point out important scenes to us, it was crucial that we all be together, which then meant that four of the five of us had to get back up, make everyone else in the rows stand up, and switch places. You also got up to go to the bathroom twice, so by the time the lights dimmed I was confident that at least 75 percent of the theater hated us, but that was OK, because I hated everyone, too.
Not only did I have a front-row seat to Diego having a pseudo-date with Joy, but Ethan made you scoot down so that he was in the middle (“Do you mind, babe?”) and I was on the other side of him, smelling his aggressive body spray and watching him try to hold your hand every time you reached for the popcorn. (“It’s gluten-free, babe. I checked for you.”) The fact that you still seemed to reject his public displays of affection was cold comfort. I didn’t mind so much that I didn’t understand French, but I found myself wishing I couldn’t speak English, if only to spare myself the torture of eavesdropping on Ethan’s version of sweet nothings.
“You said, ‘I love you,’” he whispered as the same words appeared on a black screen, over a French woman’s voice. “I said, ‘Wait.’”
“I said, shut up so I can watch,” you whispered back, and someone behind us made a loud shushing noise.
Then the credits started, with some carousel music playing over a montage of seemingly unrelated stuff: a woman laughing, two dudes trying to open a gate, a kid throwing a dart, an hourglass, a painting. My eyes were already starting to glaze over. One of my dark secrets as an actor was that I really wasn’t all that into artsy movies. If I was going to fork over thirteen bucks, I wanted to see some CGI explosions—or, at the very least, the Rock looking constipated with concern for the fate of mankind. The only thing that would have made this worth it was two hours of sitting next to you in the dark. Alone.
I looked down at Diego and Joy. They were sharing a box of popcorn and some Sour Patch Kids, each holding one, so that the other person kept having to reach into the opposite lap. Every few minutes one of them would whisper something to the other one—not a loud stage whisper like Ethan’s, but the kind when your mouth has to be almost inside the person’s ear—and laugh, their shoulders shaking in silent tremors. I seethed with jealousy.
It definitely did not help that Jules et Jim turned out to be about a love triangle where both of the main guys were obsessed with a woman named Catherine, who basically had the market cornered on Manic Pixie Dream Girls before anyone had invented them. She drew on a mustache just for kicks and fell into rivers and was sad and gorgeous and batshit and whimsical. But it was obvious it wasn’t going to end well: anyone could see it coming. (OK, so I guess I was paying a little bit of attention, when I wasn’t watching your right arm out of the corner of my left eye, trying to predict when your hand was about to dig into Ethan’s popcorn so that I could put mine in, too. If I had put half as much effort into my calculus homework, I could probably have worked for NASA. But you never ate the popcorn, anyway. You just kept drumming your fingers on your jiggling knees. I thought it meant you were bored.)
But halfway through the movie, we’d never touched, not even “accidentally,” and I was swiftly spiraling into a dark and fragmented place that felt less New Wave and more Fifth Wheel. Loneliness was bad enough when I was actually, physically alone, staring up at Pop-Pop’s presidential memorabilia covering the walls of my makeshift bedroom, passing time like treading water and praying for someone (you) to send a hopeful ping into the void with a text . . . but being lonely in a group made me feel even worse. Luckily I had also drained a large soda and was about to piss myself if I didn’t get to a bathroom soon, so I got up and edged my way out of the row, causing a chorus of groans from about half the theater. As I tripped over the clogs of the woman sitting in the aisle seat, who had refused to stand or even tuck her knees up, I glanced back to see Ethan wrapping his arm around your shoulders. And then, just like any good girlfriend would do, you leaned into him and whispered something in his ear.
You both laughed.
• • •
“You’ve reached the voicemail of Allison Anders, formerly Allison Anders Roth, of AAR Artists. Please leave me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, or you can reach one of my assistants . . .” I held the phone away from my ear as my mother’s disembodied voice read out a series of names and numbers. I thought about hanging up. I’d decided to call her mostly out of boredom, anyway, since I’d been sitting in the lobby for an hour, unable to face the Molotov cocktail of lust and angst that awaited me back in the theater. I’d played four chess games already and was down to 5 percent battery on my phone, which was an even more compelling argument for hanging up on Mom’s voicemail. But then I realized that she would see the missed call even if I didn’t leave a message and would probably start concern-texting me a series of standalone question marks. So I waited, as instructed, for the beep.
“Hey Mom,” I said, getting up and pacing across the geometric lobby carpet. “It’s your most important client. Haha, just kidding, it’s your son.” Just then, the double doors to the theater opened; the movie was letting out. “I guess I . . . um, just wanted to say hi,” I said, stepping back against the wall by the men’s room, keeping one eye on the stream of people moving toward me. “And that it’s like the Arctic Circle here, and that—” I felt someone watching me and noticed a girl a few feet away, zipping up her coat with a don’t-I-know-you? look. I cleared my throat and lowered my voice.
“I, uh . . . miss you,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “But I’m actually at a movie right now with some friends, so I guess that’s a good sign. Except for the fact that I’m outside calling my mom, so . . .” I laughed gently, shaking my head. I definitely should have hung up when I got her voicemail. I hadn’t wanted to leave her a dumb, rambling message. I hadn’t wanted to leave her any message at all. I’d just wanted to hear her voice.
“Anyway, I know you’re really busy,” I said, “so you don’t have to call me back. I’ll talk to you later.”
I ended the call and slipped my phone into my back pocket just as Ethan came out of the theater and spotted me.
“What
the hell, dude?” he cried, tossing me the coat I’d left crumpled on my seat when I made my escape. “You missed half the movie!” You, Diego, and Joy followed a few steps behind him, looking restless, confused, and puffy-eyed, respectively.
“Sorry,” I said. “I had to—”
“Take an epic dump?” Ethan asked, loud enough that a few strangers laughed.
“Um, no. I had to make a phone call.” That was true. “To my agent.” That was not true.
“Oh,” he said begrudgingly, looking annoyed he couldn’t be more annoyed.
“Consider yourself lucky,” Joy said, wiping her eyes. “That was so sad.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Don’t tell him!” Ethan said. “This is the kind of film you have to see from start to—”
“She drives her car off a bridge,” you cut in. “With Jim in it.”
“Babe!” Ethan said sharply, and you shook your head at him like someone training a dog. I felt my shoulders relax.
“And she makes Jules watch,” Joy whimpered. She looked up at Diego, her lower lip quivering. “Did I get snot on your arm at the end?”
“It’s OK,” he said, smiling down at her. “This shirt is so old, it’s basically Kleenex.”
“I mean, who would do that?” Joy asked, her eyes wide and watery.
“A crazy person,” Diego said.
“See, that’s what I take issue with,” you said, pulling on your coat while simultaneously dodging Ethan’s attempts to help. “Why does the woman have to be some unhinged sociopath?” You rooted around in your purse and fished out a container of Tic Tacs. “That’s just straight-up misogyny.”
“Truffaut is not a misogynist,” Ethan said, rolling his eyes. “He’s a genius. Have you seen The 400 Blows?”
“Nah, I think my mom blocks those channels,” Diego joked.
“Anyway,” Ethan continued, ignoring our snickering, “Catherine doesn’t do it because she’s crazy, she just realizes she can never have him, or the kind of life she wants. It’s about the choices you make when you feel desperate and trapped.”
“I felt trapped watching that,” you said, rolling your eyes and jiggling your jaw from side to side. “I’m going to the ladies’ room.”
“You have to see it,” Ethan said, turning to me as you scampered off, clutching your bag. “I think you could really use it for Rodolpho’s motivation at the end.”
“Hold up, does your play end with murder-suicide, too?” Joy asked. “Because I thought ballets were depressing, but damn. This was worse than Swan Lake.”
“It’s . . . more nuanced,” I said, mostly for Ethan’s benefit. Really I wasn’t sure I understood how someone could hurl themselves off a bridge just from wanting someone. I mean, I wanted you, but not that badly. Yet. Maybe Ethan was right, and I needed to study some unstable types, although people watching was more my speed than movie watching. It had always been a habit of mine, since I was little, to pick someone out of a crowd and try to imagine what it would be like to be them, sort of a Choose Your Own Adventure—I’d start with the shoes or the walk or some other detail and then let my imagination spin out from there. There were a dozen people standing around me in the lobby at that moment who I could use: The middle-aged man with the pleated jeans and slight limp, who would go home to Queens to care for his disabled brother; the twentysomething hipster couple with matching asymmetrical pixie cuts who might get into a fight on the train, and then, back on the sidewalk, she’d walk ahead of him, fighting tears, while he silently smoked a hand-rolled cigarette. Most of my made-up stories had depressing trajectories, which was something my therapist in L.A. would have called “worth exploring.”
“Hey, Roth, you coming or what?” Ethan called.
I hadn’t noticed that everyone had started walking without me and were almost at the exit. Diego, who had put on Joy’s earmuffs, seemed to be doing some kind of impression of her, and she was snatching at them while Ethan laughed.
I felt you next to me before you said anything—as you pulled your hood up, the fur brushed my cheek, soft and prickly at the same time. I almost jumped.
“Think they’ll ever do it?” you asked, looking up at me with eyes that seemed anime-wide all of a sudden.
My cheeks lit up with heat. “What?” I sputtered.
“Joy and Diego,” you said. “I mean, it’s so obvious.”
“I don’t know,” I said, pulling my hat on. “He’s taking his time, I think. Waiting for the right moment.”
“Waiting is overrated,” you said with a smile.
“Jesus Christ, come on, you need a formal invitation?” Ethan yelled. He was already holding the door, and a gust of frigid February air snaked into the lobby. We started down the carpet.
“For future reference,” you whispered, “if you’re ever planning a jailbreak, you could at least take me with you.”
“Yeah well . . .” I shrugged apologetically. “Every man for himself, I guess.”
You scrunched up your nose in playful indignation as we reached Ethan and he cut in, taking your arm as you stepped gingerly out onto the ice of West Houston Street in your high-heeled boots. I felt my spirits lift in a way that felt like both a relief and a warning.
I couldn’t make the feelings I had for you disappear, but I could leash them temporarily. At least until the play was over, I told myself.
It’s hard to think back to when it all felt like such a game. I didn’t realize then that you were right—that waiting wasn’t always a virtue.
Sometimes, waiting is just the difference between being able to save someone, and being too late.
Chapter Eleven
February 12
90 days left
“LAST-SECOND CLUB SWITCH there by Mickelson . . . he’s got the ball below his feet, an awkward stance in this fairway bunker . . .”
We were in the living room the next morning, Dad, Pop-Pop, and me, watching golf on ESPN despite the fact that I would literally have preferred to do anything else, including my art history homework or bringing dirty boxer shorts to the building’s basement laundry room, which could have been used as a location for one of the Saw movies with zero set decoration.
But I was too lazy to do either of those things, and my coffee—despite being served in a truly humiliating mug emblazoned with my seventh-grade portrait—was still hot. And if I was honest with myself it was actually a little bit nice to be sitting on the couch with my dad, both of us bed-headed and bleary-eyed, with our tube-socked feet propped up on the coffee table. It felt almost normal, until I turned to look out the window and saw the snowy cityscape instead of Mom’s lilac bushes.
I felt for my phone on the cushion beside me as the golfer stared intently at the tiny hole onscreen, adjusting the belt on his bright orange pants. Riveting entertainment. I knew Mom had sent a bunch of texts the night before, around 10:30 L.A. time, when I was already passed out; I saw them lined up on my lock screen when I woke up, to check if there was anything from you. (The night before, at dinner, you’d casually asked for my number “in case you want to run lines sometime,” which had made my entire night. I’d chosen not to tell you that I already had your number programmed into my phone, and that I’d even given you your own ringtone.)
“You know, it is possible to live without that thing attached to your hand,” Dad said. He had a thing about phones, a recent and incredibly annoying thing he had picked up on a meditation retreat. Apparently being too “plugged-in” interrupted the mind’s ability to be silent, which was the key to true knowledge. Or something.
“I’m not even doing anything,” I said. “I’m just holding it.”
“But holding it means you’re waiting for it to do something, and if your attention is focused on that, it can’t be focused on this.” He gestured to the cluttered living room.
“What, like golf and Nana’s vi
tamin collection?” I asked. Dad gave me a withering look.
“Well if you’re going to ‘just hold’ it, would you do me a favor and text your mother back?” he asked. “She’s getting on me now.”
“Jesus, it’s been like twelve hours. Tell her to chill.” I wished I hadn’t called her from the movie theater. I never actually called her, let alone left her a message, so she probably assumed I was out on a ledge somewhere.
Dad held up his hands—or one hand, anyway; his other had his coffee mug in a death grip. “I’m staying out of it,” he said. I turned off the phone and tossed it onto the coffee table, on top of a stack of New Yorker magazines.
“Happy now?” I grumbled.
“Would you look at that, a double bogey,” Pop-Pop said. “He’s off his game today.” I looked at the TV but all I saw was a big, green nothing. I couldn’t even guess where the ball was supposed to be.
• • •
Nana got bacon and bagels from Zabar’s like she did every Sunday, and by one o’clock the table was set with a spread that could have fed a reality show family with three sets of triplet farmhands. Golf was off and the radio was on, tuned to some jazz station. It wasn’t exactly the stuff crazy weekends were made of, but at least it was dependably uneventful. I was on my second plate—and second hour of phoneless daydreaming—when the doorbell rang.
“Did you order a package?” Pop-Pop asked Nana, looking up from his section of the newspaper.