Jason removed his hand—I didn’t look at him—and Ed said, “Dude, does she always bust your chops like that?”
I stood. “I’m walking back to the hotel. I need some air.”
“Don’t get mad just because I said Kendall’s a thug.” Ashley made a pouty face. “Jason, tell your wife she’s being a spoilsport.”
Without really making eye contact with me, Jason said, in an unfriendly tone, “You’re walking?”
I strongly wanted him to go with me; I also knew that if I were him, I wouldn’t. This was when I heard the beginning of “Vogue,” that part where Madonna says in an aggressive voice, “Strike a pose.”
Ashley exclaimed and jumped up from the table; she immediately began swaying her hips, her mouth open wide. Then she was tugging on my hand, dancing around me. I shook my head. She said, “But doesn’t it take you back?” She’d begun making the moves from the video, holding her hands sideways above and below her face.
I said—I had to speak loudly, over the music—“Dance with your husband.”
“Ed doesn’t dance.” She made a face. “You guys are lame.” She turned then, and very quickly—seamlessly—she grabbed Jason’s hands, and he let her pull him up and toward the jukebox. It wasn’t as if there was a dance floor, or as if anyone else was dancing, but he followed her lead. This is the thing: Jason is a good dancer. He’s a good dancer, and he likes dancing, and he ended up with a woman whose dancing is restricted to the electric slide at family weddings. I glanced at Ed and said, “I guess it’s clear who the introverts and extroverts are.”
Ed didn’t respond, and I wondered for the first time if he knew something I didn’t. For all I disdained her, I’d expended a lot of energy on Ashley in the past few days. But Ed didn’t seem to make an effort for anyone.
A minute passed, and although the smart thing to do would have been to follow Ed’s example and shut up, I couldn’t, for the same reason I couldn’t leave the bar while Ashley and Jason were still dancing. If one of them looked over, which they weren’t doing, I wanted them to see us talking.
“Ashley mentioned she’s starting her own business,” I said. “A PR company, right?”
He took a sip of scotch and said, “Not gonna happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“The economy’s about to crater. Nobody’ll be hiring an unproven quantity.” I’m embarrassed to admit that this was the first I’d heard of the cratering economy; I knew in 2008 that revenue at Corster, Lemp, Shreiberg, and Levine was down about 15 percent year-to-date, but I had no idea of the scope of the situation. Unfortunately, all this time later, it’s hard for me to see mentions of the Great Recession without having at least a fleeting memory of Ed Horsford.
“Ashley seems pretty determined.”
He shrugged. “She talks a good game.” Ed was watching our spouses as he added, “Say what you will about Ash—at least she knows who wears the pants in our marriage.”
I let several seconds pass, to make sure I wanted to say what I was about to say. Then I spoke as calmly as he had. “Say what you will about Jason, but at least he’d never unironically use the expression ‘who wears the pants in our marriage.’ ”
As I left, I didn’t try to catch Ashley’s or Jason’s attention on my way out.
The three-quarters-of-a-mile walk to the resort seemed, of course, long and dark, despite the bright stars overhead. From a block out of town on, I didn’t see another person, and I wondered again about the animals that had to be all around, invisible. When the lights of the resort finally came into view, I began to run even though I was wearing a flimsy pair of flats, and I ran all the way around the main building and down the path to our cabin. I was panting as I let myself in.
After I’d brushed my teeth, I debated whether to leave the outside light on, whether Jason deserved this kindness, and decided he didn’t. Then I ate both chocolates that had been left on our pillows. I must have nodded off almost immediately, and I saw on the bedside clock that close to two hours had passed when I heard Jason come in. I didn’t say anything as he peed, brushed his teeth, came back out of the bathroom, and removed all his clothes except his boxers. He lifted the covers on the bed’s far side before saying in a sarcastic voice, as if he’d known all along I was awake, “That was a fun night.”
“It must have been if you’re just getting back.”
“Wait a sec—you think you get to ditch me with those two and be pissed that I didn’t follow you?”
“I left to give you and Ashley privacy in case you wanted to take it to the next level.”
“How thoughtful.”
“I hope having Ed there didn’t cramp your style.” Neither of us spoke, and then I said, “You know that was horrible, right? For you to dance with her, that was like my high school nightmare come true.” But even as I said it, I didn’t exactly buy the claim myself—it felt symbolic more than true.
Jason, it seemed, thought the same. He said, “Then I guess it’s lucky you’re not still in high school.”
We both were quiet again, until I said, “I’m sorry about my gravy train comment.”
“I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do to prove myself to you. Quit my job and try to get hired at a big firm so my salary is as high as yours?” He finally didn’t sound sarcastic, but it was worse—he sounded deeply unhappy.
I said, “I’m glad you do what you do. It’s honorable.”
He laughed.
“It is,” I said.
“I don’t want us to keep having the same argument for the next fifty years.”
“I don’t either.” I rolled across the bed and kissed him on the lips, and after a few seconds, he kissed me back. Then he said, “You taste like mint-chocolate-chip ice cream.”
“I ate the chocolate on the pillow after I brushed my teeth. I ate yours, too.”
After a silence, he said, “I’ll forgive you this time. But don’t let it happen again.”
* * *
—
In the morning, I kept waking up and shutting my eyes, and I sensed Jason doing the same. At some point, I turned and saw that he was on his back, facing the ceiling. “Does your head hurt as much as mine?” I asked.
“This is what I think we should do,” he said. “It’s almost noon, so we’ll miss the brunch here, but isn’t there an IHOP or Waffle House on the outskirts of town? Let’s drive there, get some grease and starch in us, then we come back here, play cribbage by the pool, and chill out. No cable car or white-water rafting or any of that stuff today.”
“Deal,” I said.
“One other stipulation: we don’t talk any more about those fuckwads.”
Beneath the sheets, I extended my hand, and we shook. “I accept the terms of your offer,” I said.
Jason took a shower, then I took one, and while I dressed, he went to get the car; he said he’d meet me in front of the hotel. I walked up the path to the main building and cut through the lobby, and as soon as I stepped back outside, I saw them—they were fifteen feet away, loading suitcases into the trunk of their SUV, or Ed was loading them while Ashley talked on her phone.
I took a step backward, reflexively, just as Ashley caught sight of me and waved. We both had on sunglasses, as did Ed. Ashley held up her index finger, signaling, presumably, that I should stand there and wait for her to speak to me. I scanned the cars behind them and didn’t see Jason.
“Maggie!” Ashley called, and she was pulling the phone from her ear. She wore a black cotton dress, and as she walked toward me, I thought how I’d never wear a dress on a plane—I just don’t have that internal feminine calculus that makes the cuteness of a dress and bare legs seem worth the discomfort of unpredictable plane temperatures. “I’m bummed we have to leave today,” she said.
I wondered if it was realistic to imagine that I could live the rest
of my life without seeing her again. I’d gone sixteen years this time, which was a respectable start.
“That was so fun last night,” she was saying. “And oh my God, Maggie, the dance moves on your husband! He’s so adorable that if we were staying here any longer, I’d seriously have to steal him from you!”
From behind my sunglasses, I looked at her pretty thirty-three-year-old face, with its lines at the eyes and mouth. While holding my head level, maintaining her own sunglassed gaze, I bent my right leg at the knee and raised my heel behind me—I was wearing yoga pants and running shoes—and I pulled my shoelace loose. Then I swung my leg forward. “This is so weird to ask,” I said, “but I think I strained a muscle in my back when we were hiking, and it hurts when I bend. Would you mind tying my shoe?”
She didn’t hesitate. She said, “Oh, sure,” and she leaned at the waist as I brought my right foot up and set it against her thigh. The bottom of my shoe hung off her knee, most of the sole was against her skin, and the toe overlapped with the hem of her dress. If she thought this was rude or unclean on my part, she didn’t say so. As she looped the laces, she said, “What I always take for sore muscles is Advil. I don’t know about you, but after last night, I could use some Advil anyway.”
I didn’t notice that Jason had pulled up until I heard a honk and turned my head. He, too, was wearing sunglasses, and he was watching us impassively. Although I might, over breakfast, have confessed to Jason what I’d done, to be caught in the act felt shameful.
“We gotta go, Ash,” Ed called then, and I said to Ashley, “Us, too.” I set my foot down, and I was the one who moved in to hug her; I did it to compensate for having ceded the high ground.
Off the Record
On the plane from Indianapolis to Los Angeles, Zoe cries so hard that a flight attendant offers to take her from Nina and carry her up and down the aisle. As Nina knew it would, the handoff, which lasts fewer than five minutes, makes Zoe cry even harder, but Nina allows it to happen as an act of contrition toward the other passengers. When they land at LAX, Zoe falls asleep inside the baby carrier that’s strapped around Nina’s waist and shoulders and sleeps as Nina walks off the plane, uses the bathroom, and heads to baggage claim to collect the suitcase and car seat. While Nina is trying to locate the line for taxis, Zoe wakes up enraged, so Nina finds another bathroom, sits on the toilet seat (there’s no lid, and unsure if it’s grosser to do this with her pants up or down, she chooses down, atop a layer of toilet paper), and nurses Zoe while the motion-detecting flusher goes off several times. When they are finally settled in a taxi, it’s late afternoon in L.A.—presumably, traffic-wise, the worst time—and a pleasant sixty-five-degree October day. Zoe cries all the way to the hotel. She is six months old.
They go to sleep early and Zoe wakes only once during the night to eat, then wakes for the day at three forty-five A.M., which, to be fair, is six forty-five A.M. in Indianapolis. The sitter is not due at the hotel for another five hours. Nina eats food from home, two granola bars and a banana that has become very bruised and mushy, which Zoe declines to share. For an indeterminate but extremely long stretch, they play a game where they lie on the bed with their faces close together and Nina taps her own nose and makes a delighted gasp, then taps Zoe’s nose and Zoe makes the same noise. Even after they have been up for quite some time, it’s still dark outside the window of the hotel; they’re in North Hollywood, and down the hill, lights are visible on the Ventura Freeway.
Nina counts, and from the time they left her mother’s house (her house now, though she still isn’t used to thinking of it this way) to the time they will arrive back home adds up to forty-two hours. This means that the $5,000 she is being paid to write the profile of Kelsey Adams divides into $119 an hour of travel, at least before taxes. It’s not an eye-popping amount—a successful writer would be paid significantly more—but she needs the money. Although she has little confidence that she’ll be able to successfully pull off the trip’s logistics, it’s enough to make it worth trying. Also, and somehow this feels more embarrassing than being broke, interviewing Kelsey again makes her feel like less of a loser.
Nina brought two board books to L.A., Bear on a Bike and Barnyard Dance!, and, as she always does, Zoe gazes for a particularly long time at the pages of Bear on a Bike on which the bear is visiting the beach. What, Nina wonders, does she see?
* * *
—
The first time Nina interviewed Kelsey was almost three years ago; they met for lunch in midtown Manhattan, not far from Gloss & Glitter’s office. The slot Nina was interviewing Kelsey for was called 3QW—Three Questions With—and would constitute a sixth of a magazine page, though Kelsey’s publicist seemed to be willfully pretending that the piece would be longer and kept offering Nina increasingly elaborate “access.” (They could attend a fudge-making workshop together!) Although the publicist’s freneticness made Nina anticipate disliking Kelsey, Kelsey turned out to be warm, down-to-earth, and curious about Nina herself, which was rare in interview subjects. Kelsey was tickled to learn not only that Nina, too, had grown up in the Midwest but also that they shared a birthday. The day of the interview, Kelsey was twenty-eight, and Nina was thirty-one. For the previous two years, Kelsey had had a minor role on a very popular network sitcom that Nina had watched only in preparation for the interview; Kelsey played the sitcom family’s mail carrier. By the time Nina’s article about her ran, Kelsey had been cast as the lead in the HBO drama Copacetic, now in its second acclaimed season. The new movie she’s starring in, which is expected to garner her an Oscar nomination, will be released at Christmas.
All of which is why, since Nina returned to Indianapolis, whenever people ask if she met anyone famous when she worked in New York, she mentions Kelsey, even though Kelsey wasn’t that famous when Nina interviewed her. Nina makes a point of saying how nice Kelsey was and sometimes includes the fact that, as they were leaving the midtown restaurant, Kelsey suggested that the two of them hang out again. Nina does not include that Kelsey then added, “Is that weird?” and that Nina replied, “No, not at all,” even though she did think it was weird—not intensely weird, but weird enough to imply that Kelsey was lonely. Mostly, Kelsey seemed to Nina young, sweet, very pretty, and neither idiotic nor particularly smart. Plus, whatever Kelsey’s impression was of Nina, it wasn’t accurate, because a situation in which one person is continuously asking the other questions and treating all the responses as interesting isn’t representative of what it would be like for the two people to socialize. They never did hang out. The more time that has passed, the more Nina has seen her own snobby earnestness (her earnest snobbiness?) as laughably and characteristically self-sabotaging—she could have been friends with a celebrity!
Still, Nina was shocked when Astrid, her former boss from Gloss & Glitter, called to offer Nina the cover profile of Kelsey. First, Nina was shocked that Astrid called her in Indianapolis, something Astrid hadn’t done since laying Nina off, more than a year before. Also, Nina was shocked that Astrid was offering her a major article instead of another crappy sidebar about sunscreen or PMS. And then Nina was shocked when she learned that Kelsey Adams had requested her—her, Nina, by name—to write the profile because Kelsey felt that back in 2011, they’d really “clicked.”
“Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get her to dish on the breakup,” Astrid said. Kelsey had been dating her absurdly handsome HBO costar, a dark-haired carpenter-turned-heartthrob named Scott Zaretsky, until she suddenly wasn’t. And of course Nina was going to accept the assignment—she wanted the five grand.
Before they hung up, Astrid said, “How’s le bébé?” and Nina assumed Astrid didn’t remember Zoe’s name. Nina had never told Astrid that she was pregnant, but someone else at the magazine had, and Astrid had sent Nina an email that said Is this like a NYC single independent woman taking control of her fertility or an Indiana white trash baby mama fuckup :)
/>
Good question, Nina had emailed back.
Maybe the reason Nina wasn’t offended is that she herself had wondered—still wonders—the same thing. Truly, more than she feels upset by the last few years of her life, she feels bewildered: her mother’s lung cancer diagnosis; her mother’s death, which was five months after she was diagnosed, four and a half months after Nina returned to Indianapolis to take care of her, and four months after (unrelatedly, Astrid assured her) Nina was laid off. By that point, Nina sort of did and sort of didn’t know she was pregnant. Or she suspected, but how could she have attended to the situation while her mother was dying, even if—awkwardly, hideously—the dying took longer than Nina or even the hospice workers had expected? (She had adored her mother; every year on Nina’s birthday, until she turned fifteen, Nina’s mother made a mud pie out of Oreos, whipped cream, and gummy worms and served it in a real flower pot, and then she let Nina sleep that night in her queen-sized bed.) At the appointment Nina had finally made following her mother’s death, when the technician estimated the pregnancy at eighteen weeks, Nina had to ask herself—as, essentially, Astrid did—if she’d waited that long on purpose. She definitely hadn’t been trying to get pregnant; if she had, it wouldn’t have been by a forty-seven-year-old Indianapolis lawyer she’d met at Starbucks and gone out with a total of five times, a not particularly good-looking man who had never been married and didn’t want kids. (At Starbucks, Jeff had seen her doing the Times crossword and been condescendingly impressed.)
Their conversation about the pregnancy seemed like it belonged in an after-school special, except that the guy was thirty years too old. Their agreement is that he is giving her $1,260 a month in child support and that she has full custody of Zoe, though once every three weeks, on a Sunday, he comes over for an hour. Conveniently, it seems that none of the three of them wish for Zoe and Jeff to be alone with each other.