So 5 Minutes Ago (20 page)

“Too late for that,” I holler back. I bang the tea kettle around for a few minutes until my anger passes. Or I start to feel ridiculous. “Do you want some tea?” I say finally.

“No.”

“It’s as much of a white flag as I’m going to wave.”

“Okay, then yes.”

I find some ancient Lapsang in the freezer and make two cups. I take a sip. Like drinking liquid smoke. Oh well, it’s a gesture. “Here,” I say, heading back into the living room with the tea. “Although this probably would have been better if we smoked it.”

We sit next to each other on the sofa sipping the awful tea. “I feel like I should read some Emily Dickinson. Aloud,” Steven says.

I elbow him in the ribs. Our fight is officially over.

“Does that work?” he says, nodding at the fireplace.

“Yeah. It’s gas.”

“Shall we have a fire, dear?”

I put down my cup, reach for the matches on the coffee table. I crouch down, fiddle with the gas lever and the matches for a minute. Finally, a blue flame leaps across the empty, soot-stained bricks.

“That looks real,” he says, squinting at the flame. “Sort of.”

“I was thinking of getting some fake logs to go with it.”

“And ruin the Bunsen burner effect? Don’t you think there’s something about the purity of a naked flame?”

“If you’re a chemist. Or cook PCP in your basement.”

“If only we had some crack. Or marshmallows.”

“Okay, and this is scary—we do,” I say, leaping up and heading into the kitchen. Once you’re into the sugar, you might as well go all the way. Besides, we need a chaser for that tea. I root around the cupboard and find the half-empty bag of marshmallows. A girl doesn’t need much. Just wine, crackers, good coffee, Scharfenberger cocoa, and marshmallows. That combination has gotten me through many a night. And the next morning. I open a drawer and pull out two metal skewers—did I know I had these?—and head back into the living room.

“Burnt sugar coming up,” I say, handing him a skewer. We load them up and go at it for a while. “Smells like Girl Scouts in here,” I say, wiping the corners of my mouth with my fingers.

“Wouldn’t know,” he says, reaching for more marshmallows. “If only we had more wine, we could be like Sunny von Bulow and lapse into a coma. So what are you doing for Christmas?”

“Haven’t gotten that far. I have to get through Thanksgiving first. My parents are coming, remember?”

“I thought they were coming for Christmas?”

“The anticipation was killing me. I convinced them to come for Thanksgiving instead. Get it out of the way. I already got them a room at the Chateau.”

“You got Jack and Helen a room at the Chateau?”

“Jack and Helen and Amy and Barkley.”

“The dog’s coming?”

“Amy’s husband. Such as he is.”

“I’ll say it again, the Chateau? Nobody’s parents stay at the Chateau. Not unless they’re English.”

“They said they wanted to be near my house. They said they wanted something with ‘atmosphere.’ I was thinking of sticking them in the Standard, but I thought that was pushing it.”

“I think the Chateau’s pushing it.”

“I booked them a bungalow suite.”

“The John Belushi memorial?”

“Look, it’ll be fine,” I say. “Mom’ll love the lobby. Dad can read the paper in the courtyard and pretend he’s at the club or wherever he likes to pretend he is. And Amy can lie around the pool and think she’s at the apogee of Hollywood cool.”

“It is the apogee of Hollywood cool.”

“Well, I know that, but I’m not going to tell her.”

We roast a few more skewers. I’m starting to feel slightly jumpy from all the sugar, when the phone rings.

“Don’t answer it,” Steven says, licking his fingers. “We don’t have enough even for us and I’m not comatose yet.”

“It’s my phone, not the front door.”

“Oh, then answer it if you want.”

I check my watch—going on ten—and decide to let the machine pick up.

“Hey, you, I thought I’d check and see if you were home before I tried your cell—” is as much as Charles gets out before I grab it.

“Hey,” I say, vaulting across Steven to grab the portable off the coffee table. “How’s it going? It’s pretty late there.” I look back over at Steven. He is mouthing “He calls you
you
?” and gives me a thumbs-up.

Later, much later into our conversation, after Steven has gone and the fire is out, I feel the ground slip. Just slightly. But enough. Enough to change things. To change everything.

“Look, the point is that you and I appear to be the only DWP agents not in Doug’s crosshairs,” Charles says. We’ve been at this for over an hour. G. Suzanne. The Phoenix. He knows as much—no, more—than I do. Like the fact that G has already had a few meetings with ad agencies in New York. “It’s just wrong, Alex. Doug came to us, convinced the DWP partners to get into bed with him, and now he’s trying to screw them, particularly Suzanne, out of what is rightfully theirs.”

I do what I’ve been doing for the past hour: lying on the sofa, murmuring my assent. It’s comforting listening to Charles’s voice. Plus the fact that he seems to have a plan and that he’s confiding in me. “Well, I think you’ve got it all figured out,” I say.

“Look, I don’t have it all figured out. I don’t know, given the intricacies of Suzanne’s contract, that it’s possible to even stop him at this point. We’re talking to her lawyer now, but it’s crucial to maintain all of Suzanne’s remaining clients.”

“Oh, I thought you knew how. How to stop him.”

There’s a pause. “Look, I’m not getting reams of anger coming off you,” he says suddenly. “Where are you on all this?”

I sit up on the sofa. “
Reams
? Well, of course I’m upset. I don’t like Doug any more than you do and I really don’t like being dragged into the middle of this feud—”

“Feud? This is more than a feud. This is the future of DWP here.”

“You mean the DWP where you’re already a senior partner?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Now it’s my turn to pause. What
did
I mean? “Look, I’m just saying yes, it’s wrong that Suzanne looks like she’s going to get screwed out of what is rightfully hers. But she signed that deal. She chose to merge with BIG. I feel bad that she might lose everything, but it’s not my fault that she and the agency are in this situation.”

“I didn’t say it’s your fault, but you are in a position to do something. To help us try and stop him.”

“Am I? Am I really?” I stand up and start to pace. Maybe it’s the late hour. Or the sugar that I can feel fleeing my bloodstream like scaffolding collapsing. Or maybe I’m just tired of the whole thing. Ever since G showed up, it’s just been one thing after another and it was pretty damn sucky before. “Look, I know Suzanne thinks I can do something to help and apparently you do too, but I really doubt that. I mean, if the two of you and your lawyers can’t stop Doug, you think I can? That’s almost funny.”

“What’s he offered you?” Charles asks coldly. “This doesn’t sound like you. Or what I thought was you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say, knowing perfectly well what he means. “Yes, Doug’s approached me. You’re the one who just said you and I are about the only two DWP agents not in his sights. Now you’re blaming me because Doug has talked to me about my future at the agency? Look, you said it yourself. People are going to get laid off no matter what. People
should
get laid off. We don’t have the client base to support everyone. But I’m supposed to fall on my sword for the good of old DWP?”

“Well, I think you’ve answered my question,” he says stiffly. “It sounds like you’ve made up your mind. Thanks for letting me know where you stand.”

“I
haven’t
made up my mind,” I say, angry now. “But it’s very easy for you to be righteous about this. You’re a partner. I’m not. We’re in totally different positions and from where I sit, I don’t have a dog in this fight. Not really. Not the way things stand now.”

“Well, apparently that’s about to change.”

“Look, I just told you, I haven’t decided anything. I’m not
with
Doug. I’m not against him. But, frankly, he’s given me more reasons to side with him than you and Suzanne have.”

“Oh,” Charles says very, very quietly. “And I thought I had. And I thought you were happy about that. But apparently I was wrong.”

“Look,” I say, scrambling now for something, anything that will put this conversation back on track. Put
us
back on track. “Look, I didn’t mean what—”

“Look. Let’s forget it. Let’s forget all of it. I’ll just talk to you later.”

He hangs up. Oh,
fuck.
Two fights in one night and this one isn’t going to be fixed with a cup of tea. I throw the phone onto the sofa. Now what? I check my watch. Nearly midnight. I’m exhausted but there’s no chance I’ll get to sleep anytime soon. Not after that conversation. God, how did I manage in the space of a single phone call to blow both my relationship, such as it was, and my job? Unless I totally throw my lot in with G now, I’m screwed. Alone and screwed.

I check my watch again. Still midnight. Fuck it. I head into the kitchen, grab my bag, fish out my keys, and slam out the front door. If I can’t sleep, I might as well drive. Besides, it’s a cold, clear night. A good wind off the desert. If I take Mulholland, I should be able to see the city spread out below me, the lights spiraling out like lit circuitry.

I pull the Audi out of the garage. I’ve heard you can take it all the way, Mulholland. All the way to the ocean. If you know how to go. I slide open the sunroof. The icy night pours in. I speed across Laurel Canyon, drop the car in third, and head out. I have a long drive ahead of me.

15 We Gather Together

                  “Honey, this rain. I mean, we could’ve just stayed at home.”

It’s pouring and I’m in the lobby of the Chateau with my parents staring at the rain-soaked courtyard, reassessing this whole family-in-L.A.-for-Thanksgiving idea. Actually, Helen and I are staring at the rain. Jack is deep in an armchair with
The Wall Street Journal.

“Well, I thought the point was to actually visit
me,
” I say, trying to keep my voice out of the whiner’s circle.

“It’s El Niño,” says Jack distractedly, as he flips through the paper. “Although it’s pretty early for that. Usually it doesn’t get going until late January. Even February.”

I look over at him. “How do you know more about L.A.’s weather than I do?”

“Honey, you know your father,” Helen says, staring at the rain sluicing off the hotel roof. From the look on her face, I can tell she’s taking this as personally as she possibly can, that someone, probably me, has already ruined her trip to California.

“Look,” I say, jumping into my salvage campaign. “There’s usually a heat wave in L.A. in November. I thought it would be a good time to be here. Amy could enjoy the pool and you and I could have lunch outside at the Ivy. So I’m sorry we have to change our plans. But at least it’s
green,
” I say, nodding at the palm trees blowing in the stiff breeze.

“Oh honey, there’s no need to go on about it,” Helen says, turning back to the lobby. “We’ll be fine. We’ll just go to lunch somewhere else.”

I’d forgotten how quickly my mother can turn on a dime, leaving you in the lurch, the ditch you had frantically dug on her behalf just a second earlier. It’s why I’m not breathing a word to her, or frankly anyone in my family, about my job and Charles and whatever our relationship is. Was. Is. If I can’t figure out the reasons and wherefores of my being a Hollywood publicist three years after I made the decision to move here, I certainly know enough not to drag Helen into the discussion. She and Jack are on a need-to-know basis only. And they don’t need to know much. Two years ago, on their first—and only—trip to L.A., they saw my old DWP office. This time, they get my new business card—
Alex Davidson, Senior Publicist BIG-DWP
—and an endless stream of “It’s great!” when questions about my job—hell, my life—come up.

“So, Dad, you’re interested in lunch, right?” I say, changing strategies. If my mother is a fucking quarter horse with her moods and tactics, Jack is a Budweiser Clydesdale. This won’t be the first time I’ve taken refuge in his plodding obliviousness.

“Sure,” he says, not looking up. “Wherever you gals want to go is fine with me.”

“All right, let me think a second,” I say, running through my options. It’s Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. My parents arrived last night, the same night I had planned for us to go to dinner on Orso’s patio, where I envisioned balmy breezes and a few celebs my parents might actually recognize. Like Suzanne Pleshette or Steve Martin. Of course their delayed flight torpedoed that plan. By the time they got to the Chateau, after nine, they were so wiped they just collapsed with room service.

Now, after getting an earful from Helen about their Spartan suite—“Honey, there’s not even a rug on that wood floor”—I’m now being called to account for the weather. I’d planned that Mom and I would eat lunch at the Ivy (it’s the ideal Mom place, with chintz pillows, overpriced salads, and ancient celebs), followed by a little shopping along Robertson while Amy and Barkley hung out at the pool and went off on their own; typically they had rented their own car, a massive SUV. But this storm, which does not look to be adjourning any time soon, is now forcing me to reschedule Day II and God knows it has been hard enough to come up with an original set of Hollywood activities suitable for the Bucks County crowd. Like trying to program the Food Channel for anorexics.

At least Friday looks foolproof—a day at the spa with Amy and me and Helen, if she feels up to being touched by strangers. And there’s no changing Thursday’s plan for Thanksgiving dinner at the Getty. I had to reserve more than a month in advance and frankly, even if it’s pouring, the place will still be impressive in that over-the-top L.A. way. “A modern Acropolis,” as I described it to Helen, who, of course, thought I meant they served only Greek food—a misunderstanding that required several minutes of further discussion before she agreed to let me book our Thanksgiving there.

But first I have to deal with lunch. I check my watch. It’s getting late enough that we can probably just eat somewhere and then Helen and Jack can head back here for a nap before the evening’s festivities, such as they are, begin at Mr. Chow. Booking dinner at that tourist trap is my only nod to Amy and Barkley, who turned out to be a dog with a bone about the whole We-have-to-eat-at-Mr.-Chow-because-I-read-about-it-in-
W
thing. I mean, what heterosexual guy reads
W,
even if his wife does subscribe?

Given that overpriced MSG will be dinner, what to do about lunch? I run through the likely suspects. The Grill. The Palm. Barney Greengrass. Agents, managers, lawyers. Hollywood’s equivalent of lions, tigers, and bears. My parents would never know what hit them. Sushi in a valley mini-mall? No way. A.O.C. doesn’t serve lunch and besides, the idea of a wine bar and “small plates” would be lost on Jack and Helen. Four Seasons? Campanile? For one reason or another all the usual suspects seem wrong for a rainy, slow afternoon when most of L.A. has had the foresight to be in Hawaii. Oh, screw it, I’ll take them to Kate Mantilini. It’s a classic and has enough of an industry vibe that even Jack might notice it.

“You know, how about a great burger and a nice glass of wine at this really cool diner? They even shot a scene in
Heat
there,” I say brightly. If you smile at the baby, the baby will smile back.

“Oh honey, a burger the day before Thanksgiving?”

“Mom, they have salads and other—”

“And what’s
Heat
?” she adds, looking bewildered.

“Sounds great,” Jack says, tossing aside the paper. “Tell you what, I’ll even buy.”

“So what’s your goal with them this weekend?” Steven says, when I call him after dropping Helen and Jack at the hotel and have collapsed at home. My half-time respite in the locker room before suiting up for tonight’s game. Lunch turned out okay. Actually, better than okay. Like stealing home after two outs in the third. We got a booth overlooking Wilshire, Helen had her salad and iced tea—at least she’s on Hollywood’s wavelength with her beverage choices—and Jack, who loved the whole businessman-in-a-baseball-cap vibe, had a burger and two Anchor Steams. I can’t remember what I had, but just as we were leaving Al Pacino walked in, which, given that he’s probably one of the few celebrities my parents would recognize, allowed Helen to trot out another of her backhanded, inside-out compliment-and-reproaches all in one:

“Oh, he’s so much shorter than I thought.”

“Mom, they’re all shorter than you think. Except Nicole Kidman, who takes steroids or something so her height actually matches her self-regard.”

“Alex, I’m sure you’re used to seeing these people all the time and can afford to be blasé, but your dad and I aren’t.”

Game, Mom.

“What’s my goal?” I say to Steven. “To get through their visit in one piece.”

“I’m serious,” he says over the sound of chopping. Steven is already deep into preparations for his annual Thanksgiving-for-the-boys feast he does every year. “Do you want them to have fun? To realize Hollywood is the sham you know it to be? Or do you want them to think you have the most fabulous and difficult job and that you and not Amy are the brilliant, talented daughter they didn’t know they had?”

“You know, I’m sure you’re right. If I had a goal, this might all be clearer, but I am just honestly trying to get through this weekend pleasantly and with minimal explosions. Especially since Amy is here. If it was just my parents, I might be able to get in some of that. Like what I’m doing in Hollywood. But not with Amy around being her usual spoiled, superior self. She’s even better than Mom at peeing on everyone’s parade. So no, I do not have a goal except to get them in and out of town in one piece.”

“Denial, denial, denial,” he says, rhythmically whacking some poor vegetable. “You sound just like your mother when you talk like that.”

“How would you know? You haven’t even met her.”

“We’ve talked on the phone. Besides, it’s not for lack of trying,” he says, whacking away. “I invited you guys for Thanksgiving.”

“We went over that.”

“And I told you I would go out with you for a meal or a drink. Or come here on your way to dinner tonight. I’m just cooking for tomorrow. Just me and the twenty-pound tom.
Home Alone with the Bird.
”

“I told you, my parents are from Philly. They wouldn’t understand the concept of my having a gay male friend.”

“They’ve seen
Will & Grace.
”

“That’s set in New York. Not Philadelphia. And they wouldn’t get it with their daughter. Not when she can’t manage to find herself a nice heterosexual male to be her friend.”

“So Charles is on the need-to-know basis as well?”

“Uh,
yeah,
when I don’t even know where we stand. Look, there’s only so much I can deal with over a holiday weekend, and right now my parents are it.”

“Then just tell your parents I’m your assistant.”

“Who happens to live in a house bigger than the White House? No, they wouldn’t get that either.”

“Okay,” he says, sighing, and I can tell he’s getting bored with me and my parents. God knows I am. “Well, I’m here if you need me.”

We hang up and I check the time. Going on five-thirty. I’m not due back at the Chateau until seven, when we’ll all pile into the Lincoln Navigator Barkley insisted on renting and head to Bev-erly Hills for humiliation and dim sum. Time enough for a soak in the tub and maybe a little predinner drink. Just to keep my game face on.

Heading downstairs to the bath, I try to remember where I was last Thanksgiving. Home? Here? I’m drawing a blank. What about Christmas? Home, I think. As if it mattered. It seems like ages since a holiday meant anything. Maybe that’s what happens when you get older. It all runs together. Maybe if I had kids, it would be different. Home to Grandma and Grandpa’s for Christmas. God knows Jack and Helen’s Colonial on their 2.2 acres of prime Main Line real estate fits the bill, especially when it’s snowing, which is fairly frequently, according to Jack. But I can’t remember the last time I felt any joy being back there.

I must have at one time. I do remember that. It’s there at the back of my mind, like a name just out of reach. Or a taste you vaguely recall. Like the cones at the Dairy Queen, where Jack used to take me and our old boxer, Bull, on Saturday nights when I was still a kid. Or the smell of the cedar closet in the guest bedroom, where Helen keeps her mink jacket wrapped in tissue and where I used to hide out during those long summers home from college.

I know it’s there because I remember one Thanksgiving, one of the last ones when Grandma was there. I took a nap upstairs in the guest room after dinner, with our white cat, Blue, and with the ticking clock on the bedside table. I’d fallen asleep with the watery winter sun bathing the room. But when I awoke, the room was muffled in dusk and my heart was pounding. How long had I been asleep? Hours? It felt like days. I lay there without any sense of time or place, just the metronome of the clock ticking.

And then I heard them. Downstairs. My mother talking to her mother in the kitchen. No words. Just their voices. The music of their voices rising through the house. I looked over at Blue, who was cleaning herself, oblivious to my little resurrection.

That’s what I miss. Feeling safe. Not trapped. Safe.

“Alex, I think Barkley can find it on his own,” Helen says.

I’m in the passenger seat next to my brother-in-law, who’s punching at the satellite navigation button on the Navigator’s roof. A boy with his toys. “Mr. Chow’s,” he repeats in his robotically slow voice. “In Beverly Hills on Canon.”

“Camden,” I say.

“That’s what I said,” Barkley says without looking at me.

“It’s
Cam-den,
not
Can-on,
” I say again.

“Alex, let Barkley do it. He wants to test out the system.”

“Okay, I won’t say another word.” I flop back in the seat and turn my attention to the rain-sloshed Chateau driveway.

“You know, the one we have in the Volvo at home works great. Your mother can even find her way into the city with it,” says Jack, who is wedged in the backseat between Helen and Amy. Amy, who’s in full I’m-just-a-devoted-suburban-wife-and-daughter mode. Talk about denial. She doesn’t remotely understand her life any more than I understand mine—how we wound up on opposite ends of the parental-expectations gauge—but unlike me, she refuses to question it, even when I can tell her patience for her doltish Ken-Doll-of-an-attorney husband is wearing thin. I know that about her, just like I know that even if I stay out of her way, keep our conversations banal and upbeat this weekend, the dam will eventually give way. It’s just a question of when and where.