The Decent Proposal (14 page)

He felt a tap on his shoulder. He whirled around.

If Elizabeth had known how appalling the parking would be in West Hollywood, she wouldn't have come. It had taken her nearly an hour to find a space (she refused to park in one of the overpriced lots), and by the time she'd paid the twenty-five-dollar cover fee (which Richard had failed to mention), trudged up the metal staircase, marched into the knot of partygoers, and tapped him on the shoulder, it was well past 10:45. She glanced at the blonde by his side, guessing she was Ally, a minor yet regular member of his crew.
But really
, thought Elizabeth,
she could be anyone.
It was her own fault she didn't know what any of his friends looked like, since—as Richard reminded her constantly—there were photos of all 658 of them perfectly accessible on his Facebook page.

Richard stared at her. Somehow, in the last hour, he'd forgotten she was coming.
How much have I had to drink?
he wondered, dismissing the thought before he could answer it. She was dressed too formally, in the same black skirt she'd worn to their first date, which ended well below the knee and made her look heavier than she was. Her starched white blouse accentuated her breasts, but paired with the skirt she looked like a maid without the apron, and her hair was pulled back in a librarianish bun. Richard glanced at Mike—beautiful, brilliant
Mike—who was still engaged with the D-girl and who looked so effortlessly glamorous by comparison. His stomach bottomed out at the thought of having to introduce them finally, but there was no getting out of it now. He felt a twinge of embarrassment on Elizabeth's behalf, his drunken mind racing to the “What's Wrong with this Picture?” section of
Highlights
magazine, and causing him to actually giggle before saying hello.

“Hey,” he cried, swooping in for a hug.

Elizabeth took a half step backward before accepting his embrace. They'd never hugged before. He was obviously drunk, and she didn't think she was going to much like the drunken version of Richard Baumbach.

“I'll be
right
back,” he said, hurrying away without explanation.

Elizabeth and the tall blonde were left staring at each other. He hadn't even introduced them.

“You must be Ally.” Elizabeth held out her hand.

“I am!” Ally shook her hand, but Elizabeth could see the panic in her eyes. She had no idea who Elizabeth was.

“I'm Elizabeth.”

Ally blinked.

“Richard's friend?”

“Ohhhh, nice to meet you!”

But it was obvious she still didn't have a clue.

This was Elizabeth's first inkling that in the two months since Richard had told his friends about the Decent Proposal, he hadn't mentioned her to anyone other than Mike, and occasionally to Keith. Mike hadn't told anyone because she wanted to minimize the DP's impact, and Keith hadn't said a word because he wasn't one to gossip. People like Ally, on the outer rim of Richard's inner circle of acquaintances, had either forgotten about the Decent Proposal or grown tired of asking about it and
being shut down. They'd moved on.
#DecentProposal
had gone dark a long time ago.

The crowd parted, and Richard reappeared with a figure behind him. He stepped aside like a magician unveiling his final trick:

“Elizabeth, this is Mike. Mike, this is Elizabeth. There.” He mimed wiping his hands, “That's over with.”

Elizabeth knew Mike was Korean-American and from New Jersey, but to her she looked like a Mongolian princess: beautiful, proud, and fierce—all flint and bone. Mike radiated a hardness, not just of body but of spirit too, an iron will that rivaled even the steely reserve of La Máquina. Elizabeth would have been impressed if the poor girl weren't so obviously filled with hatred. Her nostrils were quivering.

“It's so nice to meet you finally,” said Elizabeth, extending her hand and smiling.

“Likewise.” Mike squeezed back,
hard
, matching her smile. She'd already cataloged the DP's physical attributes, and aside from her impressive rack (which was a matter of taste), her teeth were the one area where it could be argued she beat her.
Argued
. Otherwise, she was nothing special. And her clothes were fucking horrible. She could do so much better, capitalize on those natural curves, take out that stupid bun. . . . Mike felt the old “Project!” urge well up inside her, but promptly stomped it down. She wasn't going to do this girl any favors.

Richard flicked his head from one to the other, as if they were playing tennis, but after a few seconds he looked over their heads, too drunk to concentrate on them any longer. He began flapping his hand wildly:

“Keith! Get over here!”

Elizabeth watched as a tall man extracted himself from a circle of guests and loped across the room on long, elegant legs. He
was skinny except for a little paunch hanging over his belt, and was already sticking out his hand when Richard barked, “This is Elizabeth!”

The shake became luxurious, two-handed. Keith stepped back and viewed her at arm's length, like a work of art in a museum.

“Elizabeth!”

He emphasized the “beth” in a way she immediately loved.

“You're not what I pictured at all,” said Elizabeth.

He was dirty-blond, freckled, and had none of Richard's beauty, though from the way he let his smile spread slowly across his face—into the very crinkles around his eyes—Elizabeth found him attractive in a manner that struck her as belonging to an earlier era, when men relied on charm and charisma rather than appearance. Already she could feel his good humor infiltrating her via an osmosis that had nothing to do with the brightness of his eyes or the fullness of his lips.

“Oh, really? And what did you picture?” Keith dropped her hand, crossed his arms over his chest, and shifted his weight onto one foot: a rakish, sassy pose.

“Glasses?” She paused. “Definitely not so handsome.”

Keith scooted behind her, grasped both her shoulders, and wheeled her around so that she was facing Richard. “Ooh, I
like
her already!”

He pronounced “like” as “lock” and drew it out with the luxurious drawl Mike was convinced he affected, or at least greatly exaggerated. He was from Florida, for fuck's sake, and though he claimed it was a small enough town and close enough to the state's northern border to count as the Deep South, she still wondered. (Behind his back she called it his “Tennessee Williams
thang
,” and Richard tried not to laugh.) Mike resisted the urge to sneer now, and instead joined in loudest of all as the little group laughed merrily.

“So tell me 'bout this book and movie appreciation club you guys have goin' on,” Keith said. “I just think that's the greatest thing. Y'know I'm in a book club myself, don' know if Richard told you.”

“He didn't!” said Elizabeth. “What're you guys reading?”

He mentioned a novel published recently that had polarized readers, and they were delighted to discover they both hated it. The next few minutes were spent tearing it apart and desecrating its corpse. By this point Ally had wandered away, and Mike decided they were all in need of a drink. It took a gargantuan effort not to roll her eyes when the DP asked for ice water, since it was “a long drive back to Venice.”
Bo-ring!
she wanted to say, and it pained her that instead of exchanging a surreptitious “yikes!” with Richard, she had to avoid looking at him altogether. An ancient sadness washed over her, like the loss of a loved one, but she could
not
afford to go there right now, so she grabbed Richard's hand to counteract it, leading him to the bar, where it was too noisy to carry on a conversation but where they would at least be alone together inside a sea of people. She decided to order him another gin-and-tonic without even asking. She didn't care how much he drank anymore.

When they returned, Keith and Elizabeth were laughing.

“Whasso funny?” Richard demanded.

Elizabeth waved her hand dismissively. “It'd take too long to explain,” she said, shooting Keith a mischievous look.

Well, they're a lovefest
, thought Richard. This should have made him happy. He'd suspected Elizabeth was a touch homophobic (her Catholic upbringing, her hurried affirmation of gay marriage, as if it were something she'd rather not think about), and he'd taken a sadistic pleasure in inviting her to a gay club. He'd expected her to feel out of her element, to be a little wowed by the experience. At the very least, he'd
expected Keith to throw her off a little, but here they were, heads tilted together like old friends. Richard watched as Keith grabbed her hand, and when Elizabeth not only let it rest there but squeezed it harder to emphasize a point, some brutish, animal instinct unleashed itself inside him and he had to check the impulse to pull Keith—
Keith
, his friend and business partner,
gay
Keith—away from her.
Am I actually—whatever
, he told himself, except that it wasn't so easy to throw this thought away. Instead, he had an unwelcome moment of clarity amid his fuzzy, drunken state. Usually he loved these instances, like a shaft of sunlight breaking through the clouds of inebriation and illuminating an insight by way of contrast—one that never would have been visible in a clearer, sober state of mind—but this time he shied away from the brightness and waited for the clouds to return. The light, however, remained. It had to be confronted.

Why had there been no spark, no instant connection between him and Elizabeth like the one he was currently witnessing between her and Keith? Why was it so
difficult
for him to draw her out? Why didn't she ever squeeze his hand, or touch his shoulder? He knew why. There was no denying that Keith was the smart one between the two of them. Whenever they had to give notes on a script, Keith always took the lead; he read something like five magazines and one book a week. He'd gone to
Harvard
, the prick.
Of course
they loved each other. They were the smartest people he knew. And what did he have to offer, really, besides good looks (an unearned gift) and enthusiasm? He remembered suddenly his stupid joke at Factor's:
I
won't
have what she's having!
The shame of this moment crackled through him like an electric shock, practically knocking him off his feet. She must have been so
bored
having to talk about books with him; it was probably like a remedial version of the animated conversation she was having now.
Richard's cheeks flushed with embarrassment, or maybe it was just the alcohol.
Whatever.
Suddenly the aforementioned sea of revelers wasn't buoying him up but pulling him down, smothering him in its depths, and he looked toward Mike, flailing for her like a lifesaver except that she too was focused on Elizabeth and Keith, jackhammering her silky head in a manic attempt to show that she was following along. For all her glamorous appeal, Mike looked agitated,
desperate
even, beside the perfectly composed Elizabeth. Richard threw his head back and gulped down the remnants of his latest gin-and-tonic, rattling the ice cubes to shake away the whole scene.

Without meaning to, Mike and Elizabeth exchanged glances. They'd both been thinking the same thing: he'd had too much to drink.

“I think the dancing just started,” announced Richard, shaking his leg. He needed to move. Everything would be okay again if he could just
move
.

“Yeah, let's book it to the back room.” Mike cocked her head like a delicate bird poised to take flight in the direction of the loud, thumping music leaking from beyond. “We can burn off some of that alcohol with our dance moves. That bouncer's going to lose it if we don't move some of the party out of here anyway. I smell 'roid rage.”

Keith began herding his guests. Mike grabbed Richard's hand again to lead him away, and Elizabeth followed a few steps behind.

THE DJS AT POPSTARZ
blasted the sort of music people listened to with their windows rolled up or their headphones at half volume to prevent the world from finding out how unsophisticated and sentimental they really were. Mariah and Madonna, Britney and Beyoncé, Katy and Kelly, Gaga and Rihanna all
crashed onto the dance floor in a tidal wave of unapologetic pop, and the crowd let it wash over them; they wallowed in it; they splashed about; they drank it down with their alcohol. Popstarz was a place for revisiting middle school roots, except this time no one was embarrassed by their inability to dance, or pining away for their dance partner—other than in a carnal way that only enhanced the experience. As soon as the dance floor came into view, Richard dropped Mike's hand and took a running leap into the middle of the crowd already gathered there. Whitney Houston's “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” had just come on.

Richard took pride in being an exception to the rule that white guys couldn't dance. He liked to point out that it usually took some form of minority to be a good dancer: you had to be female, or black, or gay, or
something
. He was technically Jewish, of course, but according to him this was the one minority that didn't count when it came to moving your body. And while he may have overestimated his prowess, he wasn't bad. His enthusiasm counted for a lot.

Mike tolerated Popstarz. She could dance if need be, but she didn't get any joy out of it. She hated the rhythmic pelvic gyrations that had come to be accepted by her generation as recreational dancing, the puerile lewdness of it all. She preferred the restrained head-nodding of music-loving crowds drinking in live bands arrayed on a stage, and if she had to dance at all, the practiced steps of ballroom, while admittedly dorktastic, were more her sort of thing: civilized, recognizable moves requiring at least some basic skill. She would need a few more drinks in her before she could join Richard, so she sidled over to the nearest wall and watched helplessly as Elizabeth followed her.