The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating (19 page)

Their conversation was fine-tuned like a symphony, the pauses were all on beat, the laughter was harmonic, the anecdotal chords were stacked in thirds. They ordered an assortment of foods and passed them around, there was nothing bloody or undercooked. The waitstaff arrived and left unobtrusively, treating this dining party as if they were heads of state. Jack Huxley sat close to Claire, he poured wine into her glass when it was low, he offered her bites of his food, he participated in the general conversation but kept his attention on her. He said wonderfully smart things, he moved between gravitas and levity like a rattlesnake through brush. He spoke of things Claire loved to hear, of the sheer perfection of the burger at In-N-Out, of Leonard Cohen and Graham Greene, of great love affairs. They sipped their drinks: Claire’s, a bubbly wine; Jack’s, a wheat-colored beer. He was
down to earth
. The reason for the presence of Richard and Bridget became less clear. Claire took an extravagant drink and exchanged a coy glance with her dead husband’s agent as he passed her a slice of pâté.

“Thank you, Richard,” she said, then met Jack’s smile as best she could with a doe-eyed gaze.

“I’d like to read something you’ve written, Claire,” Jack said. Everything seemed transmitted from him by a breath and when he spoke the breath was strong and sure, and it was also minty-fresh.

“Oh,” Claire said, thinking it was the story not yet written that was proving to be most intriguing. “There’s a lot in progress right now.”

“Then tell me what makes a great story.”

“You’re patronizing me; you make your living on stories.”

“I just act them, I don’t write them down. Half the time I don’t even know what the story is.”

“Well.” She drew out the word and took another drink from her glass. Was this her third, her fourth? Slow down, sweet Claire. Remember what happened with tequila. Stories. Right, that’s easy. Pick your characters, dress them for the weather. Send them to sea in an impossibly small boat and then you bring them back home.

“The
best
story is one about love, sex, and death, but not necessarily in that order,” she said. “Somewhere in between—from about page seventy to one hundred and forty-three in a novel, or I suppose pages thirty to sixty in a script—there ought to be a crisis of confidence, a crippling one.” Richard nodded approvingly. “A girl meets a boy, they connect and then disband. There’s a coupling, an entanglement, and then it all comes undone. There should be sex and the opposite of sex—a healthy dose of confusion. There should be a boulevard that is littered with broken dreams, and the futile pursuit of something…”

Claire let out a deep breath and laughed, and then took another drink of wine, from a full glass that had been set before her.

Jack Huxley’s shoulder was touching hers.

“Oh my God, that’s so amazing! The part about the littered dreams?” Bridget said.

Richard and Bridget now seemed completely unnecessary. Jack leaned over to whisper in Claire’s ear. His voice was not too even or too deep, it was meaty but not scratchy, masculine but not dominant. The timbre of his vowels sent chills from the knees to the necks of every girl from here to the San Bernardino Valley, then back again.

“Maybe next time you’ll tell me a bedtime story, Claire,” he said. He seemed genuinely caught up in her. His lips, as the romance writers would say, brushed her ear.

Claire left the restaurant at the corner of Trouble and Desire in Hollywood, let Jack Huxley put her into a car, and returned alone to her room. But she did not leave, from the dinner, unscathed.

25

The next night was Jack’s party. “Don’t say I never gave you anything,” Richard said on the phone.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He called me today and asked about you,” Richard said.

Claire gasped, then swallowed.
Didion
.
Cool customer.
“Oh. So what did you tell him?”

“I told him your husband is dead, and you’re a mess.”

“Richard!”

Laughter on the phone, Bridget’s, from behind him.

“I told him you are an amazing woman,” Richard said, then added, “But be careful. We’ll see you tonight.”

Be careful?

Less than twenty-four hours after landing in L.A., Claire had had a wildly successful flirtation with the town’s biggest star and now she was attending a party at his home. She wore the black off-the-shoulder dress that Sasha had made her buy “just in case.” Thank you, Sash. She wore her crystal drop Swarovski earrings. It was possibly the first time since she’d met Charlie that Claire felt—she wouldn’t say the word, but she thought it—beautiful, in her own right. She felt grown-up. Charlie had enveloped her, had squished her like the bug on the chair of her dream, but tonight Claire felt power. She felt a measure of control, Jack Huxley or not.

Her size 4, nearly perfect hip-to-waist frame was waiting for Richard and Bridget in the lobby of the Bel-Air when her confidence suddenly wavered. Sex is one thing. Sex is easy, it turns out—for all that angst about virginity, it’s over quick. She thought of tequila and red shoes. The trouble is those other two: hope and its mean cousin, heartbreak. The problem is how to deal with those.

Claire and Bridget stood in a corner of Jack Huxley’s tastefully appointed living room, furnished in what appeared to be mid-century Edward Wormley. Diane Keaton lingered in the kitchen, Jude Law was by the pool. Bridget was wearing a bias-cut cherry dress that she’d had tailored to match her Fetch line. Her hair was piled up shiny on her head; it was exquisite but looked as though it might topple her if she leaned too far one way. The possibility worried Claire. She rushed through her drink to put it out of her mind. A jazz quartet played soft standards. The outfits were glittery, the shoulders were tanned. Everyone looked smaller in person than they did on-screen, and most of them smoked.

“You should have stayed with Jake,” Bridget said. Richard was working the room—celebrity memoirs were easy money. Innocuous women circled efficiently with flutes of champagne and decorative bites of food. Jake? The hockey guy? This came out of nowhere.

“I wasn’t really with him—”

“He has a big dick,
and
he’s funny,” Bridget said.

She popped a tiny pill in her mouth and offered one to Claire. “I’m good, thanks,” Claire said. Bridget put it in her purse, then shrugged her shoulders.

“How do you know he has a big…?” Claire asked.

Bridget laughed, which made her head bob around, which made Claire nervous, again, about her tower of hair.

“Claire! Don’t be a prude!” Bridget said.

Claire didn’t pursue this. “It’s not like he called me,” she said.

“He said you told him not to call. We had dinner with him the next week. I’m just telling you, you shouldn’t have dumped him. He really liked you.”

Jack Huxley was across the room now, in a white shirt and charcoal-colored suit. He was casually unbuttoned. Claire looked away. “I didn’t ‘dump’ him,” she said. “We weren’t in a relationship. We just didn’t go out again.”

Russell Crowe balanced a small plate of food on his cocktail glass.

It was one of the stranger scenes Claire had ever witnessed, and she’d witnessed some strange ones. Like the dinner two lesbian artists—friends (lovers?) of Charlie’s—had hosted for him shortly before he died. Virginia painted vaginas, and Katie, her partner, wrote penis-shaped haiku, and during the dinner they gave a slide-show presentation of their work.

It took two hours—Claire had checked her watch more than once—to finally get to Jack. He was surrounded at every point. It took another hour after that before they were alone, on a long cushiony sofa, in a room of various stages of drunks. By then it was one in the morning. Bridget and Richard had left at midnight. One of them, Jack or Claire, had started a silly little thing of guessing the lyric. It was something Claire and Ethan used to do.

“Who left the cake out?” she asked.

“Donna Summer.”

“In the rain,” she said. “I wasn’t finished. Who made love on the dashboard?”

“Easy. Meat Loaf.”

“You are the—”

“Eggman.”

“Wait—what’s the one thing Meat Loaf won’t do for love?”

“Lie?”

“He won’t cheat. Who’s frightened by his lack of devotion?”

Jack rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Tina,” he said. “I used to be much better at this. Or you’re cheating.”

“I’m not cheating,” Claire said, feigning indignation. “How could I cheat? I just happen to possess a wide and encompassing knowledge of seventies pop songs.”

They were the last ones in this particular room. There were rooms of people somewhere else, Claire assumed. She had waved off Richard’s offer of a ride. She heard voices, laughter from somewhere, but Claire and Jack Huxley were alone here for now. The couch was big and encompassing, a very masculine couch, and Claire felt tiny against the back of it. Jack was on the floor. He had an arm on her knee. He was slurring his words a little bit, but happy.

“God, it’s late. I’m not even tired. Do you want to get married, Claire?”

She liked that he was drunk. She could observe him, unnoticed. She’d long worked off the effects of her two glasses of wine.

“Sure, let’s.” She felt like Molly Ringwald in
Sixteen Candles.

“Let’s go get married,” he said. “But let’s have another drink first.”

“Yes, let’s have a drink first.”

There are no small parts, only small directors. She’d heard someone say that once. However insignificant this particular moment in time might be, it felt like a big part and she was a small director. Now that Jack Huxley had left the room to find them a drink, she could work on her breathing again. She tried. She gulped. Seconds ticked by and she panicked. He was gone, she’d never see him! How would she get out of here? There was something about this scene, the dichotomy: A man says, “Let’s get married,” at the perfect moment of a perfect night. It must spell doom. Jack Huxley was doing a scene: “the perfect good-bye.” He walked back in with an open bottle of wine in his left hand, something in a short glass with ice in his right, then he lay down on the floor in front of her, his head propped on one elbow and eyes like a little boy’s. He giggled.

“I’m drunk, Claire,” said Jack Huxley. “Let’s be a little drunk.”

Claire wanted to be. She should be right now, with him. She threw her head back, stretched out her neck. She took one long great swallow of wine. She hoped it looked sexy. “Okay, let’s be drunk,” she said.

Jack Huxley laughed and reached a hand out and covered her foot. He put his glass down and rolled onto his back, smiling his beautiful smile; even drunk, his movements were graceful. The awkward noises, the cracking sounds of flesh and bone shifting in movement, the pauses and gaps, the breathing sounds of ordinary men: she had either filtered these out or for Jack Huxley they didn’t exist. With Jack it was all dubbed over, as if someone had already fixed the dailies, leaving her the soothing little crashes of crystal and ice and the faint rustle of his six-hundred-dollar shirt, wrinkled and half-tucked. Claire had the feeling that after tonight he might throw it away—he seemed the type. It would be easier, more pleasing, to finish up with the shirt on a nice note than to bother with the burden of cleaning and drying and fixing it up again.
His housekeeper
, Claire thought.
She’ll know to be done with it. She’ll know by wherever he lets it fall to the floor.

Jack had been talking. She hadn’t heard him. His hand still covered her foot. “There’s some knuckleheads still out in the guesthouse,” he said, “but I’ve got security. Come with me.”

The next three days were a blur. Claire didn’t go back to her hotel. Jack Huxley sent a car to get her things; he called and took care of her bill. They stayed in at night and watched movies. Jack Huxley cooked dinner, made pancakes for breakfast and elaborate salads for lunch. They lounged in the sun and drank French ’75s.

If Bridget and Richard said good-bye before they returned to New York, she didn’t remember. They wound up there ahead of her. There were voice mails from Ethan that she didn’t return.

She remembered mostly Jack’s bedroom, the firm strength of his mattress, the double shower, the Jacuzzi bath in its own separate room. She remembered each and every time they had sex, and every sentence—she was sure of it—that they spoke. She ran them back on a continuous loop for a week.
The Razor’s Edge
was his favorite book (hers, too!). Somerset Maugham was brilliant, they’d agreed, and they both thought people who said “furthermore” were ridiculous. They liked potatoes mashed smooth but not baked and thought the obsessive search for happiness was fruitless. They agreed that people are magpies—Claire had said it, and then Jack had seized on it—all drawn to the shiny object. We are not so complex. They agreed that Picasso was overrated and Edward Hopper was not, and that a salad is not a salad without croutons. Introverts, they exclaimed, should pair with extroverts, but never with each other, and all of that is hell on seating arrangements. They both disliked people who claimed to be both “humbled” and “overwhelmed.” “How can you be both?” Jack said. Then turned her face to his with his hand and said, “Claire, you and I will save the world.” And she continuously replayed
that
.

One night they watched a marathon of George Cukor films—
Gaslight
,
The Philadelphia Story
,
Adam’s Rib
. Huxley was humble but well versed in his field.

“That’s Cukor right there,” he said, and gestured carelessly toward the wall. “With my uncle.” Claire hesitated, then approached the framed photograph. Aldous Huxley in his unmistakable Coke bottle glasses. “Oh wow,” she said, and traced a finger across the face. She’d almost forgotten. Mr. Hollywood shared DNA with one of the greatest minds of our time. No small part of why Charlie had been drawn to him. Every high school syllabus in the country included
Brave New World
.

“Don’t be impressed. I never even met him. He died when I was teething.” Jack laughed. “I use the photo to get smart girls into bed.”