“God damn it, Faye.” Campbell draws a hand down his face, agonized. “That fucked me up.” He clears his throat, frowns hard at the shallow puddles collecting on the dock.
“We have to take off,” Corrine says, and this time she moves in to embrace me before either of us can think about it too long. Her blond hair is beaded with rain, so wispy and fine I could count the number of droplets if she gave me one more minute. Campbell and Henry exchange a few final words, clap each other on their backs. Campbell moves in to give me a hug that lifts my feet off the ground.
“Jesus, you’re light,” he says, and I sense something familiar waft off Corrine. Her irresistible distaste for me. I imagine she finds my smallness and aversion to the sun prissy and high-maintenance, and that she is glad for the reminder that we have little in common.
And yet I never feel thin-thin until I hug someone outside of my strange endemic world, though I know exactly what Campbell feels when he touches me, that impossible birdlike lightness that unnerved me when I first started booking meetings with iconic Hollywood women, as though they had not just lost weight but eliminated their insides too. The hollowing happened to me gradually but with such minimal effort that sometimes I picture the type of high-powered studio executives you think don’t exist anymore but absolutely do dispensing henchmen to creep into my room in the middle of the night and empty me out, organ by organ, bone by bone. Would I even tell them to stop if my suspicions proved true?
Then, somehow, Henry and I are riding in a car together, only this time I am the one at the wheel. I don’t think I ever drove when Henry and I were together. I had nowhere to take him. I had nocar.
I park in the small hotel lot, and we make a run in the rain, slipping on wet dogwood petals and huddling together under the first window awning, startling the manager with teased hair who sits in front of her blocky desktop. We flee to the cover of the next awning, this one long and thin, shielding the red carpeted walkway into the bar and restaurant. The garden doors are open on the other side, and beyond the hedges trimmed to match aBridgertonset, the lake is gray and pockmarked with rain.
“You head back to LA tomorrow?” Henry checks. He removes his blazer and brushes it dry with the flat of his hand.
“Actually, no. Not for another week.”
Henry frowns, confused. “Another week?”
“I rented an Airbnb on the other side of the lake. Sort of like a solo writing retreat. I get more done alone.”
Henry digs his hands into his armpits and squeezes himself against the damp. “Let me swing by with your stuff. What’s your room number?”
We really are doing this, then. This dangerous, combustible thing. I am suddenly so nervous I could cry. The rain against the lake is like a setting on a sound machine. I let it soothe me. I think,This is Henry. It will be what you want.
“Three F,” I tell him, and I’m startled by the sound of my own voice, its ultrafeminine and frightened tenor.
Henry swings his blazer over my head and settles the shoulders on my shoulders, a cape to keep me dry. He gives me a quick, reassuring smile.It’s me. It’s okay. That’s the meaning I assign it as he turns and strides under the scalloped awning with his head bowed to the rain, disappearing into the secondary guest tower, which is not a tower somuch as a long, low dormitory-looking structure with sliding glass doors lining the back. I’m staying in the original building, the older but prettier one with the higher rate to match.
I raise Henry’s coat over my head and set off for my room at an unhurried pace, in case anyone is watching, in case Henry can still see me. But my heart is pounding like I’m running uphill.
Last night, when I got home and noticed the marks at the foot of the door, I briefly imagined that I might find Henry sitting on the fusty floral couch. I would tell him that he shouldn’t be here. He’s married, and so am I. I imagined him standing, approaching me, ignoring my continued pleas to leave me alone, knowing the way only Henry knows when my no means yes.
Now my hand shakes as I turn the key to the door, knowing he will be inside soon. I brush my teeth, apply an extra coat of deodorant. Henry is sensitive to smells, and he always smells good. I used to joke he had his sweat glands removed, his tongue professionally bleached, and he would smile in this soft way, as though touched someone finally understood him. I kick off my shoes and wash my feet in the tub. Thank God I got a pedicure before I came. I’m standing in an inch of soapy water when my phone rattles on the countertop. It’s my best friend who is also my agent, calling on a Saturday. I answer on speaker.
“Hello?” I say, the question evident in my voice.What’s happened?
“I have news,” she says without preamble. “It’s good but it comes with a catch.” She wants to loop in my husband, but first she wanted to check to make sure that would be okay with me.
“Go right ahead,” I say benevolently. “We’re acting like everything is fine, as usual.”
“Are you ever going to tell me what happened?” The most I’ve toldher, acting in best friend capacity, is that somethinghashappened and I’m thinking of leaving. My husband has a secret. Not the one you’re thinking, the normal one that normal husbands sometimes have.
“Try him now,” I say. “It’s, like, nine or ten at night there.”
“Okay,” she says, uncertainly, and for a moment I think the line has dropped, but then she comes back on and says, “Everyone still with me?”
“Here,” says my husband. He must have popped out of whatever exclusive supper club he’s been invited to for the evening. I can hear someone in the background ask to borrow a lighter, the wet spray of the cars rushing by on a rainy London night.
“Here,” I echo.
My agent, who I alternately refer to as my agent and best friend, depending on which role she occupies in the moment, says the name of the actress who is asking for someone to slip her a not-quite-ready copy of my script. The name of this actress is cause to scream, and so I do.
“Hold up, hold up,” my husband says. “I thought she was doing that Apple show and then right into the Marvel movie and unavailable until 2029?”
“She has to drop the show,” my agent is delighted to report. “They pushed the start date, and now it’s a scheduling conflict with Marvel. She’s essentially free this whole next year and looking for a film, something with a short production window.”
“Faye,” my husband says, a kind of awe in his voice, “you were right. Holy fuck, you were right.” I can tell that he’s smiling, which means he’s had a few drinks. In the eleven years we’ve been together, he’s smiled infrequently, even though we’ve produced three television shows and two indie films, all of which have been well received critically but did not quite manage to dent the culture in a way that matters to the studios. Still, they will always hear a pitch from us. Not all of themwill make an offer on that pitch, but enough that occasionally a project of ours gets competitive. We’ve been photographed for the cover ofThe Hollywood Reporterand given a tour of our production offices toArchitectural Digest. We are usually invited to theVanity Fairafter-party. Objectively, we are doing well, but one thing my husband and I agree on is that the termobjectively wellcan kick rocks. We want our white whale, something unapologetically commercial and occasionally brilliant. One thing we cannot agree on is what that looks like. My husband is after me to pitch something dark and female-driven and, most important, franchise friendly; I sat down and wrote this script instead. He read it, asked why I wanted to waste two years of my life on another quiet indie thing. The caliber of the actress who has requested a copy of the script makes mincemeat of that question. She will get us money. She will make us noise.
‘?“We love a man who can admit when he’s wrong,” my agent jokes, and I am glad we are not on a FaceTime so I am free to roll my eyes. I know what she’s doing—selling my husband back to me. She thinks it will be professionally disastrous for the two of us to split. My husband’s older brother runs the venture capitalist arm of the agency that represents us; I could triple my writing and directing quote and I still wouldn’t be considered an earner, not when my brother-in-law is bringing in Mint Mobile partnership money. If my husband and I do separate, if things do get ugly, if it ever does come down to a choice between the two of us, it’s me who will be shown the door. My best friend and agent has not explicitly said so to me, nor does she have to.