Chapter 2
Flattering Light
Because she does not want to be unkind, even when provoked, she will never admit that she was initially attracted to him because of his father. The two men look enough alike that for the first few weeks she dated Will, it felt as if she were with the famous man rather than his undistinguished son. She knows that Will suspects this fact; he has teased her about how he is sure that she wishes the actor rather than his boring son were offering to take her to San Francisco for a long weekend, or to Rome or Rio or Montreal, wherever it is she wants to go. They can travel anywhere she would like to because he can give her many of the same things his father can. He isn’t famous, but he is young and has money, although he isn’t the person who earned most of it. He also has time, which his famous father generally does not.
Danielle met Will through a friend who went to high school with him in Pasadena, the city where his mother moved them after she and Will’s father divorced. Renn Ivins kept the house in the Hollywood Hills and still lives in it, though he has since married and divorced a second woman, one who moved to Big Sur with her divorce settlement and alcoholism, an affliction she has publicly blamed Renn for. Despite the cheapness of the gossipy industries that surround the truly famous, Danielle finds these mean-spirited declarations fascinating and knows that many people do. Will has told her more than once that if he had fewer scruples, he could make quite a lot of money disclosing to gossip columnists details about his father’s personal life. He wouldn’t have to work at all if he were willing to play the double agent.
He doesn’t have to work anyway, a fact she doesn’t remind him of because it upsets him. He also isn’t privy to many of the details of his father’s private life because after thirty years of working in the California film industry, Renn Ivins is skilled at avoiding the more lurid of the spotlights. He confides in very few people, with Will’s sister Anna among these confidants more often than Will is. The three times Danielle has seen Renn in the fifteen months that she and Will have been dating, he impressed her with his kindness and sense of humor and how politely he treated the servers at the restaurants where they met for dinner. In her most honest moments, she knows that the accusations Will could assail her with are true: If he asked you out, you’d leave me for him in a second. You wouldn’t have given me the time of day if I weren’t his son. Realistically, how could she not feel this way about Will’s father? Long before they met, Renn Ivins was more familiar to her than many of her own family members. She has seen almost all of his movies, a number of them years before she started to date his son.
And yet, whatever her feelings for his father, she probably cares for Will as much as she has for any man since the college sweetheart she married during their senior year at UCSD, a marriage that lasted only two years. Her husband enlisted to fight in Iraq without first discussing it with her, she seeing his enlistment as a betrayal, he as an honorable and patriotic act. Joe is now stationed in Afghanistan, but the last time she saw him, at a college alumni party two years earlier, he was almost unrecognizable, not so much because of his physical appearance as because of his rigidity and quickness to perceive insult when no one was, in fact, insulting him. His face reminded her of certain landscapes she had seen in photographs, ones ravaged by fire.
She is older than Will by four years, and already tainted by domestic failure (a feeling she has trouble suppressing), whereas he has never been married or engaged. She is a tall, pretty redhead who regularly attracts the attention of other men, but she likes being with Will. Even if he doesn’t yet have a career, he is reliable, smart, and not self-congratulatory in the way that the close relatives of famous people she knew in college sometimes were. His plan, before he went to New Orleans to help his father, was to take the LSAT a second time and apply to law schools. But upon his return from Louisiana, he decided not to fill out applications for next year. What happened while he was working on Bourbon at Dusk isn’t clear to her, though her impression is that he wouldn’t take orders as noncommittally as expected, being prone to bad moods and intractability where his father is concerned. If she hadn’t been in Maui with two college friends when Will’s father called suddenly to ask him to come to New Orleans, she would have advised him against it.
Her own career, reorganizing and streamlining work and living spaces for restless wealthy people, is profitable, and, she has found, more fulfilling than she had expected when she began to work as a life space consultant, a title she made up for her business cards. She admires simplicity, uncluttered rooms, natural light. Will has let her redesign his place, which is in a high-rise just off Sepulveda Boulevard. His neighbors are all doctors or movie people or privileged offspring like himself, living on inherited money.
He has been back from New Orleans for a little over two weeks when he tells her that she can move in with him if she still wants to. It is something they have discussed a few times, but usually without any real conviction on his part and hurt or irritated feelings on hers. When he makes this suggestion, he is rinsing a glass in the kitchen sink, his back turned. She is sitting at the table, eating some of the fresh strawberries she cut up for dessert and laced with honey. He hasn’t eaten any of them. He didn’t eat much of the baked chicken she made for dinner either. He has lost weight since he left to work on his father’s production, and seems likely to lose more if he keeps going on the long runs he has added to his mornings without eating breakfast before or after these runs.
When she doesn’t reply, he turns and looks at her. “So what do you think?”
Her mouth is full of half-chewed strawberries. She has to swallow one almost whole to keep from choking on it. “I like the idea, but I need a little time to think about it, Will,” she finally says. “I thought you weren’t interested in living together.”
“I was always interested, but I wasn’t sure.”
“You are now?”
He nods. She sees that his hairline really is receding, something that bothers him so much that he has already looked into hair transplant surgery. “Yes,” he says. “What do you think? You could have one of the bedrooms for your office, or we could put up a wall in the living room and make you a new office. I’m sure that I could get the condo board to approve it.”
She shakes her head. “If we put up a wall, it would darken the rest of the space quite a bit.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” he says.
“I think you probably would.”
“All right. No wall. Whatever you want,” he says with forced lightness, turning back to the sink.
“Let me think about it for a couple of days,” she says.
“I thought you were gung-ho about living together.”
“I don’t know if I was gung-ho exactly, but I thought that at some point it might be nice.”
He shuts off the water and turns to look at her again. “If you don’t want to live with me, that’s fine. I just thought you wanted to.”
“Why are you so ready all of a sudden?”
“I’m not sure. I just am.”
She gazes at the remaining strawberries in her bowl but doesn’t feel like finishing them now. Will’s phone rings, his ringtone the sound of crickets chirping. When he looks at his phone’s display, he makes a sound of dismay.
“Who is it?” she says.
“My dad.”
“You don’t want to talk to him?” she says, realizing as soon as the words are out that it’s a stupid question, the answer as obvious as a scream.
“He can wait. I’ll call him back when we’re done with dinner.” They are done with dinner, but she says nothing while he fills his rinsed glass with orange juice and drinks all of it in one swallow. “Is he still in New Orleans?” she says.
“I think so.”
“When’s his movie supposed to wrap?”
“This week, as far as I know. Unless something gets screwed up. Don’t let him hear you call it a movie. It’s high art. A film. That’s what he’d say, anyway.”
“You don’t think it’ll be good?”
“No, it probably will be. It’s going to be great if he doesn’t get too carried away. He’s due for another Oscar, this time for best director or screenplay. Maybe both.” His tone is ironic, even a little sneering.
“Why are you so mad at him?” she says. “Are you still waiting to get paid for New Orleans?”
Will snorts. “He paid me. He always pays me.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
He pours himself more juice. “He thinks I’ll never make any money on my own. It drives me crazy.”
Do you really plan to? she could say, but doesn’t. She looks down at the table, afraid he will read her mind, but he has turned away again.
His phone rings a few minutes later, and this time he picks it up without hesitating. Even before he says her name, Danielle can tell from the way his voice softens that it’s his sister. She sets her dishes in the sink and goes into the living room. His offer that she move in with him has startled her. She hadn’t expected it to come so soon, if at all. The last time they talked about it, a couple of months earlier, he was so evasive that she assumed it wouldn’t ever happen. She loves his place, which is more spacious than her own, and closer to the neighborhoods where most of her client base is, but since returning from New Orleans, he has sometimes been so closed off that it makes her nervous to think about having to live with these unpredictable, almost hostile silences. All he would tell her about his premature return from Louisiana is that he and his father did not get along as well as they should have because Renn refused to accept any criticism, no matter how tactfully it was offered. “I have a brain too,” Will had grumbled. “He’s not the only one who knows how to get things done.” He also said that his father wanted him to be on call 24/7, which was ridiculous because as far as Will could tell, no one else on the crew was expected to be.
From the other room, Danielle hears him say, “He’s here right now? That must be why he called me. Oh, great.” There is a pause before she hears him say, “I didn’t feel like picking up, that’s why.”
She feels almost lightheaded from the realization that she will probably see Renn again very soon. The last time was the previous spring, but Will had had a cold and was such a grouch the whole time that she had to stop herself from apologizing to Renn for Will’s rudeness. More than once she has wondered if he thinks she is a gold digger or an idiot, possibly both, for dating this son who is so often surly and combative with his father.
But how unnerved and giddy she feels in Renn’s presence. Her girlfriends teased her while they were in Maui one night when she turned on the TV before bed and was immediately drawn into a movie from 1985 that starred Renn as a jungle explorer who spoke six languages and knew Morse code. At the time of the movie’s release, he was about the same age Will is now. “Is he still as sexy?” her friend Michelle asked, tickling Danielle’s side, making her squirm away with annoyed impatience. “Tell me he’s not, because if he is, you’re in trouble, Dani.”
“He’s not that sexy anymore,” she lied.
Michelle smiled, showing all of her very white teeth. “You’re full of shit. Men like him don’t spoil with age. But no matter how much Botox we girls stick in our faces, we’ll still get old.”
That night after her friends had fallen asleep, Danielle’s heart continued beating out its traitorous message: Movie star. Movie star!
Renn looks as handsome to her at fifty-two as he did at twenty-six. Maybe even more so because she knows him now, and knows that he likes her too.
When he hangs up with his sister, Will takes a couple of minutes to make his way into the living room to tell her that his father wants to meet for drinks. He’s in town for a day and a half and wants to see his kids. Does she feel like coming with him? It might be boring, and his father will probably be distracted by his cell phone or strangers stopping by the table to tell him how great he is. Even in the nicer places, he’s sometimes pestered. “He picked Sylvia’s so it won’t be too much driving for Anna or me. How thoughtful of him,” says Will, the sneer there again.
“I’ll go with you,” she says, careful to keep her tone neutral. “It sounds like fun.”
“All right, but don’t blame me if you regret it.”
“Why would I?”
“I don’t know. You might.”
“Only if you two argue.”
“I’m not planning on it.”
“I wonder why he didn’t invite us to his house instead. It’s not any farther than Sylvia’s.”
“It is for Anna.”
“It’d only be a couple of extra miles for her, wouldn’t it?”
“Why do you think he chose Sylvia’s? He wants to be seen.”
She blinks, suppressing a flare of impatience. “Is he never supposed to leave the house because he’ll be recognized?”
Will laughs in a harsh burst. “Who hired you to defend him? Trust me, he doesn’t need it. He’s got plenty of other people making excuses for him.”
“What happened when you were in New Orleans? You act like you hate him now.”
“I told you what happened. He acted like an a*shole, and I wasn’t going to stick around to put up with it any longer than I had to.”
She wonders why he has agreed to meet his contemptible father at all tonight, but she wants to go and doesn’t intend to say anything to make him change his mind, even if her hunch is that it won’t be the most pleasant evening of her life. Will is ready for a fight, and unless Renn marshals all of his paternal restraint, he will get one.
• • •
It is Friday night and Sylvia’s is crowded, the muted sounds of a jazz band’s exertions spilling out the open front door. A huddle of blond women in short, tight dresses blocks the entrance when Danielle and Will arrive, but he squeezes past them, murmuring an apology, pulling Danielle with him. The hostess looks at them with a blank expression until Will says his father’s name, and then her face is transformed by a smile so sincere that Danielle feels an answering smile spread across her own face. Will doesn’t return the girl’s smile but his expression is softer than it was at home, when he initially resisted her suggestion that he change into an unwrinkled shirt and a clean pair of khakis. In that sour moment, Danielle could not see herself moving in with him, at least not any time soon.
Renn is already seated at a table on the far left side of the stage, one half hidden from the room’s general view by a pillar decorated with a twining string of white Christmas lights. Anna is at the table too, Will’s pretty younger sister who is so different from him in temperament that Danielle privately marvels over the fact they were raised in the same family. When she and Will are spotted, both Renn and his daughter stand up. Danielle can feel herself blushing when Renn hugs her. His embrace feels oddly apologetic but also proprietary, and she smells whiskey on him and a clovelike aftershave. He is warm and bearishly strong, and she can’t ignore the rush of pleasure she feels when he touches her.
“It’s so nice to see you both,” Renn says as he settles back in his chair. “Danielle, you look as gorgeous as always.”
She looks down at the table, self-conscious but thrilled. The whites of her eyes feel seared when she looks up at him again.
“Don’t let her get away from you, Billy,” he adds, his smiling, flirtatious gaze still on her.
“I’m not planning to,” says Will, his voice a little too loud, even for the club’s cacophony.
“How are you, Anna?” Danielle asks, already feeling the tension between the two men, a whole heated front having moved into the bar with them.
“I’m doing well,” says Anna. “Four weeks left in the semester and then just one more before I graduate.”
“Dr. Ivins,” Renn says proudly. “Just like her mother.”
“But she would have liked me to be a pediatrician too.”
“You can help more people if you go into family medicine,” says Renn.
“She could help a lot of people as a pediatrician too,” says Will.
“Of course she could,” says Renn, “but she should do what she feels most passionate about.”
“You guys,” says Anna, smiling warily. “Don’t worry about me. I’m just glad I’ll be graduating soon.”
Renn laughs. “With the highest grade-point in the class.”
“No, not at all,” she says, abashed.
“But close, I’m sure,” her father says. “You’re too modest for your own good, sweetheart.”
“What’s going on in New Orleans, Dad?” Will asks, handing Danielle the beverage menu, which she finds is unpleasantly sticky. She looks at him, but his expression is as nonchalant as his tone.
“We finished shooting thirty-six hours ago,” says Renn. “A day and a half ahead of schedule. I couldn’t believe it. Saved us more than a hundred grand. Now we just have to put everything together so that it makes sense.” He winks at Danielle.
“Is Elise back in L.A. too?” says Will.
His father drinks from his water glass, not meeting his son’s eyes. “Yes, she is.”
“Elise?” says Anna. “Your female lead?”
“Yes,” Will and Renn say simultaneously.
Anna laughs. “Wow, in stereo.”
Will gives Danielle a strange, guilty look, and in that moment, she finally understands the real source of his and his father’s recent problems. It feels as if someone has come up suddenly from behind and pushed her, but she knows that she shouldn’t be surprised. The beautiful, famous girls who interest the father would of course interest the son too, all the more because the son isn’t likely to have them, at least not first. She teased Will about this once—had his father ever given him a hand-me-down girlfriend? She hadn’t realized how her question would disconcert and embarrass him; how close, it seemed, she had cut to the bone.
Objectively, the father, despite being twice his son’s age, is the more desirable man. Along with the money and the fame, it is his confidence, his stature, his sheer Renn Ivins-ness that draws people to him. He is his own thriving industry, a true celebrity, with his metal star already embedded in the famous sidewalk a few miles away. How many women have offered themselves to him over the years? How many women, the world over, believe themselves to be in love with him at that very moment? Danielle knows there have to be thousands upon thousands. Women who would compromise their marriages and self-respect for a night alone with him.
To have that kind of appeal—she can’t really imagine it. What did a person do with all of that power? How could it not change you? And so often, it seemed, for the worse?
“Elise Connor?” Danielle asks, but she knows this is exactly who they mean.
“Yes,” says Renn. He can’t suppress his smile. “The one and only.”
Will is pretending to watch the musicians onstage, tuning out his father and everyone else at the table. Danielle feels something hot and corrosive spilling into her stomach. Her girlfriends, some jealous, some well-meaning, told her to be cautious when she started dating Will. He had to know a lot of famous actresses, didn’t he? Wasn’t it likely that he had dated some of them? Despite how pretty she is, how could Danielle realistically expect to compete? She might own a profitable business, one that she had started all by herself, but she wasn’t famous, not even close. She was, sorry to say, an ordinary person. Will was not. At least this was what she had thought at first, but after a month or so of dating him, she knew that Will’s ordinariness, as he perceived it, was in danger of permanently embittering him.
“Are you seeing her, Dad?” asks Anna, crunching a piece of ice from her water glass. Her pale green eyes are rimmed with thick lashes that Danielle has always envied and admired.
Renn takes a few seconds to reply. “I suppose I am, but please keep that between you and me.” He smiles at Danielle. “And you and me.”
Even in the weak light cast by their table’s tiny lamp, Danielle can see that Will’s face is flushed. If he weren’t so upset, he would look very handsome, certainly a little mysterious, but he has spent most of his life watching his father. She suspects that he is used to being affably tolerated by his father’s associates or else ignored, and although it is something that most people are forced to accept as an elemental fact of their lives, she guesses that it is harder for the family members, the lesser planets, forced to orbit the famous, greedily glowing sun in their midst.
Does she stay with Will because she wants to play some role, no matter how minor, in his father’s life, or is it that Will reminds her of her ex-husband, Joe? Both he and Joe are men angry at the world, at other men who seem to have more than they do. Reading an article in a grocery-store magazine the previous week, Danielle had found herself staring at the page, unaware that the checkout line was advancing. The psychologist who had written the article argued that anger was the number-one social disease in the Western world, but hardly anyone bothered to acknowledge it. They would rather, the psychologist said, worry about quasi-abstractions like terrorist attacks or meteor strikes or alien invasions because these improbable disasters did not require the same painful self-examination that confronting one’s anger did.
Noticing her expression, Will makes an effort to smile and reaches for her hand. Even though she doesn’t pull away, she keeps her hand inert. She feels Renn and Anna watching them.
Anna says, “How long have you and Elise been together?”
Renn glances at his son. Danielle sees, in that half second, his contrition and his triumph. “I don’t know, seven or eight weeks, maybe?”
Will stiffens next to her but says nothing.
“Are you guys serious?” Anna asks.
Her father laughs. “I don’t know. Maybe. That might be nice.”
Anna smiles. “ ‘That might be nice.’ That’s all you’ll say?”
Renn nods. “For now, yes.”
“She’s twenty-four, Dad,” says Will. “How could it possibly be serious? For her, if not for you?”
The waiter, a blond man in a white shirt and black tie, has materialized behind Anna, interrupting the injured silence that follows Will’s question. Renn forces a smile and orders champagne cocktails for the table. Danielle is certain that Renn believes himself to be in love with Elise, and she feels an aggressive stab of jealousy. Anna looks at her from across the table, commiserating, it seems, over Will’s confrontational behavior. Her solicitousness embarrasses Danielle.
When the waiter leaves, Danielle excuses herself and goes to the bathroom, unable to sit and listen to how Renn will respond to Will’s questions about Elise, a woman younger than Renn’s own daughter.
In the bathroom, her face is noticeably drawn and ashen; her thick red hair, pinned up high, droops dispiritedly. After a minute, Anna appears in the doorway, her face a more welcome sight than Danielle expects. Without a word, Anna walks straight to her and hugs her for the second time that night.
“I can tell you’re not happy with my brother right now,” she says quietly. “He knows it too. That’s why he’s screwing things up.”
Before Danielle can stop herself, she is crying against Anna’s shoulder. Anna puts a hand to the back of Danielle’s head, gently holding it there. “Billy doesn’t know what he wants. I worry about him more than I’d like to. Thank God he doesn’t use drugs. I don’t know how he avoided it when so many of the kids we grew up with did. Do.”
Danielle pulls away and wipes her cheeks, embarrassed by her tears. “He drinks too much sometimes.”
“I know, but not all the time, right?”
She shakes her head. “No, not that often. At least I don’t think so. We’re not together every night.”
“He needs to start seeing his therapist again. I’ve been trying to get him to go.”
“I think he’s thinking about it.”
“Work on him, Danielle. He’s more likely to listen to you than anyone else.”
“Before we got here, he asked me to move in with him.”
“He did?” says Anna, her voice rising in surprise. “That’s a big deal. He’s never lived with a girlfriend before. Are you going to?”
“No, I don’t think so.” She is sure now that it is a bad idea. Aside from his chronic and unfocused anger, he is seriously infatuated with someone else, the kind of woman Danielle has no hope of ever being able to compete with.
“No? Did you tell him that?”
Danielle shakes her head. “Not yet.”
“I’m sorry about the thing with Elise. Billy’s a very sweet guy, but he can still be such a child. I know he loves you, though.”
“I don’t know.” It is a relief to talk to Anna, but she isn’t used to confiding in someone so closely related to a boyfriend. She wonders if Anna will repeat any part of their conversation to Will.
“He does. Don’t give up on him yet.”
She forces a smile, feeling tears surge behind her eyes again. “I won’t.” But as soon as she says these words, she knows they aren’t true.
Renn watches her and Anna approach the table, his smile very wide. “I can’t get over how pretty you two are,” he says as they sit down. The champagne is on the table, and he motions for everyone to pick up their glasses. “A toast to your youth and beauty. Yours too, Billy. May you all use them wisely.”
They touch glasses, Danielle glancing at Will, who manages to smile. Her eyes feel raw, as if she has been rubbing them too hard, but with Renn within whispering distance, she can almost convince herself that things are all right for as long as they stay close to him. People at other tables are looking at them, but Renn ignores this, as do Will and Anna, accustomed, certainly, to their father’s effect on strangers. Danielle tries not to look, but she can’t stop herself from glancing at a couple of the nearest tables. One of their neighbors is using her phone to take Renn’s picture; another fumbles through her handbag, probably looking for paper and a pen. She suspects that with minimal effort, he can make lifelong fans or scornful detractors of these people.
When they leave Sylvia’s an hour and two cocktails later, Anna already gone, having only had time for one drink, Renn hugs Danielle with unmistakable ardor and kisses her on the lips in full view of his son and the parking attendants. The pressure of Renn’s kiss startles her, and she pulls back as if touching fire. His face is pink-cheeked and jolly when she looks up at him, embarrassed but flattered. Without a word, Will takes her elbow and pulls her briskly away, his father calling after them, laughter in his voice. “Billy, lighten up. It was just a little good-bye kiss.”
“You’re drunk, Dad,” says Will, furious. “Leave her alone.”
“No, I’m not,” Renn calls, still laughing.
“F*ck off,” says Will, but only loud enough for Danielle to hear. His grip on her arm is too tight. She wants to shake him off but doesn’t, knowing this would only make him angrier.
And yet his anger seems a small penalty to pay for Renn’s unsolicited kiss. She can still taste him, the champagne on his lips, the brine from the delicious Italian olives the waiter surprised them with, a gift from the club’s manager. She was close enough to feel his enveloping heat again, to have a sense of what it would be like to be pressed even closer, if ever she were alone with him, if she were Elise Connor instead of Danielle Dixon, born in Kansas City, raised in Northridge, California. Her heart is still racing. When she turns to look back at him, he raises his hand and gives her a small wave. “Good night, Danielle,” he calls. “Good night, Billy. Drive safe.”
“Good night, Mr. Ivins,” she says, her face very warm. It was so nice to see you, she wants to add, but doesn’t have the nerve.
In the car on the way back to his place, Will is still furious. “I can’t believe you let him kiss you.”
“I didn’t let him kiss me. I pulled away as soon as I realized what he was doing.”
“It didn’t look to me like you minded.”
“A lot of people kiss each other good-bye. He didn’t mean anything by it.”
He glares at her, his hazel eyes very dark, as if fully dilated. “Of course he meant something by it. He’s making it clear to me that he can still have any woman he wants.”
“No, he doesn’t. And he can’t. I’m not interested in him.”
He shakes his head. “Right.”
“I’m not,” she says, angry that he is needling her, wanting only one answer, one she won’t ever give him. “Your assumptions are really offensive.”
His jaw is rigid, but when he turns to meet her eyes, his question, the plea in his voice, surprises her. “Are you staying over tonight?”
“No.”
“Your car’s at my building.”
“I know. I can drive home. I’m not drunk.”
“Come up for a few minutes. Just to make sure you’re okay.”
She hesitates. “I don’t like that you have a crush on someone else.”
He freezes, and she wonders if he is turning red. In the dim, flattering light from the streetlamps, they are able to keep some things hidden from each other. “What are you talking about?” he says. Each word, to Danielle’s ear, sounds wooden, insincere.
“Elise Connor. You and your dad are both in love with her.”
He laughs a little, feigning surprise. “No, we’re not.”
“You don’t have to lie, Will. I know she’s why you left New Orleans.”
He shakes his head. “No, she’s not. I’m not in love with her. I hardly even know her.” Danielle doesn’t reply.
“I left because he was being a pain in the ass,” Will says. “He’s smug and pompous and thinks that everyone should do whatever he wants every minute of the day. I told you that already. Sometimes I hate him.”
“No, you don’t. Don’t say things like that.”
“It’s how I feel,” he says quietly.
“What kid doesn’t get mad at his parents from time to time? Your father loves you, even when you’re not getting along.”
He keeps his eyes on the car in front of them, one of its taillights burned out. “He thinks I’m a f*ckup.”
She sighs. “No, he doesn’t.”
“Yes, he does.”
She doesn’t contradict him this time. She is so tired of his bad moods and self-pity that she will start yelling if they keep talking in this airless way.
When they get to his building, Will looks so morose that she gets into the elevator with him and rides up to the fifteenth floor and sits on his couch while he turns on the TV and listlessly changes channels. She doesn’t have the courage to tell him that she needs space and time, possibly for good. It is hard not to keep replaying the few seconds that Renn pulled her against his chest and kissed her, his arms firmly around her, as if he didn’t intend to let her go until she had figured out that it was him, not his son, who she should be dating. As a devoted viewer of his films, he is someone with whom she has had a private relationship, one-sided but still powerful, for more than half of her life. During all of her teenage years and far into her twenties, she had never seriously imagined that she would meet him one day, let alone become his son’s girlfriend.
She sits with Will in front of the TV for half an hour, then gets up to go to bed. At the other end of the apartment, a few minutes later, she hears him typing in the front door’s alarm code and then his unhurried step in the hall. She will not move in with him. His routines depress her, his grievances, his inertia, his implacable bitterness.
After he gets into bed, he says, “You wish I would take Prozac and snap out of it. I know that’s what you’re thinking.”
“That’s not what I’m thinking. Not at all,” she says, almost laughing at this absurd presumption.
“What are you thinking?”
“Nothing. I’m tired. Let’s go to sleep.”
“What if I want to move to New York?”
She stares at him. “Do you?”
“No.”
“Then why did you say it?”
“I don’t know. No reason.” He pauses. “I’m not in love with Elise Connor. I just think that my dad should date someone closer to his age. He’s thirty years older than she is. Who the hell does he think he is?”
It is a ridiculous question, something she guesses he realizes as soon as these words are agitating the air between them.
“Will,” she says. “Let’s not talk about this right now.”
“I’m not in love with her,” he insists. “I can see why you’d think so, but I’m not. She’s going to dump him as soon as she meets someone else. Someone closer to her age.”
Like you, she thinks.
“Let your father worry about that,” she says. “You know he’s going to do whatever he wants.” She pauses. “If you dislike him so much, why are you so worried about what he does?”
He hesitates. “I don’t know. I just am.”
“You need to sleep now. So do I.”
“Kiss me,” he says, and she does, reluctantly, but he doesn’t pressure her to do more. She has almost never refused him. Before now, she hasn’t wanted to. His hand reaches for hers under the sheet and she lets him hold it for a long time, even though she has told him that she can’t sleep if any part of her body is touching his. She has been like this since her marriage, when from the first night they were together, her husband slept on his side of the bed and insisted that she sleep on hers.
In the morning she can see herself making eggs and reminding Will of his dental appointment in the late afternoon. She can see him looking at her with mild amusement, or else he will be distracted, the previous night’s problems and controversies returning with the force of a blow. Like her ex-husband, he is unlikely ever to be happy. At least not as he is currently living, measuring his life against his father’s, a man to whom only a tiny percentage of the population can reasonably compare themselves. The kind of fame Renn has achieved, Danielle realizes, is more or less a novelty. Before the camera’s invention, before movies and TV, certainly before the Internet, fame was more local, less colossal. But Will’s misery, she knows, would still be powerful, no matter which century he might have been born into. His father’s life is an aberration; his gifts, his privileges, all of the possibilities to which he has access, also aberrant. In that moment, an hour after midnight, when she can hear some restless soul down on the street gunning a motorcycle, she does not know how either man can stand it.