“Will? What’s the news? You already met with him?” Nate listens and then does a fist-pump, banging his hand against the BMW’s headliner. At least someone’s getting good news today. “That’s awesome…okay. Leave it to me… Don’t worry. I’ll get him the reel right now…good…okay, we’ll talk tomorrow.” He hangs up and shoves the phone back into his pocket, then eases the car out of the drive-thru parking lot with a grin on his face. “I’ve got to run by the office real quick. Do you mind?”
“I don’t have any plans for the immediate future except feeling sorry for myself,” I say.
After about thirty more minutes of weaving between traffic as if we’re in a car chase, Nate pulls up outside the fancy glass-tower building of his office.
“Stay here. I won’t be long,” he says, tossing me the keys.
“Sure. I’ll be here with the radio on.”
I watch Nate jog towards the entrance and slam through the doors, then start the car and turn my attention towards the stereo, flicking through stations as I impatiently search for a decent song. After quickly realizing that either every radio station in L.A. sucks, or I’m just too on-edge to enjoy anything, I get out of the car to stretch my legs a little. I step up onto the sidewalk and lean up against Nate’s car.
“Why hello there!”
I look up to see who said that, and find a tall, handsome, old guy who looks like he should be farming cattle in the mid-west.
“Hello?” I reply, caution and confusion mixed with a little politeness.
“This is Nate’s car, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah. He just went inside for a minute.”
“I thought he left early to attend to a family emergency?”
“Yeah,” I shrug, scrambling for an excuse that does not include explaining to this stranger that I needed Nate to bail me out of jail. “He, uh, had to come back and grab something though. We’re leaving soon. It wasn’t like a big emergency or anything. More of a medium-sized one,” I finish lamely.
The man smiles at me as broadly as if he’d just heard I was having a baby.
“That’s wonderful! It’s such a pleasure to finally meet you! I’m Dennis Robinson,” he says, offering me his big, flat hand to shake. “I’m Nate’s boss.”
“Um…great to meet you. Nate’s said…so many good things about you. And, uh, about working here.” This is quickly turning into the most awkward conversation I’ve ever had.
He nods, pleased. “You know, Nate talks a lot about you, too. I feel like we’ve already met.”
“Really? He talks about me?”
“All the time! But I must say, he still didn’t do you justice. You’re really very beautiful, I can see why he’s so enamored with you.”
If anyone else complimented me that directly, I’d probably cringe, but coming from a guy like this, with his gentleman-of-Old-Hollywood style and old-west sincerity, it works.
“Thanks?”
“Hey!” Nate calls from the entrance, coming towards us. “Hello, Mr. Robinson.”
“Hello, Nate. Working off the clock? Thought you took a personal day.”
“You know me,” Nate says, putting his hands gently on my shoulders and guiding me to the passenger side of the car, “I can’t quit until the job’s done.”
Mr. Robinson laughs. “Good, good. Well get on back home, then. Great to finally meet the little lady.”
“Right. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
Nate quickly jumps into the driver’s seat, flashes one more innocent smile at his boss, then revs the car away like a starting gun just went off.
“Sorry about that. My boss always turns up when you least expect him.”
“He seems nice.” I’m still a little baffled by the weird exchange.
“He is. But give him a chance to start talking and you can forget about the rest of your day.”
I settle back in the car seat and we drive in silence for a little while.
“Your boss,” I say, after a little while, “said that you talk about me a lot at work.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. He said you mentioned me a lot to him.”
Nate’s face screws itself up with deep confusion.
“No offense, Jessie, but why would I talk to my boss about—” He stops himself mid-sentence to smack a palm against his face. “Oh, fuck.”
“What?”
“What did he say to you exactly?”
I shrug. “Nothing much. Just that you talked about me a lot. And that I was more beautiful than you’d told him.”
“Fuck!” Nate slams his hands against the wheel, and I’m glad for the stop sign that causes him to slow down.
“What’s going on?”
“He thinks you’re Tessa!”
“Who’s Tessa?”
He sighs and shakes his head as he eases the car up to the curb outside my building.
“My boss is old-fashioned.”
“He looks it. And?”
“And to him, a guy who isn’t married by twenty-five and a father by thirty has to be either a sexual deviant or a criminal.”
“So of course he owns a talent agency in Hollywood,” I say, incredulously.
Nate shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine. He really loves this business, though.”
“Wait a minute,” I say, laughing now that I realize what Nate’s saying. “I think I understand. So being the opportunistic bullshit-artist that you are, you figured you’d make yourself look good by telling him you have a loving wife at home named Tessa.”
“Something like that. We’re not married. I haven’t proposed yet. She still has her own place.”