“I’m in love,” Rex said when we were finally alone.
It was perhaps the very last thing I ever thought he’d say.
“In love?” I asked.
He laughed at my shock. “It doesn’t make any sense. Trust me, I know that.”
“With whom?”
“Joy.”
“Joy Nathan?”
“Yes. We’ve seen each other on and off through the years. You know how it is.”
“I know how it is with you, sure. But last I heard, you broke her heart.”
“Yes, well, it will come as no surprise to you that I have, in the past, been a little . . . let’s say, heartless.”
“Sure, we can say that.”
Rex laughed. “But I started feeling like it might be nice to have a woman in my bed when I woke up in the morning.”
“How novel.”
“And when I thought of what woman I might like that to be, I thought of Joy. So we’ve been seeing each other. Quietly, mind you. And, well, now I find that I can’t stop thinking about her. That I want to be around her all the time.”
“Rex, that’s wonderful,” I said.
“I hoped you’d think so.”
“So what should we do?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, breathing deeply, “Joy and I would like to marry.”
“OK,” I said, my brain already kicking into high gear, calculating the perfect time to announce our divorce. We’d already had two movies come out, one a modest hit, one a smash. The third, Carolina Sunset, about a young couple who have lost a child and move to a farm in North Carolina to try to heal, ultimately having affairs with people in their small town, was premiering in a few months.
Rex had phoned in his performance. But I knew the movie had the potential to be big for me. “We’ll say that the stress of filming Carolina Sunset, of being on set and watching each other kiss other people, ruined us. Everyone will feel bad for us but not too bad. People love stories of hubris. We took what we had for granted, and now we’re paying the price. You’ll wait a little while. We’ll plant a story that I introduced you to Joy because I wanted you to be happy.”
“That’s great, Evelyn, really,” Rex said. “Except that Joy’s pregnant. We’re having a baby.”
I closed my eyes, frustrated. “OK,” I said. “OK. Let me think.”
“What if we just say that we haven’t been happy for a while? That we’ve been living separate lives?”
“Then we’re saying that our chemistry has fizzled out. And who’s going to go see Carolina Sunset then?”
This was the moment, the one Harry had warned me about. Rex didn’t care about Carolina Sunset, certainly not as much as I did. He knew he wasn’t anything special in it, and even if he was, he was all wrapped up in his new love, his new baby.
He looked out the window and then back at me. “OK,” he said. “You’re right. We went into this together, we’ll leave it together. What do you suggest? I told Joy we’d be married by the time the baby comes.”
Rex North was always a more stand-up guy than anyone gave him credit for.
“Obviously,” I said. “Of course.”
The doorbell rang, and a moment later, Harry walked into the kitchen.
I had an idea.
It wasn’t a flawless idea.
Almost no idea is.
“We’re having affairs,” I said.
“What?” Rex asked.
“Good morning,” Harry said, realizing he’d missed a large part of the conversation.
“During the course of making a movie about both of us having affairs, we both started having affairs. You with Joy, me with Harry.”
“What?” Harry said.
“People know we work together,” I said to Harry. “They’ve seen us together. You’ve been in the background of hundreds of photos of me. They’ll believe it.” I turned to Rex. “We’ll divorce immediately after the stories are planted. And anyone who blames you for cheating on me with Joy, which we can’t deny for obvious reasons, will realize it’s a victimless crime. Because I was doing it to you, too.”
“This actually isn’t a terrible idea,” Rex said.
“Well, it makes both of us look bad,” I said.
“Sure,” Rex said.
“But it will sell tickets,” Harry said.
Rex smiled and then looked me right in the eye, put out his hand, and shook mine.
*
“NO ONE’S GOING to believe it,” Harry said as we drove to the tennis club later that morning. “People in town, at least.”
“What do you mean?”
“You and me. There are a lot of people who will dismiss it right out of hand.”
“Because . . .”
“Because they know what I am. I mean, I’ve considered doing something like this before, maybe one day even taking a wife. God knows it would make my mother happy. She’s still sitting there, in Champaign, Illinois, desperately wondering when I’ll find a nice girl and have a family. I would love to have a family. But too many people would see through it.” He looked at me briefly as he drove. “Just as I’m afraid too many people will see through this.”
I looked out my window at the palm trees swaying at their tops.
“So we make it undeniable,” I said.
The thing I liked about Harry was that he was never one step behind me.
“Photos,” he said. “Of the two of us.”
“Yeah. Candids, looking like we’ve been caught at something.”
“Isn’t it easier for you just to pick someone else?” he said.
“I don’t want to get to know someone else,” I said. “I’m sick of trying to pretend I’m happy. At least with you, I’ll be pretending to love someone I really do love.”
Harry was quiet for a moment. “I think you should know something,” he said finally.
“OK.”
“Something I’ve thought I should tell you for some time.”
“OK, tell me.”
“I’ve been seeing John Braverman.”
My heart started beating quickly. “Celia’s John Braverman?”
Harry nodded.
“For how long?”
“A few weeks.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
“I wasn’t sure if I should.”
“So their marriage is . . .”
“Fake,” Harry said.
“She doesn’t love him?” I asked.
“They sleep in separate beds.”
“Have you seen her?”
Harry didn’t answer at first. He looked as if he was trying to choose his words carefully. But I had no patience for perfect words.
“Harry, have you seen her?”
“Yes.”
“How does she seem?” I asked, and then thought of a better question, one more pressing. “Did she ask about me?”
While I had not found living without Celia to be easy, I did find it easier when I could pretend she was a part of another world. But this, her existing in my orbit, made everything I had been repressing come bubbling up.
“She didn’t,” Harry said. “But I suspect it’s because she didn’t want to ask, rather than not wanting to know.”
“But she doesn’t love him?”
Harry shook his head. “No, she doesn’t love him.”
I turned my head and looked back out the window. I imagined telling Harry to drive me to her house. I imagined running to her door. I imagined dropping to my knees and telling her the truth, that life without her was lonely and empty and quickly losing all meaning.
Instead, I said, “When should we do the picture?”
“What?”