“If she’s not here in five minutes I’m leaving,” I say to Rachel, our field producer who could not be bothered to find something other than rubber flip-flops for a morning at Barneys. I know Rachel earns about 38K a year and I’m being an almighty snob, but my mood is decomposing by the second.
“Let me see where she’s at,” Rachel says, stepping away to call her. But then, as though summoned, Brett rounds the corner, not a stride harried and wearing an expensive-looking T-shirt and weird jeans, a nice watch and those blocky white sneakers that cost more than a laptop. She looks good, I realize, breathlessly, she looks young and rich. But is she pretty? I find myself wondering, pettily. She’s a bigger girl, downgraded from big girl, which was how she identified herself in season one. Oh, the Big Gulp–swilling biddies came for her on Facebook: The average American woman wears a size eighteen. If you’re “big,” what does that make us? (Edited for clarity, spelling, and punctuation. The discourse did occur on Facebook.) I was tempted to fire back on her behalf, What that makes you is enormous, Deb, but Brett can’t stand to be unliked or less than thoroughly understood. She responded to each and every plus-sized crybaby and apologized, explaining that in New York there is a premium placed on thinness, and so she often feels like a big girl compared to her peers. She thanked them for this teachable moment, this reminder that she moves in a true bubble of privilege, and vowed to be more thoughtful about the language she used to talk about bodies in the future. What a spectacular waste of everyone’s time.
I have no idea what size Brett wears, though it’s not a size eighteen and it’s not a four, which is what I am, and I’m a bigger girl than Lauren and Jen combined. I do know that her shape is proportionate and the skin on her thighs and stomach—of which I’ve seen too much, alas—is impressively smooth, unpocked by dimples or cellulite. It is a bigger body but it is not an unconventional one, and I haven’t even gotten to her face, which, with her cartoonish big brown eyes and clear olive skin, is undeniably lovely. It would seem then that the answer is obvious—Is she pretty? Yes, she is. But I can’t quite get there. Perhaps because Brett behaves in a way that suggests she doesn’t even think it is true. She talks a loud game about self-compassion, about how women need to develop the neural pathways to access kind and loving self-talk (self, self, self), then turns around and maims her skin with all those seedy tattoos. And I’ve seen the way she “nourishes” herself. Brett was a violent eater during the time she lived with me, housing boxes of frozen waffles still frozen, spooning strange concoctions of sugar and flour and vanilla flavoring into her mouth like soup in the middle of the night. There was nothing kind or loving about that. It was the secretive, shifty behavior of someone downright ashamed of herself.
Brett smiles at me, shyly, but not apologetically. I am walled in by a fort of shoeboxes at this point, a pink-bowed Aquazzura sandal on one foot, a suede Isabel Marant bootie on the other. I get up to examine my lower legs in the short fitting mirror, and Brett mistakes it for an invitation to embrace. I cannot reject her, not with the cameras here. And so against my will, I wrap my arms around her and tuck my face into her shoulder. As I inhale the keen powder scent of her Moroccan oil shampoo and compare, breast to breast, her mellow heartbeat to the rabbit’s pace of my own, I wonder, indulgently, Has she gotten fatter?
“Did you have trouble finding it?” I ask her when we pull away.
“Finding what?”
“The shoe department. I know there’s the other one on the seventh floor and you don’t get up here much.”
Brett seems confused. “I mean, I don’t. But I found it fine.”
“Just late then.” I grin at her, savagely.
Brett checks that nice Cartier on her wrist. Looks vintage. How cool is she? “I was five minutes early for you.”
For a moment, the last eight months never happened. We both turn and glare at Rachel. “I was told eleven!” she says, sounding guilty.
Occasionally, Lisa has production supply varying arrival times for the cast. It’s a dirty trick, designed to load us with resentment before we even walk onto the set. You make an egomaniac wait, make her feel like her time hasn’t been respected, and you work her into a state. Even if she puts it together, which I just did, I’m glowering. I will be cordial but gruff toward Brett, and everyone will think I’m a bitch for saying I’m over it when I’m really not, and it will make for a delicious two minutes of television.
Well, if I’m going to be portrayed as a hag I may as well make my money. I reach into my purse for the gift I wrapped for Brett earlier. I had second-guessed myself up until now, unsure if I should give it to her or not. That nasty production hack cemented my decision.
Brett laughs.
“What?”
She reaches into her purse and offers me a small, long box in wrapping paper. “I got you something too.”
We open them at the same time. Mine is a pair of red Wayfarer sunglasses with the word SPOKE in white along the temple. Brett’s gift is my memoir, signed. Could we be any less subtle?
“Damn, we are thirsty bitches.” Brett laughs, directly into the camera. I take it back—we couldn’t be any less subtle, but Brett could. I have placed my books into scenes sparingly over the years, knowing that the Internet stops and frisks women for being too self-promotional. Unless you are Brett, who can’t sneeze without wiping her nose with a SPOKE embroidered hankie. The Big Chill always manages to get off without even a warning.
“The sunglasses are to wear in Morocco,” she tells me, then clutches my book, cover up, to her chest. “And I will display this in my new apartment with pride.”
“How’s it going?” I ask, my eyes twinkling with obligatory curiosity. “Totally different than living with Sarah, I imagine. I mean, you are engaged.” I laugh as though we have just shared some sort of inside joke.
“We’re both so busy we hardly see each other,” Brett says, neutrally. It is a smart answer. A politician’s answer.
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” I return. “Time apart makes time together exciting. Vince and I can’t keep our hands off each other after I get home from a book tour.” I curl one side of my mouth into a suggestive half smile. You’re not the only one in a hot relationship, honeybuns.
Brett is visibly uncomfortable, as I’d hoped.
Victorious, I turn my attention to my feet. “Which ones for dinner with the Female Director?”
“The sandals,” Brett says, without hesitation. “Definitely.”
“The pink ones with a bow?” I hoot. “That girl has made you soft.”
Brett stands up straighter. She didn’t like that. I knew she wouldn’t. “They look beige to me.”
I sit down and thread the ankle strap through the buckle. “Blush,” I say with a tiny little smirk. Brett is far girlier than she lets on. “They’re blush.” I look up as the saleswoman approaches. “I’ll take the Isabel Marant boots and the Aquazzura sandals—but the Aquazzuras in a size eight.”
“Do you want to try them on first to be sure they fit?” the saleswoman asks.
“No,” I tilt my head in Brett’s direction, “but she does.”
Brett chops the air with her hands, refusing. “No,” she says. “Absolutely not.”
“Absolutely yes,” I say, firmly. I cannot let my book be my present, not after we were both caught on camera gifting each other our own swag. “This is my engagement gift to you. I’m going on a book tour again, and then I have this dinner in L.A. obviously, and I feel bad I can’t make your . . .” I stop. Brett’s engagement party is meant to be a surprise. “I mean, I feel bad I haven’t gotten to celebrate with you yet.”