“Hi,” she says, then, “so.”
The Oscar-Nominated Female Director has to head to Chicago unexpectedly. She sends her deepest regrets. It means nothing, my agent assures me, and we will find a time for us to get together sometime soon. The good news is that I still have the reservation at Bestia if I’m up for going, just her and me. Or maybe Jesse and I want to go? Jesse. I glance up at the ceiling. She texted me earlier to let me know she had arrived, and we’d worked out that she is in the room directly above mine. I’ll refrain from doing my step aerobics then, she’d joked. The thought of harpooning her good mood with this news plunges me deeper into the mattress.
I thank my agent for the update and we hang up. I don’t risk asking if the cancellation is in any way connected to my conversation with the reporter from The Smoking Gun. Asking would be akin to flaunting symptoms of a flesh-eating plague, like if anyone were to hear me cough, I’d be brutally exiled from mankind’s last surviving community.
I hold the ceiling in contempt, knowing I need to get up and go upstairs and tell Jesse not to bother breaking out the good Dr. Martens, but upstairs feels far enough away to require a passport. I bargain with my eyelids—five minutes—as the sunset pinkens the smog on the 405.
I wake to a gaveling on the door. My room is dim and cool, perfect sleeping conditions really, and when I eventually creak to my feet, walking feels like a new skill. Jesse is on the other side of the door, looking like the model-dating member of a boy band in a blaze orange beanie, tight black jeans and a black leather jacket, black Converse sneakers and black socks. “Steph!” She laughs, admonishingly. “We’re going to be late.”
“Oh my God, Jesse.” I grope the wall for the light switch and flip it on. The bright burst feels like a million hot needles in my eyes. “I fell asleep. I’m so sorry.”
“Well . . . let’s go! Splash some water on your face and throw on those Jimmy Choos.” She claps her little hands: Chop-chop! “I’ll meet you downstairs.” She starts for the elevator.
“No, Jesse, no. Wait. The dinner is rescheduled.” I cannot bring myself to say canceled, although that’s what it is.
Jesse stops and turns, looking forty-whatever again when she furrows her brow. “To when?”
“I’m not sure. She had to go to Chicago unexpectedly.”
Jesse exhales through her nose, a single hot puff, like a bull. She lolls her head in a slow arc, the physical embodiment of the words “of course.” Of course she canceled on you. Of course this was going to be a waste of my time. You’re Stephanie Simmons, not Brett Courtney. “Were you going to tell me?”
“I just found out.”
“But you were sleeping.”
“I mean, I found out an hour or so ago. I was going to tell you. I don’t remember falling asleep. I guess I’m more jet-lagged than—”
Jesse raises a hand, silencing me. “Is this your way of trying to stretch this storyline into another season?”
It’s not. “It’s not.”
“Because frankly, Steph, the abuse stuff is too depressing to warrant a two-story arc.”
I know. “I know.”
Jesse smashes the elevator button with the heel of her hand.
“We still have the reservation at Bestia if you want to go,” I try. “I actually do have something to talk to you about. Something not depressing.” It hurts to smile.
Jesse tugs off her beanie, spiking her short hair with her fingers. “No, well, I actually have work to do.”
“I think I’m pregnant,” I call out into the hall. The words feel like the bell lap of a race, like emptying the tank; they wind me.
Jesse checks the panel above the elevator, watching its protracted climb. “But you’re not sure.”
“I mean, I’m so tired.” I gesture at my disheveled appearance for proof. Sometimes, I think I’m too quick on my feet. I’ve gotten too good at this game.
Jesse regards me as though I am the last cupcake in the box, left on the counter in the office kitchen overnight. I’m sort of dried out, my buttercream swirl smooshed. But she has a sweet tooth and I’m still a cupcake. “Let me know when you’re sure.”
She takes the stairs.
I pass out in my clothes during a Seinfeld episode and when I wake, Kathie Lee and Hoda are drinking wine and my cell is buzzing. I slide my thumb right to answer. “Gwen,” I croak.
“Did I wake you? I forgot it’s early out there.” There is a raised-eyebrows pause. “Well. Not that early. Want me to call back?”
“Don’t call me back,” I say, struggling to sit up in bed. “I’m freaking out.” My stomach is screaming and I remember I couldn’t stand the thought of dinner last night.
“Don’t freak out. This happens all the time with nonfiction.”
“The Smoking Gun calls up authors to validate their birthdays and the year they graduated high school?”
“Normally they go through the publisher. That’s why I was pulling your AQ. I wanted to be the one to give them those answers so that they wouldn’t call you and make you worry.”
“But what are they even planning to do with that information?”
“You know, cross-reference to make sure it all checks out.”
I need water as a matter of life or death. I clomp a hand around the nightstand, finding the Dasani I took from the airplane yesterday. “What if it doesn’t check out?”
“You wrote a memoir, Steph, not an autobiography. If some of the dates or details are screwy, it’s really not a story, and they’ll let it go. Like I said, this happens all the time with nonfiction. I doubt it will come to a head.”
The Dasani bottle is empty. I throw it across the room in despair. I don’t want anyone to make me feel better. I want my misery shared; I want responsibility shared. “I said in the AQ that the book was fiction, Gwen.”
Gwen is silent so long I pull the phone away from my ear to make sure the call didn’t drop. “I know,” she says, at last.
“You were the one who said it would have so much more impact if we could package it as a true story. And then when I wouldn’t agree to that—because I’d have to be a real fucking Judas to womankind to lie about being raped!—you said”—and here I do my best impression of a dumbass white girl—“well, like, how about we call it creative nonfiction, not a memoir? So that, like, I could explain to people that the abuse never happened but was a metaphor for, like, how the subtle racism I dealt with growing up was as painful as a physical assault?” I drop my voice. “And I am the fucking weakling who agreed to that, to assuage my guilt just a teensy bit knowing neither of us would correct anyone who assumed it was real, and I am the monster who also agreed to make him black because you said a white kid in a black neighborhood could be more easily traced. So, Gwen, don’t you ever leave me hanging for over twenty-four hours like that again. If I go down, I will do everything in my power to make sure you are right there with me.” I hang up, feeling like I shouldn’t have done that and also like I could have chewed her out for another hour and it wouldn’t have been enough.
I labor into the bathroom and stick a glass under the tap, examining myself in the mirror while I gulp down aluminum-flavored water. God, it is so much work to be a human being. Eight glasses of water a day—no wonder I look like shit, life is utterly demanding even on the best of days. I turn away from the mess in the mirror and limp back into the room, timbering into bed. I don’t have to leave for the airport for a few hours; I should probably get up and do something. Take advantage of the fact that I am in L.A. Go on a hike. Meditate on a mountaintop. Eat an egg-white frittata. I think about closing the curtains, but the bed is quicksand. I sink into sleep with the sexy SoCal sunshine aging my face.