For her consideration, p.16
For Her Consideration, page 16
Max was already back in my inbox with a call-in number, so I paused and dialed in. Joyce, of course, was seven minutes late, but I didn’t mind because I’d gone back to shopping for hats and daydreaming of desert heat and tiki drinks.
“Nina, how are you?” she asked.
“Very good,” I replied, one more word than I usually allowed myself. “How can I help?”
“I’m glad you asked. Strictly confidentially, of course—”
Every single thing we did at Exemplar was strictly confidential, of course.
“—I have a meeting set up tomorrow with Gregory Hart, and word on the street is he’s been unhappy with his representation at A.T.G. He’s, obviously, a frontrunner for next year’s Best Actor races, so if this happens, it’ll happen quickly and I need you ready to hit the ground running.”
“Of course,” I said, opening a new tab on top of all of the shopping in progress. Gregory Hart was in his fifties, the kind of actor who turned in awards-caliber performances consistently but had somehow never snagged one of the big trophies. He’d been a character actor, never a heartthrob or typical leading man, and I knew that those types of careers really benefited from an award or two. His lack might be why the rumor mill was churning and why Joyce was suddenly in contention.
“It would make for a big year for us,” Joyce said. “A great year for us, if I’m being honest, and so if I sign Greg, and Ari remains at the forefront of her awards race conversations as well, there will be a lot of eyes on us. Not the agency, our team specifically, and I don’t want to create any room for error.”
“Of course not,” I said quickly, my heart thumping at the mention of Ari’s name. “If there’s been any issue with my communication—”
“Not at all, Nina, we both know that the Ari incident was mainly about her comfort level—or I suppose her lack thereof with the whole process. I’d like to keep her happy but she’s not easy. I know you’re doing your best with her, all things considered.”
A moment from last night flashed into my head, Ari’s head thrown back and her mouth open, my face buried between her legs, and it occurred to me that I absolutely was doing my best, every single thing considered.
“You’ll get official word on Greg once—well, once it’s official,” Joyce said. “Until then, get ready to go. I think he may be a challenge too.”
“I like a challenge,” I said, though I wasn’t sure that was true. Bosses loved people who anticipated being tested, but I liked that my job didn’t surprise me too often. The requests were all different, but they generally boiled down to the same few categories: appointments/dinners/drinks, promotion especially via social media, and thank-you notes. I was good at those categories.
“It’s good to hear.” Joyce paused, but I could hear in her silence that she wasn’t finished talking. “Nina, have you thought much about what the next step is for you?”
Why did everyone suddenly care about my steps? “Wh-what do you mean?”
“I think you’ve shown real skill for handling, shall we say, challenging clients. Are you interested in transitioning to a junior agent role? Obviously, not until next year, when we’re through this awards season. I’d be happy to mentor you through the process.”
“Oh, I—” Honestly, I couldn’t believe it. Me, an agent? With Joyce’s mentorship? “I’d never really thought about it.”
“I think you’d be good,” Joyce said. “If it’s what you want. If it’s not what you want, it’s too tough a path to tread to make it worth it. But, really, Nina, it’s something to consider, all right?”
“I … I will,” I said, and I meant it, script revision or not. Had anyone ever placed such faith in me? Not professionally, nothing like this. “Thanks, Joyce. No matter what sounds right, it really means a lot.”
“Why don’t we grab lunch next week? It’s been a while. You can get down here from Fresno?”
“Really, it’s just like the Valley’s Valley,” I said. “It’s practically right on top of North Hollywood.”
“Nina, do you think I ever drive as far up as North Hollywood?” she asked, and we both laughed. “I’ll have Max shoot over a couple dates, let her know what works.”
We said goodbye and I abandoned my shopping to ponder what it would mean. Literally, I’d never dreamed of having a job like Joyce’s, but it was hardly due to lack of respect. Joyce was one of the smartest, most driven people I knew, and if she thought I’d be good at something, there was no way I could just let that go. No, I hadn’t moved to LA for a job like hers, but there was no guarantee I’d ever get the job I actually wanted. If I became someone like Joyce instead, I wouldn’t seem like I was floundering anymore. I would have new ambitions. Phoebe and I could talk industry strategy. Lorna could tell her friends that I’d leveled up. My future would be laid out right in front of me, junior agent to agent to … retirement? It was a clearer path than writing, that was for sure.
My phone buzzed, and I grabbed for it.
Nat signed me up for Facebook and I discovered that all of my ex-boyfriends are dead!
I arrived right on time at Ari’s on Saturday night. None of my orders had even shipped yet, but the good news was I didn’t need to be Nina, made over, tonight. Ari had requested the slutty maxidress, and it was happy to come out again (as, clearly, were my boobs).
“Hey.” Ari opened her door almost as soon as I rang the doorbell. She was dressed in a dark gray blazer over a white button-down, open halfway to her waist, and perfectly fitted jeans. “Let’s go.”
“Are we in a hurry?”
“Nina Rice,” she said with a sigh in her voice. “If we set foot in my house together, especially while you’re wearing that dress, we’re going to forget dinner again.”
I grabbed her by her shoulders and pulled her close, her hipbones jutting against the curve of my hips. “That doesn’t sound so bad to me.”
“We have all night,” she said, though her lips found mine for a long kiss. “I want to take you out. I want to do all the date shit with you.”
It was amazing, even more amazing maybe than the night we’d shared together. Falling into bed with someone was easy, or at least it had been for me, but so many fears I could have had about—well, whatever Ari and I were doing, were allayed by the simple act of being driven by her to Hippo. It was a bustling restaurant over in Highland Park practically hidden behind a coffee shop and a pizza place. Once inside their door, though, it opened up into a room with high ceilings and modern touches like the bold orange print on the back wall. Phoebe and Bianca had raved about it recently, but the point wasn’t the location but the fact that we were out together. Ari wanted to make sure we had time to talk, and her eyes kept drinking me in as if I was something to behold. I felt treasured.
“Lorna got her first iPhone,” I said, while we were browsing our menus.
“Oh, I know. She followed me on Instagram.”
“I’m sorry, she’s—”
“What do you mean?” Ari nudged my foot with hers under the table. “Lorna’s amazing. I can’t wait to see what she posts.”
“Yeah, I’ve avoided social media outside of my job, but that might be enough for me to sign up.”
“Is Lorna your only family?” she asked.
“No, I have parents and an older brother back in Missouri, and they’re fine, just … they don’t get me. I don’t even think it’s a queer thing, they’re just all analytical people who got reliable well-paying jobs and don’t understand why anyone would have taken the risk to go off to Los Angeles to attend an expensive school and attempt a career that more people fail at than succeed.”
Ari snorted. “Tell me about it, mine definitely think the same about me. Even now. They’re proud, sure, but my dad still pushes me to get a degree ‘in your spare time.’”
“Trust me, mine would say the same thing, and send a list of jobs that don’t fluctuate with the market. Believe it or not, TV writer is not on that list.”
“Lorna’s different.” She said it, didn’t ask it.
“Yeah. She just wants me to be happy. I have to keep telling myself she’s immortal or I’ll completely fall apart. I seriously can’t imagine not having her in my life. What about your family? I mean, besides your dad and his degree pushiness?”
“No siblings besides my parents’ very spoiled cockapoos, Apple and Sauce.”
“Wait,” I interrupted, “Sauce?”
“Unfortunately, yes, you heard correctly.” Ari laughed. “Sauce is the nice one, though. Apple has peed on my suitcase at least four times. I think he’s homophobic.”
“How can you tell, does he bark when Ellen comes on?”
She cracked up. “Yeah, exactly. That might be about the toxic workplace issues though. Anyway, they have a lot of advice for me—my parents, that is, not Apple or Sauce—and it all seems so rooted in … I don’t know. I’m well aware that if I’d gone a different direction with my career, I might be more successful. My parents begged me to cut my hair before I flew out for my first audition. I don’t know if you remember, but I had like this fashion mullet back then—”
“Oh, trust me, I remember.”
“My mom thought I was doomed before I started with that haircut.” She shrugged. “And then I wasn’t. But it doesn’t stop the suggestions, and it makes me feel like they’d love me to be in the closet. Not in my personal life, just so that people at their golf club don’t think of them as Jake and Kelly with the lesbian daughter.”
“The famous lesbian daughter, though,” I said. “Don’t you get points for that?”
“You’d think.” Ari reached across the table and threaded her fingers through mine. I pulled my hand back. “Everything OK?”
“I’m sure that it’s not allowed by Joyce if we—”
“Fuck Joyce,” she said, a corner of her mouth tugging upward. “I’ll fire Joyce tonight if it makes you happy.”
We both laughed, as Ari’s hand found mine again.
“Not really, I hate Hollywood sometimes but—contrary to my parents’ opinion—I’m not an idiot. But people don’t actually pay attention to me, Nina, not in normal life.”
I glanced around and saw that she was right. There were no frantic looks away, no phones secretly pointed in our direction. Ari blended in, and so we were safe.
A server stopped by for our drink order, and the truth was that neither of us had absorbed a single word on the menu. Ari fixed her smile—her real smile—on the server.
“Any recommendations? I think waiting for us to decide would be a bad idea, if you ever want to turn this table over tonight.”
He laughed and pointed out his favorite cocktails and nonalcoholic beverages on the menu. We chose from that and sent him on his way, with a warning he’d need to do the same for our food.
“I had an … interesting conversation with Joyce today, actually,” I said, though I hadn’t planned to bring it up. “She asked if I’d want to become a junior agent after awards season and that she’d mentor me.”
Ari frowned. “How’d she take it when you shot her down?”
“I … I didn’t. I’m still thinking about it.”
“What’s there to think about?” she asked. “You’re not here to agent, you’re here to write.”
“Well, plans can change,” I said. “My parents aren’t wrong that becoming a TV writer isn’t much likelier than winning the lottery.”
“Fuck that,” Ari said, as the server dropped off our drinks.
“I’ll give you two a moment,” he said, and hurried off.
“Sorry, it’s just that you’re not playing the lottery. You’re a funny, interesting, brilliant woman who has things she wants to say, who’s already in Hollywood—well, close enough—and is building connections. Any writers’ room would be lucky to have you.”
“I think you might be biased,” I said, though I wished I could somehow capture funny, interesting, brilliant and save them tangibly somehow.
“I already adjusted for bias. I didn’t say any network would be lucky to give you an automatic series order, did I?” She leaned back against her side of the booth and folded her arms across her chest. “I’d just hate to see you give up the dream now.”
“I’m not giving up anything,” I said, and tried not to think about the possibility that Ari didn’t think I was ambitious enough. “I just didn’t tell her no. I’m willing to keep my mind open to the fact that life doesn’t always go the way you plan, and that it’s not always bad when that happens.”
She didn’t look moved by this, so I nudged her foot this time.
“I didn’t plan for you to go this way, after all.”
“Unfair using that against me,” she said, but she beamed as the waiter arrived to ostensibly take our order but of course we all but forced him to tell us what to get. All I’d thought about my entire drive down was Ari’s bedroom, but now that we were seated in the Saturday night noise of this beautiful restaurant, I was in no hurry to get back there. I loved Ari’s face in the glowing light, I loved getting a little buzzy on cocktails and sobering up as plates of food kept arriving. Our server apologized for perhaps over-suggesting, but we could only laugh because we’d brought it upon ourselves.
Afterward we decided to walk down the block to grab another drink, and I had a moment where I marveled that Ari’s arm was around my waist. A few days ago, I never would have believed it. Would I ever? Would it last long enough to get used to it? Did I ever want to get used to it, or could I live in a world where it was always a bit like magic?
“I’ll grab us drinks at the bar,” Ari told me when we pushed into the crowded building. “You trust me?”
“Mostly,” I said, and she kissed me before heading over. It seemed so long ago that I’d loved seeing Taylor from afar, but as I grabbed a table and waited, it rushed back to me a little, because I liked this too. I liked Ari’s easy grin and how I saw her charm work its wonders on the bartender. She wasn’t Taylor, and I hadn’t earned the right to be proud of her yet, but I felt way more than nothing.
“Hey there,” she said, arriving back with two nearly overflowing tumblers. “I told the bartender I needed to impress a girl on our first date so he mixed up something special for us.”
“You don’t need to impress me,” I said, though I smiled ridiculously hard as we clinked our glasses together. “You know that I think you’re kind of amazing, right? The way you’re so out, and that you don’t compromise your identity for the industry … I’m inspired by you, Ari.”
She shrugged, ducking her head. “I can’t imagine doing it any other way.”
“I know, that’s the point, that’s what makes you so—”
I cut myself off as she looked back up and right into my eyes.
“What does it make me?” she asked, and I felt myself blushing. “No, I’m not trying to put you on the spot. I want to know what you were going to say.”
“I think you’re incredible. And you don’t have to act like it’s not a big deal. Imagine if when we were little there’d been someone with your haircut who won an Oscar.”
Ari’s face was flushed, and I realized she was blushing too. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
I tipped back another drink of the gin-heavy blackberry cocktail. “You’re really bad at compliments, aren’t you?”
“No,” she said quickly, which made me laugh. “I told you I was bad at this part.”
“What are you talking about? You just took me to an amazing dinner. You had a hipster bartender with a ridiculous mustache handcraft a drink just for me and it’s delicious. You’re great at this part. Just not compliments.”
She took a big swig from her glass. “Girls think they know me, is the thing. Since I’m so public and I … I don’t know. I stand for something. And then we go out and I’m just an idiot who’s good at picking restaurants. I’m not larger than life. I’m not that GIF set. I’m just this person.”
“I like this person,” I said.
“I didn’t mean you, Nina Rice.” She rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Why do you think I’m so fucking nervous? You’ve only seen me as I actually am. There’s no hiding.”
“Well, good,” I said, because I didn’t want to tread carefully with Ari anymore. Two days ago I’d dived off the deep end and I wasn’t paddling back to shore. “I like you. And your GIF set.”
“I like you too.” She finished off her drink in a gulp. “I’m ready when you are.”
“Oh, is everything OK or—”
“Wait, was I too subtle?” She leaned in, practically climbing across the table, until her lips touched my ear. “I wish I was already inside of you.”
I downed my drink too. “Believe it or not, you might have been too subtle.”
We waved to the bartender as we left, who saluted us with a sly grin. I didn’t mind that he knew where we were headed.
Back at Ari’s, though, we moved more slowly than last time. She hung up her blazer neatly before setting the coffeemaker for the morning with carefully measured scoops of artisan dark roast. I took the time to walk around, poking into her bookshelves, examining the art framed down her hallway and into her bedroom that—for spending many hours in—I’d barely noticed. It felt crisp and clean, pale gray walls with a sleek dark wooden bed with a black and gray striped duvet, as if Ikea had a more mature cousin. The color in the room came from the artwork on the walls, everything from bold photography to modern splashy abstract paintings.
I heard Ari walk in behind me, but I didn’t turn.
“What are you thinking about?” She walked right up behind me and slipped her arms around my waist. I settled back against her, loving the way we fit together.
“I like all of your art. Not just each piece, but the effect together is … joyful, somehow? Seeing all these different things together. Is that weird to say?”
“No, that’s how I feel too. One of the first things that happened when I got my first paycheck for Brother’s Keeper was that I was at this little coffee shop with a friend, and they had these gorgeous paintings on display. I started talking to my friend about how I wished I could support local artists and have something that beautiful in my apartment, and then I realized I could.” She pointed to a colorful abstract piece, different shapes overlapping on top of a bold blue background. “So now whenever I see something, I just let myself buy it.”
