For her consideration, p.22
For Her Consideration, page 22
“Five,” I corrected. “They’re big years. Being in your thirties feels a lot different.”
“Everyone tells me I’ll give less fucks then,” Ari said. “Which seems unlikely. And if I’m not giving fucks, who will?”
I laughed. “Yep, just you, the only person holding this universe together.”
“Nina Rice.” She looked at me for just a moment. “I’m really falling for you.”
It was, I knew, a half step. It was the appropriate leveling up before love was appropriate to confess. I was taking steps toward love, after I’d told myself I couldn’t have this again. I shouldn’t have this again. But here I was, just having it. Having her.
“I’m really falling for you too,” I said, though I felt a bit like a movie cop saying it was his last day before retirement, jinxing himself right into a terrible crime to solve.
“Whew,” she said, and I laughed, probably too much, just relieved to be on the lighter side of a big moment, feeling less like a movie cop and more like myself.
“How long until Georgia?” I asked.
“Two weeks. Have you thought about it?”
“I want to talk to Lorna, and check in at work to make sure I don’t have any in-person meetings coming up but … yeah. If that’s all good, I want to come for at least part of it.”
She squeezed my hand tightly. “I’m so glad.”
My phone buzzed, and I checked my messages. “Lorna’s out of the cast!”
“Did she send a photo?” Ari asked.
“Well, she did, but it’s just of her face, which doesn’t look any different.” I tapped out a reply. Congrats! We’re on our way back and it’ll be so good to see you Thursday. What’s on the menu?
“So do you have a busy week lined up?” Ari asked. “Lots of Joyce duties?”
“I managed not to give in to curiosity and even look at my work email,” I said. “Right now I’m blissfully ignorant and pretending nothing’s waiting for me.”
“I can’t comprehend living that way, but good for you,” Ari said. “I guess. Let me know once you do, though. I thought maybe we could set up a dinner with my friend Jenn and our mutual friend Peyton, who you’ve met, and—”
“Ari,” I interrupted, “no.”
“I haven’t even said anything yet,” Ari said, with more than a note of frustration in her tone. “It would be great to get, as Joyce would say, some face time with her, and remind her of how fun and interesting and brilliant you are—”
I cut her off with a loud sigh. “I’m going to give you credit and say you’re sleep-deprived and suffering from vacation brain or something.”
“Nina, what are you talking about? You have a great script that’s close to being ready, and there’s no reason to sit on it when—”
“When what?” I demanded. “My girlfriend has connections so I should rush the process and do everything before I’m comfortable with it?”
“She’s your connection too,” Ari said, both hands on the wheel now. “She told you to reach out—”
“She told me to reach out when I was ready. But I’m not ready! The script could be better, and just because you like it doesn’t mean something has to happen with it right now. I never would have let you read it if I thought you’d act like this.” I sighed, as realization hit me. “Actually, I knew you’d act like this but I pretended I didn’t because I wanted to share it with you, like I would have shared it with someone else.”
“Oh, I’m the issue, cool,” Ari said. “Not you and your inability to believe in yourself.”
I glanced down at Waze. We still had an hour and a half before reaching Ari’s.
“Do you want to just get off at the next exit?” I asked.
“Why, is there a Starbucks?” Ari asked, and I ignored but didn’t miss how her tone had softened.
“Probably but—maybe I can just grab a Lyft back.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, her hand back, our fingers entwined again, “but Karl doesn’t drive out this far, remember? He likes staying on the Eastside.”
I wanted to stay mad but she did pull off to get me a chai as well as, unbelievably, a venti Frappuccino for herself. (“Nina Rice, I need the sugar.”) I snapped a photo of her, eyes shut in a sugar high, gleefully sucking down the Frappuccino while we sat in the parking lot, and switched out my generic lock screen for the photo.
“No,” she said when she caught me doing it. “That’s a terrible picture.”
“You look so cute,” I said, holding my phone away from her. “Also it’s blackmail for anytime you get too high-and-mighty about your hipster beans.”
“Nina Rice, don’t you dare,” she said, but she laughed and kissed me. I licked the whipped cream off her sugar-sweet lips. “Don’t get a Lyft. I’ll be nicer than a Lyft.”
“Promise?”
She kissed me again. “I swear on this desert Starbucks.”
Of course I didn’t want a Lyft. I just didn’t want to feel this way, trapped with my fears and my countdown clock, a movie cop jinxing himself. After a weekend that couldn’t have felt more perfect, still marked on my body from Ari’s mouth and teeth, I couldn’t ignore that we now felt creepingly close to the edge. My disastrous possibilities lurked not deep within, but right beneath the surface. If only I could have been the Nina that Ari wanted me to be, ready for meetings and maybe full of more ambition, but I was just me. Vacation Nina was already gone. I thought about Taylor’s face that last night, as the other patrons at the bar tried not to gape, and wondered just how far off Ari’s frustration had been from that moment. Right now, even with the chai and Ari’s promise, it couldn’t have felt closer.
Chapter 20
Meanwhile in Hollywood
My week flew by once I was home from Palm Springs. There had been a lot of non-urgent communication needs while I was away, which meant that Max had compiled all of them into the longest email I’d ever received from Exemplar. I’d literally only been out for two business days, which made me realize how much I did on a daily basis without thinking much of it. There was a lot to handle when it was laid out like that, all together, but—besides the Ari Incident—it was rarely a strain for me.
Joyce was right, I thought, as was Phoebe, and Lorna too. No matter what my next step would be, I needed a next step. This had stopped being a challenge, and the truth was that while sometimes I felt like all my youth was gone, I was only thirty-two. If I was lucky, I had a lot of life left. And a challenge didn’t sound terrible. Scary, sure, but like a rollercoaster or a haunted house, where the safe ending felt all but guaranteed.
As always now, I packed up for the weekend and headed to Ari’s. Her week had sounded busy too, a flurry of meetings before heading soon to Georgia. In fact, she texted me as I was driving down on Friday that she was out longer than planned and that I should let myself in. The key hadn’t been a huge deal; Ari had tossed it to me the other week when I’d wanted to walk out to grab a chai and she’d been stuck on a call, and when I’d gotten back she’d told me it would be easier for me to keep it. So now I had this key and my own code to the security system.
“I’m here, Steve,” I called as I let myself in, though he never responded. It still felt polite to acknowledge his presence before I sat in my usual spot on the floor and opened my laptop on the coffee table. Work had quieted for the weekend, so I opened the latest version of my script outline to see if I could figure out the final act. It wasn’t really that simple, because any changes there in the fifth act would end up affecting the fourth, and before long I was rewriting the outline again, from the ground up. But right now, it was my challenge. It was nice to have one of those again.
“Hey,” Ari said, walking in. “I really need to get a setup so you can work here. I feel terrible every time I see you on the floor.”
“I don’t mind the floor,” I said, though of course the thought of Ari reorganizing her home for me was a nice one. “How was your meeting?”
“Don’t make me talk about it.” She collapsed on the sofa behind me, and I turned around to kiss her gently. “I’m fine, it was fine, they’re just all the same. Everyone talks a good game and is your best friend, and then you wait to see what’s real. And I’m the one who loves calling out bullshit, but I get sucked into it too, and I leave thinking I really have transformed the industry, and then nothing. So I just let them all blend together.”
“Sounds wise,” I said.
“I don’t know about that, but thanks,” Ari said. “Also I have to grab drinks tonight, don’t kill me, but after that, Cade texted that a bunch of people are meeting up at the Mermaid later so I thought maybe we could go to that?”
I heard the note of vulnerability in her voice and grinned. “Ari, are you asking me to meet your friends?”
“I am indeed, Nina Rice. How’s that sound? I’ll buy you dinner on the way. No one’s meeting until at least after ten.”
It sounded, well—a lot of things, really. I actually didn’t know much about Ari’s crowd, because she didn’t have a solid, rarely changing crew like mine, but I suspected they were all much younger and cooler than me. We ran into people sometimes around town, seemingly plucked from an editorial feature on the coolest queer people in Los Angeles, who knew Ari and who Ari introduced to me as her friends. There were books on her shelf written by people she knew, buzzy podcasts hosted by her friends and acquaintances, events written up breathlessly online that had been organized by someone in her sphere. My crew was close to middle age and thinking about babies; her crew was defining culture and starting their nights after ten p.m.
But I said yes because this was one of the next steps and because Ari did so much for me. I could consume extra caffeine to stay up late and meet cooler and younger people. If I wanted a future in Hollywood, it was time to get used to that anyway.
The bar was in Little Tokyo, which was a neighborhood in Downtown LA, so we grabbed sushi nearby beforehand, and I thought about how different it was, packed into a tiny booth in a raucous restaurant, from last week when the whole desert had been ours. Last week I’d felt as at ease as I ever did, and tonight I was using every spare moment to wonder if my new dress was cool to people under thirty or if I’d somehow slipped into Cool Aunt territory without knowing it. And without even being an aunt.
But then we got up to leave and my very hot and very cool girlfriend slipped her arm around my waist, and I decided to give myself at least the walk over to the bar off from worrying. Inside the crowded nautical-themed bar, a packed crowd glowed in the undersea lighting, and my heart pounded. But one by one, the crowd was OK, I realized. It seemed, upon casual glance at least, a very mixed crowd—hipsters, queer people, nerds, just … people—and I was definitely not the oldest person there. Though then Ari tugged me toward a crowd hanging out in the back corner, and I tried not to stare at all of their twentysomething faces, untouched by age.
“Hey, y’all,” Ari greeted them, and was pulled into nearly a dozen hugs by the group. They were clearly the coolest crowd in the bar, with bright hair colors and architectural haircuts and outfits in every version of stylish I could have imagined. Maybe I wasn’t even a cool aunt.
“This is Nina obviously,” Ari said, and I realized the obviously meant something, that her friends knew about me and expected me to be there, the way my brunch crew had been so adamant about getting introduced to Ari. I was Nina obviously. No one’s aunt at all.
There was a whirlwind of introductions, names and pronouns and relationships, and I felt the warmth in people’s words, the private jokes that I didn’t get, volleyed back and forth, the ease in Ari’s body language. Ari left me alone to grab drinks at the bar, and I took a chance and sidled up next to Cade, who was a tall redhead dressed all in black.
“You’re the one who feeds Ari’s cat, right?” I asked, and they burst into laughter.
“Tell me you’ve seen that fucking cat,” Cade said, and I shook my head. “I swear, I’d go in, refill his little cat water fountain, measure out all his fancy organic cat food, and nothing. You? Nothing?”
“Nothing. I’ve never seen him either.”
“And you’re there all the time, yeah?” Cade asked. “So you’d know.”
“Are y’all talking about Ari’s cat?” Another of Ari’s friends, Laser, pushed their way over. They had blonde hair that was streaked with teal, styled into swooping waves, and was dressed in bright jewel tones. “Nina, you follow Cade’s Instagram, right?”
“Oh, I’m not on social media,” I said, feeling very much the oldest and most boring person there, though they actually both gave me reverent looks.
“I really admire that,” Laser said. “Instagram is part of Facebook and therefore part of the downfall of humanity. But Cade runs a whole account for cat-sitting for Ari called @wheressteve and it’s amazing.”
“That almost makes me want to join,” I said, as Ari arrived back with margaritas.
“They’re no TGI Fridays recipe, but hopefully you’ll still be happy,” she said with a grin. “What’d I miss?”
“Just finding out that Nina hasn’t seen Steve either,” Cade said, which made Ari start ranting on the unlikeliness of inventing a fake cat. I could tell they’d had this faux fight a thousand times before, and instead of feeling left out, I felt warmed by the closeness here. It felt like Sunday brunch, just later and louder. I made a mental note to remember how these moments felt too, because my script had a lot of softer moments, quiet patios and dinner reservations. Smashed into a corner at a tiny bar could feel the same way.
I was home by Monday morning, because even with my new laptop, the bigger pile of work that tended to hit at the beginning of the week was just easier to handle from my desk. Of course I thought about Ari’s casual words, wondered if we were in the midst of an invisible countdown to shared furniture, but sometimes I also liked coming home alone. I drank my supermarket coffee and took way too long to get showered and dressed and I felt—well, I felt different. Was I Nina version 3 or 4 now? It didn’t matter; this was a good one.
There was an email when I hit Ari’s inbox, and not from her, either. She still liked to find me here, sometimes, which gave my job just a little more excitement. Maybe we’d get even more used to each other, but as of now I still grinned when I saw her name pop up in my inbox, and in “her” inbox too.
Today, though, the new email was from Peyton Butler, who I remembered from the Women in Television event we’d attended what seemed like a lifetime ago. It was rare for a contact to reach out first, but I knew that Peyton was different, sharing a mutual friend with Ari already. In fact, I was surprised Ari had given out this email address, but that probably just meant she’d wanted proof of good behavior for Joyce and the rest of her Exemplar team.
Obviously, I found that adorable.
To: arifox1@aol.com
From: pbutler@pbjamproductions.com
Subject: So good to see you!
Message: Hi Ari,
Thanks again for grabbing drinks on Friday, I know your schedule’s starting to explode so I’m glad you found time and that we were able to drag Jenn out too. Hope your night out after was fun. Would definitely like to get on your schedule again once you’re back from your shoot, and, yes, your girlfriend’s script sounds exactly like something I’d be interested in. Can you connect us, or at least get us a digital version of the script and her contact/ rep info?
Thanks again,
PB
I stared at the email. I read it over and over. I tried to find a way where I’d made up parts of it or imagined words. But, no. There it was. I’d asked Ari not to do this, and Ari did it anyway.
It was bad enough—it was terrible. But there was also the fact that Joyce didn’t know Ari had a girlfriend. Joyce certainly didn’t know that the girlfriend was me. And so, the thing that I was supposed to do—i.e., forward the email to Joyce and wait for instructions—was impossible. Plus, I didn’t want to. Even if we could skate over this girlfriend and her script, Joyce would want to keep the network exec happy. Joyce would be thrilled to help along a big connection for her client, get Ari on more TV screens in more homes. And if that meant sending along some shitty literally not-ready-for-prime-time script, why the hell not? What were my career dreams when Hollywood bullshit came first and foremost?
So I just started typing.
To: pbutler@pbjamproductions.com
From: arifox1@aol.com
Subject: re: So good to see you!
Message: Hi Peyton,
Thanks as well. I’ll be happy to schedule a meeting once I’m back from my shoot. My team or I will reach out then.
As to my girlfriend’s script, I apologize for misspeaking on Friday night. At this point the script is still under heavy revisions and is not ready to be shared.
Best,
Ari
I hit send and started to delete Peyton’s email so I wouldn’t have to look at it anymore and so I wouldn’t accidentally forward it on to Joyce or Max. But I also wanted proof that this had happened, so I printed it out, a single sheet that had changed everything, before deleting.
Normally we texted and emailed, but I grabbed for my phone and dialed.
She answered right away. “Hey, babe, what’s up?”
“Ari, did you go out with Peyton Butler and tell her about my script even though I told you specifically not to do that?”
There was more than a moment of silence.
“Shit, I—Nina, I can explain.”
“Unless your answer is no, she’s lying via email, I don’t know what you can say.”
Ari was silent again.
“I didn’t just say I wasn’t ready, Ari, I specifically said not to talk to Peyton about it, not to set up drinks,” I said, trying to hold on to a reasonable tone but feeling my voice cracking. “I can’t believe you went and did it anyway. I knew you were eager or whatever, but … fuck.”
“No, Nina, it didn’t happen like that,” she said. “Unrelated to any of that, Peyton’s team reached out to mine and set up a drinks meeting like we’d been planning to do for forever. And she started talking about how the network is hungry for something young and modern, and everything she said reminded me of your script. And I couldn’t hold myself back, when my girlfriend had written just the kind of thing she wanted. It felt stupid not to say something.”
