I Will Always Love You (17 page)

“Hollis, darling, where have you been all my life?” A six-foot-tall woman wearing towering five-inch purple Manolos and a
gauzy blue Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress strode in. Her body was skeletal, but her chest was huge, and her hair fell almost
down to her butt. She looked like a transvestite.

Stacy Brower was the creative exec known for championing the weird, the obscure, or the ignored. Stacy had discovered Between the B and the A after she’d met Hollis at an NYU film student thesis screening event and had wholeheartedly championed it straight to Sundance.
She was the perfect creative exec to hear Vanessa’s pitch.

“Hi, I’m Vanessa Abrams,” Vanessa began, hastily standing up and sticking out her hand. But instead of taking it, Stacy breezed
past her and sat down in one of the large Eames chairs in the corner, folding up her legs underneath her so she looked like
a praying mantis. Vanessa sat back down.

“I’m really interested in this pitch. Sounds amazing. So, let’s hear more about it,” Stacy said, sounding bored. Next to her,
Zach pulled out a thin Mac Air and gazed at Hollis and Vanessa, his hands poised above the keyboard.

Hollis squeezed Vanessa’s hand underneath the glass table. Vanessa smiled at Stacy and took a deep breath before launching
into the pitch she’d rehearsed so many times. “Well, it’s about a girl who moves from a Vermont farm to Brooklyn to go to
an all-girl private school. She lives with her tattooed, musician sister and has some friends who are obscenely wealthy, whom
she uses as subjects for film projects. But, mostly, it’s about growing up and finding yourself in the weirdest, most wonderful
city in the world,” Vanessa finished bravely, sneaking a glance at Stacy. Stacy’s gaze was fixed out the window. “That city
being New York,” Vanessa added, her voice scratchy.

Stacy still didn’t say anything. Vanessa followed her gaze and saw a suited man in one of the offices in the building across
the street, tossing his stapler up and down in the air and catching it. “I could watch that all day. So Zen. He thinks no
one can see him because his office door is closed. The fucker,” Stacy cackled. She turned her chair back to the table and
steepled her violet-colored fingernails together.

“Girl growing up, finding herself,” Stacy said, almost to herself. “I like it. But what if it was a boy?” Stacy mused. “You
know, I’m going to call Geoff in. He’s doing a lot of work on projects with the eighteen-to-thirty-five male demo in mind.
I think he’d like to discuss this.” Stacy smiled as Zach scurried up and out the door.

“I’m sorry, but you want the main character to be a boy?” Vanessa asked, trying not to sound horrified.

“Excuse me?” Stacy asked, arching one blond eyebrow at Vanessa in curiosity. Just then, Zach returned, trailed by a five-foot-tall
man wearing a lilac button-down, tight black jeans, and cowboy boots.

“Hello!” the man said in a high-pitched voice. “Hollis, baby, you look amazing. So, let’s talk. Stacy said you needed some
insight into the male mind?” he asked, winking showily and not bothering to introduce himself to Vanessa before he plopped
down next to her.

Vanessa gazed at Geoff in horror. She didn’t care about pleasing a demo. She wanted to make a film.

“So, here’s my pitch,” Geoff said, flapping his arms in excitement. “Eighteen-year-old boy. He lives in Australia or, you
know, that country with the hobbits… New Zealand? And he has to move to a city?” Stacy nodded enthusiastically.

“No!” Vanessa broke in. Suddenly, all eyes turned to her.

“Of course, you’re right,” Stacy locked eyes with Vanessa and smiled. It was the first time Stacy had directly interacted
with her. Vanessa smiled back, relieved. So Stacy was a little eccentric, but she got it.

“Of course it can’t be set Down Under,” Stacy said definitively, as if she were the one rejecting the idea. “Ever since Australia hit the shitter, the antipodes are fucking career suicide.” Stacy shuddered. “But I like your thinking, Geoff. I love the
idea of doing location, a different culture. People like that. Good date movie, good press. So what if the Maori boy moves
to Iceland and that’s how we open the film. It’s perfect. It’s diverse, it’s edgy, it’s Slumdog Millionaire meets Kids. Hollis, you’re a genius.” Stacy clapped her hands in excitement.

Vanessa squeezed Hollis’s hand tightly. She expected him to roll his stormy gray eyes and tell them to fuck themselves. But
instead, he was nodding as if he was agreeing. What the fuck? Vanessa yanked her hand away, aware that her palms were clammy.

“Here’s my pitch,” Hollis said, his deep voice commanding the room. “Love the Maori boy, love Iceland. So what if we double
the fun and add some twins? That way, we can really explore identity and selfhood and what makes a family.” Hollis nodded,
leaning forward on his elbows as if he couldn’t wait to see what else Stacy would add to the idea. Vanessa felt like she was going to throw up. He was agreeing with them?

“What makes a family,” Geoff piped up, his voice going up an octave in excitement. “That could be a great title.”

“Only if we’re a fucking television network for women.” Stacy rolled her eyes in his direction. “Remember, we need to get
the guys. Are you having trouble in that department?” she asked sarcastically. “No, what if it’s something like The Tribe Goes Down? See, that’s sexy.”

Vanessa couldn’t take this anymore. If Hollis wasn’t going to say anything because he was afraid of offending Stacy, well
then, she was. She knew you had to make some compromises to get financing, but this was absurd. “No,” Vanessa said loudly,
her voice seeming to ricochet off the glass walls.

“Alyssa?” Stacy asked curiously.

“It’s Vanessa,” Vanessa snapped. “I’m sorry, but the pitch was about a teenage girl who moves to Brooklyn. I’m not making a movie about twin Maori boys who move to Iceland,” she said firmly, hoping Stacy would understand. “I don’t know anything about Iceland. Or Maoris.”

“Right.” Stacy nodded. “But this is a Hollis Lyons film. If Streetscape is producing it, Hollis is directing it,” she said,
as if she were a kindergarten teacher explaining to a five-year-old why she couldn’t have two snacks. “It’ll really be great,
Hollis.” Stacy smiled. “Now, let’s keep going. So, we get them to Reykjavík, and then…” She trailed off, glancing around the
room for the next pitch.

“Then I guess I’m not needed here.” Vanessa stood up. Tears were dangerously close to flowing, and she would not cry in front of them. She walked toward the door. Hollis was still sitting on the edge of his chair, leaning his elbows on
the table as if he couldn’t wait to hear Stacy’s latest absurd idea.

“Hollis?” Vanessa asked, her voice shaking.

“See you later,” Hollis called distractedly. He turned back to the table. “I think it might be cool if one of them got involved
with a Dutch girl from Amsterdam,” he mused.

At this, Vanessa froze. Her hand was on the doorknob, but she felt paralyzed. What was Hollis doing? How could he betray her like that?

“Zach, can you walk Alyssa out, while we hash out the Amsterdam plot twist,” Stacy asked, mistaking Vanessa’s pent-up rage
for confusion over where the exit was located.

Vanessa swallowed her anger. She was going to head back to the apartment, pack her stuff, and then go straight to Ruby’s.
If Hollis thought she would continue to live with him, he was dead wrong. “Hollis is great at plot twists,” Vanessa managed
icily before she closed the door.

The best endings are the ones you don’t see coming.

the marriage of two minds works better over beers

Dan lit up a Camel as he stood outside Doma, the busy café on Perry Street. It was already almost dark, even though it was
just four in the afternoon. The café looked warm and inviting, with people reading tattered paperbacks and couples leaning
over their lattes. But Dan didn’t go in. He never knew the protocol for meeting someone for coffee. Did he go in and scout
out a table and order? Did he wait outside?

Someone’s really taking this seriously.

He pulled out his phone. Four-oh-eight. She probably wouldn’t even show. This was the last time he was meeting up with a model-slash-actress
or whatever Serena was. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his corduroys, ready to walk off.

“Dan!” He whirled around and saw Serena. Dan sucked in his breath. She was even more stunning than he remembered. She was
wearing a long gray coat, her cheeks flushed from the cold and her long hair loose and golden around her shoulders. She looked
beautiful, otherworldly, like a Hans Christian Andersen princess who’d taken a wrong turn and wound up in the city instead
of a forest in Norway.

“Oh my God!” Serena exclaimed, hugging Dan. She kissed him on the cheek, leaving a sticky lip gloss mark and a tingling sensation.

“Hey,” Dan said casually, trying not to squeak.

“So sorry to keep you waiting!” Serena shook her head apologetically. “Should we go in?”

“It’s sort of crowded,” Dan pointed out. Suddenly, he didn’t want to share Serena with the nosy coffee drinkers inside.

A shadow of a frown crossed Serena’s face. “Then let’s go somewhere else!” she decided, grabbing Dan’s hand. Dan felt himself
blush. “We could go for a walk or something,” she said easily.

Walk? No. Dan did not want to walk. In fact, all he wanted to do was stare at Serena’s silken hair and ocean blue eyes and…
“There has to be a bar around here somewhere,” he croaked.

Liquid courage always helps.

They crossed Seventh Avenue, and as they did, a flash went off. Serena turned her head away from the photographer, clearly
used to this kind of thing. “How about there?” She nodded toward an oak door to a bar with dark windows and no discernable
sign.

Dan nodded. It seemed like a good bet, the sort of place where a New York writer would take his muse. “Let’s go,” he decided,
pulling Serena inside.

The bar was grimy and dark and smelled like Lysol and Bud Lite. They were the only people there besides two red-faced old
men frowning over crossword puzzles.

“I love it!” Serena pronounced, sliding onto one of the cracked vinyl booths in the front. She shrugged off her coat, then
took off her gloves. “Aren’t you hot?” she asked, looking expectantly up at Dan, who was still clad in his black puffer coat.

“Yeah,” Dan admitted, feeling slightly nauseous. He shrugged off his coat and slid it on the bench opposite her. “I’ll get
drinks.” He strode up to the pockmarked bar, wondering what the hell he should order for Serena. She probably drank hundred-dollar
glasses of champagne.

“We’ve got five-dollar pitchers of Bud Lite until five. Manager’s special,” the ancient bartender growled, not looking up
from his sudoku puzzle.

“Sure, fine,” Dan said distractedly, slapping the money on the table. He carried back the pitcher, along with two plastic
cups, and carefully poured drinks for both of them.

“Cheers!” Serena held up her cup toward Dan. “Thanks for meeting me. I know it’s random, but when I opened up that New Yorker, I can’t even tell you how badly I needed to hear something nice. And then I saw my name… and then I saw your name…. Anyway, I really liked it,” Serena trailed off uncertainly. Did she sound like a total stalker? Maybe the poem wasn’t about
her at all—maybe it was about his dog or his mom or maybe he just randomly chose the name from a name book. Maybe her whole
problem was she was just too much of a romantic, seeing love when it wasn’t there. She took a long swig of beer.

“Oh.” Dan blushed. He’d been trying to figure out how to explain the poem to Serena without sounding like a stalker or a loser,
but so far, he had nothing. He figured the words would come to him. He took a big gulp of beer, even though he hated the taste
of it. He much preferred scotch or whiskey. “I actually wrote that in high school. Right after we dated.” Maybe the truth
was the best way to go.

“Really?” Serena gazed up at Dan’s sweet and sincere face. She and Dan had dated for a little bit their senior year, but had
quickly realized they were just too different. He’d been nice, but way too intense with his poetry, and looking back, she
could hardly remember what they’d done or spoken about when they’d been together.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Dan mumbled. He couldn’t believe he and Serena van der Woodsen, his high school crush, his former
muse, were just chatting over Bud Lights at four o’clock in the afternoon. It was so bizarre, it almost felt normal.

Serena broke into a smile. “I loved it. Except I had to look up a few of the Ovid references. If you weren’t such a good writer,
I’d think you were trying to make people feel dumb.” She smiled, then ducked under the table, pulling out a dog-eared copy
of Ovid from her large white purse. “It’s from that myth, right? About the two lovers who are turned into birds because one
can’t live without the other? I cried when I read it,” Serena confessed. It was so nice to actually talk about everything she’d been reading.

Dan blinked. Serena had actually looked up the Greek mythology allusion in the poem? He didn’t think Serena van der Woodsen
read literature.

Or The New Yorker?

“So, how’s Columbia?” Serena asked after a pause. She hadn’t been sure what they’d talk about when they met, and right now,
Dan wasn’t doing much talking at all. Maybe it was an artist thing. Maybe she was distracting him from an afternoon of poetry
writing. What was he thinking? His eyes looked so large and brown and kept flicking toward her, then away. He was mysterious.
He had substance. And, especially recently, Serena hadn’t hung out with many guys who had substance.

“It’s great!” Dan said enthusiastically, glad they’d landed on a less awkward topic. He could talk about college. “I get to
spend my time reading great books and talking to people who actually care about them, not just people who are trying to get
good grades,” Dan said, hoping Serena didn’t think he was hopelessly dorky. “In high school I felt like I was just wasting
my life doing what other people wanted me to do. I’m reading The Fountainhead. Have you read it?” Dan asked hopefully.