Authors: Virginia Franken
CHAPTER 16
In the spirit of shutting things down before they even begin, I diligently ignore Matt’s texts over the course of the next week. There’s been a
Hi
, a
How are things?
, and then a few days after that a
???
. I gave a bland response about being fine/busy to the multiple question marks—just to keep him happy (he is my husband’s boss, after all). And after that there came a text about meeting, which I didn’t respond to. After another set of indignant
???
, I was busy formulating a suitably beige response about not being comfortable with us meeting up again when he took control of the situation, and now I’m sitting in the reception area of Colburn Entertainment. Waiting. For Matt. And Peter too as it turns out. And all of the other writers’ significant others. Matt’s arranged some kind of social event. And my presence is, apparently, necessary.
I made a valiant effort to get out of it. Of course I did. But Peter really wanted me to come. And the more I made excuses, the more suspicious I could see him getting. My last hope was that we’d never find a babysitter (we haven’t needed one up till now), but unfortunately Lizzie gave us numbers for the four college students she uses on continuous rotation. So my last legitimate excuse went out the window, and here I am.
Best-case scenario, it’s going to be super awkward. Worst-case scenario, we all get drunk, Matt and I hog the karaoke machine, start singing “Reunited,” and end up making out in front of everyone. Less than ideal.
I’m on time—which is my first mistake, as this actually translates as horrifyingly early. Matt’s receptionist (whose lips really are as sultry and pouty as I’d imagined) made that clear when I first announced my presence.
“Ummm, they won’t be done for a while yet,” she said. I believe the way she drew out the “umm” for about thirty seconds was specifically in order for me to realize how ridiculous I was for showing up so “early.” It looks like the other spouses know how this works as I’m the only one who’s showed up so far, even though we were supposed to have met twenty minutes ago. My second mistake is what I’m wearing. Trying to get into the spirit of Going Out And Having Fun, I put on a pretty tight pair of jeans, my only high heels (which are made from some kind of scary material that squeaks loudly whenever the shoes touch one other), and a white top covered in tassels. I was going for bohemian chic, but after looking at Pouty (who’s dressed in leggings and a T-shirt but somehow looks two hundred percent more ready to party than I do), I can see that I just look old.
I’m sipping an extremely bland cup of coffee that she’s prepared for me from the ten-thousand-dollar espresso machine in the corner. Maybe that could be a good idea for a business: go around teaching Hollywood’s assistants how to make a drinkable cup of coffee using nothing more than a drip cup and some decent beans. I know for a fact that Matt makes people lug that ridiculous machine on set when he’s filming. I read about it in some stupid
Forbes
profile I came across during my most recent “Matt Colburn” Googlefest. If the machine was some bizarre way of trying to impress me, it’s backfired horribly for him.
I just start tapping out a text to Peter to tell him I’m leaving when the door opens and another wife shows up. At least I presume she’s a wife. She looks too casual for an executive, and the very few female writers I’ve met usually reveal much less skin. I’m sure they’d be worried about distracting the rest of the all-male writing room.
“Kendra! OMG, it’s been for-ev-er!” the wife says to Pouty. She actually says the letters
O-M-G
. I didn’t know you could do that.
“Oh, hi! How are you?” replies Pouty, who suddenly pulls her eyes fully away from her phone for the first time since I got here and stands to attention. “They’re still working. Shall I go in?”
“No, don’t worry. I’ve got nowhere to be. So how have you been? Did things ever work out with that guy you were seeing?”
“Which one?”
“The photographer from Match?”
It seems that things did not work out with the photographer from Match, and the wife stays rapt for Kendra’s whole monologue. As I look at her, I wonder what she does for a living. PR maybe? I don’t think she’s an actress. She’s pretty, but average. She only looks good because of the manufactured polish; she’s got no natural sparkle. Her hair is styled in big bouncy waves, and every time she shakes her head in disbelief at Kendra’s story, the entire structure shakes as one. The hair is quite mesmerizing, but eventually as the story unfolds, and it turns out the photographer
still
wouldn’t agree to be exclusive, it’s not enough to hold my interest. I try to stand up and make an exit as discreetly as I can. It’s not discreet enough. The wife turns around when I’m just three paces from the door.
“Oh my gosh, I didn’t see you! Have you been there all that time?” she gasps. It’s my biggest conversational peeve—people asking questions they already know the answer to. I know, I know, that’s just how nice people make nice conversation, but to me it just seems to advertise dumbness. I hold back on replying that in fact I just arrived in the room four seconds ago via an intergalactic wormhole and give her a lukewarm nod.
“Are you coming out tonight?” she asks.
Not if I can help it. “I was thinking of skipping it, actually. They seem like they’re taking a long time and—”
“No, don’t do that! I don’t want to be the only girl at this thing! So embarrassing! Let me just text Matt and see what’s going on. I’m Kimberly, by the way.”
Wait! This nothing-really-special woman is
Kimberly
? The woman Matt opted to marry in my place? Hoping I’m not looking too stunned, I extend my hand to shake, like a robot.
“I’m Am . . .” I say, my name dying on my lips as I wonder what Matt’s told her about me. Which would be worse—that she’s never heard of me or that she has a meltdown at the surprise visit from the Ghost of Girlfriends Past?
“I give hugs, girl!” she says, and pulls me into a firm one. I’m not ready for it. I don’t move my head in time and my face is suddenly awkwardly slammed up super close to hers. At least, I find it awkward. I don’t think she minds at all. Just as she’s releasing me from our face bump, the door behind us opens and a creature who looks half man, half hobbit announces himself with something of a cough/grunt.
“Matt says: Do you want to come in? We’re almost done.”
“Into the writing room?” Kimberly asks. She seems disturbed. This offer has clearly never been extended before.
“It’s okay,” I say. “We’ll stay out here and wait for the others.”
“There are no others,” says hobbit man, addressing the comment to Kimberly’s cleavage. If the rest of the writers are as charming as he is, I can see why.
Matt sticks his head around the door.
“Come on in!” he says, beckoning. “We’re nearly done. Just a few more minutes.”
Kimberly and I cautiously step into the room. If I were a writer, I’d definitely have a hard time being creative in here. Everything is white, it’s freezing cold, the shutters are closed, and the lighting is borderline neon. Eight men who look like they’ve had their souls recently sucked out of them sit around the table. In the center of the table lies a mound of pizza like a holy shrine. I see Peter at the back. He sees me come in and gives me a quick wink. He’s the only one not wearing a baseball cap. Maybe they all wear those to protect themselves from the glare of the overhead lighting. I think I’d last about twenty minutes in here without getting a serious headache.
“This is perfect,” says Matt. “We were just discussing a scene that could definitely use some female perspective. Please, come on in. Sit down.”
“You could always hire some female writers,” I say. It’s as if no one heard me. “You know, maybe just a token one,” I say a little louder. One writer awkwardly adjusts the screen on his laptop. That’s the extent of the room’s reaction. Fine.
“They don’t normally hire women on the show,” Kimberly whispers into my ear. “Not unless it’s a must-hire.”
“What’s a must-hire?”
“Somebody that they must hire,” she says, looking at me like I’m the dumb one. “You know, like someone’s niece or something. I wonder if that’s why they got us down here today, for the ‘female perspective.’ He never normally does anything social. I’ve never even met these writers before. The whole thing is totally weird.”
As Kimberly and I uneasily sit down at the table, I wonder if it’s possible Matt set all this up in order to see me. Is he so desperate to be in my presence that he’ll even arrange a meeting in front of our respective spouses and his entire writing team? I realize that Kimberly is still whispering in my ear. She never stopped. I tune back in and find she’s midway through a lament about how she had to have one of the guesthouse bathrooms taken out and put back in a total of three times this year. It seems that the problem lies in the planning permit. From the way she’s talking about it, it’s obvious that this is the biggest challenge she’s had to overcome this decade. This woman is totally average in every way possible. She’s vaguely nice and seems to know the right people to call to get a bathroom ripped out and reinstalled again, but apart from that . . . there’s nothing much else there. How could this woman have bridged the gap that I left behind? How could she? All she’s done to earn this fabulous life that she’s living is just turn up at the right time, be available, and be more or less pleasant. How does that happen?
I’m distracted from Kimberly’s bathroom diatribe by the change in Peter’s voice. It’s growing louder, harder; his sentences are getting shorter.
“It just doesn’t ring true of the character. At all.” This is Peter. “Delores is passionate, but she’s also smart. She’s a lawyer, not a superhero. She knows she can’t get in there on her own. She’d try to find help.”
“So, ladies.” Matt turns to us. Conversational pet peeve No. 2: being referred to as a
lady
. “Ladies,” for whatever reason, is even worse. “This is where we need your help. We’ve got a woman outside a burning building; she knows her kids are inside. As Peter mentioned, she’s a smart, logic-based attorney. However, not so smart that she managed to install a phone charger in her car; her phone is dead. Does she run and find someone to call the fire department to help her extract her children? Or would she run straight in and try to save them herself?” He pauses for our response. There isn’t one. “I’m pretty sure she’d run in. What mother wouldn’t, right? It’s the feminine instinct. But Peter here vehemently disagrees.”
The other writers look toward Kimberly and me, dead-eyed. I’ve a feeling this dueling has been going on all day.
“Kimberly?” he asks. It’s obvious he expects her to sum up, in a few quick sentences, what every person in possession of a vagina would do in this particular instance. Right now. In front of this room full of people. To her credit, she doesn’t seem unnerved at all.
“Um. Well. How many children does she have?”
“Three,” says Matt, containing his exasperation admirably. It’s pretty clear that Kimberly’s not going to offer an illuminating perspective on the feminine psyche when cast in the role of heroine.
“And they’re all in the building?”
“They are all in the building,” says Matt.
Kimberly pauses. The room waits. After a few seconds it becomes apparent that the pause is actually a stop. We’ve reached the extent of Kimberly’s natural response on the topic.
“Kimberly—would you try to save our children from a burning building?” Matt rephrases for her. Another pause from Kimberly. I can tell that this is not what he was hoping for.
“I mean, I think I’d run in. But then I don’t know. It might be pretty hot. So then maybe I wouldn’t run in. But then my kids would be in there, so I can’t say for sure.” She sees Matt’s frustration starting to seep through his expression and switches into trying-to-please mode. “I guess, yes, I would probably go in. I’d do my best, anyway.” She seems reluctant to make any firmer commitment on the topic in case, perhaps, she’s going to be asked to prove what she’s just said. And thus Kimberly’s theorem comes to its stunning close.
“Amy?” he asks me next.
Of course I’d run straight in and drag my kids out. I’ve done it before from a farmhouse in Colombia and that wasn’t even for
my
kids. It’s just the way mothers are wired. And Kimberly doesn’t know it, but God forbid it actually happened, she’d do the same thing too. When you’re with your kids, logic rarely comes into anything, least of all a situation like that.
However
. . . my husband is saying the opposite. And the last thing I want to do right now is provoke him any further. Especially if it’s going to come back at me in the form of accusations of my taking Matt’s side over his.
“I think most women would probably stay outside,” I say, avoiding eye contact with everyone and squinting up into the harsh lighting. This situation is extremely
uncomfortable
. “Even the most desperate person would know that they wouldn’t be able to walk into a fire without some kind of equipment. I’ve been near a structure fire before and that heat will have you backing right off, no matter what your heart is telling you to do. She’d go for help. For sure.”
Peter looks up at me. I expect him to be pleased. He’s not. My mention of once being near a structure fire has reminded him that in fact
I did
once run into a burning building to try and save some children. And
that’s
what mothers do. And he knows I’m lying to agree with him, and he also now knows that he’s wrong. He hates being wrong and he hates people lying. I’ve succeeded in doing the opposite of appeasing him.
“But you’re not one of those girly girls anyway, Amy,” says Matt. “I still think that most normal women would run in. Let’s just go with that.”
Really? Because I’ve never owned a set of false eyelashes, I’m not interested in protecting my children from death? I’m about as offended as I’ve ever been. But I sit on it. This will all be done soon. I just have to get through this, drink a couple of martinis, keep Peter calm, and get home.