"The apartment is yours," Henry says. "You'll be getting this in writing from George."
"It's so great! But do you think we should have pushed for more? If you were me, would you still take them to court over the rest of the estate? Then, as soon as I think that, I wonder, because of the pressure Eddie put on the boys, if we should just take the money and run."
"I'm not in the advice business any longer. There is no
we.
I don't like liars. I'm calling to say don't call me."
"Because of Eddie? Is that fair? He's not living here. And let's just say that ever happened? All you'd have to do is call ahead when you're coming over, and I'd send him to a movie."
"It's
not
going to happen. This is not the kind of friendship I want to maintain."
She yells, "You got Thalia!
My
daughter. Not yours. Mine. You've poisoned her against me. So have a nice life with all those adoring people I supplied you with. You win. I get a roof over my head and you get everything else."
"Denise—" he tries, but the line goes dead.
T
HALIA E-MAILS HENRY
to say that she dropped by Salon Gerard, and would he believe they gave her old job away—that stupid part-time minimum-wage
nothing?
He opens the kitchen door and yells downstairs, "Are you there? Want coffee? I have whipped cream in a can."
"Be right up," she says. "But let me warn you: I'm dressed for success."
She enters the kitchen in an outfit as bland as he's ever seen her in: a straight khaki skirt to the knee, a short-sleeved blouse in pale pink, ironed, and Williebelle's double strand of costume pearls.
"Job interview?" Henry asks.
"Temp agency."
From weeks of silent dwelling on the topic, he plunges into his occupational wish list: Yale Drama School? Tisch? That actors' studio he likes to watch on Bravo with students in the audience who don't look as if they're fresh out of college, either? What about
teaching
acting? To kids? Summer camps? At Elderhostel? Has she ever considered law school? She'd be so good before a jury. What about some kind of internship, maybe a cable news station, where a smart boss would catch on fast to the fact that she's smart, articulate—
"I'm thinking cleaning lady," she says. "If I took care of upstairs and downstairs, I'd at least be contributing to my upkeep."
"I see. And would I have to fire Lidia?"
"No," she says. "Of course not. Bad idea."
"Sit. A single or a double?" he asks, even though her favorite mug—John Travolta, in powder blue as Tony Manero—is already under the machine's spout. "I realize," he begins over the noise of beans grinding, "that the enlightened parent is supposed to say, 'If cleaning houses makes you happy, follow that dream.' But I know you're joking. I have great faith in your talent and therefore your future—"
"Too much faith! I'm almost thirty, and I can't even get my job back handing out rayon smocks. And yes, I'd love to go to the Yale School of Drama, but I'd never get in. And if I did, by some fluke, I'd be the oldest and possibly the least qualified—"
"Don't say that! You studied acting. We could compose a very respectable resumé—"
"Anyone can study acting. Is that what geniuses major in? Anyone who watches celebrity
Jeopardy
knows that they dumb down the questions those weeks."
He turns around, abandoning work on his own cup. "Where is this coming from? Please don't tell me that this fiasco with Estime has made you question yourself and your potential."
"I'm too old for potential. Look at my mother: I probably inherited her career genes." She holds the can of whipped cream at arm's length as it releases its last noisy froth into her mug.
"I have another," says Henry.
"I'm good." She takes her first sip. "Mom ever call you back?" she asks.
He hands her a teaspoon and napkin, then takes the second kitchen stool. "Is this from the daughter who never wants to see or talk to her again?"
"It's about you," says Thalia.
"How is it about me? Because when a person slams down the phone in the middle of my sentence, in fact a sentence that was about to turn conciliatory—"
"I know you! You don't like a grudge floating out there in the ionosphere, even if it's your cheating ex-wife."
"I'm a lawyer. I have hundreds of open grudges out there, defendants
and
plaintiffs."
"Doubt it."
He goes to the refrigerator for the new, unbidden can of whipped cream. When he returns he says, "She e-mails me. Regularly."
"Apologies?"
"Not in so many words. You know her: She has a blind spot for when she's being ignored. Or, by some members of her immediate family, being thrown to the wolves."
Thalia, between sips, says, "Utterly predictable."
"Which?"
"The mending fences. I knew this would happen, one big blended stepfamily, especially since you're not that great at banishing and abandoning."
Henry says, "I don't encourage her. My answers are quite terse. And I don't reply to every one."
"Ha," says Thalia.
"She always ends with something equivalent to 'How is Thalia?'"
"And you say what to that?"
"That's the part I don't reply to. Well, maybe every other time. Maybe just, 'She's well.'"
"Does she mention her boyfriend?"
"No."
"Just mine?"
Who is this "mine"?
Henry wonders. Not Giovanni; not if he's filled the salon job with another pretty girl. The deejay? Not likely; he had his moments, but Thalia hasn't mentioned him or his club in weeks. After what he determines to be a nonchalant interval, he asks, "Did Leif ever answer your text messages?"
"So far, no."
Henry says, "Then I'm appalled."
"He's taking it all out on me: We flopped. He paid a ton of money for his big exposure, his reinvention, and what happened?
Nada.
A couple of insults on blogs and a few embarrassing photos."
"What the hell is wrong with him? Does he
not
know that if you have intimate relations with a woman and then don't call, regardless of what business failures complicate the relationship, it's rude and it's loutish?"
Thalia says, "Listen to the expert. I love it."
Henry says, "I learned a lot, secondhand, from Celeste. I was something of a repository for her romantic woes. Out in public, we were often mistaken for a mister and missus." He smiles so wistfully that Thalia asks, "What? What are you remembering?"
Henry says, with difficulty, "I shared this at her memorial service ... Once, a waitress—it was a nothing place on Columbus, now closed—came over to our table and said, 'You two aren't married, are you? To each other?' And we said, 'No, why?' and she pointed to another waitress, who waved from the counter. 'We have a little bet going. I said you couldn't be married because you two talk to each other. For real. Constant conversation. Married people tend to bring a newspaper. Or stare out the window. Or fight.' So Celeste motions to the waitress,
Come closer.
Then she announces, 'You're very observant. He and I are having an affair. So if either of us comes in with our spouses, don't say a word. They're rich. We married them for their money. But
this
is the real thing.'" Henry shakes his head as if he's been babbling foolishly.
Thalia asks, "Hesh? Would it be news to you that Celeste was in love with you?"
"You never met her! She had no illusions about our friendship—"
Thalia puts her mug down to count on her fingers. "You were married once. She was single, heterosexual—have we established that?—and probably showing up at your front door with casseroles when Denise left, if it went back that far."
Henry says, "I don't remember any casseroles. She wasn't much of a cook. In fact, over the entire course of our friendship—"
Thalia interrupts to say, "Okay. Never mind. I love that you were blind to this."
Henry says only, "She was wonderful company."
Thalia says, "But now you have me. And Todd. Don't you think we're wonderful company? Or used to be, before my downward spiral?"
"There's no downward spiral. It's just a bump in the road. All actresses at one time or another work temp jobs and wait tables. It's honorable. And it makes for a better human interest story when you hit the big time. Rags to riches—people love that."
"Too late," she says. She pats the pockets of her skirt and brings forth a silent phone.
He asks if she is expecting a call.
"Not any more than usual."
"Not Leif? May I ask that?"
"You can ask, but he's so furious that he won't even answer a text message."
"Something's not right," says Henry. "Leif Dumont is not a lady-killer. This is a man who can't quite carry on a conversation, who is probably interpreting an order from Estime along the lines of 'That's over. She's out. Next!' to mean 'Don't contact Thalia, period.' My guess is that his head is spinning. He's hired this outfit for advice and guidance, and look where he is now: even less famous and a lot more confused."
"You know what I should have done? I should've spoken up before this got off the ground, when he first invited me on board. I could have asked, 'How much are you paying this outfit? Let's just try it. Let's go out on a couple of dates and I'll have my bartender friends e-mail Rush and Molloy, Gawker, all the places that ask for tips and sightings. Let's give the campaign a shot without Estime—just amateur hour. Just try it as Leif Dumont, horror helmer, and Thalia Krouch, wannabe actress/nobody.'"
"Please don't say that."
Thalia's left hand again moves to her neckline and rests on Williebelle's pearls. "Can't a person be a little depressed as she heads off to take a typing test?" She looks down at her feet. "Especially in brown pumps from Payless."
"I can fix this," Henry says. "I will. You signed a contract. Promises were made and terms were violated. I'm going to call Estime's lawyer as soon as I reread the file."
"Which terms exactly?" Thalia asks. "Because if you're going to sue based on the no-sex clause, Leif might argue that it was more or less consensual."
"More or less?"
"Okay: my idea."
"Nonetheless," says Henry. "May I rue the day I ever signed off on this?"
She turns to the job of squirting more whipped cream into her mug, a napkin held against her interview shirt front. "It made a
little
sense," she finally says. "Leif came along, a fellow actor, my teacher's ex-student if not old paramour, which was an interesting footnote. I heard the plan, essentially
Be my pal, pose as my girlfriend, no strings attached, we throw in an allowance.
I mean, how can you not feel sorry for a guy stooping to this? So there was my rescue fantasy: I'd take him under my wing, he'd succeed, and then, with an Estime team behind me, pitching my previously unnoticed talents—presto, the limelight."
"What happened to
your
Estime team? Your piece of the action?"
Thalia shakes her head. "Doesn't happen when the hired hand can't get her name in boldface type on Page Six. Or any page."
"Then I won't call Estime. I'll call Leif."
"To say what? 'Where are you? Are your intentions honorable?' Please don't. Because my guess is he's confessed his sins to Caitlin and he's on a plane trying to convince her that his heart is true despite a little slip-up in the abstinence department."
"Why does everyone confess everything to everybody these days?" Henry asks.
Leif is not on a plane heading west to make things right with Caitlin, but one flight down, knocking on the maisonette's front door. When she doesn't answer, he calls Thalia's cell, which she has switched from vibrate to a festive Caribbean ring. She stares at the name and its 310 area code. "It's him," she says.
"I'll give you some privacy," says Henry.
She shakes her head,
No, stay,
and answers with a brisk "Thalia Archer."
After a moment, and clearly for Henry's edification, she repeats, "You're at my door? Sorry. I'm not home. I'm meeting with my lawyer." She listens, twists her mouth this way and that. "Yes, actually, that does mean I'm upstairs. But I'd like Henry to be present. He has some serious concerns about, um ... violated codicils."
Another pause. "Afterward," she answers, her voice no longer brittle. "Maybe we can go downstairs for that conversation."
She hangs up, excuses herself, and disappears into the powder room. When she emerges, her hair has been newly tousled and her cheeks are pinker, pinch marks evident. "You need some basic ladies' grooming aids," she says.
When the doorbell rings, Thalia says, "I'm actually nervous. How ridiculous is that?"
"I'll get it," says Henry. "You wait in the parlor."
He opens the door to find Leif in a suit, tie, no diamond studs in his earlobes, and a blue baseball cap that says "L.A." "Thalia's in the parlor," he says.
"I think I'm supposed to talk to you first."
Henry, though unprepared, realizes he's never before spoken with Leif alone and shouldn't squander the opportunity. "Quite right," he says. "This way," and leads him past the parlor, past a puzzled Thalia, into the library.
Leif has already taken off his cap. His hair is coming in, an uneven sprouting of lackluster brown going gray. He doesn't sit or speak. Henry motions to the couch and says, "I guess you're waiting for me to ask what happened."
"Which part?"
Henry says, "Let's start at the end and work backward."
"The club," says Leif.
"You stormed off. And that was the last contact you've had with Thalia. Is that correct?"
Leif says, "I didn't storm off. I put her into the limo and then I left, which is what you do when you get the message, big-time."
"She assumed you were furious."
Henry hasn't closed the door to either the library or the parlor. In seconds, Thalia materializes, sits down on the couch, folds her arms across her chest, and says, "Go on. I'm listening."
Henry watches Leif. His face and ears turn the red of past mortifications.
"Henry's asking about the night at the Box," Leif says.
"Your disappearing into the night. I heard."
"That's as far as we got."
"Do you not think that was rude? Not to mention loutish? Especially after accusing me of using you?"
Leif says, "I do. I also think, maybe, this was the conversation we were going to have downstairs."
Henry says, "I can leave."
Thalia says, "Henry can stay. He knows what happened. And I mean
ev-ry-thing
"
Leif closes his eyes, returns his Dodgers cap to his head, pulls it low on his forehead, and exhales an exasperated breath.
"He's my adviser in all matters," Thalia continues. "Didn't you think it would come out sooner or later as we both tried to figure out what went so wrong?"
Leif stands. "I get it," he says. "'What. Went. So. Wrong.' That's all I needed to know. Thank you. I'll see myself out."
Henry says, "Now wait a minute. Thalia? Would you like to rephrase anything you just said?"