The Gift Bag Chronicles (28 page)

I look at him. “
No
guy thinks he’s a bad guy! Every guy thinks he’s a prince.”

“Alex, I’m not a bad guy. You said it yourself, we’re friends. We wouldn’t be friends if you really thought I was a bad guy.”

“Okay, as a friend you’re a great guy,” I say, pushing the bedclothes aside and sitting up, looping my hair behind my ears. “But
all the evidence I can find when it comes to being more than a friend, is that you are not a great guy. I think you’re exactly the way a lot of guys are.”

“Yeah, and how’s that?”

I don’t even pause. “Self-protective. Evasive. And terrified of commitment.”

He looks at me a minute, and then, like he’s decided something, he pushes off the bed.

“Well, if that’s what you really think.”

What I think is we’re playing emotional poker. Trying to suss each other out without hurting ourselves by wanting more than the other is prepared to give. “I don’t want to think that,” I say, looking up. “But you’re the ex–statistics major. What’s my evidence that you’re not?”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t.”

“You’re asking a lot.”

“I’m only asking you what you
want.”

“You want me to change.”

“Do
you?”

He looks at me. I hold his gaze.

“I’ll call you,” he says, turning for the door. “I’ll call you and let you know.”

As it turned out, I didn’t call him. And he never called me
. Maybe we were both waiting for the other to call. Or maybe it really was our version of Scarlett and Rhett’s contretemps. At least they got married before they had their big frankly-my-dear-I-don’t-give-a-damn scene. Oscar and I didn’t even get twelve hours together.

Not that I have all that much time to think about it. Okay, I could always make time. A girl can
always
make time to think about a guy. Especially after a night like that. But between work, all our events, which are coming thick and fast now, and dealing with Helen’s ongoing recovery, which means I’m flying back to Philly an average of every other week, I have plenty of reasons not to think about him. Not to mention that I still don’t know what I think about the whole thing.

Besides, I’m still dealing with the painters. Because, of course, Brad hasn’t finished. Or he has finished. For now, but he had to
leave for some family thing and will be back in a couple weeks to finish up. I gave up trying to track his whereabouts when he just quit coming one day. I simply stacked all the paint stuff in the garage and called Louise. Threw it in her lap. She’s the landlady, for God’s sake. Let her find him and figure it out.

And then, of course, there’s Charles. My boyfriend. Or ostensible boyfriend. If I don’t know what I think about Oscar, I really don’t know what I think about Charles. I know it hit me on the Cape that Charles and I are not a family and, without some seismic change, probably never will be. Still, it’s a long way from that realization to actually breaking up. Okay, so the dish is cracked, but are you really prepared to toss it in the trash
right now?
Maybe I’m just being a coward. Or maybe I’m just being a pragmatist. Not so much about work, although that is no small consideration now that the holidays — and more to the point
C
’s gala — are imminent. I mean, a girl can deal with only so much at one time, right? And breaking up with Charles while we’re in the throes of putting together one of the agency’s biggest parties of the year doesn’t seem like the smartest move one could make. For all of us.

Still, there’s a bigger reason not to do it that has nothing to do with Oscar or Charles or work. It’s the fact that I’m older now, and the idea of moving on, of remaking my life all over again, doesn’t have as much appeal as it used to. After a while, you realize how much effort is required to create things. Careers. Relationships. Homes. They don’t just happen overnight. And you think twice about trashing them.

So whatever the reason, and it’s probably a little bit of all of them, I’m not taking my night with Oscar as any kind of sign that I no longer want to be with Charles. Charles and I might not be ideal, but I’m not going to break up with him, especially not over a guy I’m not even speaking to.

Emphasis on the
not speaking
. In fact, for somebody who never liked e-mail, Oscar’s learned to love it in a hurry. Now it’s the only way we communicate, since he and I also still have to
work together. E-mailed work memos from Oscar Parties to the DWP-ED event staff. Re: the Ferragamo charity event. Re: Barry Rose’s Scrabble party. Re:
C
’s Christmas party. Re: Re: Re: Which is fine. And frankly, it’s kind of amazing how much you can accomplish without ever actually speaking. And the beauty part is, no one seems to notice. Or almost no one.

“So, do you and Oscar ever actually talk anymore?” Steven said after a staff meeting about a month later, when I had briefed the team on no fewer than five upcoming events from a memo Oscar had e-mailed me. Or rather he’d e-mailed to Caitlin, who forwarded it on to me.

“Uh, yeah. Why?”

“Because it just seems like you guys used to talk every five minutes and now it’s all e-mail.”

“What? No, we speak. We e-mail. Everyone e-mails. It is speaking.”

“No, it isn’t,” he said, shooting me a look.

“Look, it’s fine,” I said, hurrying down the hall. “We’re all just busy.”

“Okay, what do I not know?” Steven said, speeding up to keep pace with me.

“You don’t know lots of things,” I said, heading into my office. “You don’t know when Amy’s birthday is. Or Bevan’s. You don’t know that Helen is having to have her stent replaced because she’s developed complications. You don’t know—”

“Oh, no, she is?” he said, looking stricken. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“Yes, but the doctor says the new stent will be better. Anyway, there’s lots you don’t know.”

He looked at me a second. A dog on the hunt.
“There’s lots I don’t know?
Okay, am I detecting some youthful indiscretion on your part with Oscar?”

“What?”
I said, looking shocked, shocked. “No. Why would you even think that?”

He looked at me and crossed his arms. “They can run, but they can’t hide.”

Oh, okay. Besides, I can’t be running from everyone. “Okay, look, I might concede that, except, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not so fucking youthful anymore.”

“Oh, please. What are you, thirty-two?”

“Thirty-six.”

“Oh, please, what are you, thirty-six?”

I shot him a look. “Thanks for trying. Let’s just leave it at ‘indiscretion.’”

I could tell he was still dying for details. For dirt. For dish. Maybe my talk of Helen deterred him. Or knowing my real age. But in any case, he didn’t. Go there.

“So, you’re okay, right?”

“Actually, I don’t really want to ask myself that question,” I said, heading for my desk and sinking into my chair. “Between Helen and work and Charles being all over me about work and my having to deal with Oscar on every single one of our events — and why hasn’t one of us looked into hiring another event producer? — I don’t have time to ask myself that question. It’s enough to get up every day and just deal with it all.”

“Well, you know what they say?”

“Life sucks and then you die?”

“Time is on your side.”

“Nobody ever said that.”

“Mick Jagger said it.
Sang
it. It’s practically a cultural anthem.”

“Do yourself a favor. Do not hold up a man who still dates teenagers when he’s sixty-two as any kind of role model to a thirty-six-year-old single woman.”

Now, the week before Thanksgiving, the worst seems to be over. At least for now. Until Sundance starts the whole event roundelay
all over again. The way our calendar stacked up this fall, all our biggest events, except for Barry Rose’s Scrabble party this weekend and
C
’s Christmas party the third week in December, are behind us. Only a couple of small, private holiday parties for DWP-ED clients, which are nothing.

Which means I’m down to my last two events dealing with Oscar. Still by e-mail, of course, but Steven has already lined up a couple new event producers — God knows, there’s a new one unleashed in town every other minute — who look promising. Helen’s new stent has taken, and she’s feeling so much better that Jack is taking her on a cruise this Christmas. What she’s always talked of doing. It’ll be the first Christmas we haven’t had the family command performance in Bryn Mawr, so Charles and I actually have plans to spend it in Hawaii.

I’m still not quite sure how this happened. Especially after the Cape and my realization that we weren’t in fact a match made in heaven. But when Charles’s parents decided to spend Christmas on safari — and that left both of us on our own for the first time since we’d been together — it sort of just happened.

“Since neither of us has to tend the home fires this Christmas, why don’t we go somewhere great together?” Charles had said.

“Umm, sure,” I said, so startled by the suggestion that I stopped midtype in sending e-mails. I decide you are not the man of my dreams and now you want to spend Christmas together? “Where’d you have in mind?”

Since it was either Aspen or Hawaii and I hadn’t been on skis in years and—well, anyway, we now have reservations at the Four Seasons on the Big Island. Things seemed to be going so well that even Brad has resurfaced and is, finally, finishing the painting Louise hired him to do almost three months ago.

“Is Mercury in retrograde or out of retrograde or whatever it is?” I say when Steven stops by to give me the latest RSVP list for the Scrabble party.

“I’m sorry, do I look like Nancy Reagan? Why would I know if Mercury is in retrograde? Or Leningrad or wherever you think he is. Or isn’t.”

“Uh, because you regularly see a psychic?”

“I don’t
see
a psychic. I’m
seeing
a psychic. They have personal lives, you know.”

“Well, ask him if Mercury is in retrograde. Or out of it. I want to know why everything seems to be going so well these days.”

“Define
well
. You think because most of our events are over and you’re still not speaking to Oscar, it’s because of the stars?”

“It’s not just Oscar, it’s everything,” I say, picking up the guest list and scanning it. The usual roster of die-hard liberal Hollywood directors and writers, all of them guilt-tripped into attending Barry’s annual word game. Or at least saying they’re attending. Cut it in half and that’s more likely to be our head count for Saturday night. “I mean, Helen’s better. Brad’s finally finishing the painting. Charles and I are going away for Christmas. Even Patrice is playing nice. For her.”

In fact, she’s been keeping a surprisingly low profile lately. Ever since she blew the December cover — held up a decision about Charlize while she negotiated with Britney’s reps until they both got wind of it and walked — and had to go with a model at the last minute. She’d even agreed to Oscar’s recommendation to hold the party at the Hancock Park house.

“Yeah, well, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, before you get too carried away, how’s your Saturday looking?”

I look up. “The Saturday before Thanksgiving, before I leave Tuesday for five days in Philly, which is also going to be our Christmas, so we’re exchanging gifts, none of which I have bought yet, the Saturday of Barry Rose’s Scrabble party, ah, it’s looking totally open.”

“Great, then you won’t mind running the lunch meeting with Patrice and Jay and Lucienne.”

“What idiot scheduled that right before Thanksgiving week?”

“Patrice. When she heard Lucienne was passing through town on her way to Cabo for Thanksgiving,” Steven says. “You still think Mercury’s in your corner?”

“What I think is that you’re handling that meeting.”

“Well, I am. Or I was, but unfortunately I have to leave for Florida Thursday night. My mother is having surgery.”

“Wait a minute, you have
parents?”

“Yeah, that’s cute, and after I’ve been so supportive about Helen.”

“Yes, I’m sorry,” I say with mock contrition. Steven’s mother is a classic.
Rita
. Lives in some monster condo in Palm Beach with her other child, her miniature poodle, Bulgari. Bridge and plastic surgery are her other two passions. Steven comes in a distant fourth. “I didn’t think there was anything left to be done on her body.”

“Laser surgery,” he says with a shrug. “On her eyes. Or one of them. So she can get rid of her glasses. I told her I’m calling her Cyclops, but she insists she’s going through with it.”

“You’re seriously going?” I say, realizing that now not only will I have to run the meeting with Patrice but I’ll also have to be the point person on the Scrabble party instead of just doing a drive-by, as I’d intended. Shit. Even with Allie, Jill, and Maurine there, I’ll have to spend most of the night there, which means I will no doubt have to deal with Oscar. In person.

“Look, I don’t
want
to go,” Steven says. “I’m not even staying for Thanksgiving since I’m cooking my annual bacchanalian feast for the boys here. But there was a cancellation, and she wants it done before the holidays. So yes, I’m going.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say, already rearranging the rest of my week in my head. If I’m to get everything done before I leave Tuesday, I’ll have to spend Thursday night, Friday night, and all day Sunday shopping for Christmas gifts, spend Friday afternoon doing the
final walk-through on the Scrabble party, and then Saturday do the lunch meeting, followed by my blow-dry and the party, where I’ll just try to stay out of Oscar’s way as much as possible. It won’t be pretty, but assuming he’s not interested in crossing paths with me either, I should be able to get away relatively unscathed. Besides, it’s not like I have a choice. “But you’re going to owe me,” I say. “You and Mercury.”

I’m not even awake on Saturday when I hear the front gate buzzer go. Oh, God. What time is it? I fish my arm out from under the covers. Just coming up on 8:30.
Thank you so much, whoever you are
. Must be the Jehovah’s Witnesses I saw canvassing the neighborhood the other day. Like this is any way to win converts. Especially in Laurel Canyon. I pull the sheets over my head and sink back down. I had been planning on sleeping until 10:00. Just to give me a running start on the hours of work ahead. I’m just drifting off when I hear the buzzer go again. And again.