“I hope your fruit rots!” I scream and then start to run. Why? I don't know, it's not like he's running after me or anything, but I just need to get away from everything and this seems to be the best way.
I get back to my house some ten minutes after I left, just in time for
Weird Science
. Peaches has always hated the movie
Weird Science
so I guess that's why she's not here.
“Alex?” I hear from outside. “Are you there?”
“Hi, Adam,” I say, going over to the window. As always, he looks adorable in a pair of Lucky jeans and a black cashmere crewneck sweater. His hair is delectably disheveled, as usual.
“Your dog came over and she wouldn't stop barking until I came over here. Is everything okay?”
I look at Peaches as she stands next to Adam. I know she's up to something.
“Yes,” I fake chuckle. “Everything is fine. I don't know why she was barking at you,” I tell him in the most offhand way I can. “Maybe she just wants you to play fetch with her.”
“Oh, is that what you want, girl?” he asks, walking over to a stray ball in the yard and throwing it across the lawn.
Peaches doesn't move. She stands there and looks at him, and then she looks at me and barks again.
“Peaches, chill,” I instruct her from the window. “I don't know what's going on with her, she's been acting crazy all day,” I lie. “Listen,” I tell him, “I just came in from a jog, can I call you later?”
“Sure,” he says. “You're sure you're all right though?”
Peaches starts barking again.
“Would you shut up already?” I tell Peaches. “You don't have to do this.”
“What's the matter with her?” he asks me.
“She's just trying to stick her nose where it doesn't need sticking, ” I say, looking right at Peaches, who continues barking.
“Look, something's going on here,” Adam shouts up to me. “I mean, come on, Alex, obviously even your dog wants me to know what's going on. Let me come in and we'll talk.”
Oh, for crying out loud. I give up. I'll just tell him already. Who cares anymore? So what if he wants nothing to do with me anymore. I'll be in fourth heaven where he won't come see me anyway.
“Fine, come on in,” I wave to him.
He comes in through the kitchen and I sit him down at the table as Peaches runs past us.
“A lot of help you are,” I yell to her as she runs upstairs.
“Okay, spill,” he says to me, taking a seat.
I take a deep breath. The whole thing is stirring in my head and I don't know where to begin. I still don't want to tell him. I don't know how to tell him. What I am about to say to him could ruin everything, forever. I'm still sitting there trying to get the words out in the right way, and he's just sitting there waiting for me with this reserved look like no matter what it is, it will be fine. Will it?
“The truth is,” I start as I take a deep breath, “Adam, I'm not like you. When I died and got up to heaven and saw you and this house and all those fantastic clothes, I thought this was what I deserved. I just assumed that I was entitled to all of it. The thing is, after I left your house that morning, I was told something I should have already known. I'm not entitled to any of this,” I say, looking around my kitchen with the island stove in the middle of the room.
For the first time, I've explained what's going on. I'm not crying and he's not breaking in. He's still sitting here in that calm fashion.
“The thing is, being that this is heaven, I'm being given the chance to plead my case. I'm being allowed to tell my side of the story so that maybe God or whoever is judging will let me stay up here with you. If I don't explain myself well, I have to go down a few planes in heaven.”
Adam still isn't saying anything. He's just sitting here staring at me with this blank look on his face like he's really intent on listening to what I'm saying, and I can't read his feelings.
“The thing is, I'm writing this essay to give my side of it,” I say, exhaling, “and I'm starting to realize that maybe I wasn't going on to lead an existence on earth that would let me deserve to be up here in seventh heaven.”
“But you were really young when you died,” he reminds me.
“I know and that's why they let me take the test. As I'm writing it, though, it's become really clear to me that they're probably right and I have to accept it. I did not lead a life on earth that would have led to any kind of fulfillment for myself.”
Adam takes a deep breath as he takes my hand.
“Well,” he smiles, “if you don't think we're going to be able to see each other in the future, why don't we make the best of the time we have now?”
“Because I can't think of anything more painful,” I tell him, and now I start to cry. “If I spend any more time with you, I'll fall in love with you even more, and I know myself, my heart will be in pain for the rest of eternity. Even looking at you is breaking my heartâto think I won't be able to see your face every day and we won't be able to throw softballs at each other's heads or have the best sex every night for the rest of our deaths,” I say, really starting to freak out. “Adam, I can't even look at you anymore, it makes me so sad. I have to get out of here. I've got to turn myself in and leave here for good!” I cry, starting to walk out.
“Alex,” he whispers, taking my arm as I begin to leave, “then do something for me. If you have to go, and it's because you think you were never going to lead a fulfilling life on earth, why don't you make a fulfilling life for the time you are in seventh heaven? Stay with me for as long as we're able to be together.”
“But I can't,” I tell him as he puts his arms around me.
“Promise yourself that if you leave here, you'll leave with only the best memories,” he says as I bury myself in his shoulder. “Make this time worthwhile and then maybe you'll realize what leading a fulfilling life is all about. It's not the pain of missing out on what you don't have anymore, it's making the most of what you have for the time you have it.”
He's got me as I collapse in his arms and we kiss the sweetest kisses I'll ever know.
I've just had the second best sex of my life and death and we're lying here as I try not to think that this might be the last time I'll ever see him.
“Thanks, Adam,” I tell him. “Thanks for understanding.”
“I'm just glad to be here with you,” he says, pulling me in tighter.
“Adam?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I'm just wondering,” I start. “I mean, you're such a great guy and you must have done a lot of good to be up here in seventh heaven. I just admitted to you that I'm not all I've been cracked up to be. I just have to know, what the heck is it that you see in me anyway?”
This makes him laugh.
“No, I'm serious. I know I'm cute and everything, but what is it? What would a guy like you want with a girl like me?”
“You really want to know?”
“Yes, it's kind of driving me crazy.”
“Well,” he says, taking a deep breath, “now, taking in the fact that you're dead and all . . .”
He leans on his elbow as he looks down at me lying under him.
“Alex, if there is one thing that I find really attractive in a woman, it's her ability to work a room.”
“When was I working a room?”
“Well, it wasn't a room exactly, in this case it was the gates of heaven. When I first saw you, you were the most popular girl in line, talking to everyone around you like you were at the hip-pest party. You were this fearless woman who was making the best of a situation, and at the time I thought to myself, âNow, that's a woman who really lived.' ”
To tell you the truth, I'm shocked at what he's saying.
“Well, it was really fun in that line,” I say.
“The reason it was so much fun was because you were talking to everyone, being our little cheerleader, our comic relief,” he says. “So all that you're telling me about not living a fulfilling life on earth or that you weren't going to lead a fulfilling life on earth, well, all I had to do was see you for five minutes to know that whatever you did with your life, it must have been done with every bit of energy you had. From what you told me earlier, I don't think it's that you didn't live life to its fullest, I think you were so busy living that you didn't take any time to realize it.”
His words are sinking in to me. It's one of those lightbulb moments when everything starts to make sense: the people I've loved, the things I did, my own damned insecurity and not believing in myself.
Have I been looking at my life with the wrong attitude? Is that why I can't get into my parents' dreams? Is that why I'm not able to visit them on earth for more than a moment?
“That's the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me,” I tell him with tears in my eyes.
“Alex, no matter what happens to you, I hope you'll remember it.”
“I will, I promise I will.”
I fall asleep that night thinking of only two things: one, I can't believe I didn't tell Adam sooner and, two, I must go over and apologize to that guy with the fruit trees for flipping him the bird.
8
You might be surprised to hear the following statement come from me:
It feels good to do good work.
I had been working in the men's CO-OP Shoes department at Barneys for six months and I had really started to get into it. The CO-OP section of Barneys, if you don't know, contains the more-casual shoes and therefore it meant selling shoes to more-casual guys who weren't anal about their shoesâthey just wanted to look cool. It only took me a good six months before I began to realize that the men's equivalent to “Do I look fat in this?” is actually “Do these look cool?” That's all they ever wanted to know.
In the Beverly Hills Barneys, this being Hollywood and all, if you worked in CO-OP, you always helped a lot of screen-writers and directors. If you worked in main-floor men's shoes, though, that was for the agents, managers, and entertainment attorneys (aka the anal ones who stayed there for hours comparing one shoe to another, though luckily I didn't have to deal with them). I would even have to go so far as to say that in my casual, laid-back shoe section, it was pretty easy. I don't know what was with the fashion, but every writer had to have red Adidas sneakers. It must have been a real fashion “do” in the screenwriting world. We were always ordering more red Adidas and that was usually the shoe of choice to sell. In the summertime, though, flip-flops were all the rage and that was great for me for one reason alone.
Now, if you've never worked in a shoe store before and you don't know what I'm talking about, I should spell it out for you. The bad news about working with shoes is that it's a bitch getting those shoes down off the shelves in the storeroom, and just about every guy who came in wasn't sure if he was one size or another. You always had to get two of everything, and if the guy wanted to try on a couple of pairs of shoes, it could take your back out. The best news is that you start to strengthen your biceps and triceps so much that working with weights at the gym for me became a bygone task. I've always hated my arms. The upper arms, no matter how many weights I lifted, always had flags of fat blowing in the wind every time I raised them. If I had stayed on earth, one day I would have gotten the fat sucked out of my upper arms, but had I kept on working in the men's CO-OP Shoes department at Barneys, I bet I could have forgone the hassle. That is, unless flip-flops became really popular all year round, which, thankfully, they never did during my tenureâso my arms were always on the brink of looking like Linda Hamilton's in
Terminator 2
.
Working along with my buddy Peter, who was single and gay, we had the men's CO-OP Shoes department cornered as far as any cute guy who happened to come in. If he was straight and cute, he was immediately my customer and getting those Paul Smith suede chukka boots off the shelves in the back room didn't seem so awful. Peter and I were always getting hit on, though, on the average of one of us a day. There were invitations to movie screenings and fun parties. A very popular straight married actor once hit on Peter (and no, I'm sorry, I can't blab as to who it was; once a Barneys employee, always a Barneys employeeâwe never rat out our customers), but Peter turned the guy down. When I asked him why, he said, “Honey, that's not the way I see myself getting into
People
magazine,” which I thought was a very good point.
Pretty soon, you got to know all your customers and that was very important to me. See, in those early months when I started working there, I knew there was one thing that had been missing for years in department stores that I needed to bring back. I wanted to know my customers. Like the stories my mother told me about the grand days of department stores when she was younger. Salespeople knew you by name and knew exactly what you were looking for. I wanted to be that salesperson. I took meticulous notes on all my customers, their styles, their likes and dislikes, not to mention the size and widths of their shoes.
There was Kal Rogers, a television director who I ended up dating until he dumped me for the lead actress in his show, but he still bought a lot of shoes and that was more important to me. There was Lou Sernoff, a film producer who made me keep his orthotic in the back for whenever he came in to try on shoes. (I accidentally lost it once and Lou took a fit, but it turned out that Peter had been using it as a doorstop in the back room.) Stan Mitchell, a screenwriter, only bought brown shoes, and it was a year before I figured out for him that he was color blind. The guy was a successful comedy writer and went his whole life without realizing he couldn't see colors until I asked him one day about the brown-shoe phenomenon.