Been There, Married That (ARC)

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  [AU: Please provide the dedication at this time] To Christophe, Thomas and Patrick-the Original LGE.

  1: Happy(?) Birthday!

  “A toast!”

  Trevor, my husband, tapped his Saint Louis glass with a sterling knife, and the glittery couples chattering around the candlelit table snapped to attention. Everyone paid attention to Trevor. Even Pep, our tween with ADD, ADHD, and recent DOATM (Disgust of All Things Mom) paid attention when her father cleared his throat.

  Trevor tapped his glass a few more times, sending out warning bells, then stretched to his six-foot frame. His lean shoulders curved into a question mark, a tennis player’s stripped physicality from destroying Dexter with his backhand on Trip’s court, Krav Maga with Uli in our home gym, and chewing each bite of food that passed his lips thirty-six times.

  Even oatmeal.

  He grinned, basking in the attention, then drew his long fingers through his internationally documented hair, thick and black and brushed with foil streaks. (Some smart aleck on Instagram had created @TrevorNashHair. His hair had more followers than I.)

  Even if he weren’t an Oscar-winning producer, you couldn’t not pay attention.

  “To my wife, Agnes,” Trevor said.

  I hate the name, too. Someone’s great-grandmother on some side somewhere was an Agnes. What can you do?

  “Happy forty-eighth! You look amazing, darling!” A buttery blonde with a smoky eye and red lips screamed as she leaned across the table, ruby drops from her wineglass spilling onto the cream tablecloth, her extensions hovering dangerously near the candle’s flame. Karyn was the kind of friend who’s not a real friend but is more dangerous not to have as a friend. She’s the best frenemy a girl could have.

  Trevor had handpicked the chilly private room at Le Figaro along with the guest list, and we’d crowded into the brick anteroom, enjoying a full view of the wine cellar. I had requested a small, manageable party. We’d recently celebrated a record exec’s wife’s fiftieth (before they broke up), and Flo Rida performed live on a damp Bel Air lawn for tons of money. We’d shimmied to Flo Rida’s three dance songs in a hell circle of rich people biting their lower lips and awkward twerking.

  My ears rang for days afterward.

  “I want to toast my wife’s incredible . . .” He glanced down at me and smiled. “Work ethic!” Cue a symphony of sterling silver on Saint Louis crystal. I blushed, but not because of my hardy stock. Trevor has saluted my work ethic in every speech since our wedding, as though he’s surprised that I, a Hollywood wife, still have a job. I blushed because my fertility is on its last heaving throes, my eggs scrambled and crapping out, waving the white maxi pad. All that’s left for me is flushing and sweat. Soon, I will be all dried out, a human tumbleweed, rolling along Sunset Boulevard to guzzle martinis at the Polo Lounge.

  I sneaked a napkin between my legs. Sixty-six degrees in the room and my dress felt like I peed myself. What’s so hot about hot flashes? Who knew a person could sweat buckets sitting still as a rock, and in so many nooks and crannies? Forehead, ears, neck, cleavage, groin, back of the knees! Who has sweat glands on the backs of their knees? (Me, that’s who.)

  I’d nabbed an appointment to see Izzy. Of course I had. Everyone in town called him by his first name. Izzy. Allegedly, he was a medical doctor. You had to wait six months to see him—and by that time, you’d inject rattlesnake venom, toadstools, gulp Xanax, your kid’s Adderall, anything, to get relief. He was the most popular man on the Westside, barring LeBron James sightings at the Brentwood Country Mart.

  I raised my glass to the unlined faces aglow with candlelight, padded bank accounts, and wine. Karyn and Michael. Karyn you’ve met. Ex-assistant (to Michael, during his first marriage), current stylist. Hails from Ogden, Utah, with an acquired British-ish accent. Pleasant and Bland Michael boasts verifiable Hollywood lineage guaranteeing him a lifetime parking spot at Paramount; I don’t think he’s ever had a bad day. Juliette and Jordan. Three kids, two from surrogates. Expecting another. From another surrogate. Jordan’s an impish, childlike comedy director who watches too much anime porn on his iPhone; lovely Juliette has a sandwich named after her at Malibu Promises. Henry and Elizabeth. Henry, a jock “super agent,” upped his meds because he didn’t get the big Sony job and his hard-ons have disappeared. Poof. Sporty Liz, quadracial daughter of a Jamaican-Scottish record company czar and Japanese-German model, has a Ph.D. she doesn’t use and is bored with Henry’s whining and no-rection. We’ve been on several vacations with these couples. Hualālai, Las Ventanas, Saint Barts. Oscar Weekend in Beverly Hills.

  I felt lucky to be in my marriage, with our familiar problems. Problem. How to handle Trevor. I hear the song:

  ♬ How Do You Solve a Problem Like Tre-e-vor?♬

  For a brief, shining moment, no one was on his phone.

  “Cheers,” I said. Thank you, muted candlelight. And wine, you, too, don’t ever leave me.

  Trevor clinked my glass and dry pecked my cheek. “Happy birthday, champ,” he said, squeezing my shoulder as he slid a small box toward me.

  “Thank you, honey,” I said. “Should I wait?”

  “Go ahead, open it,” he said, and he trained his fluorescent smile on our friends.

  “Now that’s an auspicious box,” Elizabeth said, her eyes crinkling.

  I tugged at the blue ribbon and opened the velvet box.

  “Martin Katz?” Karyn asked. “I’d recognize an MK box anywhere!”

  “Is it Tiffany?” Juliette said, then turned to Jordan. “Love the name Tiffany! Write that down; that’s a good name for our next herby, or himby, or theyby.”

  I blinked and held out the bracelet.

  “Fitbit!” I said as my upper lip perspired.

  “Aggie’s been begging me for one,” Trevor said. “I train every day with it.”

  “Me, too, every day,” Henry said, perking up. “I hit the gym, 4:30, rain or shine.”

  Begged? I’d never even asked for one. I couldn’t program a banana. I willed myself to smile.

  All eyes on me.

  I feel you, Tupac.

  “I love it!” I said, squeezing the napkin between my thighs.

  2: The Last Book Party

  March. Post-awards season. Awards season only exists in Hollywood; four seasons weren’t enough for us—we had to invent another. My book launch party in the bowels of the Soho House was starting in twenty minutes. Guests would start arriving in an hour and change.

  LA, where you at? Not where the books are.

  “Oh mah gah you look amazing we have a problem!”

  I was perched like a trained parrot at a makeshift makeup station, submerged in electro-industrial ambient “music.” Basically, music without lyrics or melody or music. A makeup artist with post-election PTSD, magenta hair, and a nose stud grumbled about heavy lids as she glued lashes onto my eyes. In LA, “caterpillar-eye” had reached peak saturation.

  “Did you hear we have a major major problem?”

  “What’s the problem, Marie?” I asked, my eyes shut. I could smell her, my crow-boned, aggressively tanned book publicist. She smelled like Lemon Pledge and Miller Lite.

  I liked her, but I also wanted her to die.

  I blinked.

  “Don’t blink!” the makeup artist shrieked; her lip stud quivered. Too late. My left eye glued shut.

  “Your card’s not working I
tried it like twelve hundred times.” Marie didn’t do commas or numbers under one hundred.

  “Hand me my purse,” I said, groping space like a drunk and blind swimmer. “I have a MasterCard. I just don’t get miles.” Miles. Dear, sweet miles. My favorite serotonin surge.

  “It’s okay it’s totally okay it’s fine we can wait for Trevor—what the fuck are you doing?” Marie was gone, chasing after a waiter-slash-app-developer (copping to just being an actor is so 2016) balancing a full tray of glasses. “Those aren’t the bishop cut glasses get the bishop cuts!!” she yelled.

  “So you’re Trevor’s wifey,” the makeup artist said, sucking an Altoid while working a tweezer with her tattooed hand. I’ve had this conversation a million times. I knew how it went. Suck suck. Suck. Sucksuck.

  “Yep, that’s me,” I said, then, “joking,” “Try not to blind me. I’m bad enough at dressing myself as it is.”

  Although, I thought, temporary blindness might be a relief. I find myself handicap-yearning lately. A fender bender that resulted in a broken-but-healable femur . . . Hello, adjustable hospital bed! Hi, gossipy nurses who sit up with me all night! Come to Mama, simple remote!

  I’d bribe Pep with a new iPhone whatever to sleep over in my hospital room. We’d flip through her baby pictures and sip chicken broth and slurp on applesauce and red Jell-O (never green; one of our salient bonds is a mutual loathing of green Jell-O) and watch RHOA—which, let’s face it, is the best RHO. Maybe she’d like me again.

  “Do you have kids?” Makeup Artist bubbled.

  I “awakened” from my adjustable hospital bed. I could read minds in LA. It’s simple. All anyone cares about is who you’re connected to and Waze.

  Makeup Artist’s Brain: Trevor is superrich and, like, powerful, and he’s married to . . . what is she, even? So, like, ordinary. So like my mom.

  “We have a daughter,” I said. Pep. Peppers. Pep is short for Penelope. I’m not sure why we named her Penelope. Neither of us is Brit-adjacent. There’s a law that all Penelopes are adorable and sweet-natured. Our Penelope, almost as tall as her mother, is adorable and what’s the opposite of sweet-natured. Pep is sour. Happened over the last year. I keep a mental tally of the things she hates: school, questions about school, girls at school, boys at school, teachers at school, my worried face when I ask about school, my shoes, my jokes (about school).

  Where’d she go, my freckled, gap-toothed sidekick?

  “You wrote a book, huh?” she asked as my eyelid snapped open. I felt it rip and didn’t scream, because courage. “The mixologist told me Trevor optioned it for a movie. Or podcast? Like. You must feel so cool.”

  Me: Mixologist? Bartender. Right.

  “Hidden under a thick, pasty layer of uncool.”

  I didn’t tell her option is Hollywood lingua franca for Don’t quit your day job. My project had a 0.0001 percent chance of getting made. Option means a Hollywood Reporter or Variety announcement that you paid more to your publicist to run than you deposited in your bank account. At the end of the day (there’s night?), an option costs you more than no option.

  A better option? Not to option.

  Okay, I’m done. I’m out of options. F04A

  My eye watered, and a tear ran down my cheek, taking my bronzer with it. Perspiration would take care of the rest. The makeup artist frowned and sucked.

  I hate bronzer, I thought. Bronzer is a lie.

  “There she is, that’s my kid, over there.” Dad’s Boston brogue hijacked the room, piercing the electronic music shield. I opened my eyes—left one stuck. Dad’s Old Spice reached me, those slate eyes assessed me, those eyes that see right through your bullshit, young lady.

  “What happened to your freckles?” Dad said. “You’re selling books, not cocktails, kiddo.”

  “Hi, Daddy.” I reached over for a hug. He’d left his beloved Red Sox cap at home, his team a bright brushstroke in an otherwise gray, broken childhood that exists only in East Coast towns and Ben Affleck movies. Dad was wearing the only suit he owned and a mock turtleneck he’d bought in the ’70s, a splurge in menswear, level three at Sears in Hollywood. It’s like he’s going to old man’s prom. Beside him is a languid, fawn-like woman with a punk haircut, her face angled, a slash of cheekbone. She was familiar, and I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing. Or if that were a good thing, if you’re a fan of the subjunctive. (I am. Were it is.)

  “Kid, meet Shu Chen,” he said. “You’re winking.”

  “Oh . . . oh!” I said, my eye blinking and watering. “Nice to meet you, Shu.”

  Dad often had a pretty woman on his arm, but not a “Scream Queen”; anyone who’d seen a 90s horror film revered Shu’s shriek The other girls were Dad’s “friends,” his “pals”; he mentored them, filling the advice void my sister and I had left behind. Walk with purpose, run with elbows tight, wear a baseball cap at night when driving, punch from your hips—all of which boiled down to: Stay away from men.

  Shu smiled and tilted her small, perfect head on her impossible neck. I wanted to ask her to reenact her scream from Zombie Sorority.

  “How do you . . .” Know my dad?

  “Starbucks, kid,” my dad said. My dad got more play standing in line at Starbucks with his Red Sox cap on than Liam Hemsworth with his squiggly bits on a plate on Grindr.

  “Dad, you’re early. No one’s going to be here for at least an hour.”

  “I had to find parking.”

  Here we go. The parking conversation.

  “There is valet parking.”

  “Street parking suits me fine. I circled for twenty minutes, found a spot a few blocks down.”

  Parking is a charged subject, filled with dangerous familial potholes; the Murphys argue about parking the way some families argue about politics. Two of the three Murphys agree—valet parking is for lazy, rich people. I’m the third.

  “Shu speaks five languages,” Dad said, studying the room, his gaze like Velcro, sticking and then discarding the bar, the PR wizardess, cocktail waitresses, mixologist—

  “Where’s your husband?”

  Dad doesn’t call him Trevor. He refuses to say his name after a fight on Thanksgiving maybe five years ago. The topic was cranberry sauce. Whole fruit versus jelly. Trevor’s not a fan of texture. (Like there’s any argument. Team Whole Fruit.)

  “His name is Trevor. He should be here . . .”

  Now, right now, and I’m trying not to panic.

  “Want to introduce him to Shu. That woman’s so talented. Speaks five languages. He should cast her. I’m going to talk to someone about turning down that music.”

  I watched him walk away, full stride, Dad, the Paul Newman doppelgänger. Fin, my baby sister by eighteen months, had inherited not only his full, wide mouth but those eyes and his swimmer’s shoulders and long legs. I’d inherited his sense of direction. And his ability to stay out of prison. Not so much Fin. I wonder how she is.

  “Amazing so amazing AdrienBrodyjustgothere!” Marie yelled as I stashed my phone in my midget Judith Leiber purse. We were hemmed in against the bar like cattle by whippets in black suits huddled around Tinder or Grindr (or both), their hungry faces and neat, solemn beards illuminated by iPhones. Agents.

  A cadre of blondes with coyote grins and blood-soled heels, guzzling cocktails and snapping endless selfies, congregated on velvet couches.

  My party was as sex-segregated as a middle school dance.

  “Is it stiflingly hot in here?” I said with a wink. “Or is that my life force seeping from my body?”

  “Great crowd!” she yelled. “We’re soooo lucky because a lot of rapists couldn’t come, you know.”

  “Me Too?” I said, referring to #MeToo, Hollywood’s favorite hashtag

  “You, too?” she said, her voice grave. “Me, too.”

  I gave up and soaked in the drinks menu with my “good” eye:

  TRES DEADLIES

  Tres Ochos Tequila with cream of coconut and fresh lime

  RAISING THE DEA
D(LIES)

  Vanilla SKYY vodka with tangerine liqueur and a chili/sugar rim

  DEADLIES ON ARRIVAL

  French champagne with muddled raspberry and a sprig of mint

  “Have you heard from Trevor?” Marie asked, her eyes like golf balls in her orange head. I wondered how much of her hair was hers and how much was stolen off a sleeping teenage girl’s head in Bangladesh.

  “Haven’t had a chance to check my phone.” I winked.

  “You haven’t?”

  “No.” I winked.

  “Are you . . . kidding?”

  “No.” I winked, and she scooted off after an actor I didn’t know from a show I’d never heard of. I grabbed a glass of ice and held it to my neck.

  Party people were already discussing where to go next—the magical “upstairs” for members or home to watch Game of Thrones. Meanwhile, I still couldn’t pronounce our clever hors d’oeuvres names.

  “These Wagyu salmon fritter blintzen croutes are lit!” I heard a girl say.

  I absentmindedly sipped a tequila concoction, hypnotized by bedazzled Hollywood wives’ tales. Topics: schools, nannies, #resistance, Aspen, Cabo, poop tea. One wife was very proud of the fact that she does all her son’s homework.

  He’s at USC.

  I wished I could go home and catch a glimpse of Pep while she slept, the only time she’s not annoyed with me. (I think. She could be annoyance-dreaming.) My feet felt as if I were walking on knives, but the tequila would render me numb yet wide awake when I started signing books that no one in this room will ever read.

  The young bartender with James Dean brows (the boy thought I was talking about a porn star) had stage-whispered, “Tequila’s a stimulant. Enjoy.”

  Like everyone at this party wasn’t already on Adderall.

  “You wore the Tory,” a husky voice said above the incessanta electronica. “Excellent.” Liz, her eyes as bright and clear as the vodka she can’t drink anymore.

  “Liz approved. I can go home now.” My navy crew neck dress was classic and not too sexy. (Like Tory, herself, except this dress wrinkles.). It was fit for a yacht in Saint-Tropez or the produce section at Bristol Farms.