Remember When 2 (6 page)

   Huh. I hadn’t noticed that before.

   It was a beautiful ring and the flaw was miniscule, really. But for some reason, my eyes managed to zero in on it until I could see nothing else but that one, stupid speck. I thought about pointing it out to Lisa, but she’d already launched into a Q and A.

   “So, what are our plans for the wedding?”

   Of course Lis would refer to the wedding planning as ‘ours’. It went without saying that she’d be my Maid—er,
Matron
—of Honor. I bit my lip at her across the table and replied, “Um, I hadn’t really thought about it yet. I guess we’ll have it somewhere in Jersey, right?”

   “Don’t ask me! It’s your wedding, dopey. Haven’t you even thought about that at all?”

   I remembered Lisa’s wedding from a few years before. The ceremony was a beautiful but simple affair at the Redys’ church, but the reception took place in a much more elaborate setting down in West Orange.

   She’d driven me crazy with every detail about the big day, and I spent less time helping her plan and more time trying to chill her the hell out. We’d visited practically every reception hall in New Jersey over a two-week period, trying to find the place with the highest ceilings (in order to accommodate Pick’s NBA buddies) and the prettiest grounds (in order to accommodate Lisa’s “vision”).

   Oh. And a staircase. It was crucial to have a flipping staircase for the pictures.

   She must have tried on fifty dresses before narrowing her choice down to the ultimate victor (It had to be
cream
. Not off-white, not beige,
cream
), and I must have eaten forty thousand calories worth of cake samples. Thankfully, the silver bridesmaid gowns we had to wear were corset-style. Not very comfortable, but they matched Lisa’s ideal of “
traditionally modern
”, and made me look even skinnier than I did pre-cake.

   And the flowers. I swear, I’d never seen so many flowers in my entire life! Should you ever find yourself  in a life-or-death situation where it is absolutely imperative to make the distinction between “dusty rose” and “fairy pink”… call Lisa. She’s the girl for the job.

   As amazing as Lisa and Pickford’s wedding was, I didn’t think I wanted anything that involved.

   But still. I guess I should have figured that at least
some
forethought would be expected of me before walking down that aisle.

   “Well, sort of. Not really, I guess.” I laughed and added, “We just got engaged four days ago! Guess I’m just not the super-planner you are, Bridezilla.”

   “I was
not
a bridezilla!”

   I started to crack up, watching Lisa getting all defensive. “You’re right. Bridezilla’s probably too harsh. You were more like Princess Di on acid.”

   Our waiter came out to take our order even though neither one of us had even cracked open a menu. Not that it mattered. Lisa always got the Nicoise Salad—without anchovies—and I always got the Cobb.

   After our server took his leave, I sank back into my deck chair, looking out over the lake. It really was a beautiful day- bright and clear and breezy; a nice departure from the perpetually
grey and noisy city that I called home. Lisa knew how much I enjoyed some quiet every now and then—even if she rarely respected that aspiration—so it was a good thing that she’d cracked open her newspaper instead of blabbering my ear off. Silence was easier to obtain when she was engrossed with the Style section.

   I decided to join her, reaching a hand across the table and asking, “Hey, gimme the crossword, will ya?”

   Lisa rifled through the paper as I dug around in my purse for a pencil. She handed it over and went back to her article, and I displayed some rudimentary origami skills, getting the page folded just the right way for optimal cruciverbalism...

   ...when right there on
Page Six
was a picture of none other than my old high school boyfriend, Trip Wilmington.

   I immediately gasped at the sight of him, but it’s not as though I hadn’t experienced that scenario before. It seemed he’d been popping up sporadically in those days. I would pick up the occasional copy of
People
, or
Entertainment Weekly
, or
Us
, and every now and again find his gorgeous mug staring back at me from the pages. But mainly, I encountered him on movie screens, and most recently, he’d invaded my home via my dream.

   I still couldn’t quite believe that my high school sweetheart grew up to become a Hollywood movie star.

   He’d started going by the name Trip Wiley by that time, and I was well aware of the fact that he’d been making his living as an actor. I know I may have been a bit more attuned to that information than your average entertainment-seeker (given our prior association) but he was actually starting to become kind of famous. And there I was, looking at his picture right there on
Page Six
.

   “Holy shit! It’s Trip!”

   Lisa spun her head around, looking behind her before realizing I was talking to the newspaper. I slid the page across the table and showed her the picture.

   She said, “Mmmm. Trip Wilmington. He was yummy.”

   Don’t I know it.

   “Jesus. I still can’t believe he’s like, getting famous.”

   Lisa took a sip from her Sprite. “I know. How weird is that? We know a famous person.
You
had
sex
with a famous person!”

   Does it still count if he and I hooked up
before
he was famous? It’s funny, but the last time I even saw him in person was the morning after we’d slept together, the morning I was leaving for college.

   I didn’t see his face until years later, when I went to see
Failing to Fly
, an aptly-named piece of garbage that almost had me walking out of the theater. But all of a sudden, Trip popped up onscreen and almost gave me a heart attack. It was a throwaway scene to the rest of the world, a silent appearance of about ten seconds total. It happened so quickly and unexpectedly that I wasn’t even sure I’d really seen it.

   I wrote him in L.A. to ask him about it, but my letter went unanswered. It turned out to be the last one I ever sent him.

   In the summer of ‘98, Devin had taken me to see
The Fairways
for our very first “date”. About midway through, Trip showed up in a speaking role. He wasn’t onscreen very long, but I almost fainted dead away. I didn’t say anything to Devin about it and just kept the revelation to myself. He and I barely knew each other at the time, and truly, Devin knew so many famous people. His mother was a Tony Award-Winning Choreographer for crying out loud. He grew up around all that crap—actors and dancers and artists and writers—all the most creative and world-renowned personalities that New York had to offer. He probably would have laughed at me for making a big deal out of knowing “guy at bus stop”.

   Soon after that, around Thanksgiving, Trip had a small but meaty role as a male escort in
Bonded
. I hadn’t seen that one in the theaters, but the commercials for it ran nonstop and the buzz was pretty big. Even though Ella Perez was the big headliner star in that film, Trip was the one that ended up getting all the attention. It was a small part in a pretty big movie, and was a major turning point in his career (and apparently a major turning point for my subconscious, since my dream from the other morning was practically a shot-for-shot reenactment of his sex scene in that film).

   The following fall, he had another supporting role in
The Bank Vault
, a huge Tarantino ensemble which was nominated for all sorts of awards. I watched the Golden Globes and the Oscars that year, hoping to catch a glimpse of Trip in a tux. But he wasn’t at either event and
Bank Vault
walked away with only a gold statue for sound editing.

   According to the
Page Six
in front of me, he was the lead actor in
Swayed
, which was scheduled for release on October 5—
my birthday—
and was currently wrapping up filming on something called
ReVersed
down near Washington Square Park in the city.

  
Trip’s been in New York all these weeks?

   I’d known that he was filming a movie “on location”, but I didn’t know that the location was
New York
. And not just New York, but Washington Square Park! The square was mere steps away from my apartment down in The Village and basically served as the backyard for my alma mater, NYU. I knew the area well. I’m sure I must have registered the white trucks and production equipment throughout the park, which were a telltale sign of yet another movie being filmed in the neighborhood. But between the big budget Hollywood flicks, independent features and New School student films, that scenario wasn’t so out of the ordinary on any given day in the city. A person learned to become immune to such things pretty quickly.

   Lisa’s babbling broke through my daydreaming. “Wonder if he’ll be at the reunion. You got the save-the-date, right?”

   “I did. I was going to ask you about it. Are we going?”

   As Lisa prattled on about our former classmates, thoughts of my
Bonded
dream played through my mind. I’d earlier settled on the idea that I merely hallucinated about the movie because I had just seen it on DVD. Combine that with the reunion reminder, and my mind had simply sparked a memory about Trip’s and my
personal
sex scene from years ago.

   But then I started to wonder if maybe I was actually psychic. Maybe I’d telepathically sensed his proximity and subconsciously invited him to slip down the street, seep through the cracks under my door and plant himself right into my waiting mind.

   Wow. One mere mention of my ex-boyfriend and it already felt like my brain had begun to melt. I was starting to lose it. Bigtime.

   “Jesus. Ten years,” Lisa finally sighed.

   “Yeesh, I know,” I said, trying to reconstitute my grey matter. “Wanna start placing bets on whose asses got fat now, or should we wait until it gets closer to the event?”

   Lisa folded her newspaper back onto the empty chair next to her, saying, “Hey. Lay off fat asses. Mine’s been expanding lately.”

   “Yeah, but you can get away with it. You’re
married
to an ass man.”

   Our salads came, and the two of us immediately attacked them with abandon. Mmm. Looked like I got some extra crispy bacon on my Cobb. The Westlake Pub made the best salads in the
world, but the rest of their menu was pretty spectacular, too. I happened to think they made the most awesome pizza in Jersey. And that was saying a
lot
.

   Lis suddenly gestured her fork in my direction and gave me the stinkeye. “Ya know, you didn’t have to
agree
with me.”

   I was preoccupied with my mental menu perusal, and had no idea what she was talking about. “What?” I asked mid-chew.

   She calmly placed her fork next to her plate and swiped her napkin across her mouth. “Most
normal
best friends would have made a point to dispute the proportions of my ass.”

   I started to crack up, offering a, “Sorry,” through my mouthful of food.

   “Bitch.”

THE CONTENDER

   “Dammit, Devin. Why are you being so stubborn?”

   I’d been arguing with my editor for over an hour. Although, as so often happened lately, the work-related argument had turned personal.

   “Layla, enough already. You’re a copywriter for godsakes. You are
not
a reporter.”

   “Well, gee, I wonder why that is.”

   I stared him down as best I could, considering he was a full head taller than me. It’s hard to be intimidating when you’re only five-and-a-half-feet tall.

   He looked at me then, that familiar exasperated expression he loved to give me, that sigh that let me know that he was still my superior and that I shouldn’t push him too far.

   But I knew I’d struck a nerve. We both knew that the only reason I was still stuck in the copywriting department was because Devin wanted it that way. He tried to justify holding me back by saying that I’d be the subject of nasty gossip, people thinking that a pretty little thing like me must have slept my way to a promotion, and he was only trying to protect me.
Umm, I’m sorry. Is my name Jennifer and do we work at WKRP?
Fact of the matter was, I was past the point of caring about anyone’s stupid gossip. I just wanted a chance to get my foot in the door.

   Devin just happened to be the doorman.