The Next Best Thing (16 page)

“Do you need something?” I asked, setting the receiver back down.

He was looking at me so intently I wondered if there was something on my face. That had happened before. The nerve endings on the right side weren’t as sensitive as those on the left, so I was always careful to check for stray toothpaste or lipstick or breakfast debris before I left the house and again before I got out of the car, but maybe I’d missed something.

“Dave?” I asked, feeling my skin getting hot.

He shook his head like he was trying to wake himself from a dream. “Sorry. Senior moment.” He touched his forehead and then put his hands on his wheels, shifting himself backward, as if going to the pantry. Then he stopped and said, “You know I’ve got a pool at my house, right?”

“Right.” I’d talked with his pool maintenance people a few times, arranging for cleanings and deliveries of chemicals.

“Maybe, if you wanted, you could come over for a swim.”

“Really?” Dave knew that I was a swimmer. He’d spotted my gym bag, my goggles and suit tucked into its mesh pockets, and I’d told him how I loved the water, that I’d been a lifeguard for a summer on the Cape, that it had been one of the best summers of my life. (And also, although I didn’t tell him, one of the worst. In my National Seashore–issued red racerback bikini and a baseball cap pulled low, between my tan and all the running and swimming I did to stay in shape, I looked as close to a
Bay-watch
babe as I ever would in my life. Jogging across the beach sometimes, in that red bikini, tanned legs flashing, I’d notice the appreciative gazes of boys and men and the jealous glances of women—all gone the instant they got a look at my face.)

“Yes.” He turned his chair so that he was facing the pantry. “I’m usually away most Sundays, playing poker. If you wanted to
stop by . . .” He let his voice trail off, maybe wondering if this was a good idea, if it somehow crossed the employer-employee line.

“My gym has a pool,” I told him. “So it’s not like I’ve got nowhere to go.”

“Swimming outside’s different.”

I found myself nodding in spite of myself. I swam at my gym all the time, of course, but the only outdoor swimming I’d gotten to do in Los Angeles was at Maurice’s club, and the pool there was on the small side, more for kids, or for tennis players to take a dip in, too short for me to get a decent workout. Still, I loved the feeling of swimming in the outdoors, the contrast of the air and the water on my skin.

“You’d be helping me with my WASP guilt,” Dave said. “I’m the only one who ever uses the pool. It feels wasteful.”

“Shazia doesn’t swim?” I asked casually, as if I wasn’t angling for information about how much time she was spending at Dave’s house and how serious they were.

“Not much. It’s a hair thing, I guess,” he said. “Anyhow. There’s a key underneath the welcome mat . . .”

“I heard that!” Big Dave sang out from his office.

Little Dave shook his head fondly. “Just shoot me a text ahead of time.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That’s really nice of you.”

He ducked his head. “No problem.”

I spent the rest of the week replaying the conversation, wondering whether he’d been serious or had just made the offer on the spur of the moment, never imagining that I’d follow through. I had a boyfriend, I told myself sternly, even though I suspected if I mentioned Dave’s offer to Gary, he’d just shrug and tell me to have fun. On Friday I decided that Dave was just being polite . . . but then, on Saturday afternoon, I remembered how he’d looked when he’d been talking about
Body,
how intently he’d stared at me, and I felt my stomach do a slow flip-flop.
He wants to be my friend,
I told myself. I could use friends. I’d made a few at
The Girls’ Room,
but since my abrupt exit from the show I hadn’t kept in touch, so now my circle was small: Gary, Grandma and Maurice, the Daves, the
Bunk Eight
writers, Caitlyn, who emailed from Berkeley, and a few of my college-bound clients who’d kept in touch.

I texted his cell phone at eleven o’clock the next morning, after telling Gary I’d be spending the day with my grandmother. “I’m actually in Vegas,” Dave wrote back. “Stop by whenever you like—I won’t be home until eight or nine tonight.”

I thanked him, plugged his address into my GPS, and drove, trying not to imagine that Dave had invited me over for drinks, or dinner, or to watch a DVD of one of the Oscar-nominated films that he got each year as a voting member of the Writers Guild and cuddle on his couch. Dave lived in a sprawling single-story modern house perched high on a hill near the Getty Museum, just off the 405. The key was where he’d told me it would be, and the wooden door, set in a frame that I guessed had been widened to accommodate his wheelchair, swung open easily. Pocket gave me a welcoming yip before curling back up on her dog bed in a patch of sunshine in the living room.
Don’t snoop,
I told myself . . . but it was hard not to stare, not to wander through the beautifully designed and decorated home and marvel at the way it had all been put together.

If the Daves’ offices looked like a playroom designed by a ten-year-old boy with an unlimited budget, Little Dave’s house looked like something out of one of the decorating magazines I’d buy at the airport to keep me entertained and envious until I landed. There was an actual Andy Warhol hanging in the entry-way, and a painting I didn’t recognize, a six-by-nine-foot panel of undulating blues and greens in swirls and waves, that dominated the wall between the front door and the living room. The Francis Bacon book I’d given him was displayed on a leather-topped coffee
table in the living room, which had, on its hardwood floor, the most beautiful rug I’d ever seen, an intricately patterned design of flowers and sunbursts rendered in shimmering green and gold and turquoise. Waist-high built-in bookcases ran along three of the walls, filled with novels and books about art and photography, collections of screenplays and biographies of famous actors. The fourth wall was floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out at the backyard and the pool. Paintings and framed photographs hung on the walls, and everything was arranged by someone who clearly had an eye for balance and proportion and texture: a heavy wool blanket on a smooth leather chair, a rough sisal rug on a smooth wooden floor, a cushy cotton dog bed and a basket of bones and rubber chew toys next to Pocket’s bed. Everywhere I looked, something invited my inspection or my touch—heavy peach-colored marble sculptures shaped like pears and used as bookends; a stuffed leather pig that sat on the mantel over the fireplace, its snout turned up at an insouciant angle; an orchid, thick with violet-and-cream-colored flowers, on an end table, next to a stack of those “Made on a Mac” books of photographs that I had to keep myself from picking up and reading.

Instead, I made myself walk through the white-on-white kitchen, with low marble counters and wide passageways. Like the entire house, it had clearly been designed for someone in a wheelchair and, judging from the way things gleamed, was more to be admired than to be used. Either that or Dave had a housekeeper, someone whose job it was to keep the floors and sinks and countertops immaculate. The back of the kitchen, like the living room, was a wall of glass, with views of a koi pond and a landscaped yard, with brick paths and wooden benches, lush grass and flowering vines. Beyond that was the pool, a narrow rectangle twenty-five yards long, lined with dark-blue tiles and a hot tub at one end, with chaise longues and white canvas umbrellas,
a drinks cart and a table for four and a small pool house, a miniature of the main house, behind it.

I walked out back to continue my inspection. At one end of the pool house there was a gym, with weight machines and a hand-pedal recumbent exercise bike. At the other end was a screening room, with half a dozen theater-style chairs and a full-size screen. The bathroom was enormous, with creamy marble tile covering the floor, a ceiling fan spinning slowly overhead, and a giant walk-in—or wheel-in—shower with two overhead spouts the size of dinner plates and a handheld attachment and nozzles bristling from the walls. Beside it were wooden cubbies, built-in dressers, and padded benches covered in green-and-blue-striped fabric. There were wicker baskets of flip-flops by the door, and stacks of blue-and-white towels.

I walked around, letting my fingertips sample the surfaces and fabrics, looking at everything, before sliding open one of the dresser drawers. Inside, I found stacks of women’s swimsuits, in all different colors and styles, everything from white string bikinis so skimpy they’d barely fit a toddler to a modest black tank suit in a size sixteen. Some looked as if they’d been worn; others still had tags attached. I wondered who they belonged to, who they’d been bought for. Girlfriends? Female friends? One woman whose weight fluctuated wildly? They definitely didn’t all belong to his current love. I’d Googled Shazia somewhat obsessively, and in every picture I’d seen she was the same, tall and slim and elegant.

I picked up the stack of suits, feeling the slippery nylon and Lycra in my hands. I knew the basics of Dave’s history: the bits that Big Dave had told me, what I’d been able to glean from gossip, and the profile that the
Hollywood Reporter
had done three years ago. I knew that Dave had been paralyzed in a boating accident right after he’d graduated from college, when his sailboat
had been T-boned by a drunk guy in a powerboat near Province-town on Cape Cod Bay. I knew about how he’d deferred his admission to Yale Law School and decided to give Hollywood a try. He’d sold his first show three weeks before his self-imposed one-year deadline, and now went back east only for birthdays, his parents’ anniversary, and one Red Sox game each season.

I replaced the pile of swimsuits, reached into my bag, and pulled on the one I’d brought from home. Then I stood in front of the mirror, in the flattering light of the lamps, imagining how Dave might see me. The doctors had spent most of their time and attention on my face, reasoning, correctly, that clothing would cover the worst of the damage most of the time. My right arm and shoulder were puckered and pitted with scars that made it look as if something had been chewing on me.
You look fine,
Gary would say—he wasn’t one for compliments, and I tried not to do the needy-girl thing of asking for them. Now I considered myself, my legs tan and smooth with muscle from the swimming and hiking and yoga, my hair falling in thick profusion over my shoulders. I would never have one of those va-va-voom Hollywood bodies that balanced a tiny waist with improbably big breasts, but I had, as Grandma was constantly telling me, “a cute figure,” decently proportioned and shown off nicely in the V-neck swimsuit I’d selected on the chance that Dave might come home when I was in the water.

Outside, by the pool, I sat on one of the lounge chairs, wrapped in the thick terry towel, feeling the sun warm my face and my feet, listening to the birds and the wind in the trees. If someone had handed me this piece of land and several million dollars to do whatever I wanted, to build whatever kind of house and garden would please me best, this was probably close to what I would have come up with. In its specifics, it was different from the little home where I’d grown up, but in its feel, the way it welcomed you, with its play of patterns and texture and
color, it felt like the way a home should be. I could see myself cooking in the kitchen, serving meals to Grandma and Maurice and the Daves at the dining-room table, swimming in the pool first thing in the morning, and curling up on the couch as a fire burned late at night.

I wondered again what the deal was with Shazia, and how much time she spent here. I’d tried to keep from poking around too much, but from what I could tell, there didn’t seem to be anyone else’s stuff in the rooms I’d surveyed—no women’s coats hanging in the closet by the front door (I’d broken down and peeked), no yogurt or cottage cheese or diet drinks or pomegranate juice in the refrigerator (I’d looked there, too).

So maybe Dave and Shazia weren’t serious. Or maybe, for all I knew, he’d moved into her place, and they were currently not in Vegas at all, but back there, in bed together, doing things to each other that mere mortals would have to pay to see on cable. I pulled on my cap and goggles and eased myself into the water, which was not too cold and not too hot, and held me up like a lover’s hands. Like the rest of the house, like every piece of furniture, like the rugs and the cabinets and the color of the walls, it was not too hot and not too cold . . . it was just right.

T
he actress stood onstage, in a circle of light, facing an audience I knew she couldn’t see. Dressed in a fitted blue skirt, a frilly white blouse, and high heels, she breathed deeply, making her breasts swell against the shirt’s buttons. Her nerves were palpable. In the hot stage lights, I could see the fine sheen of sweat on her upper lip. Finally she began.

“I think we can find a way to make this work,” she said. I leaned forward in my seat, surrounded by executives, my hands pressed tightly together, knowing every word she’d say, because I’d written them and rewritten them and read them out loud dozens, maybe hundreds of times. The setting was an upscale restaurant in Boston; the woman, Daphne, was a waitress, a regular-looking girl who wore her heart on her sleeve and had big dreams of someday owning a restaurant of her own. In this scene, the first in the show, she was appealing to her boss to let her switch from the front of the house to the kitchen and work with the chefs.
The best pilots are the simplest,
the Daves had instructed me.
It’s all about getting the audience to fall in love with your characters, so you tell as basic a story as you can.