The Next Best Thing (9 page)

“But it’s my kind of thing,” I’d pointed out, and added that I’d gone to his school’s end-of-year potluck picnic, that I’d chatted with his colleagues and even gotten into the principal’s swimming pool, scars and all.
Why is it not your thing?
I wanted to ask . . . but part of me didn’t want to know the answer and just hoped that he’d be a good boyfriend and come with me.

Gary and I had met in the coffee shop where I’d retreated after things had fallen apart with Rob and I’d left
The Girls’ Room.
I’d run ads on Craigslist advertising my services—for a fee, I’d help high-school seniors craft their college essays. Gary had watched me working and asked if I could help him with his personal ad on Match.com, where he was flying, unnoticed and un-dated, under the handle “Lonelyguy.” (“Why?” I’d asked him. “Was ‘Desperate, Creepy Stalkerguy’ taken?”)

We’d agreed on a fee. I’d interviewed him and learned that he was a high-school teacher, the middle of three children from St. Louis, that he’d come to Los Angeles with a girlfriend, that things hadn’t worked out but he didn’t regret the move, because he loved the California weather, the chance to spend most of his time in shorts and sandals and see the ocean every day. The ad I’d written spelled out his good qualities, his patience and consideration, his dry sense of humor, and then I discovered that I had feelings for him, and, much to my surprise, that he had feelings for me, too.

Gary was my first real boyfriend, the first man I’d gone to bed with, and things had been wonderful. At least, they’d been wonderful when I was just the Two Daves’ assistant. When I’d
realized I was thinking about Little Dave more frequently, and in different ways than an employee should think about her boss, I’d told myself it was just a workplace crush, destined to go nowhere. David Carter was ten years older than I was, and in a wheelchair, and the women he dated were so far out of my league that they might as well have represented some evolutionary leap forward from human females as I knew them. Gary was steady and funny and reliably kind. We’d bring in a pizza and watch movies on a Friday night, take trips on the weekends to the zoo or the park or the beach. I thought—when I wasn’t fantasizing about Dave dumping Shazia, or the gorgeous research cardiologist he’d dated before her, or the stunning actress who’d preceded the doctor, and declaring that I was the one he loved—that maybe someday Gary and I would get married. We’d buy a house in the Valley, where you could get more for your money, a place convenient to the private school where he taught, with a swimming pool and a guest house where Grandma could stay. I’d write screenplays, he’d teach history, and we would live out the non-glamorous Hollywood version of happily ever after. I would think about it . . . but it would be like thinking in outline, life as a series of occasions without any of the dialogue or description filled in. I could name the orderly procession of events—getting married, buying a house, having children—I just couldn’t imagine actually doing them with Gary. There was no reason why this should be: I loved him, I enjoyed his company, his sense of humor, his good looks . . . but when I tried to imagine the specifics—standing under a chuppah with him, or greeting him with a positive pregnancy test—my mind would shut down. When my pilot had been ordered, it felt like a good excuse to stop thinking about why that was, to simply apply myself to the work at hand and hope that my romantic future would sort itself out while I tended to my show.

Ever since I’d gotten the call, though, things had gotten worse, not better. I’d thought that Gary, who’d always been supportive, my biggest cheerleader, my number one fan, would be thrilled for me, and that maybe I’d be able to picture more of a future together when I had the grown-up job title “executive producer and showrunner.” Instead of being an assistant, I’d have assistants of my own, and responsibility for a staff of actors and directors, gaffers and grips, set decorators and stand-ins that would eventually number close to two hundred. None of this would change the content of my character, just the size of my bank account. I would be, still, the woman I’d always been: same personality, same dreams, same face. But Gary had changed, becoming quiet and sullen and hard to reach. I’d dial his number and be sent straight to voice mail. Or we’d make plans and then he’d cancel at the last minute. In the past few weeks, he’d taken on extra work at school, agreeing to coach the chess club, offering extra Spanish tutoring sessions. He’d said that he could use the money, but that made no sense: I’d be earning four times what I’d be making as an assistant if the show got picked up, and the pilot shoots alone would give me more than enough to pay for our usual entertainments, and even fund a few weekends out of town, if we found time to take them . . . but when I pointed this out, he got even quieter, and every time I’d started to ask my grandmother what it meant, and why he was behaving as he was, I’d stopped before I’d started, part of me convinced that I did not want to know the answer.
At least he’s here,
I thought, and told myself that Gary’s presence in a roomful of executives and showrunners meant that he was coming around to accepting my new role . . . but the look on his face before he brought his wineglass to his mouth and drained it strongly suggested that he’d rather be anywhere else, anywhere but in this room, with these people.

Waiters bustled to refill glasses and set out wooden platters of appetizers, sliced cured meats and house-made buffalata, ceramic dishes of glossy rosemary-brined olives, warm Parker House rolls with ridged pats of butter and silver-dollar-size mother-of-pearl dishes of sea salt on the side. Lisa beamed at me. “To Ruthie,” she said, with her glass held aloft, “and to
The Next Best Thing.
May it run for a hundred episodes.”

“A hundred episodes!” everyone echoed. Glasses were clinked. More wine was poured. Little Dave, sitting in his chair with a glass of wine in one hand and his arm unself-consciously around his date’s waist, gave me a smile and lifted his glass. “Enjoy this,” he said. “It’s as good as it’s going to get.”

I bent down to hear him better, glad for the excuse to get close. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he said in his calm, cultured voice, still with its hint of a New England accent, even though it had been years since he’d come west, “that they haven’t made a hash of it yet.”

“Made a hash of it?” I must have sounded skeptical, because Dave gave me a wry smile.

“I forget. You weren’t around when
The Girls’ Room
got off the ground. Or
Bunk Eight.
You don’t know what it’s like to have your vision . . .” He paused, letting his gaze rest on each of the executives as he sought out the right word. “Adulterated,” he finally said.

I took another sip of wine, conscious of Gary, who was standing in the corner with one of the waiters. “I know things change once you’re in production,” I said. “I’ve been working in the business for five years, you know. Remember? I’m the one who sits at the desk outside your office? Reads the scripts? Sets up your lunches? Listens in on the notes calls? Goes to all the tapings?”

“Ah,” said Dave. “But it’s different when it’s yours.” Before I could ask him to explain or tell him the seventeen reasons I believed my show would not, in fact, be adulterated, the waiters
ushered us toward the table. Dave wheeled himself into the space left empty between Shazia and Lloyd. I took a spot at the foot of the table. In spite of Dave’s warning, in spite of Gary’s obvious unhappiness, I couldn’t stop smiling.
My show,
I thought, picturing the sign taped to the door, as I chatted with Joan, discussing actresses who might be right to play Daphne Danhauser, the lead, and her Nana Trudy.
My show.

There was roasted pork loin with fennel, seared rib eyes with truffle butter, and whole grilled branzino for the main course. Bottles of Riesling and Malbec were emptied and replaced and emptied again. Then came coffee and cordials and the famous butter pound cake, served with mounds of whipped cream, and salt-sprinkled dark-chocolate brownies on a wheeled cart. Afterward, groaning and vowing not to eat for a week, we all walked out to the valet stand, and I waited, thanking everyone, until the executives had departed and Big Dave had eased his frame into the tiny sports car he drove and Molly, who, sensibly, refused to contort herself into the passenger seat, had hopped into her Range Rover, and Little Dave had wheeled himself up the ramp of his Mercedes van, after holding the door for Shazia and closing it once she was in. Then, finally, it was just me and my boyfriend, standing in the windy street.

“That,” said Gary, “was awful.”

I turned toward him, the frustration I’d ignored all night bubbling up. “Why? What was so awful about being in a roomful of people I’m going to be doing my show with? People who are actually, oh, I don’t know, happy for me?”

Gary ducked his head. “This isn’t working,” he said in a low voice.

I felt my chest contracting, as if I’d been punched. “What?”

Gary pulled off his glasses and blinked at me as he rubbed the lenses on his shirttail. “I’m proud of you. Or I’d like to be. I can’t ask you to go backward, to just be an assistant for the rest of
your life. You want bigger things.” He spread his hands, smiling sheepishly. “Me, I’m just a teacher.”

“What do you mean, just a teacher? That’s the most important work there is.”
No,
I thought.
Oh, please, no
. I was remembering our two-year anniversary, a trip we’d taken to Desert Springs. We’d taken side-by-side mud baths, giggling in the steamy, sulfur-scented weedy water, Gary grumbling about how he was going to be picking twigs out of various crevices for weeks to come. We’d had dinner in a fancy restaurant at what used to be Cary Grant’s estate, sitting outside, and when I’d gotten cold, Gary had gone inside and come back out with a wool blanket for my lap.

The wind gusted. I yanked my hat down around my ears and reached for him. He stepped backward and then held my hands, taking pains to keep plenty of space between our bodies.

“You’re important,” I told him. “What you do is so incredibly important. It matters more than anything, more than any dumb TV show, and I’m sorry if I haven’t been making you feel that way.”

He shook his head and dropped my hands, running his fingers through his hair. “It’s not you. It’s not that. You haven’t done anything wrong. Those people,” he said, tilting his head up toward the restaurant, “they’re, like, a different species or something.”

“The women, maybe,” I muttered.

Gary kept talking. “They’re just so different. They don’t care about the same things that I do.”

“What do they care about?” I asked. I was simultaneously feeling panicky sorrow and honest curiosity. How did Gary see himself in relation to the executives and showrunners and Hollywood girlfriends and wives we’d just shared a meal with? How did he really see me?

Gary spread his hands wide again. “Ah, you know. They care
about making money. It’s not about art, or drama, or telling the best stories, or trying to make the world a better place. It’s just selling stuff. Selling airtime to the advertisers. Selling stories to the viewers. Like that.”

I stared at him, wondering when he’d turned into a communist, or whatever he’d become, and how I’d failed to notice. “Is that what you think I am?” I asked. “That I don’t care about art or craft or storytelling? That I’m just a sellout?”

He shook his head . . . but he didn’t do it immediately, and he didn’t do it very hard.

“I don’t understand,” I said. My voice was raw, and my belly was knotted. Everything hurt. “I wrote something people like, and now a network wants to put it on the air. What did I do . . .” I felt my throat tighten as I forced the words out. “What did I do that’s so wrong?”

“Nothing,” said Gary, sounding tired. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s me.” He made a sweeping gesture, one that took in the restaurant, the road, the valet stand, the glitter of the shops, the high-end sedans and SUVs and sports cars stopped at the traffic light, cars that each cost more than he’d make in three years of teaching. “This isn’t the kind of life I want for myself, and those aren’t the kind of people I’m ever going to be comfortable with.”

And now I’m one of them,
I thought.
One of those people.
When I’d been an assistant, or when I’d supported myself editing kids’ college essays about how their class trip to Paris gave them a new perspective on the world, or how the night their father won an Oscar had changed their lives, I’d been fine, just another L.A. striver with more dreams than successes. But now . . .

Gary took my hands once more. “I want you to be happy. I want you to find someone to be happy with, someone who wants all of this, who’s going to be happy for you. But it’s not for me. Do you understand?”

I thought I did. Maybe
I don’t feel comfortable with these people
was what Gary told himself or maybe even what he really believed, but I thought the truth was different and far less flattering. The truth, I thought, was that Gary liked it when we were both in the same place, a just-starting-out teacher and an unemployed television writer, both of us trying to take that next crucial step forward. Now I’d leapt ahead, vaulting over him, and he didn’t like being left behind, and I didn’t know if I could face what was coming all by myself, all alone. It was too much. I couldn’t do it without him . . . but I wasn’t going to beg. Maybe the fantasy of Dave would be better than the reality of Gary. Maybe somehow it would be enough to sustain me.