It’s a feeling I should do well to remember right now.
Ollie is still somewhere in the restaurant, pretending to be on his phone. Gabe is looking down at his water, rotating the wet glass between his palms like he’s ineffectively trying to start a fire.
“I didn’t know she’d be there that night,” Gabe says. “I thought she was in London and then when I got offstage, she was in my dressing room.”
He looks up at me.
“Is that supposed to make it better?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I just know how it looked and it wasn’t supposed to be like that.”
“How was it supposed to be?” I ask.
“I don’t know!” He’s angry. Frustrated. The feeling is mutual. “I don’t know. I thought—I mean, you hadn’t written about him—”
“The Novelist.”
Gabe blinks at me.
“Jeremy,” I self-correct.
Gabe pauses like he’s counting to ten in his head.
“You hadn’t written about him in a while, and Jacinda and I were never really, you know—” He gestures. “It wasn’t real.”
“Did Jacinda know that?” I ask. “Because she certainly seemed surprised to see me too.”
“It might have been my impulse to get married,” Gabe says. “But our initial arrangement was her idea.”
“She didn’t care that you and I…” I trail off, not exactly sure what I’m laying claim to.
Gabe looks down at the table. “She didn’t know,” he says. “About that weekend.”
I cross my arms—feeling vindicated and also like shit.
“I told her about it,” Gabe says. “But later.”
“Nice of you,” I say.
“Stupid.” Gabe points at himself. “Young.”
I nod, not disagreeing.
“She does know your work,” he says. “And she likes it.”
“That makes one of you,” I say.
“Chani,” he says.
I’m thinking about the interview I was supposed to do with her. How I’d chickened out.
“I was so glad to see you,” Gabe says. “You have no idea.”
“You were still married,” I say.
“I know!” He runs a hand through his hair. “But don’t forget, so were you.”
I open my mouth. Close it. He’s right, and it all suddenly feels absurd. We’re both angry at the other for the exact same reason. Both angry at each other for something neither of us really has a right to be angry about.
It takes all the air out of my rage.
“I was glad to see you too,” I say.
Gabe releases his glass of water and reaches a hand out toward me. I take it without a second thought.
“Why did you invite me?” I ask.
“I couldn’t not,” he says. “It’s not a good enough reason but it is the reason.”
“I couldn’t not go,” I say.
“I—” he says.
“Well, it looks like neither of you have killed the other,” Ollie says.
He sits down, oblivious to the moment he just interrupted. My hand has already returned to my lap. Gabe’s is flat on the table.
“No,” Gabe says.
“No murders committed,” I say.
Neither of us is looking at the other.
“Great,” Ollie says. “Glad I can trust the two of you with steak knives. Let’s eat.”
TIME OUT NEW YORK
Bond on Broadway
[excerpt]
By Nina Wood
This weekend, Gabe Parker returns to his roots.
“It’s a bit like being back in college,” he tells me. “And I’m just as nervous as I was then.”
He’s taking time in between the Saturday matinee and evening previews to talk about his Broadway debut as Karl Lindner in A Raisin in the Sun.
The part is not the one you’d expect a big-name star like Parker to take, but he says he’s always loved the play and jumped at the chance to be involved, in any way possible.
“I’m not completely na?ve,” he says. “I know there will be plenty of people coming to see if I mess up my lines or get lost onstage or something like that. But you know, if it gets people to buy tickets and come to the theatre, they can cheer for my failure all they want.”
He says it with a smile, likely knowing, as well as I do, that he seems to do his best work when he’s considered the underdog.
“The lower the expectations the better,” he jokes.