“Here you go.” The assistant to the assistant handed me a glass of water. Nobody gave out bottles anymore, for fear of being perceived as an environmental terrorist. She also handed me a napkin, which, once she turned her back to me, I used to mop my brow.
I limped across the cowhide rug to wait on a dimpled leather settee the color of money. I gazed at the wall of movie posters （five of them, all huge hits!）， feeling silent exhilaration that the legendary multihyphenate who could put both my kids through college with a nod of his head was right on the other side. And he wanted to work with me! All I had to do was not be an asshole for the fifteen minutes he allotted me, my agent had said—easy enough, even for an asshole.
Ten minutes passed, then ten minutes more. I had only been three minutes late—a miracle!—certainly that wasn’t enough to make him change his mind about meeting me? Another five minutes passed. I was about to take out my phone to call my agent when the assistant’s assistant approached. Her expression was pained. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Something’s suddenly come up. This meeting is not going to happen today.” And my exhilaration popped like a birthday balloon.
I glanced toward the big boss’s office as I was escorted through the reception area, but he had closed the blinds, so I couldn’t see who he had chosen to meet with instead of me. Not that it mattered. I was still getting tossed out on my ass.
My phone lit up as I walked back to my car. It was Laura, my agent. Wanting to know how it went, no doubt. I pressed “Ignore.” A moment later the phone buzzed again. This time it was Libby, my wife. I needed this job. We needed this job. I let the call go to voice mail.
Walking across the lot, between the soundstages and star trailers, I recalled an episode of The Brady Bunch, my favorite show when I was a kid. One of the “bunch” wanted to wiggle out of a date without hurting the boy’s feelings—must have been Marcia, because Cindy was an infant and nobody wanted a date with Jan. After spending act one agonizing about how to let him down easy, Marcia said the exact same thing about something suddenly coming up. It was the first and only time I ever heard that phrase—until ten minutes ago. Marcia’s date knew, as anyone with half a brain would, what it really meant: I’m not into you. I don’t remember how the episode ended, just that I felt really bad for the guy, and ashamed of Marcia, who was the nicest of the three sisters and should have known better.
I finally reached the garage. My feet were killing me. The blister on my left heel had bled through my sock, staining the inside of my cap-toed Oxford. Mercifully, my car was still there. I limped over to it, got in, and in the privacy of the darkened shell, I kicked off my bloody shoe and, though I’d never in a million years admit it, I cried.
CHAPTER 3
“Did you meet the new neighbors?” Libby asked, hands on hips, from the threshold of the garage. It was more of an accusation than a question. I could read the annoyed subtext in her perfectly sculpted brow. Why didn’t you introduce me? if I did. Why didn’t you go say hello? if I didn’t.
“I waved to the husband,” I said, recalling the man on the little wooden bench, how he sat with his knees splayed wide, his six-foot-and-then-some frame too big for the narrow wooden slats. “They seemed like they were in a hurry,” I lied, hoping this would spare me from an onslaught of Why didn’t yous.
“They’ve certainly had a lot of deliveries,” she said, as if it were odd for people moving into a new house to get new things. “By the looks of it they got all new furniture!” She was right, there had been a steady stream of delivery trucks over the past few days—bedroom furniture from Ethan Allen, rugs from Z Gallerie, a washer and dryer from Best Buy. I wasn’t sure if a middle-aged couple getting all new everything was unusual or just annoying—we hadn’t so much as upgraded our TV in over a decade. I pondered the possibilities. Newly married? Newly successful? Or simply from so far away it didn’t make sense to bring anything?
“I wonder what they paid for the house,” Libby thought out loud, and I wondered why she wondered these things. “The more the better,” she added. We hadn’t talked about selling our house, but I suddenly realized she’d been thinking about it. All this time I’d thought she had dragged me to look at “the updated, traditional, three-bedroom gem” when it was for sale and open “just for fun.”
I fiddled with the Shop-Vac, hoping she would get the hint and go back inside. Turning the garage into a woodworking shop had been an accidental stroke of genius. I got to be out of the house without using up my allotment of “me time.” I’m no master carpenter, but I enjoyed my little projects—bookcases for the girls, a step stool for the pantry. I even redid all the crown molding in the dining room. I stretched that project out to four glorious weeks. And in the rare instance that we actually used the dining room, I got to brag about my handiwork.