No, it was a romance. At night, when he was in the tea house and I was in my room, he’d text me Miss you and all of the cells in my body would start moving at triple speed. We’d text back and forth for hours some nights, until finally I’d tell him that the sun was coming up in four hours, and that maybe we should get some sleep. He’d reply, Can’t wait.
I barely slept those two weeks, except for the afternoons in the tea house. Even some of those days, I’d stay awake and watch him sleep. Isn’t this how you brainwash someone? Deprive them of sleep and feed them a lot of lies? I decide I’ve been brainwashed and wonder how many other women have fallen for this nonsense.
When I settle on an ending to Sunrise, it’s because it satisfies me. He’s just come off a disastrous breakup with a starlet and three weeks in rehab （I’ve taken the liberty of ratcheting up the drinking here） and returns to my house. In my mind, his hair is infested with lice, but I don’t write this because I don’t want to freak out the moviegoers. He’s all apologies and explanations; he finally knows what he wants.
“I know what I want too,” she tells him as he holds her hand. “And it’s not you.”
I get up from my table in the tea house and sit on the daybed. “And it’s not you,” I say out loud. It feels good, this rebuke. I imagine the sting on his face. The surprise that I would have moved on, me in my little life. “And it’s not you,” I say again and start to cry, because of course it’s not true.
CHAPTER 17
A week before the New York opening, The Tea House has screened in some smaller theaters, and critics seem to like it. They call it “thoughtful” and “powerful,” which is funny because I just call it “what happened.” I told Jackie I’d be at the New York premiere, after she reminds me not to let Leo steal my moment in the sun.
Weezie texts me to ask if I’ll be there. Who’s asking? I kid.
Just me, but I want to make sure you look killer. She asks if she can have her friend, a stylist, send me a few dresses to choose from, and I figure why not. I’m not going to show up looking like I just walked off the cover of the Tapestry album. I have a second credit card with no balance that sort of feels like a loaded gun. I keep it in my wallet in case I need it, really need it. Ben used to count our unspent credit limit as an asset, as in, “Of course we can afford it, we have twelve hundred dollars left on the Visa.”
A box arrives with three dresses and two pairs of shoes. They all have price tags on them, and I try not to look. They are emerald green, silver, and black, all fitted enough to make me look young and viable, but also tailored and lined enough to make me look like a grown-up. With Bernadette’s help I choose the silver one, because she thinks it makes me look like I sparkle. The shoes are absurd and cost more than the dress. They are also silver and have the tiniest strap of leather over the toe and another around the ankle. They are nothing, weightless, yet they cost a mortgage payment. I tell Bernadette that I can just as easily wear the black shoes that I got for Granny’s funeral.
“Fine.” Bernadette storms out of the room and comes back with the phone. “I’m sorry, but here.” She shoves the phone at me like it’s medicine.
“Hello?”
“For chrissake, Nora. Just buy the shoes.” Just.
“Hey, Pen.”
“You are a big deal. You’re going to the opening of your own movie. From what Bernie tells me, you’re going to be gorgeous in that dress. Just for once, go the rest of the way. For me. I can’t bear to think of Leo seeing you in those funeral shoes.”
One thing I love about Penny is how much she cares about the stuff she cares about. The time she found white peonies for her white party. The way the new building across the street from her apartment centers perfectly in her picture window. Bernadette shares this quality, the ability to get nuclear-level excited about the smallest thing.
I try them on while we’re talking. “Pen, they’re the most ridiculously overpriced ounce of leather . . .” I stop talking and turn in front of the mirror.
“What?”
“They’re a piece of art,” I say. Is it possible that I have pretty feet? And maybe that pretty travels right up to my legs? I may be hallucinating, but I think my face might look younger. What are these, magic shoes?
“This is what I’m saying. Go big or go home. For once in your life, just buy the shoes.”
“Pen, how am I going to get out of a car and walk all the way down the red carpet in these shoes?” I try to imagine it as I say it, me clunking along until that pointy heel catches a snag and I fall flat on my face, while Leo and Naomi shake their heads in pity. Penny’s known me my whole life; she knows what I mean. “I have nothing to hold on to,” I say.