“Oh.” I feel like someone who just wandered off the Kansas cornfields onto Hollywood Boulevard. “But you were together before, right?”
“Like for a minute. But it was nothing. Look, Leo’s super attractive, but we literally have nothing to talk about. It got old fast.”
We had everything to talk about, I want to say. How is that possible? He’s got nothing to say to her but can talk to me for twenty hours a day and pick up in the morning where he left off. My heart is not adequately shut, and I am starting to feel sick. That one thought, that we had so much to talk about, wants to drag me back to the belief that we had something, that he was something meant for me.
She’s saying good-bye. She’s hugging me. When I’m alone in the bathroom staring at my only slightly too-made-up reflection, I realize that I am newly hurt. His not being with Naomi is a fresh wound. His leaving me to go back to her obeys all the laws of nature. Any man would have done the same. But his leaving me just to be not with me aches all over again.
I find Martin mildly drunk at a little table talking to another gorgeous young woman. He motions for me to sit on his other side. “Come, there’s room for both of you.” Oh, brother.
“So Leo and Naomi aren’t together?” I hear myself say.
“Shhhhhh. We’re still marketing this thing. Shhhhhh,” he says with Elmer Fudd eyes, glancing left, then right.
I need some air and maybe a cracker. A waiter passes with a tray of stuffed mushrooms and I put four on a napkin. I make my way to a terrace off the main room where people are still milling around but where there’s room to breathe. I take a seat on the side of a fountain and dig in to my snack.
My parents have gone back to their hotel and they took Oscar with them, so I don’t need to worry about the three of them. I guess I can leave anytime I want to. I need to unpack my feelings and then repack them more securely. But the air feels nice, crisp for Los Angeles I guess, and I am in the middle of my big moment. I wrote a movie and won an Oscar. I’m wearing this beautiful dress, and once I take it off, I don’t know when I’ll ever wear it again. I just want to sit and enjoy it a little longer.
“You okay?” It’s Leo.
My mouth is full of mushrooms, so I cover it with my dirty napkin and mumble, “Sure.”
“So congratulations, really,” he says. “Okay if I sit down?”
“Thanks.” I nod. He sits down right next to me, but not close enough that any of our parts are touching. My eyes track that space between us, as if it’s something so familiar but from another lifetime.
“It’s a big deal,” he says.
“Yeah. For you too.”
“Not really. I don’t mean to seem jaded, but the first one felt like a bigger deal. And I can’t get that excited about an award for acting like a total dick.” He’s flustered. “Oh, sorry.”
“No offense taken, that’s how I wrote it.”
“Yeah. So are you happy? You said you were happy a while back.”
“I am. My kids are good. I’m a big success.” I look away, as if on the other side of me might be the answer, a better thing to say.
“Okay. That’s what matters.”
That’s not what matters at all, I think. “That’s not what matters at all,” I say.
“Probably not. Sounded right though.”
“Do you have a pencil?” I ask. He reaches into his coat pocket and hands me a pen. I can feel him watching me as I tie my hair in a knot and secure it with his pen. If only I could wash my face. I turn to him. “That’s better.”
He doesn’t smile. Something hurts, and I’m glad. He says, “I guess I want you to know that what we had was the most important thing that’s ever happened to me. And I’m glad it happened.”
I hold his gaze as I consider this. It’s a really nice thing to hear, but it sort of sounds like he’s delivering the breakup speech he should have given me last spring. He wants to be let off the hook, and to my surprise, I find that I want to let him off the hook. I don’t want him to feel bad about leaving me, and I sort of like the idea that he remembers it like I do. Maybe there are moments where people come together and you can just seal them in their own space while you move on with your life. Maybe what we had was a secret you keep hidden in a book to take out and ponder on your birthday. I smile at the thought because I know I’ve stolen it from a movie.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing. I just hated The Bridges of Madison County.”