Chapter 12 Be More Like Meryl Streep #2
Jack had always thought that the way you got to know people was gradually. That had generally been the case for him, whether it came to his students or the few friends he’d made as an adult.
That wasn’t how it had worked with Blair, though. They’d gone from disdain to fairly intense friendship rapidly, first over text, then over zombies.
And suddenly, with her question about compulsions, a bunch of pieces to the puzzle that was Blair Kellermoon slid into place like a game of Tetris.
The lock checking. Esme’s remarks about how she was hiding.
Maybe even the strange feeling he got at the ends of their TV evenings when he would try to help clean up and she suddenly couldn’t get rid of him fast enough.
He didn’t know exactly what he was understanding, but Blair was battling something.
The puzzle pieces brought not only understanding, but compassion, something Jack didn’t have much experience with.
He saw how hard Blair worked. How committed she was to being a supportive but not stifling mother.
How much she loved, in her soul loved, Green Light.
She tried so hard. At everything. And wasn’t that exhausting?
When he first arrived in LA, he had thought Blair strident.
Told himself that what he’d thought had been wit and banter had actually been stridency.
He saw now that he hadn’t gotten it right that second time, either.
Blair’s primary personality trait wasn’t stridency, or even wit—though she had both of those characteristics in certain circumstances—it was earnestness.
A seriousness of purpose that was often obscured by her California-girl sunny good looks or by the roles she had played on-screen.
And/or she obscured it purposely because she didn’t want or couldn’t afford to be perceived as overly rigid.
Seriousness of purpose, though. It was attractive.
He told himself to file that thought away for later. They were in the middle of a conversation, and the stakes suddenly felt higher than they’d been a minute ago.
“I think I am using the word compulsion colloquially,” he said carefully. “In the sense that this guy spent a lot of time working. And he worked alone. The solitude adds an air of seriousness to it, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, but locals brought him materials. So it must have become a community project, at least to some extent.”
“But he spent thirty years on this. There has to be some kind of… drive there.” He didn’t want to use the word compulsion anymore. “Why else would he devote so much of his time, his life?”
“Why does anyone do anything?”
“Why does anyone do anything that isn’t for money or love?” he countered. “That’s the question, I think.”
“How do you know this wasn’t for love?”
“Well, probably we would have learned about it if it was all in homage to a special lady. Or gentleman.”
“But you have to love something to make art, don’t you?”
The question set him back on his heels.
“Even if it’s just, like, humanity,” she added. “Right? Because why else do it?”
She glanced at him but didn’t press. Eventually she said, “You want to grab dinner on the way home?”
The question felt a little forced. He didn’t know how to answer.
Part of him, the familiar antisocial part, couldn’t wait to get back to the pool house so he could think about the revelations that were coming at him so fast and furious today—about Blair, about how deeply those stupid crows were affecting him, and, not to be too melodramatic about it, about art.
But another part of him, a bigger part of him, didn’t want the evening to be over yet.
“There’s a restaurant not too far from home that I used to go to a lot,” she said. “It’s quiet and reliable.”
He thought again about the giant Tetris game. About Esme’s accusations about Blair’s unsociability.
Maybe this wasn’t about him. Maybe Blair wanted—needed—to go out to dinner.
“Let’s do it.”
The restaurant was an unassuming yet fancy bistro in Laurel Canyon.
The host, a white-haired man wearing a suit, recognized Blair, though he didn’t make a big deal about it and ushered them to a table in a small room off the main restaurant.
Blair was wearing a fedora she had retrieved from the trunk of her car.
Even so, he heard the whispers of other diners as they passed.
Jack began to understand, for the first time, that Blair was famous.
Well, he’d known that. He had googled her after the Books with Blair debacle—that was when he’d seen the cherry dress. He just didn’t intersect with her as a famous person.
At their table, Jack pressed her to take the seat by the wall.
He could then use his body to shield her.
He glanced around. There were only two other tables in this room.
One was a big table of thirtysomethings who were wrapped up in themselves, laughing and looking at each other’s phones, but the other held a pair of middle-aged women who were huddled together whispering. They had clocked her.
“I’m starting to realize,” Jack whispered as they got situated, “that you can’t just go out like normal people do.”
“I can go out. I just have to be mindful about where. And ready to engage with people if need be. I haven’t been out in ages, because…”
He wanted to press her. Because why? He held the question back.
“I end up in the tabloids as the jilted wife or what have you.”
Yes, he wanted to say, but that’s new. That’s Reggie and his cars and his bullshit, and you said you hadn’t been out in “ages.”
Esme had said on that call that Blair hadn’t been hanging out with her friends.
Jack wasn’t good with friends. He didn’t have many.
But his image of professionally successful and—here was that dreaded term again—emotionally intelligent women was that they did.
That their strong social bonds were probably why they were so successful and emotionally intelligent.
“But I can go out if I want to,” Blair said. “There are places you go when you want to be photographed and places you go when you don’t.”
He forced himself to listen to what she was actually saying. That was probably what an emotionally intelligent, professionally successful friend would do. “Why would you ever want to be photographed?”
“These days, I wouldn’t. But there are times when you have to control the narrative. It’s part of the job. Unfortunately.” She cocked her head. “Or at least it was part of the job when I was acting. It feels less important now.”
A man in chef’s whites approached, and Blair grinned. “Chef!”
“Blair!” He lowered his voice. “Or should I say Barb?” The two of them embraced, their mutual affection palpable.
“Josh, this is my friend Jack.” Jack appreciated that she didn’t use his full name. Not that he expected anyone to recognize it the way they would hers, but still. “Jack, Josh opened this place right around the first time I lived in the house we’re in. We used to come here when Cal was a baby.”
“And here you are all these years later, even though you’re superfamous now,” Josh said.
“It’s my favorite restaurant. Why wouldn’t I come to my favorite restaurant?” There was something odd about the way Blair had posed that question, as if she were asking herself instead of Josh.
“What’s this about ‘the house we’re in’?” Josh wagged his eyebrows.
“Oh, no, it’s not like that,” Blair said quickly. “Jack is a friend staying in my pool house temporarily.”
It alarmed Jack that he and Blair would be perceived as a couple, but he supposed it was a logical conclusion.
A server approached with two plates.
“Something to munch on while you look at the menu,” Josh said. “Olives from the farm garden warmed with black truffle oil, and some rosemary and leek focaccia.”
“Thanks, Josh.”
“What’s with the Barb thing?” Jack asked after Josh left.
“Barb Tybee. It’s the fake name I use. Barbara is actually my middle name, and Tybee is an island off the coast where I’m from.”
“You really are famous.”
She quirked a half smile, and one dimple popped out. “I really am famous.”
Yeah, that had been an idiotic thing to say. “I just meant…” What? What had he meant?
“I know what you meant, and I appreciate it.”
“What did I mean?” He really wanted to know.
“You don’t think of me as a famous person. You just think of me as… me.” The second dimple appeared. “Even if you don’t like me a lot of the time.”
Jack couldn’t make himself utter the words I like you, so he just made an exceedingly uncharacteristic vague grunt and picked up his fork.
Dinner was great. The food was outstanding—and so was the company. He did like Blair, and at some point he abandoned his attempts to psychoanalyze her and just enjoyed her company. He wasn’t accustomed to any of it, to feeling invigorated by being out in the world, by talking to people.
Though he was aware that he wasn’t with “people.” He was with Blair.
“Do you ever think about who you are aside from your art?” he asked as they tucked into a shared slice of orange-almond cake. It was his version of answering her question about whether you had to love something in order to make art. Or trying to answer it, anyway.
“Do you?”
“Only all the time.”
“Ha.”
“I’m serious, though,” he said. He very much wanted to hear her answer.
“I think I’m more of a facilitator of the arts than an artist myself. There is perhaps a certain art in producing, but it’s different from making something out of nothing.”
“What about acting?”
“I don’t really do it anymore. But I think acting is more of a craft.
Something you can learn. I was good at it, or good enough, but it wasn’t some deep soul calling.
Don’t get me wrong, I think there are some great actors for whom it is an art, their lives’ work.
Those people are either completely instinctual or they’re smart as hell—academic smart, I mean. Like you.”
“So you’re never going to act again?”
“Never say never. I am not above taking an obscene amount of money for a cameo. But I like producing a lot better.”