Chapter 13. Molly
I wake up at 1:00 p.m. on the first day of this blessed year with a hangover and acute postparty anxiety. I brought in 2019 at Margot Tess’s annual bash at her estate in Los Feliz. She’s a big deal right now, and the crowd there was glitzier than the industry people I usually hang out with. Consequently, I networked my face off and am now a crumpled ball of emotional toilet paper.
My relationship with parties is complicated. I dread going to them, because I’m an introvert who prefers to spend her time alone or—once socially starved—with the same four to six close friends. But since so much of my job is reliant on networking, and social and business relationships are so intertwined in LA, I do have to force myself out of the house when the occasion arises.
And then, I’m like that guy from The Mask. I glam myself up and walk into a room and remember that I’m attractive and funny and good at banter. I dole out compliments, offer favors, introduce people, fetch cocktails, and collect numbers until I’m in a fizz of party energy and don’t want to go home. I am the girl who ends up at the after-party bumming cigarettes and slinging take-it-to-the-grave gossip with the die-hards. By 4:00 a.m., I have eight new best friends.
But then—then—I wake up in the morning (or, in this case, afternoon) and second-guess every single thing that I did. Was it rude of me to introduce myself to that producer? Did my manic energy make me seem drunk, or crazy? And, oh God, what do I do with all these numbers I collected? Should I follow up with invitations to coffee or drinks? And what on earth will I do if my new acquaintances say yes?
I drag myself out of bed, grab a sugar-free Red Bull from the fridge (an unparalleled hangover cure), and settle myself on the couch to reread my texts from last night in hopes of remembering who I ensnared in my web.
Seven people. Sob.
I brace myself and check to see if I did any more damage by email.
Seth’s name is at the top of my inbox.
I didn’t expect to hear from him again after my deranged decision to contact him over Christmas. I open it, and it’s a sweet message about my new movie.
I consider not replying. As someone who had no business contacting him in the first place, I really don’t want to give him the wrong idea. But the gesture is so kind that I owe him at least a quick response.
From: [email protected]
Date: Mon, Jan 1, 2019 at 1:45pm
Re: Subject: Congrats!
Thanks, Seth—that’s nice to hear. My last couple of scripts have been trapped in development hell for years, and producers are pivoting away from original screenplays and optioning books instead, so this is the first big gig I’ve had in a while. I’m excited about it.
I consider deleting all this—my hangover jitters are making me a bit too sincere—but this is Seth, who is a thirteen out of ten on the sincerity scale, so I keep it, and just add:
You good?
xo
Molls
I close my inbox and move on to sending dreaded follow-up texts to my new friends and associates and eating soothing, delicious carbs.
I’m just about feeling normal, if tired, when I get a text from my father.
Dad:HNY toots
Dad:Saw your news re the movie. Not bad.
Not bad.I smile, despite myself. This, from him, is the compliment of the century.
No one is more dismissive of my career than my father. He thinks rom-coms are “fluff” and tells me I’m wasting my time with “indie bullshit” when I should be going after “the big stuff.” He considers himself an expert on such matters because his books have been adapted into movies. Specifically, they’ve been adapted into a huge blockbuster film franchise that grosses hundreds of millions of dollars a picture.
I suppose here is where I should disclose that my father is Roger Marks. Yes. The guy who writes those sleazy potboilers about Mack Fontaine, the Florida private eye who’s always catching serial killers in swamps and seducing hot blondes with dangerous pasts. The one whose books you’ve seen at every supermarket checkout line in the country.
Because of his status as a premier author of novels with one-page chapters and plots about exotic pet–smuggling rings, he also credits himself with my success as a screenwriter. He loves to tell me I get my talent from him, and to imply that the Marks name has gotten me where I am.
It has not. I’d rather die than name-drop Mack Fontaine, and my father is a narcissist.
But in my darker moments, I wonder if he’s at least a little bit right about the talent part. It’s possible I do get my best professional qualities—my creativity, my ease with words, my ability to be charismatic at parties—from him. And this worries me. Because if I’ve inherited his best qualities, there is a strong possibility I’ve also inherited his worst. His incurable sarcasm. His ice-cold approach to relationships. His ability to hurt people without even noticing.
I don’t text him back. I’m already on edge, and engaging with him will only make it worse. Instead, I check my email to see if there’s anything new from Seth. A hit of his optimism might level me out.
And there is a new message. But it’s surprisingly lacking in perkiness.
From: [email protected]
Date: Mon, Jan 1, 2019 at 6:52pm
Re: Re: Subject: Congrats!
Am I good? Well let’s see. I’m at the office, even though it’s 9pm on a national holiday.
Not by choice. I had dinner lined up with a buddy tonight, but he canceled this afternoon and I nearly wept. Well, not really. But it hit me harder than a rescheduled dinner should have. Probably because I’m not dating anyone at the moment and my friends are occupied with their families, which they have been busy creating while I have, despite my best efforts to find the human connection I crave, instead billed millions of dollars drafting ironclad prenups.
I need to get a life, Molls. I hear there’s more to human existence than conference calls about custody hearings and eating extremely expensive takeout sushi at your desk.
This is not the Seth Rubenstein I know. He sounds despondent. Worryingly so. I don’t even think about it. I just write him back.
From: [email protected]
Date: Mon, Jan 1, 2019 at 6:55pm
Re: Re: Re: Subject: Congrats!
Poor lonely old man. You know, you can call me if you need a shoulder to cry on. It’s only 7pm here, and I love miserable people.
555-341-4532
xo
My phone rings almost immediately. I hesitate for a second. Are we really going to talk on the phone? Like in high school, when we would have those long, emo chats that would go on for hours?
Probably not. I’ll just say hi and make sure he’s okay.
I pick up on the second ring.
“Wow,” I say. “That was fast. Good to know you still have no cool.”
“Molly Marks, have I ever once pretended to be cool?” There’s a smile in his voice. A wry one I can picture. Good. He must not be as miserable as I thought.
“You’re right,” I say. “You’ve always been very honest about being a dork.”
“Thank you.”
There’s an awkward pause. I’m not sure what to say. So I go with, “I’m sorry you’re stuck at work.”
“Oh, it’s okay. I’d rather be here than at home. What are you doing?”
“Not much. Contemplating making pasta.”
“I thought people in LA didn’t eat pasta.”
“Hungover people do.”
He laughs. “Big night last night?”
“Huge.”
“Was it at least fun?”
“Yeah, but all that socializing makes me jittery the next day. Plus, my anxiety is always worse around New Year’s. I hate this time of year.”
“I hate it too,” he says. “All the pressure to start fresh and be better.”
I am floored that Seth is not a New Year’s person. You would think he’d be champing at the bit to practice mindfulness and give up sugar and sign up for marathons.
“I’m surprised you’re not into it,” I say. “But yes. Achievement fetishizing. Gag me.”
“I like setting goals in other contexts. But there’s something about doing it just because it’s January that makes me grumpy.”
The idea of him as anything other than sunshine and light is so novel it’s adorable.
“I bet you’re cute, all grumpy,” I say.
Flirtatiously?
Should I be flirting? Is that wise?
I’m not sure what I’m doing. I’m not sure what this is.
“Not especially cute, I’m afraid,” he says. “There’s soy sauce on my shirt.”
“There’s probably a woman out there who likes that.”
“Good, can you give me her number?” he says.
Uh, yeah. We are definitely flirting. I need to regroup.
“I bet you make resolutions anyway,” I say. “Admit it.”
He sighs. “Of course I do. You have to. Otherwise you have nothing to talk about at the office.”
“Not me. My office is in my house, and it’s currently littered in Hershey Kiss wrappers.”
“I thought you didn’t like chocolate.”
He remembers.
“I don’t, but Alyssa sent me a bag of ‘New Year’s kisses’ because she pities my spinster existence. And hangovers make me hungry. Anyway, what are your resolutions?”
“You’ll make fun of them.”
I probably will.
“I promise not to.”
“I don’t believe you. But my attraction to your scorn is deeply ingrained.”
It gives me no small measure of satisfaction to hear him acknowledge that I’m not the only one who’s still attracted.
“Try me.”
“Spend less time at the office. Find a girlfriend. Get married. Have a baby by thirty-six.”
I whistle. “Damn. You have work to do.”
“I know. It’s crippling,” he says.
“Maybe if you didn’t pressure yourself so much it would be easier to just, like, live?”
“But I don’t want to just live, Molly Marks. I want to suck the marrow from the bones of life and fulfill all my most mundane heteronormative fantasies.”
It feels oddly intimate that he is disclosing this to me.
“Do you want me to show you how Tinder works?” I ask, trying to lighten things up.
“Oh, believe me, I know how Tinder works. I feel like I’ve dated every woman in Chicago. But they keep breaking up with me.”
“I have trouble believing that,” I say nicely, because he sounds sad.
“It’s true. Dave claims I’m a serial monogamist who plows into doomed relationships because I romanticize love as a cure-all.”
“Hmm,” I say. I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but this kind of tracks. “Do you?”
“I don’t know. Every time I meet a nice gal, I get very excited. It always feels real.”
I can’t imagine this problem won’t sort itself out soon enough. He’s hot, rich, and good at sex. He’s just had bad luck.
“Well, don’t worry,” I say. “You’re an eligible bachelor. It’ll happen. All that wifed-up stuff is easier for men.”
“Is it?”
“It certainly is in LA. We ladies get put on the shelf young.”
“Are you dating anyone?”
I pause before answering. I’m worried this conversation is getting too personal.
“No. I broke up with a guy a few months ago, before the reunion.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Uh, I found out he owned a sword.”
“Are you serious?”
“No. He was a boring careerist. I got tired of him droning on and on about his finance job.”
Belatedly, I realize Seth also has a professional job, and might worry that I find him boring. Which I don’t.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” he says. “If you wanted it to.”
“Thanks. I didn’t. We were only together a few months. No big deal.”
“Do you want to find someone? Like, get married and have kids and all that?”
I don’t really think about it that much. I don’t put much stock in relationships to dictate my future. But I guess, if some miracle happened, I wouldn’t be opposed to it.
“Uh, maybe. If I found the right person.”
It occurs to me that we’re having a conversation about marriage and life plans. I need to back off.
“Um. Is this weird?” I ask.
“Is what weird?”
“You know, talking about our feelings?”
“I don’t think so. It’s nice.”
“It’s kind of intense, actually,” I say.
“Well, you can hang up if you can’t handle the heat, Marks,” he says with a sharp laugh. “I know you sometimes have trouble finishing what you’ve started.”
Whoa.
That was needlessly barbed from anyone I’m trying to be nice to—let alone Seth.
“Excuse you,” I say, not hiding my offense. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just a joke.”
But we both know it isn’t.
“Really? It sounded like a dig.”
“No, I was just referencing what you said at the reunion. That you’re scared of intimacy.”
“Wrong,” I shoot back. “If I recall, I said I was scared of losing you in high school, so I broke up with you to avoid being hurt. That’s not the same thing.”
“Are you sure?”
I don’t appreciate this Socratic method bullshit. If I wanted to be criticized, I’d have texted my dad back.
“Seth, I was talking about my behavior when I was a teenager. Are you really going to extrapolate that to who I am now, having interacted with me for about ten hours in the last fifteen years?”
Bizarrely, he doesn’t back down.
“Remember how I’m a divorce attorney? And I deal with breakups eighteen hours a day? You’re a type, Molly. You’re a bolter. You get scared of feelings and run away.”
I should hang up. This is not the light conversation I wanted to have with him.
“Do I have to pay you your hourly rate for this, counselor?” I ask.
There is a very, very long pause.
“I’m providing it pro bono because I like you,” he finally says. His voice has gone soft. Almost tender.
I feel unsteady. I don’t know what to do with this.
“You like me?” I repeat.
“So much, Molly.”
“You know, I’m not terribly likable,” I joke, because I don’t trust myself to follow where this is going. “You could be forgiven for saying no.”
“See, you’re doing it,” he says. “Deflecting. When the conversation gets earnest, you make a joke or some self-deprecating comment.”
I know he’s right, but I don’t want to admit it.
“Maybe I just do that with you.”
“I highly doubt it. You did it when we were teenagers. And it correlates with a personality type in a relationship. You probably check out when things scare you. Intimacy shuts you down.”
What am I supposed to say to this? He likes me “so much,” but he’s criticizing me for how I act in relationships?
“Why are you being like this?” I ask. “I offered to keep you company. I’m not looking for a psych diagnosis. Believe me, I have enough of those.”
“I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “It’s the lawyer in me, I guess. Can’t stop arguing. I’m being a dick.”
But that isn’t quite it. None of this comes off as mean. It comes off as too honest.
“You’re not being a dick,” I say. “You’re being awfully presumptuous about me though.”
“You’re right,” he says. “I want to get to know you better.”
Yeah, it’s time to end this.
“Listen, I need to eat dinner and get some sleep,” I say.
There’s another long pause. Then he says, “Marks, you’re abandoning me in my hour of need?” His tone is lighter. He obviously senses that he’s freaked me out.
“What did you think you were getting?” I blurt without thinking. “Hours of phone sex?”
He lets out a shocked laugh. “A boy can dream.”
My cheeks are red, and my eyes are shut so tightly that they hurt. “Sorry.”
“Well, save my number in case you change your mind. It’s good to talk to you, Molls.”
“Uh-huh. Sweet dreams.”
Sweet dreams?
Am I the most awkward person in all of Los Angeles?
I hang up before he can say goodbye.
I wish it wasn’t too late to call Dezzie or Alyssa to dissect this conversation. Although, if I tell them what happened, they’ll think I’m obsessing and read into it.
Which… Should they read into it?
What am I doing, telling a man I somewhat recently had sex with to call me late at night when he’s sad, if not suggesting there’s something between us?
I did suggest it, tacitly at least, then backpedaled in terror when he acknowledged what was happening. Which is maybe why that stuff about my habit of bolting stung.
I console myself with pasta. A lot of pasta. The entire box of pasta.
I won’t even get into the amount of wine I wash it down with.
Suffice it to say, enough to text him in the middle of the night.
Molly:I know it was my idea but I don’t think we should talk anymore
I pause, and then type one more line.
Molly:sorry
There, that should settle it.
Usually when I make a decision, especially one involving a man, I am unequivocal. I break off relationships like a bodybuilder snapping a pretzel in half, and then I pop that pretzel into my mouth and savor the salt like I would the taste of his tears.
But this time, it doesn’t work.
I lie awake, clutching my phone until my hand starts to ache, staring at my own text bubble.
I feel like I wrote the wrong thing.
Am I allowed to write something else after requesting cessation of contact? And if so, what do I say? Sorry, Seth, you called it. Intimacy freaks me out! Please make yourself available for light banter only lest I panic and…
And what?
What do I think I will do?
Well, exactly what he said I would.
Run away.
I can’t help it. It’s in my DNA.
I get up and put my phone in the other room where I can’t stare at it or, worse, use it to text Seth something else. I pick up the eight-hundred-page Norwegian novel I’m slogging through and, thanks to the gods of mind-numbing Scandinavian autofiction, fall asleep within minutes.
I wake up to warm California sunlight streaming through the windows and feel good until I remember what I did. I force myself to get up and make coffee before I grab my phone off the charger.
There’s a message from Seth. It’s time-stamped brutally early in the morning, so he must have sent it as soon as he woke up.
Seth:Hey Molls. Don’t be sorry—I get it. You were just trying to be nice and keep me company and I was totally out of line. I hope you don’t think I was criticizing you or that I harbor ill-will over high school. I promise I’m not carrying a grudge.
Seth:The thing is, I think I might be carrying a torch. I really enjoyed our time together at the reunion and getting back in touch with you. I’ve thought about you a lot since we saw each other, and how much fun I had with you, and how beautiful you are, and how hot it was when we had sex.
Seth:I know it’s juvenile playground stuff to antagonize a girl you like, and maybe that’s what I was doing last night, and I’m sorry. If you want to try talking again, I promise to do nothing but flirt with you and tell you how pretty you are. But I hear you, and I won’t bother you unless you tell me it’s okay… at least not until I collect my winnings at our 20th reunion. Take care.—Seth
Trust Seth to be the type of person who writes entire perfectly punctuated paragraphs by text message, and signs them with his name like my mom. The nerdiness of his prose styling, however, does not stop me from doing a deep textual analysis of his every word.
It’s the “carrying a torch” that gets me. It’s got a nice ring to it—courtly with an ache of regret, like it’s torn out of a Lyle Lovett song. There’s a large, wicked part of me that wants to tell him to keep sending me softhearted paragraph-length texts about how lovely I am.
But his sweetness is the clincher. I’m just not nice enough for him.
I wish, for a moment, that I was. That I believed in the logic of rom-coms: that Seth could shore up my faith and sand down my rough edges, and I could brace him with realism until we evolved into each other’s missing piece.
But that’s not how it works.
I send Seth one more message.
Molly:You’re sweet. But I can’t.