Fifteen
I WASN’T GOING to make a “Day in the Life” documentary about Hutch, of course.
Not to put up on YouTube for all the world to see.
I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t. Not knowing everything I knew now.
Here was my plan: I’d make the video—and make it amazing —and show it to Sullivan and her executive team to prove my worth and save my job. I’d do my normal thing—but then I’d just never upload it.
That could work, right?
If Hutch didn’t want to be famous, then I wouldn’t make him any more famous.
I’d just use Hutch’s infinite charms to make a video so kick-ass that Sullivan had no choice but to let me keep my job. What was that Steve Martin quote? “Be so good they can’t ignore you”? I would be so amazing they couldn’t downsize me.
Not as catchy, but still.
And if I had to objectify Hutch a little bit to delight my she-wolf boss and get that done?
There were worse penances to pay.
This was a way for everybody to win, right?
I typically started the “Day in the Life” sessions around ten in the morning. This gave me plenty of time to get good footage before the sun went down, a night to sleep on it, and then a little time the next morning to capture anything I’d missed.
The next morning at ten sharp, I showed up at Hutch’s house. Except it wasn’t a house.
It was a houseboat.
Of all things.
In case this needs to be said, it’s a very strange feeling to pack up all your favorite camera equipment and borrow your landlord’s Mini Cooper and drive to a sleepover with a man who does not want you there.
Twenty-four hours can be a very long time.
And then when your map app leads you to a place called the Sunshine Marina? And the house turns out to be a houseboat? Even stranger.
At first, I thought I must have the address wrong.
Until I saw the hand lettering on the hull that read Rue the Day . Perhaps in honor of the only person I’d ever met named Rue. And then, above it, on the rooftop deck, wagging his tail at the sight of me, I saw George Bailey.
Guess this must be it.
But didn’t military people live in… I don’t know— barracks , or something?
All the time I’d spent with Hutch, and it had never once occurred to me that he went home every night and slept on the water .
It made him even more appealing, if that was possible.
I hesitated a minute before walking down the dock to get things started. I wasn’t sure what to make of his hot-cold thing. No doubt he was angry about having to do this. But was he really so angry that it completely nullified all the things he’d said—and done—just two nights before?
It seemed extreme. But he wasn’t explaining—and I didn’t know how to make him explain.
I didn’t see a way out. So I guessed I’d just have to go through.
The good news is, the first load of stuff I carried with me, as I went to go knock on Hutch’s door, was just my overnight bag—not the bag with all my camera equipment.
As soon as I stepped off the dock onto the back deck of the boat, two things happened: one, Hutch opened the back door, and two, George Bailey scrambled down the spiral stairs from the rooftop and bounded right at me to catapult himself into my arms.
Thinking, again, contrary to all laws of physics, that I was going to catch him.
Which, of course, I didn’t.
But, this time, George Bailey didn’t just knock me down.
He knocked me overboard .
Me, and himself, and my overnight bag. We all flew backward and plunged into the very cold, very wet, very watery water of the marina.
Yes, I’d been taking swim lessons with Hutch. And yes, I’d passed my SWET training. But those had been controlled conditions. Now I was in a much deeper, much realer natural body of water. And now I had all my clothes—and sneakers—on. And now I was tangled in the cross-body strap of my duffel bag. With a Great Dane plunging in after me and then using my body as a climbing structure to scramble back up toward the surface.
Given the shock of it all, I did a pretty good job of pulling myself together. I followed Hutch’s advice and said to myself, You’ve been underwater before . And that was enough to help me not panic. I wriggled out of the shoulder strap and reminded myself that my body fat wanted to float. Whatever air was in my lungs would also want to float—though I wasn’t sure if George Bailey’s impact had knocked all of that out. Make your hands into fins , I commanded myself. Kick your feet.
Amazingly, I listened.
Even more amazingly, it worked.
I could see sunlight filtering down from above—and I reached for it. And kicked like hell. And before I knew it, I surfaced.
I was halfway through a triumphant breath when Hutch surfaced right next to me.
Without even saying anything, he manhandled me, flipped me around, and maneuvered me toward the boat—exactly like he’d done to the soul he rescued yesterday.
Despite the fact that I’d just handled the moment competently myself, I confess that it did feel surprisingly comforting to be taken in Hutch’s arms. It was a physical and undeniable feeling of safety that just doesn’t come along too often in day-to-day life.
Still, on principle, I argued.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, as he swam us toward the boat ladder.
“I’m rescuing you.”
“But I already rescued myself!”
As he grabbed the ladder, he let go of me.
I turned around, grabbed the ladder, too, and faced Hutch in the water.
He looked at me, realizing that was true. “I guess you did.”
“Isn’t that what you’ve been teaching me to do?”
“These are just very different conditions.”
At those words, George Bailey paddled up and between us toward the ladder, and, in unison, we both pushed on his butt as he scrambled back up onto the deck and then shook the water out of his fur.
Hutch looked from the dog to me. “Why does he keep trying to jump into your arms?”
“He’s your dog, pal.”
“I’m sincerely sorry,” Hutch said.
“It’s okay,” I said—and then I noticed my suitcase floating away behind him.
Hutch turned to see it, too, and then he was off like a dolphin to retrieve it for me. “Let’s get you inside,” he said, when he got back.
“You don’t have to push me on the butt like George Bailey,” I said, pointing at him before I started up the ladder.
Hutch held up both hands and said, “I wouldn’t dare.”
I wound up showering and changing into some sweats of Hutch’s, while he loaded batches of my marina-water-soaked things into the tiniest washing machine in the world. Even over the noise of the shower water, I could hear him humming “Heart and Soul.”
In the shower, the soap stung my breastbone, and I found scratches there as thick as yarn from George Bailey’s claws. Later, I showed them to Hutch by pulling the collar of the T-shirt down and tilting my neck back.
Hutch frowned at the sight and then made me sit on a kitchen stool while he dabbed ointment on with a Q-tip—apologizing over and over.
Yes, I probably could have managed that procedure by myself in private in the bathroom. But Hutch was a professional. Plus, it was really—surprisingly—nice to be taken care of.
What can I say? I just went ahead and let it happen.
“I keep thinking about it and thinking about it,” Hutch said, standing close and dabbing along the scratch line. “What is it about you?”
No lie: that’s a heck of a thing to hear from a man as dreamy as Hutch when he’s standing six inches away and giving medical attention to your chest. “You keep thinking and thinking,” I echoed, watching his hand as he worked, “what it is about me?”
“You and this dog,” Hutch said.
Ah. Yes. The dog. I regrouped. “Maybe I remind him of someone?” I offered. “Or maybe he can sense that I’m very good at hugs?”
“Are you?” Hutch asked, not looking up.
“Of course,” I said. “I’m out of practice, but I’m good.”
WAS GETTING KNOCKED ass-over-teakettle off the side of a boat the ideal way to start a filming session?
Ordinarily, no.
But starting like this had a huge upside this time: Hutch felt so guilty and responsible, he was much nicer to me afterward.
I’d been anticipating put-upon silence, and maybe that’s what I would’ve gotten—if his dog hadn’t almost drowned me. But in the wake of that impromptu water rescue, I got apologies, and hot tea, and a soft T-shirt with the big letters USCG across it. I got eye contact, and chitchat, and kindness. I’d been braced for a solid day of misery, and instead, it was… quietly fun. Which sparked a conspiracy theory in my head that I did not share with Hutch. Maybe George Bailey was helping me. Maybe that was the deal with this dog. Maybe he was some kind of canine yenta.
Impossible, of course. But the facts didn’t lie.
Everything we had to do in the next twenty-four hours got a lot more fun if Hutch wasn’t actively mad at me. And everything we had to do included me following him around, filming whatever it was that he did on his day off. Everyday things: folding laundry, making sandwiches, going for a run, cleaning the boat. I got all kinds of beautiful close-ups of the sandwich, the laundry tumbling in the dryer, his sneakers, the bucket of soap bubbles.
I asked if he really did two hundred push-ups every day, and he said yes, but only in the morning. I asked him if he could do some jump-roping tricks, and he obliged. I also happened to show up on a deck-washing day, so I was forced to film shirtless Hutch in his swim trunks scrubbing the deck—soap, hoses, and all.
The things we do for art.
I would apologize for objectifying him, but I didn’t have a choice. I had, at this point, an audience of one—Sullivan. Of the six minutes I had to work with, shirtless jump-roping could have as many as it wanted.
The craziest part of the day was taking George Bailey on a walk. I went with them and got wide shots of the two of them playing in the grass at a nearby park, the dog hip-height to the man beside him. Also: close-ups of George Bailey’s velvety ears, his sad eyes, and his big paws padding along the weathered wood of the docks. Oh—and a fantastic wide shot of the moment when Hutch patted his own shoulders, and George Bailey lifted up on his hind paws to rest his front ones there—and he was taller than Hutch .
The moment just happened to happen in front of a purple-and-orange sunset.
So many great visuals.
On the way back, once I had all my shots, I fell into step beside them.
“I can’t believe you live on a houseboat,” I said. “Who lives on a houseboat?”
“It’s not mine,” Hutch said. “It’s Rue’s. Or, actually—it was her husband, Robert’s. He built it himself. He was an engineer. Anyway, she couldn’t bring herself to sell it. She kept it in storage all these years. When I moved here, she offered it to me, and one weekend we docked it at the marina.”
“It’s Rue’s? I can’t believe she hasn’t decorated it for you.”
“She wants to. Badly. But I’m holding firm. Just keeping it clean is enough for me.”
“It does seem quite clean. Almost brand-new.”
Hutch’s voice got a little quieter. “Well, Robert had just finished it when… the accident happened. They were going to retire and spend summers on it, but they never got the chance.”
Just then, George Bailey stopped and dropped his head.
“Shit,” Hutch said, dropping to his knee beside him. And in seconds, Hutch had pulled a yellow dishwashing glove out of his pocket and shoved his hand into it, and then took ahold of George Bailey’s snout. “Nope, nope, nope. That’s a nope.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Hutch put his fingers into George Bailey’s mouth, trying to pry his jaws open. “Toad,” he said.
“Toad?”
Hutch nodded, still working. “He likes to scoop them up in his mouth.”
I stared in horror. “He eats live toads?”
“He doesn’t eat them. He just holds them. In his mouth.”
“He just—?”
“Which is fine. To each his own, you know? And native toads are fine. No harm, no foul. But there’s an invasive species called the cane toad that squirts poison—like lethal in fifteen minutes if you don’t do anything. So he just can’t be messing around with toads. I keep explain ing this to him,” Hutch said, still working on George Bailey’s jaw, “but he never listens.”
Right then, Hutch’s fingers must have tripped a gag reflex, because George Bailey made a little hacking noise, lowered his head, and opened his jaw.
Out flopped a medium-sized toad.
Hutch pulled out his flashlight and peered at it while the toad took a second to gather its wits, and then it hopped off into the grass, unharmed.
“Was that a poisonous one?” I asked.
Hutch shook his head. “There’s no ridge on the head. We’re good.”
“Wow,” I said, in a tone like That was close .
“Yeah,” Hutch said. “Normally, I walk him earlier. And watch him closer. But today I’m—” He glanced my way. “Distracted.”
By the time we got back, the sun was down. The plan was to film Hutch making dinner, and then eat together, and then sit down for an official interview, where I’d ask him about the Puppy Love rescue. I always filmed the interviews—but since I only used the audio, the visuals didn’t matter, and so I generally did those at night.
We had time. No rush.
Hutch made pasta with fresh tomato sauce and basil, and we ate it on the rooftop deck, with the vast starry sky above and the sparkling water below.
And then, after a careful sound check of all the locations on the boat, I determined that Hutch’s bedroom, of all places, was the quietest spot for recording sound. I got set up in there while Hutch was off in the kitchen, making George Bailey’s dinner.
And then a funny thing happened.
I realized I’d forgotten my extension cord.
“Do you have an extension cord?” I called to Hutch in the other room.
“In the closet! At the bottom! In a plastic tub!” he called back.
And so then I was opening Hutch’s closet, having some kind of visceral pheromone reaction to the sensation of all his clothes hanging there together, then pulling out the plastic tub, only to find something else behind it.
Back in the corner of the closet, dropped and forgotten by the look of things, was my little hot-pink hibiscus hair clip. The one Rue had given me. The one I’d lost during the Great Splinter Removal.
I stared at it for a second.
What in the world was my hair clip doing in Hutch’s closet?
Was it there on purpose? By accident? Was it a keepsake? A memento? Had he found it and saved it for me—but then forgotten to return it?
I wondered if I should just take it back. Or ask him about it. But I had a feeling like it being there might mean something—which might be embarrassing for Hutch. Or it might mean nothing—which would be embarrassing for me. So when I put the tub back, I set the flower back in place where I’d found it.
Better to let things unfold on their own.
THE INTERVIEW WENT really well. Maybe all Hutch had needed was practice. Or maybe it was the comfort of being in his own bedroom, instead of at work. Or maybe it had been a long day and he was ready to let his guard down. But he told the story of rescuing Jennifer Aniston’s dog simply and clearly—in a way that was nothing short of page-turning. I sat beside him on the bed with my headphones on, holding the mic and letting that sandpapery voice of his just flood every nook and cranny of my ears and then wash on down through the rest of me.
And this was before I’d added visuals.
This “Day in the Life” was going to be epic, and gorgeous, and unforgettable.
Too bad nobody would ever see it but me. And Sullivan.
AFTERWARD, WHEN IT was time for bed, Hutch tried to insist on giving me his bedroom.
“I changed the sheets and everything,” he said.
“I’m fine on the sofa,” I said.
“That doesn’t feel polite—to make a guest sleep on the sofa.”
“I’m not a guest. I’m a filmmaker.”
“Still—”
“Look,” I said, “this isn’t some corporate thing I normally make in my normal job. This isn’t some stiff executive reading cue cards. This is journalism. This is cinema verité. I’m trying to do something important here. I’m trying to capture something true—something that matters about the human spirit. I have to film what’s real. I’m trying to capture your actual life. Would I be in your bed in your actual life?”
Hutch blinked.
“That didn’t come out right,” I said. “You know what I mean.”
He nodded. “Okay, then. But don’t be surprised if you get licked.”
Now it was my turn to blink.
But then I followed Hutch’s gaze to George Bailey, dozing on a rug nearby.
Ah.
“This room is kind of his territory.”
“Fine. That’s fine.”
Hutch gave a little headshake, like he was pretty sure it wouldn’t be fine.
As he walked away, I called after him, “There is one favor I need to ask of you, though.”
He turned. “Shoot.”
But this was a terrible question to have to ask. I squeezed my eyes closed. “Can I film you putting on your pajamas?”
Another new Hutch frown for the collection: Are you insane? “What?”
How to explain? Cole had definitely told him my job was on the line. But how much had he told him?
“Did Cole tell you about Sullivan?” I asked.
Hutch shook his head.
I took a breath. “Our boss is a lady named Karen Sullivan. She’s the main person who gets to decide if I keep my job or not. She will see this video. And I think she will really… appreciate your visuals.”
“Appreciate my visuals?”
I nodded. “So much so that she might not fire me.”
Hutch tilted his head inquisitively. “Are you trying to titillate your boss?”
“Just a little bit,” I said. “For a good cause.”
At that, Hutch smiled and shook his head. And I suddenly noticed that I’d seen him smile more times today than in all the weeks I’d been following him around.
I hated to belabor it, but I felt the need to justify myself. “I’m just saying,” I said, gesturing at his torso, “that thing could save my job.”
Now Hutch looked almost embarrassed. “Only one problem,” he said. “I don’t sleep in pajamas.”
Oh, god. “Please tell me you don’t sleep naked.”
“That would be a tall order for your cinema verité, wouldn’t it?”
I flared my nostrils, like Just tell me.
“I do not sleep naked,” Hutch said.
I let out a relief-drenched sigh—
“I sleep in boxer briefs.”
—then I tried to suck it back in.
The sight of this made Hutch laugh. “I can put on pajamas, if you want,” Hutch offered.
With most men, I would’ve jumped at that offer. Of course. Of course he shouldn’t be sleeping in his underwear.
But there was just something about Hutch.
I thought about a story Rue had told me the other night about a time she and Hutch were traveling together and their flight got delayed. They had to deboard and wait to change planes in the terminal. The hours ticked by, and people were missing connections right and left, and everybody waiting just got angrier and angrier, and people started going up to the reservation desk and yelling at the gate agents—who, of course, had no control over anything.
After watching this for a little while, Hutch got up and walked off.
When he came back, he had a whole tray of coffees. He walked up to the reservation desk, and he set the coffees down, and said to the ticket agent, “I know it’s been a tough day, and I know you’re all working so hard. Thank you for everything you’re doing.”
Then he left the coffees there for them.
Rue said the whole area went dead quiet. Everybody witnessed that one act of kindness—and had to confront the humanity of those ticket agents in a whole new way. The man who was mid-rant lowered his arms, closed his mouth, and walked quietly back to his seat. Rue herself, who had been frustrated, too, totally recalibrated. That one action, she told me, shaking her head, just neutralized everybody, and reminded them what human decency was—and let the agents get back to work.
I guess what I’m saying is… if a guy like that wanted to sleep in his underwear, he could sleep in his underwear.
It’s such a vital skill—learning to recognize who’s a good guy and who isn’t. Sometimes it’s hard to tell, and sometimes it’s impossible. But I had to admit right then that I was as sure as a person could be that Hutch was, absolutely, a good guy. From watching him take a sticker burr out of George Bailey’s paw on our walk tonight, to the way he’d grabbed my pasta bowl back so he could add a sprig of basil… I knew. I just knew.
He was a person it was okay to feel safe with.
“Just sleep how you’d normally sleep,” I said. “I’m not uncomfortable.” And I meant it. “But,” I added then, getting back to Sullivan, “if you’re not putting things on for bed, could I film you taking a few things off? ”