Chapter 37
“What qualities will you bring to this job that other candidates might not?” the man who couldn’t have been more than twenty-four asked me.
Tomorrow had come, and here I was, all dressed up, makeup on, talking to the assistant of a movie producer asking me what qualities I could bring to taking coffee orders and stocking dressing rooms with snacks.
For some reason, when Cheryl told me her company was hiring, I had pictured something more administrative.
She was a casting director. I thought she wanted me to give input there.
But I realized that was a ridiculous notion.
That wasn’t a job someone walked into with no experience.
I’d also thought this interview was a formality, but as I took in the overly serious expression of Mr. Jeans and T-Shirt, I knew that it wasn’t.
“I’m really good at blending in,” I said to the twenty-four-(twenty-three?)-year-old.
“Making myself unseen in the most helpful ways.” That probably wasn’t the answer he wanted.
He wanted to hear that I was a hard worker or a team player or had a photographic memory or something. But my answer felt more true right now.
The impressed downward turn of his lips made me think that being invisible was probably something he hadn’t considered a strength before now.
We were sitting on high stools in the corner of a warehouse, set pieces and lights being moved around us by a dozen or so people in orange shirts.
A golf cart zipped by outside. My heel slipped off the bottom rung of the stool where it had been resting, causing me to jolt forward before regaining my balance.
“Well, Margot, the job is yours if you want it.”
“I got the job?” I asked, somewhat surprised. My answer to the last question wasn’t any better than my answers to the dozen before that had been. Maybe this really was just a formality.
“Yes,” he said, standing. “Report here tomorrow at seven A.M. sharp.” He took in my pencil skirt and button-down blouse. “You can wear something more comfortable.”
“You don’t think this is comfortable?” I asked.
He finally cracked a smile. “You’ll want sneakers. Trust me, you’ll be walking a lot.”
“Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow… I guess,” I said.
“Great,” he said.
Yes, great , I thought with a sigh as I walked away. This was just temporary, I reminded myself. Just until I could get some clients, sell some books. Just temporary.
I drove home trying to think of this as a good thing. I’d have some money coming in. The pay wasn’t terrible. It would take some stress off. It would keep me busy. Help me not be in my head all day or incessantly checking emails.
I had all but talked myself into how amazing this was going to be when I pulled into my designated spot back home and walked the path to my door. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, twenty feet from my destination. A figure sat on my front porch.
She stood when she saw me. “Hi.”
“Audrey.”
“Can we talk?” She pointed over her shoulder at the apartment.
“Okay.” I finished my walk and unlocked the door, her floral scent hitting me in the face as I did.
She followed me inside.
I threw my keys on the kitchen counter, then stood facing her, my arms crossed, waiting.
She took in my living room, her eyes landing on each of the poor decorating decisions Sloane and I had made over the years. A mishmash of clutter, really. She sunk to the couch. “We’ve never fought like this before.”
“That’s because I always apologize,” I said. “I’m not apologizing this time.”
“You want me to apologize? You called me a bitch.”
“A judgmental bitch,” I amended. “You really didn’t come here to apologize?”
“I came here to talk.”
I sighed, bracing myself on the back of the love seat. “I’m not in the mood, Audrey. I just took a job as an assistant to an assistant, so you can gloat and leave now.”
“You took a job? I thought you were starting your own agency.”
“Didn’t you assume I’d fail at that?” I said.
“Maggie, you’re not being fair.”
“You made a fruit tray, Audrey. You didn’t even give me a chance to follow through.
You didn’t even trust me with fruit.” Maybe it wasn’t the right example, since I did not, in fact, follow through with the fruit.
But that was beside the point. The point was that she didn’t believe in me, not even with the most minuscule things, like a stupid fruit tray.
“I trust you,” she insisted. “Don’t give up. Don’t take an assistant job.”
“Wasn’t it you who said I live in a dream world? Encouraged me to go to Santa Barbara instead of UCLA, told me to give up screenwriting. Said it was impractical? I’m just being realistic, Audrey.”
“I was trying to help,” she said.
“Were you?”
She blew a breath out her nose. “Fine. Whatever. Do what you want.”
“Thank you. I will.”
She grunted and crossed her arms. “And Oliver?”
His name made me flinch, then settled in the pit of my stomach and seemed to harden there into a painful knot. “What about him?”
“It’s just, my viewers have researched me. Found pictures I posted online years ago. They know I’ve dated him. How will that look if they find out you’re dating him now? It will be weird.”
“I don’t care about your viewers.”
“It’s my life, Maggie. My livelihood. I care.”
I sighed. “I already told you I’m not dating him anymore.
So you can stop worrying. There is no evidence of our time together anywhere on the internet.
” That thought made me sad. Made it seem like it had all been something I’d conjured up in my imagination.
I stepped out of my heels and used my foot to slide them next to the couch.
“Wait, is that why you came here? To make sure I wasn’t dating him? ”
“I came here to try to make things right.”
“Okay, well, things don’t always happen just because you want them to. I need some time.”
“I don’t understand why you’re so mad at me,” she said.
“I think that’s the main problem,” I returned.
She stood. “Maggie, you don’t have to get a job. I’ll let you borrow some money. Help you develop a plan for your business.”
“Absolutely not.”
“But you were going to let Mom loan you money?”
“Mom wouldn’t hold it over my head. Tell me exactly how I need to spend it.”
“I run a successful business.”
“You know nothing about publishing and yet you still think you would do a better job than me. You don’t believe in me. Only in yourself. That’s why I’m mad, Audrey. That.”
“ I don’t believe in me,” I said.
“What?” Sloane asked.
We were sitting at the dinner table, a plateful of street tacos between us.
We’d both just gotten home from work. Mr. Twenty-Three (twenty-two?) was right, sneakers were a must. I’d been on my feet all day and I was tired.
I hadn’t even had a second to feel sorry for myself.
Okay, fine, I had a few seconds for that.
“I don’t believe in myself,” I said again. “I believed in everything my sister ever did with all my heart, knew she would succeed. But when it came to me, I second-guessed, let myself be talked out of everything, just assumed I would fail. I have always gotten in my own way.”
“Your sister isn’t innocent in all this.”
“I know,” I said, squeezing a lime over the cabbage and meat on my taco. “But it’s not her life. It’s mine. She is not the arbiter of success. I do not have to do things the way she did them in order for them to work. I don’t always have to defer to her.”
“Amen,” Sloane said.
“I’m going to post in more writer forums and travel to writing conferences. Get myself in front of writers.”
Sloane’s eyebrows popped up. “Yes, you should.”
“I know, I should save my money.”
“I wasn’t thinking that at all.”
I laughed. “Yes, you were.”
“Yes, I was,” she said around a bite of taco.
“I’m going to borrow money from my parents so I’m not so strapped. Because I believe I’m going to be successful and I didn’t do a good job of making them believe that. I’ll make a PowerPoint or something. They’ll eat that up.”
She squeezed my arm. “Tell me you’re going to quit your new job.”
“Ha! Yes, I am. Because I’m going to put more time into my business.”
“Because you are going to succeed,” she said.
“Because I am going to succeed,” I repeated.