3. Nepotize Me, Cap’n #2
He sent a black car to get me. An Uber, of course, but still, a slick move. Oscar-winning progeny. As far as selling myself went, I could do worse.
I wore a red dress, high neck, open back, bias cut. It clung in the right places, but not too closely—not a club dress. Not that kind of party.
Despite the electrical fan that wheezed across our living room to the best of its geriatric abilities, the kitchen still smelled of last night’s adobo, the lingering waft of garlic a sensual pairing with the heady top notes of sweat.
The evening news was playing on TV, the sound low and omnipresent.
How has the latest abduction affected the local community?
Well, some say it’s nothing new. “When has it ever been safe to walk alone at night? Some of us have to work the graveyard shift regardless—”
My mom, doubled over the dining room table with her box of receipts, gave me a look as I left. “Going out again, I see.”
She didn’t have to voice any specifics to her disapproval. That was the benefit of having done so much of the legwork already. I understood the shorthand, the way I was a disappointment without her even having to specify why.
“You know,” I remarked, choosing inadvisably to poke the bear, “just once, you could tell me I look nice.”
She looked at me for a long time, then returned to her receipts.
“Beauty is fleeting,” she said without glancing back up.
“Sure is,” I muttered back. It was the kind of dig she’d have slapped me for if I were even a few years younger. She did have to fight the urge to look up at me sharply then, I could tell. Her mouth had pressed thin. I could see it, the effort she was making not to give me what I wanted.
The truth was I could see myself in her—the person I’d eventually turn into. My mom was a pretty woman, but her lips had gone narrower and harder with age.
“You’ll have to change your attitude,” she said. “Right now you’re a tenant and an employee. Not an actress.”
I left.
The venue was lovely, frigidly air-conditioned, one of those places I couldn’t otherwise have gotten into on my own.
A former men’s club of some kind, or maybe it still was.
There was an air of vintage about it as I progressed from the lobby to the ballrooms—there was money in the palette of the carpets, the leather furniture worn to comfort by the burden of important thoughts.
In the air, faint hints of tobacco and cedar lingered; the solid wood counters were polished to gleaming.
Rich men in black and white hung from mahogany frames along the walls.
In the lobby, I took a quick picture and added “thursday night vibes” in lower case. Sleek italics to accentuate the elegance, contributing to the false glimmer of my aspirational, parasocial life.
I kept walking, following the signs that read ARA ANNUAL GALA, DE WITT BALLROOM. Teddy met me at the entrance to the ballroom, visibly frazzled in contrast to the sleek tailoring of his suit.
“Sorry, the band got stuck in traffic—been putting out that fire for the last half hour,” he said in my ear, leaning in with a familiarity, a performance of intimacy.
His hand was on my lower back and I understood that I was his girlfriend for the evening, so I shifted to place one hand on his hip.
As I angled myself, something caught my eye from afar—someone my eyes recognized but my brain couldn’t place.
I squinted at the man in worn black jeans, a pair of muddy work boots.
He slipped from my line of sight the moment Teddy steered me into the ballroom, but it didn’t matter. His head had been turned away.
Whoever it was, it was just a blur of distraction, an outfit out of place for the event.
Maybe there had been some kind of electrical or plumbing malfunction.
Just another thing among many that were indisputably background to the subject at hand, like the women my age or older who were passing hors d’oeuvres, carrying drinks around on trays.
I’d had my fair share of stints as a catering waitress, singer for the band, hired bartender, you name it.
It felt strange, as it always did, to linger on the precipice between guest and help.
“I’ve got to check on something, I’m so sorry—Here, let me at least get you a drink—” Teddy angled me toward the bar, but I shook him off gently, with a curated air of fondness.
“I can get my own drinks, Teddy. I’m a big girl.
” Cool girl, unshakable, at home in a room full of strangers, that was all part of the role.
The mask was on again, though I couldn’t technically tell you what was underneath it.
If there was a version of me who disliked this, it had stopped mattering long ago.
“I’ll be right back, I swear—”
“Take your time, I’m fine.” I nudged him playfully. “Get to work.”
He beamed. I almost bought my own performance.
In my head, we’d woken up together that morning, he’d complained about his job, tracing his initials on my bare stomach, groaning a refusal to leave the crisp white sheets, the smell of my perfume on his neck.
(I don’t know why I always reverted to this, the image of myself as the dead wife in flashbacks. An archetypal role, I guess.)
I turned to the bar and ordered a rye on ice.
“Now that’s a big girl drink,” said a voice behind me, and I turned to find a blond woman standing near me, a bright, sunrise-colored cocktail clutched in one hand.
She looked so LA I struggled to break her down to parts—the composite was so uniform.
Tan, toned, expertly preserved. Beautiful by every conceivable tenet.
She had to be somewhere in the forties or even fifties if she appeared to be in her thirties, or so I’d learned over the course of my tenure among upwardly mobile white people.
She looked perhaps a decade older than me, which pending the skill of her plastic surgeon could have put her anywhere from thirty-five to sixty-five.
“I despise anything that isn’t mostly juice,” she said, raising her tropical cocktail to her lips for emphasis.
“It’s a precautionary measure,” I assured her, angling in her direction. Now I had a friend, and a rich one. The evening was going swimmingly. “The more unpleasant the drink, the easier it is to avoid drinking it too quickly.”
“Ah! A tactician.”
“Trying my best.”
“Beauty and brains.” She toasted me then.
The bartender handed me my drink and I tried not to notice things that weren’t appropriate for my character to notice, like how attractive the bartender was.
This was not a night to fuck the bartender, who was almost certainly another aspiring actor.
I was young, never more beautiful, never less at war with my body than I ultimately would be.
Sex for the sake of sex I could have anytime, anyplace; sex for love I could have had if I chose to, and obviously I did not.
When was sex not, in some way, a business decision? In that regard, only two people mattered to me that evening, and one was a vessel to the other. This was a night to chase the Oscar progeny, whether or not my loins happened to flame.
“So.” The woman beside me sipped her drink, glancing askance at me. She carried a noticeable scent, something approximating nectar, an almost overripe sweetness. I couldn’t tell if it was her perfume or something else—it could have easily been her cocktail. “You’re here with Edward, then?”
I realized Teddy might not go by Teddy in professional landscapes. “I am, yes. We’re old friends.”
“He’s got a thought or two in that brain, doesn’t he?
I’ll give him that. Lovely portfolio, God help him.
Lovely doesn’t cut it these days the way you’d think it should.
” The woman sipped her drink again, masking a small cough.
“I’d prefer he looked like that,” she added, gesturing to the bartender behind us, a sentiment I tried not to audibly share.
“But perhaps understandably, William does not concern himself with my entertainment when it comes to humanitarian affairs.”
William. Interesting. Was she testing me with that demure little name drop? Yes, I felt sure she was. I sipped my drink, guessing her archetype.
“Men can be such tyrants,” I said. She laughed; I’d nailed it. West Coast liberalism demanded little in the way of meaningful politics, but those of a certain age were all girlbosses to some extent.
“Emmanuelle de Witt,” she said, holding out her hand.
I offered mine. “Anya Morris.”
“Of the New York Morrises?”
“Possibly? My father’s from New Jersey.” I doubted there was any relation whatsoever, but per the demands of my craft, I suspended disbelief.
“Oh, so very possibly, then.” She sipped more thoughtfully, then added, “Genealogy is a little hobby of ours. William’s positively fanatical.”
Another test. “Oh?”
“It’s the legacy, you know. Killian was a massive collector.
All those books.” Killian. Another name drop, still frustratingly opaque.
A de Witt by blood or by marriage? Not that it mattered, aside from helping me determine her billing among the cast. She flapped a hand and turned to me. “Anyway. Film or tech?”
“Film,” I said apologetically.
“Ah, I knew it.” Her smile was wry and private, like she’d won a bet with herself. “Finally, an actual artist. You’re an actress?”
“Yes, on the industry’s better days. Other days I’m just a content creator.”
“Oh, what a mess.” She gave a vague, unreadable gesture. She seemed to routinely leave half the conversation unsaid. “Is today a good day, then? Industry-wise.”
“In Pacific Time? The night’s still young. In New York, I’m already toast,” I replied. She laughed again. I warmed with the whiskey, with the knowledge that she liked me. Whether I liked her back was not yet relevant, possibly never would be.