Chapter 13
The morning is cold, colder than the lake. Henry taught me that’s why steam rises off the surface of the water; in retrospect, it makes me sound like an idiot that anyone had to tell me this. Of course that’s why steam rises off the water. Joan Didion isn’t the only one who was ever so young.
Henry has been gone since dawn. I have showered.
I have paced. I have replayed the disembodied voice I heard calling out to me last night.
Near-death hallucination or is someone else here?
The idea that I could have been that close to death sickens me, but so does the possibility that we are not alone, Henry and I.
After a while I curl up into the fetal position in a state of pure and uncut terror, wondering what the consequences will be for my failed one-woman mutiny.
I hear the turn of the key, and when the door opens, I am on my feet, facing Henry resolutely. Henry stands there, the size of the fucking door, my phone in the palm of his hand. Nausea slams into me like a two-ton truck. I’d rather he was holding a gun.
With a long index finger, Henry scrolls, stops, begins to read a message he has composed in my voice.
“Hi, Caroline,” he begins. Caroline is the name of the agent who is trying to poach me.
My spine curls inward, my stomach burbles.
I’m going to be sick. Breathe. Breathe, Faye.
“I wanted to tell you that while I enjoyed our meeting too, I’ve decided to stay put.
My team has done right by me all these years, and no doubt you are amazing at what you do, but your taste skews a little too commercial for the aspirations I have for myself. ”
Fuck breathing. Fuck just about everything.
For a certain kind of literary agent, which Caroline Hasser most certainly is, there is no greater insult than the word commercial.
And the way Henry has phrased it—taste skews—is the way I speak.
It is the way everyone I speak to speaks.
Henry Spalding has combed through my messages and delivered a damn-near-flawless performance of Faye Heron.
This is not a message but a missive. It will sound the death knell of any sort of future relationship with Caroline.
It all but ensures that if I do file for divorce, if I do find myself a persona non grata at the agency that has done more than right by me over the years, has made me, really, my options will be severely limited.
Caroline is the head of the literary department at the only other big agency out there.
I know writers and other creators who do not believe they need the backing of the big ones to make it in the industry, and maybe they don’t, but I am someone who needs to have the machine behind her.
I crave conventional structure in every aspect of my life but the creative one.
I need to feel insulated by fast-talking people in pinstripes, cocooned, so that I can set to work spinning all my strange larvae silk.
What’s worse—what’s actually brilliant—Caroline will read this message and think, Fuck you, Faye.
It will not elicit phone calls and messages to check on me and make sure I haven’t been hacked, lost my mind, been kidnapped, the way Henry’s scheduled Instagram rant would have.
Caroline likely won’t even write me back, and there is no one for her to alert.
Of course my husband doesn’t know I’ve met with her.
Caroline is part of the exit plan I’ve been quietly assembling while I come to terms with the fact that my marriage is unsalvageable. This is a clean, traceless hit.
“If you send that,” I say to Henry in a quiet, pleading way, because I’ve decided that appealing to the part of him that needs to feel needed by me is the only way out of this, “I’ll be trapped.”
Henry leans against the walls of my confines with a cavalier arch of an eyebrow. His point is not lost on me.
“This is a stay at the Four Seasons in comparison to what I’m dealing with at home.”
Henry puts a hand to his hair, rumples it handsomely, while he considers my plea.
“From what I’ve pieced together, your friend—who is also your agent?
—seems to think that if you leave him, you’ll have to dissolve your production company, and it could get ugly.
I don’t doubt it will—divorce is a nasty business—but I don’t quite understand why your agency would choose him over you. ”
“Because his brother is a big shot at the firm.”
“Aren’t you?”
“I’m Hollywood middle class compared to him.”
“Faye,” Henry all but purrs, “how modest of you.”
I am reminded of that stick of dynamite between my legs. It’s the snooty voice, the loose way Henry is leaning against the wall. It’s the undeniable reality that he could wreck me with his right thumb. “Okay,” I say in the smallest voice I own, hoping it will appease him.
Henry sniffs, his distaste apparent that I would fold so easily. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I repeat, stronger, “I’ll do what you want.
” Yes, when it comes to doing the thing I like doing, the thing I’m good at, the thing that earned me entreé into Henry’s tax bracket and invites admiration and respect, I will fold easily to protect that.
Why does Henry want me to act as though liking what I do and wanting others to like it too is some sort of deeply immoral character flaw?
“You don’t even know what I want,” Henry says.
“We spent the night together,” I remind him. “I felt what you wanted.”
“Biology, sweetheart.” Henry gives me a small, pitying smile. My stomach twists. I wish I could say in anger.
“I always figured,” Henry continues, a bit sorrowfully, “that what we had was like a rubber band. No matter how far it stretched, it would snap back the next time we were together again. But last night, Faye…” He sighs and real regret shows on his face.
“I slept next to you and I felt for it and it was gone. Whatever has happened to you in the years since we last saw each other, it’s made you, I don’t know…
” I know the word he’s searching for before he says it. “Untouchable.”
I recover, but not quickly enough. Henry catches my grief, and I can see he feels sorry for me.
“I have no desire to fuck you,” he says gently, like he’s trying to let me down easy.
“What I do want is to get into your email. Due to a suspicious sign-in, you’ve been logged out.
Tech support said it could take up to four days, and here we are, on the fourth day.
I’m going to shore so I can write down the security questions you need to answer to be able to reset your password. Do that, and then you can go home.”
I stare up at him, devastated, uncomprehending. “This is why I’m here?”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, but I have not been sitting around pining for you all these years.”
“I heard you,” I say. “Back at the hotel. I heard you say you’d been waiting for this for a long time.
I don’t know what the fuck you want with my email, but that doesn’t line up with anything else you’ve said to me since we’ve been here.
” I hear myself, I sound winded and desperate, but I keep going.
“It doesn’t line up with the way you were with me last night. ”
“I’ve said a lot of things I don’t mean the last few days,” Henry says coolly.
I stare at him, burning with indignation. “Who was that, calling out for me on the water?”
Henry turns to go. “You passed out. It was a dream.”
“I don’t believe you,” I say to his back. “I don’t believe anything you’re telling me.”
Henry steps out the door. “I’ll be leaving shortly. This will be over soon.”