Chapter 30 #2
No dice. I’m a producer, baby, so why don’t you blow me. “We’ll see. But no pressure there. Jeremy might also have something for me.”
“Okay, now I really like the sound of him.”
My stomach is rumbling, and no wonder Dick is always so worked up. Making a movie is nerve-racking. Can I do it? Can I pull it off?
—
Three…two…ACTION.
Here you come, walking down Eighth Street, and this is it.
The first scene is a quickie. Just us. Smooth sailing thus far—KNOCK ON WOOD—and you hug me.
You missed me; you don’t have to say it.
I feel it. We reenter India on Eighth Street for THINGS I LEARNED HOW TO PRONOUNCE.
You know, a redemption tour kinda thing.
We are first to arrive, and our asses are planted on green velour pillows.
I’ve been practicing, training my stomach the way I trained my muscles.
You look good, like you care. You wore your cape and my raspberry birthday beret, and I brought TUMS. I’m not gonna get the runs tonight and you want beer, so we get beer and you rub your hands together and clap.
“So how have you been?”
I’m too nervous to say much, and I can’t tell you about my auditions. “You first.”
You’re nervous too, so it’s good for you to anxiously talk about your day with Barry, even if it is hard to pay attention.
This is dangerous, what I’m doing, and the city is a character, the one I can’t control.
What if you know Carl? What if you’ve been to Betty’s bar?
I showed them a picture of you, and they swear they’ve never met you and they wouldn’t lie to me—I like those actors, I do—but what if you saw them?
Betty told me to remember the bottom line.
This is what we do, Joe. We met in an improv class. Do not worry. Love always prevails!
You put your hand on my arm. Love prevails. “I think that’s them.”
The curtains open wide on the Dinner Theater, a Joe Goldberg Joint.
I knock back a shot of Jim Fucking Henson. A good director stays loose. Ready. Action.
Jeremy is a hugger, and he looks like Piven. Blazer over a Vice City T-shirt. I’d believe he’s a blogger and he jokes about the last time I was here like a real friend. You can’t believe I told him about that, and Sarah says Jeremy and I talk about everything.
They sit on their green pillows and we sit on our green pillows and the little bowls of THINGS I CAN PRONOUNCE start to fill up our table.
The conversation flows. You love Jeremy.
You say it so many times that I’m having yellow hat flashbacks, and I’m relieved when he steps away to take a call on his cell, when Betty slips off to the bathroom.
“Well,” you say. “What can I say, Cusack? I fucking love them.”
That’s an A-plus from a Lisa Schwarzbaum movie review, and I am good. “I know, right? Like you said…Dick and Schlitz, not quite my speed, but Jeremy and Betty…”
“Who’s Betty?”
JIM HENSON BE DAMNED, and I choke. “Shit.”
“Are you okay?”
No. “Yes, just went down the wrong tube. Betty is Jeremy’s ex.”
“Ah,” you say. “So, you don’t know Sarah as well?”
“Well, Betty was a bartender, and we used to hang out with her at her bar a lot.”
“Which bar?”
No no no no no no. “Oh, it closed. Some dive on the Upper West. No great shakes.”
You nibble on your naan and Jeremy trots back to the table. “Sorry. That was my agent.”
Everyone is a liar, a dreamer, and you whistle. “Wow,” you say. “I feel stupid, but I didn’t realize that bloggers have agents.”
OH THAT’S RIGHT AND FUCK YOU, JEREMY CARL. I cut in, as the director has to do in a jam. “Well, Jeremy is also writing a novel…”
He gets it. He opts out of another shot and nurses his beer and says he can’t talk about the novel until he finishes the novel—you hear that, Angus?—and you say that sounds like Fight Club logic and Betty is back from the bathroom and you don’t miss a beat.
“Sarah, have you read Jeremy’s book?”
Betty blinks in that way where you can tell she’s an actress, new to the game, the gig. “Did I read what?”
I was wrong—I am going to get the runs—and Jeremy laughs. “Ouch…. Ouch.”
They really are good with improv, the way Carl feeds Betty the intel about his novel, the first few pages of it anyway.
Betty plays with this new information like it’s an old toy, entertaining you with tales of his angsty late-night brooding back in San Fran.
They have me convinced. They have you convinced, and much as I like them…
I will never trust a fucking actor. Ever.
Betty wraps up a tale of her own little quarter-life crisis, the way she might apply to grad school but for what, who can tell.
You sip your beer and smile. “Sarah, I hear you so hard. I thought hitting the big two-five would make me chill out, but my level of lost is that I borrowed my roommate’s camcorder to tape an audition for a cohost job on The View. ”
You turn red and everyone laughs and it’s just the kind of thing you never would’ve told me until tonight and now I get it, the reason you needed “space.” You touch me. “Don’t worry, Joe. If I get on that show and you’re a PA, my first order of business is to give you a promotion.”
You will never be on The View (that’s a compliment) and I will never work at The View (that’s a fact) and it doesn’t fucking matter!
All that matters is now. Jeremy and Sarah are perfect.
Encouraging, as in they can see that for you.
Sarah says there is too much pressure in the city.
She only figured things out when she moved to San Francisco, when she had space and sunlight.
You touch your heart. “I could never leave New York.”
We all felt it. By New York, you mean me. I kiss the back of your hand. “Big did.”
And now it’s time to talk about Sex. A relief, because more food arrived and the pressure is off.
Sex doesn’t require me to lie or keep track of every little detail.
I’m able to focus on small bites. I don’t sweat or get the runs, and then it’s a wrap on this scene!
We split the bill as Carl and I joke about that time we drunkenly accidentally dined and dashed at Veselka—give this man an Oscar!
—and now it’s our MONTAGE: HANDSOME COUPLES TAKE ON MANHATTAN.
We leave India, floating through the East Village like Harry and Sally and the other two. We point at funny T-shirts and crazy shoes, and it’s all so natural, the way Carl and Betty drift ahead of us, the way you lean your head on my shoulder.
“I really do love them. Maybe sometime we can visit them in San Francisco.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe we could do that.”
“Maybe soon? Barry doesn’t have an episode in April. I could get away for a few days….”
This is not possible, Vail. Jeremy and Sarah do not exist. “Well, that would be great.”
“I know I’m a hypocrite with the let’s take it slow and then…let’s fly to California.”
Indeed. “Never.”
“You’re probably like, ‘This little old lady is going from zero to sixty,’ and I just…”
Jeremy looks back at us to see where we are, and he sees us having a moment. Paid friends are the best friends. I look at you. The new you. The new you as in the one who sees the full me, the loved me. “Vail, it’s a cliché for a reason, okay? Age is just a number.”
“Sarah’s really pretty.”
That is bait. I do not bite. I do better. I kiss you. “And yeah, Vail. It would be fucking fun to go to San Fran, maybe even move there….”
You ask me if I like hills and rice as we laugh and realize we don’t know shit about San Francisco.
We’re more equal than ever and you’re afraid that you want me too much, afraid that I will back out the second you jump in.
“I gotta say, Joe. I was nervous, but this…this is nice. And it means a lot to me, meeting your friends, and they’re so settled, you know?
They make me feel like I’m gonna figure out stuff in my life. I love that.”
The tables are turning. You are the young one, despite your age, your world-class family travel, and your college degree. “Well, they love you, Vail. And if we wanna go to San Francisco, we can go to San Francisco. We can do whatever the hell we want.”
Your lips quiver. “I lied to you.”
THAT IS NOT IN THE SCRIPT and I fucking hate improv, I do. “Okay.”
“The reason I haven’t introduced you to Barry…”
“Vail, that’s your work. I don’t need to meet your boss.”
“Well, Joe, I have to say it….” He has a big cock. “He’s my uncle, okay?”
You don’t seem to get that this is good news. “Ah. He’s your Uncle Angus.”
“No, Joe. I make it sound like I’m a part of things on the show. I’m learning the ropes, but really I’m just…I’m a professional niece. Everyone I work with knows it, I’m only there as a favor to my ritzy uncle, so last week…I can’t.”
“It’s okay.” And necessary. I have to know why you iced me out. Learn, baby, learn.
“I went to this temp agency, and the woman was so mean. She was like, ‘Do you have pantyhose? Do you have references that aren’t family? Do you know Excel?’ ”
“Fuck her.”
Sometimes it really is that simple to love someone. A simple, strong fuck her. You kiss me. “Thank you, Cusack. I guess your friends are just so…Together.”
I hold your hands, both of them. “I believe in you. And if you want me to kill the lady from the temp agency, I’m game.”
The gallows humor only works because I am me. Gentle. Devoted. The scene doesn’t need more dialogue, not right now. I hold you the way you need to be held. And then you pull away. You tilt your head. Uh-oh. “There’s one more thing.”
NO, VAIL, I ALREADY CALLED CUT. “Okay.”
“The whole San Francisco thing…I can’t…I can’t promise you the we when I barely have the I.”
I laugh it off, I am somewhere between Big and Steve. “Vail, come on. You know when Miranda sees Big show up for Carrie in Denial?”
“Who are you, Joe Goldberg?”
I am a producer. I am the man. “I’ll say it whenever you need to hear it…I’m here.”
You look at me like you wish you could take off all my clothes. “Mm-hmm.”
Been a while since I got an mm-hmm, and I keep at it.
“I don’t wanna play games, and I know I can be a little clingy…”
“No, last week…that was totally about me and the temp agency.”
I needed that; you knew it. “So what next? Is it gonna be Live! With Regis and Vail?”
You’re laughing—I am funnier than Dubs—and you don’t say that no guy’s ever been this good to you.
You don’t need to say it. It’s in your eyes, in your shoulders below that silly cape.
I check on our friends and give a two minutes hand signal.
I wish this were all on tape. You take me in your arms and bring me home right here on the corner of Fifth and Sixth.
We form an invisible statue that will be here for the rest of time.
We hold on tight. We don’t let go. We hold on to each other in a way we never have, and this movie is the kind that changes lives.
It’s like when Steve called Miranda late at night after she was at her worst with him, when he responded to her darkness and self-loathing with his best. He gave her the fucking moon, and so did I.
I was wise to make a movie for you. That’s how your brain works, and you really did need to see someone else believe in me.
I feel the Carrie leaving your system. Same way I spit out my Big.
We’re not perfect. But we were never realer than we are right now, and reality doesn’t bite, and sorry, Mr. Mooney, but hope isn’t always the stairway to hell.
I took a leap of faith and I landed on my feet, in your arms. I win.