I write: I’m looking for someone.
I hand her back the pen. Our fingers still don’t touch.
Who?
She has fat diamonds on her earlobes. I take the pen and this time our fingers touch, barely.
That wouldn’t be fair. She’s auditioning.
A security guard barges in. She waves him away. It was that easy. She saved me. She is the boss. She motions for me to stay.
I owe you a water. ☺
So she remembers me too. I write: La Poubelle.
She writes: Yes.
I write: Yes.
She picks up an extra set of headphones and I move my chair even closer and there is sex, so much sex, inside everything she does. Amy and I bantered. This is hotter. This is purer. She scratches her elbow and I want to slap my fifty dicks against her elbow. She sneezes. I write: God bless you.
Thank you.
My turn: I’m Joe. You?
She licks her lips. Hi Joe. I’m Love.
There is heat generated by our legs, parallel, our forearms, close. I write: Love?
She covers her mouth with her hand. My parents are crazy. It’s a fun name though. Like any name after a while. You grow into it and your name is just your name. But then yes. It’s weird, being love. Hello, narcissistic asshole, right?
Love is funny. Hello, narcissistic asshole.
She smiles and it’s on, a spontaneous nonverbal blind date. I crack jokes. Love takes pictures of my jokes about the actresses and texts them to someone. A waiter comes. I write down my order: cheeseburger medium well fries grey goose soda. Love bites her lip and looks at the waiter and makes a peace sign. Two. She is an easy, breezy, beautiful CoverGirl. I actively promise myself that I will not think of her as healthier than Beck and more fun than Amy. I won’t let old, broken down, dead, bad, thieving love be in the same room with new, sweet, honey-legged Love. I am here, now.
She snaps her fingers and points at the monitor. I continue to make Love laugh and when the waiter comes back with our burgers. I reach into my wallet and Love reaches over and grabs my arm. She shakes her head no. She signs for the burgers and I crack up when it occurs to me that everyone knows that sex is better when you’re in Love. She sees me laughing and she writes one word: Pervert.
She doesn’t look away when I stare into her eyes. Amy would have hit me or squirmed or made it all into a cynical joke. Beck would have pouted and brought up something boring like the etymology of the word pervert. But Love’s eyes remain fixed on me and I know. She’s a pervert too.
16
I don’t believe in love at first sight. But I do believe in electricity, the way it can recharge you. I am healing. When Delilah texts, I write back: Went away for a couple nights, visiting my uncle.
Love picks up a container of Ice Breakers Ice Cubes gum. She pops the lid and offers the box. I open my palm, expecting her to tip it so that a cube rolls into my hand, but she writes: U can put ur hand in my box.
Everything would be perfect if she had used you instead of u.
I reach into her box and I pull out a piece of the gum. I have learned from our notebook exchanges that Love is a producer on this movie. She is working with some guy, the guy she keeps sending my jokes to. I tell her that I came by to look for my neighbor who is nervous about her audition.
Love does that thing girls do when they like you, where they find out you’re single and they can’t smile and look at you at the same time so they stare at the floor and their cheeks turn red and their eyes crinkle and yes.
I write that my neighbor is really tall. Blond. Did you see anybody like that?
Confident Love shakes her head no. We’re looking for someone more petite. I don’t remember any tall blondes, no remarkable ones anyway. Do you have a picture of this girl?
I shake my head. But it’s fine. It doesn’t matter anymore. Her grin widens.
All first dates come to a brutal, nasty end and ours does when a voice blasts into our headphones. It’s a man. He is loud and fast: “Forty to Love, Forty to Love. Checkity checkity breakity breakity.”
I write: Is that your boyfriend?
She laughs. She shakes her head no.
That was it, my answer, my prompt, my cue, my yes. I yank off my headphones and Love does the same. I kiss her. She kisses me back. It is the warmest kiss of my life. Love’s mouth is Soho House, velvet and marble, members only. I don’t try for anything more than this and I pull away first. She says hello to me, and her voice is at once pornographically suggestive and judiciously blunt, like she has been on trial, been recorded, part of that generation that was instructed to use your words.
She shakes her head and laughs. “It’s so weird to hear your voice when you haven’t heard it for a while.”
She’s right and I’m laughing and she smells so damn good.
“Come meet my brother,” she says. “He’s the one who wrote the ridiculous fucking casting call, but you know, he has a vision.”
She explains that their parents used to be obsessed with tennis, watching it more than playing it. Love doesn’t play much (yes!) and Forty isn’t much of a jock (who cares?). It’s funny what girls think you want to know. We walk through the main room and she waves hello to random people. Love is a passport; she’s Ray Liotta in Goodfellas and Julianne Moore in Boogie Nights, a hostess, a leader. With her, I can go anywhere. She looks at me before she opens the door marked screening room.
“Bear with me,” she says. “Forty can be a lot.”
She’s not kidding. The room reeks of cigars and lobster. Forty’s on the phone and he motions for us to be quiet while he humors his agent. Contrary to popular belief, Philip Seymour Hoffman is not dead; he’s alive and well, camping out in Forty Quinn. Forty is bowlegged and blond, in madras shorts, a Steve Miller Band T-shirt, with a giant boy smile. Love tells me they’re twins but Forty looks a hundred years older. His skin is leathery from sun, cocaine, and court-ordered community service. His hair is the opposite of his skin, shiny to the point of silken, possibly transplanted from a doll, yellow and conditioned and parted in the middle.
“He’s intense,” she whispers.
“Are you guys close?” I ask.
“We’re twins,” she says. She didn’t answer the question and she tucks her hair behind her ears and begins organizing his mess. We only ordered two cheeseburgers and Forty ordered everything on the menu. I try not to react to this mess of wasted food. I will not fuck this up.
Forty has a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and he pops the cork off a bottle of Dom. “I did not feel the Groundlings girls,” he says into the phone. “I need more heart in a woman, you know? Nancy is going to hear from me because I specifically told her do not bring me funny unless you bring me honey.”
He hangs up, growling, and Love reels him in. “Forty,” she says in a kindergarten teacher tone. “Calm down. It’s gonna be fine.”
“It’s not fine,” he says. “We didn’t find her.”