I almost want to laugh. But instead I just smile, big and juicy. “You know it, Milo.”
We hit traffic and I will not let any of it get to me. Los Angeles is a giant high school cafeteria sometimes and I survived real high school. Surely I can deal with my girlfriend morphing into a mystery bitch and icing me out.
It’s not like I want to participate in their conversation anyway, the two of them droning on about how sick of Malibu they get every year, how they can’t wait to get back to civilization and restaurants and awards show seasons and steakhouses and shows at the Roxy and the UCB. But if Monica had manners, she would stop texting and engage with me. She would quell the pervasive atmosphere of rejection overwhelming me in this fucking car and then maybe if I were lost in conversation with her, Love would get jealous and want to join our conversation. But no. Monica fucking texts. Love and Milo talk and I interrupt them and tell Love that I have some great Pantry playlists but she says she’s gonna turn on some Steve Miller Band through her Bluetooth.
“Why Steve Miller Band?” I ask. “It seems so random, like someone passionately demanding a grilled chicken sandwich.”
Nobody laughs at my joke and Love says she loves grilled chicken sandwiches and there’s a scene in 2012 when Amanda Peet is in a grocery store during an earthquake and the floor splits and this is how that is. Love is more distant with every eighth of a mile. No wonder the divorce rate in this industry is so high.
Soon we pull off and we’re on Franklin and it’s the same old gas station and there is the same old Scientology Celebrity Centre and there is the same old Franklin Village and Love pouts when I hang a left onto Bronson and drive toward the canyon.
“You don’t want to valet?” she asks.
“I’d rather park myself,” I say.
She huffs. “Look, if you need cash for the valet, I have it.”
Milo bites his lip and if this scene winds up in anything he ever writes, I will kill him. Monica is still ignoring all of us, choosing the people in her phone. I veer into a spot, like the scrappy, rough-around-the-edges villager that I am. Love yelps, overreacting, lurching. Oh, please. Love can’t get out of the car fast enough and I tell Monica it’s time to go and she is confused.
“We’re here?” she asks.
Love smiles at me like I’m a third cousin she hasn’t seen in years. “So,” she says. “You must be excited to reunite with your friends from the neighborhood. Or wait, are they all stuck working?”
“They wouldn’t be into this kind of thing,” I say.
She links her arm through mine, halfheartedly. “I might be able to get some SRO tickets,” she says. “That means Standing Room Only.”
I pretend to sneeze and pull my arm away. “I know what it means,” I say. “I’m from New York.”
“Oh, I know,” she says. “There’s no forgetting that.”
We walk in silence. And I won’t be seeing my four fucking friends. I learned online that they’re all pretty busy. Calvin got a DUI and he’s working crazy hours. Harvey Swallows got throat cancer and he’s trying to embrace the humor and the irony. Dez is having a party for his dog, Little D. Delilah is doing on-air coverage for some wannabe Entertainment Tonight kind of show on a network I’ve never heard of.
We are almost at Franklin when Love tugs on my arm. “Are you mad at me or something?”
“No,” I say.
“Then why were you such a dick in the car?”
“Why was I a dick?”
“Don’t make it about the word,” she says. “You know what I mean.”
“Love, you’re the one being a dick.”
“Very mature,” she says. “Look, something is just fucked up and you’re shutting down and it’s bullshit and I can’t take it right now.”
“So don’t,” I say.
“You’re still gonna try and tell me you’re not being a dick.”
I shrug. Forty’s up ahead on the corner, waving to us.
She sighs. “I don’t have time for this.”
“For me,” I say. This is happening so fast and her eyeliner looks like war paint.
“Joe,” she says. “This isn’t good.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means I have so much pressure on me right now and you’re adding to it instead of helping me.”
“I’m adding to it,” I repeat. I want to throw her over my shoulder but she doesn’t want that anymore. She doesn’t want me anymore.
“After the show, we need to talk,” she says. And that is how you know it’s over. Need is not want. Your girlfriend wants to talk to you but the girl who doesn’t love you just needs to talk to you and I guess I should have known. She picked me up so quick, so smooth. Now she’ll drop me, so quick, so smooth.
I tell her to go and she says whatever and runs to her brother and Milo and the three of them start talking Boots and Puppies. Monica is here now, too late.
“What’s up?” she asks. I can’t deal with her generic shit right now.
“Nothing,” I say. My heart hurts.
“Cool,” she says. “I have been so crazy getting ready to jam, you know? My temp agency is not very cool about people going away and stuff. They need to chill.”
“Where are you going?”
She is puzzled. But she is always puzzled. “Location,” she says, like I should know. “Aren’t you coming too?”
I look at her. I don’t know about location. And this is how I know what Love needs to talk to me about. She needs to tell me that it’s over, that she’s not bringing me to location.
Monica bites her lip. “Oops,” she says. “I assumed Love told you. Forty asked me to go yesterday. Dude, don’t get all worked up. Let’s have fun!”
But I can’t have fun. I am too good for this shit. I want to end this first, beat Love to the punch. I want to smash all her fucking tennis racquets into the grass court until they splinter. We spent the whole summer together and she doesn’t even have the decency to not invite me. She doesn’t look back as we round the corner and her new jeans are so tight, I hope she gets a yeast infection.
She links arms with Milo and they greet Seth Rogen and his wife, air kisses, hugs. She isn’t motioning for me to come over. And now I have to have a reunion with Calvin. He has the night off and he’s here, hugging me. There’s a new small potbelly underneath his Henderson shirt and I’d like to think that Love is watching me reunite with him, wishing that I would make an introduction, but I know better. Her friends are famous. She doesn’t need me. Calvin cracks a tasteless joke about how I hit the jackpot and I don’t laugh.
Monica checks the time on her Google wristwatch. Calvin grabs her arm. She giggles. “It’s a present,” she says. “I could never, like, get this.”
“From your boyfriend?” he asks.
She nods. But she flirts. “He saw it on my Pinterest. He can be really sweet when he wants to be.”
Calvin looks at me. “Where’s your watch, JoeBro?”
I tell him it’s in the shop and he starts to hit on Monica and they’re talking surfboards and eBay and it’s increasingly obvious they’re going to fuck. There is so much change, too much change, and everything I built is falling apart and Calvin is programming Monica’s number into his phone. I should have left when Love said we need to talk. She is laughing too hard at James Franco’s jokes as Milo accepts congratulatory hugs from Justin Long. This is supposed to be a tribute to a dead man and instead it’s a bunch of boy-men in moth-eaten T-shirts laughing at their own jokes, cocky fucks who get paid to make jokes, get pussy because they get paid to be funny. I can’t breathe.