Love has plans for us. We’re going to go to Chateau—she is dying for those truffle fries—and we are going to watch Pitch Perfect—she hasn’t seen it in a while—and we are going to go to my apartment and get my things, assuming it’s not too much too fast.
I kiss her. “God, no.”
Then there is a loud sound in the house; the pop of a bottle of Veuve. Forty. Love calls out to him and he doesn’t answer and then he comes running, fat feet padding, and he cannonballs into our pool and he doesn’t belong here.
Love squeals. He emerges from the water.
“Forty, this isn’t really the best time,” I say, looking at my naked girlfriend, who elegantly swims to the stairs and reaches for her bikini and covers herself with the ease of a Bond girl. I can do no such thing. My shorts are far away, on a fucking chaise.
Forty flops like a sea lion and Love looks at me and I shrug. He swims to the other side of the pool and picks up a waterproof remote control and now a projection screen begins to open on the far wall. I look at Love. “We watch movies here,” she says.
Forty fumbles with the remote. I think he’s on a fair amount of cocaine. His fingers jitter. But he is able to find his destination: Deadline.com
And there, on the front page, on the giant screen, a headline:
FORTY SELLS TWO: MEGAN ELLISON’S ANNAPURNA TO PRODUCE TWO ORIGINAL SCRIPTS BY DEBUT SCREENWRITER FORTY QUINN
I rub water out of my eyes and force myself to stay calm. It’s just a headline. A mistake. That’s all. We’ll call the paper or the website or whatever the fuck it is and they’ll change the headline, put my name in it.
I motion for the remote and he tosses it to me. I refresh the page, because maybe Forty already took care of that. Maybe he thinks they already fixed things, got my name in there. The remote is slow. The world is fast, loud. Love and Forty scream and splash each other and I can’t be in this fucking pool waiting right now and my stomach is whirling and I get out of the pool and I streak across the Spanish tile floor and grab my shorts and get into them. I get my phone and I drip on it and I have to protect it. I shiver. My nipples are hard. I turn away from Love and Forty and I go to Deadline but it’s the same shit and then the article itself loads and it gets worse. The article reports that both scripts are written by Forty Quinn and there is no mention of brilliant newcomer Joe Goldberg anywhere. I read the first paragraph over and over, as if my name might be buried in there in some sort of cryptogram Da Vinci Code bullshit but no. I scroll down and scan the screen for the words Joe and Goldberg but again, no. I am breathing fast, like I’m running, like I’m fucking and I’m fucked. He stole my scripts and fucked me.
“Joe?” It’s Love, my girlfriend, the one whose twin brother fucked me. He fucked me. I clutch the phone.
I turn back around. Love is on the deck, squeezing her hair. Forty is still in the pool, treading water. I want a harpoon. I want to end him. Love clears her throat. At some point in the last thirty-five seconds, she put on a hooded bathrobe and picked up her iPad.
“Go on, sister girl,” Forty says. He sucks Veuve out of the bottle. “Let me hear it. Come on, Lovey.”
“And I quote,” she begins. “‘Megan Ellison tells Deadline that she has discovered a major talent in Quinn and plans to fast track The Third Twin and The Mess and . . .’” Love squeals. “‘The bidding war, which lasted all summer—’” Love balks. She stares at Forty. He laughs.
“You always think the worst of me,” he says.
“Every time you disappeared I assumed you were holed up at the Ritz,” she says.
Forty laughs. “Well, not every time, but sometimes women can prove to be very inspirational.”
Love reads to us about the hot property and summarizes the comments. People are saying that Barry Stein is a fool; he’s washed up. He could have had these scripts early on but he has no eye for talent anymore. Not that anyone would ever choose to team up with Stein over Megan Ellison. Megan Ellison is the best and they’re saying Forty Quinn is the best and apparently there’s a murder scene in the desert that will make you see the world in a whole new way and Forty Quinn has been pitching for years and it’s one of those situations where talent and hard work and perseverance pay off and you can’t make it in Hollywood without all three and I am rubbing my eyes again and they sting.
Love strokes my head. “Are you okay?”
“The chlorine hit me hard,” I say.
“It’s a saltwater pool,” she says. She kisses my head. “Maybe you should go inside and wash up?”
All I want is to get away from Forty but I know what I have to do first. I have to put on a fucking show. I have to stand up and walk over to the pool and I have to extend a hand to him. I have to shake his damn, wrinkled hand.
“Congrats, my man.”
“Thanks, Old Sport,” he says, and tears off his sunglasses. “The best news is, this is only the beginning.” I think he winks. I don’t know. Maybe that’s his resting face and I never noticed it. I blame my aspirations, the ones I fed every time I sat down at Intelligentsia to write. Fucking idiot I am. I am so much better than this. I should have spent my summer writing a book and Forty lowers his voice. “Megan says we have a big future together. Huge.”
The pronouns are discombobulated. We as in he and Megan. I am not in the we even though their we could not exist without me. ME. Megan Ellison. My skin crawls. “That’s awesome,” I manage. “You did it.”
He nods. Slow. “Yes,” he says. “I fucking did it.”
Love squeals. “You guys, it’s on Variety now!”
The news is everywhere and I am nowhere and Love doesn’t know it but she is celebrating my demise. I go inside but I don’t go to one of the seven bathrooms to wash up. No. I go to Forty’s knapsack where I find his iPad and pull up his Gmail. I read the e-mails, so many e-mails, between Forty and his agent, this dumb fucker who thinks Forty grew into his voice. I don’t know what you did this summer, but whatever it is, it worked. Well done, 40. Here’s to 40 more.
And there are more e-mails, here’s one from Barry Stein. He wants to know when Forty became so fucking funny yet also so goddamn original, are people saying Tarantino? This feels like Tarantino and that compliment is mine. I wrote these scripts and here’s one, someone at CAA, someone who wants to know how he came up with this CAGE! TRAPPING THAT GIRL IN THE CAGE AFTER THAT BEACHY WEEKEND, TO GO FROM THE BEACH TO THE CAGE. FUCKING AMAZING FUNNY TWISTED SHIT MISTER MAN YOU ARE GOD. HOLY FUCK ALSO CAN WE GET BACK TO THE THIRD TWIN? BECAUSE HOW DOES YOUR BRAIN GO THERE AND HERE?
Outside, you can see that Forty has drunk his own Kool-Aid and crossed over to the dark side. He believes it, all of it, he brainwashed himself with compliments and coke, hookers and agents. And he didn’t even come up with the fucking title—Captain Dave did. Outside, Love gets all hoppy and bouncy when “Love Is a Battlefield” begins to play and she is correct. This is war.