“Ever think you’ll go back?” he asked.
“The same time you go back to Omaha.” We exchanged a smile. “Maybe that’ll change someday when I have kids, but I doubt it. Plus, I’ve been thinking of moving to Venice.”
“Really?”
I nodded. This was not exactly true, but it was true in that I’d spent some unremembered period of time in the fall of the previous year searching for potential jobs that could allow me to move to the city I’d dreamed of living in since I was a teenager. When my mom and dad were arguing at the height of their financial stress, I’d put on headphones and click through images of the strange and wonderful city on our old Dell desktop.
“I’m aching for a change of pace. I know there’s always nostalgia for ten minutes ago, but the country seems ugly to me in a way it never did before. It’s reached some kind of new temperature lately.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” he said.
This was a clichéd sentiment on my part, completely unoriginal, and not something I was even sure I believed. Mostly I was tired of my job. I’d gone from art director to senior art director to creative director as fast as anyone ever had in my company, but that progress had stalled. The higher I climbed, the more enraging the office politics became, and I had this sense every time I sat down in a meeting that my coworkers still considered me an intern. I’d moved to Chicago during the recession, determined to make my way, and after a year of unpaid internships, I thought I’d have to return to my little town in Iowa and live with my parents and waitress at one of the chains by the freeway where so many of my high school peers found work. The entry-level advertising job came just in time with my rent due and my bank account overdrawn and my three credit cards maxed. I was determined to prove I could do it, and when I got passed over for the Grinspoons of the world it reminded me of that desperation all over again.
I had five people working under me now, and on more than one occasion I’d hear the younger guys repeating back to me ideas I’d pitched earlier, regurgitating them as their own and congratulating each other. The worst of these was Darren, an ultra-nice young backslapper and Dartmouth grad who came from money and had connections littered throughout the agency. Marketing still retained its boys’ club formulation, and this gave the women sharp elbows. Even after I’d piloted two very successful campaigns (a new home water purifier and a mind-numbing financial product called closed-end funds) my boss, the senior VP, Beth McClann still spoke to me like a kid sister being allowed to go off on her own at the fair for the first time. When she gave Darren the promotion that by the whole office’s estimation should have been mine, I’d almost burst into hot tears. This blithely sweet guy who never missed an opportunity to second-guess me in front of my team, who acted like my seniority was ephemeral and temporary, I would now effectively have to answer to. I’d waited until I got to the bathroom to cry and thought about quitting and moving to Venice.
We split vegan chocolate cake for dessert, dueling over it with two short-tined forks. He asked me about my family, and I told him about my brother and sister, the former a lawyer in Tampa with a wife and two sons, the latter a physician’s assistant in Davenport, married to her second husband, recently pregnant. I even found myself telling him of our lifelong emotional combat: her easily wounded nature, my impatience with her. My dad’s insistence that his daughters could succeed at anything, from youth basketball to a high-powered city job, engrained in me and utterly lost on her. My warnings about both of her quick marriages. He asked about her new husband.
“He’s older,” I said. “Midforties. They met because she worked for him.”
“He was the physician she was assisting.” He grinned, a flash of the teeth that I recalled were crooked in some of his earlier films and now as straight as wall tiles.
“Exactly.” I twisted the stem of my wineglass, staring at the purple murk within. “My sister is one of those people who leaps without thinking. It’s been her MO since we were little and she threw tantrums in the supermarket over Fruit Roll-Ups.”
“And you’re not the tantrum-throwing type?”
No, I thought, Jefferey in mind. Unfortunately.
The waitress returned and he handed her his AmEx. I thanked him for dinner.
“It’s my pleasure. You up for a drink? I know a great place.”
“I’m sure you do, but I think I’d better get home.” It’s so stupid, the little dances we do even when we know they’re dances.
“Come on, come have a drink with me,” he said as if reading from one of his scripts. “It’s good to have a conversation with someone who’s not pretending.”
“See, but you’re saying that so I think, ‘Oh, he likes me because I’m treating him like a real person and not fawning over how famous and gorgeous he is.’ ”
His lovely eyes dashed away from mine, and I knew I’d at least called him on his method.
“You know what I think?” he said. “I think you’re the one who knows she’s pretty goddamn intelligent, interesting, and beautiful but has to put up all these guards against pricks. And hey, I understand why you’d assume the worst about me, but honestly, right now? I’ve had a good time with you, and I’d like to continue. I’d like to buy you another glass of wine that you can sip at a pace best measured on a geologic timescale.”
The laugh escaped before I could clamp down on it. I rolled my eyes.
“You’re not as awful as you could be, I guess.”
We walked back down through the restaurant where all but a few sets of eyes turned to us. Admittedly, it was more than a thrill. My stomach felt light, and I wished I had a dress on or at least something sexier than the jeans and blouse I’d worn to work. Wishing I’d done something with my hair that day—at least a chance to blow-dry and run a straightener through it—for this little walk of beauty and celebrity and mystery.
This time in the cab there was nothing left of the sun but a rumor on a dark horizon, and the distant lights of the skyscrapers backlit our drive. I knew it might be the wine, but there it was nevertheless: I felt good. This was exciting and unexpected and fun, and I couldn’t recall the last time I’d felt any of that.
The bar was just a dim blue bulb above an unmarked door. Small tables surrounded by plush chairs with tall backs, the bustle of your standard chic nightspot. The host led us to a table in a corner at the back. We had to stop twice for people requesting selfies.
“There are all kinds of downsides to this,” he told me as we sat. “I know that sounds like a whiny millionaire problem—”
“Multimillionaire problem,” I corrected.
He smiled. “But it doesn’t take long to see why it becomes awful. The temptation to sit in your mansion or penthouse like Citizen Kane and never be in the world is real. You get strange letters and social media shit, and people say things that you have to report to the authorities. Outright death threats become routine. Every interview, everything you say is scrutinized to the point where you want to pass every sentence by a PR rep because you never know who you’ll offend. There are land mines out there you don’t even know about and internet warriors always trying to plant new ones under you. You can’t eat a meal or have a drink or buy a book because people are filming you everywhere you go. You’re basically a zoo animal when you’re in public. Every room or space is a set, and the director’s told everyone with names A through M to notice you when you walk in, and names N to Z to notice exactly thirty seconds later. And that’s coming from someone whose career has been absolute shit the last few years. People underestimate the wonder of anonymity. Once you’ve lost it completely, that’s all you ever really want back.”