The Idea of Him

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“Murray,” I interrupted. “Why did you get that criminal Max Rowland to invest in a do-gooder festival like ours and put extra pressure on us to please him as well? I’m managing so many projects I don’t know if I have the time to …” My home situation was sapping so much energy out of me that I could barely listen to his commands, let alone execute them.

“Bullshit. You got spunk and intelligence.” He counted these attributes on his fingers without releasing the raspberry pastry in his grip. “You like to argue. Delsie likes that. I like that. I need to be told when I’m off base.”

For the past ten years, Murray had never once listened to me when I told him he was off base. I put down my pen.

“So what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to promise me everything will go okay with the festival.”

“First of all, as much as you’d like me to be, Murray, I’m not your mommy. And second, why do I have to go it alone? Why can’t you be more involved?”

“You are to deal alone with Max on festival business; I’m not doing it anymore. Have a pastry. You’re too goddamned thin.”

Why was every man in my life acting like a little child who had to have everything the way he wanted just now? Maybe I courted them. That thought depressed me as I thought about making an effort to expunge the next generation of too many man-babies. I decided I’d let Blake handle his friend issues on his own and give him praise when he did.

I turned to Murray. “You have to talk to me about the other business with Max Rowland; he’s a felon so I deserve to know you are being careful, or I refuse …”

Selena peeked into the room and said, “Sorry, Mr. Hillsinger. Your mother. Line two. You know how she reacts when I say you’re in a meeting so the light will be blinking until you pick up.”

“Shit!” Murray slammed the table. “Never satisfied. She’s working on me now to go to the Venice Film Festival at the end of summer, thinks she’s a film expert because her son has a few fuckin’ famous clients in Hollywood.” He picked up the receiver and completely changed the tone of his voice. “Yes, Ma.” He sounded like a little boy and slumped his shoulders. “Yes, sure, Ma. I’ll work on it. I thought you’d like the idea of Boca with your girlfriends again, but Venice it is.” He slumped deep into his sofa at her latest request. “No, Ma. You know the hotels are all booked. No, Ma. Doesn’t matter what they say, the Cipriani isn’t the only good one, but, yes, Ma, I’ll try to get you a room, but please remember if I can’t deliver for you, it’s because it’s been booked for celebrities for a year now.”

He had to pull the phone away from his ear as she reacted to that bit of news.

“Ma, I’ll try to get you in. I’ll call you later.” Pause. “Yes, I love you.” He put down the receiver.

“How come you look like a dejected eight-year-old every time you talk to her?”

“Because she terrifies me, that’s why,” he admitted in total defeat. “She purposely asks for the hotel that’s booked out five years in advance. They want Clooney and DiCaprio in the Cipriani that week, not my mom in her fuckin’ fanny pack and Mephisto shoes! Jesus.”

I looked at the explosion of crumbs in front of me and shook my head. “Do you want me to write something specific for Delsie’s speech at the festival?”

“You decide what to put in it. You wrote those great environmental speeches when I hired you. A kid out of college who writes speeches with that much impact, I want going full tilt on this.”

“Okay, Murray. And there were a lot of people I wrote them with; it wasn’t all me.”

He dusted his hands and heaved into a standing position, getting ready to dismiss me. “I don’t give a shit if all your environmental writing success back then was genetic talent from your dad’s love of the sea, or dumb luck on timing with the globe going green and the fuckin’ terrorists controlling all the oil. Point is, you’re gonna do what I ask and you’re the best writer I got … and I’m very indebted to you, even though I don’t say it enough.”

“Of course, Murray,” I said, my feelings for him warming back up as they invariably did.

“Look, kid,” he said. I turned at the tender sound in his voice. “Your dad would have been proud. Too bad the good die young and he never saw your work promoting a cause that championed the ocean he lived in.”

“Something like that.”

He put his arm around me, ushering me out. “I remember when I first heard you give a speech. I knew that instant you could coach all my clients and write all their speeches. You sounded like a senator: junior fucking Barbara Boxer or something. Just don’t get all lesbo on me.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“I mean, that short hair, all tough …”

“I don’t think Barbara Boxer is known to be gay; I think she—”

“I don’t give a fuck about whether she is or isn’t. Just don’t start takin’ yourself too fuckin’ seriously.” He grabbed his cordless phone, started punching numbers into it, and looked at it as though it were shouting obscenities in his ear. “Goddamn it, Selena, get in here and dial this thing.”

Selena scurried in, her Kardashian ass bouncing up and down like a beach ball, and took the phone while Murray finished lecturing me. “I want you to write more press releases on each film to create more press buzz for everything we do here. You know, groundbreaking shit lesbo senators pay attention to.”

Selena handed him the phone and waited to be sent back to her desk. She looked at me in solidarity. Murray wasn’t finished.

“Get me every goddamn cable news screamer screaming about the high-gloss, high-fuckin’-quality festival.”

Now he was just being ridiculous. “Nobody on cable news cares about art and culture. They’re too busy yelling at each other. We’re on the right track, Murray. We’re doing fine. We’re getting good coverage already this week …”

“Max?” he said into the phone, swatting one hand at Selena and me. “That brunette looked like she could fit your balls and your dick in her mouth! After your behavior last night in A.C., you fucking owe me fifty grand and two whores, you old bastard.” Gales of laughter followed. I honestly had no idea if Murray was joking around or making a factual statement to the criminal client who seemed to be invading our lives more every day.

10 (#ulink_d1c5d43f-2991-5a99-bb6d-d01a2329eac5)

Necessary Reckoning (#ulink_d1c5d43f-2991-5a99-bb6d-d01a2329eac5)

When I got back to my office, Caitlin was lounging on my couch reading a report she’d pulled out of the hot pink computer bag I’d given her for her twenty-ninth birthday last winter.

“What was so earth-shatteringly important?” she asked.

“Murray wants me to get more press for the whole film festival, since the pitch to Delsie went so well and because now he’s got Max financially invested in it,” I said as I sat at my desk and clicked on my computer screen. I scrolled through what looked like a hundred e-mails that had come in since I’d left. “You know, just more buzz.”

“Murray always wants more attention,” she pointed out. “No amount will ever satisfy him, you know that.”

“Yes, I know that. That’s why my job sucks.”

Caitlin sat up and threw the report onto the coffee table. “That’s a piece of crap. Anyway, whatever you did or didn’t do right, all that matters is that what you said seemed to work for him.”

I stopped what I was doing and looked at her. “Really, Caitlin, that’s all that matters?” Caitlin and I spent so much time together all day long that we often went into sister mode. I felt like picking a fight with her just because she was in front of me.

She tilted her head. “That’s not what I meant.” She lay back on the sofa. “You’re good at what you do, but you should be concentrating your anxiety on your other talents. Maybe you’d get further, faster, and be able to leave this place.”

“Why?” I asked sarcastically. “You angling for my job?”

“Jesus, Allie. Chill,” she said. “Why would you say that, when all I’m doing is showing my support for your writing?”

“Sorry. I was kind of joking, or trying to,” I said. It had been unfair of me; she was right.

She grinned, apology accepted. “I read your reports and speeches every day. They sing compared to everyone else’s around here. You should be using your clout with Wade or Murray to move your own fiction writing career along and stop worrying about the little stuff that Murray is always going to take credit for anyway.” She settled in for a little lecture. “If I had access to Murray’s connections like you do, or to Wade’s, I’d be working them harder is all. If I was writing a script about a surrogate mom, like you are, I’d be asking Wade to show it to Sarah Jessica Parker, poster mom for surrogates.”

“Are you out of your mind? I’m not involving Wade in my writing career. I want to do it my way.”

“Fine. Do it all slow and appropriate. But just remember slow and appropriate usually gets beaten at the box office by swift and shrewd.” Caitlin started balancing a pillow on her feet. This woman could never sit still. “Max is meeting with the festival team and Murray again tomorrow. You could go and get Max to invest in your script.”

“That’s not possible,” I said, meaning the Max meeting and not the immature notion that a script I hadn’t even finished yet could be pitched. Murray didn’t lie to me. That’s one thing I could count on. “Murray isn’t going to talk business with the festival people for a while. He wants me to handle it all.”

“Well, it said FF on his calendar for tomorrow. They’re meeting at some hotel in the West Forties. I’m sure of it.”

I was shocked anew at her espionage. “How do you know FF is film festival?”

“Well, they are the initials for starters, and I asked Selena, because I’m really nosy and she told me yes, but that I shouldn’t say anything.”

I let that sit. Caitlin was always on my side, but a little difficult to control. I just had to channel her energy into productive areas, like this revelation that my boss had lied about not getting involved in festival business. Her skill was often valuable, but it made Caitlin seem at times much more than five years younger than she was. “You’ve got a package waiting for you up front,” she said, bouncing toward my door. “You want me to go get it? Maybe it’s Wade trying to get on your good side.”

“Oh my God, Caitlin! You talk like a cattle auctioneer! Yes, go get the package. Jesus!” I sat at my desk thinking that something with my boss wasn’t sitting right. He told me he wasn’t doing festival business with Max Rowland anymore, then he has a private meeting about it without telling me? Was every man in my life cheating on me in one way or another?

Click.

Caitlin sped out of the room and returned just as quickly, holding a box wrapped in dark brown paper, peppered with an absurd number of crooked postage stamps, and my address written in a familiar script. I ran a finger across the handsomely scrawled Par Avion, and I knew instantly the provenance. I opened it up. No card, but just as I expected: a pair of black silk long johns. I hadn’t heard from James since the last pair.

Caitlin peeked over my computer again. “Who the hell sends long underwear in May?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Oh. It’s something. Just something you don’t want to tell me.” She smiled, completely softening up. That, and knowing she was getting nowhere. “It’s okay. I still adore you. Keep your secrets. But if you want an ear, I’m here for you.” She had the sense to close the door behind her and leave me alone, wry amusement written all over her face.

James again. Through the years, he would always try to make me feel protected by sending a pair of long johns like these with a note saying: I will always keep you warm and safe. Part of me would immediately begin to feel better just remembering his words.