Sebastian Stuart - The Mentor

“Don’t give me that crap. You think my job is a day at the beach? I’m a vice president of a television network, cookie honey sweetie baby.”

Anne laughs-who else could make her laugh at this moment?

“I miss you, Kayla.”

Kayla Edelstein is Anne’s best buddy. They were roommates at Stanford, two eighteen-year-olds from opposite ends of the continent who joyously discovered that they shared a sense of humor, passionate liberal politics, and enough drive to light Cleveland. After graduation they moved to Manhattan together, shared a basement apartment off Riverside Drive, dated and sometimes bedded a series of gorgeous young men, and dived full-tilt-boogie into their careers. Anne got her first job as an editorial assistant at Vogue, Kayla hers as an agent’s assistant at William Morris. Within three years Kayla relocated to L.A., where her rise has been steady and sure. She’s currently head of development for the country’s second-largest cable network. The two friends speak at least once a week and make sure they see each other three or four times a year.

“So how are you?” Kayla asks in a voice that says, Don’t try to bullshit me, kiddo.

“Good.”

There’s a long pause.

“All right, it’s been a lousy couple of weeks.”

“I’ve seen the reviews. Is he totally flipped?”

“Pretty much. I know you think he’s a bulldog, and sometimes he is. But he feels things more acutely than most people. He can’t help himself. It’s part of what makes his work so good. And so difficult for him.”

“Why don’t the two of you come out here, lie by the pool in Santa Monica for a week? You need to get out of that town.”

“Charles is throwing himself into a new book. It’s the best thing. He knows he’s capable of more than Capitol Offense. I don’t care about his sales anymore. I just want him to tap into that magic again; I want him to be great again.”

“So do I, Annie. What about your website? Am I going to love it?”

“You’re going to way love it. It’s the coolest. Sales are going to go through the roof.”

“Why do I get the feeling there’s something you’re not telling me?”

“Because you have a very vivid imagination.”

“If I had a very vivid imagination, would I be in television? What I do have is intuition, and it tells me you’re holding back.”

Anne drums her nails on the countertop. Should she tell her best friend about the shards of glass waiting for Charles on the bathroom floor?

“Maybe I should come out there for a couple of days,” Anne says.

“Pretty please. I could use you right now. I just dumped Fred.”

“But you adored him.”

“I adored his demented sense of humor and the way he nibbled my inner thighs. What I didn’t adore was the fact that he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.”

“You told me he wasn’t like that.”

“ He told me he wasn’t like that. But my intuition didn’t believe him. So I made some discreet calls and met this fabulous call girl-slash-private eye, Sorbonne grad, could be running Paramount but has this Jane Bond lifestyle she loves. Anyway she lured old Freddy into a zipless fuck, and believe me, it wasn’t hard. Best five grand I ever dropped.”

“I’m sorry, Kayla.”

“I’m not. I’m thrilled. Saved by the babe.”

“But you really liked the guy.”

There’s a long pause and Anne can almost hear Kayla’s bravado fizzle.

“Yeah, you’re right, I did. He was so funny. And nerdy. I guess even geeks can be shits. Oh, Anne, I’m thirty-seven and I’ve never had a stable relationship,” Kayla says in a voice that’s starting to crack.

“You will, honey, you will. And, hey, what about our friendship?”

“You’re right. And fuck it-self-pity is the biggest bore.”

“Damn straight. Remember our solemn oath: We will never feel sorry for ourselves. We will always have a cleaning lady, and-”

“Sex is for our pleasure,” Kayla finishes. The two friends break into laughter.

“Oh, God, Annie, I miss you.”

Anne hears the front door open. “Listen, I should run. I’ll call you in a couple of days. Love you.”

“Oh, the genius just walked in? You’re still a lovesick pup at heart, aren’t you? Charles Davis uber alles.”

Dinner doesn’t go as Anne hoped. In spite of the Coltrane and the candles, the mood is about as romantic as a trip to the dry cleaners. Charles is tense and uncommunicative; he has three drinks and only picks at his food. Anne tries-a little too hard-to keep things warm and lively, bringing up the latest movies and political gossip, but it’s obvious that he’s bored and distracted. When she raves about her website she’s rewarded with a condescending “Terrific.” She feels like telling him he’d better hope the website is a success because his royalties on Capitol Offense sure as hell aren’t going to pay for the apartment. She curses herself for buying into his sulk, is too wound up to eat, keeps flashing on the shards of glass, and her left foot won’t stop twitching.

“Charles, why don’t we get away, maybe down to Saint Bart’s, even just for a long weekend?”

He finishes his drink and looks out the window. “You’ve got to stop crowding me, Anne.”

“I wasn’t aware that I was crowding you.”

“You can’t help it. You’re just so full of enthusiasms. Sometimes they’re hard to take.”

“Our marriage is one of my enthusiasms. Perhaps it’s a misplaced one.”

“At the moment it may well be.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that right now I’m consumed by my own struggle and incapable of giving you the attention you deserve. Maybe I should rent a little apartment in Rome for a year.”

Wonderful-the great novelist spends a year in a garret overlooking the Tiber while she sweats it out in New York.

“Don’t expect me to be here when you get back,” Anne says.

Charles gets up and crosses the room. He lifts a painted Balinese monkey off the mantel and stares at its screeching face. “Only one thing is going to save me, to save us, Anne, and that’s a great book. We have to work as a team. I need your help.”

Anne goes around the room turning off the lights until the only illumination is the reflected glow that pours through the windows from the city outside. She stands in the middle of the room and steps out of her dress. Charles is watching her. She slips out of her bra and stands there in her soft cotton panties in the beckoning light. She knows that he still loves her body.

“Let’s make love,” she says.

Charles just stands there, looking at her. She can see it in his eyes-desire, faint at first, but building.

She goes to him and kisses him. “Please, darling, let’s forget about the world for a little while. Let’s get back to you and me.”

She pulls off his jacket and runs her hands down his shoulders. Then she unbuttons his shirt, her fingers trembling lightly. She can smell his pine soap, his sweat, the wine on his breath. She pushes his shirt open. She touches his chest, his neck, the warmth under his arms. His eyes are half closed.

Slowly, very slowly, he moves an index finger down the curve of her breast. “You and me?”

“Yes,” Anne whispers.

Charles leans in to kiss her, slipping his hands down the back of her panties and pushing them off her hips, taking control.

They met at a benefit softball game in Bridgehampton. She was twenty-three, winning raves from her bosses at Vogue, besieged by suitors, adoring the East. He was thirty-six, tanned and famous, and when he hit that triple and slid into third base, she was gone. They had a few cursory dates, but they both knew what those were about-prolonging the tension, foreplay basically. When they finally fell into each other’s arms-in a bedroom that looked out on the endless dunes of the Hamptons, the Atlantic glistening beneath a billion stars-it was what she’d been waiting for all her life.