Jessica Chiarella - And Again

“And then?”

“And then she realized that I wasn’t going to change. Realized it before I did, actually. She was always the smart one.”

“How did she know to contact Sam?” I ask, but then the dots connect in my head before he has a chance to answer. “Your opposition research, of course.”

“She’s good at this sort of thing,” David replies. “She’s lived with me for long enough, she’s picked up on my talent for exacting the most damage possible with the littlest possible effort. I would be impressed if she didn’t ruin my whole life in the process. And if she wasn’t threatening to take my son away from me.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, and for the first time in a long time, I mean it. I realize what a colossal mess of things we’ve made, how we’ve been given our lives back only to take them apart ourselves, of our own accord. And I wonder if our SUBs have, in fact, made us more human than we were, less able to tamp down our fears and our desires, made us feel too much all at once. Maybe people aren’t meant to feel things so powerfully, as we have, and to act on them.

“Why did you do it, David?” I ask. “Why try to keep it from passing the FDA?”

David lets out a long breath, sits back in his chair. “Turns out, that was the price of getting me into the program. One of my corporate donors wants their drug in the next trial, so this one can’t go through.”

“Jesus, that’s disgusting.”

He nods. “I wish you were right. I wish it had something to do with God. At least I’d have some… conviction to cling to. But it was just blind self-preservation, in the end.”

“And the crazy thing is, I understand,” I reply, remembering sitting on that bathroom floor with Sam’s arms tight around me. How riotous the fear was. How I would have offered up anything I had to the person who could spare me everything that came after. “But unfortunately for you, it’s just another of those things that I can understand, and no one else will.”

He walks to the window, peering out over my view of Printer’s Row. “You know I always hated this city? The Democratic machine, the corruption. God, the winters. But it’s really sort of beautiful now, isn’t it? I can see why you love it the way you do.” He turns back to me. “I’ve missed you. Even when I was busy hating you, I missed you.”

I look away, because I can’t return the sentiment. I have missed David, but in the way I’ve missed Connie and Linda and even Dr. Bernard. When I wake up at night and instinctually reach across my bed, I’m not reaching for David. I try to divert the subject from my own lengthy hesitation.

“You know, I ran into Linda at the grocery store a few months back.”

“Yeah, I ran in to her a while back too,” David replies, a bit of a smile breaking across his face. “I think it’s safe to say that none of us really knew each other at all, no matter how many meetings we went to.”

“Sure, but we still knew each other better than anyone else.”

“You’re probably right.” He looks wistful, and then he clears his throat. “So what are you going to do now? Seems like you have a pretty clean slate to work with here.”

“I don’t really know.” I don’t tell him the truth, about how, for the past few months, I’ve been seeing everything in shades of light and darkness and texture, everything as a potential photograph. The way I can feel myself changing, when I hold my camera, when I peer through the lens. That secret bit of hope is mine for now. Something for me to cherish alone.

“If you still want to be reckless, you could come with me to Washington. I have an apartment there.”

“Be your mistress?” I ask.

“Or a friend. I don’t have many friends there. Gets lonely,” he replies, though his expression hasn’t changed. He doesn’t appear as vulnerable as he sounds. He could just as easily be making small talk.

“I’m not your friend, David,” I reply. “We were never friends, were we?”

“No,” he replies, shrugging. “I guess we weren’t.” He brushes my hair off my shoulder, a familiar, intimate sort of gesture.

“I’m going back there in a few weeks. I finally have to face all of this shit. And for the first time in my life, I have no idea what to say.”

I lean forward and kiss him. A last kiss, to match all of the firsts we’ve enjoyed together. And I realize how good it feels, to be kind to David, despite all of his failings. To forgive him, a little, because of everyone in our lives, we’re probably most like each other. And it feels a little like forgiving myself.

“You tell them what you told me,” I say. “You tell them that God put a gun to your head, and you did what you had to do to stay alive. And that not one of them would have done any different.”

“You think that will be enough?” he asks, his face so open, his exhaustion so evident that I wish I could draw him. Instead, I rise and get my camera.

Harry arranges a business lunch at Cointreau, one of the new Los Angeles restaurants that keep cropping up, lasting for a few glittering months, and then dying off when everyone realizes you always leave hungry. It’s me and Jay Cunningham, whom I knew when he was John Carrion, the up-and-coming producer. It seems he’s arrived, as I spot him and Harry at a table across the room. I stride in past the well-manicured clientele, catching stares as I pass in my red skirt and white blouse, clothes that on anyone else would look simple, bland even. I may as well have walked in wearing a bikini, the way these businessmen are looking at me. I hated the looks I got when I was withered and sickly, the stares that were so much worse than the people who would not look at me at all. This is an entirely different feeling, but just as invasive.

My model friends and I used to joke that Jay was so greasy he must have bathed in Vaseline, and the sentiment holds true even now as he takes my hand before I drop into a seat across from him. He’s tan, very tan, L.A. tan, almost orange. Like he’s been hitting the salon to compliment his day-to-day sojourns out in the merciless California sun. His hair is slicked back and the green of his eyes, which would be pleasant on someone else, clashes with his fake skin tone and gives him the look of a viper sizing up his dinner.

There’s already a dirty martini in front of my plate. I raise an eyebrow at him.

“You think I’ve forgotten what you drink?” he asks, lifting his own drink in a mock toast. I smile and pretend to sip, though even bringing the glass to my face, even breathing the fumes of it as I wet my lips, feels like huffing wood varnish.

“Jay is trying to find someone for the indie flick he’s filming here next summer,” Harry says, motioning lazily back and forth between the two of us with a thick hand.

“Straight to business, hmm?” Jay says, folding his hands in front of him. “He’s right. Our talent got pregnant and dropped out. Can’t shoot her pole dancing when she’s the size of Texas, now can we?”

“Pole dancing?” I ask, though we’re interrupted by the waiter, who takes our orders and bustles off with admirable efficiency.

“It’s a dark comedy about a single mother,” Jay replies. “Late twenties, early thirties. Struggling, with an over-bright but difficult little kid. Takes up a job at a gentlemen’s club where she meets a down-on-his-luck doctor with a gambling problem, and what do you know? Sparks fly. Now, the studio is fighting us on this, but we’re looking for an R rating so there might be some nudity. Nothing gratuitous, of course.”

I smile. Of course, there’s nothing gratuitous about playing a woman who takes her clothes off for money. Or being a woman who takes her clothes off for money.