Jennifer Weiner - Good in Bed

I staggered down the hall, into the elevator, and through the gold door reading “Ladies” in elaborate script, heading for the handicapped stall and peace, quiet, and solitude, grabbing two neatly rolled towels on my way in. “Fucking Maxi Ryder!” I hissed, and slammed the door, sat down, and pressed my fists against my eyes.

“Huh?” said a familiar voice from somewhere over my head. “Why?”

I looked up. A face was peeking over the top of the stall.

“Why?” Maxi Ryder said again. She was just as adorable in person as she was on the big screen, with her saucer-wide blue eyes, her lightly freckled, creamy skin, her cascade of auburn curls, seemingly brighter and more glossy than standard-issue human hair was meant to be. She was gripping a slim cigarette in one tiny blue-veined hand, and as I watched she took a generous drag and blew it out toward the ceiling.

“Don’t smoke in here,” I told her. It was the first thing I could think of. “You’ll set off the alarms.”

“You’re cursing me because I’m smoking?”

“No. I’m cursing you because you stood me up.”

“What?”

Two sneaker-clad feet plunked lightly onto the marble and came to rest outside my stall. “Open up,” she said, rapping at the door. “I want some explanation.”

I slumped down on the toilet seat. First April, now this! Reluctantly I leaned forward and unlocked the door. Maxi stood outside the stall, arms crossed on her chest, waiting for her answers. “I’m from the Philadelphia Examiner,” I began. “I was supposed to interview you. Your little Gestapo-ette told me, after I came all the way up here, that the interview had been canceled and rescheduled with this woman at my office who’s just…” I gulped. “Vomitous,” I arrived at. “So it kind of ruined my day. Not to mention our Sunday section.” I sighed. “But it’s not your fault, I guess. So I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have cursed at you.”

“Bloody April,” said Maxi. “She never even told me.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“I’m hiding,” said Maxi Ryder, and gave a nervous giggle. “From April, actually.”

In person her voice was soft, cultured. She was wearing bell-bottomed jeans and a scoop-necked pink T-shirt. Her hair was piled into the kind of artless updo that probably took a hairdresser half an hour to construct, ornamented with tiny, sparkling butterfly clips. Like most young female stars I’d met, she was thin to the point of unreality. I could make out the bones of her wrists and forearms, the pale blue tracery of veins along her neck.

Her pouty lips were painted scarlet. Her eyes were carefully lined and shadowed. And her cheeks were streaked with tears.

“Sorry about your interview,” she said.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said again. “So what brings you to these parts? Don’t you have your own bathroom somewhere else?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said, and drew a long, shuddering breath. “You know.”

“Well, actually, not being a thin, rich, successful movie star, I probably don’t.”

One corner of her mouth quirked upward, then drew down again into a trembling crimson bow. “Ever had your heart broken?” she asked in a shaky voice.

“Actually, yes,” I said.

She closed her eyes. Impossibly long lashes rested against her pale freckled cheeks, and tears slid out from beneath them.

“It’s unbearable,” she said. “I know how that sounds…”

“No. No. I know what you mean. I know that it feels like that.”

I handed her one of the rolled-up towels I’d grabbed on the way in. She took it, then looked at me. It was, I thought, a test.

“My house is full of things he gave me,” I began, and she nodded vigorously, curls bouncing.

“That’s it,” she said, “that’s right.”

“And it hurts to look at them, and it hurts to put them away.”

Maxi slumped to the bathroom floor and leaned her cheek against the cool marble wall. After a moment’s hesitation, I joined her, struck by the absurdity of it all, and how it would make a great opening for an article: Maxi Ryder, one of the most acclaimed young actresses of her generation, is crying on the bathroom floor.

“My mother always says that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” I said.

“Do you believe that?” she asked.

I only had to think about it for a minute. “No. I don’t even think she believes it. I wish I’d never loved him. I wish I’d never met him. Because I think that as good as the good times were, it isn’t worth feeling like this.”

We sat for a minute, side by side.

“What’s your name?”

“Candace Shapiro. Cannie.”

“What was his name?”

“Bruce. And you?”

“I’m Maxi Ryder.

“I know that. I meant, what was his name?”

She made a horrible face. “Oh, don’t tell me you don’t know! Everybody knows! Entertainment Weekly did a whole story. With a flow chart!”

“Well, I was very explicitly forbidden from even mentioning it.” Plus, there was more than one candidate, but it didn’t seem prudent to say so.

“Kevin,” she whispered. Which would be Kevin Britton, her costar from Trembling.

“Still Kevin?”

“Still Kevin, always Kevin,” she said sadly, fumbling for another cigarette. “Kevin who I can’t forget, even after I’ve tried everything. Drink… drugs… work… other men…”

Jeez. I suddenly felt very innocent.

“What do you do?”

I knew what she was asking me. “Oh, you know. Probably the same kinds of things as you.” I laid one hand across my forehead, affecting world-weary hauteur. “I started by running off to my private island with Brad Pitt, trying to forget the pain by buying up llama ranches in New England…”

She punched my arm. Her clenched fist felt like a puff of air. “Seriously! Maybe it’ll be something I haven’t thought of.”

“Probably just more stuff that doesn’t really work. Baths, showers, bike rides…”

“I can’t go for bike rides,” she said morosely.

“Because of the paparazzi?”

“No. I never learned how.”

“Really? Bruce, my ex-boyfriend, couldn’t ride a bike either…” My voice trailed off.

“God, don’t you hate that?” she asked.

“The way even completely unrelated things remind you of the person you’re trying to forget? Yes. I hate it.” I looked at her. With her face framed by the bathroom wall marble, she looked ready for her close-up. Whereas I was probably a blotchy-faced, runny-nosed wreck. No justice, I thought. “What do you do?” I asked.

“Invest,” Maxi said instantly. “Manage my money. And my parents’ money, too.” She sighed. “I used to manage Kevin’s money. I wish he’d given me a little notice that he was going to dump me. I’d have sunk him so deep into Planet Hollywood that he’d be taking guest-shots on the WB just to make his rent.”

I considered Maxi with newfound respect. “So you, like…” I racked my brains for the appropriate vocabulary. “Day-trade?’

She shook her head. “Nope. I don’t have time to be geeking around on computers all day. I pick stocks, and I look for investment opportunities.” She stood and stretched, her hands on her nonexistent hips. “I buy real estate.”

My respect was turning into awe. “Like houses?”

“Yup. Buy them, have a crew renovate them, sell them at a profit, or live in them a while, if I’m between movies.”

I felt my fingers reaching for my pen and notebook, creeping almost of their own accord. Maxi as real-estate mogul was something I hadn’t read in any of the innumerable profiles I’d plowed through. It would make great copy. “Hey,” I ventured. “Do you think… I mean, I know they said you were busy, but maybe… could we talk for a few minutes? So I can write my story?”