Aftermath of Dreaming(5)

Still silence.

Okay, I knew he’d probably pretty definitely be upset about this Michael stuff, but what was I supposed to do, not tell him? He’s my best friend, for Christ’s sake. Though sometimes he acts like he’s jealous, which I mostly find hard to believe, then annoying the few times I do because we’ve always only been friends, and even though I know he’s straight—he’s had girlfriends and women are attracted to him, though he hasn’t dated in ages—I just don’t think of him that way, so I wish he’d remember that our friendship doesn’t involve sex and stop getting mad at me when I talk about other men.

“I’m glad you had a good time with him yesterday.” I can hear the decision in Reggie’s voice to move on, to let the rhythms and sounds of our mutual morning ritual carry us back to how we are.

I sit down on the couch, relieved. “Thanks, Reggie.” Our friendship has been one long conversation interrupted only long enough for us to have more experiences to tell each other about, and I don’t want anything to stop that. Until Reggie and I talk about something that’s happened, it’s not real. It’s still in our heads, swirling around, waiting to be interpreted and set down, our minds a journal of each other’s lives. “So what’s happening with the script?”

“A big fat bunch of nothing. I mean, it’s great having you tell me about New Orleans, but I need to see the places ol’ Kate was writing about for myself—something to reinspire me—not that that’s going to happen with how goddamn busy work is.”

Reggie’s dream project is the film adaptation of a Kate Chopin story that he’s been writing forever and that is sort of the reason we met over four years ago. It was an L.A. New Year’s Eve, rainy and dismal, things either should never be, but maybe not so surprising for winter and my second one out here.

I had parties to go to that night with friends, but it was still afternoon, so I was browsing in a bookstore to kill a few of the year’s final hours. I looked at art books for a while, then went into a fiction aisle where a copy of The Awakening caught my eye. Taking it down, I flipped through until I found the chapter where the main character leaves her husband, and I suddenly remembered the first time I read that part and how I had to put the book down and just breathe for a moment because I was so amazed that this woman in 1890s New Orleans no less could walk away from the one man who enabled her to live the only life she knew.

Then someone near me in the aisle said, “Do you like Chopin, too?” which immediately catapulted me back from the novel’s world to L.A. where a pleasant-looking man was gazing at me like we had been in conversation all day. Reggie was holding a book by Dumas, one finger marking a spot as if it had been resting next to his bed. He was wearing a dark gray Shetland wool sweater, so I knew he wasn’t from here. And not East Coast, either, but near. Culturally, at least. We stood for over an hour discussing Kate Chopin—he had read everything by her—and New Orleans—he had never been—while people milled past us, water to our rocks in a stream. And our friendship’s conversation began. Every year on New Year’s Eve, Reggie calls to wish me happy anniversary.

“Maybe you could get down there for a weekend,” I say as my phone line clicks, but before I can decide to ignore it, Reggie tells me to go ahead.

“Hello?” I hope it’s Michael, then immediately don’t, so I won’t have to say goodbye to one of them for the other.

“You haven’t even left yet?”

If I were forced to read those words without hearing the voice, I could still identify them as having been uttered by my only sibling, Suzanne.

“I am having a major bouquet crisis over here.”

“Hi, Suzanne. We said ten; it’s only nine.”

“No.” Her word lasts three beats. “We said Monday, nine A.M.”

I silently shake my head, taking my own three seats, as I remind myself of the advice I read in a bridal book after Suzanne announced her engagement and chose me as her maid of honor: “Remember, bridesmaids, however she behaves, this is her big day!” I wish I had never read that damn book, though wedding protocol is probably like traffic laws—you get punished for breaking one whether you knew it existed or not.

“Okay, I’m just finishing up a call, then as fast as the freeway is moving, I’ll be there.”

“Hurry,” my sister says, then hangs up the phone.

I click back to Reggie and hear the alleluia of his iMac coming to life, as if announcing that instead of resting on the seventh day, God made Mac. I relay the interrupting interlude to him, sure that he will believe what I remembered and Suzanne forgot.

“Freud was—”

“A great man, yes, that I remember. I also remember Suzanne telling me ten o’clock, but my mantra for her wedding is ‘whatever.’” I walk down the hall to my bedroom to start getting ready to leave. “How is your work going anyway?”

“The director’s a nightmare, and the client wants more energy, which, lemme tell ya, this commercial is never gonna have. They fight it out while I wonder how they expected the actors they hired to impersonate live people. If I passed one of these freaks in the produce aisle, I’d turn and run.”

“They’re lucky they have you to edit. You always make something amazing.”

“I should be making something amazing with my own script.”