Aftermath of Dreaming(73)

“You looked like my friend,” Viv said, after she downed her shot of wheat grass before settling in with a tall watermelon juice. We were sitting at a table under a heavy Boston fern, its tendrils curling down, reaching toward Viv like the fingers of a fan.

“I did? Who?”

“No, not someone in particular. When you walked into class that first time, my publicist was with me, and a friend of mine had said she might join us, so we were both looking out for her, but my publicist had never seen her before, so she pointed at you thinking you were my friend, and I said, ‘No, that’s not her.’ Then she said, ‘She looks like someone who’d be a friend of yours.’ Isn’t that funny?” Viv made it sound like we had just discovered our grandmothers were first cousins. We stayed for an hour, talking about her music, my art, life in L.A., and before we parted, we traded phone numbers.

Driving home, I was enveloped in the feeling of finding a friend. New school shoes is how it felt. Shiny and pretty with one or two uncomfortable spots maybe, but those would get broken in, as they took me on adventures of many kinds.



A couple of nights later, I arrived at Andrew’s house early one evening, and the front door was opened by a slight man with sandy brown hair. Before I could wonder who he was, the man put his hand out and said, “Hello, Yvette, I’m Patrick, I believe we met on the phone.” He was as polite and solicitous leading me back to Andrew’s office as he had been so many years ago when he arranged for a doctor to come to my apartment, then wired money to me. It was like meeting family, someone I already had a connection to. Andrew got up from his desk when he saw us come in, walked over to kiss me, then handed Patrick a small piece of paper, saying, “These two calls I will take.” Then wrapping his arm around me, he said, “C’mon, honey.” And we went to his bedroom.



Driving down the hill a few hours later, I realized that I was on a very short list of people whose calls were always put through to Andrew no matter when and no matter what he was doing, and calls constantly came in at Andrew’s, like jets lining up at Kennedy with operator-woman and Patrick running traffic control. He always came to the phone for me, and had since the beginning way back in New York. If he was in the middle of a meeting, he’d say, “Where are you?” then, “How are you?” and after hearing that I was okay, he’d tell me he’d call me back. It was the epitome of safety, his attention and concern and time every day. It was like having a million dollars that somehow fit into a back pocket of a garment that I wore daily. Him. Andrew currency. Not that I’d spend it in public. Without him ever saying it, I knew that our relationship was a secret.

Rarely, he’d be unreachable, like when he was at a postproduction studio where he was completing his latest film, Valiant Hour, but Patrick would always tell me, or Andrew would himself. Like he would before seeing Stephanie; he’d say he’d be out that night, and I knew what that meant without asking him.

Andrew was seeing Stephanie, a two-time Academy Award–nominated actress who had landed the role of his love interest in Valiant Hour, which all the gossip columnists agreed might finally grant her the coveted ultimate award from the industry. Not to mention the award of being on Andrew’s arm at every public event and in between his sheets. She was his girlfriend, or that was the word Andrew used when he spoke about her to me.

I had known that Andrew and Stephanie were together long before he said anything about it, thanks to the media chronicling the relationship assiduously from its beginning a year before. When I first read about it I still lived in New York, and I had thought she didn’t seem his type. Stephanie was tall and coldly blond and Nordic, like some Viking taking over the land. Then when I moved to L.A. and started seeing Andrew regularly, I really didn’t believe in their relationship. The emotional validity of it. I had a feeling Andrew was with her because she was perfect for his film. He generally got involved with his leading women, as if the films he picked to do were some sort of obligatory matchmaking service. And it was impossible for me to believe that Stephanie really cared about him. She looked like a woman who, if she ever pulled herself away from the mirror long enough, would eat her young, so I figured she was just using Andrew to get the trophy that really mattered to her, while she was one on his arm. And he on hers.

A few months before Stephanie had started seeing Andrew, she came into the restaurant I worked at in Greenwich Village. She was in New York promoting a film, the film she had done that must have gotten Andrew’s attention and put her on his radar screen as the next girl for him. She had heard about the great little French bistro in the Village that everyone was raving about and had to come in for a meal. But not just any meal. Stephanie was macrobiotic at that point, though God knows what fad she’s moved onto since, so the chef was instructed to cook special macro dishes for her that she could eat while her dinner companions chowed down on the regular fare of paté and cassoulet and tripe and French fries. I guess Stephanie was under the delusion that the chef would be honored to cook for her and us to serve her, but all of us waiters drew straws, with the loser having to take her table, and the chef grumbled and complained the whole time he cooked the brown rice and steamed the sad vegetables and made the soggy beans. He would have been honored if she had eaten a meal he wanted to cook, otherwise, we all wished she had gone to one of those health restaurants in the East Village, but clearly they weren’t fabulous enough.