Aftermath of Dreaming(74)

Lying in bed later that night, knowing that Andrew was in bed with Stephanie—he’d told me he had to meet her at some party—I had a wonderful daydream that Stephanie suddenly decided to quit her career and leave Andrew, but I knew that would never happen. And Andrew wouldn’t break up with her before their movie came out because that would be bad for box office, so I’d have to wait until after the opening in the spring to see what he’d do, like make another movie with her, or dump her and find someone new. Like me. A part of me hoped Valiant Hour would be a big success for him, but another part hoped it wouldn’t, but only because of Stephanie, so he’d never see her again and I could move in. Literally.



One morning after salsa class, Viv and I were on the sundeck at our usual table drinking watermelon juice and talking about our weekends. It was late November, but the morning was still warm as if the heat of the summer had saved itself to emerge one final time before withdrawing for the year. I had been jumpy all morning, and had hoped the class would exhaust it out of me, but it hadn’t. I needed to talk about Andrew. After seeing him regularly for almost three months and still not telling anyone, I felt about to burst. The impressions of his body on my skin, the daily and multiple phone calls, the withdrawal I went through in between seeing him, all of it was commanding my head nonstop. I needed to get it out to someone. I considered calling Carrie in New York, but we had started drifting apart once I began SVA and was buried in schoolwork. Then when I moved in with Tim, our regular communication ended, so talking to her after so much time wasn’t an option. And I needed someone local, a friend, which Viv was, and she was right in front of me, drinking her juice, going on and on about her boyfriend, so for me not to say anything about Andrew felt like being at lunch with her and not eating a meal. Starving, just looking in. I wanted to talk, but in a controlled kind of way, so that Viv would forget all about it afterward, only remembering if I talked about it again. There was no way she could know it was Andrew, so I decided to conceal his identity, and began telling Viv about this guy I was seeing, Andy—a nickname Andrew was never called. I said he went out of town sometimes—my way of talking about not seeing him when he was with Stephanie—and I’d miss him so much, but we talked on the phone all the time and about the sex we had and…

It felt good to get it out, and Viv was an attentive listener. She made noises that encouraged me to talk and nodded at other parts; she was completely understanding, even saying things that were dead-on about Andrew, as if we had been speaking about him the whole time I’d known him.

The phone was ringing when I got home. It was Andrew wondering where I’d been, he had come by my apartment, but I wasn’t in. I was so happy to have finally been able to talk about him to Viv, even in a veiled way, that I told Andrew about the salsa classes and my friendship with her, though not about the conversation she and I had just had.

“Viv, the pop singer?” Andrew said in a tone I had never heard before.

“Yeah, her.” I immediately felt uneasy though I couldn’t figure out what could be wrong.

“Viv.” Andrew’s voice pounced on the word. “Who released a couple of albums, but now is in free fall?”

“Yes, her. What’s the big deal?”

“She’s Stephanie’s best friend.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. You didn’t tell her anything about us, did you?”

“Oh, God, no. I wouldn’t do that.” My mind was scrambling, trying to remember everything I had said to Viv.

“Good, because otherwise we’re f*cked. Stephanie is pretty vindictive. I can handle her, but I wouldn’t want her wrath on your head.”

I was quiet for a moment while that horrible thought sank in. “Jesus, how f*cking small is this town?”

Which made Andrew laugh, as if I were starting to understand something he had learned before I was born. And actually, I realized, he had.

“As long as you didn’t say anything to Viv—who, by the way, has one of the biggest mouths in Hollywood, so don’t tell her anything you don’t want broadcast on the street—we’ll be fine. Call me later,” he said, then his voice moved down a few places inside me until it reached exactly where he wanted it to be. “You need to f*ck me tonight.”

“I sure do.”

I hung up the phone thrilled that I was going to see Andrew soon, but flipped out about Stephanie and Viv. Fuck. How could I have been so stupid as to use the name Andy? Daddy had always said that the way people get caught in lies is that they can’t remember what they said, so right before I told Viv about Andrew, I thought I’d use a name close to his so I wouldn’t get tripped up. But f*ck, Stephanie and Viv were best friends. Jesus, I wished I had known that. And how weird was it that of all the people I made friends with, or who had made friends with me, she’s removed from Andrew one degree. Though maybe everyone is in L.A. I prayed Viv wouldn’t say anything to Stephanie, though really what could she say? But if Viv had figured it out, and told Stephanie, who then got all over Andrew about it, he would be pissed off and would stop seeing me, and…Fuck. I would just have to tell Viv the next time we talked that Andy and I had broken up and pray to God that she forgets everything I’d said.



Two days later, Viv and I were on the patio after salsa class, drinking our watermelon juice while she talked about her boyfriend, Craig Beltram, a music executive for a huge record label she wanted to get on. As she talked, I was mentally rehearsing how to say that Andy and I were over. I had considered telling her that I couldn’t stay for juice this time, but I realized that I needed to get the lie about the lie over with, so that I could move on and stop worrying nonstop as I had been for the last forty-eight hours. She was complaining about Craig’s habit of being late, so I told her how I just couldn’t take Andy’s being out of town and had broken up with him last night.