Good Riddance(80)

I stayed behind. I baked cheesecake brownies. I rewatched the episode of Riverdale where Archie and Miss Grundy are busted for falling in love. After a longer-than-expected absence, Jeremy was back, announcing, “We’re all set. You hungry? How about pizza?”

“All set with, like, everything? Did she mention the shredding?”

“Only a dozen times. I told her a replacement was on its way.”

“Not that she’s getting it!”

“I don’t think she has any use for it. She’s not feeling too ambitious these days.”

It was hard for me to feign concern about Geneva’s well-being, but I did force myself to ask, “Is it her health?”

“Nope. It’s professional. The money’s dried up.”

“I thought her father funded everything.”

“Not anymore.”

“Yikes. Did she say why?”

“She tried to change the subject, but I kept at it. Eventually, she admitted that he’d listened to the podcast—she blames us, by the way; he hadn’t known about it till we tipped him off in the emergency room. It sounds like he went slightly ballistic.”

“Because he hated it that much?”

“More like he figured out that the actors were impersonating real people, reading bullshit scripts, which apparently can land a producer in court.”

Suddenly, this was turning into a very enjoyable conversation. I led him to the gray tufted couch in the living room and put my feet up on the coffee table. “I’m surprised she told you that much.”

“She didn’t. She was testing the waters. She asked if anyone I knew, maybe people from New Hampshire, had listened to it. And if so, did they have . . . issues? So, of course, I had to run with it.”

“How?”

“I told her your family was considering a giant lawsuit.”

How nice to have a boyfriend so skilled at improvising. I offered my hand for a high five. “And our show? You got to that?”

That earned me one of his signature when-did-I-ever-let-you-down looks. “I told her that I’m writing a one-woman show for you, the premise being what you’ve endured since the family heirloom fell into her hands, including getting fired thanks to her bad-mouthing you all over town. I threw in slander, defamation, character assassination. Oh, and on the spot I named the show The Yearbook Thief, which caused a little conniption. So I reassured her that I’d given her a new identity, that the title character who helped herself to the yearbook was not Geneva Wisenkorn but a man who drove around Pickering on garbage day searching for collectibles.”

“And the reason for your reassurances to the enemy?” I asked.

He paused. “I know you won’t love this. I know you’ll think it’s like asking your major asshole rival in a campaign to join your ticket, to which your loyal family members say, ‘No way; how could you ask him to be your vice president after all those awful things he said about you?’”

“Okay, now I’m nervous.”

“Don’t be. It’s so nothing. I told her, since she did make the story possible—and, believe me, she knew that ‘making the story possible’ meant the grief she caused you. So, here’s the deal: In lieu of suing her for X, Y, and Z, or her suing us for dramatizing her bad deeds . . . she’d give her blessing to the project.”

“That’s it? We want her blessing?”

“She’s running it by Daddy or, as she put it, ‘consulting with my attorney.’”

“And we’re not worried that when Daddy hears his daughter’s the villain of a one-woman show—”

“She’s not. Eugene Palumbo is. And you can put money on the fact that Lawyer Dad is saying, ‘That’s it? They’re not gonna sue you if you let them put on a play about a yearbook stolen by a guy named Palumbo in Bumblefuck, New Hampshire?’”

I said, “You’re good.”

“Thank you.”

“When do we hear?”

“I told her we’d have to know by the end of the week, or else we’d name someone else as an executive producer.”

Did he just say “executive producer”?

“Actually, coexecutive producer, i.e., nothing. She just gets her name in the playbill and she tries to raise some money.”

I asked if I’d have to meet with her and/or be nice to her.

That was Jeremy’s cue to slip into a new favorite role, impresario reassuring the ingénue. “You’re the star, darling. Always better to be a gracious leading lady than a diva.”

Diva . . . some days I pictured the press release chronicling my rise from high school Hair to Montessori failure to Drama Factory dud to leading lady—plucked from obscurity like a twenty-first-century Lana Turner.

Was that even true, that she was discovered in Schwab’s drugstore or was that just Hollywood legend? I’d be embarrassed to ask Jeremy. Next time I was back in my own apartment, I’d Google it.





41


Just Like That



We invited my father and Kathi to Jeremy’s apartment, where we’d begin the reading as soon as the sun had set over the Hudson. First, we lubricated them with drinks made from Jeremy’s well-stocked bar. My father’s Manhattan got a perfect stemmed cherry, and Kathi’s mojito looked like our host had just returned from the farmers’ market.