The Break(40)

“Was?” Sylvie says.

I shrug again. I can’t help it. “She could be dead,” I say.



It’s the first thing I’ve ever said to Sylvie that seems to surprise her.

“Dead?” she repeats. “What would make you say something like that?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Just a feeling. Not like I can necessarily trust the things I feel, lately.”

“Why don’t we start there?”

“With June being dead?”

“No, Rowan. With you not being able to trust the things you feel.”

Tick, tock goes the clock, like something out of one of Gabe’s movies. Sylvie doesn’t look at Gabe, only me. She asks, “Why don’t you tell me more about those dreams and fantasies you’ve been having about harm coming to your baby?”

“Okay,” I say slowly, wanting to talk about anything but this. I think of a particularly awful nightmare I had last night about Lila and me on a too-small boat careening into a deep navy sea, the wood of the sailboat splintering beneath our bare feet, the creeping knowledge that we were going to sink filtering through my half-awake state. I woke with hands flailing for a life preserver for both of us. Gabe was nowhere; he wasn’t in the dream, and he wasn’t in the bed when I fully woke up. He came back at midnight and told me he couldn’t sleep, that he needed to get out, to walk the streets.

I open my mouth to try to put the nightmare into words, and a swell of dread rises within me.





EIGHTEEN


June. Three months ago. August 2nd.


On the first Tuesday in August I’m sorting through screenplays in my cubicle outside Louisa’s office. We’ve settled into an easy working pattern, and the longer I’m here at WTA—three weeks and five days but who’s counting?—the easier it is to slip through the office like every interaction isn’t the biggest deal in the world. I mean, of course I want my big break to happen here, but I also really enjoy working for Louisa: our easy banter and our jokes, how we talk about our lives to each other, and how we stay in the office working later than almost anyone else.

Louisa gives me loads of acting business advice, and she got me a discount with an acting coach she knows. I start classes with the woman in three weeks. I knew I truly, deeply liked and cared for Louisa one weekend morning when I was at a sidewalk sale on Spring Street and bought a pair of earrings for eighteen bucks that I just knew she’d love. She squealed when I gave them to her and wore them to work four days in a row. And then I saw a picture she posted from the weekend with her therapist-friend Sylvie, and Louisa was wearing them then, too, and she had a huge smile on her face, which made me think: Please get pregnant soon, please let that be the news you have for me one Monday morning . . .



I add the three screenplays I read in the last two days to piles with my sticky notes. Sorting screenplays into four piles—bad, medium, pretty good, you have to read this!—is my new job, and I absolutely love it. It turns out I can read a 120-page screenplay in around two hours and have something intelligent (or at least, semihelpful) to tell Louisa. Sometimes I even take them home with me. I feel so important carrying them on the subway, all the pages bound and topped with a blue cover marked Williamson Talent Agency. Plus, telling Sean I have to work each night is a great way to get him off my back. He’s increasingly suffocating, like a bad smell you can’t figure out, so most nights I tuck in early and lock my door. And it turns out I love reading screenplays—getting swept away, imagining them as movies playing through my mind (and, admittedly, sometimes imagining myself playing the lead)—and then reporting back to Louisa in the morning. I like it even more than going out drinking. Who knew? It’s the kind of thing my parents would be proud of, if I had those kind of parents. I just don’t think my dad would even understand this world of talent agencies, so I keep the details short when I call home. Mostly we just talk about the weather and my dad’s shop. But maybe I’m underestimating my dad; maybe I should tell him more. My mom sounds a little off lately, like she’s about to tank. I really should take a weekend trip up to see them and check.

As I file away the latest screenplay, Kai pops her head over my cubicle.

“Heya,” she says. We’ve been out for cheap dinners three times during the past few weeks. It’s sealed us as office friends.

“What’s up?” I ask with a smile. Having a friend has already made me feel more at ease in this city. Before Kai, I really just had Sean and Louisa, and New York City isn’t really the kind of place where you meet other women at bars and exchange numbers so you can go get coffee together or go to the gym.

“My friend is throwing down in Williamsburg on Saturday, do you wanna come?” Kai asks.



“A party?” I ask. It’s only taken me these few weeks in New York to realize there aren’t house or apartment parties the way there were in college and anywhere else I’ve lived. Everyone here seems to meet at a bar or restaurant.

“Yup,” says Kai. “A proper party. At their loft.”

Loft. I love that word. I imagine buying one when—if!—I get my big break. “Sure,” I say, smiling, and then Harrison Russell rounds the corner with his head down, looking at his phone. He pops his gaze up when he sees Kai and me and smiles. He pays so much attention to me. Kai’s kind of aloof with him—maybe because she has a serious girlfriend and isn’t charmed by him, but more likely because she knows it’s better to keep things professional at work, and I’m sure that’s a smarter way than mine: I keep halfway flirting back when he makes jokes with me, because he’s cute and he’s not married, and I kind of can’t help it.