The Comeback(19)

“The Snap Online has posted about you being back in Venice, living with Dylan and his new girlfriend,” Laurel says. “They have a source swearing you spent the year being treated for an opioid addiction in a Nicaraguan rehab. It’s getting picked up everywhere.”

“Why now?”

Laurel stares at me in confusion.

“Like why didn’t they do any stories back when I actually left?”

“When you left you could have been anywhere, shooting a movie in Canada or the Ukraine, recording an album of Scottish pirate metal songs, I don’t fucking know. The press isn’t going to ask the questions if the fans aren’t asking questions. But now you’re back and you’ve got nothing to show for it, and nothing to say about it, and people are starting to notice. You’re also dressing like my great-aunt Meryl, and not to be rude, but you’re borderline chubby.”

“Wow, Laurel,” I say, trying to will some tears into existence to make her feel bad. “I never stood a chance with friends like you.”

“Do you think you could have Lyme?” Laurel asks, frowning at me.

“I don’t have Lyme disease.”

“Okay, you have to help me then. What are we doing here? Are we doing 2007 Britney? Or a Marilyn thing? Because you’re smarter than this, Grace.”

“Why is everyone more worried about me having a breakdown now than when I was actually having one?”

“Because at least your hair was good then,” Laurel sniffs, and I stick my middle finger up at her. I don’t hate her as much as I should, which probably says a lot about me.

“Honestly? I just want to be normal, Laurel,” I say, but I can hear how cliché it sounds now that I’m back here, and how holing yourself up in your husband’s house with his new girlfriend probably isn’t the best way to go about it.

“No you don’t, Grace, you just think you do,” Laurel says, looking disappointed. “Shall we ask our server if she wants to swap places with you? Do you want me to ask if they’re hiring here?”

“I’m figuring it out,” I say, ignoring her.

“You don’t get to choose when to be normal. Don’t you realize that?” Laurel says, shaking her head. “That was the deal.”

I watch over Laurel’s shoulder as a woman in a Lakers T-shirt asks a man at the table next to her something about me. He shrugs, embarrassed when he catches me watching. I reflexively peel my lips back into a smile.

“I’ll message you the link to the Nicaragua story,” Laurel says. “And you can tell me how you want to respond.”

“I still don’t—”

“You still don’t have a phone. Of course you don’t, you little freak,” she says almost affectionately. “Okay, I’ll print it off for you and give it to you next time I see you, or maybe I’ll transcribe it and train a carrier pigeon to drop it off to you, since there seems to be no urgency whatsoever on your part to read it anyway . . .”

Our server places my egg sandwich down in front of me and I watch as Laurel pulls out another phone, this one black.

“Why do you have two phones?” I ask as I chew a mouthful of bread and egg dripping in harissa mayo.

“I have one for play and one for work.”

“What . . . what’s your exact job at the moment?”

“I’m a life coach. I specialize in pivoting career goals so that they reflect your strengths,” Laurel says, completely seriously.

“Have you ever had a career, other than being a career adviser?”

“Of course I have,” she says, making a face like I’m an idiot. “You.”

After that I finish my sandwich in peace because Laurel seems to have forgotten I’m here, rapidly firing off some emails and texts instead. Despite the glass of rosé, she does seem to have got her shit together since I last saw her.

The soft egg yolk drips down my fingers, and I lick each one before cleaning myself up with my napkin. Laurel is eyeing me with disgust.

“Don’t be mad just because you haven’t eaten a meal in ten years,” I say, and she starts to laugh.

“There she is.”

I smile at her, but I’m already bored of our sparring and bored of the couple next to us who are taking photos of me when they think I’m not looking, and bored of this lunch but also bored of anything else I could be doing instead.

“So, this house thing,” Laurel says, watching me closely now. “I’ve pulled some options together for you. Two of them are near me in Silver Lake, and two of them are on the beach. I know you want to be away from Dylan and what’s-her-bitch, but you can’t let them drive you out of the entire Westside.”

“Wren. She’s actually a delight.”

“What happened to you at home? Are your parents loving or something?” Laurel asks, and I forgot that she could occasionally make me laugh.

“Something like that. Let me see the beach houses.”

I wait as she pulls them up. There are certain things that nobody teaches you when you have people who are paid to do everything for you. How to be alone is one, and doing anything useful online is another. Or at least it was for me. My agent and manager picked up on the fact that I’d never been allowed a smartphone as a kid, and decided to project an image of me as an extinct species in the age of the overshare—a millennial without a social media presence. No hawking of detox teas or dating apps for me. Instead, they curated a portrait of a reluctant young indie actress trying to live a normal life in Venice with her talented documentary-filmmaker husband. Much was made of the fact that I used a flip phone and had never posted a selfie anywhere. In reality, my movies were never real indies and I was never really cool, but that didn’t seem to matter. Working with Able was supposed to give me the exposure I needed, without having to force myself on the public in other ways to stay relevant. It was a luxury I always knew I was lucky to have, despite everything else that came with it.