I'm Glad About You(37)

Alison lay back on the bed, her heart pounding. How could she be the one to tell him? He clearly did not know. He was willing to throw everything away, but to throw away this would have been beyond thinking. It would have poisoned everything even more than it already was.

You could have done it just once, her animal brain informed her, pissed. Nobody even knows you’re here. You could have done it and walked away and at least you would have done it. The part of her which understood Kyle better than he understood himself dismissed this. He wouldn’t have been able to live with himself, it said. Wanna bet? said the animal. Alison barely tracked the back-and-forth, as she listened for the sound of a car door, in the distance, slamming shut, the turn of the motor, the gentle crunch of the gravel under the wheels as it moved off. That wife better be driving, she thought. Kyle is drunk. But she’s not. She’s not drinking, because she has a secret to tell him. She listened to the end of the night for what seemed a lifetime. Finally, the sounds came: The car door slammed. The gravel crunched. The car drove off.

Alison remained on the bed, staring at the ceiling, the walls, the Matisse, the jewelry box, the wine bottles, the dark air beyond the windows. She heard the rest of the party drain off. Dennis was doubtless passed out on some couch in some room somewhere.

Alison’s reptilian brain, thwarted in its main purpose for coming—a purpose so nearly achieved—was clever and determined, and no longer willing to take no for an answer. There was no reason to stay in Cincinnati; the entire city and her history there was a trap and a disease and a punishment. She had to get out, and get out for good.

She waited another ten minutes. Then she got off the bed, went to the dresser, and opened the jewelry box, emptying its contents first onto Felicia’s duvet, and then into one of the many handbags Felicia had so helpfully left on a shelf of her walk-in closet. Alison then crept down the back stairs and peered into the kitchen, which was deserted. The house was empty. Alison made her way back to the main hallway, where her coat waited for her in a tidy little heap right by the front stairs. She picked it up, put it on, and left, and the following day she informed her parents that she needed to return to New York immediately. Over their heedless protests, Megan drove her to the airport, where she took the first standby seat available.

By the time Dennis’s father and his wife returned to Cincinnati three weeks later, the trail was cold. No one could say when or how, even, the robbery took place. Two months later, Alison put down a security deposit on a tidy little studio apartment just six blocks from the Atlantic/Pacific Street subway station in Brooklyn. Three months later, she booked a pilot.





part two





nine





THE SCENE WAS A MESS. A good mess, but wow was it taking forf*ckingever to figure out how to get the thing to click. It wasn’t like there were a ton of extras to wrangle, and God knows there wasn’t any fancy camera work going on, but there were about eight entrances and exits and meaningful shreds of conversation that were interrupted by plot elements from six other story lines and then yet more buildup to the climactic fight between Tara and Rob that was supposed to get to some place of white-hot rage in a back room of this location, and then end with them having sex on a pool table.

So there were plenty of unhelpful twists and turns but there was fantastic stuff too. Alison flipped through the pages quickly, reviewing, then let the script drop onto the polished plywood bartop and stood, rolling onto the tips of her feet, stretching out the backs of her calves. Her arms floated up over her head and her fingers met, unbidden, in a reflexive yoga stretch which calmed her nerves and made the black cashmere sweater she was wearing creep up to her midriff, making her look for a moment like a world-class belly dancer. The costume designer, Alec, really knew his shit. That sweater fit like a glove but it would come off as soon as Bradley touched it.

She looked around, trying to spot Bradley, but he wasn’t on set yet. It was one of his behavioral trademarks, to make the set wait; he was the show’s acknowledged antihero and he had absorbed his character’s easy contempt for reality and rules. There were better-looking actors on the show, but Bradley’s bad boy with a heart of gold owned the internet. The websites oozed with estrogen gone haywire; the guy was a certifiable rock star, as far as the lonely ladies of America were concerned. He continued to drift down to the set on his own schedule, no matter how much the crew griped about it. But there was no question that today he deliberately was working her nerves. He had been abrupt in the makeup room, commenting on the way she was “letting them” ruin her hair, and announcing to Donny the hair guy that he didn’t want to have to deal with some insane twist on the back of her neck while also figuring out how to actually have sex on a pool table. When Donny earnestly tried to explain that the director had already approved the look, Bradley snapped.

“I have not had sex with her for a year,” he told Donny. “I’m not taking the time to do anything but grab her, get her on the pool table, and f*ck her.” Before anyone could think of anything to say to that, he turned on her. “It’s your hair. Can you take care of this, please?”

She wanted to snap back at him, but she knew to save it up. “Sure,” she said.

“Thank you,” he replied, with an impatient edge that was much more pointed than the words. As she watched him go, she could see Irene from makeup make a small face while concentrating on the difficulties of cleaning a clotted eyebrow wand. Donny tried to recover some of his pride. “Queen Bradley is on the loose,” he observed. “It’s going to be a long day.”