I'm Glad About You(59)

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THE “SURPRISE VISIT” she had decided to make was welcome and easily explained, especially since she hadn’t yet met Megan’s twins, who were already toddlers. Rose was happy to see Alison and so even was her father, whose skepticism about his wayward daughter had eased considerably since she had started making money. He was still never around, always off golfing or at the gym, but when she did catch a glimpse of him he was nice enough. In his distant dad way, he was proud of her for being on television and didn’t care that the show was crap. Megan, meanwhile, was pregnant again and desperate for help and companionship, so Alison’s glamorous irony was entertaining when she drove over to Walnut Hills and tried haplessly to lend a hand with those twin toddlers. There was a kind of joyful and unthinking chaos that carried everyone through Alison’s sudden arrival, but after a few days she knew that they were whispering behind her back. What, after all, was she doing there? And how long was she going to stay?

She herself could not have told them, although she was not as ignorant of her heart’s maneuverings as she pretended to be. She knew the nature of the storm that was gathering on her horizon and she also knew that there was no way to run from it. Not that she precisely wanted to run from it. The universe had come calling, and she felt the reckless joy of having summoned it. She also wanted to kick it in the face. So many girls in her position turned into utter nightmares at this juncture, making surly and constant hysterical demands, exacting a cost for being given everything everyone told you to want. But any hunger for self-indulgent rage around Alison’s personal choices had never been acknowledged. She was from Ohio. People didn’t act like that here.

In fact, they didn’t act like this anywhere else. Disappearing into the Midwest was not generally considered even a possibility in the Hollywood playbook; consequently, it was a tactic with a short shelf life. The very day after Alison’s chance meeting with Kyle, her mother’s phone rang, and Rose answered it.

“Why, yes, she is,” she informed the caller. “Just a minute.” She held the receiver out to Alison, who was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of Cheerios. “It’s for you.”

Alison glanced up, surprised, and took the phone. “Hello?”

“You don’t answer your cell anymore?”

“Ryan?” She had a moment of thinking, How on earth did you find me, but then that would imply that she didn’t want to be found. When in fact things weren’t at all that clear.

“I’ve left messages everywhere, are you avoiding me?”

“Why would I avoid you?” Her mother behind her, eyes going wide, looked worried suddenly. Alison waved her off. “It’s my agent, Mom.” This announcement seemed to worry Rose even further. People didn’t have agents in Ohio, and she clearly thought Alison should treat this important person with more respect. Alison dragged the receiver back to her bedroom and slammed the door on the chord.

“I just needed to go home and see my family.”

“For a whole week?”

“I needed to see my sister, she’s got these twins now, they grow up so fast. My mom’s been bugging me. How did you find me?”

“You have a lot of loyal fans. Your Wikipedia page is very informative.”

“You got my parents’ phone number off my Wikipedia page?”

“Listen, I was getting desperate. I was about to start tweeting all your stalkers, to find out what they knew.”

“That joke is in poor taste.”

“So is bolting New York when the hottest director around has taken a very special interest in you.”

“I’m sick of interest,” she muttered.

“Not this kind you’re not. Louise Nagler just called, to check on your avail, for the spring.”

“Meaning?”

“She’s casting Last Stop.”

Last Stop was Lars’s movie. An eighty-million-dollar epic about a bunch of heroic American black ops who go rogue and take down an evil drug cartel in Mexico. The twist? The secret leader of this merry band of reprobates was a woman. Lars had talked about this project incessantly with the lunatics he did business with, at the dinners he had been dragging her to. She had heard him describe it repeatedly as his dream project, although that seemed to be a term that all these people used a bit casually. Other terms being used were “tentpole” and “international blockbuster” and “mega hit.” The names that were being tossed about for the female lead included all the hottest stars in features. There was never even a whisper that Lars or his cohorts would even consider the possibility of casting an unknown. The idea seemed too ludicrous to even entertain. “Oh, for crying out loud, Ryan,” she said. “She’s being polite.”

“No one inquires about avails to be polite.”

“How do you know?”

“I think I know a little bit more about show business than you do. They’re concerned about your series, whether or not your dates would conflict.”

“They are not.”

“How do you know, Miss Thing? Who’s the agent, me or you?”

“Don’t do that.”

“Who’s the agent?”

“Ryan—it’s ridiculous to even talk about something that far-fetched anyway. Besides, I have a seven-year contract on a terrible television series and they aren’t going to let me out.”