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Throat aching, I walk slowly to the hall table and put down my briefcase and look around a house I bought for Keith and me. Of course he was dead already, but I knew he’d love this house. I could see us in this house.
I kick off my heels, one and then the other, then shrug off my coat and drop it on the back of a living room chair. Even though it’s almost Thanksgiving it’s a warm night, and I head for the French doors and push them open. The potted Meyer lemon tree on the patio is in bloom, and the heady citrus scent perfumes the air.
It doesn’t happen very often anymore, but sometimes at night I dream Keith’s still here, still with me, and then in the morning I wake and roll over, warm and happy, and it comes back to me. He’s gone and he’s never coming back.
Which is why I date and why I want to fall in love again. But Keith will be a tough love to replace.
He was beautiful— a blond Graeco-Roman soldier— and smart, so incredibly smart. I loved looking at Keith while he worked. I loved looking at Keith when we were sitting having coffee and reading through a dozen papers every morning. I loved watching him sleep, whether it was in bed or in his chair, where he wrote and edited. He was warm and self-deprecating, funny, heroic. The only thing he feared was not getting the story right. Not getting the truth.
He taught me more than anyone else and in the shortest amount of time. After that meeting on the side of the highway, I didn’t see him again for months, until we were seated across from each other at an industry awards dinner. We were both attending the dinner with different people, and yet there we were, directly across from each other, and every time I looked up I somehow caught his eye, and every time I did, I smiled.
I couldn’t help it.
There was something in his face, something gentle and intelligent, kind and loving, and the best way I can describe it is think of the actor Greg Kinnear. He had that kind of face. Open and curious and yet most of all kind.
Kind. So very kind to me. So full of love, and God knows how much I needed it. How little I’ve had of it. How much I still want it.
And here I am, in my beautiful little historic Mediterranean bungalow, alone. I’m so sick of alone. Which is why I’ve continued dating Trevor. Even though he’s far away, and even though we’ll never be soul mates, he makes me feel that I matter. He fills the time, if not the space. But he doesn’t challenge the memory of Keith. No one does, and I suppose I’ve liked it that way. Keith’s memory is safe. No man who enters my life can compete.
But it does limit the personal life. It means that my home is quiet. It means that I live with ghosts instead of people. Makes it tough to have a family. Or kids. Which I do want.
If only Keith had made me pregnant. If only he’d left me with a piece of him before he died.
Because I want a life that begins when I open the front door. I want voices here in my house. I want conversation and lights and activity. Hugs. Talk. Laughter.
I want.
Catching myself, I turn around and head for the kitchen, where I open the stainless steel fridge door and take a look inside. Two prepackaged meals delivered by In the Zone delivery, a Tupperware of trimmed radishes, celery, broccoli, and carrots, a bottle of pomegranate juice, and an opened bottle of white wine.
I reach for the white wine and pour myself a tiny glass. Wandering out of the kitchen, I grab my phone and dial Trevor’s number. It rings five times before kicking into voice mail.
“Trevor, it’s me. Just wanted to hear your voice before I went to bed.” I want to hear someone’s voice before bed. I want someone to say good night to me, someone to say “I love you” to me.
But that’s not the relationship Trevor and I have. Ours isn’t love. It’s sex and passing time and keeping company. But that has to count for something.
More brightly, I add to my message, “I’ll be up another half hour to an hour, so call me if you can. Otherwise I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Night.”
I hang up, sip my wine, and look out the living room’s open doors to the sparkle of lights on the valley floor. I take a last sip, finishing the minuscule amount I poured myself. I never drink too much because I don’t need the calories, but tonight I want the taste. I want the warmth.
And there it is again. I want. Ah, the evils of wanting. I shouldn’t want.
I have more than most.
Except for love and family, I have everything.
The morning comes too early. I wake up and look at the clock. Six-fifty a.m. And then I remember it’s Saturday and I have nothing to do until eight, when Dana, my trainer, arrives for my (ugh) workout.
I flop back down and tug the covers up higher, wishing I were starting the day without a workout. But there’s no room for error here. Weight, face, and image must be perfect.
After ten minutes of not being able to fall back asleep, I roll over onto my stomach and reach for my BlackBerry, which has been on the bedside table charging all night. After unplugging it from the charger, I check my calendar for my weekend schedule, which I already know will be crazy busy.
8:00 AM Workout with Dana
9:15 AM Fittings with Shannon
10:00 AM Hair appt
11:30 AM Baby shower brunch thrown by pal indie film-maker Christie Hern at Shutters Hotel on the beach in Santa Monica
2–5 PM Pediatric AIDS fund-raiser hosted by producer Mel Savage and his wife, Meg, at their home in Brentwood
7–11 PM Political fund-raiser at the Getty with a pre-party at 6 hosted by CAA king Steve Lehman at his house for a hundred of Steve’s closest friends.
I could possibly sneak out of attending the political fund-raiser— I already paid— they don’t need me physically there. But the pre-party at Steve’s is important. Steve is one of Max’s closest friends and very dialed in, which means I have to go. I’m there not for me, but to make my agent look good, so today wardrobe and hair really matter.
But then, I think, climbing from bed, when do I have a day when hair and wardrobe don’t matter?
Dana arrives at eight on the dot, arms full of stretchy bands and huge vinyl balls. She sets them down in the living room and heads back to her car for her medicine ball, and I drag my stationary bike from the hall closet (this is L.A., we don’t own a lot of coats) and unfold the treadmill that’s in the living room corner.
Back in my house, Dana swiftly shoves my sofa back and I move the coffee table and we have our workout space.
For the next sixty minutes, I do weights and reps between two-minute bursts of intense cardio. Sprints on the treadmill are followed by a hundred lunges (seriously). Two minutes cycling as fast as I can at the hardest resistance I can bear is the precursor to forty pushups. More treadmill and then squats with the medicine ball. More bike and then shoulder presses and bicep curls and tricep kickbacks.
By the time she’s done with me, I’m sweating profusely and every muscle quivers. My legs shake as I push the bike back into the closet and head for the shower. I’m still trying to recover when Shannon, my stylist, arrives fifteen minutes later.
Years ago, I learned the value of a good stylist after choosing my own evening gown to wear on the red carpet during the pre-award interviews. I thought I looked beautiful and I felt like a princess in the salmon silk gown and with my hair curled. Instead I ended up being horribly skewered by Joan and Melissa Rivers in their post-awards fashion roundup. They mocked me for looking more like Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage than Cinderella herself. My dress was the wrong color, the skirt too full, the sleeves too puffy, my hair beyond absurd. Apparently, I was the show’s fashion travesty. Didn’t I have a mother to dress me? Joan asked.
I don’t, haven’t since I was a teen, but that’s not the point.
The point is, I don’t have good taste. There are women with an innate sense of style, but I’m not one of them. I now employ a stylist for all appearances related to my position as host of America Tonight. Happily, it’s an expense Max got covered by the studio in my last contract, and that’s helped considerably. Best of all, I have
n’t been a fashion victim again, although Marta and Shey find it hysterical that I need so much help just getting dressed. In my defense, unlike them, I don’t have an artistic bone in my body, which is why my bedroom is still white and my dream of a terraced garden with a pool remains but a dream.
And it is rather funny that I— who can do so much— can’t get dressed without help.
As the doorbell rings, I wonder what a weekend in Los Angeles without events would be like.
Two days without hair, makeup, wardrobe. Two days without cameras and paparazzi.
Opening the door, I welcome Shannon and take a couple of the garment bags slung over her arm. Shannon’s a tall, willowy redhead, a former costume designer who understands fabric and fit, two things definitely beyond my scope.
The dresses are all beautiful, but there’s a clear standout, a fitted Grecian gown in an unusual hue, the color somewhere between plum and eggplant, by designer Naeem Khan, topped by a stunning thick silver collar that’s so ornate it might have been worn by an Egyptian queen.
Shannon’s zipping my gown, and the zipper sticks for a split second. “Suck it in,” she commands.
I do and the zipper goes the rest of the way up.
