I hit play again.
‘You think you’re so smart,’ the Lily on the screen said. ‘But I’m smarter.’
17LilyFive years ago
‘I can’t believe he’s so fucking stupid,’ I grumbled, taking another handful of peanuts from the bowl I’d stolen from behind the bar.
‘It’s more complicated than that, I think,’ Murray said.
‘Hello, yes, Asian woman living in the world, I know it’s more complicated than that. But it’s also just so fuckingstupid.’
Jeff came by the table, setting a glass of white wine down in front of me and a beer in front of Murray. ‘You looked like you needed these,’ he said, leaning down and kissing the top of my head. ‘It didn’t go well, love?’
I shook my head. ‘It was a perfect pitch, too. We knew the social justice angle wouldn’t play, so we barely touched on it. We went for a ratings angle instead – talked about how casting more diversely would let us tell new, exciting kinds of stories, and open up new markets.’
‘But all Greg heard was the word “diverse”,’ Murray said. ‘He started yellinggo woke, go brokeso loud they probably heard it at the other end of the building.’
‘He didn’t even let us finish,’ I said mournfully.
That was what had really got to me. Murray and I had worked so hard – and avoided so many Tony-shaped landmines – to get this meeting with the executive vice-president of unscripted programming. We’d spent weeks preparing, doing exhaustive, laborious research. And he hadn’t even let usfinish.
‘Ah, shit, I’m sorry,’ Jeff said. ‘Anything I can do?’
‘Bring us dinner?’ I tangled my fingers in his and pressed a hopeful kiss to his wrist.
‘I think I can make that happen.’ He smiled fondly at me.
‘Not for me, thanks, mate,’ Murray said. ‘I think that’s my date.’ He nodded at a brunette in bright red lipstick who’d just walked in.
‘Then let me donate a drink for the lady to the cause.’ Jeff slid my untouched glass of wine across the table to him. ‘Come with me to the bar, love. I’ll get you another one.’
I perched on my favourite barstool on the end. ‘Don’t you want to sit on the other side tonight?’ Jeff asked, taking a fresh wineglass down. ‘So you can spy on him?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I can watch you work better from this angle. Can I have red instead of white, please?’
‘You’re ruining his plan.’ Jeff closed the wine fridge with his foot and took a bottle of red wine from the counter instead.
‘What plan?’
‘Do you think he parades all his dates through my bar because he wants my opinion on them?’ He poured the wine into my glass. ‘He’s trying to make you jealous.’
I snorted. ‘No, he’s not.’
Jeff gave me a look.
I shifted slightly on my barstool. One of my only frustrations with our otherwise excellent relationship was that he thought exactly the same thing that Thuong and all my other friends thought: that Murray was in love with me. And Jeff had more ammunition, because he was the only person in the world – besides Murray and me – who knew about the washing machine incident.
I’d tried to explain what it meant to put something in the vault to Jeff once before. He hadn’t got it, hadn’t been able to grasp how you could just draw lines around something, set it aside, and close the door on it. If he didn’t understand my vault, he sure as hell wouldn’t understand that Murray had one too, and that the washing machine incident was locked away in there.
So I sighed and chose a different one of the many truths. ‘Babe, we have been coming to this bar since long before you bought it,’ I said. ‘Meeting a new person is inherently frightening, but doing it in a familiar environment makes it easier. That’s part of why we make the experience on the shows so weird for the contestants. Unsettled people make good drama.’
I took a sip of my wine. ‘And Murray doesn’t exactly have a ton of dating experience under his belt. He’s never been on the apps before. He was with Julia since they were basically children. Entering his slut era at age thirty is already scary ashell, especially for a control freak like him. At least here he can control the environment.’
Jeff sighed. ‘Come here.’
I leaned across the bar so he could kiss me.
‘Sometimes, love,’ he said against my lips, before kissing me again, ‘I think you might be too clever for your own good.’
