After the Reunion (22 page)

Every hour one of the kids from the store (Peter called them The Couriers) would come by with freshly baked replacements. There was a courier assigned to every mall. “Are they selling anything?” Emily would ask.

“No.”

“Oh God.”

At the end of the day she was exhausted, and although she had long before lost count of how many cookies she’d given away she knew there had been a lot. She drove back to the store to meet with Peter and Jared.

“They loved them at the school cafeteria,” Peter said.

“They seemed to love them at my mall,” Emily reported. “I looked in the trashcans before I left and nobody had thrown any away. I think people thought I was a bag lady.” She tried to sound cheerful, but the truth was when she had seen all those empty paper napkins crumpled there she had wanted to cry, and she didn’t know why. Perhaps a combination of pride and frustration.

“If things aren’t better tomorrow we can go out in the street and give them away here,” Jared said.

“We can’t give them away forever,” Emily said, frightened again. How could they be a failure before they’d even begun? How long could they afford this? She didn’t even want to ask. To cheer the boys up she took them to dinner in a restaurant.

That night she couldn’t sleep. She had allowed herself to think all this could be possible, and now real life had intervened. Real life, for most other people, was hard work followed by success. For her, it seemed, it was her college advisor all over again, telling her she had been improperly prepared.
If you’re so interested in medicine, Emily, you marry a doctor
. If you think you can sell cookies … What was that awful old joke? “If you want bread, go fuck a baker.” She felt miserable.

The next morning the radio weather report said it would be just as hot. Emily drove to Westwood with dread, her car air conditioner already on. When she got to her block she saw people in the street. What was happening? Then she saw that they were standing in line.

They were standing in line waiting for her to open the store.

They were standing in line for Emily’s Cookies.

Emily held back the tears of joy, excited and happy and unbelieving. She wanted to laugh, to sing, to hug all of them. Peter was already there, inside the locked store, supervising the kids who were doing the baking. Even with the door closed you could smell the delicious aroma. He came to the door when he saw Emily get out of her car, and he held out his hand in a gracious gesture. She had a key too. She mimed “Me?” and he nodded. She took the key out of her handbag with a flourish and opened the door to the shop to let the long line of customers in.

She felt as if she were a celebrity cutting the ribbon.

Chapter Eighteen

By the beginning of summer Kit realized her relationship with Tip was going nowhere but down, at least as far as she was concerned. He still thought they were “in love.” But she was bored and restless and lonely because he was hardly ever there. It was bad enough to be going with a cop, who was working all the time, but a cop who was going to law school on the side … He might as well be just another date, but his clothes were there, and he kept bringing food, and he showed up faithfully to sleep, as if this were his home too. He had started talking about the future. Where they might go for a vacation, how if they kept on getting along so well maybe one day they might get married. He said he had a great career ahead of him.

The whole thing made her feel like she was choking.

She would be starting her movie soon and she wanted to be free. She tried to tell him that once and he got really upset. He said he’d never found a girl as wonderful as she was and he didn’t want to lose her. He said that even though she’d been patient enough not to mention it he realized being his girl friend at this time in his life wasn’t the easiest thing in the world for her, or for anybody, but when she was making the movie she wouldn’t mind that he kept long hours because so would she, and it would be so nice to spend their time off together. It sounded as if they were already married.

One thing Kit didn’t want to be was married. Sometimes in conversation she would say: “When I get married,” but it was a phrase that just popped out of her and had no relationship to how she actually felt. Oh, maybe sometime eventually she would try it. Marriage was probably something you had to try along with all the other experiences in life, particularly if you wanted to enrich yourself as an actress. But she certainly never wanted to have kids.

She thought of her mother, already married at her age. And then going crazy … Nobody had ever sat down and tried to explain it to her and Peter—it was always that her mother had gotten sick, period. But her mother had been alone all day with two little kids, their father away most of the time becoming successful; and even though no one ever told her, Kit understood that part of it, intellectually at least. Being locked up with two kids, as active as they had been, must have been hard. But emotionally Kit could not condone her mother’s behavior at all.
She
was the child her mother would have let drown, not some abstract person you read about in a case history. She thought of herself as having been adorable; nice little Kate, lively and curious. How could you kill your little Kate? You shouldn’t scare her. You should love her.

It was a lucky thing Kit had no feelings at all about either of her parents. Otherwise she would really feel hurt at the way they had betrayed her.

Her mother was going to start a cookie business with Peter. He was all excited about it, already planning how to spend the money he was going to make. Kit thought there was a good chance he would do well. Peter was very clever. Their father wasn’t being too gracious. He called her mother “The Cookie Monster” behind her back, but he said at least she wasn’t trying to produce movies like those other rich Beverly Hills wives. He was also trying to get her to come back. Ah, domestic harmony.

Kit’s script had arrived. It wasn’t a huge part, but it was a good one, with some good lines, and she actually got to be funny. She played a kind of tough, wise-talking teenager—yecch, a teenager again!—but she also had a scene where she was emotional and cried. A range of emotions to show off what she could do. She knew there would be lots of rewrites coming, but she had already memorized her part anyway. God knows she had enough free time.

Emma’s movie was being shot in California and New York. She came by one afternoon on her day off. Tip was there, but he was asleep because he’d worked all night. Emma had never seen him, so Kate opened the bedroom door and they tiptoed in, Emma looked at him sleeping, and they tiptoed out.

“Cute,” Emma said.

“Not bad.” Kate grinned because Tip really was good-looking and she knew it.

They sat in the living room and drank coffee. “He leaves his gun right there in the bedroom?” Emma said.

“He has to take it home. He’s a cop.”

“Doesn’t it make you nervous?”

“I’m used to it.”

“So is it looove, or what?” Emma asked cheerfully.

Kit shrugged. “He loves me.”

“As usual. And you?”

“I’d like to start seeing other people.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Bad timing I guess.”

“You always say that,” Emma said.

“When do I say that?”

“Always. Ever since I met you.”

“I think I’m in for about ten more years of bad timing,” Kit said. “Why do men get so serious?”

“Lots of men don’t.”

She thought about it. “Yeah,” she agreed. “How’s the movie going?”

“It’s terrific. Zack Shepard is a genius. I’m right by his side all the time learning a lot.”

“And …?”

“And nothing. He’s not interested in me. All he does is work. He doesn’t even have a girl friend on the set. He might still have that one at home, but she didn’t come to New York with us. Or maybe she did but she was shopping or something.”

“I’ve decided it would be just as boring to be married to a famous man as to some jerk,” Kit said. “Except the celebrity might give better parties.”

“
You’d
have to give the parties,” Emma said. “The wife entertains. The wife brings the Porthault pillowcases on location to put on the drool-stained pillows in the hotel.”

“You still have the same disgusting turn of phrase,” Kit said affectionately.

“I have to be observant. It’s my job.”

“Like noticing Tip’s gun,” Kit said. “There must be a million things in that room and you zeroed right in on it.”

“My talent,” Emma said calmly.

“Did I ever tell you that my father chased my mother out of the house with a loaded gun?”

“My God,” Emma said. “And you’re still not scared?”

“What’s there to be scared of? He’s not my father and I’m not my mother.”

On the other hand, she thought, it gave rise to a lot of interesting possibilities.…

When Tip woke up he insisted on taking her and Emma to dinner, at a Mexican restaurant down by the Marina. They drank margaritas, hers and Emma’s without salt because they didn’t want to get bloated. Tip said they were ruining the drink by having it that way.
What a civilian
, Kit thought, irritated.
He really doesn’t understand anything about me
. Everything he said or did was beginning to annoy her lately. It was her usual reaction to feeling trapped.

After dinner Emma had to go right home because she had to get up early. Kit and Tip went back to her house and had sex. That, at least, was still superior.

“You were strange tonight,” he said afterward.

“Strange when?”

“At dinner.”

She didn’t answer.

“Were you mad at me or something?” he asked.

“No.”

“Did you mind that I invited your friend to come along on our one night alone?”

“Emma?” she said incredulously. “Why should I be mad? She’s my only friend.”

“I’m your friend,” Tip said, hurt.

“That’s like apples and oranges,” Kit said distantly. She wished he would go away.

“I start working days next week,” he said. “Then we’ll have nights together. Except the three nights I’ll have class, but then I come home early.”

She nodded.

“I’ll be studying my law books, you’ll be preparing your scene for the next day, it’ll be nice. I’ll take care of you.”

You make me sound like a geriatric case
, she thought, but said nothing. She wanted to scream.

The next day she made a couple of phone calls, surfacing for air. She found a party. When Tip was at work Kit went out, testing her old social life and finding it surprisingly exhilarating after all these months as a hermit. At first, walking into the beautiful house where the party was being held, she had the fear that she might run into her father again. But he wasn’t there. She decided that if she ever did catch him again she would let him see her, and then he would be so intimidated that he would be the one who had to lay low. She wasn’t going to allow him to ruin her fun.

She saw Seth from class standing by the bar, holding a glass of something nonalcoholic and looking over the women. He was a combination of gorgeous and adorable, and incorrigibly priapic. Kit thought she was probably the only girl she knew who had continued to say no to him so far, but she was saving him for a rainy day. This was the rainy day.

“Hi,” she said.

“Kit …” He put his arm around her, murmured her name, nuzzled her hair, the way anybody else would have shaken hands.

“How are you?” she asked.

“I want to go home with you,” he murmured, giving her a winsome look. Sometimes she wondered if he knew how goofy he was and did it on purpose, acting outrageous when other people only felt that way and tried to cover it up with a semblance of prefuck conversation.

“Dance with me,” she said, “and maybe I’ll say yes.”

They danced, she had a glass of white wine, and he had his hands all over her. He had a nice touch, he was cuddly, and the girls from class said he was a terrific lay. It would be easy to find yourself aroused by him, she thought, and then allowed herself to be.

“I just want to lick you all over,” he said in a little-boy voice. “Please …”

“Okay,” Kit said.

She gave him her address and he followed her in his car. At her house he put on some soft music, lit some candles. Then he took her clothes off, just like people were always doing in books and movies but never in real life, or at least not in her experience, which had been considerable. Then they went into the bedroom and he did indeed lick her all over, very slowly and patiently, with obvious enjoyment, until Kit decided she should have said yes to a session with him a long time ago. Then he did a lot of other things which she enjoyed just as much.

After her fourth orgasm she was beginning to get a little sore. She glanced at the clock on the bedside table and figured Tip would be home in three hours. “How about we get some sleep?” she said.

“Sleep?”

She wondered if he was one of those guys who sneaked out in the middle of the night when you were sleeping. Nobody ever said he was; they said he was absolutely terrific. Guys who sneaked out were not terrific; they were total shits, and she had only met one of them and she thought he was probably bisexual. “Just for a while,” she said.

He rolled over and put his arms and legs around her until she nearly disappeared. “Can you fall asleep like this?” he asked. “I want to hold you.”

“I’ll try.”

He was nibbling gently on her ear, but Kit was so tired she drifted right off to sleep. She slept lightly but pleasantly, dreaming she was sailing away in a balloon.

She woke to the sound of Tip’s car pulling up, and then she heard the front door opening and closing quietly. The bedroom was softly golden from the morning sun seeping through the thick tan linen shades. Seth was still asleep and so was her arm. She curled up into a little ball and waited. She was excited, but she was not afraid. Her heart was pounding the way it did just before the camera started rolling. She closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep.

She opened her eyes and saw Tip standing in the doorway, still in his uniform; with his gun in its holster, big, black, and phallic. She didn’t say anything. He didn’t say anything either, just stood there looking at her with an expression on his face she couldn’t read. He glanced at Seth and then looked away again at her, as if her bed partner were completely beneath contempt but she was the one with whom he was concerned.