In Some Other World, Maybe: A Novel (39 page)

Perhaps the greatest impediment to the cleanup is the weird formal air between them. For so many years they shared everything—she used to squish the tiny whiteheads on his nose, and he knew her tampon and laxative preferences—and yet it’s somehow incredibly awkward for the two of them to occupy the same space, a space that used to be theirs.

Hesitant salutations. He thanks her for coming. She asks if he’s hurt.

Phoebe starts to pick up a piece of glass, but Adam stops her. “You should be wearing gloves or something.”

Of course, the only gloves he has are four-hundred-dollar Gucci leather ones far too long for her stout fingers, but he insists she wear them.

Blood from one of his myriad mini-cuts gets on the thumb.

“I seem to be having an O. J. Simpson moment,” she mumbles.

A laugh comes out his nose.

And things are a little better.

“So how
exactly
did this happen?” she asks, and he tells her about a run gone epically awry, followed by pain medication/food mismanagement.

Phoebe clicks her tongue sympathetically. “That stuff always makes you sick.”

“I know.” His smile is so much sadder than she remembers.

When they’ve cleared a safe patch of floor tile, Adam starts to push himself up on the edge of the toilet. Taking off the gloves, she extends her hand.

A pause before he takes it.

His skin on hers.

Adam can’t stand on his broken foot, and his right leg has fallen asleep, so he lumbers into her. Everything familiar, the feel of his weight, the smell of his sweat—she’s twenty-five again, helping Adam out of a different bathroom.

“I’m sorry.” Letting go of her, he balances on the wall. “Can you get my crutches?”

It would probably be as easy for him to lean on her, but she does what he asks. Watches him limp to the sleek leather couch in the living room and helps prop his leg on the table. As he catches his breath, Adam repeatedly thanks her.

There really aren’t many reasons to stay and so many to go—it’s two in the morning, she has work the next day, her husband whom she loves—but leaving seems horribly wrong, too.

“Can I offer you a drink?” Adam asks, and they both laugh.

She sits on the sofa, a safe three feet between them.

When she first arrived, she’d been far too concerned about Adam to notice how different the condo is. Looking around now, it seems not a single piece of furniture, window treatment, or floorboard remains from the time she lived here. All gone are the things they’d picked out together, when they suddenly had lots of disposable income, when they were at long last really together. Something about that stings, but it’s not her place to say anything.

Adam plucks a glass splinter from the Ace bandages around his leg.

“Maybe I should take you to the emergency room?”

“Not much they can do.” The melancholy smile again. “Ankle’s already broken.”

“Well, you probably weren’t supposed to hurl shelving at it during this phase of recovery.”

“I have to go back on Tuesday. I’m sure it’ll be okay for a few days.”

“Fine, I’ll take you then,” she says before she realizes it. Remembers their lives aren’t linked that way anymore. Possibly there’s a friend or that new assistant who does these kinds of things? Or a woman? Even though Phoebe doesn’t like to dwell on it, it would make sense that there’d be a lady in Adam’s life. “I mean, unless, you’d rather…”

Gray eyes serious, Adam tells her that would be nice. “Thank you.”

He’s in desperate need of a shower—still dirty from the jog, the million little bloody scratches—but he’s probably not supposed to get the plaster wet, and she knows bathing isn’t something she should help him with. So she gets a damp washcloth from one of the bathrooms not full of glass and destruction.

As she hands it to him, Adam’s stomach audibly growls.

“Did you eat anything today?” Phoebe asks, overwhelmed by how easy it is to ask the kinds of things she used to ask all the time, when they were together, when it was required they take care of each other.

“At some point, I think I meant to.”

Suggesting they order takeout, she makes a mental list of places they used to call, narrows it to the few still open this late. “Matzo ball soup from Selma’s?”

What she says makes him look up sharply. “You’re ordering me soup?”

“If your stomach’s still messed up, it’s probably the best thing.”

“That would be great.” A wince, as he looks away.

“Hurts?”

Still not looking at her, he nods. “Yeah.”

It’s not until she’s merging on the 405 an hour later that Phoebe realizes Adam might not have been talking about his broken bones.

The sun is starting to crack the sky by the time Phoebe gets back to Los Feliz, but Cole is bopping Cassie up and down in the living room.

“You were gone awhile,” he says, too casually. “We were starting to get a little concerned.”

It takes Phoebe longer to respond than it should, because it’s so staggering to think that her husband (bed rumpled and lovable in pajama pants and bare feet) and child (the world’s most delightful six-month-old) exist in the same world as Adam—these two different lives never having intersected.

“Sorry. I would’ve called, but I figured you went back to sleep.”

“No biggie. Everything squared away?”

Phoebe starts to explain, but in the breaking dawn it seems absurd she felt the need to blindly rush over in the middle of the night. That Adam, a legitimate movie star (even if he did go on a broadcast rant about his last movie) living in a full-service building, didn’t have anyone to call other than the ex-girlfriend he hadn’t spoken to in more than a year.

“He broke his ankle and wasn’t doing so great.”

“You get him fixed up?”

“Yeah.” She pauses. “Actually, I said I’d take him to the doctor Tuesday morning. Is that all right?”

“Why are you asking my permission?” Frustration percolating in his question.

An honest answer seems unwise. Poor form to tell Cole she misses Adam the way she misses her brother—a persistent, hovering ache. Probably shouldn’t say she felt physically ill after reading the horrible
Murder Island 3
reviews, knowing how upset Adam would be. Not mention that thirty minutes ago, she almost kissed Adam good-bye—not because of any overwhelming passion but because that’s what she always used to do.

“It’s a little weird, right?” she finally offers.

“He’s your friend. If he needs help, I trust you.” Cole doesn’t sound thoroughly convinced of this, lifts his shoulders in what’s probably meant to be an unfazed shrug but comes off as simply uncomfortable.

She offers a reassuring caress of his triceps as she takes a sleepy Cassie from his arms.

“Besides,” he says, “you already chose me over the famous actor, remember?”

Playfully, she bumps her nose to his because this is also true. “I did, didn’t I?”

*   *   *

Adam is having pants difficulties and calls out a warning that he’s not entirely clothed when Phoebe lets herself in.

“Please, you helpless and half naked sums up a decade of my life,” she jokes. But there’s a flush on her cheeks, eyes darty, when she peeks into his bedroom.

Finding scissors Adam had no idea he owned, she cuts the leg on a pair of track pants so he can pull them over the temporary cast.

At the orthopedist’s office, Phoebe has zillions of questions about cast materials, future surgeries, and activity restrictions, and Adam is amazed and grateful. He can’t believe he hadn’t thought to ask such basic things like whether or not he can drive (he can, as long as the car is an automatic) and what kind of workouts are off-limits (pretty much any exercise that doesn’t involve sitting).

“I may have called my dad,” Phoebe admits when Adam raises questioning eyebrows.

Three hours and a giant blue fiberglass cast later, she’s helping him back into the passenger seat of her car, and he’s thanking her again and again.

“Do you maybe wanna come over for lunch?” she asks without any of the confidence she’d exhibited in the doctor’s office. “You could meet Cassie and see Kraken?”

Caught off guard, Adam doesn’t respond. Phoebe waves her words away, tells him that he should go home and rest.

“No.” He shakes his head. “I’d love to come.”

It’s a half-hour drive to Los Feliz, and they talk about still-shared things, such as Evie Saperstein and the weather. She parks in front of a modest bungalow and helps him out. When Phoebe opens the front door, Kraken almost knocks her down trying to get to Adam.

Hunched over on his crutches, he’s trying to maintain balance while patting the dog’s head when a man, presumably Phoebe’s husband, appears with baby in arms. All Adam knows of Cole has been garnered from snippets Evie rarely lets slip. He’s young, a chef, Phoebe seems happy. And Adam feels strangely hollow watching this wavy-haired guy’s quick, tense exchange with Phoebe.

“Babe, I’m so late.” The child passed.

Then Cole notices Adam and solidifies to concrete.

Bouncing Cassie, Phoebe does a quick intro. Adam manages to shake the dude’s hand while keeping his right crutch secure under his armpit. Unfreezing, Cole offers a half smile that makes no attempt to reach green eyes. A self-conscious kiss on Phoebe’s cheek, a nervous wave toward Adam, and Cole is gone. For a severed second, Phoebe looks after him, something hard to read on her face.

She turns to Adam. “We need to get your leg up.”

The house is small but cozy, with unique built-in storage spaces and wood trim, and there’s a postage-stamp backyard with a deck and a huge old tree. Baby still in arms, Phoebe helps Adam get situated on one patio chair, his ankle elevated on another.

“Can you take her for a sec?” she says, handing him her daughter.

Adam knows nothing about babies (Cecily literally had to demonstrate how to hold one during the second season of
E&E: Rising
, when they were filming some World 7 scene where they had an infant), but Phoebe’s child feels karmically sound in his grasp, as if she would have found her way there one way or the other.

“Hey there.” He smiles. Of course she’s beautiful.

Cassie has Phoebe’s deep blue eyes and heart-shaped mouth; Adam knows instantly that he could love her, that it doesn’t matter he’s not her father.

Phoebe brings out a pitcher of flavored iced tea and some ridiculously delicious chowder he assumes Cole made, since he’d never seen Phoebe cook anything in all the time they lived together. She puts Cassie in an elaborate activity chair while they eat and discuss more safe topics. He suspects she’s heard about the Howard Stern incident, but she doesn’t mention it, only asks if he’s working on anything new. So he tells her about the HBO Civil War series, about how everyone thinks he’s too young to play Grant, but he can’t stop thinking about the early version of the script he’d read.

“I’d love to look at it,” she says.

“I’d like that.”

And then they just look at each other.

“It’s really good to see you.” She sets her weirdly chubby fingers on his cast. “I’m glad you called.”

With the chairs and his gargantuan cast between them, it’s an awkward lunge, but he makes it.

Kissing Phoebe is home.

His tongue knows the crown on her right molar, his teeth know how hard he can bite before it hurts. Anais Anais perfume and vanilla lotion all around him.

Even as he’s doing it, Adam is vaguely aware this isn’t what she wants, that this will be one more time he fails her.

But:

She’s the one who invited him over.

She’s the one who wants to read scripts like she used to do.

She’s the one kissing him back.

Finally, her hands on his chest, pushing him away. “Adam, stop. I’m married.”

“In some forties shotgun fantasy,” he says quickly, hurtfully.

“You think I’m with him because of Cassie?” Phoebe’s face is flushed; of the long list of women he’s angered, she’s the only one who becomes lovelier. “That’s really what you think?”

It might be what he’d
like
, but, no, it isn’t what Adam thinks. No matter how pregnant Phoebe was when she married Cole, Adam is painfully aware she made her choice well before any of that.

“I’m sorry. It’s just…” He gestures to the baby, the backyard, the dog, hits his hand on the back of the chair. “I wanted this.”

“A Target patio set?”

“A life with you.”

He studies his toes peeking out from his cast, furious at himself for saying what he had vowed not to say two years ago when she told him she was engaged, when he tried to be a better man.

“I guess I knew that.” Her voice breaks into something bordering a sob. “I shouldn’t have brought you here. That was unfair.”

Now her head is bowed.

“But I missed you so, so much,” she’s saying. “It’s really selfish, I’m sorry.”

Thirty-five and she’s still so beautiful.

“No, Pheebs.” Fast as he can manage, he’s on his feet (foot), a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

He thinks of his bizarre conversation with Sharon Gallaher, whom he called because he couldn’t admit he needed to call Phoebe.

“It’s all okay,” he says. “We’re gonna be all right.”

*   *   *

Two days after returning from Detroit and not writing any sort of article on the “Thirty Years of
E&E
” convention, Sharon is at her desk at
The Enquiring Sun
when she gets a call on her cell from a Chicago number: Oliver Ryan.

She steps into the hall to answer.

“Did you get back from Detroit without incident?” he asks.

“Yeah.” She pauses, trying to remember how to do this, how it works.

“Good. So I know that we talked about going out sometime this week … well, I talked about it,” he says, and even though Sharon’s only met Oliver twice, she can completely envision him, with a hesitant smile, one hand in his pocket.

“Yeah,” she says again.

“Well, I can’t do this week. I got sent to Chicago for a bit.”

“Oh, no worries.” Bite of disappointment.

“But I do want to make this happen. I mean, if you still want to.”