In Her Spotlight Exclusive: Bonus Scenes
That's right, I've got some Rebecca Frisch POV for you!
Some Bonus Fiction
Hi readers!
After getting notes from my editor on the early draft she read of In Her Spotlight, I realized that she had a lot of questions about the underlying emotions of Tess and Rebecca. Tess, sure, fine, OK, if she’s the main character I can get that work done!!
Sometimes, though, writing a non-POV character can be a little tricky! You want to make sure you’re getting everything across per Tess’s POV, of course, but also I needed enough about Rebecca to get in there, even the stuff Tess didn’t notice or assign any meaning to. Some characters are trickier than others, and I reminded myself that, in the past, my best way to get a handle on them tended to be to write some scenes from their POV.
The exercise I gave myself was to write Rebecca in conversation with the same person (who is actually not in the book itself) at the same location at three different points in the manuscript. Writers who are wrestling with portraying a character as clearly as you can see them in your head: this absolutely helped me immeasurably! It has in the past too but I always seem to forget the stuff that works for me? I totally used things that came up in this writing exercise in the final book (though now this is a real chicken-and-the-egg thing to reread, which details did I discover here and which did I already know).
Normally those writing exercises don’t quite feel shareable; they are often dashed-off scenes that are a little too clunky with exposition or at getting to the heart of something, but I honestly really loved how these scenes turned out! I’m not a two-POV writer (not at this point at least!) but I thought these were too good to leave languishing in my DropBox, so today I’m sharing them with you.
(In case you’re about to ask, no, I didn’t do these for any of the other Out in Hollywood love interests, so sadly I don’t have a pile of these to send out again! I’m genuinely sad that I didn’t.)
Rebecca Scenes
Carmen walked out of the building as the driver lifted my bags out of the trunk. We were friends on social media so nothing about her was a surprise, and yet it still was. An Instagram grid was nothing like a living person, which was something it turned out that your ex-wife could still be.
“Hey.” She wrapped her arms around me once the Lyft driver had taken off down the block. Carmen had a real ease about her, leaning into me with the exact right pressure for what we were now, which wasn’t nothing but not far from it. “It’s good to see you. You look great, of course.”
“Thanks, you too,” I said, taking a step back from her and not bothering to overanalyze the of course. Her dark hair was piled messily on top of her head, and she was dressed in a floaty black dress. When we were together she would have been in jeans and an old T-shirt, though to be fair, I would have been too. “I really can’t thank you enough.”
“Well, come in, take a look at the space before you thank me,” she said, holding open the door for me. It took awhile to roll in my bags, and I appreciated that she didn’t comment on it. Even a low-maintenance person would have needed extra baggage for six or seven weeks away from home, I assumed, not that I knew how those people functioned, or packed.
The loft was bright, open, airy—everything one wanted from a loft. As I looked around at the artwork on the walls, Carmen directed me down a short corridor as if to say we hadn’t reached my accommodations yet. A small office, futon at one end, my home for the foreseeable future.
“I know,” she said with more than a note of apology in her voice. “But it’s all yours as long as you need.”
I could tell from her tone that I was supposed to hate this room, but of course it was bigger than my bedroom and with better light. Carmen might have known more about me than most, but I saw no need to tell her that.
“It’s great,” I said. “I really can’t begin to thank you.”
“Can I take you to dinner?” she asked. “An hour or so, after you get settled?”
“Shouldn’t I be taking you?” I asked, even though I was already doing the math of the money I was making and the money I’d be spending. Still, that math would have been a lot worse without this room.
“No, it’ll be your welcome to LA meal,” she said. “On me. See you in an hour?”
I agreed to that and, in lieu of organizing, sat on the futon with the Hometown script and my notepad and did my best to get through a few days’ work in the next hour. I’d had last-minute gigs before—off-off Broadway, someone’s kid’s high school production, that friend of my mom’s who’d cried until I’d gotten pulled into a community production of Streetcar—but nothing like this. This thing that could change my career—a transfer to Broadway in a season or two, maybe a second Tony nom—or it could change my career—a buzz of gossip that Rebecca Frisch couldn’t get her shit together, fucked up the show Geoffrey Gordan would have nailed.
“Rebecca?”
I looked up and nodded to Carmen who was standing in the doorway. “Yeah, sorry, it’s been an hour already?”
“Do you need…” She glanced behind me, probably at my untouched stack of suitcases. “More time?”
“No, let’s go.” I got up like someone with purpose. Dinner purpose. Absolutely not like someone who had found herself—who had agreed to this particular scenario. Though of course Carmen knew me all way down to my core, or at least she had. Who was this act for?
I followed Carmen into the lobby and then outside, where the fading evening sunlight streaked the sky with oranges, purples, pinks. “Wow, so it just looks like this?”
Carmen chuckled, walking ahead of me down the block. “It does. Are you still in Brooklyn?”
“Oh, I’ll probably die in Brooklyn,” I said. “If I’m lucky enough the building doesn’t get sold out from under me in the next fifty years or so.”
“Here’s hoping,” Carmen said, and I laughed. “How’s sushi?”
“Oh my god, this sunset and sushi? LA’s everything I’ve heard.” I glanced around at the busy sidewalks ahead of us. “Wait, are we walking? I thought no one walked in LA.”
“That stereotype is strictly by neighborhood,” she said. “It’s really pedestrian-friendly around here. Which is good, because I still don’t have a car.”
“I didn’t know that was even legal here,” I said. “I guess I’m excited to already have my preconceived notions tested.”
“You said you’re working downtown?” Carmen asked.
“I already checked Google Maps,” I said. “It’s only a mile, so I assumed I’d be the lone person walking, but I guess it’ll just be…regular.”
“Regular-ish,” she said with a laugh. “It won’t feel like New York, if that’s what you’re wondering. Though of course I moved here for a reason, and it wasn’t so everything would feel the same.”
“Sure,” I said, and she glanced quickly in my direction.
“I didn’t mean—”
“No, I know,” I said. “Or even if you did! It’s fine.”
“It wasn’t only you I wanted to get away from, if it makes you feel better.”
“Well, yeah, a little,” I said, and we both laughed. “Carm, I don’t harbor any illusions that I wasn’t the absolute worst—”
“Hey,” she said, warmly, gently, the way she’d always been. “It took both of us to make all those mistakes. You only get so much credit.”
She held open the door of a restaurant for me, and I followed her inside. It was a beautiful spot, low lighting and lots of wood, everything I wanted in a sushi joint. We were seated and I pretended to browse the menu while also refreshing my inbox and skimming my group chat. DID YOU FUCK CARMEN YET?, Asher had texted. I’m not going to, I replied, though I knew that maybe I would, because I was here and I’d certainly made worse mistakes, sexual and otherwise. I bet $100 you will fuck your ex, Asher replied, and Emily added, Before the show opens, and Sasha jumped in to accept those odds, and I felt very far away as my friends staked their financial claims on my sex life and bad decision-making.
I worked out of town all the time, of course, but Los Angeles was literally the furthest away I’d been. And there was context for the emptiness I felt right now at my center, how untethered I felt from anything I knew. Carmen wasn’t mine, not anymore. Tess fucking Gardner, good god. The show that could change everything but was put together by someone else. Someone else, for fuck’s sake, if we were talking context! A career I’d kill for, behavior I would…well, kill for in a different way. Opportunities he got for being talented but also for being a straight man in a world that was always ready to lift them up to the next thing.
A server stopped by, and Carmen glanced at my phone before ordering for both of us.
“Sorry,” I said, shoving it into my pocket. “A lot’s up in the air with the show. Not as if I expect anyone to send me anything important on a Sunday night.”
“So it’s a last-minute gig?” she asked. “I didn’t know those were possible in your line of work.”
“No, it’s…an unusual scenario,” I said. “And a very long story that I won’t bore you with.”
“You won’t bore me,” she said. “And we don’t have any food yet, so.”
“Last week I got a call from my agent, this world premiere production was set to start rehearsals on Monday—tomorrow, yes—but there’d been a large number of allegations against the director that were going to come out in the New York Times later in the week. So he stepped down and—well, unlike plenty of my gigs, there was too much money to be lost to just cancel it, so they had to find someone willing to drop everything and take over someone else’s production. His cast, his already-happened meetings with the design team.”
“And it looks good to bring in a woman,” Carmen said.
“You’d think, but my agent knows everything, basically, and they actually asked another man who turned it down before they came to me.”
“Jesus christ,” she said, and I laughed, relieved that my instinct to tell her everything hadn’t been wrong. “But if there’s money to lose, I assume that means there’s…money to gain. And publicity. All of that.”
I shrugged. “The money’s good, considering, yes. Sasha will spin this, I’m sure, as much as she can, but there’s a huge chance I’ll only be mentioned in the same breath as allegations so. We’ll see.”
“How’s the script?” she asked, as our server brought us a small bottle of sake and a couple of shotglasses. “I know you’d take it regardless.”
“Oh, god,” I said with a laugh. “I guess that I probably would. But it’s beautiful, actually. It’s about dealing with the trauma of where you come from—literally and figuratively speaking—but it’s still bright and funny. So, so sharp. I got a chance to Zoom with the playwright this weekend and she’s incredible. Oh, and while I’m listing good things I should say that I demanded they hire my Arcadia stage manager so I’ll have him with me too.”
“All of that does sound very positive,” she said, holding up a shotglass for me to clink mine against. “How’s the cast? Do you know yet?”
I sighed. I would not actually be telling Carmen everything.
“Oh,” she said knowingly. “That bad?”
“No,” I said quickly. “There are a couple of actors who’ve worked multiple times with the director. So I don’t know how they’ll feel coming in to work with me instead. The producers definitely want a Broadway run, and my gut says they’re hoping the allegations go away and they can get rid of me before the next production, and if the cast wants that too—well, I’m not saying that would actually affect decision-making, but it’ll feel shitty. And I won’t do my best work, and then they’ll be right to dump me anyway.”
“I forgot how quickly you spiral,” she said.
“One of my most charming qualities,” I said with a smile I didn’t feel. “There’s also someone really famous in the cast, and I don’t know how that’ll play into all of this.”
The fucking understatement of the year!
Carmen looked eager, even though she’d never followed pop culture much. “Who?”
“Tess Gardner,” I said, practicing a casual and neutral tone, while Carmen shrugged. “I knew you wouldn’t know.”
“No, I never know anyone,” she said. “Are you anticipating diva behavior?”
“No idea.” I tried to imagine it, but I couldn’t. I knew that fame changed people, and I’d already decided it had changed her, the girl who stayed up late to talk about Shakespeare and Meisner and Strasberg and was now currently zipping through the air wearing a cape. Still, diva behavior didn’t easily fit on top of the person I’d known. “It’s not usually how things go in New York, to be honest. I haven’t worked with a lot of A-list talent, but the stories I hear, people just want to show up and do the work. Theatre’s too hard and pays too little for too much bullshit, really. But out here, I don’t know. She does comic book movies. Does it even matter that she went to Juilliard?”
“I mean, probably?” Carmen said, while I regretted letting out a detail I wasn’t sure I should have known. There were four other cast members and I had no idea where any of them had trained. “Though I know you’ll go in with an open mind. You were always good at that.”
I waved it off. There was no way to guiltlessly take a compliment I didn’t deserve, not when I already had made up my mind about Tess Gardner and who she was now. Diva behavior or not.
After a ridiculously large amount of sushi—I almost couldn’t believe how good it was out here, a random restaurant walkable from Carmen’s place where every piece of nigiri all but melted into your mouth—we headed back to Carmen’s place.
“Are you seeing anyone these days?” she asked me.
“No,” I said, following her into her building, knowing what my answer could mean for my friends’ finances. “I had something—anyway. It fell apart before the Tonys, which is why Sasha was my date. I’m not sure I have my shit together enough to be dating anyone, not seriously at least. What about you?”
She smiled and nodded. “I am. It’s early, but it’s promising. She didn’t bat an eye that my ex-wife was going to crash in my office for nearly two months, so I’m feeling good.”
I wasn’t disappointed, not really. Sleeping with Carmen would have happened because she was there and because she knew who I was and still seemed to like me as a person. And also it would have been easy. Sometimes that was more than enough.
Back in Carmen’s office I forced myself to get out my outfit for the next morning, hang it up in the tiny closet so I’d look sharp and not the mess I felt like. When I suffered from imposter syndrome, the clothes always took care of me. It was three hours later in New York but I yawned my way through another skim through my notes, a quick page through the script. I could do this, I reminded myself. Maybe I’d built my own image on nothing to start, but somewhere along the way I’d managed to lay a foundation anyway. A play like this was my dream, and I couldn’t let Geoffrey Gordan or Tess Gardner take away from me that this dream was coming true.
JUST LANDED!!! Kevin texted, and something shifted in my chest. I wasn’t alone here. Not figuratively, not literally. I’m gonna be exhausted tomorrow but I can’t wait to see you!
Same! I replied. I’m beyond grateful for you, if I haven’t already made that clear.
The play’s so good. You’re gonna crush this.
I thanked him, set my alarm, and tried to settle back on the lumpy futon. Sleep and I rarely met each other easily on a good night, and the thought that tonight would be possible was laughable. A memory washed over me, Tess’s arms wrapped around me, her lips on my ear, whispering go to sleep, Rebecca, as if all my insomnia had needed was a beautiful girl asking sweetly. But it had worked, actually; that summer was the best I’d ever slept. Even today. Fuck!
I rolled over and tapped my phone on the makeshift nightstand I’d made out of one of my suitcases. Morning—and Tess Gardner—would come when they came. That much was out of my control. Everything else, I’d learned over time, was well within it. I’d roll in bulletproof, which was how the world wanted to see me anyway. It had been a long time since I’d blamed Tess for what had happened, but that didn’t mean I wanted Princess Platinum to know how it had felt, a dozen or so years ago, walking into that empty room and feeling my life evaporate before my eyes.
* * *
When I walked into Carmen’s, I nearly ran into Stella, who was waiting by the door, I assumed not for me.
“Hi,” I said, my gentlest tone. Carmen might have said that Stella hadn’t batted an eye at my accommodations, but I still wanted to play as nice as possible. I couldn’t imagine how little she must have wanted me around!
“Carmen said she had to do two more things before we could leave for dinner,” she said with a laugh. “Ten minutes ago. Or I wouldn’t be standing here like this.”
“You can stand wherever you like,” I said. “In a few weeks I’ll be out of your hair.”
“I’ve barely seen you,” she said. “You’re like a little mouse.”
“Oh,” I said, because I didn’t like that at all but I could tell she was trying to assure me. “Normally I don’t get that comparison. The height and all.”
Stella looked me over as if she’d just noticed how tall I was, as Carmen walked into the room.
“Sorry, babe,” she said to Stella before turning to me. “You’re home at a reasonable hour. That seems positive.”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “It’s been going really well.”
“Come with us to dinner,” Stella said. “We’re getting sushi.”
“Yes, please,” Carmen said. “I want to hear about the show, and I’ve hardly seen you.”
“I told her she’s like a little mouse,” Stella said, walking with Carmen outside and leaving me with no choice but to follow. “Sometimes at night I see her scurry down the hallway.”
“That’s me,” I said, and Carmen laughed.
“Rebecca’s a very polite houseguest,” she said. “Which is funny because that’s not what she’s like to live with.”
“Oh my god,” I said, more than a little shocked. Not that she thought it—of course I knew she thought it—but that she’d say it like this, just a little trivia fact to share with her girlfriend in front of me.
“She takes up a lot of space,” Carmen continued, smiling at me. “She leaves her things everywhere. We had a table but I was always finding her eating over the sink like it was her lunchbreak from the factory floor and she only had five minutes before she had to clock in again for her next shift. And the table was covered with playbills from everything she saw—and she saw everything—and all her notepads, so I couldn’t use it either.”
I wanted to laugh at how young and horrible I’d been, except that the only thing that had changed was that my current place was too small to even have a kitchen table. “Eating over the sink is underrated. There’s hardly any cleanup.”
Carmen and Stella glanced at me with definite concern in their eyes. It was funny how it didn’t rattle me at all that Carmen had someone in her life who wasn’t me. Not that I wasn’t rattled; it was so evident that they were actual adults who ate at a table and knew how to balance their careers with their relationship and probably had more than a low three digits in their checking accounts at present. Carmen’s phone, I was certain, was not on her parents’ family plan.
I wanted the whole thing, the job that filled me with purpose and collaboration, a love that would inspire me and take care of me and give me a safe spot to land at night and, of course, to be that in return for that person. But forty was getting closer and closer, and I still felt like a child. Sometimes I felt more like a child now than I had back when Tess and I were together, when the world seemed like an equation the two of us could easily solve together.
Not that I wanted to think about Tess, jesus christ. Not that I wanted to consider how it would feel to find out she had a girlfriend, that despite her image she was cozied up to someone who fit her. Rattled would be an understatement. Obviously I would have been a fool to miss that she was still attracted to me. It was undeniable that there was still a certain something that sparked between us, that there probably always would be. It didn’t mean anything! Tess Gardner was not actually interested in me, and even if she was, it wasn’t real, because she’d be interested in the person on The Cut, in The Times’ Magazine, the person who cheered on camera when Kenneth Argyle won the Tony and I didn’t. Bulletfuckingproof. Who didn’t want that Rebecca Frisch?
At Tenno I let Carmen—and Stella—handle ordering again, though this time I managed to keep my phone in my pocket and act like an adult in her late-mid-thirties who’d been raised with proper manners. Mom and Dad would be proud.
“So the show’s going well?” Carmen asked once we’d clinked our sake shotglasses again. Sake wasn’t my favorite but I liked the ritual of it, liked something to do with my hands that wasn’t refreshing my inbox.
“Yes,” I said, nodding, like yes, this well! “The cast has really gelled. Sometimes I forget I didn’t select them. He-who-shall-not-be-named sounds like a fucking monster but I can’t deny that he knows how to put a group of actors together.”
“How’s the comic book person?” Carmen asked.
“Who’s the comic book person?” Stella asked.
“A really famous person,” Carmen replied as if that answered it, and Stella and I laughed.
“She lives in Los Angeles,” Stella said, gesturing to Carmen, “and she knows no one.”
“It’s cute,” I said, which made Stella laugh. “It’s Tess Gardner. Who I should say, for the record, is wonderful. Who I was completely wrong about.”
“No diva behavior?” Carmen asked.
“No. The hardest fucking working person in the cast.” I shot back my sake to, hopefully, distract from the wondrous tone that had sneaked in, the idea that Tess Gardner was a marvel and I was at her feet in awe. As her director, I wasn’t. She was talented and dedicated, but so were the rest of them. As her ex, though. As someone who’d loved her before any of this had happened, to see who she was now, it floored me.
“Are the rumors true?” Stella asked. “Everyone says Princess Platinum’s a dyke.”
“I couldn’t say,” I replied, which was the most accurate answer I could give.
“I like those movies,” Stella said. “They’re very chaotic.”
“I like them too,” I admitted.
“Have I seen one?” Carmen asked Stella, who laughed.
“We’ve been dating for two months,” Stella said. “I don’t know.”
“They’re all streaming,” I said. “Watch one, and I’ll put you on the list for the invited friends and family dress rehearsal, if you’re interested.”
I hoped that Carmen remembered that it was a theatre term and not that I considered her either of those things. I wanted to be the kind of lesbian whose ex-wife was her friend, but temporary boarder was about as good as I was going to get.
“Yes,” Stella said, intensely. “I want to see Princess Platinum onstage.”
“What are her superpowers?” Carmen asked.
“Flying,” Stella said.
“Sparkling,” I added. “Strength? Right? It’s not just that she works out a lot.”
“Her clothes go like this,” Stella said, gesturing in a way that indicated the platinum suit activating but if you hadn’t seen the movies looked more than a little demented.
“I wish my clothes would do that in the morning,” I said.
“I have absolutely no idea what the two of you are talking about,” Carmen said, shaking her head.
“If she does this, it’s like a shield.” I held up my fists like Tess had at the donor dinner only about twenty-five times.
“It’s more like this,” Stella said, turning to the side. “It’s cuter.”
“Yeah, it’s cute when she does it,” I said. “I think you have to see the movies to understand.”
“I’m not sure any of this is the selling point you two think,” Carmen said, shaking her head, and Stella and I burst into laughter. “I’m excited to see the play, though, so thank you. You know I always liked seeing your shows.”
“I know,” I said softly. I missed it, too, how I’d drop into the open seat next to her as the lights dimmed, her hand on my thigh as I took notes in the dark. There hadn’t been anyone since who’d been around long enough to develop a habit with, no usual way we looked up at a stage together. I didn’t miss Carmen, not like that, but I missed someone. Sometimes I felt like I’d lost the chance to have that, like I was waiting to board a carousel that never stopped turning. Everyone else had lofts and 401ks and kitchen tables, while I had photo features and sponcon and the illusion I had my shit together. Also in some ways I did have my shit together and that was hard to make sense of in the midst of the rest of it. The show, I knew, was shaping up to really be something. That was Stephanie’s gorgeous script, and it was the actors, and it was every single person putting their life into that production, but it was also me.
Back at Carmen’s I did my best to make myself scarce, but Carmen leaned into my doorway before I could pull the door shut for the night. “You know I was only teasing earlier, right?”
“About what?” I asked, and she shook her head.
“Come on. We know each other too well for that.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry that I was shitty to live with. Really. I don’t know why I couldn’t just get it together. I don’t know why I still can’t.”
“Yeah, and when things were good I found it all extremely charming,” she said. “Stella’s right; it really was like living with a little mouse.”
“Oh, glad that’s catching on,” I said.
“We’re OK?” she asked, and I nodded.
“Of course. And I’m so grateful you’ve given me this space, even though I—” I gestured to the explosion of my things behind me. “I am who I am, I suppose.”
“You don’t have to thank me every time you see me,” she said. “Have a good night, Rebecca. Try giving yourself a break for once, OK?”
“OK,” I said, and held it fully together before she closed the door, and curled up on the futon to cry softly into the pillow. What a fucking masochist I was, to come out here to knowingly interact with Tess every day, to beg my way into Carmen’s home, to come face-to-face with my past when I hadn’t gotten my future straightened out. Everyone else seemed to know something I didn’t.
My phone buzzed, and I smiled to see the groupchat was up late tonight. Rebecca, any movement on that bet?
I grinned and typed. Tonight Carmen’s girlfriend referred to me as “a little mouse” so, no, I don’t think Asher and Asher’s compatriots are taking home that cash. Fuck, I miss all of you. LA’s lovely and work is good but I could use a night out.
It was good to remember they all knew me too, the actual me, the person who still ate over her sink but also had been nominated for a fucking Tony Award. And I wasn’t nearly alone as I felt tonight, on a terrible mattress in Los Angeles.
* * *
Carmen was stretched out on the sofa when I walked in, but she sat up almost at attention when she saw me. “Rough day?”
“Wow,” I said. “Flattering.”
“Sorry,” she said, her tone warm at its edges. It had been from the start, really. “I was trying to be comforting. I can tell it went exactly as I intended.”
“Yeah, nailed it.” I gestured down the hallway. “I’ll get out of your hair.”
“No, you’re fine,” she said. “Dinner? I was going to see what was in the freezer, but let’s grab something instead.”
“Sushi?” I asked, and she agreed before we walked outside together, silent until we were seated at Tenno.
“How are you?” Carmen asked.
“I’m tired,” I said. “Rehearsals after tech are rough. On the cast, and it extends out.”
“And also,” Carmen said, “you were spending most of your nights somewhere else and now you aren’t.”
“Oh,” I said, because if I was a little mouse how did she notice? “Sure. That.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, sure, that.”
“I don’t know what else to say.” I held out my hands. “I thought it was something and it turned out it wasn’t. Again. And I feel like a fool. And this time I have to keep seeing her—”
Carmen’s eyebrows ascended even higher. “This time?”
“Ignore everything I say, please.”
I expected her to laugh but she sighed. “That doesn’t always work, you know.”
I thought of the conversation in Gertie and Leroy’s office. Sometimes I just say things and the look on Tess’s face.
“You do the thing where you think you’re in charge of what counts and what doesn’t,” Carmen continued, and I felt like because I’d been staying with her for free for nearly five weeks that I couldn’t ask her to stop or get up and leave, like I wanted to.
A server stopped by to get our order, which I left up to Carmen, and I held out my hand, palm up, when it was just the two of us again.
“I leave plenty up to other people,” I said.
“Like our order? OK, Rebecca.”
“No, I…” I shoved my hair back from my face. “I don’t know what everyone means. All I think about is collaboration and how to meet people where they are and—”
“Maybe for work you do,” she said, as the server set down our sake and shotglasses. “And we aren’t in each other’s lives anymore, so I don’t actually know. But I wouldn’t say that was the case with us.”
“We were so young,” I said.
“Oh, I know,” she said. “I don’t hold anyone accountable for their twenties, including both of us. But at the same time…”
“I don’t know how I could have been clearer,” I said. “I was willing to do whatever she needed from me. And the whole time—I don’t know how none of what I did mattered compared to things I said in passing.”
“Cheers.” Carmen held up her glass and I dutifully clinked mine against it. “Look, I know that you’re not asking for my advice, and in fact, I’m fairly sure you don’t want it. But when I hear you say something like that, that you don’t know how you could been clearer, all I hear is that you didn’t actually tell her any of this, that you expected her to read whatever situation this was correctly. But correct me if I’m wrong.”
“I don’t hear any advice,” I said, and Carmen laughed.
“Sure, to be clearer, tell her how you feel. With words. Tell her you’d do whatever she needed. With words. Do not linger under the assumption that your feelings alone are enough to make someone feel like you love her, because I can tell you from experience that they aren’t.”
“Fuck,” I muttered, taking off my glasses and wiping my eyes.
“It’s easy to forget how soft you are,” Carmen said gently. “And I know you don’t want the world to see that. I for one love your whole thing.”
I shot back my sake and shoved my glasses back on even though I wasn’t sure I was finished crying. “What whole thing?”
“Oh, come on. The Rebecca Frisch machine. The outfits and the glasses and the photoshoots and all your thirst traps on Instagram.”
“I do not post thirst traps,” I said, and she cracked up.
“Sure, you in a suit staring into the camera like a model, you don’t know what you’re doing to all the sapphics.” Carmen grinned. “It’s not a crime to be hot.”
“Oh my god,” I said, flattered and so deeply uncomfortable. “I still don’t—I mean, I get what you’re saying. But also I’m still the same awkward person and—when all people see is the Rebecca Frisch machine, it doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t mean—well, not people, at large, but people in my actual life…”
“Well,” she said, gentle again, “I’m not sure the machine shuts off as often as you think it does. Or however the metaphor goes.”
It must be inconvenient that people actually believe you’re the person you invented.
“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do,” I said, and Carmen laughed again.
“It was literally to tell her how you feel, with words. Remember?”
“I’m not sure it’s that simple,” I said, though something like hope bloomed deep in my chest at the thought. “And it wasn’t only me. Her life makes things—it’s complicated.”
“Oh,” Carmen said, nodding. “The comic book woman.”
I thought about denying it. I thought about how strange it was that none of my friends knew but that now my ex-wife did. I thought about Tess’s life in the closet and how the last thing I wanted was to weaponize that.
Carmen, though, was no weapon. And, of course, she also had no idea who anyone was and this was a fairly safe admission.
“She’s very special,” I said, finally. “There’s that side of her but there’s the way she throws herself into everything and how determined she is to take care of everyone—including me, which is something no one ever thinks I need. And we laughed so much and it all felt so safe and then—”
Our server set down a platter of sushi, and I snagged a piece of toro with my chopsticks instead of finishing the thought aloud. Inside, though. And then I could have made sure she understood, and I didn’t.
“Also, you know, look at me,” I said, and then waved my hand. “Not like that. You know that I’m a disaster, Carm. You’ve said it yourself, the way I live.”
“And I also said that when I was in love with you, I found it very charming,” she said. “Or at least part of the package, a package I liked a lot. It would shock me to find out she doesn’t feel the same. And, also, you aren’t a disaster. You have executive function issues, like most artists. And you’re poorly paid, also like most artists. And since she’s also an artist, I can’t believe that she doesn’t understand all of that.”
“It’s so annoying how not like that she is,” I said. “She’s good at everything.”
“I didn’t say that she was the same,” Carmen said. “I said that she must understand.”
“You make it sound easy,” I said. “And I’m not sure that it is.”
“No, none of it’s easy,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that it’s complicated. You’re not as obvious as you think you are, and you can be careless with people’s feelings. So say more. And instead of deciding what counts and what doesn’t, remember that it all counts.”
I ate a piece of salmon instead of responding.
“And maybe this isn’t it,” Carmen said. “And that’s OK. But I’d like it to be it for you at some point. You deserve to be happy.”
I thought about saying someday. When my shit was together. When I paid for my own phone. When I read any of the sixty-thousand Apartment Therapy posts I’d bookmarked to organize my space. When I didn’t get intimidating notices from the bank that they’d close my savings account if it dipped any lower.
And then I thought about how Tess knew basically all of that and had loved me anyway.
“I’m going home in a week and a half,” I said.
“Well, then,” Carmen said with a smile. “I’d suggest you hurry.”
If somehow you made it to the end of this and haven’t gotten your copy of In Her Spotlight yet, it’s so easy to handle that!
One time I had to drop off a friend at Tenno Sushi and I misjudged it by like A LOT and he had to walk many blocks there for a business dinner. For some reason I wasn’t thinking about this fact when I set these scenes there and I feel guilty every time I’ve reread these?