Love the One You're With (13 page)

“What a coincidence,” Suzanne says, smirking as she lifts up the receiver. “Or we could just call Room six-twelve … Or better yet head straight for his room.”

I shake my head and tell her meeting Leo for dinner is not an option.

“Are you
suuuure
?”

“Positive.”

” ‘Cause I think it’d be fun.”

“Fun to watch me squirm?”

“No. Fun because I happen to enjoy Leo’s company.”

I can’t tell whether she’s kidding, testing me, or simply holding to her promise not to judge, but I snatch the phone—and the bag of peanut M&M’s from her.

“C’mon,” she presses. “Don’t you want to know what Leo’s been up to all these years?”

“I know what he’s been up to. He’s still reporting and writing,” I say, kicking off my shoes and sliding my feet into a pair of white terry-cloth slippers with the hotel’s insignia. I pop a handful of candy into my mouth and add, “That’s how I got here, remember?”

“Yes, but beyond his work … You know nothing about his personal life, do you? You don’t even know if he’s married?”

“He’s not married.”

“Are you sure?”

“He’s not wearing a ring.”

“Means nothing. Plenty of married men don’t wear rings.”

“Appalling,” I mutter.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean they are players,” Suzanne says, taking the polar opposite stance of her usual rants on ringless, philandering pilots and leering businessmen populating her first-class cabins. “Not wearing a ring can just be … sort of old school. Dad never wore his wedding ring—and I think it’s safe to say that he wasn’t on the prowl.”

“Can you really be old school if you’re under forty?”

“Sure you can. It’s the whole old-soul thing … and I think Leo is an old soul,” she says, almost admiringly, as it occurs to me that calling someone an “old soul” is almost always a compliment.

I look at her. “And you’re basing that on
what
exactly?”

“I don’t know. It just seems like … he’s not caught up in materialism and all the other superficial trappings of our generation.”

“Suzanne! Where are you getting this crap? You’ve spent about four hours with him, total!”

“He does noble work,” she says, likely referring to his coverage of the AIDS Walk.

“Just because he cares about AIDS victims doesn’t make him an old-soul saint,” I scoff—and yet I have to secretly admit that she is tapping into one of the things I once loved about Leo. Unlike so many guys, particularly guys I’ve met in New York, Leo was never a social climber or follower. He didn’t consult
New York
magazine or
Zagat’
s to select our restaurants and bars. He didn’t sport the omnipresent black Gucci loafers. He never dropped references to great literary works he’d just read or artsy films he’d just seen or small indie bands that he had “discovered.” He never aspired to settle down in a big house in the suburbs with a pretty wife and a couple of kids. And he always preferred travel and experience to fancy possessions. Bottom line, Leo wasn’t about checking off boxes or trying to impress or
ever
striving to be someone or something he wasn’t.

I say some of this to Suzanne now, mostly just musing aloud, but then silently comparing Leo to Andy. Andy who owns several pairs of Gucci loafers; Andy who frequently peruses the popular press for our restaurant selections; Andy who is anxious to exit the
best
city in the world so that we can live in a big house in Atlanta. And while my unaffected husband could never be accused of playing that pretentious urban game of name checking the hippest indie bands or art-house films or literary novel du jour, I had to concede that he at least
appeared
to have a more status-bound lifestyle than my ex.

A wave of guilt overcomes me as I shift in the other direction, feeling fiercely defensive of my husband. So what if he has an appreciation for the finer things in life, including the occasional brand-name good? So what if he wants a comfortable home and easy life for his family? It’s not as though he makes choices to keep up with the Joneses or mindlessly follow the pack. He just happens to be a mainstream guy, adhering unapologetically to his own preferences—which makes him his own man every bit as much as Leo is his own man.

Moreover, why do I feel the need to make comparisons between Andy and Leo at all when there really is no connection between the two? I hesitate and then pose this question to Suzanne, fully expecting her to take the diplomatic high ground, say that I
shouldn’t
compare them. That Leo has absolutely nothing to do with Andy and vice versa.

Instead she says, “First of all, it’s impossible not to compare. When you go down a fork in a road, it’s impossible not to think about that other path. Wonder what your life could have been like …”

“I guess so,” I say, thinking that the Leo path was never really an option. I tried to take it, and it turned out to be a cold, dark dead end.

Suzanne runs her hands through her long, curly hair and continues, “Second of all, Leo and Andy
are
connected, by simple virtue of the fact that you love—or once loved—them both.”

I give her a disconcerted look. “How do you figure?”

“Because,” she says, “no matter how much or how little two people you love have in common … or whether they overlap or have a decade between them … or whether they hate each other’s guts or know absolutely nothing about one another … they’re still linked in some strange way. They’re still stuck in the same fraternity, just as you’re in a sorority with everyone Andy has ever loved. There’s just an unspoken kinship there, like it or not.”

As I contemplate this theory, she goes on to tell me how she ran into Vince’s stripper ex-girlfriend at a bowling alley recently and, although they only vaguely know each other and share just a few, attenuated acquaintances (which is almost impossible to avoid altogether when you’re both from Pittsburgh), they still ended up having a long conversation while watching Vince score his first and only three-hundred-point perfect game.

“And it was really weird,” Suzanne says, “because we didn’t really talk about Vince—aside from his ungainly form and crazy Brooklyn-side approach—but it’s as if she totally knows what I’m enduring … What it feels like to love Vince, in spite of all his bullshit … And even though you’re my sister and I’ve told you so much more about my relationship than I’d
ever
confess to her, in some ways, she
still
knows more than you could
ever
know.”

“Even if she no longer cares about him?” I clarify.

“Well, based on the adoring look on her face when Vince was carrying on all over the place, high-fiving everyone he could find, that is certainly dubious,” Suzanne says. “But yes. Even if.”

I put my head down on a pillow, feeling my buzz recede, replaced by fatigue and even greater hunger. I ask Suzanne if she wouldn’t rather stay in and order room service, but then remember that her life is largely about flying to cities and never leaving the airport hotels, so I tell her that I could be motivated to go out, too.

“Nah. Fuck it,” Suzanne says. “I didn’t come here for the nightlife.”

“Aww,” I say, laughing and planting a big kiss on her cheek. “You came here for your sister, didn’t you!”

“Get off me!” she says.

“C’mon,” I say, kissing her cheek again, and then her forehead, basking in joking moments like these as the only chance I have to kiss Suzanne. Like our father, she is uncomfortable with most physical affection whereas I inherited my mother’s cuddly gene. “You adore your little sister. That’s why you’re here! Admit it!”

“Nope,” she says. “I came here for two reasons …”

“Oh yeah?” I say. “For Drake and what else?”

“To baby-sit your cheatin’ ass,” she says, chucking a pillow at my head. “That’s what else.”

She is clearly joking, but it is still the last bit of incentive I need to change into my nightgown, select a club sandwich from the room-service menu, and call my husband.

“Hey, honey,” Andy says. “You guys having a good time?”

“Very,” I say, thinking how nice—and somehow cozy—his voice is.

He asks me what I’m doing and I tell him that we’re just staying in and talking.

“So you’re not picking up any guys?” he says.

“C’mon,” I say, feeling a pang of guilt as I recall the smell of liquor on Leo’s breath and the lingering look he gave me before he left the bar. I picture him now, sipping a margarita somewhere nearby.

“That’s my girl,” Andy says, yawning. “Love you.”

I smile and tell Andy I love him, too.

“Enough to get me that autograph?”

“Not that much,” I say. And then think—
But definitely enough to forgo that guacamole and the man who will later fall asleep in Room 612
.

fifteen

Sometime in the middle of the night I am awakened by the sound of my own voice and a dream of Leo so graphic that I feel flustered—nearly embarrassed—a tough feat when you’re lying alone in the dark. As I listen to Suzanne softly snoring in her bed, I catch my breath and slowly play back all the vivid details—the silhouette of his broad shoulders flexing over me; his hands between my legs; his mouth on my neck; and that first slow stroke inside me.

I bite down hard on my lip, alert and tingling with the knowledge that he is just one floor above me in a bed just like this one, perhaps dreaming of the very same thing, maybe even wide awake and wishing it were happening. Just as I am.

It would be so easy, I think. All I would have to do is reach over for the phone, call Room 612 and whisper:
Can I come see you?

And he would say,
Yes, baby
.
Come now
.

I know he would tell me to come. I know because of this assignment tomorrow—the very fact that we are both here in L.A. staying at the same hotel. I know because of that unmistakable look he gave me in the bar, a look that even Suzanne couldn’t miss. But most of all, I know because of how good we once felt together. Despite how much I try to deny it and ignore it or focus only on the way things ended, I know what was there. He must remember it, too.

I close my eyes, my heart racing with something close to fear, as I picture getting out of bed, silently stealing through the halls, finding Leo’s door and knocking once, just as he knocked on my hotel door during our jury duty so long ago. I can clearly see Leo waiting for me on the other side, unshaven and sleepy-eyed, leading me to his bed, slowly undressing me.

Once under the covers, there would be no discussion of why we broke up or the past eight years or anything or
anyone
else. There would be no words at all. Just the sounds of us breathing, kissing, fucking.

I tell myself that it wouldn’t really count. Not when I’m this far from home. Not in the very middle of the night. I tell myself that it would only be the blurry continuation of a dream too satisfying and too real to resist.

When I wake up again several hours later, sun is streaming through the window, and Suzanne is already shuffling around the room, tidying her belongings and mine as she watches the muted television.

“Holy eastern exposure,” I groan.

“I know,” she says, looking up from her bag of toiletries. “We forgot to shut the blinds.”

“We forgot to take Advil, too,” I say, squinting from the throbbing sensation in my left temple and a dose of guilt and regret that is evocative of the walk of shame in college—the morning after alcohol and loud music and the veil of nighttime induced you to kiss someone you might not have otherwise even talked to. I reassure myself that this is not the same thing at all.
Nothing
happened last night. I had a dream. That is all. Dreams sometimes—
often
—mean absolutely nothing. Once, when I was in the adolescent throes of braces-tightening torture, I had an appallingly provocative dream about my orthodontist, a balding, nondescript soccer dad of a guy, who was the father of a classmate to boot. And I can guarantee that I didn’t want Dr. Popovich on
any,
even subconscious, level.

Yet, deep down, I know that
this
dream didn’t come from nowhere. And more significantly, I know that the problem isn’t the dream per se. It was the way I felt afterward, once awake. It is the way I still feel now.

I sit up and stretch, feeling better just getting out of a horizontal position. Then, once out of bed altogether, I shift into professional, efficient mode, even adopting a crisp, businesslike tone with Suzanne. I cannot afford to indulge in ridiculous, misguided fantasies when I have a huge, career-defining shoot in front of me. In my great mentor Frank’s words,
It’s show time
.

But hours later, after I’ve completed a thorough battery check and equipment inventory, reviewed my notes, phoned my freelance assistant to confirm our schedule, and triple-checked with the manager of the diner that she is indeed closing for two hours as per Drake’s camp’s request, I am in the shower, under very hot water, still brooding over Leo. Wishing I had packed cuter clothes for the shoot. Contemplating just how awful I would feel if I had called him last night. Wondering whether it just might have been worth it—and then berating myself for even thinking such a terrible thing.

At some point, Suzanne interrupts my thoughts, shouting through a thick cloud of steam, “Are you alive in there?”

“Yeah,” I say tersely, remembering how, as a teenager, she’d often pick the lock with a bobby pin and barge right into the bathroom during my only alone time in our cramped ranch.

“Are you nervous or just really dirty?” she asks me now, as she wipes down the mirror with a towel and sets about brushing her teeth.

I turn the water off and wring out my hair, as I admit that, yes, I am nervous. But I do not confess that the real reason for my nerves has very little to do with photographing Drake.

It is surreal, the sight of them together, talking earnestly over a burger (Leo’s) and a Greek salad (Drake’s). For a moment, I lose myself, taking in all the details. I observe that their hair is the same dark brown hue, but while Drake is sporting a five o’clock shadow and longish, slightly greasy hair, Leo is clean-shaven, nearly conservative in comparison. Both are wearing plain black T-shirts, but Leo’s appears to be a Gap staple, and Drake’s is more trendy and form fitting (and likely five times more expensive). He has also heavily accessorized the look with a silver hoop earring, several rings, and his trademark amber-colored glasses.

More than their dress or appearance, though, I am riveted by the placid, relaxed mood of their table. To Leo’s credit, Drake looks unguarded, even engrossed by questions he’s undoubtedly answered a thousand times, and Leo looks to be at complete, sexy ease. I note that he has ditched what used to be his standard yellow pad in favor of a small silver tape recorder which he has set up discretely beside the salt-and-pepper kiosk. In fact, but for the recorder and the sheer knowledge that Drake is
Drake,
there would be no way to discern that an interview is in the works. Even the grungy-but-still-ultra-fashionable posse whom I presume to be Drake’s entourage is keeping a respectful distance near the counter, further kudos to Leo; I’ve seen public relations types swarm around celebrities far less famous with interviewers far more accredited, playing watchdog against inane or inappropriate questions. Clearly the pack has determined that Leo is a solid guy—or at least a solid journalist.

“Damn,” Suzanne whispers as she stares. “What a
strong
face he has.”

I nod, even though I know we are not looking at the same man, basking for one final second in Leo.

Then I say, “Okay. Let’s get to work,” and begin unloading my equipment, surveying various backgrounds, and searching for the source of the best natural light. “Try to act like an assistant, would ya?”

“Right-o,” she says, as the manager of the diner, a squat woman named Rosa whose current giddiness belies her deep frown lines, asks if she can get us anything for at least the third time since ushering us into her diner. I have the sense that today is a highlight of her career, something we have in common—although only one of us has an 8 × 10 glossy shot of Drake and black Sharpie ready to go.

I tell Rosa no thank you, and she presses with, “Not even a water or coffee?”

I am too jittery for caffeine, so accept her offer of water while Suzanne pipes up with an unabashed request for a strawberry milkshake.

“Super. We’re famous for our milkshakes,” Rosa says proudly and scurries to put in the order.

I give my sister a disapproving, but mildly amused, look.

She shrugs. “What can I tell ya? I work best with a sugar buzz. Don’t you want to get the best out of your people?”

I roll my eyes, relieved to discover that my real assistant, a fresh-faced youth named Justin, has arrived with some larger lights and other rental equipment too cumbersome to fly with. After introducing ourselves and briefly chatting, I point out the shots that I think are best, then ask for his input, which seems to please him. His delight, in turn, makes me feel like the old pro and gives me a needed boost of confidence. Justin agrees with my assessment on background and lighting, adds one idea of his own, and the two of us get down to the nitty-gritty of setting up, taking light-meter reads, and snapping a couple of test sets. Meanwhile, Suzanne makes a feeble showing of helpfulness while doing her best to eavesdrop on the interview.

As we move about the small diner, I can’t help overhearing an occasional question from Leo, and a few inspiring snippets from Drake until finally, Justin and I are ready to go. I glance at my watch, discovering that we are ahead of schedule, and feel relaxed for the first time all day—maybe even all week.

Until I hear Leo say my name, that is, and I turn around to find him and Drake watching me expectantly.

“C’mere,” Leo beckons as if we’re the oldest of pals, and he has just run into the third friend in our once inseparable triumvirate.

My heart skips a beat—for so many reasons. Or at least two.

“Holy shit. He’s looking
right
at you,” Suzanne mumbles behind her milkshake. And then—“Whatever you do, don’t trip over those cords.”

I take a deep breath, give myself a final little pep talk and, feeling grateful that I don’t work in heels, stroll over to the table where several of Drake’s staffers are now hovering.

Leo looks past them, as if they’re invisible, and says to me, “Hey, Ellen.”

“Hi, Leo,” I say.

“Have a seat,” he says, as I think
déjà vu
. Although upon further thought, the exchange actually
is
the same as yesterday’s—which means it’s not déjà vu.
Enough mental rambling
, I think as I take Leo’s side of the booth. He moves over, but only barely, so that we are close enough to hold hands if we were so inclined.

“Ellen, this is Drake Watters. Drake, meet my good friend Ellen,” Leo says in what is another surreal moment. I simply can’t believe that I’m being introduced to Drake—and that
Leo
is making the introduction.

I instinctively start to extend my hand, but then remember what Frank once told me about how germ phobic many A-listers are, so I give Drake a respectful nod instead.

“Hello, Drake,” I say, my heart racing.

“Very nice to meet you, Ellen,” he says in his lyrical South African accent. He looks every bit as cool as I thought he would, yet at the same time, there is something surprisingly unflashy, even understated, about him.

“Nice to meet you, too,” I say, stopping with that, as I recall another bit of advice from Frank: that a death knell for a photographer is to bore a celebrity subject with obsequious chatter. Not that anything springs to mind anyway, except for:
I was, like, totally deflowered to that one song of yours
. Although true, I know I would never in a million years utter such a ridiculous thing, yet I still feel mildly concerned that I might—the verbal equivalent of fearing that you will, for no reason at all, hurl yourself off a balcony at the mall.

At this point, one handler type rubs his palms together indicating that there will be no further small talk. “You’re Ellen Dempsey?” he says, also in a South African accent, but a clunkier one than Drake’s.

“Yes,” I say, fleetingly wishing that I changed my professional name when Andy and I married.

“You have fifteen minutes to shoot,” another handler instructs me, somewhat condescendingly.

“No problem,” I say, then turn my gaze back to Drake. “Shall we get started?”

“Sure,” he says, nodding just as a rock star should—all loosey-goosey, cool. “Where do you want me?”

I point to a booth behind ours, switching into auto-pilot. There is no time left for jitters. “Right over there,” I instruct him. “Just slide in toward the window, please. And could you take your cup of tea with you? I’d like it in the foreground.”

“Great,” Drake says, winking. “I wasn’t done with it, anyway.”

As he slides out of the booth, I catch Leo giving me a look that can only be described as fond. I flash him a small, sincere—nearly fond—smile in return.

“Break a leg,” he whispers, looking up at me.

I pause, getting sucked into his eyes. Then, against my better judgment, I say, “Wait for me?”

Leo smiles. “Was planning on it. You can’t shake me that easily.”

I smile again as it suddenly occurs to me that I will not be able to hide Leo’s connection to the story forever. Andy and Margot will see his byline. Everyone will. Our names will be printed together, along with Drake’s, all on the very same page. But as I pick up my camera, I tell myself that this day might just be worth a little bit of trouble.

The next fifteen minutes are a high-adrenaline blur of snapping ninety-four photos while giving Drake a steady stream of monotone instruction:
Sit here, stand there, a little to the left, chin up a bit, small smile, no smile, half-smile, hand on your mug, hand on the table, hands on your lap, look out the window, look over my shoulder, look right at me
. Then:
Okay
.
That’s it
.
Thank you, Drake
.

And I’m done. Blissfully done. And the best, most euphoric part is that I know I have my one, great shot. I
always
know when I have my shot—and today I am even more certain than usual. Drake, with just the right amount of natural light behind him, creating almost a soft halo effect; red booth contrasting with black shirt and white mug; strong lines of the table, window, and Drake’s own bone structure. Perfection.

“Thank you, Ellen Dempsey,” Drake says, smiling. “That was painless.”

I smile—no,
beam
—back at him, memorizing the way he makes my most ordinary name sound like a line of a poem, one of his songs. I am on an absolute physical, emotional high.