Forever in Blue (32 page)

Carmen jiggled her phone in her hand and thought of who to call. She’d already spoken to Lena once and her agent twice. Her mind summoned a glimpse of Tibby’s face, more out of loyalty than an expectation of actually talking to her. Since Tibby had moved to Australia with Brian almost two years before, Carmen had almost given up hope of reaching her in real time. Tibby’s move had been hasty, somewhat disorganized, and just … far. The sixteen-hour time difference was a constant impediment. Tibby had gone from place to place at first and didn’t get a landline until long after Carmen had given up on the idea. International calls between their cellphones were plagued by stupid complications, mostly on Tibby’s side. In a couple of weeks. In a month. By next spring. Those were the times when Carmen told herself they’d resume regular contact. Carmen often thought of hauling over there for a visit. This past June she’d staked out a date on the calendar, and Bee and Lena had instantly agreed to the scheme. When she’d emailed Tibby about it, Tibby’s return had come more quickly than usual. “Now’s not a good time.”

Carmen took it personally for once. “Did I do something?” she’d asked in her next message.

“Oh, Carma, no. You did nothing wrong. Nothing. Just busy and unsettled here. It’ll be soon. I promise. I want to see you and Len and Bee more than anything else in the world.”

And there was Bee. Carmen hadn’t seen her since Bridget’s last swing through New York over the Christmas holidays, but there were long periods when Bridget and Carmen talked every day—that is, as long as Bee hadn’t lost her phone or neglected to pay her bill for too long. Bee was the best possible distraction from an hour in the makeup chair. But Carmen hesitated to call her now. It had been awkward between them for the last few weeks, since Bee had effectively called Jones an asshole.

Well, to be fair, Bee hadn’t just come out and said “Your fiancé is an asshole.” In fact, to be fair, it was Carmen who’d called him an asshole and Bee who’d lost no time in agreeing with her. But Carmen was allowed to say Jones was an asshole. She was the one marrying the asshole.

Carmen’s phone rang, saving her the trouble of dialing anyone, and she snapped it up. The earphones were already stuck in her ears. She was one of the few people she knew who answered the phone as she checked the caller ID, not after.

“Hey, babe.”

“Hey, Jones.”

“In the chair still?”

“Yep.” Jones was in the business, so he knew how it went. Besides, he’d called her half an hour before.

“How late are you shooting tonight?”

“Till around seven, Steven said.”

“If you can, cut out a little early and come directly to the Mandarin, all right? It’s the pre-party before the big Haiti benefit. It’s important for you to at least show.”

“It won’t make a difference to Haiti if I don’t get there in time for the pre-party.” It was one of three benefits they had on the calendar that week.

“It’s not about Haiti,” Jones said, as though she were being dense. “It’s about the Shaws. They invited us, and I don’t want to stiff them. She’s probably going to be head of production by next year. We’ll be out of there by eight. Nobody’s going to stay for the whole thing.”

“Oh. Of course.” Cynical though she was, Carmen never remembered to be quite cynical enough. Why would she think the Haiti benefit was about Haiti and not about the Shaws? Why would she think the gala was about the gala and not about the party before the gala? If not for Jones, she could have been one of the boobs who thought it was about Haiti and stayed for the whole thing.

It was endlessly tricky being in the know. It was a state Carmen had achieved with a certain bravado, but she found it difficult to maintain. Without Jones, she could easily slip out of the know, relapse into her natural eagerness, and probably never get hired for another part in her life.

“It’s a game and you play it,” he often told her when she felt discouraged or repulsed. “If you want to succeed in this business, it’s what you do. Otherwise, you gotta pick a different business.” He was thirty-nine years old to her twenty-nine. He’d been doing it for sixteen years, he always reminded her. But he didn’t need to tell her. Whether or not she liked it, she was perfectly good at playing the game when she chose to.

“I’ll try to be there before seven,” she said.

Carmen felt vaguely dissatisfied as she ended the call. It wasn’t that Jones didn’t care about charities. He did. Every month he put five percent of his earnings into a charitable fund. You couldn’t fault him for that.

“Was that your boyfriend again?” Rita asked.

Carmen nodded distractedly. Sometimes it was hard to know what you could fault him for.

“He’s an executive at ABC, isn’t he?”

She nodded again. Everybody in this business was looking for another contact.

“Lucky you,” Rita said.

“Yes,” she said. And not just because he was her boyfriend, but because he was her fiancé. If she was lucky, then she was extra lucky.

And what if she wasn’t lucky? Then what was she?

EXCERPT COPYRIGHT © 2011 BY ANN BRASHARES

PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE,

AN IMPRINT OF THE RANDOM HOUSE PUBLISHING GROUP,

A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC., NEW YORK.