Little Known Facts: A Novel (5 page)

Renn is already seated at a table on the far left side of the stage, one half hidden from the room’s general view by a pillar decorated with a twining string of white Christmas lights. Anna is at the table too, Will’s pretty younger sister who is so different from him in temperament that Danielle privately marvels over the fact they were raised in the same family. When she and Will are spotted, both Renn and his daughter stand up. Danielle can feel herself blushing when Renn hugs her. His embrace feels oddly apologetic but also proprietary, and she smells whiskey on him and a clovelike aftershave. He is warm and bearishly strong, and she can’t ignore the rush of pleasure she feels when he touches her.

“It’s so nice to see you both,” Renn says as he settles back in his chair. “Danielle, you look as gorgeous as always.”

She looks down at the table, self-conscious but thrilled. The whites of her eyes feel seared when she looks up at him again.

“Don’t let her get away from you, Billy,” he adds, his smiling, flirtatious gaze still on her.

“I’m not planning to,” says Will, his voice a little too loud, even for the club’s cacophony.

“How are you, Anna?” Danielle asks, already feeling the tension between the two men, a whole heated front having moved into the bar with them.

“I’m doing well,” says Anna. “Four weeks left in the semester and then just one more before I graduate.”

“Dr. Ivins,” Renn says proudly. “Just like her mother.”

“But she would have liked me to be a pediatrician too.”

“You can help more people if you go into family medicine,” says Renn.

“She could help a lot of people as a pediatrician too,” says Will.

“Of course she could,” says Renn, “but she should do what she feels most passionate about.”

“You guys,” says Anna, smiling warily. “Don’t worry about me. I’m just glad I’ll be graduating soon.”

Renn laughs. “With the highest grade-point in the class.”

“No, not at all,” she says, abashed.

“But close, I’m sure,” her father says. “You’re too modest for your own good, sweetheart.”

“What’s going on in New Orleans, Dad?” Will asks, handing Danielle the beverage menu, which she finds is unpleasantly sticky. She looks at him, but his expression is as nonchalant as his tone.

“We finished shooting thirty-six hours ago,” says Renn. “A day and a half ahead of schedule. I couldn’t believe it. Saved us more than a hundred grand. Now we just have to put everything together so that it makes sense.” He winks at Danielle.

“Is Elise back in L.A. too?” says Will.

His father drinks from his water glass, not meeting his son’s eyes. “Yes, she is.”

“Elise?” says Anna. “Your female lead?”

“Yes,” Will and Renn say simultaneously.

Anna laughs. “Wow, in stereo.”

Will gives Danielle a strange, guilty look, and in that moment, she finally understands the real source of his and his father’s recent problems. It feels as if someone has come up suddenly from behind and pushed her, but she knows that she shouldn’t be surprised. The beautiful, famous girls who interest the father would of course interest the son too, all the more because the son isn’t likely to have them, at least not first. She teased Will about this once—had his father ever given him a hand-me-down girlfriend? She hadn’t realized how her question would disconcert and embarrass him; how close, it seemed, she had cut to the bone.

Objectively, the father, despite being twice his son’s age, is the more desirable man. Along with the money and the fame, it is his confidence, his stature, his sheer Renn Ivins-ness that draws people to him. He is his own thriving industry, a true celebrity, with his metal star already embedded in the famous sidewalk a few miles away. How many women have offered themselves to him over the years? How many women, the world over, believe themselves to be in love with him at that very moment? Danielle knows there have to be thousands upon thousands. Women who would compromise their marriages and self-respect for a night alone with him.

To have that kind of appeal—she can’t really imagine it. What did a person do with all of that power? How could it not change you? And so often, it seemed, for the worse?

“Elise Connor?” Danielle asks, but she knows this is exactly who they mean.

“Yes,” says Renn. He can’t suppress his smile. “The one and only.”

Will is pretending to watch the musicians onstage, tuning out his father and everyone else at the table. Danielle feels something hot and corrosive spilling into her stomach. Her girlfriends, some jealous, some well-meaning, told her to be cautious when she started dating Will. He had to know a lot of famous actresses, didn’t he? Wasn’t it likely that he had dated some of them? Despite how pretty she is, how could Danielle realistically expect to compete? She might own a profitable business, one that she had started all by herself, but she wasn’t famous, not even close. She was, sorry to say, an ordinary person. Will was not. At least this was what she had thought at first, but after a month or so of dating him, she knew that Will’s ordinariness, as he perceived it, was in danger of permanently embittering him.

“Are you seeing her, Dad?” asks Anna, crunching a piece of ice from her water glass. Her pale green eyes are rimmed with thick lashes that Danielle has always envied and admired.

Renn takes a few seconds to reply. “I suppose I am, but please keep that between you and me.” He smiles at Danielle. “And you and me.”

Even in the weak light cast by their table’s tiny lamp, Danielle can see that Will’s face is flushed. If he weren’t so upset, he would look very handsome, certainly a little mysterious, but he has spent most of his life watching his father. She suspects that he is used to being affably tolerated by his father’s associates or else ignored, and although it is something that most people are forced to accept as an elemental fact of their lives, she guesses that it is harder for the family members, the lesser planets, forced to orbit the famous, greedily glowing sun in their midst.

Does she stay with Will because she wants to play some role, no matter how minor, in his father’s life, or is it that Will reminds her of her ex-husband, Joe? Both he and Joe are men angry at the world, at other men who seem to have more than they do. Reading an article in a grocery-store magazine the previous week, Danielle had found herself staring at the page, unaware that the checkout line was advancing. The psychologist who had written the article argued that anger was the number-one social disease in the Western world, but hardly anyone bothered to acknowledge it. They would rather, the psychologist said, worry about quasi-abstractions like terrorist attacks or meteor strikes or alien invasions because these improbable disasters did not require the same painful self-examination that confronting one’s anger did.

Noticing her expression, Will makes an effort to smile and reaches for her hand. Even though she doesn’t pull away, she keeps her hand inert. She feels Renn and Anna watching them.

Anna says, “How long have you and Elise been together?”

Renn glances at his son. Danielle sees, in that half second, his contrition and his triumph. “I don’t know, seven or eight weeks, maybe?”

Will stiffens next to her but says nothing.

“Are you guys serious?” Anna asks.

Her father laughs. “I don’t know. Maybe. That might be nice.”

Anna smiles. “ ‘That might be nice.’ That’s all you’ll say?”

Renn nods. “For now, yes.”

“She’s twenty-four, Dad,” says Will. “How could it possibly be serious? For her, if not for you?”

The waiter, a blond man in a white shirt and black tie, has materialized behind Anna, interrupting the injured silence that follows Will’s question. Renn forces a smile and orders champagne cocktails for the table. Danielle is certain that Renn believes himself to be in love with Elise, and she feels an aggressive stab of jealousy. Anna looks at her from across the table, commiserating, it seems, over Will’s confrontational behavior. Her solicitousness embarrasses Danielle.

When the waiter leaves, Danielle excuses herself and goes to the bathroom, unable to sit and listen to how Renn will respond to Will’s questions about Elise, a woman younger than Renn’s own daughter.

In the bathroom, her face is noticeably drawn and ashen; her thick red hair, pinned up high, droops dispiritedly. After a minute, Anna appears in the doorway, her face a more welcome sight than Danielle expects. Without a word, Anna walks straight to her and hugs her for the second time that night.

“I can tell you’re not happy with my brother right now,” she says quietly. “He knows it too. That’s why he’s screwing things up.”

Before Danielle can stop herself, she is crying against Anna’s shoulder. Anna puts a hand to the back of Danielle’s head, gently holding it there. “Billy doesn’t know what he wants. I worry about him more than I’d like to. Thank God he doesn’t use drugs. I don’t know how he avoided it when so many of the kids we grew up with did. Do.”

Danielle pulls away and wipes her cheeks, embarrassed by her tears. “He drinks too much sometimes.”

“I know, but not all the time, right?”

She shakes her head. “No, not that often. At least I don’t think so. We’re not together every night.”

“He needs to start seeing his therapist again. I’ve been trying to get him to go.”

“I think he’s thinking about it.”

“Work on him, Danielle. He’s more likely to listen to you than anyone else.”

“Before we got here, he asked me to move in with him.”

“He did?” says Anna, her voice rising in surprise. “That’s a big deal. He’s never lived with a girlfriend before. Are you going to?”

“No, I don’t think so.” She is sure now that it is a bad idea. Aside from his chronic and unfocused anger, he is seriously infatuated with someone else, the kind of woman Danielle has no hope of ever being able to compete with.

“No? Did you tell him that?”

Danielle shakes her head. “Not yet.”

“I’m sorry about the thing with Elise. Billy’s a very sweet guy, but he can still be such a child. I know he loves you, though.”

“I don’t know.” It is a relief to talk to Anna, but she isn’t used to confiding in someone so closely related to a boyfriend. She wonders if Anna will repeat any part of their conversation to Will.

“He does. Don’t give up on him yet.”

She forces a smile, feeling tears surge behind her eyes again. “I won’t.” But as soon as she says these words, she knows they aren’t true.

Renn watches her and Anna approach the table, his smile very wide. “I can’t get over how pretty you two are,” he says as they sit down. The champagne is on the table, and he motions for everyone to pick up their glasses. “A toast to your youth and beauty. Yours too, Billy. May you all use them wisely.”

They touch glasses, Danielle glancing at Will, who manages to smile. Her eyes feel raw, as if she has been rubbing them too hard, but with Renn within whispering distance, she can almost convince herself that things are all right for as long as they stay close to him. People at other tables are looking at them, but Renn ignores this, as do Will and Anna, accustomed, certainly, to their father’s effect on strangers. Danielle tries not to look, but she can’t stop herself from glancing at a couple of the nearest tables. One of their neighbors is using her phone to take Renn’s picture; another fumbles through her handbag, probably looking for paper and a pen. She suspects that with minimal effort, he can make lifelong fans or scornful detractors of these people.

When they leave Sylvia’s an hour and two cocktails later, Anna already gone, having only had time for one drink, Renn hugs Danielle with unmistakable ardor and kisses her on the lips in full view of his son and the parking attendants. The pressure of Renn’s kiss startles her, and she pulls back as if touching fire. His face is pink-cheeked and jolly when she looks up at him, embarrassed but flattered. Without a word, Will takes her elbow and pulls her briskly away, his father calling after them, laughter in his voice. “Billy, lighten up. It was just a little good-bye kiss.”

“You’re drunk, Dad,” says Will, furious. “Leave her alone.”

“No, I’m not,” Renn calls, still laughing.

“Fuck off,” says Will, but only loud enough for Danielle to hear. His grip on her arm is too tight. She wants to shake him off but doesn’t, knowing this would only make him angrier.

And yet his anger seems a small penalty to pay for Renn’s unsolicited kiss. She can still taste him, the champagne on his lips, the brine from the delicious Italian olives the waiter surprised them with, a gift from the club’s manager. She was close enough to feel his enveloping heat again, to have a sense of what it would be like to be pressed even closer, if ever she were alone with him, if she were Elise Connor instead of Danielle Dixon, born in Kansas City, raised in Northridge, California. Her heart is still racing. When she turns to look back at him, he raises his hand and gives her a small wave. “Good night, Danielle,” he calls. “Good night, Billy. Drive safe.”

“Good night, Mr. Ivins,” she says, her face very warm. It was so nice to see you, she wants to add, but doesn’t have the nerve.

In the car on the way back to his place, Will is still furious. “I can’t believe you let him kiss you.”

“I didn’t let him kiss me. I pulled away as soon as I realized what he was doing.”

“It didn’t look to me like you minded.”

“A lot of people kiss each other good-bye. He didn’t mean anything by it.”

He glares at her, his hazel eyes very dark, as if fully dilated. “Of course he meant something by it. He’s making it clear to me that he can still have any woman he wants.”

“No, he doesn’t. And he can’t. I’m not interested in him.”

He shakes his head. “Right.”

“I’m not,” she says, angry that he is needling her, wanting only one answer, one she won’t ever give him. “Your assumptions are really offensive.”

His jaw is rigid, but when he turns to meet her eyes, his question, the plea in his voice, surprises her. “Are you staying over tonight?”

“No.”

“Your car’s at my building.”

“I know. I can drive home. I’m not drunk.”

“Come up for a few minutes. Just to make sure you’re okay.”