The Next Best Thing (42 page)

“You are so beautiful,” he said.

“Come in here with me.”

“Be patient.”

I nodded, dizzy with arousal, loving the way he was taking charge, telling me what to do with none of Gary’s fretful delicacy, his questions of
Is this all right?
I’d never imagined anything like this, never imagined feeling this way.

“Spread your legs. Close your eyes.” I did what he told me. Over the concussive beat of the spray, pulsing from the jets, I imagined that I could hear his chair inching forward, clothes hitting the ground . . . and then Dave was sitting on the bench behind me. One of his hands was gripping my bottom. He slid the forefinger of his other hand inside of me, then pulled it out, brushing it against my clit. I felt my thighs and belly clenching, felt my orgasm spiraling up from deep inside of me. Just when I was trembling on the brink, eyes shut, mouth open, he pulled his hand away.

“No,” I groaned as he reached up and held my breasts, cupping them firmly, then tugging at the nipples.

“Sit on my lap,” he whispered, and he kissed me, his tongue slipping into my mouth, the water pounding down on top of us.

“Dave,” I said. “I love you.”

He slipped one finger inside of me, then two . . . and then, with his free hand, he pulled the shower nozzle out of its holster. I felt the teasing brush of the water on my neck, my shoulders, my breasts, as I leaned my head back against his shoulder. “Oh,” I said as I felt the water pulsing between my legs. “Oh, God.”

“Now,” he breathed in my ear, his fingers working between my legs, his lips against my neck. “Now.”

“Oh,” I said. It felt like I was lighting up, from my toes to my calves to my knees, my thighs, my hips, my belly, all of me filling with fire. I managed to say his name once, and then as the spasms shook my body, I couldn’t say anything at all.

When I could move again, I turned around and looked at him. “Oh my God,” I whispered. “What was that?”

Dave was looking at me with something like wonder on his face. “Bedroom,” he said hoarsely, and I pushed myself up and out of the water, and held his hand as we hurried into the house, me on my bare feet and Dave on his wheels, both of us moving as fast as we could.

W
hen I woke up the next morning Dave was propped on one elbow, looking at me. “Money’s on the bedside table,” he said. I felt my heart stop. “I’m kidding,” Dave said, and started to laugh, his familiar dry
Heh heh heh.
“Oh, my Lord, the look on your face!”

“You’re hilarious,” I said, and whacked him with a pillow. “Have you ever thought about comedy?”

He grabbed my hand and pushed it up over my head. He was so strong. I could still hardly believe it. My body was still ringing like a struck chime. I wondered what he was experiencing, if he felt the way I did, at least in the parts of his body that could still feel. Maybe sex was just more intellectual when you had no sensation from the waist down. I’d have to ask him about it. I wasn’t sure, but I thought we’d have time.

But before I could ask him anything, there was something I needed answered.

“Dave,” I said. “What about Shazia?”

He tucked my head under his arm, kissed my cheek, and said, “Shazia and I aren’t really a couple.”

I gaped at him. “What do you mean?”

“She’s gay.”

My mouth dropped open. “What?”

“Her parents are born-again Christians. Super-conservative. She has a partner, a talent manager, and they live a very private life. But she’s not ready to be out. Because of her parents, mostly.”

“So you’re . . . what? Her beard?”

He nodded, slightly shamefaced.

“That is so old-school,” I murmured. “But don’t you want . . .” I groped for the words. “Haven’t you been lonely?”

He shook his head. “I have the writers’ room.”

Me,
I thought.
You have me.
“But what did you do about . . .” I stopped, remembering what Big Dave had said, back during my first week of work. “He pays for escorts,” Big Dave had announced, tossing his light saber from one hand to the other. “Which is painful for a penny-pinching WASP from New England. First, there’s the shame of admitting you even want to have sex. Then there’s the pain of having to pay for it.”

“You probably saw the swimsuits in the pool house,” he began. I swallowed. For a moment, I was tempted to tell him to stop, to ask him not to say any more, certain that I didn’t want to hear what was coming.

“Sometimes I have women over. Escorts,” he said, in case I couldn’t fill in that blank on my own. “I watch them swim. And then sometimes I watch them do other things I tell them to do.”

Other things.
Oh, boy. I pictured beautiful women gliding through the water like mermaids, shedding their swimsuits as they went. I imagined them in the shower, with the handheld nozzles, maneuvering their bodies against the glass as Dave told them what to do. “So you’re a director,” I said, and laughed at his expression, surprised and amused.

“I never really thought of it that way.”

“Was this what you liked before the accident?” I asked.

Dave’s brow furrowed. “Interesting question,” he said. “I’m not sure. I hadn’t had a lot of girlfriends before then.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, I was shy. And I was short. Runt of the litter.” He shook his head. “It bothered me when I was younger. Before I knew I’d spend the rest of my life sitting down.” He cupped my cheek, smiling fondly. “So do you think you’re ready for an introduction into the wonderful world of catheters and Viagra?”

“I’ve seen the ads for Cialis,” I told him. “The one with the old dude and the lady in the bathtubs. It looks like fun. What’s the big deal?”

“For starters, you have to take it two hours in advance of when you expect there to be . . . activity. I’m not an optimist, but I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gone to sleep on my back.”

I laughed as I looked at him, with his hair uncharacteristically mussed, in a plain white T-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms. His hair was thinning on top, and his upper and lower bodies looked as if they belonged to two different people, a fitness buff grafted on top of a couch-bound grandpa, and I loved him so completely, loved every part of him, the way his ears were a little pointed on top, the light brown hair on his forearms and on his toes. I fitted my body against his, smelling soap, the hay-and-sunshine smell of his skin. In the morning light, his eyes were clear and pale blue, and I could see the ghost of freckles on his nose. I touched his cheek with my fingertips and was encouraged when he didn’t move away.

“So what now?”

“Get up,” he said, and swatted my rump lightly. “I’ll toast you a bagel. Then you’d better get to work.” He glanced at his phone, plugged in on the table next to his bed. “And I should, too.”

“Can’t we both just call in sick?” His hand was still on my bottom, and I felt myself start to flush, remembering the night before:
Touch yourself there. Let me see you. Keep your eyes open. Look at me.

I reached for him, pulling him close, letting my mouth linger
on the underside of his jaw. He flipped me over and eased me onto my back, and I wondered, with a dizzy, wonderful lurching feeling, if we were going to start again. With Gary, the sex was over when he was . . . but now, blissful possibilities unfolded in my mind. What was sex like with someone for whom there wasn’t necessarily the end point of an orgasm? I couldn’t wait to find out.

But, instead of kissing me or fondling my breasts, Dave lay down beside me, tracing the scars on my shoulder with his finger.

“Did it hurt?” he asked. His voice was so full of concern that my eyes prickled.

“The operations did. The accident, I can’t remember.” I looked down at his legs. “How about you?”

“Ah,” he said. “Did Big Dave ever tell you the story?”

“He told me a little. I know that you were in a sailboat, and you got hit by a guy who was in a powerboat, and he was drunk when he hit you. He’d been in trouble before, and he went to jail.”

“Ten years. Down to eight, with time off for good behavior. Go forth and sin no more.” Dave paused. “He said it was a blessing.”

This was news that hadn’t appeared in the paper, news that Big Dave had not shared. “You talked to him?”

“We were pen pals, I guess you could say. When he was in jail. He earned his GED, got about halfway toward a bachelor’s degree, and he finished it at CCCC—that’s Cape Cod Community College—after he was out.” He gave me his small, tucked-in smile. “And I got a year-long deferral from law school and came out here.”

“Lucky for me,” I said, and took his hand.

“Lucky for me,” Dave said. “If it hadn’t been for the accident, then Craig—that’s the guy who hit me—would never have gotten
his college degree, never gotten sober, never met his wife, and I’d be another miserable lawyer.”

“So you’re saying . . .” I rolled away from him, propped myself up on one elbow, and looked down at his dear, handsome face. In her bed in the corner, Pocket stood up, yawning as she stretched.

“I remember,” Dave continued, “one of my philosophy professors once said that ‘Why do we suffer?’ is the question that’s driven every religion that’s ever lasted.”

“So what’s the answer?” I asked. “Why do we suffer? What does it mean? What is it for?”

Dave thought for a moment, his eyes on the ceiling, fingers drumming on the comforter. “I don’t remember,” he said. “I think I dropped the class.” He shook his head at the memory of his college-age self. “I only signed up in the first place because I thought I was in love with this girl, and she was a philosophy major.”

I tucked myself against him, my head on his chest, my hip against his hip, my strong, tanned legs hooked over his pale, thin ones.

“Maybe it’s like running. You do it because it feels so good when it stops. Maybe there’s suffering because it makes us appreciate the good things more.”

He bent down and kissed my forehead, gathering me against him. My body stirred in response. I could feel that familiar heady thrum between my legs, and I shivered, wondering if we’d have time for more.

“Want that bagel?” he asked, looking at the time again.

“Are you buying?”

“In the kitchen,” he said, and used his arms and shoulders to swing himself out of the bed and into the chair. “Come along.”

I found one of his T-shirts and a pair of boxers in the dresser drawer and pulled them on, then walked down the sunny hallway,
with Pocket trotting briskly behind me, thinking that maybe everything balanced. There was suffering, and there was joy, and maybe, just maybe, amid the wreckage of what I’d thought I wanted most, there was still a chance for me to grab some happiness, to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

A
fter the director rolled his eyes and yelled, “Cut!”; after the warm-up guy hollered, “That’s a thank you and good night” and played “Hit the Road, Jack”; after the studio audience filed out the doors; after the actors had taken their final bows and driven off into the night, I went back to the writers’ room.

It was almost two in the morning. The bungalow was dark and deserted. The cleaning crew had come and gone, tossing the pizza boxes and plastic cups we’d used to drink a Champagne toast before showtime. I scavenged a clean cup from the pantry, found the bottle of Scotch that the Daves had sent over, gift-wrapped, that morning, and sat at my desk with the lights off, the computer displaying its coruscating screensaver, waves of color rolling from violet to blue and back again. I could hear a breeze through the windows, and the refrigerator’s clicks and churns. The rooms smelled like furniture polish and fresh flowers—everyone’s agent had sent bouquets that morning, and the outer office was filled with enough roses and lilies to stock a funeral. I spun the bottle cap loose and poured myself a shot. It burned going down, first painfully, then pleasantly. I refilled the cup, leaned back in my chair, and lifted it in a toast. “Here’s to me,” I said, and swallowed.

I felt wired and jittery, exhausted and exhilarated, and underneath
all that, deeply, deeply afraid. I was afraid that the show was turning into a disaster and that there was no way for me to stop it, to stem the tide or turn the ship or hit
REBOOT
and start things over again. I was Mickey in the sorcerer’s hat, and the brooms had danced away from me. All I could do was wring my hands and watch them go, and worry that what I was putting out into the universe not only would fail to comfort the girls I’d imagined, the girls like me, but would actively harm them.

I took another swallow of Scotch, rocked back in my chair, and shook my head. Having survived the development process, the pilot shoot, the test results, and the decisions that had followed, having fired Annie Tait and dealt with Cady’s weight loss and Pete’s crippling stage fright, I thought I’d been prepared for every species of trouble that could come with today’s pilot reshoots, with an audience in the seats, executives in the greenroom, picking at their catered dinners, and my gum-chewing director tanned and rested and ready to earn his pay (three times as much per episode as I was getting—I’d checked).