“Some people want to see you dead.”
“Some people?”
He nods at the other writers smoking by the window. “It’s not you obviously. There’s just a feeling about the moral center of the show.”
A pit forms in Susan’s stomach, a fragile, disposable thing.
“Where do you see her going?” Rip asks. He looks at her and his eyes are kind, interested. No one has asked her this before. She has always understood her job: to take what she’s given, to make it the best it can be.
“I think she deserves love.”
Rip nods at this, sips his drink. “Who, then?”
“Why choose. Maybe it’s a mystery.”
“A secret admirer?”
They riff. Susan is brimming, ideas tap dancing, unshackled out of relief or maybe… intuition? It feels enough like it, organic the way acting is, only this time she’s shifting the order of things, stepping into new power.
“Maybe he’s a serial killer?” she suggests. “Nice big storyline for you.”
“That’s real big,” says Rip. “Showrunner big.”
“Maybe we only see his gloved hand. Max in costumes keeps saying he wants to do more gloves.”
“Gloves for Max.”
“And get Orson involved. A suspect or something. That boy needs a break.”
Rip’s lip curls up into a smile.
“What. I’m talking with my hands, aren’t I?”
“No, no. You’re just a generous person, Susie.”
“How do you mean?”
“I ask you how we can save your career and you just want to make space for everyone else.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to—to overstep—”
Mark Flowers is at her other side. “I won’t let them kill you, Susie,” he says close in her ear. “And if they do, I’ll give you a spin-off.” And then, in a blink, he is spinning her off, onto the dance floor, laughter erupting from her whole face, her nostrils, her eyes lined with electric blue. He grabs her by the waist and picks her up, twirling her round, and in the midst of all the stardust she cannot help but feel like a terrible person.
When Mark sets her down, his hand wanders lower, around to her ass. Smiling, she shifts it back up. It’s the sort of thing you have to get used to, hands like water on you in this city. She waves her own left, ringed hand at him, and Mark mimes looking around the room.
“I don’t see any husband,” he says.
Susan smiles as though it’s all a big joke, as if they’re all playing along, her stomach prickling with sickness, the need to extricate.It’s make-believe, she thinks,it’s fairy dust. She aches for Al, the solid object of his devotion. The distance crests in a sudden nausea. Putting on her best cheap laugh, she topples to the bar and drapes herself on Orson’s shoulder. “Time for me to go,” she pouts.
Orson pouts back at her. She knows he hates weekends, that he still feels lonely in this city, that he changes his accent just to be understood sometimes, that he’ll spend long hours at the beach with his Walkman, listening to tape cassettes from his childhood.
“See you Monday?”
She nods. She knows none of them can understand why she’s doing this, the back-and-forth double life.
“Good luck,” Orson says. Does he imagine her time with Al to be more difficult than it is, because of how she complains to him? It’s not that she tries to misrepresent life at home, but she has to vent to someone. When she cannot get through to him. When she has to cancel plans. When they fight. Orson hugs her, kissing her cheek, his scent becoming known to her, sending her out into the bruise-colored night.
Are you sure you trust these people?
