Reid flips through the catalog while I pour the wine, wondering how best to broach this subject. But then I’m just as quickly distracted by the way he concentrates on each page, how his eyes scan each word, a hand pressed over his mouth. How he offers even the most inconsequential things the dignity of his attention.
“Lili,” he says casually, his gaze still fixed on a high-end portable fire pit. “I can hear you thinking.”
I slide a glass toward him, then take a sip from my own, the bubbles bursting in my mouth. I lean against the island.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t mean to pry. I know this was supposed to be our having-fun time.”
“Yeah. I can see how the dead wife gets in the way ofthat.” He says it jokingly, but I can still hear the strain in his voice.
“It can’t be easy to share that with people you barely know. Or maybe—maybe sometimes it’s easier to share with someone you barely know.”
Reid nods, then looks out the sliding glass doors to the backyard. “It’ll be ten years in September. Gracie was seven.”
When he turns back to me, I see a slackness in his face, a dullness in his eyes. It doesn’t look right on him. I want to put him back the way he was.
He tilts his flute toward me. “Might need something stronger than this.”
I hold up a finger and duck into the locked butler’s pantry, where I stashed all the hard alcohol once Emme started middle school. I come back with a bottle of whiskey and pull out two coffee mugs from our prolific collection of flea market finds: “I’m Too Sexy for 40,” reads one with aSex and the City–era black-and-pink color theme; the other is a classic diner mug, half an inch thick with a proud blue stripe running around the rim.
I pour a healthy glug into each and slide him the sexy mug. He looks at it and raises an eyebrow at me.
“It’s true,” I say, innocently.
“You think it’s true now, you should’ve seen me when I was actually forty.”
I gesture toward the mug. “Better?”
He takes a sip and nods. “That’s good shit.”
“Got me through my divorce.”
I watch him readjust in the stool. He has another sip, bolstering himself, and takes a breath. Exhales. “Thea was one of the most charismatic people I have ever known. When she walked into a room, the energy shifted. I never understood what people meant when they talked about ‘star quality’ until I met her.”
“Where did you two meet?”
“On a movie. A little indie my writing partner and I did in 2003. Our main character was an escort who witnesses an accidental homicide. This was at a time when sex workers were portrayed pretty one-dimensionally in movies, so we had our work cut out for us. We were confident in where our writing ended up, but I honestly wasn’t sure we had the budget to get an actor who could play her the right way. But when I watched Thea on set, I just... I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. She was magic. She completely disappeared into the part. And when she reemerged, she was still soluminous.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. You’d think I’d be able to describe her better after knowing her for so many years, but I just always struggle to do her justice.”
I nod, maybe too emphatically. Not being able to describe people with words—it’s why I take photos.
“And I loved her, I really did. But I also loved that she loved me, you know? I loved that this otherworldly person somehow thought that I was important enough to be loved.”
I’m distracted by the idea that Reid—Reid—wouldever think himself unworthy of love. But I nod. “I think I understand that.”
“Yeah?” Reid looks up at me from underneath a heavy brow, his voice hoarse. Seeking validation. To know that he’s not alone.
“I promise I’ll stop talking about him, but it’s a bit how I felt about James. When I met him, I was twenty-three, directionless, still living with Nisha in Alphabet City. And here was this twenty-eight-year-old doctor, clean-shaven and well-dressed. He thought my lifestyle was romantic and interesting, even though the bohemian thing was entirely unintentional. He made me feel like I was worth something, and I thought that maybe, with his influence, I could get myself together—be worthy of him.”
“Funny,” he says. “We both married people we thought we didn’t deserve.”
“Funnyis one word,” I say.
Reid clears his throat. “Thea had a troubled childhood, was in and out of rehab throughout her teens and into her early twenties. She’d been in recovery for almost five years when I met her, but I think our relationship gave her an extra boost of stability she could never quite find on her own. For the first few years of our relationship, she was holding down jobs, maintaining her friendships, taking good care of her health. But when we had Gracie... it’s like we tripped a wire. She started using again soon after Gracie was born. When Gracie was three, Cat and I got Thea to go back into rehab, found her a therapist she liked.She was working the program again. She was good again, for a while.”
Reid looks out the window, like he’s lost to the memory.
“And then one day, I get a call from the LAPD. I knew what they were going to say before I even picked up the phone.” He runs a hand over his face, then drinks deeply from his coffee mug. When he speaks again, his voice is thick with emotion. “She ran off the road on Mulholland Drive. No one else was hurt, thank god, but they found enough ketamine in her system to kill a horse. When the police told me what happened, I laughed. It was the most deranged reaction, but I couldn’t help it. Of course, my actress wife went out like she was in a fucking David Lynch movie.”
“Did you know she was using again?” I bury my question in my own mug.
