Noah considered her. “You’re just saying that because she has an unrestricted view of my ankles.”
AJ punched him in the arm, and they started walking back.
“It’s okay to have a favorite body part,” he said conversationally. “I have several.”
As Bud slept in his arms, he bent down and whispered them in her ear.
Noah had originally signedon to shoot a film that July but had backed out of all commitments until the fall in view of Eudora’s illness. Even so, he was extremely in demand following his Oscar win. Several times a week, scripts arrived from Ned for him to read.
Noah would review them on the patio in an hour or two, and most of the time, AJ would find them in the recycling or in Errol’s office, stacked next to the fireplace for kindling. Occasionally, he would ask her to read one for her opinion, and AJ actually thought a few were pretty good. But Noah didn’t seem overly eager to jump into his next project, and AJ couldn’t blame him.
He had been pushing himself nonstop for the past decade to reach this point in his career, and just as he had grasped it, he’d lost Eudora, his last close family member and main support.
Mostly, he seemed distracted by the obvious upside of this, which was that Eudora’s death had miraculously returned AJ to him, but occasionally, AJ would catch him looking pensive or standing near her preferred spot in the drawing room.
“I don’t know if it just hasn’t hit me yet or what,” he said to AJ after one such occasion. “It still feels like she’s here—like she might walk through the door any minute.”
He hadn’t spoken much about the end, but it couldn’t have been easy. AJ had concluded this mostly because Noah wouldn’t go near Eudora’s room. From the outside, it looked tidy enough, and AJ knew it was immaculate, because once a week a crew of cleaners descended on Drew House to combat entropy, but whatever had happened in there, Noah wished to avoid it.
Which was how Eudora’s room became AJ’s office.
Noah had an impishstreak as a lover, and nothing brought this out more than AJ trying to concentrate. The first time she brought her computer to the drawing room to work on the novel adaptation, heturned up innocently with one of his model kits. Within twenty minutes, the screen on AJ’s laptop had gone dark as Noah went down on her, the model kit forgotten nearby.
The second time this happened, AJ was in the kitchen working at the island. He sauntered in, fresh from a run, and poured himself a water from the fridge.
“What’s that?” He nodded to her laptop, still panting slightly.
“The screenplay that’s due in twelve days,” she said without lookingup.
“Oh, right,” he said. AJ could hear that telltale note in his voice.
“I have to do this,” she said, still avoiding his gaze.
“I know,” he said respectfully.
Within five minutes, he was fucking her against the island.
AJ’s third attempt was on the patio, which was where Noah himself preferred to work. This time, he called her inside for “help taking a leaf out of the dining room table,” and AJ wound up fucking him herself in one of the dining room chairs because it was so pathetically transparent, and because he smelled amazing, and because she could.
You couldn’t succeed atSNLand not work well under a deadline, but this was AJ’s first draft for these particular producers, and she needed to nail it. A week before it was due, AJ awoke at foura.m.in a blind panic; she was only halfway through the script. It was time to buckle down.
Eudora’s soft pink room was a mix of a Tudor royal’s bedchamber and Barbara Eden’s lamp fromI Dream of Jeannie.It was also the one place Noah would not follow. As AJ stepped inside, she waited to feel fear or dread or ghoulishness; instead, she settled in and got right to work.
She progressed quickly over the next couple days, taking occasional breaks to poke around Eudora’s effects. She discovered that the floral perfume she favored was Red Door, by Elizabeth Arden, from the bottles on both her nightstand and vanity.
One attempt at child’s pose revealed a stash of Eudora’s final Home Shopping Network purchases beneath her majestic canopy bed. By the looks of it, she’d gone in big on Snuggies and the collected works of Kenny G.
Then, one day, as AJ began the final build of the screenplay, she found herself looking directly at a file box labeledSummer 2000.It had been there the whole time, as if waiting for her to spot it among Eudora’s papers. Startled, AJ roused herself from the chaise and lifted the lid.
Her breath caught as she took in the CD case forNOW 4,the Gelly Roll pen with the fake flower attached, and the clipboard. She extracted these treasures from the box to reveal a loose collection of notes below, meticulously dated beginning in June 2000.
AJ bit her lip. Eudorahadleft these papers to her and Noah. Heart pounding, she began to read.
June 8, 2000
Ezell—
Today something remarkable happened. A girl came to the house—with Noah. The moment they walked in, I could tell there was a bond between them. Noah’s been like a caged animal for weeks, snarling and irascible, but in her presence he is soothed.
