“Mmmmm,” he replies. “Whiskey at dinner.” I hear him rustle and rise.
“I thought this was a working weekend.” I say it lightly, though I worry it comes out too brittle, too judgmental.
Ben had holed up at a writer’s retreat for the weekend, trying to finesse the pilot of a hospital drama—Code Emergency—that he and Eric are bringing to the networks. I think he’s better than that, better than an average hospital drama that he could write on his worst days, much less on his best ones. But I don’t want to have that argument again, the one in which he tells me that I don’t need to remind him of his own mediocrity, which is never my intention, but we’ve been out of sync lately, and so he takes my suggestions as criticisms, and now I just try to avoid suggestions entirely.
“Whiskey goes perfectly well with working,” he says.
“OK.”
“Oh God, Tatum,” he groans. “Give me a break.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You said everything.”
“Ben, I asked if you were working, that was the whole point of this retreat!”
“And I did—I worked for eight hours, OK? Not on my earth-shattering masterpiece, OK? OnCode Emergency, which I know you think is beneath me.”
“I don’t think that.” I do, but there is no point in getting into it now, when I already know how this discussion is going to go. This TV stint is fine, it’sfine. But Ben’s potential is stratospheric; it’s so far beyond this that it almost literally pains me. But to say that to him—which I have mistakenly from time to time—is condescending, patronizing. And I know that. I do. But sometimes I can’t help myself anyway. He isbrilliant, and I only want him to know that he doesn’t have to sell himself short. When I say this, he replies that I sound more and more like his father every day. So I try to censor myself now, something that I never thought I’d have to do with him.
“Well, I worked all day. My shoulder hurts from hunching over my laptop. And then, at dinner, a couple of guys and I had some whiskey. So what?”
“So nothing. I’m glad. It sounds great.”
It’s too late to backtrack from my passive-aggressiveness, and we both know it.
“OK,” he says.
“I just—”
“Here we go,” he says.
I stop myself. It’s easier to say these things—You can do better—over the phone when I don’t have to look him in the eye and see how much my disappointment guts him. It’s a cheap betrayal, saying the hard things when you don’t have to witness their recourse. So I don’t tonight. Besides, Hollywood is mercurial, and plenty of Ben’s stumbles have been no fault of his own. It’s not like he’s not out there trying.
“Home tomorrow to see Joey?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Give him a kiss for me.”
“I will. I promised him ice cream. We’ll go to the beach,” he says.
“Give him an extra scoop, tell him it’s from me.”
“I will,” he says.
“Love you,” I say.
“You too,” he answers.
But each of us sounds empty, as if the words can’t transcend the divide of the three thousand miles between us.
Daisy texts me as soon as I hang up.GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE.
“Aren’t we too old for this? Clubbing somewhere after midnight on the Lower East Side?” I say to her, after the bouncer has slipped me past the velvet rope without even glancing at the guest list, after the hostess has fawned and ushered me back to the VIP room, after the owner has said personal hellos and sent over a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.
“You’re never too old to be clubbing at midnight somewhere on the Lower East Side.” She refills her flute with the Veuve Clicquot. “Besides, look at all the beautiful men.” She fans her arms wide, her champagne spilling over the lip of her glass. “There are so, so many beautiful men.”
