But it would mean something about him if it had been true.
And she had to try to make that clear without somehow praising him.
“No, I wouldn’t. It would show you’re capable of human feelings,” she said.
But of course he just gave her a withering look.
“Yeah, but I’m not capable of them, am I. So talk some sense.”
“Thisissense. You bring her out at the theater we’ve booked for the talk with Juno Winford, you hold hands, you kiss a cheek, you talk about being inspired by your great love, she smiles demurely, makes a pithy comment, problem solved.”
“Stop trying to make incredibly weird, impossible things sound normal.”
“They don’t have to be normal. They just have to work. And they will,” she said, firmer about it than she thought she could be. Though of course this was her wheelhouse now. He was just in it.
And clearly didn’t like that he was.
“You’re just that good at this, huh,” he tried to sneer.
But failed, on one big level. “You said I was, yesterday.”
“Oh, so now you’re using my words against me.”
“I’d use a death ray against you if it existed and I thought I could get away with it. Now, here are the pictures. Pick whichever one looks most like you could convince an audience is attractive to you,” she said, as businesslike as he was petulant about things. He practically pouted, sullenly, as she laid down the three headshots of the actresses she’d enlisted.
But when she purposefully glanced away, she caught him peering at them out of the corner of her eye. She saw the fervently concealed intrigue in him—just like that time when he had dismissed a book she had praised to a girl in their workshop group. Then later she’d seen him lurking around where the book was, in the library.
Like he wanted to see for himself, despite telling himself otherwise.
And it felt even more like that when he sat back and waved a hand at them.
“None of them. They’re all too—” he started to say, then cut himself off.
She suspected what he was going for, however.
“Too what? If you saytoo old, so help me.”
“Of course not too old.”
“Whyof course?”
“They look like they could be my kids, for fuck’s sake,” he said, and when he did she tried to keep thinking he had wanted to be mean. But the problem was, hejust sounded too baffled. Like this fact was self-evident, and why was she confused?
She had to believe him. Even though he was being ridiculous. “Sure, if you gave birth to them at age five. They are all in their thirties, dingbat,” she said. Then got an exasperated expression for her troubles.
“You just suggested that I can give birth andIam the dingbat?”
“It was just a way of putting it. I didn’t mean it literally.”
“Yeah, well, it was wrong anyway, because they may be technically a reasonable age for me but none of them look it. My face is five miles of rough road, and I know it. I could be mistaken for fifty-eight, easy. And they’re all like you—somehow eternally mid-twenties.”
What the fuck, she thought.
And so fiercely she couldn’t stop her reaction. She sat back in her chair, speechless for a moment. Searching for the words, but unable to fathom what they might be. She even found herself studying his face for evidence of what he was saying. Despite the fact that there was none there.
He was a little grizzled, sure.
But he wasn’t a rough road.
