“All right,” I tell her. “You can use that.” Destyny beams at me, and behind her I see Monroe reapproaching, no doubt ready to ask if I’m willing to reconsider the climbing abilities ofTiberius.The answer is a definite no. I’m not about to be responsible for a dog worming its way out of a harness and plummeting down a cliff.
Kate darts right in front of her, putting a hand on my arm, which I resist the urge to shake off. “Jason!” she says. “It’s so good to meet you. I’m a huge fan.”
I blink at her. Kate looks younger than the others, like she might be in her late thirties, but still not our target demographic. “You watch my show?”
“No, ofclimbing.” She runs her fingers through the ends of her long, dark hair. “I’m an avid climber, so if you need an assistant—”
“I have an assistant,” I say quickly, because her other hand has slid past my elbow and is now feeling up my bicep. I take a step back. Again. At this rate, I’m going to end up moonwalking right back into camp. “Mygirlfriend,Emily,will be assisting us when we climb.” I don’t love that I just reduced Emily’s producer role to “my assistant,” but clearly I had to work those words in somehow.
“Oh.” Kate’s lip implant forms a pout. “Well, if you want to do any climbing off camera—”
I will be, but not with her. “My girlfriend—”
Kate steps in way too close, and her eyebrow and one corner of her mouth rise in tandem. “I’m just saying you can climb me anytime.”
Oh. My. God. I look around desperately for Emily and catch her standing on the other side of Monroe, looking like she wants to murder Kate. I don’t know if she heard that, but she’s got the gist.
I sure hope she also caught that I wasn’t encouraging it. “All right!” I shout at Rich, stepping rapidly away from Kate. “We ready to get this party started?”The camera people around us seem to be generally ready, and I’m happy to get this train rolling, if only so I don’t have to field any more ridiculous requests or unwanted propositions.
Though I’m beginning to think that’s the job I signed on for, one way or another.
Rich gives me the go-ahead, and I start my spiel about equipment and safety. Calista doesn’t listen to a word I say, and when I call her on it, assures me she has no intention of climbing anything. Kate persists in claiming to be an avid climber and authoritatively repeats my every instruction verbatim. Destyny brags to the others about how much more stylish she’s going to look in her harness than the ones I’m providing, and despite her vow not to climb, Calista announces that she’ll require one of our “staff designers” to spruce up any harness she uses. Monroe asks no fewer than three times about which parts of this require opposable thumbs and are therefore impossible for a canine. (The answer: all of them.) Genesis clutches her cross to her chest like she thinks all this talk about harnesses may be code for some kind of sex play of which Jesus would not approve.
But at the end of the session, they appear to be aware that belaying isn’t a sex joke, so I consider my work here to be done.
Three
Emily
It takes me twice as long to finish my project as it should, because for every data point I enter about the projected increase in website traffic, I find my fingers freezing on the laptop, thinking about Jason. And not because any aspect of my latest social media strategy has anything to do with him—he’s always happy to let me bounce ideas off him, but internet marketing for financial planning firms or law offices doesn’t exactly thrill the guy (or any sane person, including me).
But I hoped my question earlier would have.
That conversation with Jason obviously did not go well. I know I was not entirely reasonable. For all that I feel like I’m a rational human being, fighting with Jason tends to bring out a whole other side of me. One that insists that only sociopaths put tuna fish in mac and cheese, and especially in the mac and cheese casserole their girlfriend picked up for dinner from her favorite restaurant, and maybe said sociopaths should go the hell back to said restaurant and get me some non-contaminated food.
For the record, Jason doesn’t tend to be much better in fights, and has been known to say that he will starve himself to death (“literally,” he emphasizes, because he knows how much I hate the misuse of that word) before he eats one more helping of “the world’s most boring mac and cheese” and he will alsoliterallydie before he drives back to the restaurant for more of it.
We fight like this and neither of us are joking.This doesn’t happen often, and it takes all of about twenty minutes of going to separate rooms and sulking before we sheepishly admit how ridiculous we’re being and then apologize and have amazing make-up sex and spend the rest of the night making fun of ourselves.
But that wasn’t exactly a fight. I asked my question, crazy nervous when I did, and he gave me a series of answers that made it clear that he hasn’t even thought about the next steps in our relationship, and was just trying to give me the answer he thought I wanted so we could stop talking about it as quickly as possible.
Okay, yeah,he said. Like I’d asked him if he was cool with me eating his leftover pad thai.Sure. If you want.
I swallow past a too-tight throat and hit save. My work is both late and not fantastic, but neither of those things are going to get better. I unplug my laptop—I ensured our crew was allowed to use the trailer with the generator, since we’re going to be here for a week—then give a quick goodbye wave to the two crew members going through today’s footage.
The sun is setting by the time I leave the trailer, and the sky is this lovely mix of dusky blue and burnt orange, outlining the jagged mountains around us. I was never much of an outdoors person before I met Jason, but now it’s my favorite place to be—especially when he’s with me.
Which, at this moment, he’s not. I’m not sure if it would be better or worse if he was.
I walk toward the one-lane road, where I’ll travel along the shoulder until I get to the turnout where my car is parked, sandwiched between two production trailers. We might be able to charge our laptops and phones in the trailer here at camp, but to get cell service or wifi, everyone has to drive out of the canyon.
I pass the Not-Wives sitting at the south edge of camp in a circle on yoga mats, surrounded by lanterns and citronella candles, wearing workout clothes that are probably more expensive than my rent.
They aren’t in yoga poses, though, and they don’t seem to be breaking a sweat.They are, of course, surrounded by cameras.
“Breathe in,” Monroe intones. She’s the only one with her eyes closed, includingTiberius, who is poking his small puffy head out of the bag at her side, looking disdainful. Possibly because he is wearing a tiny blue dog fedora and matching bow tie. “Wrap yourself in the fabric of the universe.”
“What kind of fabric is it?” Destyny asks without a trace of irony.
