They don’t look concerned, they look happy.
“Well, first of all, good morning, lovely. I hope you eat a cracker today, you look too skinny,” Mirabel says.
I wish everyone would stop commenting on my weight. “Come into my office,” I say.
They both follow me in and sit down in the chairs. Eli starts, “Okay, things going on today,” he says as he’s staring at a schedule on his phone. “The writers and cast will all be in at nine for a table read, which is in twenty minutes.”
“Great,” I say.
“They scheduled the pilot finally,” Mirabel says. “It’s airing February 14.”
“Ew.” I’m cringing internally. “Why Valentine’s Day? The show is like the antithesis of Valentine’s Day.”
“I don’t think so!” Eli says.
“It is,” I argue. “Are they trying to be ironic? The whole point of the show is that relationships don’t have to look like they did in 1908! The point of the show is that different arrangements work for different people. It’s not at all in line with some antiquated, consumer bullshit holiday!”
“Calm down,” Mirabel says. “You’re shaking.”
I take a deep breath. “I had too much coffee,” I say.
“Maybe theyaretrying to be ironic,” Eli says. “That would be sort of brilliant.”
“Let’s move on. What else?” I ask.
“That’s it,” Eli says as he starts to stand. “Oh, Lars might come in later.”
The thought makes me happy. Even though I’m still a little angry at Lars, I do actually miss him. “Fine,” I mumble.
Eli leaves the room. “So what’s up, how was your weekend?” Mirabel asks.
“Okay, I guess. I found out my ex-husband has a girlfriend and he’s gonna bring her to Thanksgiving.” I’m trying, unsuccessfully, to sound indifferent.
When I look up, Mirabel is smiling. She’s younger than me by a few years, not married, and has no kids. I actually don’t even know if she dates. I know she’s a workaholic, in good shape, a fantastic writer, but I’ve never gotten the sense that she has much of a personal life. It kind of feels like she lives at the office. We go to lunch a couple of times a week, but she mostly talks about the show and listens to me gab about my life.
“How do you feel about it?” she says.
“I’m trying not to care. I just don’t want my kids to be affected, you know?” I notice how pretty Mirabel looks today. She has an Eva Mendes thing about her and now I’m wondering where her Ryan Gosling is. “What about you? You never talk about your life. Do you date?”
“No, I’m divorced. It’s been seven years,” she says matter-of-factly. “Since then, I haven’t been interested.”
I wonder for a moment if that’s how I’ll be in seven years.
“I had no idea,” I say. You’d think she would have brought itup when I was talking about my divorce. “So, what happened?”
“What happened was that I didn’t want kids and he did. That’s basically it. I kind of let it go because I didn’t feel like it was fair of me to keep him from having a family.”
“You didn’t talk about it before you got married?”
“I don’t think I knew. I don’t remember having a conversation about it with him,” she says, “though if we did talk about it when we were first together, I probably would have said I wanted kids. But then I saw all my friends with their kids and…I knew it just wasn’t for me.”
“So, does your ex have a family now?”
“Yep, three kids, nice wife, the whole bit. But this isn’t about me. Just now I was thinking how you’re completely in denial about your feelings, Dani, and that’s why I was smiling. I wasthere once.Of courseit must irk you that Alex has a girlfriend and that he’s bringing her to Thanksgiving.”
“Would you be shocked to hear, though, that Iwanthim to date? I want him to have a girlfriend.”
“Why?”
