Plus One (37 page)

“
I'm
all done, yeah.” He tried to smile.

“You don't look so good.”

Alex dropped his elbows and leaned back on the mattress. “I fucked up,” he said. The room was spinning. “All the startup money—gone. He told me it was pre-sold. He told me it was a done deal.”

Miranda frowned and adjusted her robe, loosening the belt. “Let me get you some water.” She rustled up a glass from the cabinet, filled it from the sink, and came and sat beside him.

“Two hundred thirty thousand. And that doesn't even include the rental. We're not
network
rich—that's real money.” The
floor rocked beneath him.

“You're hyperventilating,” she said, reaching out. “Put your head here.” She moved over and sat cross-legged against the headrest, then took his head in two hands and placed it in her lap. “This is a panic attack. I used to get them all the time. You're going to be fine. Just tilt your head back and breathe slowly. Inhale through your nose. Exhale through the mouth. There.”

Alex did as he was told, his breath following her whispered prompts. She rubbed his temples with her index fingers. “Now in… now out,” she cooed. “Just relax. There you go.”

He could feel the cushion of her calves under his head. A wave of calm washed over him. She smelled like licorice. He opened his eyes and looked up. Her face was reversed above him, the light from the window flaring behind the crown of her hair, her lips directly above his eyes. He felt swaddled, enfolded. He reached up and touched a pale freckle on her throat, then began tracing a line across the soft skin of her neck. She put her hand against his cheek. He held steady, holding her gaze. He was floating now, rising up and tilting his head to the side, his mouth pressing up against hers.

She returned the kiss, her hand pressing against his cheek and then down to the top button of his shirt. He reached up and slid his hand inside her robe, found the plush curve of her breast. Her nipple hardened under his fingertips.

“Oh Sher,” she said, loosening his shirt. “There you are. Just lay still—let me.”

She knelt beside him and in one motion hooked his pants with the arch of her foot and slid them down his legs. She ran her hand down his chest, over his stomach, under his belt. God, she was good at this. His penis popped free and she took hold of it, then slapped it playfully against his stomach.

“You're all good down here,” she said. “Everything healed up nicely.”

Alex's eyes shot open. “I… I can't believe I'm here.”

“Just relax. Don't worry—let me.”

“I just haven't—with anyone but—”

“Shhh.” She kissed his neck and reached around and pressed down on his hipbone. “She's not here now. I am. No one has to know anything. She's far, far away. Baltimore is a long, long way away….”

He felt a jolt shoot through him. “Baltimore? How do you—”

Miranda loosened her grip. “I spoke with Anne-Marie yesterday—”

“Who? You mean
Figgy's
Anne-Marie?”

“Right—my pilot? It's on top of the pile. We're supposed to get an answer back next—”

Alex lurched backward, batting her away. “Wait, what? You're… doing a show? With Figgy?”

Miranda sat up, her robe draping off one shoulder. “Not official or anything—but… I thought maybe she'd told you. After you were so nice about the script—on the ride home from the doctor's? My agent sent
Gerald & Geraldine
over. I know Figgy's been busy, but Anne-Marie loves it and thinks we have a real shot—Figgy shepherding, me running the room. You know how big this could be for me….”

“So—what's
this
then?” Alex sputtered. “You really think Figgy's going to work with you after—
this
? You and me, we do this, and then you go off and make a show with my—my wife?”

Miranda took his hand in hers, leaned in, and kissed his fingertips. “
She
doesn't have to find out, dummy. She never has to find out. You're still nine months away from your tenth anniversary, right?
You're
not going to tell her—not now. And why would I? That would ruin my career.”

A chill shot through Alex's chest. Miranda not only knew about the magic ten, she knew precisely how long he'd been married. All at once, Alex pictured himself at home, tangled up in
his sweaty sheets, pathetically jerking off to visions of Miranda's milky white skin… and meanwhile, Miranda was perched on her bed with her laptop, methodically scanning Wikipedia and
Deadline
and
Starhomes.com
to piece together the particulars of his marriage, her career, the floor plan of his house. He tried to speak. All that came out of his mouth was a raspy stutter.

She pulled back and tilted her head. “Look, I like you, Alex. And I know you like me. This could work out for both of us.”

Alex shut his eyes tight and coughed. “I know nothing.”

“What?”

He scrambled backward and pulled apart his balled-up clothes. “I thought—I don't know—with the blog and the butcher shop and—I thought you were all about
food
.”

Miranda stayed on the bed. “You know what a butcher makes an hour? It's ridiculous. I've gotta look after myself. I'm not like you—I didn't marry up.”

He yanked up his jeans and took a wobbly step backward.

“Look, Alex—I'm sorry! I've just been trying to be
helpful
, you know? And don't you want to help me? With you and Figgy both in the business—we can all help each other. Isn't that what it's all about?
Relationships
?”

She reached over and touched his foot, her hand still warm. He said nothing. The silence was broken by a buzzing in Alex's pocket. He plucked out his phone.

It was a text from Figgy. “Emergency kits! School just called my office! Why haven't you taken care of this?”

“I'm sorry—I've gotta go,” he said.

• • •

Alex drove across town in a daze, hands locked tight on the steering wheel, the usually soothing voice of the GPS faint and far away. He left Figgy's text unanswered. He resisted the temptation
to call and tell her to get off his back, stop treating every dispatch from their proudly laid-back school as a matter of do-or-die urgency.

He arrived at the Pines just before dismissal and collected the emergency bags from the trunk. On the quad, a group of kids was clustered around a guy in a tank top finger-picking an acoustic guitar and a girl in short-shorts who looked to be about twenty-six but couldn't have been more than sixteen. She was scooping tiny colored pellets from an icebox painted with a sign that said “Dipping Dots for Darfur!”

He made his way to the administration office and plopped the bags on the counter. “Hi—I'm Sam and Sylvie's dad? I guess I'm a little delinquent with this—but can I turn it in now?”

A dark-skinned woman with a nose ring popped up from her desk. “Oh hi. I spoke to your wife. All here? Change of clothes, pictures, medications?”

He gave the bags a wan tap. “Yup—good to go.”

“You're all set for the comfort recording?”

“Sorry?”

The receptionist flashed a tight smile. “The comfort recording. Part of our innovation initiative—you've been getting emails about it? Very exciting. Instead of traditional emergency letters, we're doing digital audio recordings. The studies show stress levels are dramatically reduced by the actual voice of loved ones in times of crisis.”

Alex shook his head, a barrage of half-read e-mails now coming back to him. “I guess I'm a little unclear about the whole ‘times of crisis' thing. What ‘times of crisis' are we talking about here?”

“Earthquakes, obviously,” she said. “But also flooding, gas leaks, shootings, police lockdowns, wildfires, urban uprisings—we need to be prepared for
all
contingencies, don't we? It's L.A., after all!”

She pulled open a drawer under the counter and produced a
handheld recorder. “Would you prefer recording a separate message to each child or would you rather address both children at once? We're absolutely amenable to shared messaging.”

“Sorry—what?” Alex pinched his nose.

“Two recordings or one?”

“One is fine.”

She handed him the recorder, nodding sagely. She stayed put, intent on ensuring that he properly completed the assigned task. He cleared his throat and looked around the room at the three or four other people working at their desks. No one paid him the slightest attention.

He clicked the red button and held the recorder to his mouth. “Hi Sylvie honey! And Sam—hey kiddo! Dad here. This is pretty weird, right? I guess something bad has happened? That's why you're hearing this? But it's going to be okay, okay? You're safe here at school with the teachers and the nice nose-ring lady and the kid who plays guitar on the quad? Sam, he's your buddy, right? Go get your sister and hang with him and I promise I'll be there as soon as I can, okay?”

He looked over at the receptionist and hunched his shoulders. She smiled and motioned for him to go on. He paused, not sure what else to say. He closed his eyes. At once, an image formed. Sam and Sylvie were crouched in a darkened classroom, faces smudged, strands of insulation hanging from the ceiling, electrical wires whipping overhead, flashlight beams cutting through the murk. And then he saw himself in his own kitchen at home, pinned against the floor in a pile of rubble, his voice calling out for help.

“But I may not be able to get to you,” he was saying now, voice trailing out from the wreckage. “It's a time of crisis, right? I may be—I don't know, stuck under the fridge.”

He kept going, voice trembling, the events of the day making the prospect of calamity entirely plausible. “The point is, shit
happens
. It just does. So if this really is the last time I get to say anything to you… God.”

Alex coughed and looked up above the receptionist's desk at a square of sky through a high window. “Sam, honey. Are you gay? You're gay, right? You poor sweetie, that's gonna be hard. I always knew. You're so
mad
at me. Why are you so mad at me? I'm not mad at
you
—really I'm not. What other eleven-year-old has his own line of cosmetics? Do you know how incredible that is? You know
you
made more money than I did last year?”

The receptionist leaned forward with a look of concern. “Sir—maybe we should stop here and get some
tea
? Would you like some tea?”

He put up a finger and closed his eyes again. “Sylvie, honey. Oh God, Sylvie. You're such a princess. I've spoiled you rotten, I know. You're kind of a brat, aren't you? At least with Mom. That's my fault. The truth is that some sick part of me loves it when you ignore her and act rude to her—because when you do,
I'm
the favorite. You may not know it now, but that's some unhealthy vain shit right there.”

“Sir, please,” the receptionist said.

Alex took a single step back. He paused for a breath. “The point is, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for not being a better dad—I've been so crazy, about Mom's show and the move and the rest of it. I've been checked out. But the truth is you guys are both so strong and funny and smart. I wish I could claim more credit, but everything that's good about you is yours alone—you came in fully loaded, and you'll have what's good about you long after I'm gone. So don't worry. You've got each other and you've got your mom—and she's the most loyal, ferocious lioness in the jungle. She'll keep you safe. She's a lot like you, Sylvie. And Sam, you too. What I'm trying to say, kids, is that being your dad is the best thing I've ever been even involved in. And you should know that I'm thinking about you even if my body has been cut in two by an
industrial-grade refrigerator.”

Alex clicked the stop button and put the recorder on the counter. The receptionist was silent, her eyes narrowed and expression blank. Behind her, the principal and a few others had come out of their offices and were standing around watching the show.

“All set then,” he said, turning to the door. “See you at the gala.”

Fifteen