When It Happens to You (10 page)

Lindsay smiled, graciously accepting bouquets of flowers and bottles of wine from her guests. She passed the wine on to Didier, who had been born to the parents of a fading haute bourgeois, a generation that while squandering the money of its forebears was nevertheless schooled in the best of everything no longer affordable. He took the wine and set about uncorking each bottle with an almost religious reverence. Peter watched as he opened, sniffed, and then displayed the bottles with precision along the center of the low outdoor dining table.

Lindsay came over and grabbed Peter by the shoulder, eagerly nudging him toward a bald man wearing shaded glasses. “Quintin, this is my brother, Peter,” Lindsay said.

The bald man flashed a smile. “How do you do?” he said as his eyes flitted from Peter's eyes, down his body, and then back to his eyes in less than a second. “Now, where has she been hiding you?”

“He's my big brother!” Lindsay said, touching the man lightly on the cheek. “Born a whole three and a half minutes before me!”

“Nice to meet you,” Peter said.

A severe-looking woman with a Louise Brooks bob, deep-hooded eyes, and a slash of a red mouth came over. Quintin put his arm around the woman while still looking at Peter.

“This is my wife, Rita,” he said.

“Rita is a phenomenal artist,” Lindsay said. “Those sketches you were admiring in the hallway? Hers.”

“You are too kind,” Rita lowered her lids and smiled. Her pointy canines jutted out, giving her the look of something feral.

Peter had no idea what sketches Lindsay was referring to, but he nodded and smiled anyway.

“And Quintin works at Warners,” Lindsay said. “You
must
cast my brother!”

“You're an actor?” It was a question that sounded declarative, and Peter felt that he could already sense the man's interest wane.

“He's incredible.” Lindsay linked her arm in Peter's and leaned her head affectionately on his shoulder. “I'm trying to get him to move out here.”

“From where?” Quintin asked. Peter watched the man's eyes dart around as he surveyed who else was at the party.

“New York,” Lindsay said.

“Oh, where in New York?” Rita asked. “We still keep a place in SoHo.”

“Brooklyn,” Peter said. “Would you excuse me? I was just going to get a drink. Can I get you anything?”

“No, thank you,” Rita said. “I'm going to see what Didier is pouring.”

“Have your agent set something up,” Quintin said to Peter as he backed away.

“Will do,” Peter said. “Thanks.”

He walked across the gravel, over the stepping-stones that had been artfully arranged so as to suggest a skyscraper, and into the kitchen to grab a beer. A woman in a fuchsia sari was leaning into the open refrigerator. She turned around and jumped when she saw Peter.

“Oh! Hi there. I was just grabbing some Badoit,” she said, holding up the water bottle as if proof.

“You didn't happen to see any beer in there, did you?” Peter asked.

The woman stepped to the side. “Have a look,” she said. “You're Lindsay's brother, aren't you?”

“I am,” Peter said.

“I'm Vela,” the woman said. “Lindsay practices yoga in my studio.”

“Oh, yoga. Great,” Peter said.

“Do you practice?” Vela set about opening cupboards, looking for a glass.

“No. Can't say I do,” Peter said.

“Well, we have a fantastic beginners' class on Tuesday,” Vela told him. She located a glass and poured herself some of the French mineral water. “You want some? Oh, right. You were looking for a beer, weren't you?” She laughed, an attractive husky laugh, and put the extra glass back in the cupboard. “Our website is called Chit Yoga.”

“Excuse me?” Peter said.

“Philosophically, pure awareness, transcendent consciousness, as in
Sat-chit-ananda
,” she explained.

“Oh.
Chit,
” Peter said, nodding. “I'll be sure to check you out. I mean
it
. Not you.”

Vela laughed again. “You can check me out, too.” She winked at him and headed outside. Peter felt the tips of his ears turn red. Vela was garden-variety beautiful, but curiously he was not attracted to her at all. He had always found women with arms more muscular than his intimidating. He located a beer in the refrigerator and went on the hunt for a bottle opener. Lindsay rushed into the kitchen and grabbed him by the shirt.

“No hiding in here!” she scolded.

“Where do you keep your bottle openers?”

She went to a drawer on the opposite side of the kitchen and found one. Grabbing his beer, she opened it for him and threw the cap away. Then she took hold of his arm and pulled him out of the kitchen, back into the throng.

“Isn't Vela great?” Lindsay said. “She said she met you.”

“Yeah, she seems nice. Yoga, huh?”

Lindsay leaned in and whispered conspiratorially in his ear. “You should definitely have your agent call Quintin. He just got promoted and if he likes you . . .”

“Okay, Linds. Don't worry about me. Go be a hostess.”

He didn't have the heart to tell her that his agent had let him go after the
New York Post
debacle, and he hadn't gotten around to finding another one.

They weaved their way through the crowd of people while Lindsay embraced, kissed, and laughed with her carefully selected mélange of writers, artists, designers, and financiers. She continually tried, and failed, to draw him into the various conversations.

“Sean!” Lindsay threw her arms around a tall man wearing a fitted T-shirt clearly intended to show off his physique. He looked familiar to Peter. “Where's Stella?” Lindsay demanded. “She's coming, isn't she?”

“Parking,” the man said. “She won't let me drive her Volt until she gets a dent in it herself.”

“Oh, you are too funny,” Lindsay said. “Not only does she direct you, but she chauffeurs you around as well. What a lucky boy.”

“Lucky and emasculated,” Sean said. He smiled at Peter with the look of someone who is used to charming a room with his false modesty. Peter laughed a little too enthusiastically and took the opportunity to retreat before Lindsay had a chance to introduce him. He recognized now that Sean was an actor, primarily known for action movies, but who had recently broken into more serious films with a couple of parts in some carefully chosen independent films. He had married the director of one of them, Stella, a woman fifteen years his senior, and his career had just now reached the watershed moment when an actor has a chance at the best of everything. He was on the list that could get movies made just by agreeing to be in them, regardless of suitability or skill.

Just by looking at him, Peter knew that Sean wasn't a good actor. He would bet money that he had never studied Chekhov, Ibsen, or even Shakespeare, but Peter would also be willing to bet that it would be Sean, this latter-day matinee idol, who would be called by the Public Theater to perform Shakespeare in the Park. He felt the nauseating and all-too-familiar sensations of failure and envy, and he fled the house, looking for a place far enough away from everyone to inhibit conversation but close enough so that he couldn't be accused by his sister of leaving the party.

Outside, the last of the early evening light was evanescing. Someone switched on the outdoor lights, and little bulbs illuminated the garden, giving it the look of a provincial town square in France. Peter wandered through the raised beds of vegetables and herbs. He stopped at a large tomato vine and picked a tomato.

“Isn't it the best scent ever?”

He turned and saw a slender woman with a short blond pixie cut standing next to him.

“The best,” Peter said.

“My mother used to grow tomatoes in her garden, and I always thought if I made a perfume, I would make tomato vine one of the notes.”

Peter nodded.

“The vines actually smell even better than the tomatoes,” she said.

“You make perfume?” Peter asked.

“No, I said
if
.”

“Oh, you sounded all professional, with the whole ‘notes,' and all.”

She laughed. “Maybe that's what I should do. Make perfume,” she said. “But don't you have to be famous now to make a perfume?”

“You're not famous?” Peter said. “Forget it, I'm not talking to you. Don't you know there are famous people here at this party!” He turned around and walked a few steps away, then turned back. She was smiling. He noticed her two front teeth overlapping slightly. It was a really nice smile.

“I'm Peter,” he said.

“Greta.” She gave him her hand and he took it in his. It was small and delicate and for some reason made him think of a little bird.

“Who do you know here?” he asked her.

“No one,” she said. “Except Lindsay.” She turned and looked at the people milling around the yard, chatting. “You?”

“She's my sister,” he said.

“I was wondering,” Greta said. “You have the same nose.”

Peter self-consciously reached his hand up to touch his nose. He rubbed the bridge of it and then drank the rest of his beer and looked around for somewhere to throw the bottle.

“Here I'll take that,” Greta said. She reached out her hand to him and he stared at her, confused.

“What? You'll take my empty beer bottle?”

She withdrew her hand, and he could see the flush of embarrassment on her face.

“Do you often solicit the trash of strangers?” he asked

“It's a habit,” she said. “I have a daughter and I always have my hand out. Gum, candy wrappers, food she's chewed up and spit out . . .”

At the mention of her daughter, Peter glanced down at her hand to see if she was wearing a ring. Her hand was bare.

“I have an idea,” he said. “Let's go try some of that food over there, and whatever I don't like, I'll just spit in your hand.”

Greta threw her head back and laughed, and Peter was surprised at how pleasant it was to hear her laugh.

“You're funny,” she said. “I don't think I'm going to stay very long though.”

“Don't go,” he said.

She looked at him questioningly, and it was his turn to be embarrassed.

“I mean . . . why are you going to go?” he stammered. “Do you have to get home to your kid or something?”

“I don't have to . . .” she said. “She's with her father right now. At
his
place,” she added quickly.

“Do me a favor then, and don't go,” he said. Standing next to this woman, a stranger, he felt as though he was a man at sea drowning and she a buoy thrown to him as he gulped his last mouthful of saltwater. The intensity of the feeling was so strong that it eclipsed any anxiety or fear of rejection that he should have been feeling. All that mattered to him at that moment was that she not leave him there alone.

She looked slightly rattled, her eyebrows knitting together in consternation. Suddenly, he grew mortified by his outburst and raced through his mind thinking of graceful ways that he could recant. Too many drinks, he could say—though truthfully he'd had only one beer. Jet-lag. Maybe he could pass it off as a joke? He looked down at his shoes as he felt his discomfort creeping through him in the awkward silence. Then he looked up and found her staring back at him with an inscrutable smile on her face.

“I'll stay,” she said.

 

When she did leave the party, less than an hour later and at his prompting, they made their escape together. While Greta said her good-byes and thank-yous to Lindsay, Peter waited for her in the back alley behind the house until she emerged and they ran off down the street with the exultant air of disobedient schoolchildren. They didn't stop running for two full blocks, at which point Greta stopped, laughing and panting. She leaned over, holding her side, pressing the heel of her hand into it.

“I have a stitch,” she said. “Ouch!”

Her face was flushed with excitement and pleasure. On impulse, Peter took her face in his hands and kissed her. She kissed him back, timidly at first and then with an intensity that was visceral in its desire. When they broke apart, breathless and shy, no one spoke. Peter took her small hand in his, and together they walked in silence toward the ocean without even knowing for sure in which direction they would find the water.

 

She was five years older than him, which seemed like little to him but mattered a great deal to Greta. “Oh God. I'm so old,” she complained. “I've never been with anyone younger than me.”

“Don't you know it's a trend?” he said. “Think of me like a stylish handbag.”

It was days later, and having spent nearly every one of them together—at least for a couple of hours—they had fallen into a conversational ease that felt both brand-new yet wholly familiar. For Peter, being with Greta was like being wrapped in a warm towel after emerging cold and shivering from the ocean. They wandered along the Venice boardwalk, past dreadlocked men, tattooed women, skaters, artists, and the homeless. The smells of incense and marijuana and saltwater wafted through the air. As they passed by a “pharmacy,” which was nothing more than a rebranded head-shop, a young man in a lab coat passed out flyers in front.

“We're here to help,” he said as he pressed one into Greta's hand.

“Thanks,” she said. Peter took the flyer from her and dropped it in the first trash can they passed.

“I've never been with someone divorced,” he said. “So there's a first for both of us.”

“Except I'm not divorced,” she said. “Not yet.”

Her statement took him off guard. He had assumed that Greta was divorced but realized now that they had carefully avoided the topic. “Well, I've never been with anyone married either,” he said lightly, waiting for the laugh. When it didn't come, he looked over and saw the pain in her face. “At least, as far as I know,” he added.