TWENTY-THREE

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Nathaniel

In the corner of Nathaniel’s darkening backyard stood a Mexican man in a baseball cap, stone-faced, manning a metal cart. A stepped-down section of the cart featured a gas burner, dedicated to warming tortillas. This was Percy’s brainchild, the linchpin in Nathaniel’s thirtieth surprise birthday celebration. It was the nicest, most sincere thing Percy had ever done for him. The Mexican man had been there since before sunset but now it was 10 p.m. and the line was steadily five people deep—a sight Nathaniel much preferred to the alterative, when they were outnumbered by overripe lemons on the ground.

It was his house so he couldn’t show up too late. Though he did try. He had a vague feeling Percy was cooking something up, so instead of calling a car after lunch, Nathaniel strolled along the curve of Sunset, moving only slightly slower than traffic. He walked to the Chateau Marmont, where he nodded with a sense of purpose at the valets and took a seat in the velvety den. The Chateau was pleasant during the day. Like a movie star without her makeup on. Nathaniel picked up a copy of the New York Post, and peered over the pages as guests approached the reception desk. They eyed him for signs of fame. Not a bad way to kill an hour on his birthday.

Los Angeles had taught him what New York had failed to teach him. The cure for loneliness isn’t socialization, it isn’t a thousand “what are you up to?” texts—it’s more loneliness. Reaching out to people wouldn’t eradicate feelings of inadequacy. Quite the opposite. All those with full, successful lives wanted was time to themselves, a reprieve from the demands of popularity and work. The trick was to act like you were being pulled in every direction.

His phone buzzed again, but this time his heart thudded at the formation of the letters: Bean. She had known it was him in the elevator. She knew he had ignored her on purpose. How would he explain? He opened the text.

Hey stranger. What’s the name of the condoms u use? Thin/Swedish maybe? Haha. srsly lmk! x

He sat back and put the newspaper over his face.

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“It’s weird.” The F.I.T. gestured at the Mexican man with her Solo cup. “He’s just standing there with his fajitas.”

The F.I.T. had a name and her name was Meghan and Meghan was perplexed by the taco man. Hence her referring to his serving “fajitas,” when they were clearly not fajitas. Nathaniel understood. Fajitas sounded like less of a stereotype. But he had lived in L.A. long enough to become inured to the city’s blatant racial divides, to realize that if you are an unstaffed “TV writer,” the man coming to your rental house to ladle beans is most definitely pulling in more cash than you.

“How was your TV meeting?”

“Good. You should grab a plate.”

Meghan shook her head and held her hand against her stomach, informing him of her impending “avocado baby.” She was wearing the same men’s shirt as this morning but with the ends tied in a knot around her ribs. She was backlit by the lights in the kitchen, where people inside were admiring Percy’s wall of superhero lunch boxes. The down on her skin looked like some delicate nature photography of a peach. Her waist was the kind of waist his grandmother would pinch without warning and demand to know how she fit all her organs in there. But Meghan’s gallbladder was not of concern right now, so long as her vagina was vagina-sized.

Sweet and safe as she seemed (she lived in Philly, who was she going to tell about his struggles?), he did not feel like opening up to her. It wasn’t worth it, even with her standing here in his backyard, pressuring him for the details of his lunch as if it were both of their first days on the job. He resented the communal attitude.

“My meeting was as productive as possible,” he said. “You know how these things go.”

“Yeah, I do. It was impossible to get a straight answer out of my agent after my first go-see because I obviously don’t have the look they wanted—I knew it when I walked in—but my agent didn’t want to hurt my feelings. Does that ever happen to you? People are so nice that you’re not sure if you’re being rejected?”

Nathaniel could hear Lauren now, saying how much she adored his writing.

“Anyway.” Megan twisted her hair around her finger. “Thank you for lending me your car. I didn’t even hit anything!”

“I appreciate that.”

“Were you surprised tonight?”

“Not really.” He put his finger to his lips. “Don’t tell Percy.”

In a lawn chair behind him, Percy was telling his favorite story about the time he was trapped in traffic on the way to work and had to pee so badly, he reached for an empty Coke bottle and unzipped his pants . . . which was how he discovered that urine has a high oxygen content, because his dick got stuck. He stabbed the bottle with a ballpoint pen, spraying piss all over his pants. Once on the lot, he ducked into a bathroom and splashed himself with water, making up some story about an exploding pipe. For Percy, any experience that afforded him the opportunity to make a Chinese pee-pee joke was a good experience.

Behind him, up the slope of the yard, sat a UTA agent named Eric Goldenberg. He looked thirty-four but was twenty-four, maybe even younger. He wore pocket squares and loafers and dropped so many names, the only verbs Nathaniel picked up on were “signed,” “left,” and “fucked.” Just a stream of proper nouns holding the fucks together.

“I was all, sorry to follow the fuck-up, Ridley, but this is my fucking job.”

It seemed everywhere Nathaniel went, there was some kid vying to be the director’s unlikely voice of reason.

Two women came prancing over to him: the writer for a recently-picked-up series about a fruit stand business and her lead actress, a girl named Stacey with a pinky nail of an IMDB page. The writer, Ava, he knew by media presence only. But Stacey he had met. Stacey was a friend of Bean’s.

“She’s my boss now.” Stacey giggled and leaned her elbow on Ava’s shoulders.

“I am! I am totally the boss of you.” Ava vibrated her lips as she pushed air out of her cheeks. “Anyway, we came over here to say—”

“—to say happy birthday to Nathaniel, who is officially old.” Stacey smirked.

“Well, yeah, that, obviously that.” Ava spat a wad of gum into the grass, his grass.

A gangly music manager with whom Nathaniel often competed for the same women darted past with a girl chasing him. The music manager held her phone in the air.

“Colin, you dick!” The girl ran after him, jumping for her phone.

“@KidRock doesn’t give an @fuckingshit if you tweet at him!” Colin shouted.

“But also!” Ava had Meghan by her shoulders. “Also we came to tell you—what’s your name?”

“Her name’s Meghan.”

“She can speak for herself, Nathaniel,” said Stacey.

Ava put on her best Lectures at LACMA voice. “Meghan, you are so pretty. And not in an accessible way but in a really intimidating way. Like, we were intimidated to come over here. But that’s exactly why we bit the bullet. Because if women aren’t going to appreciate one another, who will? Women in Hollywood need to own their looks instead of being shamed if they aren’t beautiful or ashamed if they are.”

“Thanks,” Meghan said to the ground.

“Who’s ashamed to be beautiful?”

They ignored him and so he gave it another shot:

“Also she doesn’t live in Hollywood. And she’s a model for a living.”

“So?” Stacey sprayed Nathaniel’s face in antagonism. “So am I.”

“So are you what?”

“A model.”

“When did you model?”

“I’ve done some modeling.”

“Nat, you staffed anywhere?” Ava asked, as if her one-in-a-million show had given her Midas’s green light to use at will.

“I’m pretty swamped right now . . . but I’m open to it.”

“Wait.” Stacey gestured at Meghan. “I want to get back to the matter at hand. Nathaniel, you don’t think your friend needs peer affirmation?”

“Huh? I’m only suggesting that she is lovely and it should come as no surprise that other people have noticed before you two. If you hear Bob Dylan play guitar at a party and you say, ‘Hey, that kid’s got something,’ that’s funny, right? Because it’s Bob Dylan.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t need to be told.” Meghan sided with the girls. “Everyone needs to be told.”

“Yeah, Nathaniel.” Stacey ran her fingers through her hair.

“Why are you saying that as if it’s not my real name? I just compared Meghan to Bob Dylan. How am I the asshole? Meghan, you know I think you’re pretty.”

“Gee, thanks.” Meghan rolled her eyes as the others laughed.

Then she reached for his hand and squeezed it hard. This was all he had to do instead of lending her his car and indulging her ridiculous questions about coyote attacks? Pay her a direct compliment? It never would have occurred to him.

“Anyway,” said Ava, “I’m on my way out. I have Soul Cycle at the butt crack. You don’t have to come, Stace.”

“No, I’ll go with you.”

“Are you sure? Stay. Stay if you’re having fun.”

“No, I’ll come. Happy birthday, Nathaniel.”

Stacey kissed him on the cheek. He watched them exit the party, giggling, hugging, lamenting their inability to spend more time with people they made no effort to spend time with over the past two hours. How long until Ava’s fruit stand series got terrible ratings, followed by conflicting network notes, followed by infighting, followed by a viral GIF of Stacey performing fellatio on a ripe banana? Could he skip to that part?

“Hey.” Meghan tossed her hair. “You want to see something?”

“I always want to see something.”

She stroked the screen of her phone, mumbling, “Where is it?” Her face really did look stunning, lit by the tiny screen. She cued to a photo of herself, naked, a tiger blocking her ass. An actual tiger. Then she launched into a story about a trip she had taken with her boyfriend, an environmental aid worker, to a Nigerian wildlife reserve.

“Is he still in the picture?”

“The tiger?”

“No, not the tiger.”

“Oh.” She looked at the grass. “He travels a lot for work.”

“So do you.”

“Yeah, but I can’t be like, ‘Hey, stop building wells in Bangladesh, it’s annoying.’”

“What you do is important, too. Ask Stacey and Ava.”

“Being decent-looking, you mean? Yeah! I’m just like this, you know.”

She stepped back and put her arms akimbo.

“We’re all just like this, baby.”

New people arrived, streaming in from the side yard and carrying beer. There were producers’ assistants, personal assistants, second assistants. The occasional minor comedian or indie musician showed, having been coaxed into coming by Percy. It made him nostalgic for the East Coast, to see the whole show through Meghan’s eyes.

“You know I think they’re full of shit, right?”

“Sorry?”

“I was just fucking with those girls. The idea of women who stipulate that all women be on the same team or face some kind of feminist excommunication is a fascist trend. Like, if I’m critical about a woman, I’m catty or a bitch. Automatic. But okay, if I hate cilantro—and I do, it tastes like soap—do you think that means I’m jealous of cilantro?”

“No, I do not.”

“Do you think I have a hidden anti-cilantro agenda?”

He shook his head back and forth.

“Of course not. I just don’t like it. But everyone has to keep her mouth shut unless she has something nice to say. It’s why I had to call my agent today and make her tell me I didn’t book the job. I’m telling you, that brand of feminism is turning women into toddlers.”

“Oh my God.”

“And that those girls would pull the girl power card based on my appearance, of all things . . . it’s superficial and counterproductive.”

“Will you marry me?”

“Sure.” She shrugged.

He pinched her empty cup together with his and took her hand.

“Come with me now.”

“Nathaniel . . . come on, I have a boyfriend.”

“How true is that sentence? Scale of one to ten.”

“Hmmm.” She pretended to mull it over and then, finally, whispered in his ear, “Okay. Only because it’s your birthday.”