“I see why the two of you are friends,” he says.
“Thanks, Jude.” His compliment is thoughtful, unusual.
He keeps going, “If you want to stick with Buster’s climax scene as you wrote it, I defer to you.”
“Really? I’m—what about Rich?”
“That insufferable worm? He doesn’t get it. And I’ll have your back.”
“I don’t know what to say.” I want to say thanks for having my back and also to express relief that he’s not bought a ticket on the Rich train, but part of me also wants to say that this is still not quite enough. That he still took something from me. Something he now seems to understand I deserved.
“Say it took me long enough,” Jude says. “Say that I shouldn’t have been imposing my personal beliefs on the show that already knows quite well what it’s doing.”
“Those really are your personal beliefs?” I ask. “What you were saying in the costume department? All that, ‘What’s the point? What is reality? What is there to believe in?’ ”
I give these questions my best zombie voice, and Jude laughs as the server sets down Summer’s steak and forbidden rice.
“You make it all sound embarrassingly uncurious,” he says. “But from experience, yes, that is essentially what I believe.”
“Okay, but all of us canchooseto believe in something,” I say, “and before you wave me off, I’m not talking about religion.”
“Believe me,” he says, “I’d prefer to believe in God…inanything—”
“What’s holding you back?”
He looks at me but doesn’t answer. I wish he would.
“I have it on pretty good authority that there is Something out there,” I say. “Something beyond even Malibu…”
“You mean Santa Barbara,” Jude jokes, but when I don’t laugh, he asks, “What exactly do you believe in, Fenny?”
I put a hand to my chest, to my heart. “My sister. I believe in her. And my nephews. Even my brother-in-law when he’s not being a dork. I know what you mean about how sometimes life serves us brutal emotional devastation, but when I go over to the east side, to hang out with my family, I choose to believe that my time with them is worth something. Maybe everything. It does all of us good if I can believe that.”
Jude’s quiet, thinking.
“How’s it going with your dog?” I ask.
He takes a big sip of wine. “I walk into a room, he walks out of it.”
I bite back a laugh. “Ouch. And you’ve tried bonding over destroying a pair of your shoes together?”
“I offered him tug-of-war with some very expensive Bruno Maglis yesterday. He didn’t bite.”
“Maybe you need to up your game.”
“As in?”
“Grand gesture, dude.”
“What are you thinking? I feel it’s too soon to propose.”
“How about a guys’ trip? A grumpy old men trip! Go somewhere together and just figure out how to love each other.”
We both take bites of steak, and Jude looks at me as if this is a good idea, but by the time he’s chewed and swallowed and drank some more wine, his face looks drawn again.
“Love each other?”
“Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it,” I say, but I hear the waver in my voice. Just because I believe in love doesn’t guarantee personal success in the act. In fact, recently for me, the opposite seems to be true.
