Page 63 of The Spirit of Love
“Oh, shoot,” Jude says, jumping up. “Where are my manners? Fenny, this is Walter Matthau. Walter Matthau, Fenny.”
I put out a hand to Walter Matthau, who places his paw in my palm. He has soulful eyes but a puppy’s wagging tail. I give his head a scratch and he nuzzles into my touch, the way my old dog, Milo, used to do.
“I can see why he hates you,” I tease. “You take him to bars. You forget he’s there. You don’t introduce him to your colleagues.”
“That was terrible,” Jude agrees. “It’s no excuse, but you—I—when I saw you here, I got distracted.”
“Has he been with you all day?”
“I had a dog walker with him this afternoon while I was on set, but I’m trying to take your advice.” He gestures around the bar, then at the dog giving him quite the side-eye. “This is the closest I could come to a guys’ trip for now.”
“That’s great, Jude,” I say, and mean it.
“Unless he runs off with you.” Jude nods at his dog, who hasall but crawled on top of me. I give him one more good belly rub and then rise to sit back next to Jude.
“I miss my dog,” I say. “Milo died last year. Brindle boxer. Very wise and dignified.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I heard all dogs go to heaven.”
“Which you don’t believe in,” I say with a smile. “Don’t patronize me just because my dog died. Anyway, I think Milo was reincarnated as, like, a really beautiful spider, spinning webs on a giant cactus at the Huntington Gardens.”
Jude looks at me as if he’s trying to figure out whether I’m serious, but then he seems to get that that’s not really the point. He smiles and so do I.
“Thanks for today, on set,” he says, biting into a fry.
“Yeah, what happened there? Is it okay to ask? The morning went so smoothly. Is it Buster you have a hard time working with?”
“No, Buster’s great. It was all me. This is embarrassing, but I get vertigo. Not great around steep drops. I was on my way to freaking out, but you saved me, Fenny. You saved the scene.”
“It was nothing—”
“It was not. Why do you downplay your strengths?”
I blink, surprised. “I know my strengths. I don’t downplay them. When I say it was nothing, I mean it changes nothing. I’ll still be rewriting scripts later tonight and into infinity.”
“You should be directing,” he says, just as I’ve taken a sip of my beer.
I have to fight hard to not do the spit-take gag.
“I’m serious,” Jude goes on. “You’ve got all the instincts. The actors revere you. You know everything, see everything,grasp everything. Buster said you’d already helped him block the scenes. You were made for this! You’reZombie Hospital’s unicorn. And unicorns need to direct. What?”
“Gee. It’s a great idea, Jude,” I deadpan, meeting his eyes. “Why didn’t I ever think of that?”
There’s a pregnant pause as I watch understanding flow into his brown eyes. They soften, turning down a bit at the corners.
“Oh,” he says, still looking at me.
The energy between us is so fraught that I can’t speak for fear of crying. I think Jude sees me, underneath the layers of protective sarcasm. I think he sees what I wanted, what he took from me, what it means.
“Fenny,” he says, and his voice is different. “They told me there was an unexpected opening.”
“It was unexpected to me, too,” I say quietly.
“Rich told me—what anass—he said something about the director they had lined up being institutionalized.”
“Maybe he was gazing into the future.” I take a drink. “But for now, she’s very much still here.”
“That’s why you hate me.”
