Page 80 of The Spirit of Love
I think a moment. “I think my line would go something like this: ‘So all you need is the sad femme in a canoe with two thirds of a six-pack of beer to go with it?’ ”
Jude’s expression falls. “You’re sad?”
“I’ve been happier. It’s okay.”
“Can we talk?”
I nod toward the seat across from me in the canoe. I pat my thighs to call the dog. “Come on, Walter Matthau. Get in.”
“Apology accepted,” Isay with my mouth full ten minutes later. I’m finishing the most perfect bite of chewy baguette topped with Majorcan sardines in preserved lemon oil, which Jude prepared while I rowed to the south end of Linnie Canal.
“That’s a huge relief,” he says, handling the oar now while I eat. “I was going to need multiple takes to get anywhere near what the food can do in one. Food is better than, like, Marlon Brando.”
“Maybe that’s why he gained so much weight. Can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
Jude laughs and we chew, a little shyly, and it feels almost like we’re back to the way we were this morning, before the things we’d said in my trailer, back when we’d been a team. At our feet, Walter Matthau is curled up, his chin propped on the gunwale of the canoe, watching a squirrel run up a palm tree. I’m glad that he and Jude seem more connected. I wish I could say the same thing for Jude and me.
“Fenny?”
I look at Jude, his brown eyes sincere and worried. There’s something tender about his anxiety tonight, something open and vulnerable.
“Yeah?”
“Even though I know I’m going to fuck it up,” he says. “I still want to apologize.”
I meet his eyes and nod to let him know I’m listening.
“Maybe it seemed like I flipped a switch this morning,” he says, looking at the water.
“I’m sure it was weird, having me step in to direct scenes you’d already prepped,” I tell him, honestly.
“Yes and no,” he says. “But there’s more to it than that.” He pauses. “Do you remember Tania, from the wedding?”
I watch his hands moving the oar because it feels too hard to look at him.
“Big hat?” I say. “Breasts like beach balls?”
“That’s her.”
“Never seen her.”
“She called me this afternoon.”
“Cool. Yeah. I noticed you took some sort of phone ringing thing…”
What’s wrong with me? One mention of this woman and I become as inarticulate as tinned fish.
Jude looks up at the sky for a moment, where the moon is new and near invisible. “Getting back in touch with her has been good for me.”
“I’m sure,” I say, meaning it. “You two had that amazing connection.”
“You’re probably wondering what she has to do with anything,” Jude says.
That and why the stirring in my gut feels like jealousy.
“When Tania and I spoke today,” he continues, “she held me accountable for some things she says I’ve been denying myself.”
“I see.” Heat fills my head with dizzying anger. “Like the scenes you should have been directing today?”
