As she navigated the twists and turns on Mulholland Drive, she caught glimpses of the city to her right and the Valley to her left. It was a few days before the autumnal equinox, so there would still be over an hour of sunlight. Summer was Jane’s least favorite season in LA; toward the end of it the whole city felt like it was dusty and chafed, suffering from sunstroke and heat exhaustion. She rolled down the windows and inhaled the cloying scent of jasmine cut by the bracingly herbaceous smells of the scrub that blanketed the Santa Monica Mountains.
Maybe she was content. Maybe Teddy was permanent. Maybe her job was permanent. Maybe the path of her life was right in front of her, and all she had to do was follow it.
Or maybe she was following the path of least resistance, not the right path, or the best path, if there even was such a thing. Maybe she was having a midlife crisis. Was thirty-two too early to have one? Well, when life expectancy was around sixty for women, thirty was the actual midpoint. But this was 2019. She could expect to live into her eighties or nineties. She had plenty of time, so there was no point to indulging in a preemptory midlife crisis.
Exhausted when she got home, Jane put down her things and entered the kitchen where Teddy was preparing dinner. This was when he was at his most appealing. An enthusiastic if limited cook, his repertoire was mostly comfort foods and involved a fair amount of hacks. Tonight, he was making spaghetti and meatballs with sauce from a jar and precooked meatballs from a vacuum-sealed pack he got at Trader Joe’s. Still, she liked being cooked for, and he seemed to take real pleasure in caring for her.
Curt probably never cooked. He probably had a private chef.
“Hey, Teddy. Smells good.”
He was stirring the pasta on the stove. She wrapped her arms around him from behind and kissed his neck. He shuddered with appreciation. Jane breathed in all the smells: the hint of salt in the steam from the pasta water, the sweet tomato sauce, but mostly Teddy’s earthy musk with its faint note of cannabis. Oh, Teddy.
“Well, you know, no one makes Italian food better than the Irish.”
Teddy was proud of his Irish heritage, which was on his father’s side, but three generations back, so it was a bit of a reach. Still, Jane did have to concede she saw in Teddy lingering traces of malarkey and sentiment.
“How was your day?”
“Fine. Tiring. Lindsey talks and talks.... I like working with her, but it’s a lot sometimes. How about you?”
“Good, made a few trades, went to the gym, cooked you this delicious dinner....”
He dumped the pasta into a colander.
“Thanks. It’s exactly what I am in the mood for.”
And it was.
Jane lay in bed letting her mind unravel. Teddy was already sound asleep beside her. They’d had sex and Jane thought about how tactile and erotic she could be, how much she enjoyed sex, even if her mind never turned off completely, even if she felt like she was watching herself throughout. Teddy was a very good lover—he got off on getting her off, which had been an afterthought, if a thought at all, for most of her previous boyfriends.
Sleeping, he looked so innocent and sweet. Maybe all love was a form of codependence. Humans were social organisms, so maybe it was baked into human nature?
Jane had brought home one of the Transformers figurines as a gift for Teddy. The size of the pile of duplicates had been obscene. Curt had tasked Trista with eBaying them, which obviously meant it would never happen. Jane’s salvage was an act of kindness, for if a toy had no player, it lacked purpose.
Still, for some reason the idea of having it in their house had made her uneasy. Instead, she’d ducked into the detached garage and placed it into the bin where she kept “Things I Decided Not to Give to Teddy.” There was a tie, a wallet, a watchband, a lighter. And now a Transformer. The items were all hidden beneath her collection of Hermès scarves. Maybe one day these objects would be released, given a second chance to delight and be useful. But right now, they were exactly where Jane wanted them.
Chapter Three
Kim
Jane’s spidey-sense was raised as soon as she spotted the Buddha statue. Clients who showcased their equanimity were reliably the biggest nightmares. This ostentatious Buddha, oozing pudgy tranquility, signaled the exact opposite. It was an attempt to mask something: anxiety, addiction, rage; a disorder (narcissistic personality, borderline personality, obsessive-compulsive disorder were all possibilities); or some turbulent blend of these and other pathologies. But wait—wasn’t duality quintessentially Buddhist? So perhaps someone could simultaneously be both a repellant chaotic mess and enlightened? Jane caught herself. Surely some of the Buddhists in Los Angeles were genuinely serene ascetics. She needed to be less binary in her thinking. After all, everything was about spectrums these days.
Buddha aside, it was still clear from the get-go that this woman would be a challenge. Kim Strauss had answered the door yammering on her phone and indicated that she was mid-conversation by holding a bony finger up uncomfortably close to Jane’s face.
“Okay, I have some notes, but—let me try to distill them, okay? And then, yeah, we can talk. I mean, I can’t articulate it exactly, but it’s missing something. You know, what makes it noisy? What makes it stand out? What’s ‘the thing’? Everything needs a thing.... Well, I can’t tell you what the thing is, you have to dig and find it.... I know you worked hard, Sally, and I am sorry I don’t like it more, but I have to be honest. Because I want it to work, for all of us. I’m on your side! No one is more in your corner than me, okay?... Okay okay, I am walking into a meeting now, bye.”
Kim, a movie producer with scant credits, worked from home. Jane had googled her and gleaned the pertinent details. One movie Kim had finagled an executive producer credit on went to Sundance; another got some kind of limited theatrical release. And like everyone who had been working in the feature film business, she was now desperately trying to find an angle to get into television and streaming.
When Kim ended the call and turned her attention to Jane, she informed her that she was “really really busy” and actually was “really really organized” but she had no idea how her last assistant organized anything, which is why she had to fire her, so now she needed her home office “entirely revamped.” Then Kim had beckoned her inside, and that’s when Jane first laid eyes on the ominous Buddha.
She had made a vow recently: she was going to try to find something good in everyone, even people she found odious. Reflexive misanthropy was getting tiresome. Teddy was so good-natured, but at the expense of being a discerning judge of character; he overlooked many defects. He was easygoing and happy, and sometimes Jane wondered if she could be more like him. But unlike Teddy, she wasn’t the stop-and-smell-the-rosestype; she was more liable to trample the roses while preoccupied by the thoughts roiling in her head. A problem-solver, Jane wanted to solve herself. She wanted to see positives as clearly and vividly as she saw negatives. She wanted a whole new lens for her life. It would take a lot of work to get there, and right now, she had to deal with Kim.
The house, which had views of the San Fernando Valley, was rigorously mid-century in its architecture and decor. The furnishings managed to look expensive and generic at the same time, and because the mid-century revival had peaked over a decade ago, it looked dated—not in a retro chic way, but in an old, tired way. Kim herself embodied the style of the house. Her lean muscularity, evidence of hours of Pilates and Cardio Barre, echoed the rigid post-and-beam angularity of the architecture: both the house and Kim were assemblies of cold, hard surfaces. The Buddha, perched on an otherwise bare shelf over the living room sofa, was the only curvilinear object in sight.
Jane studied Kim more closely. Her skin was as smooth and shiny as her kitchen counter. Her hair was a long, straight honey blond that matched the washed-out teak of the flooring.
In Los Angeles, women got blonder as they got older, and this ubiquitous straw hair color was high maintenance, requiring pricey, laborious salon treatments. On Kim, who had dark brown eyes and olive skin, the long blond hair looked incongruous. Jane used to wish that her brown hair was lighter, but she’d grown proud of the richness of the color. That was some progress, right? A pinch of self-regard, if not self-love. And it felt good. She wanted more.
