“I see what you can’t see in your fog of weed.”
“Youshould smoke weed, Jane, because you need to chill the fuck out.”
At this, Jane had gone into the bedroom and turned on the TV. She channel-surfed, but everything was grating. She turned it off and closed her eyes. Was she some kind of Puritan scold? Had she been a nag? Too cutting? Maybe Teddy was right and she did need to chill the fuck out.
She gathered herself and found Teddy already engrossed inFortnite.
“Teddy, you’re right. I do need to chill. Sorry if I went overboard.”
He kept one eye on the screen and looked at her out of the corner of the other.
“No worries. I know just the thing. Slurricane, it’s the indica you need.”
He was so ready to forgive. It was one of the qualities Jane did love about him. He fired up the vaporizer. The fumes initially seemed slightly acrid, but as Jane felt them unfurling in her lungs, she willed herself to go with this high, not to fight it.
They ended up playingFortnitefor a short time. Jane played rarely and badly. Teddy encouraged her to try harder; she would get better and enjoy it more.
“Jane did you see that assault rifle? Why did you pick up that piece of pizza?”
“I like pizza more than guns, okay?”
“Okay, you’re definitely stoned.”
Jane’s avatar dashed across the lime green meadow and took cover in a bush.
“Jay! That is the worst possible place to camp!”
“Well, it looks inviting.... It’s not like some bunker or anything.”
“Shoot, Jane, shoot! They’re coming at you fast and hard!”
Jane was reluctant to even pretend to kill anyone. It was barbaric.
“Jane, these are all, you know, pixels—pretend!”
“I just can’t, Teddy.”
He gave her a playful kiss. “Okay. I mean, it ruins the whole game, but... it’s sweet, actually, and pretty damn cute.”
And soon they were in bed. Whatever raw emotions hadn’t been dulled by the weed added a tinge of tenderness to their sex, yet Jane still couldn’t inhabit her own body. She was thinking about how Teddy could be so carefree, while she was so laden with cares. Their sexual routine had become so familiar to her, she knew all his moves, as well as her own. Because it was rote, it was easy to disassociate, yet still manage to climax.
Jane never slept well after any weed intake—inhaled or edibles—so it had taken her a long time to wake up this morning. Yet despite running late, this morning, like every morning, Jane trepidatiously stepped onto the scale, then looked down at the number and shrugged, realizing once again that this was pointless, but also feeling helpless to stop.
On some days, Jane felt okay, almost confident, about her looks. She could be grateful for her thick chestnut hair, which she wore a few inches below her shoulders; perhaps her pale skin was a nice contrast to the tumble of dark hair; maybe her hazeleyes were intriguingly mutable. She was an assiduous exerciser, so even though she wasn’t exactly body positive, objectively she knew she was in good shape.
Nevertheless, her daily weigh-in reigned as the most pernicious quantifier of self-worth, and Jane had tried many different modes of measurement. She’d taken a personality test, which diagnosed her as—surprise!—a perfectionist. She’d done hydrostatic body fat testing, supposedly the most accurate fat measurement of all. When she went into a tailspin about the result, Teddy tried to console her—couldn’t she just look in the mirror and see how gorgeous she was? Of course she couldn’t, but she didn’t tell him that.
Realizing the weed hangover was making her slightly brain-foggy and irritable, Jane forced herself to bring her attention back to Kim’s desk and plucked a private school bill from atop a pile of papers. Twenty thousand dollars was only half a year’s tuition. Wow.
Kim had perched nearby at the dining room table, dispiritingly close to the threshold of the office, and the piercing tone of her voice set Jane on edge.
“Tom, I can’t get this movie made unless Sally does another pass on the script. That’s simply the facts.... It feels—musty.... Yes, I was on with her earlier, and I was trying to give her my thoughts, but she is very defensive and doesn’t seem to get it.... I mean, I actually think it’s kind of misogynistic.... Yes, Tom, women can be as guilty of misogyny as men. Listen, I can’t tell her how to fix it, I can only tell her what’s not working. I mean, I spent a lot of time trying to get her to a deeper place.”
Jane was reminded of why she made the decision to ditch show business. It attracted deeply insecure people desperate to prove they were talented and worthy. Not only the actors andwriters and directors, but also the agents and executives and producers. It was a clusterfuck. Kim’s demeanor was probably a shield for her core bundle of insecurities. But if you are insecure, why go into a field that provides absolutely no security? Was it bravery? Ego? Stupidity?
Jane was glad she got out before it was too late. And on a good day, she thought of her organizing work as a kind of noble public service. But it was going to be very hard for her to keep her new resolution. She was finding a lot to loathe about Kim but so far could not find a single thing to like.
Jane had spent the better part of an hour sorting scripts, letters, legal pads, bills, prescriptions. The screenplays were dog-eared and often wine-stained. The legal pads were blanketed with frightening doodles. There were lots of stray pills. She found correspondence with the tutors and teachers about her son’s ADHD and emails pertaining to Kim’s acrimonious divorce from her Spanish husband. He had sired her two children, then promptly picked up and gone back to Madrid, and now was trying to get spousal support from her. Jane noticed that Kim’s Beverly Hills divorce attorney was none other than Kelsey’s father, which made perfect sense and was also disturbing: the world could be too small.
