Chapter Thirteen
Julie
Jane stared at the blank page of her diary. Her head felt like it was stuffed with alcohol-soaked cotton balls. She’d been out with Anna the night before and drank a lot. Too much, in fact. A rare instance of overindulgence that she probably needed, but this morning, her thoughts were muddled and she was reluctant to write anything in her diary, where it would exist for posterity. The nagging thought—what if anyone ever read it?—kept surfacing. Then again, who would, unless she died without destroying her diaries, and someone was really, really bored?
Jane was struggling with her goal to approach the new year and new decade with gusto, with joie de vivre. As usual, all the words for living well came from Italian and French. All English had to offer was the consonant, harsh-soundingzest.
It was a presidential election year, and already there was hyperbolic wall-to-wall coverage. Jane was still so appalled by the last presidential election that the idea of enduring another one was stressful and exhausting. She was determined not to letthis anxiety bleed over into the rest of her life. She was going to do her best to ignore it all: in the name of good mental hygiene, politics needed to be put in a secure lockbox, then stowed in a remote location. But a part of her felt guilty, like she was evading her responsibility as a citizen in a democratic republic. Still, there was so much noise, so much misinformation, so much stupidity, that at least rigorously filtering it, if not opting for the draconian lockbox, seemed both sane and responsible.
When they met for dinner at their favorite Mexican restaurant, which was homey and—by LA standards—old enough to be an institution, Jane and Anna were both in the same apprehensive, unsettled mood.
“Work is getting nuts with pilot season. Everything becomes an emergency because all these people are making it impossible for me to just do my job. There are four layers of approvals for even a day player, it’s beyond ridiculous,” Anna said with an exasperated eye roll.
“I don’t know how you deal with all that and still manage to do such great work.”
“Well, thank you for noticing, I feel like I rarely get any credit.”
“I watch everything you cast, and you always find such amazing people.”
“Thank you, Jane. I appreciate that so much. When I’m dealing with all the bullshit, I try to remind myself that the work should be its own reward. I love putting together a great cast; I love giving a talented actor their first break—especially if they actually acknowledge your support, which of course they rarely do....” A heap of guacamole slid off the tortilla chip Anna held and splatted on the table. Undeterred, she popped the bare chip into her mouth, grabbing another to shovel up the errant glob. “I really wish all of it were easier. It doesn’t need to be so complicated.”
Jane sighed. “Everything is overcomplicated now.”
“Beyond. How’s your work?”
“Fine. It’s the new year, so lots of getting-organized resolutions, lots of hopelessly messy people vowing to change their ways....”
Anna chortled. “I don’t know how you, of all people, deal with that.”
“What do you mean, ‘of all people’?”
“Oh come on, Jane. You don’t have much patience for messiness... or entitlement or vapidity.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“No! That’s what I love about you, but for your job? I don’t know so much.”
“Well, I’m learning to love messiness, entitlement, and vapidity. It’s, like, my personal growth journey,” Jane replied, tingeing the wordjourneywith plenty of irony.
“Who are you?”
“I’m rebranding myself, Anna.”
“I’m all for personal growth journeys. I hope you’re going to post all about it on Insta!”
As Jane cut into her enchilada with her fork, it oozed molten cheese. “Ha, yes, no—it’s more like a tiny pivot. You know, I do like my job, maybe it’s perverse, but I do. I meet interesting people, different people every day. It’s in and out, so—I do my job, and whatever happens is then in the client’s hands. If they fuck it all up, at least I don’t have to bear witness to it. And when my workday ends, the work doesn’t follow me home....”
“I probably shouldn’t ask you for any juicy gossip because you’re so uptight about your NDA,” Anna remarked, clearly hoping Jane would spill some secrets.
“Well, I did sign the thing.”
“I have to sign those stupid things more and more myself, because god knows you need top secret security clearance to work on a TV show that Paul Rudd is in.” Anna took a slug of her margarita. “Whatever, at least I am usually dealing with the devils I know, whereas you deal with new kinds of insanity every day.”
“Yeah, every day is a brand-new freak show. But everyone is also basically pretty much the same.”
“Everyone the same? No. What do you mean? I strongly disagree, but go on.”
“When you boil it down, all people are quite simple: they want to be loved, and to be comfortable. Even the very wealthy, the very famous, who have way too much—that’s all they want. It’s very universal, very primal.”
