“So, don’t wait. Go live your life as you want to live it. Find a real man — a man of integrity and honor. Act. Do what you love. Leave this loser behind.”
“You mean, go back to L.A.?” I hiccuped in-between sobs.
“If that’s what you want? I thought you didn’t like it there, that’s why you came here.”
I shook my head.
“No, I loved it. I think I just bought into the idea that I didn’t have a future there. Bill helped. Told me women after a certain age are through in Hollywood. Apparently they’re through in marriage too. Bastard.”
“Nothing that says you can’t go back now. Screw Bill — women certainly aren’t through in their forties. Look at Meryl Streep for Christ’s sake! Now there’s a powerful woman.”
“But she was already famous when she was forty-five. I don’t have an agent. I don’t even have a showreel anymore. I am just this loser who has convinced herself that having a cheating husband is OK. Someone who kept thinking that I should be happy, even though I wasn’t. Because I had the dream home and a good job and a man who bought me roses and chocolate. Never missed an anniversary. Never stopped making love. It’s just I wasn’t enough…he always wanted more…” I started sobbing again.
“You’re plenty enough,” Jane said. “Haven’t you seen the way men in this town look at you? You have gorgeous red hair, eyes that could knock anyone out and curves to die for!”
Maybe she was right. About the curves at least. Once upon a time they’d prevented me from doing the catwalk. I was tall and curvy — perfect for some shoots, but not what the modeling industry wanted for the catwalk. Things had changed since, or so I’d heard.
“It’s one thing to be attractive, Jane. It’s totally different to be loved. And I’m not young anymore. The woman he was with today…she couldn’t have been more than twenty, maybe not even that.”
“He was seriously sleeping with someone who could still be in her teens?” Jane looked horrified. “How could anyone do that to a woman that age?”
“If you haven’t noticed: men do anything for sex. They don’t think. They’re animals that way.”
Jane gave me a soft, worried, smile.
“Not all men Pat, not all men.” She was happily married, so she should know.
“Well, screw them anyway.” A sudden rush of energy came over me — I’d wanted to change my life for years, I’d just been too much of a coward to do so. Now, as I felt I had nothing left of the life I’d clung to, as that life was Bill, I had nothing to lose. “I need to get away from Bill, Jane. I need to start a new life.”
And that’s exactly what I’d told Bill.
***
“This is insanity Pat and you know it,” Bill protested as I was moving the suitcases I'd packed out to my car. “At least take the SUV if you’re driving to L.A. and not your old Beetle!”
“I’m takingmycar Bill, as I’m startingmylife in L.A.”
“I’ve told you I’m sorry Pat. You know I’ll do anything to make it up to you.”
“No, what I know is that for I don’t know how many years, ten, maybe? You’ve been cheating. During all this time you’ve not been sorry. And now you’re paying some poor young girl… I thought I knew you Bill, but I didn’t. What’s more, I want a different life from you. I want a life in L.A. and you don’t.”
“We have everything here Pat, friends, work…skiing in winter, beautiful mountains and lakes in summer.”
“Yes, we have your life here. My life is the movies.”
“But getting back into the industry at your age…”
“…is perfectly possible if you know what you’re doing. I’ve worked in the industry all my adult life.”
“You’re a kids’ coach Pat, not an actress. Not anymore.”
“No Bill, I’m an actress who coaches kids. Only, for the past sixteen years the most exciting things I’ve acted in are community plays and commercials for local brands. I love coaching kids, but it’s not enough. It hasn’t been for years.”
“So why don’t you stay here and get a manager in L.A. and see what happens?”
“You know as well as I do that I need a showreel to get a manager and it will take hard work — I can’t be driving two hours each way for every audition! Now move out of my way so I can take this suitcase to the car.”
“This is insane! At your age you can’t just bounce back into Hollywood.”
