Four Blondes

Maybe it would be better if James didn’t write a book. (Maybe it would be better if they moved to Vermont and worked for a small local newspaper. After two months, it would be like they were dead—everyone they knew would forget about them, and Winnie isn’t ready to do that. Yet.)

The phone rings. She picks it up.

“Yes,” she says.

“It’s me.” (It’s James.)

“Hi,” she says. She suddenly remembers that she has all these things to do. Like work.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I’m stressed. I’ve got a kazillion things to do.”

You’ve always got a kazillion things to do, and I wish you’d shut up about it, James thinks. Wondering: Why don’t you pay attention to me? Why don’t you make me feel good? Why is it always about you? Aloud, he says, “I got a call this morning. From Clay. Tanner’s coming to town.”

“Is he?” Winnie says. She isn’t sure how she feels about this information yet.

“He has a movie premiere. On Thursday.”

“Ugh,” Winnie says. For the first time in days, she knows that James is thinking the same thing she is. “Another—”

“Yup. Bang-’em-up, shoot-’em-up, big-budget movie, courtesy of Paramount Pictures.”

“I suppose we have to go,” Winnie says, emitting a long sigh.

“You don’t have to,” James says. “But I’m going to.”

“If you’re going, I’m going,” Winnie says.

“Fine,” James says in a small voice.

“Don’t you want me to go?” Winnie says. Threatening.

(Why does she always become immediately threatening? James thinks. Even wasps let you swat them away before they sting you.)

“I do want you to go,” James says. “But you hate things like that.”

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“I don’t hate them. I think they’re boring. You know how I feel about celebrity worship.”

“Tanner wants me to be there,” James says.

“I’m sure he wants us both to be there. But that doesn’t mean we have to do whatever Tanner wants.”

“He’s only in town twice a year,” James says. “I want to go.”

(I’m sure you do, Winnie thinks. So you can ogle dumb blondes.) “Fine,” she says. She hangs up the phone.

Now she has to be “concerned” (a much better word, more accurate than “worried”) about James for a week. Specifically about what he’s going to do (how he’s going to behave) when Tanner is in town. She will spend hours (time that should be spent doing something important, like thinking of ideas) reacting to James’s as yet unenacted behavior. She will obsess over if/then scenarios. Such as: If James stays out all night with Tanner (again), then she will divorce him. If James flirts (pitifully, desperately) with the actresses in the film (again), then she will lock him out of the house. If James drinks too much and throws up out the cab window (again), then she will throw all his clothes out the window. (James does not understand that he is skating on thin ice. Very thin ice.)

His black marks are mounting: She’s known him for ten years and still can’t trust him. He doesn’t do exactly what he’s supposed to do. He can’t be relied upon (even to get the right groceries at the supermarket). He acts like a baby (he is a big grown-up baby). He’s turning out not to be important. (And he doesn’t pay the bills.)

She might (actually) be better off without him: It would mean one less person to take care of.

Winnie hits a button on her computer and goes to her e-mails.