Truth in Advertising Page 0,125
or something, but he doesn’t react for several seconds.
He looks back at me. “So, I’m sorry. The job gets in the way sometimes. But that’s life, isn’t it? Come by the office sometime and I’ll show you the rejection letters I received from London’s finest publishing houses in regard to my book of poetry sixteen years ago. I keep them in a drawer. A reminder of who I am. We can be many people, you see. Good to keep in mind in this business.”
“Thank you.”
“Take a vacation. Think about what you want. The job’s still yours if you want it. Maybe you’ve been in diapers too long. Time for a change.”
“You can’t have just said that.”
“I’m not proud of it.”
I say, “What about Frank?”
“I’ll handle Frank. ‘Clueless, soulless douchebag.’ One of your better lines, actually. Maybe there’s hope for you as a writer.”
He walks away. Then stops and turns back.
“Your friend Phoebe stopped by my office yesterday afternoon. Lucky man to have a friend like that.”
He looks at me and does something he’s never done in the eighteen months I’ve known him. He smiles. An honest-to-God smile. And I find that I’m smiling, too.
I shout to him, “I feel like we should make out.”
Over his shoulder, “Dodge says that to me all the time.”
• • •
We held a funeral mass for my father in Boston and we all cried and hugged and told wonderful stories about the past, stories we’d all forgotten but that were now rendered clear in our collective memories. It was cathartic and I was deeply changed because of it. We promised to rent a house together next summer on Nantucket.
That is a lie, of course. Life doesn’t work that way, except in commercials and adorable Jennifer Aniston movies. It’s just that I can see that ending so clearly. The wide shot at the cemetery. Pan down from the gray sky to the leafless trees. Cut to a shot of the man (me, I guess) looking at the wind in the trees and the shapes that the fast-moving clouds make on the lawn and the gravestones. Cut to hands grabbing fistfuls of the chocolate-brown dirt that the gravediggers have placed in a pile atop a large square of Astroturf. Cut to the diggers leaning on their shovels. Inevitably one of them must wipe his nose with the back of his gloved hand. Note: Have a wind machine ready if it’s not a windy day. Shoot in New York to make it look like Boston. Less travel. If you want blue sky we can color correct it in post, no problem. We can do it in twenty-seven seconds with three seconds left for a VO and a logo. Just tell me what the product is.
The annoying thing about life is that it screws up the production. It’s rarely neat and tidy. And yet sometimes it can surprise you.
Maura called me awhile ago, one night at home, out of the blue. She wanted to know the story of the ashes. She told me she wished she’d been there. We talked for forty-five minutes. She told me about her children, how one of them reminds her of me at times. He makes up stories and makes his parents laugh. I promised to visit. They have a summer place in Maine. She said maybe we could all get together there sometime.
Kevin called and we spoke. I’m going to San Francisco in the spring. I’ve never met his partner.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said that there are no second acts in American lives. I have no idea what that means but I believe that in quoting him I appear far more intelligent than I am. I don’t know about second acts, but I do think we get second chances, fifth chances, eighteenth chances. Every day we get a fresh chance to live the way we want. We get a chance to do one amazing thing, one scary thing, one difficult thing, one beautiful thing. We get a chance to make a difference.
I tell Phoebe that I’m going to be at the American Airlines international departures terminal at JFK. I tell her I’ll have a passport and a suitcase. I tell her I have these two first-class tickets anywhere in the world.
• • •
Thirty yards away, a bobbing mass of lovely energy walking down the wide corridor. I watch her and realize I’m smiling. She pulls a wheelie suitcase behind her. Her long dark coat is open and she wears blue jeans and her tall