RC observed. Her cellphone began to bleat, and she sighed. “Crap. I’ve got to do some damage control, but call me tomorrow, OK? You two should come for dinner soon. As long as you don’t mind takeout.” She vanished toward the door.
Esme spun slowly, surveying the dwindling crowd, then turned back to Claudia. “Hey, film star, do you know anyone who might want to teach film appreciation to high school students?” she asked. “My mom just took a job as head of this private high school—Ennis Gates Academy, maybe you’ve heard of it, it’s very artsy-fartsy—and she’s looking for a teacher to replace one that just ran off with a student. Oops, right? She asked me for suggestions, but you’re better connected to that world than I am, being that I’m just a corporate drudge these days.”
Claudia didn’t feel in the least bit connected to teaching, but she didn’t want to tell Esme this. “They teach film appreciation to high school students?” she asked.
Esme wrinkled her nose. “It’s LA. Of course they do. The school got some enormous endowment from a former student who made a bundle in real estate and started a film production company. Or was it investment banking? Can’t remember. Anyway, they have a whole department, own their own film equipment, all that.”
“Seriously? At my high school in Wisconsin they cut art classes because they didn’t have enough money for the tempera paints.”
Esme twisted her hair up into a ponytail again, holding it back with one hand. “Deprivation is a foreign concept to these kids. It’s kind of sad—there’s nothing to strive for, since they have access to everything already. Honestly, I shudder at the thought of my kids growing up in this town.”
Claudia nodded. “Of course, you and Jeremy grew up here,” she said.
“And look how I turned out,” Esme observed.
“My mom let me battle it out in a public high school,” Jeremy said. “But it’s a lot worse now. I don’t think we’ll be able to do that with ours.”
Claudia glanced at Jeremy, surprised that he had brought up the subject of children. The verdict early on had been “not until our careers take off and we’re financially stable.” Then again, they were almost there now, weren’t they?
“Anyway, film teachers? Know one?”
Claudia reluctantly turned back to Esme. “What about Malcolm, the guy who won the Nichols award when we were in film school?”
Esme curled her lip. “Last time I heard, he was working at a coffee shop and applying to law school. He never even sold a script …. I’ll figure it out. I just thought I should ask while I had you in front of me. Soon you won’t even take my calls anymore. Your movie’s going to be huge and I’ll never see you again.”
“You’re the one working eighty-hour weeks,” Claudia pointed out.
“This is true. I should quit.”
The hummus plates were ravaged; the party was starting to thin out. Claudia squeezed Jeremy’s arm and left her friends to get a last drink before the bar closed. She stood in line by herself, behind two middle-aged women in head-to-toe black carrying leather satchels laden with screenplays—development executives, in all likelihood. One had Chanel sunglasses perched on top of her head, so firmly anchored in her pageboy that they might have been surgically attached.
“Two million,” Sunglasses was saying.
“No way,” said the other. “It’s going up against five other films this weekend, including Batman. It won’t even break a half-mil. They should have released it in the spring when there’s no other competition.”
The bartender poured them matching glasses of white wine from a bottle of cheap chardonnay. “Female audiences will love it,” Sunglasses continued.
“Women don’t go to the movies anymore, remember? They don’t count.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s not a shame.”
Claudia could feel her feet tremble in her stilettos; the room suddenly seemed to be slipping sideways. It was only when the two women froze in place, clutching their chardonnay with stiff fingers, and the bartender lurched forward to stabilize the vodka bottle display rattling on the bar, that Claudia realized that they were experiencing an aftershock. “Do you feel—” said Sunglasses, to no one in particular.
Claudia braced herself, expecting the worst—you were silly to think you’d escape unscathed—but the earthquake had already dribbled away, almost before it had even begun. The noise level in the room briefly dipped, before returning to an even louder volume: A minor aftershock, barely worth mentioning. The women smiled and turned away from the bar, noting Claudia’s presence for the first