The Family Man Part 32

WISH YOU COULD'VE been there, Thalia tells them, three abreast on a bench in Central Park, she and Henry sharing the salt and vinegar potato chips that came with Todd's turkey sandwich. It probably was, she tells them, the pinnacle of her improv career. Not so much the content, which was uneven- "Stop torturing us," says Henry.

"I'm due back at work in twenty minutes, and that includes my travel time," says Todd.

Thalia adopts a tone suitable to a Dragnet voice-over. "Eleven fifty-nine P.M. We arrive at the Box. Leif and I, in fact, do get in."

"Wearing?" asks Todd.

"Not what was prescribed-"

"But not one of Nana's hand-me-downs?"

"No. Jeans and those boots you approve of. In fact, these very things." She lifts her feet and displays her impossibly pointed snakeskin toes.

"Proceed," says Todd.

"Okay. I see the other girl, the hired hand, approach Leif, according to plan. She's not a good actor, but then again, she wasn't chosen for her acting skills. Huge b.o.o.bs, blond hair, fake eyelashes, glitter on cheeks, shoulders, cleavage; skirt up to her crotch-so ridiculous, so obvious, that I laughed. But mostly I was watching Leif. Completely fascinating-he just could not do it, could not perform as love object."

"So did you follow the script, or didn't you?" Henry asks.

Thalia nibbles prettily around the edges of a large potato chip until it's gone, then plucks a napkin from Todd's knee to blot her mouth.

"We're dying here," says Todd. "Tell us it all turned out fine, a triumph. Mission accomplished."

Thalia stands and faces Henry and Todd for the walk-through. "Okay. So this girl is all over Leif. I take out my phone"-she does-"and next thing I know I'm snapping pictures like I'm a fan, like won't my girlfriends back in Toledo be thrilled when they get these. I ask, 'What's your name?' She says, 'Heather Maze. Like amaze, without the A.' Now I realize that she thinks I'm the press and has apparently forgotten about Thalia the jealous girlfriend. So I ask, 'Who are you wearing?' which she doesn't get. I move on to, Are you a regular here?' She says, 'Um, well, no, but I'd like to be. It's awesome.' I ask, 'Are you an actress? Because you're so'-gag me-'glamorous.' She says, 'I am an actress!' So I say, And who is this gentleman?' Now I've got a pencil poised as if I'm writing all this down-not really-it's lip liner and a bar napkin. Heather starts looking around, finally wondering what happened to the angry girlfriend who's going to throw the first punch. I ask her again, 'Who is this gentleman you're with?' She says, 'Um. Lee Dupont.' I say, 'Wow, a Dupont. From the chemical Duponts?' She says, 'I don't know. We just met.'"

"What's Leif doing while this is going on?" Henry asks.

"Nothing up to this point. But then, when I least expect it, he asks quite calmly, 'Thalia? What are you doing?' which clues Heather in. "'Thalia?' You're Thalia?' Misp.r.o.nounced, of course. So even though I hadn't exactly thought this through, word for word, I knew I had to say something meaningful. I wanted to say to the crowd, All of you got into the Box tonight. Does that make you happy? Popular? Better-looking and more important than your friends who didn't get past the velvet rope?'"

"You said that, or you didn't say that?" asks Henry.

She sits down again. "Did not say that. I mean, the place is big. It's loud. And what was my platform? Fellow club rat? It wasn't as if I was challenging them via satellite from a refugee camp. So I told Heather her job was over. She shouldn't demean herself, and she shouldn't confuse acting with real life." She takes another chip and with her mouth full mumbles, "Which is when I kissed Leif."

"What kind of kiss?" asks Henry.

"How many kinds are there?"

"A stage kiss?" Todd supplies.

"Maybe not," says Thalia.

The two men meditate on this. Finally Todd says, "It makes sense. Instead of starting a brawl, you were turning a sword into a plowshare."

"How did Leif react?" asks Henry. "And what did Heather do?"

"Well, Heather by now is all mixed up. She muscles me out of the way"-Thalia pantomimes a big chest moving in for the a.s.sault-"and now she kisses Leif. And I mean kisses."

"And is Leif standing there like a cigar-store Indian?" asks Todd.

"Leif did okay," she says.

"Meaning?"

"He actually looked the way a normal guy might look if two women were showering him with attention. And get this: He had his lips on her and his eyes on me. And you know what I saw?"

"No," they both answer.

"A look in his eye. Like he recognized the irony of the situation. As if he was saying, Do you believe this is happening to us?"

"Us?" Todd repeats. "He used that p.r.o.noun?"

"How could he use a p.r.o.noun? He was sending this telepathically."

"Which I notice you were receiving loud and clear," says Todd.

"How long did this public display go on?" asks Henry.

"Until I tapped her on the shoulder, very calmly, once, twice. Finally-and now her lips have slid south, somewhere around the Adam's apple-she mutters, 'What the f.u.c.k...?' So I say, 'Heather? Why are you doing this? Do you need this job so badly that you'd put yourself in this situation, with people wondering if you're a floozy or a hooker or a pickpocket?'"

"No you didn't!" says Todd happily.

"I certainly did."

Henry says, "But she probably thought it was an honest day's work. Do you think it was right to humiliate her?"

Thalia pats Henry's knee as she says to Todd, "How very Henry of him to worry about Heather Maze, perfect stranger."

"What about phase two?" Henry asks.

"Remind me," says Thalia.

"You and Leif are photographed making up in the limo. Did any press show up?"

"Oh, that," says Thalia.

"No?" asks Todd.

"No. He was mad at me by this time. Livid."

"Probably because you didn't create the promised fracas," says Henry.

"You're missing a defining moment: I said Leif got mad at me. Leif the silent, the blocked, the inscrutable. He yanked me by the hand, out the door, and read me the riot act. Doesn't that sound like progress?"

"I don't get why it was a riot act," says Todd.

Thalia's lips move silently. Finally she says, "Along the lines of, I used him."

"How?" asks Todd.

"You've done nothing but help him!" says Henry. "Who could have been nicer throughout this whole fiasco?"

"I bet the kiss threw him off," says Todd.

"Something did."

"How was it left?" asks Todd.

"It wasn't. He put me in the limo, slammed the door behind me, and loped off into the night."

"With Heather?"

"Maybe she chased after him. I don't know. My driver took off."

"So this is it," Henry says. "It ends with a whimper instead of a bang."

Todd brushes crumbs off his knees and stands. "I have to run. Sharon is going to be eating her egg salad sandwich at the cash register if I don't get back. But here's my take: Leif is not livid. He's confused. He's still trying to figure out what happened." He compacts his lunch bag into a ball, tosses, misses the trash can, says, "I'll get it ... Bye, sweetie. Hesh? See you tonight?"

They watch him cut over to the trash can, pick up not only his bag but two other stray wrappers, then head out of the park on a westward path.

"Do you think he's right?" asks Thalia. "About the kiss? Mixed messages?"

Henry asks, "Why did you kiss him? You must have known he was developing feelings for you. I can't imagine you were doing it purely as performance art."

Thalia doesn't answer, except for a repentant shrug. She walks over to a vending cart and returns with two bottles of water. "So what's on tap for this afternoon?" she asks.

"For me? The usual."

"Which is what on a beautiful spring day with no briefs to write or contracts to negotiate?"

"Nothing," says Henry.

"Me neither. We're b.u.ms." She smiles. "Hesh."

Henry says, "Yiddish, I think. It doesn't usually slip out in public."

A nursery school wagon carting a half-dozen toddlers approaches, pulled by two smiling young women, one in purple leg warmers and the other in red high-top sneakers. Thalia and Henry wave. The children stare. One teacher says, "Wave back, you silly chili beans!" and one or two do, perfunctorily.

"Only half of them were wearing sweaters," Henry notes after they've pa.s.sed by.

"We are so bored," says Thalia.

Henry asks, "Want to walk over to Lincoln Square Theater and see what's playing?"

She shakes her head. "I'm sort of waiting for a call. Unless I'm supposed to be making a call."

"To Leif?"

"Either to yell or to apologize. I haven't decided yet."

"Up to you," says Henry. "Or just leave it."

"I've already texted him."

"Saying what?"

"No words. Just a question mark." She waits a few long beats before saying, "Maybe there's a little more to it than I've confessed."

"Such as?"

"You're not going to like it. I may have to sugar-coat it."

He suspects it's contractual, and already he doesn't like it. "Did you sign something without me going over it first? A non-comp agreement, or an extension?"

Thalia lifts her face to the sun, closes her eyes, and says, "Hmm. Extension. Let me see. Yes. That word could apply to what happened between me and Hose."

Henry waits for the next pair of pedestrians, bird watchers speaking German, to pa.s.s by before asking, "You slept with Leif?"

"These things happen," she says. "I think once the idea was planted in my brain about-you remember the p.e.n.i.s discussion?-I became a little more, shall we say, attuned." She sits up again and asks, "Wanna walk?"

He says only yes, sensing that a good father doesn't ask a grown daughter for details about a s.e.xual episode, especially an inadvertent one.

They head north, then turn onto West 75th. "Don't worry," she says. "We agreed that it was more or less accidental and spontaneous, and it shouldn't happen again."

When they reach his front door, Henry says that he's late putting annuals into the flower urns by the steps. He had postponed the planting, thinking paparazzi might kill his flowers with their cigarette b.u.t.ts. Thalia sits down on the stairway and pats a spot next to her. "Like that ever happened," she says.

He sits, her cell phone between them. "Has Leif told the little girlfriend?" he asks.

"I told him not to. I said, What's the big deal? Confessions are ultimately selfish. Who does it help to say, 'Remember the woman they hired to pose as my girlfriend? I f.u.c.ked her. But don't worry! It was only s.e.x. It meant nothing.'"

"You said that to him?" Henry asks.

"More or less ... okay, less. All I said was, 'Don't blurt anything out in an IM to Caitlin.'"

"What does the Estime team know?" Henry asks.

"Nothing! Well, nothing about our little fling, but probably everything about my sermons at the Box."

Henry says, "I have to ask: Did Leif press you into having s.e.x? Is there any chance it was the result of an action plan by Wendy Morelli?"

Thalia says no so quickly and firmly that Henry says, "Sorry. Just playing devil's advocate."

"I know I made a mess of this," she says. "Why did I think he was going to shrug it off?"

Henry doesn't know what to say next. He wishes Todd were here; Todd is so much better at this kind of thing.

"Maybe I'll go back to school," she says. "Isn't that what you do when you realize you can't keep saying 'actor' if your main job is checking coats?"