“Almost fourteen — going on forty-two. Did you ever want kids?”
She was glad Larissa hadn’t pretended not to know she was childless. “I think there was a moment. Man, we tried. Recently, even.” Her words surprised her; sometimes “opening up” went both ways. “I guess my career always seemed to come first. I never wanted to be one of those monsters you read about in some spawn-of-celebrity tell-all. You know, whose presence was defined by their absence.”
“Then it’s probably a good thing. That you didn’t.”
“Right? No kid, no memoir!” They laughed too hard, as if defusing a tension. “But hey, people do it — the kids-and-career thing — and do it well. So maybe I’m just… full of shit.” They laughed again, then Dusty paused to silently reflect while the enthralled Larissa took it all in.
“Would you ever adopt?”
“We’re not ruling it out… though I’m not sure that’s something either of us have a passion for. It’s kind of a crapshoot though, right? Like, people never seem to get one that becomes a doctor or a lawyer. It’s always either junkie or serial killer—”
“Or both—”
“Or actor!”
Larissa practically belly-laughed. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens to Maddox and Zahara.”
“Angelina’s amazing, I have total respect. But it’s not the little African babies who go south, it’s the Americans. The white Americans!”
“You could always get yourself a little Russkie.”
“Nun-uh. Fetal alcohol syndrome.”
“China?”
“The holiday card photo always looks… awkward.”
Larissa spit-taked her oolong tea then laid her head on the table in a summer storm of giggles. Dusty really liked this lady.
She dropped the actress at her car on a residential street behind the Yoga Center, thanking her for the “playdate.” They were shooting tonight from suppertime till dawn and commiserated about the inverted schedule; it could really do a number on your body and your head. They lingered like that, running their merry mouths about circadian rhythms, fractured menses and aging vessels, and even while they spoke, Dusty mused how it’d been ages since she met a peer, someone who’d been around the block a few times but was still open-hearted, still game, still interested. It was way sexy. The thought of fooling around crossed her mind — she could lean over and kiss her right now, just swamp her — but these days that was dangerous, for all kinds of reasons. The omnipresent, cockeyed slaves to fame were a-tweeting, and all the cocksure paparazzi were using drones. Plus, she’d never cheated on Allegra, not really, in any way that counted. There’d been the low-grade emotional affair or two (she took that as an elder’s prerogative) and maybe that time in Pebble Beach when she let herself come during a massage. The masseuse never even knew it, though maybe that was just an absurd lie she told herself.
No, if she was going to be unfaithful, she’d feel better about waiting until her spouse wasn’t so miserable, so vulnerable. It was just too easy.
—
Dusty waited in the car.
She thought Allegra had been holed up in the pool house for the last few days working on her script, when actually she’d been tirelessly sketching perfume bottles. She stepped from the house, in vintage Chanel (her version of a power suit), a green leather portfolio tucked in her arm. That touch — the portfolio — broke Dusty’s heart.
“Do they know I’m coming?” asked Allegra.
“Of course they do,” she lied. The Swiss were thrilled to be having the meeting at all. They wouldn’t have cared if Dusty brought a mob of violent, mentally ill homeless people along.
The Bartok offices were just off Civic Center Drive in that leafy, oddball business park on the edge of Beverly Hills. An employee waited for them on the sidewalk. Their youngish escort, face flushed by the surreal proximity of a movie legend on a quiet Sunday, was charmingly beside himself. He shepherded them through a series of empty lobbies with a wabi-sabi aesthetic — Le Corbusier spaces and furnishings fit for a high-fashion zendo. They finally entered a vault-ceilinged room where a dozen elegant men and women sitting around an enormous ebony conference table instantly rose to their feet. It took a few minutes for the marrieds to shake everyone’s hand.
Anton, a beautiful, sixtyish black with a suavely indiscernible accent, spoke up. “First off, we want to thank you for coming to see us during this very busy time — I am sure it is always a very busy time. But we are most grateful and delighted, absolutely. We welcome you!”
The group, smiling in approbation, deferred to the powerful chair, giddily holding themselves in check.
“No, no,” said the honoree. “Thank you. I know it’s taken too long for us to meet and I’m so thankful for your patience. Elise and I have been talking about this forever. And I just wanted everyone to know the delays weren’t a diva thing. My schedule has been out of control.”
“Not at all, not at all,” said the chair — though more, a king enamored of a neighboring country’s queen.
“We are totally honored,” said an insanely stylish Frenchwoman with Gertrude Stein hair. “I was telling Dominic, we will wait forever!” With the last, she tapped her fist to the table, militant and nobly resolute, as if sealing a Rosicrucian blood oath.
“Well, maybe not forever,” twinkled the chair.
“But close,” said Dominic, a few seats away. “Not forever but ‘for-almost.’ I said we would wait ‘for-almost.’”
The room laughed as its expansions and contractions began in earnest.
“I feel so horrible asking you to come here on a Sunday!” said Dusty.
“That you would come to visit on your day of rest from filmwork is really so much appreciated.”
“‘Day of rest’ sounds so biblical,” said the actress.
“But it’s true, mais non?” said the Gertrude. “When you compose a film, you are making the world from Creation.”
“I can only imagine how exhausting it can be,” said the chair.
“The exhausting part doesn’t happen until the red carpet! And the junkets. But I do feel a little guilty — you should all be at home. It’s so kind of you to accommodate my sometimes ridiculous life.”
The banter went on in that vein, the mutual praise and phony apologies, with shyer, lesser lights down-table testing the waters by volunteering a clumsily worshipful remark about the star’s body of work and their general gratitude at being born in her time—apart from the incomparable joy of meeting her today in the flesh, breathing the same air, potentially sharing the same sewage plumbing, etcetera. Allegra wondered how high the bullshit would fly.
A stately woman in head-to-toe Missoni said, “I cannot remember when our team has been this excited about a fragrance.”
“I’m excited too!” said Dusty.
“I like to tell Anton,” said a raffish man, clearly a “creative,” “that the Dusty Team is a bit like the Venus flytrap.”
“Oooh!” said Dusty. “Love me a Venus flytrap!”
“I promise we won’t close on you all the way,” he added.