She watched a P.A. sidestep the line to talk to a server.
“Dusty loved the seaweed and kale,” she heard him say. “Do you think there’s any way she could get a little more?”
“Absolutely!”
The caterer went about his task and the stand-in seized the moment.
“Hi, Rory!”
“Oh hi, Larissa!”
(Exclamation-point hellos were the coin of the realm.)
(It was her habit to establish “real” relationships with the crew of each film she worked on, a strategy that often paid unexpected dividends.)
“Can you do me a favor?” she whispered. She was arch and flirty, even though he knew that she knew he was gay. They got off on the goof.
“Totally.”
“Can you get this to Dusty?” She handed him an envelope. “It’s something she asked me to research. I didn’t want to bother her.”
“You got it.”
“You’re awesome.”
“No, you’re awesome.”
“No, you’re awesome.”
They riffed like that a few more times and were cracking themselves up when the caterer returned with Dusty’s healthful treat.
—
“You take such good care of me, Rory,” said Dusty, as he set down her food. “Can I adopt you?”
“You can so adopt me. Oh my God.”
“I love you.”
“Oh my God, I love you for saying that!”
On the way out he turned back, having almost forgotten.
“And this is from Larissa.” She was nonplussed. “Your stand-in.”
Dusty took the note.
“Need anything else?” he asked.
“Nope, I’m great. Might try to nap.”
Before closing the door, he shouted, “Bye, Mom!”
She pulled out the flyer. It was a schedule of yoga classes, with Larissa’s name and a few yellow-highlighted class times. A Post-it read My day job! Come — if you need to de-stress. 
L
—
At her fourteen-week checkup, the doctor couldn’t find a heartbeat. Apparently, that wasn’t unusual but an ultrasound confirmed their daughter was dead. A few days after the D&C, Allegra was in crippling pain and kept bleeding. They did another ultrasound and couldn’t believe the whole baby was still in there. She had a second D&C.
Dusty had been a few weeks shy of announcing the pregnancy; now she needed to do everything possible to hide what had happened. But there were too many variables and all she could really do was hold her breath. The shooting schedule was shuffled to allow her to stay home awhile with her wife. Bennett was the only one told. For everyone else, it became a “family emergency,” related to Dusty’s mother. She got a lot of mileage out of her mother in emergencies — about all Reina was good for.
It was awful. Allegra was crazed, distant, bellicose. Dusty got tired of the lashings and after a few days felt guilty for praying that she pack up her sullen histrionics and take them to the beach house, where she could lick her wounds in solitude. That never happened. She was glad to have withheld the suggestion because the image of her young wife walking into the sea had hauntedly taken hold. Marta, of all people, was the one to persuade Dusty to return to work a few days early.
Not to worry, said the housekeeper. I’ll take good care.
God bless Marta.
—
She spent hours in the pool, soaking in amniotic misery. She wanted a home water birth; now she had a home water death all her own.
Whatever she touched turned to shit, sorrow, and dead ends — everything, that is, but Dusty. Dusty was her salvation, their union her miracle birth. Why, then, was she punishing the only one who ever loved her, loved and protected, bestowing shelter, status, and a fractured raison d’être? (Made an honest woman of her too.) Wasn’t Dusty suffering as well? Of course she was. Well, maybe. Probably… — just now, Allegra didn’t give a fuck, and for the most heinously juvenile rationale: Dusty was older, Dusty was rich, Dusty was immortal. Dusty was bulletproof because she’d already had a little girl, already had the whole full-tilt Alien experience of it, already watched the thing slither out and bloodsquall with life. That she basically never saw it again was just a technicality.
Before the Xanax, Ambien, and Percocet mugged her to sleep, she dodged her wretchedness by skimming the recently published diary of a righteous medieval executioner (a little light reading before bed). Allegra fixated on the passage that described his specialty: torturing robbers who used the severed fingers of infants as lucky-charm candles to light the homes they plundered at night. She drifted off the pages into a kaleidoscope of fantasies. She imagined herself buried alive, crouching in a sealed tomb while Dusty organized a rescue party… sitting with Anna Wintour at a fashion show while Allegra’s famous, spanking new triplets threw epic, squalling tantrums… on the Rue du Faubourg in front of Chanel, having her YouTube head sawed off by Boko Haram schoolgirl recruit hotties. Maybe she’d just stop eating. Feeding the body seemed nothing more than a reward for infanticide — comfort food for an infernal job well done. She was tired of the whole eating/shitting game anyway, the one that turned everything into stink, poison, and sewage. She’d gotten a lemon for a womb, but her asshole was a fertile workhorse slated to deliver thousands of newborns right to the end. Even in her last moments on earth, her bowels would loosen — God would make certain she’d die in “childbirth,” spraying one final citizen into the fecal world.
She thought of overdosing, which led her to a meditation on media moms, all those trashy suicide fails who snuffed gangs of kids in their bathtubs. At least they had babies to kill. She reflected on sundry sash and doorknob hangings (Robin Williams, L’Wren Scott), wondering if she’d ever manage to grow the cojones to do the same. But how? When she couldn’t even commit to third-draft screenplays, rip-off perfume flacons, and fucktard custom chapeaux? Eight times her beloved Ms. Blow tried in vitro — eight times! Toward the finish line, like some Wile E. Coyote agoniste, she’d variously flung herself off a bridge, rear-ended a truck, tried drowning herself in a lake — and after nothing worked, the bitch drank weed killer. (When the E.R. nurses didn’t know who she was, Issie shouted, “Google me!”) Now that’s commitment! While the bonkers muse had a memorial fit for famous eulogizers and fashionista pallbearers, Allegra knew her own final wrap party was poised to outshine and outgun: the interment would blow Issie’s out of the water, featuring a legendary cortège of Dusty-pimped thumbnail-ready griever-chic A-listers, curated to celebrate her uselessness, infertility, and defeat.
Chronicle of a life stillborn…
The thought of such inglorious pageantries made her want to vomit.
Jeremy tried to see her but she kept texting that she just wasn’t ready. After two weeks he showed up unannounced. He was sweet and loving, but when she gave him nothing he soured.