His agent hung up, and an assistant from the studio called. Then he was on hold for ten minutes, waiting for the head of the studio to get on.
She had graduate degrees in both business and law, degrees that should have been irrelevant when it came to understanding the creative process, but now seemed to be the equivalent of having won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. “Philip,” she said, not apologizing for keeping him waiting,
“something happened between the last draft and the current one.”
“It’s called a rewrite,” Philip said.
“We’ve lost something with the main character. She isn’t likable anymore.”
“Really?” Philip replied.
“She has no personality,” said the studio head.
“That’s because you’ve insisted I take out anything that would give her personality,” Philip replied.
“We have to think about the audience. Women are very, very judgmental. As you know. They’re harsh critics of other women.”
“That’s too bad,” Philip said. “Maybe if they weren’t, women would rule the world.”
“I’ll need another draft in two weeks. Just fix it, Philip,” she said, and hung up.
Philip called his agent. “Can I quit this project?” he asked.
“Forget your ego and just give them what they want. Then it’s their problem.”
Philip put the phone down, wondering, as he often did these days, what had happened to his courage.
His intercom buzzed. “Miss Lola Fabrikant is downstairs,” the doorman Fritz said. “Shall I send her up?”
Damn, Philip thought. In the confrontation with the studio, he’d forgotten about his appointment with the girl who’d e-mailed him requesting an interview. He’d seen ten candidates for the job, and every one had been a disappointment. This girl would likely prove another waste of time, but she was already downstairs. He’d give her ten minutes just to be polite. “Send her up,” he said.
A few minutes later, Lola Fabrikant was perched on Philip’s couch, attempting to be on her very best behavior. Philip Oakland was no longer as young as his author photo on the back cover of her tattered copy of Summer Morning, but he wasn’t old, either, and he was certainly younger than her father, who would never wear a faded black T-shirt and Adidas tennis shoes and sport hair past his earlobes. Folded up in his chair, feet on his desk, Philip alternated between tapping a pen on a pile of papers and tucking his hair behind his ears. The girl who had given Lola his e-mail had been right — Philip Oakland was hot.
“Tell me about you,” Philip said. “I want to know everything.” He was no longer in a rush to get rid of Miss Lola Fabrikant, who was not what he’d been expecting and who, after his lousy day, was more than a welcome relief, almost like the answer to his prayers.
“Have you seen my Facebook page?” she asked.
“I haven’t.”
“I tried to look you up,” she said. “But you don’t have a page.”
“Should I?”
She frowned at him as if concerned for his welfare. “Everyone has a Facebook page. How else can your friends keep up with you?”
How else indeed, he thought, finding her charming. “Do you want to show me your Facebook page?”
She tapped quickly on her iPhone and held it out to him. “That’s me in Miami.” Philip stared at a photograph of a bikini-clad Lola standing on a small boat. Was he being seduced deliberately or inadvertently, he wondered. Did it matter?
“And then there’s my bio,” she said, coming up behind him to tap once again on the small machine. “See? My favorite color: yellow. My favorite quote: ‘My way or the Henry Hudson Highway.’ My dream honeymoon: sailing on a yacht around the Greek Islands.” She swung her long hair, and a strand touched his face. She giggled. “Sorry.”
“It’s very interesting,” he said, handing the iPhone back to her.
“I know,” she said. “My friends are always saying big things are going to happen to me.”
“What kinds of big things?” Philip asked, noting her smooth, unblem-ished skin. Her presence was turning him into an idiot, he thought.
“I don’t know,” she said, thinking how different Philip Oakland was from anyone she’d ever met. He was like a real person, but better, because he was a celebrity. She sat back down on the couch. “I know I should know, because I’m twenty-two, but I don’t.”
“You’re a baby,” Philip said. “You have your whole life ahead of you.”
She dismissed this by blowing a small puff of air through her lips.
“Everyone always says that, but it isn’t true. These days you have to make it right away. Or you get left behind.”
“Really?” Philip asked.
“Oh yes,” she said, nodding her lovely head. “Things have changed. If you want something, a million other people want it as well.” She paused, holding out her sandaled foot and cocking her head to admire her black toenail polish. “But it doesn’t bother me. I’m very competitive. I like to win. And I usually do.”
Aha, Philip thought, suddenly inspired. This was what his character was missing in Bridesmaids Revisited. This unbridled confidence of youth.
“So what is this job?” she asked. “What do I have to do? I won’t have to pick up your dry cleaning or anything like that, will I?”
“Worse, I’m afraid,” Philip said. “I’ll expect you to do some research for me — but I’ll also want you to be an assistant. When I’m on a conference call, you’ll be on the other line and will take notes. If I make hand-written notes on a manuscript, you’ll retype it. I’ll expect you to read every draft before it goes out, checking for typos and continuity. And occasionally, I’ll use you as a sounding board.”
“Meaning?” Lola asked, tilting her head.
“For instance,” Philip said, “I’m working on a screenplay now called Bridesmaids Revisited. I’m wondering how obsessed a twenty-two-year-old woman would be with her wedding.”
“Haven’t you ever seen Bridezillas?” Lola asked, flabbergasted.
“What’s that?” Philip said.
“Ohmigod,” Lola said, warming up to this discussion about reality shows, which was one of her favorite topics. “It’s about these women who are totally obsessed with their weddings, to the point where they literally go crazy.”
Philip tapped his pen. “But why?” he asked. “What’s the big deal about getting married?”
“Every girl wants to get married now. And they want to do it while they’re young.”
“I thought they wanted to have careers and take over the world by thirty.”
“That was older Gen Y,” Lola said. “All the girls I know want to get married and have kids right away. They don’t want to end up like their mothers.”
“What’s wrong with their mothers?”
“They’re unhappy,” Lola said. “Girls my age won’t put up with unhappiness.”
Philip felt an urgency to get back to work. He unfolded his legs from the desk and stood up.
“Is that it?” she said.
“That’s it,” he said.
She picked up her bag, a gray snakeskin pouch that was so large Philip guessed it must have been made from the entire skin of a boa constric-tor. “Do I have the job?” she asked.
“Why don’t we both think about it and talk tomorrow,” Philip said.
She looked crushed. “Don’t you like me?” she asked.
He opened the door. “I do like you,” he said. “I like you very much.
That’s the problem.”
When she was gone, he stepped out onto his terrace. His vista was south. A chunky, modern medieval landscape of gray-blues and terra cottas lay before him. Just below was Washington Square Park, a patch of green populated with tiny people going about their business.