We Are Gathered Read online

  “This place is really cool,” Carter said. Elizabeth and I both jumped in surprise. “I love science. Mastodons are so much cooler than elephants.” Carter assessed Elizabeth and glanced at me with a smile. “I’m Carter Graham,” he said, as if she wouldn’t know. “Carla and I work together.”

  “Hi,” Elizabeth said. Even in the dark light, with the soundtrack of braying animals in their death throes, you could see the flush and glow of Elizabeth’s face and hear her quick inhale. I thought about shooing out the Boy Scout troop that had just entered, shutting the doors, and telling them to get on with it, I’d be back in an hour.

  “Elizabeth Gottlieb, Carter Graham,” I said.

  “Thanks for letting me crash,” Carter said. “I love this place. It makes me feel better about my life. People think LA is brutal now, but they should see how it used to be. I think my agent is bad, but at least he’s not a saber-toothed tiger.” He smiled, and both she and I were dazzled. As many times as I have seen it, I still melt when he smiles even though it isn’t meant for me.

  And then he turned on the charm. One of Carter’s gifts is the ability to convince you that he is suffering in his Hollywood Hills mansion with the infinity pool and the six-car garage. He is suffering. Ridiculously overpaid for trivial work, forced to have lunch with people engaged in the bloodthirsty power struggle that is the movie business, these Los Angeles philistines who care nothing for—Where is the worst current global crisis? he asks me, and I tell him the civil war in South Sudan. He’s forced to have lunch with people who do not even know about the war in South Sudan, he parrots. No one understands him. They are all using him except for (fill in the blank here), though, of course, you are using him, maybe not for his movie star status but for his astonishing good looks and charm, his you-are-the-center-of-the-universeness that you feel when he turns his gaze on you and declares you the epitome of a Scorpio, fierce, brilliant, and passionate, or a Pisces, gentle, wise, and romantic, or (fill in the blank with whatever you want to believe yourself to be). He hasn’t tried that charm on me because he knows I think astrology is idiotic (as opposed to astronomy, which is the actual study of the geophysics of the universe—Carter often confuses the words), but I love him nonetheless since he is all the unrequited crushes I have had since kindergarten to college rolled into one Übermensch package of charisma and beauty.

  We walked to the next room. A dire wolf was drooling over an ancient horse the size of a zebra but with a lovely tawny color instead of black-and-white stripes while a giant ground sloth lumbered in the background. There we all are, I thought. Poor Elizabeth, the graceful Equus occidentalis, is about to be the dire wolf’s lunch. What does the sloth care? What can Harlan’s ground sloth—Paramylodon harlani—do about it? Such are the ways of the world, then and now. And who was Harlan? Elizabeth and Carter drifted off, leaning into each other, whispering. After that room, we had the option of going to look at the site of ongoing excavations, which I would have liked, but Carter said, “I know this awesome place for sushi near here. Wanna go?”

  Elizabeth glanced at me, and I shrugged. “Sure.” We got into Carter’s car. He had driven the BMW so as not to be too flashy for the law student. I sat in the backseat, and since the top was down, my hair was destroyed and I could barely hear the conversation; but I caught a passing line in which he said he was tired of actresses. He wanted someone with a real job. In Hollywood, it was impossible to meet someone like her. I hate sushi, but I didn’t say anything. Carter ordered expansively, and we couldn’t eat it all. I watched the tray of colorful raw fish congeal and rot while my movie-star boss seduced my friend. He started off with generic questions. She mentioned that her father was a lawyer, and he said, “Tell me about a time you were proud of your father.” He stuffed sashimi in his mouth. “Or ashamed.”

  Elizabeth furrowed her brow and thought hard about the question. I wanted to shout, Oh, for God’s sake, make something up; he doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. He asks every girl that question. If I was writing the script, I would make Elizabeth smarter; my heroine of the dystopian future would be onto him. She would say, “He took down a Russian mobster who was smuggling heroin in baby formula. A thousand babies died until my father threw him in jail and tossed away the key.” Her dad is a fucking tax attorney. His moments of heroism involve not inflating his billable hours and getting a friend’s kid out of a DUI pro bono.

  When the check came, Carter said, “What are you doing later? I’ve got an extra ticket to the Lakers game. It’s kind of a cool thing to do when you visit LA. Courtside Lakers game. I know Carla hates sports, and I wouldn’t want to interfere in your plans.”

  “We were going to go to Santa Monica and see the pier.”

  “You can do that tomorrow,” Carter said.

  I said, “If you want to go, it’s fine with me. I have work I could do.”

  “You sure?”

  “You should go. Even if you don’t like sports, it’s a great experience.”

  She turned to Carter. “You don’t have anyone else you’d rather take?”

  “I promise you,” he said, half smiling in a way that showed his dimple. “There is no one else in the world I would rather take.”

  I picked Elizabeth up from Carter’s house two days later when she was to fly back east. They were out by the pool. Elizabeth was wearing khaki shorts and a sleeveless button-down knotted at the waist. Carter was shirtless and wearing pajama bottoms. Her hair was freshly washed and dried, still damp at the tips. As was often his habit, he had not showered in days. I could smell him from the other side of the pool. His hair hung greasy and uncombed, and still both Elizabeth and I wanted him.

  There was a half-empty bottle of expensive wine on the patio table. He stood to hug her and then kissed her forehead. I waited a polite distance away while they said their goodbyes. She held on to his hand as she turned away and didn’t drop it until she had to.

  “You ready?” I asked her. There were tears in her eyes.

  “Hey, Carla,” Carter called out to me.

  “Hello, Carter,” I said, trying to sound weary.

  “Did you read that book that Scott sent over?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “I think we should do an updated version of The Tempest.”

  “You know I don’t want to do any horror films.”

  The tear was starting to trickle down her cheek. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  Elizabeth nodded, sniffled. Carter walked with us up the stairs into the hallway. He said, “Sorry. I can’t go to the door. Paparazzi. Long lenses.”

  In the car on the way to the airport, she said, “I think I am in love with him. He told me things he’s never told anyone else.”

  “About his cousin’s suicide?”

  Her mouth unhinged. “Well, of course, you know. You’ve known him for two years.”

  “Please tell me you used a condom, Elizabeth.”

  “He said he is in love with me too. He’s tired of dating movie stars. He wants someone smart and real. He’s going to come to Atlanta next month. He’s up for a movie that might shoot there, but it’s probably easier for me to transfer schools, like to UCLA Law. Wouldn’t that be awesome? We could see each other all the time.”

  “Don’t change your life for him, Elizabeth,” I begged her. “He isn’t worth it.”

  “And no. I didn’t.” She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “Use a condom.”

  For a month after meeting Carter, Elizabeth considered coming back to see him since he apparently had mentioned something about wanting to get to know her better. Once she realized that Carter was not in love with her and six months later was 100 percent sure that she did not have a sexually transmitted disease, she never spoke of him again. That is Elizabeth’s gift. She decided that the whole thing was a mistake, and so it never happened, just like that. Once, about a year later when I was home visiting my dad, Elizabeth insisted I join her and Debbie Shapiro on a girls’ night out
. When the subject of Carter came up, Elizabeth’s only comment was, “I don’t actually think he’s that talented.”

  Debbie said, “Are you kidding? He’s amazing.” To me, she said, “You’re so lucky to work for him.” Carter is very good at his job, and everyone, Debbie Shapiro, Elizabeth, the world at large, assumes he is the people he plays. He is a suicidal teenager brought back from the brink by the high school nerd; he is Mr. Darcy; he is Gregory Filipovich, the reluctant asthmatic hero who ingeniously saves a bunch of kids from a band of Chechen terrorists; and he is Moishe Gold, a Jewish orphan who is cloned by Dr. Mengele and survives only by murdering the successive clones of himself. All these women are in love with Carter, the self-effacing hero. That’s why their love is fake and only mine is real.

  I am fifteen minutes late arriving for prewedding photos, and the wedding planner, Carol Silverman, is in a tizzy. She practically yanks me out of the car. She is barking orders into a walkie-talkie as if we were headed into combat.

  “Don’t you look lovely,” Mrs. Silverman says to me, without actually looking at me.

  It’s surprising Carter hired me in the first place. In general, he doesn’t like ugly people. I guess he couldn’t resist my pedigree. Cute assistants are a dime a dozen in Hollywood, but there aren’t as many Ivy League grads. Plus, I’d worked for a few years. I was the assistant to the head of acquisitions at William Morris in New York. Ah, New York. I miss New York, where it is almost a virtue to be ugly. A hundred years from now, there will be no one in Hollywood who does not look like a clone of Scarlett Johansson or Channing Tatum, but people in New York will be moving in the opposite direction, having their ears enlarged, getting tattoos of birthmarks, figuring out what to eat to make your head swell out like an alien’s. When that happens, I will be the queen of New York City, but when I lived there, I found that a limited amount of ugliness might have been acceptable, like Adrien Brody’s big nose, but deformity was as ostracized as it is everywhere else.

  Brad Kerker, my boss at William Morris, knew that Carter needed an assistant. To this day, I don’t know if he suggested me as a joke, because he seemed shocked when I told him Carter had hired me and that I was moving to California. Brad was New York, fat, with perpetual tomato-sauce stains on his tie, but publishers loved him, and he had a way of getting the earliest copies of future bestsellers and optioning them on the cheap. There is one thing Hollywood loves more than beauty, and that’s money, and Brad Kerker knows how to make it for them. When I quit, he said, “But I need you here.”

  “Then why did you put me up for the job?”

  “I thought you’d want to meet Carter Graham.”

  “I did. I liked him. He hired me.”

  “You’re going to hate LA,” he told me.

  “Probably,” I said. “But I kind of hate New York. And he’s paying me the same salary and I only have to work twenty hours, so I can do some writing myself.”

  Brad snorted. “You’d better find out which twenty hours, Carla. And what exactly is your job description?

  “Director of development and acquisitions for Vertigo Productions. He just formed his own production company so he can make movies outside the Hollywood mold. He’s tired of just getting action flicks. He’s really smart, and he thinks you’re amazing. It’s a great opportunity for me, Brad.”

  “Every actor has his own production company. Scott fucking Baio has his own production company. The guy who played Squiggy on Laverne & Shirley has his own production company. This is not a good career move for you, Carla.”

  “I can’t get you coffee and bagels for the rest of my life.”

  “What do you think you’re going to do for him?”

  “Read scripts and galleys, background research for roles. I know there will be some scut work in there, but that’s okay. It’s only twenty hours a week.”

  “Fine, fine.” He waved me away. “You’re replaceable, Carla. Everyone is. Before you go, make sure there’s another Carla sitting in that chair. Maybe one a little taller.”

  My friend Elizabeth Gottlieb has avoided all this humiliation. She has a gift that I hope the fairies will bestow on my child if I ever have one. They gave Sleeping Beauty beauty and song, and then kept her from dying from poison. I used to wonder what the third gift would have been if it hadn’t been used to mitigate Maleficent’s curse—probably grace. No need for brains in a Disney princess. Elizabeth’s gift is contentment. She used to tell people she wanted to go to Yale. She didn’t have the grades for it, but the world had always given her whatever she wanted up to that point. I am not sure she even applied. Mr. Perry, the Mansfield guidance counselor, was pretty blunt about your options. At some point senior year, she acted like she had never heard of Yale. After she was accepted at the University of Virginia, she made it clear that it had always been her first choice. Whatever she has is exactly what she wants. I have reached the ripe old age of twenty-eight, and here is the wisdom I can bestow: there is no greater gift than that. If all you’ve got is a double-wide trailer but all you want is a double-wide trailer: ta-da! You win. Elizabeth has never set her aspirations at anything higher than reasonably achievable. College, law school, marriage, house in the nicer part of town, vacations to Paris and the Caribbean, 2.2 kids, designer dog. I am sure Elizabeth will not be barren, but if, God forbid, she cannot have children, she will never have wanted them in the first place. Note to self: someone with these qualities will be the heroine of my future dystopian world. She will look exactly the way Elizabeth looks today, bursting with health, long wavy black hair, a spray of freckles on the nose, freshly tanned, makeup so subtle it looks like she’s not wearing makeup. Surround her with giant-headed, tattooed minions in yellow chiffon dresses and let her accept them and love them.

  “Carla!” Mrs. Silverman is shouting my name. The bridesmaids are lining up for the procession. I have always known that Elizabeth meant more to me than I to her. I kind of think she likes it that way. She is used to being admired, and it is easy for her to give of herself since others so willingly give to her. After the rehearsal dinner in which seventeen out of eighteen of the bridesmaids got up and told charming stories about Elizabeth, all of which concluded with how she had helped them through something really difficult, I tried and failed to come up with a list of eighteen friends, much less best friends. In the screenplay, I am the last one at the podium. I turn to Elizabeth, and after the dull stories, I eloquently start to sum up all the qualities that make her so special. Her eyes shine. The audience suddenly realizes that though she is beautiful I am something more. I have a soul. I am the one deserving of love. Without my noticing, someone slips in the back door and listens, nodding with each word; his eyes fill with tears. It is Carter, who has learned too late that he loves me. He pushes through the crowd to get to me, but before he reaches me, he sees me passionately kiss Harry Silverman, who has returned from saving gorillas in Africa to find me. I am going to leave with Harry Silverman, and we are going to spend the rest of our lives in a remote Rwandan village fighting poachers and surrounded by rescued chimpanzees and silverbacks. Carter will drown his sorrows at the open bar. “I am so sorry,” he will call as I pass by him. He swirls the cheap vodka in his glass, and we see his bloodshot eyes.

  I can’t remember the names of all of Elizabeth’s bridesmaids, but there is a swirl of them, two baseball teams’ worth, all in pale yellow, a color that only looks good on people with a deeper tan than I have. Debbie Shapiro, whose older brother, Steven, once called me a dog, is here. Two of Elizabeth’s college roommates, one of whom is the heir to some kind of big money and a champion equestrienne, are here. There’s a girl from France and one with an accent I can’t quite place, Germanic but not German, I think. Three from law school, two from summer camp in North Carolina. Mrs. Silverman is flapping her arms to herd us together. She needs a lasso and maybe a barking dog. In the movie version of this day, I trot over to the general scrum, not sure where to stand. I trip over an out-of-place chair and stumble into De
bbie Shapiro, look up—something’s not right. Her head is inflating, first one cheek bulging out like the gullet of a bullfrog, then the other. Before my eyes, she expands, her head now the size of a large watermelon, though mercifully the updo is staying in place, the rhinestone barrette still sparkles in the sunlight. The expansion shows no sign of stopping; she has passed beach ball and is on her way to hot-air balloon. Her eyes are stretching out and bulging. Somehow, she hasn’t noticed. She glances down at me and smiles in the way she has always smiled at me, pity and arrogance combined into a bleached, toothy grin. She drapes an arm—not an arm, a tentacle—around Elizabeth; coyly cocks another tentacle, this one shoed in a golden sandal, in the air; and smiles for the photographer. Another young woman, a redhead who I think Elizabeth knows from college, lumbers over to join the picture. Her head is more elephantine, neckless, planted on her shoulders with large fleshy Buddha ears flapping in the wind. No one shows any sign that they can see what is happening. Elizabeth brushes her bangs to the side. In thanks, the elephant girl nods her head. She has no trunk, just a regular pert little nose, slightly upturned, minuscule in the middle of her enormous head. The wedding photographer motions his hands to get them to stand closer together. “Beautiful,” he calls.

  The wedding planner whistles us together—yes, Mrs. Silverman has obtained a whistle; now all she wants for is a whip—and here the bridesmaids come, trotting obediently to join octopus and elephant.

  “Carla.” Mrs. Silverman blows her whistle until she is red in the face, but it is set to a pitch I can’t hear. She stomps over and drags me into my place at the end of the line.

  The guests are hastily taking their places. Hundreds of white chairs have been assembled on the lawn of the Gott-liebs’ house, and it’s hard for the high-heeled and the hobbled to make their way. The two wheelchairs come bumping along and almost collide. There is a standoff between the crippled, Zayde Albert, ancient, and Jeffrey Wolf, young, both shriveled. It’s a tie.