Page 25 of The Spirit of Love

Jude tilts his head. “No, she was describing a scene you helped her figure out. How you sat down with her, rewrote the lines until they were in her voice, until—I think she said—until delivering them made her feel, for the first time, like an actor.”

What he’s describing with Aurora did happen. It was when we were trying to crack how she’d play one of her earliest scenes as an undercover zombie priestess. But the rounds of telephone it took this compliment to reach me is suspicious.

A server whisks away our salad plates, replacing them a moment later with the transcendent zucchini Parm I’d tasted in the kitchen earlier.

“The actors respect you,” Jude continues.

“The writers like writing with you. The producers trust your knowledge of the series more than anyone else. You are the series bible. You’re at the top of your game, and I’m out of my depth.

” He takes a bite of the zucchini Parm and shakes his head in disbelief. “Is there crack in this food or what?”

“I know. Summer is an alien from outer space in the kitchen.”

“I see why the two of you are friends,” he says.

“Thanks, Jude.” His compliment is thoughtful, unusual.

He keeps going, “If you want to stick with Buster’s climax scene as you wrote it, I defer to you.”

“Really? I’m—what about Rich?”

“That insufferable worm? He doesn’t get it. And I’ll have your back.”

“I don’t know what to say.” I want to say thanks for having my back and also to express relief that he’s not bought a ticket on the Rich train, but part of me also wants to say that this is still not quite enough.

That he still took something from me. Something he now seems to understand I deserved.

“Say it took me long enough,” Jude says. “Say that I shouldn’t have been imposing my personal beliefs on the show that already knows quite well what it’s doing.”

“Those really are your personal beliefs?” I ask. “What you were saying in the costume department? All that, ‘What’s the point? What is reality? What is there to believe in?’?”

I give these questions my best zombie voice, and Jude laughs as the server sets down Summer’s steak and forbidden rice.

“You make it all sound embarrassingly uncurious,” he says. “But from experience, yes, that is essentially what I believe.”

“Okay, but all of us can choose to believe in something,” I say, “and before you wave me off, I’m not talking about religion.”

“Believe me,” he says, “I’d prefer to believe in God…in anything —”

“What’s holding you back?”

He looks at me but doesn’t answer. I wish he would.

“I have it on pretty good authority that there is Something out there,” I say. “Something beyond even Malibu…”

“You mean Santa Barbara,” Jude jokes, but when I don’t laugh, he asks, “What exactly do you believe in, Fenny?”

I put a hand to my chest, to my heart. “My sister. I believe in her. And my nephews. Even my brother-in-law when he’s not being a dork.

I know what you mean about how sometimes life serves us brutal emotional devastation, but when I go over to the east side, to hang out with my family, I choose to believe that my time with them is worth something.

Maybe everything. It does all of us good if I can believe that. ”

Jude’s quiet, thinking.

“How’s it going with your dog?” I ask.

He takes a big sip of wine. “I walk into a room, he walks out of it.”

I bite back a laugh. “Ouch. And you’ve tried bonding over destroying a pair of your shoes together?”

“I offered him tug-of-war with some very expensive Bruno Maglis yesterday. He didn’t bite.”

“Maybe you need to up your game.”

“As in?”

“Grand gesture, dude.”

“What are you thinking? I feel it’s too soon to propose.”

“How about a guys’ trip? A grumpy old men trip! Go somewhere together and just figure out how to love each other.”

We both take bites of steak, and Jude looks at me as if this is a good idea, but by the time he’s chewed and swallowed and drank some more wine, his face looks drawn again.

“Love each other?”

“Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it,” I say, but I hear the waver in my voice. Just because I believe in love doesn’t guarantee personal success in the act. In fact, recently for me, the opposite seems to be true.

“Aha,” Jude says, picking up on my energy. “Perhaps you’re not so sure?”

“I’m sure that if you love a dog, it loves you back, okay?” I quip, not wanting to get into my vulnerable love life right now.

“Right, I’ll schedule ‘grumpy old men do Vegas’ as soon as I get a day off,” Jude says. “TV is a grueling schedule. I don’t know how you’ve done it for so long.”

“You get used to it.”

“With films, you go hard for months at a time, maybe a year, but then you’re done. You get time off to recalibrate. But a successful TV show never stops.”

“Life sucks and then you die?” I prompt.

“I knew there was a nihilist in there somewhere.” He smiles. And I can’t help liking his smile.

“Do you ever get away, Fenny? ‘Grumpy young ladies’ trip?”

“Not often enough,” I say.

“Where would you go if you could go anywhere tomorrow?”

Because the emotional door was already ajar, I can’t help thinking of Catalina, of Sam and his cabin and his bed.

I think of my schedule for the next several months and how I’ll be spending more time with the people in this room—with Jude—than I will with my dearest friends, my family, and certainly with Sam.

And how, for years, that was a choice I happily made in order to make strides toward the career I want.

But what about this week, when it all backfired?

What am I doing, next to this man who I like looking at and standing near and sometimes even talking to, but who wrecked my career simply by being good at his? In film school, my professors would say, “Art isn’t a zero-sum game. There’s room for all of you at the top.”

But from where I’m sitting, it looks more like a savage session of musical chairs.

Maybe Jude’s attitude is contagious, because as I stare out Amy’s windows at the island I know is out there but can’t see, I find myself wondering, What’s the point?