Page 34 of The Spirit of Love

Chapter Twenty

I take it all out on the water, driving my oar into the canal like I’m training for the women’s eight.

The jacarandas are in bloom on either side of the banks, dropping purple petals on the water as I pass and filling the air with a sweet, buzzy smell.

Seagulls caw in the pink sky, dancing under wisps of golden clouds, and the late-summer air is still warm enough that I’m comfortable in a T-shirt, jeans, and Birkenstocks.

It would be a lovely evening for a canoe ride, if one were in the mood to enjoy it.

I round the corner at the Grand Canal, kicking up a wake and gaining speed as I pass under the “A Wish for Others” Bridge.

I wish I wasn’t so miserable. I wish Tania would teleport permanently to Tunisia, or at least that she had less-spectacular cleavage.

I wish I knew how to push through my disillusionment and locate the triumph I wanted to feel today.

I directed . My dream since I was a kid, training my camera and my eye, is finally a milestone past-tense crossed. A real event that can’t unhappen.

And objectively speaking, I did well. In the eleventh hour of shooting today, with the help of cast and crew, we got the take from Buster. I think. I hope. We’ll check in editing—fingers crossed. But maybe today I secured the cathartic missing piece to our season-opening climax sequence.

Why didn’t it fill me up? Why do I still feel the same hole that I so frequently feel? Adrift. Unworthy. Unsure.

I thought if the team at Zombie Hospital could see me succeeding today, it would mean something to me.

I thought I’d feel a concrete sense of my value.

I thought reaching this goal would be the career equivalent of the clarity I felt when I chose Edie in the hospital.

But something still feels muddy. Something still feels missing.

And I don’t know if I’ll ever find it.

I lower my oar, letting the boat glide on its own as I rip into the six-pack of Grapefruit Sculpin I grabbed from the Canal Market on my way home from work.

I crack open a can and take a long, hoppy swig, willing the alcohol to loosen some of my angst. What was so important about that phone call that Jude had to step out of the soundstage?

Why didn’t he come back for the rest of the shoot?

One way of looking at recent Zombie Hospital events is that Jude did far more for me than he needed to. He fought for me to direct and helped me claim an opportunity I would not have had otherwise for who knows how long.

“That’s not nothing.” I tell the white heron who has paused above me on the railing of the wishing bridge. But it’s also not enough. Because I was beginning to take it for granted that Jude and I were a team, that he would have wanted to share today with me.

I tell myself I don’t need his approval. Until three weeks ago in Rich’s office, I didn’t even know he existed!

Then why did I still want him there, meeting my eyes, giving me his serious, closed-mouth smile, half hidden in his beard? Why have I come to rely so much on that smile?

If Jude had been there at the end of our shoot today, I would have mouthed I’m sorry from the across the set.

And he would have done that thing where he tips his head to the left and kind of grimaces, and he would have mouthed Me, too .

Or we would have written it down on a coaster, or stared it out under the stars.

There are many ways our rift might have been patched, but all of them required him sticking around today.

Which he didn’t. And now, I fear the chasm between us will widen all weekend long.

I fear that, with every passing minute for the next three days, I’m going to get both angrier at Jude and less confident in myself.

Why is he under my skin this much?

The beer slips from my hand. What the hell are Jude and Walter Matthau doing crossing the wishing bridge over my canal?

As I stare at the apparitions, my canoe veers into the sandbar on the right bank of the canal and I plough into one of my neighbor’s boats, making a fairly loud metallic crashing din.

My beer has spilled all over my Birkenstocks.

Jude stops, and I crouch in the canoe so he can’t see me, but I strain my neck to look at him.

He’s hasn’t changed out of the suit he was wearing this morning, and he’s carrying a large white paper bag.

I watch as he takes out his phone, as if double-checking something, and then looks up at the gold numbers of my address nailed to my front door.

He strokes his beard. Walter Matthau sits.

Jude’s shoulders rise and fall. Then he turns around and the two of them start walking back the way they came.

Over the bridge.

Right above me.

I drop my head a moment too late. Our eyes lock for half a second, and I see Jude freeze in the middle of the bridge.

“Fenny?”

“Shit,” I mutter, snatching my beer can from the belly of the canoe and pretending to sip it, pretending I’m not wearing its contents. “Changed your mind?” I ask, pointing in the direction of my front door.

“You saw that?” He sighs. “That’s embarrassing.”

I lift a shoulder and gesture at the state of my canoe. “Not as bad as running into your neighbor’s swan-shaped paddleboat at the sight of the last person you were expecting to see tonight.”

Concern takes over Jude’s expression. “Really? I made you crash? Let me help!”

He bounds over the ramp of the bridge and hurries across the path leading down to the water. At the sight of me, Walter Matthau barks excitedly, pawing the mud on the riverbank. When Jude gets closer, I make out the lettering on the paper bag in his hands.

Monsieur Marcel, my favorite French grocery store in the Original Farmers Market.

“What’s all that?” I ask.

“This is…” He glances down, at the bag, and at his dog, pausing before he answers. “Six types of tinned fish. Two baguettes. And one apologetic homme.”

I cover my laugh with my hand.

Jude cringes. “Awful, I know. I wrote those lines while I was working up the nerve to ring your doorbell. You can see now why I gave up and had to turn around.”

“It’s the delivery that needs work,” I tease. “But let’s just go with it. Maybe it will lead somewhere interesting. Take it from the top,” I coach, gesturing for him to retry.

“You mean the—”

“Say the line again, like you’ve perfected it. Like you’ve workshopped it with Scorsese and made him cry. Say it like it’s undeniable.”

Jude nods. He takes a moment and then holds the shopping bag above his head like John Cusack in Say Anything .

“Are you going to cue me in?”

“Hey, Jude. What’s all that?” I repeat.

When Jude speaks again, his voice is alive with a youthful bravado I’ve never heard from him before. “This, Fenny Fein, is six types of tinned fish, two baguettes, and one apologetic homme!”

“Wow, so much better.”

“Yeah, but what happens next?” he asks. “I’ve never been the writer.”

I think a moment. “I think my line would go something like this: ‘So all you need is the sad femme in a canoe with two thirds of a six-pack of beer to go with it?’?”

Jude’s expression falls. “You’re sad?”

“I’ve been happier. It’s okay.”

“Can we talk?”

I nod toward the seat across from me in the canoe. I pat my thighs to call the dog. “Come on, Walter Matthau. Get in.”

“Apology accepted,” I say with my mouth full ten minutes later. I’m finishing the most perfect bite of chewy baguette topped with Majorcan sardines in preserved lemon oil, which Jude prepared while I rowed to the south end of Linnie Canal.

“That’s a huge relief,” he says, handling the oar now while I eat. “I was going to need multiple takes to get anywhere near what the food can do in one. Food is better than, like, Marlon Brando.”

“Maybe that’s why he gained so much weight. Can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

Jude laughs and we chew, a little shyly, and it feels almost like we’re back to the way we were this morning, before the things we’d said in my trailer, back when we’d been a team.

At our feet, Walter Matthau is curled up, his chin propped on the gunwale of the canoe, watching a squirrel run up a palm tree.

I’m glad that he and Jude seem more connected.

I wish I could say the same thing for Jude and me.

“Fenny?”

I look at Jude, his brown eyes sincere and worried. There’s something tender about his anxiety tonight, something open and vulnerable.

“Yeah?”

“Even though I know I’m going to fuck it up,” he says. “I still want to apologize.”

I meet his eyes and nod to let him know I’m listening.

“Maybe it seemed like I flipped a switch this morning,” he says, looking at the water.

“I’m sure it was weird, having me step in to direct scenes you’d already prepped,” I tell him, honestly.

“Yes and no,” he says. “But there’s more to it than that.” He pauses. “Do you remember Tania, from the wedding?”

I watch his hands moving the oar because it feels too hard to look at him.

“Big hat?” I say. “Breasts like beach balls?”

“That’s her.”

“Never seen her.”

“She called me this afternoon.”

“Cool. Yeah. I noticed you took some sort of phone ringing thing…”

What’s wrong with me? One mention of this woman and I become as inarticulate as tinned fish.

Jude looks up at the sky for a moment, where the moon is new and near invisible. “Getting back in touch with her has been good for me.”

“I’m sure,” I say, meaning it. “You two had that amazing connection.”

“You’re probably wondering what she has to do with anything,” Jude says.

That and why the stirring in my gut feels like jealousy.

“When Tania and I spoke today,” he continues, “she held me accountable for some things she says I’ve been denying myself.”

“I see.” Heat fills my head with dizzying anger. “Like the scenes you should have been directing today?”

“No. It isn’t that.” Jude shakes his head. He swallows, stares hard at the water, then looks up at me. “This is hard for me to say.”

“Just say it,” I encourage him. “I’ve told you a crazy thing or two before.”