Page 48 of Wish You Were Her
Chapter Fourteen
RE: Wish You Were Here!
Dear Friend,
Today’s book isMiddlemarch, as promised. Here’s a picture of it outside Pete’s Cafe. I can’t wait to see you. Sorry if I’ve been distant of late. Some strange things have been going on and I need to get over something. Nothing major, something small. Totally manageable. I’m trying not to dress-rehearse horrible scenarios in my head where you take one look at me and run away from Lake Pristine forever.
Wish you were here as I need my brain to stop catastrophizing.
Your friend
Allegra had one mirror in the small spare bedroom of her father’s bookshop apartment and it was on the inside of the wardrobe door. She had spent longer than normal trying to find the right thing to wear. She loved fashion and dressing up, but this was the first time in years without a stylist on the other end of a text chain to approve and co-sign the ensemble. She had complete freedom of choice for once.
The silver lamé dress was a little revealing and perhaps toodressy for the launch of a small-town book festival, but Allegra was hoping that the date beforehand with Simon would ignite in person what was so natural and becoming over email. She hoped that he would apologize for his priggishness and attribute it to nerves or posturing.
Allegra wanted to be in love. She had read once that falling in love only happened when a person was ready for change in their life. She had fallen a handful of times and had realized, after bracing for impact and feeling the ground, that she had fallen alone. She had pulled herself up alone. She had waited out the fever of it all alone.
As an actor, she had watched others while they lived their lives. Halloween parties, school trips and wild weekends with their friends. She had known call sheets, early commutes to set with strange men driving black sedans and no one around her but adults who were telling her which plastic surgeries she should undergo in order to “get ahead of the inevitable.”
She knew she was fortunate. She knew luck had touched her in a way that most people would never know.
But sometimes she just hungered. She watched her peers and she thirsted for a warm group chat and inside jokes. For joint eighteenth birthday parties and “did you get home safe?” texts. She was watched from the moment she left her apartment for set until the second her bedroom light went off. The security detail were always quiet and quick; they didn’t need to exchange words with her. Getting rid of them for quiet time in Lake Pristine had taken a great deal of persuasion but it had been worth it.
She appreciated their work but they inevitably always made her feel like a commodity that they moved swiftly and silently from mark to mark. It had been miraculous, escaping to Lake Pristine and shedding all of the control.
When the camera began to roll, she was allowed to come alive. She was allowed to live in the lives of people whose skin she could climb inside. Those moments of electricity were what kept her heart beating through the whole ordeal of it. The in-between moments, the constant shuffling and promoting and waiting, they were bearable because making the art was so wonderfully cosmic.
But she wanted some spontaneity. She wanted to taste the food on the table of life that the industry had promised was bad for her. She wanted to take a bite and hear their gasps of disbelief and horror.
Flavors became so mild when you were always tasting someone else’s food for them.
She wanted a feast of her own.
She slid on the Manolos she had purchased with her first TV pay check and descended the stairs from the apartment to the bookshop beneath. The lights in the shop were switched off for the evening, everyone in town for the festival launch party. Only the computer was awake. Allegra opened up the inbox and checked the sent folder, smiling when she eventually found the latest from Simon.
Wish you were here.
She wondered if the spark from their emails would come to life when he finally realized that she always had been.
“God, Jonah, you look nice.”
Jonah swallowed and thanked Alice, as she showed him to his empty table in the cafe she ran with her husband, Pete. It was abuzz with people, only a few other tables were empty. The whole room was adorned with flowers from the summersolstice and the chandelier brought occasion and pomp to the otherwise cozy cafe.
Jonah was wearing a black suit with the white opera scarf he had begged his mother for five Hanukkahs ago. He placedMiddlemarchon the table and slid a rose between the pages.
His nerves were overpowering but the hope was even worse.
School had been tough. Jonah always asked why things were the way they were, and it had never gone down well with the teachers. If it hadn’t been for Simon, he would have been a social pariah because he was always saying the wrong thing. His intentions were never bad, but his delivery could never assure people of that.
The bookshop had allowed him room to breathe but also to become even more tetchy, even more isolated.
Then came her emails.
In some careless, frivolous way, someone was actually amused by him. Intrigued enough to keep talking, despite the social niceties having been adhered to and the obligation no longer necessary.
