Funny You Should Ask
Elissa Sussman
“The course of true love—”
“—gathers no moss.”
—The Philadelphia Story
Prologue
“He requested you,” Alexandra says.
It’s a good thing we’re on the phone because I’d bet the editor in chief of Broad Sheets magazine would not appreciate the death glare I’m giving my screen. And I know she wouldn’t understand why.
“Bullshit,” I say.
I’m half hoping she’ll prove me wrong, and I’m embarrassed to realize that I’m holding my breath while I wait for her answer.
“Okay, okay,” she admits. “His people requested you.”
That makes sense. The article I did on Gabe Parker ten years ago had been a PR team’s wet dream. It gave Gabe the kind of publicity that people would buy if they could. Which is, in essence, what they’re attempting to do now.
I can’t blame them. Hell, I’m sure my own publicist is kicking herself for not thinking of it first. Stars aligning and all that.
That article is the reason that ten years later, no matter what I’m promoting, no matter what I’m being interviewed for, I still get asked the same, exact question.
And I always offer the same, exact answer.
“Nope, nothing happened,” I’ll say with a big smile. “Don’t I wish, though.”
My ego still takes a hit when people accept that answer with an easy, relieved nod. But I get it. That’s my brand. Being the kind of woman who spends a platonic weekend with a Hollywood heartthrob in his prime. Readers didn’t have to be threatened by me. Instead, they could sympathize with how I—a “regular girl”—had gotten a chance with someone like Gabe Parker and whiffed it.
It also helped that Gabe’s immediate reaction to the article’s release—running off to marry his gorgeous, former-model co-star—proved emphatically that I wasn’t his type.
A bruising but necessary public rejection. One that had done wonders for me professionally.
It made me lovable. Accessible. Relatable.
It sold articles.
It sold books.
It made my career.
“They want you two to re-create as much of your weekend as you can,” Alexandra says. “He arrives in L.A. in a few hours.”
I mentally scoff. I’ve never had an interview like this happen when it was supposed to. Even that first weekend had been rescheduled at least twice. Still, it’s surprising how quickly they’re trying to pull this together. It doesn’t give me any time to research, to prep.
I guess they assume that, to a certain extent, I’ve been preparing for this for ten years.
They’re not wrong. Because the truth is, I’ve spent those years simultaneously profiting and running from that Gabe Parker interview.
From Gabe Parker.
“You have the paperback coming out,” Alexandra says. “He has a movie coming out.”
She didn’t need to remind me of either.
The professional benefits are clear.
The personal ones…
It’s impossible to ignore Gabe, and his career trajectory. The adage about car wrecks and being unable to look away has been true of him for the last five years or so. Everyone knows that he got fired after his third Bond film. Everyone knows that his marriage to Jacinda Lockwood reached an embarrassing, pedestrian conclusion. Everyone knows that he’s been in and out of rehab centers.
Everyone says that this new movie could either revive his career or end it for good.
“I can send over the screener,” Alexandra suggests. “See what you think.”
I bite my tongue, holding back what would have probably been a caustic, unwelcome response. I know Alexandra is being helpful. I know she wants this interview to be as successful as the first.
I know I’m being ungrateful to even consider turning it down.
But the thought of sitting across from Gabe Parker after all these years, pretending I haven’t replayed that weekend over and over in my head, pretending I don’t still think about the moments we shared, pretending that what I tell everyone is the truth and that nothing really happened between us…
Well. It makes me feel more than a little unsteady.
“I’ve heard the movie is good,” Alexandra says.
It’s a remake of The Philadelphia Story. My favorite movie. One of ten dozen things Gabe and I had talked about.
Back then, Gabe would have been perfect as Mike Connor, the struggling writer vying for the heart of socialite Tracy Lord. Now, at forty, he’s playing the ex-addict ex-husband, C. K. Dexter Haven.
There have already been a dozen think pieces about the choice—about how it’s so close to Gabe’s real life that it’s not really acting at all. How it’s nothing more than stunt casting. How Gabe is washed up and doesn’t deserve another chance.
No one thought he deserved to be Bond either.
I don’t need to see the movie to know he’s probably perfect in it. Just like I know that trying to fight my editor, Gabe’s management, and (if I told her about it) my therapist would be futile.
“He’ll be waiting at the restaurant at one,” Alexandra says. “But if you really don’t want to, I can send—”
“I’ll do it,” I say.
I’ve chickened out on only one interview in my career—I won’t do it again.
Instead, I swallow back the taste of impending doom. It tastes a lot like a really good burger and a perfect sour beer. It tastes like Jell-O shots and popcorn.
It tastes like expensive mint toothpaste.
I know that by accepting this assignment, I’ll get the answers to every unasked question I’ve had for the last ten years.
No matter what, everything that Gabe and I started that weekend a decade ago in December will finally get a proper ending.
BROAD SHEETS
GABE PARKER:
Shaken, Not Stirred—Part One
By Chani Horowitz
Gabe Parker is shoeless, shirtless, and holding a puppy.
“I’m sorry,” he tells me. “This place is a rental. Do you mind holding her for a moment while I deal with this?”