He drank his beer.
I wanted to bang my head on the table. He knew why I was here—why we were doing this interview. This article was meant to help fix the public perception around him being chosen for Bond. It was supposed to help him.
“Did it bother you?” I asked. “The material?”
“No,” he said.
“Did it bother your family?”
“No,” he said.
“They didn’t care that you were kissing a man onstage?”
“My sister thought it was hilarious,” Gabe said. “But only because I’m her baby brother. She thinks everything I do is hilarious. Usually unintentionally.”
“You and your sister are close.”
Gabe downed the rest of his beer, and signaled for another.
My pen froze above my notebook. Two beers?
Gabe was a big guy and two beers was nothing to some, but I started to feel nervous. For him. It was ridiculous, of course. It wasn’t my job to protect him from himself. He was an adult. He knew his limits. Besides, if he ended up drinking enough to make him more talkative, all the better for me.
Right?
“She’s my best friend,” Gabe said. “We’re only a year apart, so we’re basically like twins.”
It was—almost verbatim—what he’d said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. And The Hollywood Reporter.
“And you have a niece?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
“She’s three,” Gabe said. “And she’s the love—”
“—of your life,” I finished for him before I could think any better of it.
He’d said that in the Vanity Fair article too.
“You’ve done your research,” Gabe said.
It wasn’t a compliment.
“It’s my job,” I countered.
I knew I wasn’t doing great with the questions, but he was an actor. I didn’t expect him to spill anything surprising or shocking, but I had expected him to say something.
But it was quiet on the other side of the table. For a moment.
“I did my research too,” he said. “Both of your parents are teachers. You have a younger brother and a younger sister. They all live locally. You usually have Shabbat dinner with them. You went to Sarah Lawrence for undergrad, Iowa for grad school. You met your boyfriend there. In the campus bookstore.”
“Ex-boyfriend,” I said.
Gabe ignored me. “You started out in fiction, but mostly write nonfiction now. Your writing has been described as sharp. You’re from L.A. You hate New York.”
“I don’t hate New York.” I was unnerved.
I did hate New York.
I stared at him. He stared back.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” he asked softly. “When someone thinks they know you.”
The whole thing reminded me of the time I’d tried to learn how to skateboard in some ill-advised bid to get the attention of a guy I knew in high school. I’d been floating along, when suddenly I leaned too far back and the skateboard had come shooting out from under me. I was airborne for half a second before hitting the ground—tailbone first—hard. The pain had made me cry and the tears had made the boy disappear.
It felt a little like that now, like Gabe had yanked the skateboard—something I had been arrogant to even try to ride—right out from under me.
I was used to asking a simple question and sitting back, letting my subject monologue until I got some decent pull quotes. I was used to celebrities being excited to talk about themselves.
“It’s my job,” I repeated lamely.
“I know,” he said.
Do it better was what was implied.
I flipped through my notebook as if a life raft would suddenly appear.
“Have you always been a Bond fan?” I asked, floundering.
“Sure,” he said. “What man isn’t?”
“Did you watch them with your dad?”
Gabe’s face went blank.
If this interview was a sinking boat, I’d just blown out the bottom.
Because there was one thing I’d been told was off-limits.
Years ago, some scummy online tabloid had dug through Gabe’s proverbial trash and written a piece about the person that Gabe never spoke about.
It had been called “Gabe Parker: Without a Father Figure.”
The piece had been poorly written, thin on details, and yet it said more than Gabe or his management ever had. I was ashamed that I was one of millions who read it—discovering that Gabe’s father had died when he was ten.
The whole thing might have gone away if Team Parker hadn’t threatened to sue the tabloid. Instead, it just made people more curious. After all, if Gabe and his late father had had a good relationship, there would have been nothing to hide. Clearly there was something to hide. Abuse or estrangement or something equally horrible and juicy. Exactly the kind of information the public seemed to feel entitled to.
The kind of information that any interviewer would kill to have access to.
Looking at Gabe now, I could guess what he was thinking. That I was the kind of interviewer that would do whatever it took to get what I wanted—that I wasn’t above pushing his buttons to get a reaction. To get a story.
I wanted to get a story, just not in that way.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know the rules.”
If I had to grovel, I would.
“I didn’t mean—”
He waved a hand. “Let’s just move on, okay?”
Fuck. When I’d thought about all the ways I could mess up this interview, I hadn’t really considered that I would unintentionally and thoughtlessly lob a “gotcha” question at him.
“I won’t include that,” I said, knowing he probably wouldn’t believe me.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “What about your father?”
“My father?”
“Is he a Bond fan?”
His arms were crossed.
“Sure,” I said. “What man isn’t?”
I was trying to be playful, tossing Gabe’s words back at him. I had no idea if my father liked James Bond movies. The only things I’d ever seen him watch were Lakers games.
Gabe didn’t say anything, just cast a cynical look down at my notebook. I put a hand over the page. As if he could read it upside down and from across the table.
“I—”
But before I could finish my sentence, Gabe stood abruptly.
My stomach plummeted.