One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell [38]
She laughed. “Oh, we have one.”
Back in her room, they engaged in the long, delicious process of getting to know each other’s bodies. When they took off their shirts and pressed together, the sensation of skin on skin was a revelation. They lay together for a while, like high school kids who have all the time in the world and don’t need to go too far too fast; then they took off their pants and pantomimed sex—his penis touching her vagina through their undergarments. All through the night, they touched and kissed, dozing off and waking to the joy of finding the other in the bed, and then the kissing started again, and finally, in the early morning when it was right, he entered her. There was nothing like that first push, and it so overwhelmed them that he stopped, just let his penis be inside her, while they absorbed the miracle of two pieces that fit perfectly together.
She had a seven A.M. call, but at ten A.M., during a break in shooting, he was in her trailer and they were doing it on the small bed in the back with the polyester sheets. They did it three more times that day, and during dinner with the crew, she sat with her leg over his, and he kept putting his hand under her shirt to touch her waist. By then the whole crew knew, but set romances were a given in the intimacy and stress of getting a movie made. Though they usually ended when the movie wrapped, Philip came to L.A. and moved into her bungalow. They played house like any other young couple discovering the wonders of companionship, when the mundane was new and even a trip to the supermarket could be an adventure. Their anonymous bliss lasted only a short while, however, because then the movie came out, and it was huge.
Their relationship was suddenly public. They rented a bigger house with a gate in the Hollywood Hills, but they couldn’t keep the outside world from creeping in, and that started the trouble.
Their first fight was over an article in a magazine that featured her on the cover. In the piece, she was quoted as saying, “I can’t take making movies too seriously. In the end, it’s not that different from what little girls do when they’re playing dress-up.” She came home from a meeting one afternoon and found the magazine on the coffee table and Philip in a foul mood over her quote. “Is that what you think about my work?” he said.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“That’s right,” he said, “because everything is about you. Did you ever consider the fact that it’s my movie you were talking about?”
“Don’t take yourself so seriously. It’s not attractive.” But she had, it seemed, irrevocably bruised his ego. They continued on for a little longer, then he moved back to New York. A miserable month passed before he called her. “I’ve been thinking. It’s not us. It’s Hollywood. Why don’t you come to New York?”
She’d been twenty-four then, willing to take on any adventure. But that was over twenty years ago, she thought now, staring at her reflection in the makeup mirror. In the harsh light of the bare bulbs, there was no denying that she no longer looked like that girl. Her face had matured; it was more angular and hollow, and no one would mistake her for an ingenue. But she knew a lot more about what she wanted from life and what no longer mattered.
But did Philip know? Leaning in to the mirror to check her makeup, she wondered what he’d thought when she’d run into him in the elevator. Did he see her as middle-aged? Did he still find her attractive?
The last time she’d seen him had been ten years ago. She’d been in New York doing publicity for a movie when she ran into Philip in the lobby of One Fifth. They hadn’t talked in over a year, but they immediately fell into their old habits, and when she’d finished her last interview, they’d met for dinner at Da Silvano. At eleven o’clock there was a terrific thunderstorm, trapping everyone inside, and the waiters cleared