Will wasn’t an idiot—he knew every person in Hollywood with money fancied himself a producer. But this guy had a real job, a real office he went to, and everything. So it wasn’t just a pipe dream when he sent it along. But now Will had been waiting ten days, and nothing still. He checked his email again. It was a holiday back home. Relax. He’d just never allowed himself to want something quite like this before. He needed out so badly. Away from everything that was transpiring in that other email box of his. But he needed the money. He needed the dignity. He couldn’t let Whitney leave him further behind just yet. As ever, movies were his island, his salvation. But all he could do for now was tinker meaninglessly. He opened the software he’d downloaded for free. He read: INT—BAR—NIGHT. Then he changed it to something better: INT—BAR—DAY.
“Jesus, sorry,” Whitney said, emerging from the bedroom. “That was an hour longer than it was supposed to be.”
“All okay?”
“I can’t stand it when executives misuse words. Exegesis. Enervate. Epigraph.”
“Exigencies,” he said. “Equal pay.”
Whitney smiled. “You get it. Will gets it. And that’s the point of keeping him around…” she said. “The last twenty minutes was just Karen describing her house search, anyway.”
“What neighborhood?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. They’re playing a much greater game than Westside-Eastside. They’re looking for something that’s architecturally significant.”
She was stripping down to take a shower. Off came her shirt and her bra and then her pants. He stood and pressed up behind her. She could feel him through his jeans.
“You’re not so architecturally insignificant yourself,” he said.
She looked at him with real or feigned disgust in the reflection of the hallway mirror.
“Are you calling me sturdy?” she said. “You’re saying I’m what, a brick house?”
He dropped his hands from her hips and rolled his eyes and returned to the couch, to the fresh beer he’d just cracked, and she moved to the bathroom for a quick rinse-off since the moment was gone.
They were out the door by seven. They crossed Diagonal and zagged through the Eixample, the big corners, the wide intersections with their plane trees. They passed the 1-2-3 restaurant, set back on the chamfered corner beneath a black awning and black glass, no tables on the sidewalk, no invitation to come in without a reservation, as they’d done forty-eight impossibly long hours ago. They passed a Gaudí. They passed another Gaudí. It was the only thing they could count on in this neighborhood. The tree-trunk curves, the twisted wrought iron, the jagged colored tiles. Never more than a few blocks without a reminder of whose city it was.
They were up out of the Eixample and into Gràcia, squares with classical guitars and fathers dancing with young daughters. There were pedestrian alleys with empty restaurants and businesses with gibberish portmanteaus and big transparent windows framing two or three employees, younger than Will and Whitney, working on laptops with a single shared desk and a single shared printer, late on a maybe-local-holiday. They passed another couple their age speaking English, and both Whitney and the other woman did it to one another: They looked each other up and down and then in the eyes. Do I know you? Do I like you? Do I hate you? Do I work with you? Did I go to school with you? Do I owe you an email? Do you owe me a call? Are you pretty? Are you famous? Are you a stranger? You’re a stranger. You’re nobody I know, goodbye.
The slope grew steeper. They passed a man seated on a bench with a Walkman who was singing along with a heavy accent to the Beach Boys. The alley kicked back steeper still. If they followed it into the hills they would hit Parc Güell, the escalators that carried tourists to the top, to the palm trees and the salamander and the dreamscape and the view.
Instead, though, they found the restaurant, a stand-up thing with a stand-up counter and stand-up tables. Leonard had picked it. Whitney had cross-referenced it with their email guide, and there was indeed a consensus. The room was tight but the ceiling was high, and the walls were packed with wine and tins of fish. Golds and grays and strangely appetizing browns. The walls of liquor bottles appeared illuminated by a warm yellow source, shining through the vintage labels. They were on the early side, so there was still space to stake their claim. They spotted Jack and Leonard in the back. They already had glasses of wine. But they weren’t speaking to one another as Will and Whitney approached. They were staring straight ahead. They had space between them, and Leonard’s arms were crossed until she noticed Will and Whitney.
“Hola,” Leonard said. Their standing up made her seem all the smaller, all the wronger in scale. Jack was wearing an oversize dark-blue shirt, an oversize collar spread like wings. The sculptedness of his hair made his head seem even smaller than the night before. Leonard was wearing a bright blue dress. In contrast with the dead laundered dark of Jack’s shirt and jeans, the dress was alive with light. Whitney didn’t know for certain, but she suspected it was Valentino. It reached her shins and was carved up in
