and I could cook. There had to be strings attached. I just couldn’t figure out which ones, or where. And on that morning, with the sun shining and the waves rolling in, it seemed easier to let this wonderful adventure unfold than to spend much more time trying.
Things happened very quickly after that.
Maxi drove me to a skyscraper with bluish-silver glass walls and a trendy eatery on the bottom level. “I’m taking you to meet my agent,” she explained, punching the button for the seventh floor.
I racked my brain for appropriate questions. “Is she… does she handle writers?” I asked. “Is she good?”
“Yes, and very,” said Maxi, marching me down the hall. She rapped sharply on an open door and stuck her head inside.
“That’s bullshit!” said a woman’s voice, floating out into the hallway. “Terence, that’s absolute crap. This is the project you’re looking for, and he’s absolutely going to have it done by next week…”
I peered over Maxi’s shoulder, expecting the voice to belong to a chain-smoking dame with platinum hair and possibly shoulder pads, with an unfiltered cigarette in one hand and a cup of black coffee in the other… a female version of the reptilian sunglassed guy who’d told me there were no fat actresses in Hollywood. Instead, perched behind the giant slab of a desk was a strawberry-blond pixie with creamy skin and freckles. She wore a pale-green jumper and a lace-scalloped lilac-colored T-shirt and a pair of Keds on her child-sized feet. Her hair was gathered into a haphazard bun with a pale blue scrunchy. She looked as if she were maybe twelve years old.
“That’s Violet,” Maxi said proudly.
“Bull-SHIT!” said Violet again. I fought down the urge to put my hands on my belly where I imagined the baby’s ears would be.
“What do you think?” Maxi whispered.
“She’s… um,” I said. “She looks like Pippi Longstocking! Is she old enough to be using language like that?”
Maxi cracked up. “Don’t worry,” she said. “She might look like a Girl Scout, but she’s plenty tough.”
With a valedictory “Bullshit,” Violet hung up the phone, got to her feet, and extended her hand. “Cannie. A pleasure,” she said, sounding like a regular person, not like a fire-breathing dragon who’d been channeling Andrew Dice Clay just moments before. “I really enjoyed your screenplay. Do you know what I liked best about it?”
“The curse words?” I ventured.
Violet laughed. “No, no,” she said. “I loved that your lead character had such faith in herself. So many romantic comedies, it seems, the female lead has to be rescued somehow… by love, or by money, or a fairy godmother. I loved that Josie just rescued herself, and believed in herself the whole time.”
Wow. I’d never thought about it quite that way. To me, Josie’s story was wish fulfillment, pure and simple – the story of what could happen if one of the stars I interviewed in New York ever looked at me and saw more than a potential puff piece in plus-size female form.
“Women are going to fucking love this movie,” Violet predicted.
“I’m so glad you think so,” I said.
Violet nodded, yanked the scrunchy out of her hair, ran her fingers through it, and gathered her curls into a marginally neater version of the same bun. “We’ll talk more later,” she said, gathering a legal pad, a fistful of pens, a copy of my screenplay, and what looked like a copy of a contract. “For now, let’s make you some money.”
In the end it turned out that little Violet was an ace negotiator. Maybe it was just that the sound of that brassy voice and nonstop stream of obscenities coming out of her adorable little person was so jarring that the trio of young guys in sharp suits wound up staring more than they did contesting her assertion that my script was worth it. In the end the amount of money they gave me – one chunk to be delivered within five days of signing, the other to be handed over the day filming began, a third chunk for “first look” at whatever I wrote next – was pretty unbelievable. Maxi hugged me, and Violet hugged both of us. “Now go out there and make me proud,” she said, before traipsing back to her office, looking for all the world like a fourth-grader coming in from afternoon recess.
By five o’clock that afternoon I was sitting back on Maxi’s deck with a bowl of chilled grapes in my lap and a flute of nonalcoholic sparkling grape juice in my hand, feeling the most incredibly sweet relief. Now I could buy whatever house I wanted, or hire a nanny, even take a whole year off of work when the baby came. And whatever rewriting I had to do, it wouldn’t be as bad as facing Gabby, and her nonstop stream criticism, both of the to-the-face and behind-the-back variety. It couldn’t be as bad as straining over the seventh draft of my letter to Bruce. Those things were work. This would just be play.
I talked for hours that afternoon, screaming out the joyous news to my mother, to Lucy and Josh, to Andy and Samantha, to assorted relatives and colleagues, to anyone I could think of who’d share in my happiness. Then I called Dr. K. at his office.
“It’s Cannie,” I said. “I just want you to know that everything’s fine.”
“Your friend’s feeling better?”
“Much better,” I said, and explained it – how Adrian had recovered, how I’d decided to stay at Maxi’s, how tiny little Violet had gotten me all of this money.
“It’s going to be a great movie,” Dr. K. said.
“I can’t even believe it,” I said, for perhaps the thirtieth time that afternoon. “It doesn’t even feel real.”
“Well, just enjoy it,” he said. “It sounds like you’re off to a wonderful start.”
Maxi watched the whole thing bemusedly, and threw a tennis ball for Nifkin until he collapsed, panting, next to a pile of seaweed.
“Who’s that one?” she asked, and I explained.
“He’s… well, he was my doctor, when I was trying to lose weight, before I got pregnant. Now he’s a friend, I guess. I called him last night to ask him about Adrian.”
“It sounds like you like him,” she said, waggling her eyebrows, Groucho Marx style. “Does he make house calls?”
I have no idea,” I said. “He’s very nice. Very tall.” “Tall’s good,” said Maxi. “So what now?” “Dinner?” I suggested.
“Oh, that’s right,” said Maxi. “I forgot that you’re multitalented. You can write, and cook, too!”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I said. “Let me see what else is in the fridge.”
Maxi smiled. “I’ve got a better idea of something we should do first,” she said.
The guard at the front of the jewelry store nodded at me and Maxi, and swung the heavy glass door open wide.
“What are we doing here?” I whispered.
“Buying you a treat,” said Maxi. “And you don’t have to whisper.”
“What are you, my sugar daddy?” I scoffed.
“Oh, no,” Maxi said very seriously. “You’re going to buy something for yourself.”
I gaped at her. “What? Why? Shouldn’t you be encouraging me to save? I’ve got a baby on the way”
“Of course you’re going to save,” said Maxi, sounding eminently
