Chapter 29 Cass

CHAPTER 29 CASS

January 2007

New York

When The Very Last took off, I didn’t know how to feel exactly. I tried to tell myself it meant that Amanda wasn’t mad at me. How could she be if she was helping me from another dimension? But I couldn’t always make that logic stick.

My first royalty check was Powerball money. One day my account said $2,100—from my small book advance and my job working as a barista in our Harlem neighborhood—the next it looked like the number on a calculator you forgot to reset to zero. Many, many numbers. And all of it was mine. Accounts were in my new legal name (Cass Ford), and so were my credit cards. I had full access. But it was Sidney’s law firm that handled everything, could keep tabs on the back end. She made that clear.

I hated how brilliant she was at her job; how good the sex was. Because the relationship had bad vibes. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment three blocks from the Blue Star Café, where I was still working even as The Very Last was rocketing to the top of the bestseller lists. She oversaw my life so thoroughly, but I’d not yet tugged at the restraints. So, it’s no surprise that Sidney wasn’t planning to tell me about Ry Channing’s invitation.

And if not for a blizzard walloping New York, I’d probably have never known.

The day was cold and slate gray. I was working at Blue Star, but by midafternoon the place was empty. Eight inches of snow had already fallen, and they were calling for two feet. Nobody was on the streets. Closing early was a no-brainer.

I cleaned up, stacked the chairs, and locked the door behind me, stepping out into a snow globe. I walked in the middle of the avenue—no cars in any direction. Nothing could match the eerie thrill of a snowstorm, and I thought of Amanda pulling me along on an orange plastic sled into town, the two of us pretending we were on an expedition in Alaska. Survival not guaranteed. I imagined Amanda next to me now, wearing a red knit beanie, snowflakes on her eyelashes, loving every minute of a big storm. We never wasted a snow day; we squeezed adventure out of each one.

My tears were hot on my cheeks. I paused and tilted my head back, blinked and blinked. A MANDA IS DEAD , still written in the clouds.

A few minutes later, when I got into the apartment, I caught Sidney at our breakfast table, cell phone open in front of her, call on speaker. She was obviously surprised to see me and scrambled to bring it to her ear, but not before I heard the guy on the line say, “You’ve seen Ryan’s letter to Cate, she thinks an in-person will make the movie unstopp—”

When the call ended, I said, “Let me see the letter.”

Sidney reached for her work bag, tugged out a piece of paper. I leaned against the counter and began reading: Dear Cate, I find myself thinking of you frequently. Which is odd, of course, I’m aware. But there are a few reasons for this, which I’d like to explain if you come out to Los Angeles.

I paused, glanced at Sidney. She rolled her eyes, said, “It’s ridiculous, I know,” which was not at all my sentiment. I kept reading: The main reason I think you should come is because everyone thinks it’s a terrible idea. But I have this feeling that you don’t listen to what other people say—

“I’m going,” I said. I handed the letter back to Sidney.

“Don’t be crazy,” she said. “Secrecy isn’t exactly Hollywood’s strong suit.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said. (Also—what did Sidney know about Hollywood?)

“It’s not about being careful,” she said. “They chew people up, spit them out—I don’t want that to happen to you.”

“It’s not Hollywood , it’s one person. I’m going,” I said. Sidney didn’t understand me at all. “And… question for you: When, exactly, were you planning to tell me that the star of the movie adaptation wanted to meet with me?”

She ignored the question; selective engagement was her specialty.

“What about everything we’ve carefully built to get to this point?” she said. “Everything is in place the way you wanted it to be. You’re going to risk it all just because some prima donna can’t stand not having exactly what she wants?”

“That’s not what I read,” I said, although the idea of Ry Channing wanting time with me was not an insignificant factor in my decision-making. She carried herself with a kind of swagger, and her hand gestures made me hopeful she wasn’t totally straight. (If you know, you know.) I had watched Moon , then everything else she’d been in.

“She wrote that meeting with me would help the movie,” I said. “And weren’t you saying just yesterday that the quality of the movie is ‘crucial’ to the success of the next books?”

She stared at me. I held her gaze. Finally, she stood up.

“You just want to get away from me, don’t you?” she said, lifting her coat off the back of the chair, slipping it on. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? That’s what all of this is about.” She hammered these last few words, drew a circle with her finger. “Fine, go fuck up your life again,” she added. “See if I care.”

Then she walked out, slamming the door behind her.

My face was pressed against the plastic oval as the plane landed. Los Angeles, finally. More twists and turns than expected, but I was finally here. My heart ached for Amanda. I turned on my cell phone as we taxied to the gate. I had seven missed calls from Sidney. Earlier that morning, I’d slipped out of bed, then the apartment, without saying goodbye, and she sounded sad and disappointed in her first message, then angry in the next few. I powered down my phone and stuffed it deep into my bag.

The sun, the light—I had my hand out the window the entire cab ride, letting it catch the breeze, thinking about Amanda. Would all the weirdness between us have melted away as we drove into Los Angeles? Would we be starring in romantic comedies right now, happily complaining about the absurdity of the movie biz, or would we have burned through all our cash, gotten jobs as waitresses, and become bitter about our failed dreams?

I thought about how Amanda would have loved sushi, but not as much as what loving it said about her, as well as parties in the Hollywood Hills, which I’d only read about, and bottomless Champagne, which she would have been thrilled by, but mostly she would have loved knowing that Champagne was a place, not a grape. I could imagine her telling people that fact like it was a trivia gem until realizing most people already knew, and then she would have laughed at her na?veté and made that part of the story, too.

Los Angeles Amanda became real to me. She was still a good time, just like she always was—I mean, had been —but in LA, she would get sharpened. And I wanted so badly to know this version of her, to marvel together at the idiocy of our previous selves. I’d accepted Amanda’s death as a fact, but only intellectually—a trick that had kept me from the kind of grief that forces you beneath the covers.

In the back of that taxi, I opened a cheap spiral notebook—by then I’d gone through dozens of them—and wrote my best friend back to life.