"Metadata" by Edith-Nicole Cameron
- Roi Fainéant
- 5 days ago
- 27 min read
It was David who brought it up. “So your boyfriend made a movie,” he hollered at me out the car window. David is my husband. Eighteen years. He’s funny, right? Because I don’t have a boyfriend.
This was in January: a Friday, still dark out at 7:20 in the morning, and fifteen below. David sat in the driver’s seat of his electric blue Nissan Leaf, reverse lights on, ready to back out of the driveway to deliver the three children to their three respective schools. My fingers were bare, dexterous so as to fasten Lennon, my youngest, into his car seat, which not-quite accommodates him in winter, cocooned from chin to toe in what looks like a tiny spacesuit. After kissing Lennon’s balaclava-clad forehead, I slammed the back door when David – fifteen below! – rolled down the passenger-side window and leaned across Paige, our 12-year-old daughter.
I was not quite sure how to respond, so I pretended to not hear him.
“Ew. Mom has a boyfriend?” Paige asked, disgusted.
I briefly covered my smile with my hands, exhaling a bit of warmth into them. Then I blew kisses and my fogged glasses obscured whether I received any in return. Paige’s window rose shut.
I was taking a much-earned PTO day. I coordinate the performance art programming at the local modern art museum and while you don’t do that for the money, I’d amassed comp time amidst a tsunami of night-and-weekend holiday events we’d just wrapped up. The subzero temperatures limited my menu of day-off options, but I’d settled on two indulgences once I caught up on laundry: a hot yoga class at Inergy, and an entire glorious afternoon nestled on our sunroom couch with my down comforter and a book that had nothing whatsoever to do with parenting or performance art.
But David’s remark in the driveway rather disrupted my self-care extravaganza. David was referring, I could only imagine, to Metadata – Blake Bentley’s first feature-length film. It had been on my radar since August, and Allie had confirmed its release via text a week before: OMG. Metadata!!! You will DIE. It’s on Netflix. Allie is my former college roommate, a real live Hollywood actress who you probably don’t know by name but whose face you would certainly recognize, and also and more importantly she’s my very best friend, dubious career choice notwithstanding.
At any rate, I still don’t know how or when David heard about Blake’s film and I don’t think I’ll ask. Films aren’t really David’s thing. And good Lord neither is Blake Bentley. I don’t even keep up with Blake’s career. I mean, when I’m reminded it exists, I do feel vaguely happy for him. He’s arrived, hasn’t he? That’s nice.
But generally, Blake does not cross my mind.
I haven’t even seen him since 2005. He told me then that making movies was all he wanted in life, though on that particular occasion, he wasn’t optimistic. We were both twenty-six. Baby adults. Blake worked in advertising, self-loathing and sullen about selling out and resentful of the rare successes some of his film school classmates were seeing. Not long after, actually the same year I was promoted to Associate Performance Arts Curator at the museum, a position I hold to this day, Blake won a big award for a cell service commercial. It starred Bea Arthur and debuted during the 2008 Olympics. It was, I think quite objectively, hilarious – I always found Blake hilarious. But anyway, for him, that commercial was a game changer. In Blake’s final email to me, sent on Wednesday, September 26, 2009, right after my daughter Paige landed on earth and right before Blake’s (first) wedding, he mentioned that his sitcom pilot had been picked up. I read the email while pumping in a museum bathroom stall. Typing one-handedly on the laptop perched precariously on my thighs, I replied: “That’s amazing!!!” He never wrote back. I have never since included more than one exclamation point in an email.
The show ended up being wildly popular, but for some time I avoided watching it. This was the long-nights-short-years stage: as soon as Paige hit thirteen months and started sleeping through the night, her brother Archer was conceived, and we barely weathered the two-under-two storm. Four years later, on the horizon a future where mortgage-sized daycare bills, febrile seizures, and BPA-free sippy cups were but distant memories, David was promoted to the chief suite and we overindulged in two celebratory bottles of Krug Vintage Brut. It was after Lennon was born nine months later when I finally did watch Blake’s show.
Allie had been in between projects and flew out to Minneapolis to lend a hand while David traveled to Dublin for a tech conference. Allie was useless where changing diapers or reading bedtime stories was concerned. But every night, once the kids were down, she made us each an Old Fashioned, I pumped and dumped, and we binge-watched all five seasons of “Choose A Life.” The show capitalized on late ‘90s L.A. nostalgia: the brooding disenchantment of not-quite-making-it in the entertainment industry. But it was glossy and cute for primetime, so no cocaine. Allie had slept with two of the supporting-role actors featured in Season 4.
“You gave me chlamydia, asshole!” she shouted at my 72” flatscreen.
“Gross. I’m sorry.”
“It’s treatable,” she shrugged. Allie can shrug off anything.
Hormonal, sleep-deprived, slightly drunk, and officially outnumbered by humans incapable of meaningfully contributing to their own daily survival, I could see through blurry eyes the show’s appeal. It evoked a pulse, or maybe a sense of place, that made me homesick. But Blake had not transcended the tortured artist trope. The main characters were three male roommates in their early thirties, all stuck on the artist’s pendulum, vacillating between grandiose and doubtful, as they tackled in every episode a different existential crisis, a different complication in their predictable romantic entanglements with girl in adjacent apartment / artsy barista girl / girl dating best friend. And these women were props. Conventions to propel the plot, centered on the real stars: the vortex that is Los Angeles and a trio of impossibly attractive, self-defeating men all clearly addicted to intensity. My therapist once theorized that Blake was addicted to intensity.
You know who is not addicted to intensity? David Rockwell, my husband. Eccentric first impression aside, he’s a very steady person. No swinging pendulum. An occasional bad day, sure, when he’s battling a cold or misplaced his keys or when Apple stock has plummeted or news of a thorny HR issue has just graced his inbox. But generally, he’s neither stuck nor self-defeating. To my knowledge, no femme-props thrust his narrative.
David runs the IT department of a medical device start-up. He emerged as a sort of software wunderkind during the tech boom of the early 2000s, and got his first six-figure job at seventeen. He has always preferred to be called David – not Dave, never Davey – because David afforded him a more authoritative air when, unable yet to grow facial hair, he had started out in his field. Now he has a generous beard, mostly silver, although the hair on his head is still dark. David regularly reads The Economist, bakes two loaves of 100% whole wheat sourdough every other Sunday, and meditates at the lakefront Zen Center on Friday mornings before the rest of us are even awake.
I met David on a Thursday night in March of 2002. Three months earlier, I’d packed up my entire life into a teal Honda Civic and driven from Santa Cruz to Minneapolis. The draw was an entry-level job in the Walker Art Center’s communications department.
David was a regular at the Walker’s “Next Gen Modern” events – booze-infused, invitation-only parties meant to secure the charitable dollar of young professionals in the Twin Cities before some other non-profit got it first. My colleagues and I were required to attend, supplying social lubrication on an as-needed basis. Everyone hangs out with their high school friends in the Twin Cities, so being fairly new to Minneapolis – and two thousand miles away from my own high school friends – I was happy to have something to do at night. Even if it was technically work and necessitated branching out of my own diminutive tax bracket.
David introduced himself while we both waited in the cash bar queue – Next Gen Modern’s hotbed of flirtatious possibility. He wore a dark gray Hugo Boss suit and I immediately wondered whether the number on its price tag had exceeded my monthly salary. He was cute, in a Scandinavian way, and tall, which I like, and he leaned down to hear me through the din. He laughed freely at my jokes and maintained eye contact throughout our conversation, not once scanning the room to evaluate preferable networking opportunities or blonder, leggier women. Maybe this was normal adult behavior, or Midwestern behavior, I didn’t know. But hitherto I had not experienced such undivided attention, while dressed anyway. Once we each held a stemmed plastic flute of sparkling wine, I touched his forearm as an experiment. He leaned in a bit closer and it was then that I noticed his lips: juicy delicious, I’d later tell Allie. David seemed to read my mind: “Do you like tacos?” We kissed in the Walker Sculpture Garden while waiting for a cab, and then again at Chino Latino in between margaritas, and then more vigorously in the back of the second cab we shared that night. As the driver idled outside my Loring Park apartment, David sucked on my bottom lip so hard that it evolved into a hickey by morning, which I didn’t know was possible.
The next day, slightly hungover and wearing maroon lipstick, I interviewed my work colleagues to discern the appropriate passage of time before I could call him. Was two days too eager? David texted at 11 a.m. Do you have lunch plans? When I met him outside the Uptown Diner thirty minutes later, he placed his hands on my cheeks, bent down so that our faces were inches apart, and said, “I like you so much.”
Now, of course, our origin story is two decades stale and buried beneath the mundanities of family life: permission slips, mac and cheese, wrinkled math homework and stray Lego bricks; ripe, sweaty pajamas strewn on the living room rug; sock balls proliferating like dust bunnies beneath beds, couches, radiators. But then, I found David’s initial enthusiasm almost embarrassing. It dawned on me, though. David wasn’t amassing material or narrating a sexier version of his life as it unfolded. He would never write a book about meeting me, dwell on details like my margarita-sweet mouth or the fogged-up windshield of the cab. David never notices the details. I don’t know what he notices. I was Californian and artsy and I suppose I added texture to his already-clear track. Whenever our evening schedules kept us apart, he called. On week two, David was on the phone with his mother when I overheard him refer to me as his girlfriend.
Blake Bentley, on the other hand, never called. I was never his girlfriend. We first crossed paths at a party in February of our junior year – I was at Cal Arts, Blake at USC. Allie and I hosted the party at Allie’s mysteriously rich Uncle Carl’s condo in Santa Monica, where we’d been enlisted to housesit for two weeks and feed three moody cats.
For years this party was legendary in the collective memory of those in attendance. Allie finally sealed the deal with Lance Olsen, who’d fancied her since welcome week at Cal Arts but only that night temporarily ditched his Mormon teetotalism and garnered enough liquid courage to make his move. Two seniors known fondly as the Gay Justins got so high off Lea Garcia’s boyfriend’s mushrooms that they jumped in tandem from Uncle Carl’s third story patio into the courtyard pool, which was hypothermic in temperature, but – thank heavens – neither covered nor drained for the winter. RFB – a nickname, short for Repressed Friend Brett (we had a lot of nicknames in the theater department) – spearheaded a slobbery spin-the-bottle tournament, later linked to a mono outbreak on campus. Also, we lost one of the cats.
I always skewed more uptight than most drama majors, possibly more repressed even than RFB, but at parties I’d still end up smoking pot out of an apple under the deft tutelage of Korean Gay Justin or taking three shots of Goldschlager followed by a chaser of Catholic guilt. I liked inching towards out-of-control and then panicking my way back to my baseline prudishness.
At the party with which we are concerned, it was around 1 a.m. when my drink-induced elation waned. I surveyed the room: Sticky red Solo cups populated every horizontal surface – window sills and marble counters, Uncle Carl’s state-of-the-art stereo system; a stream of bong water dripped off the glass coffee table, pooling on a zebra-print rug that I hoped was not an actual dead animal hide. I figured we’d had a good run and were lucky nobody had gotten hurt and it was time to signal a winding-down trend. I collected as many partially-filled cups and beer bottles as I could carry and headed to the kitchen to exchange them for bleach and a sponge, when Allie grabbed my arm.
“Relax,” Allie said. “Like, how fabulous is this party?”
Allie was in my class but almost a year older and decades worldlier. She’d grown up in Burbank and her dad worked in film production, but wasn’t a big-name producer normal people hear about, and to this day I have no idea what exactly he, or any producer, does. At any rate, early exposure to the industry gave Allie an edge. Vidal Sassoon hair and legs for days didn’t hurt. She was the lead in every mainstage production that included a sexy female protagonist. And she grabbed on to every opportunity she could to “hone” her craft. On Tuesday afternoons, she worked as a standardized patient at UCLA’s med school, guiding America’s fumbling, future top doctors through their inaugural pap smears and breast exams. Allie’s giant emerald eyes were only half open as she grabbed the stack of cups from my hand, and I wished I could look as pretty sober as she looked stoned.
She took the topmost cup, poured in equal parts vodka and Fresca, and handed it to me. “It’s the conquests you’re going to remember, Claire, not the cleaning.” I had written off the prospect of conquests at that point, but I could at least revive my buzz.
“Ben just got here, and he brought like really cute friends and there is one whose face you are totally going to want to eat,” Allie whispered in my ear. She gestured with a perfectly-shaped eyebrow towards the front door. And there was Blake Bentley, with two other presumably heterosexual males (worthy of note at a drama party) and Ben Sloane, Allie’s high school classmate, a film studies major at USC. Just that day we’d invited Ben when we ran into him at Trader Joe’s, Allie and I each pushing an unwieldy shopping cart full of cheap beer and rail-quality vodka, obviously prepping for a party.
I try not to overthink what this says about me as a wife and, you know, functional adult, but all these years later, I can still describe in considerable detail what Blake looked like that first time. He was about a foot taller than me and skinny, with short dark hair that formed a sharp widow’s peak on his high forehead. He wore loose but not baggy jeans and a tight-fitting baseball shirt with a heather gray torso and navy sleeves. I immediately noticed the rigidity in his posture, a restraint entirely inconsistent with the effusive, incestuous energy of the party, the energy of my college career.
Allie looped her arm through mine and escorted me to our newest arrivals. Ben’s face widened into a loopy grin as we approached, leaving me with no doubt whatsoever that he held romantic aspirations toward Allie. Who didn’t? He formally introduced us: “my film program buddies.” Blake’s eyes met mine and I knew right away he was going to be important for me. “Drinks are over here,” I said, lacing my fingers through his and directing him to the bar, the others following.
Blake opted for Coors Lite over vodka. Close up, his eyes were starless-sky dark and he blinked – like he walked – deliberately, slowly. We must have engaged in some obligatory socializing initially, pretending to ignore winks of encouragement and RFB’s “hit that, C!” But before long, Beck’s Odelay blaring on Uncle Carl’s built-in speakers, Blake leaned towards me: “It’s kind of loud and crowded in here, for talking.”
We ended up in Uncle Carl’s office, upstairs, away from the actual party. There was a large empty desk and bookshelves full of records and a framed sketch that Allie swore was an original Picasso. Blake and I melted into a copper distressed-leather loveseat, my legs stretched over his lap, his beer-free hand resting on my thigh. Youth.
Blake was from Missoula. He was obsessed with movies and baseball and had already decided that his senior project was going to be a parody of Pulp Fiction. He showed me his idea book: a tiny notebook with a built-in pen that he kept in his pocket. I flipped through the pages, laughing at the cryptic phrases scribbled throughout: “tuna pet” and “Sick Boy zombie?” and “Uma Thurman drag queen.” I found a blank page and, emboldened by liquor and the proximity of his mouth, wrote my phone number. “Just in case,” I said. “I was going to ask,” he said.
I told him I wanted to live somewhere besides California, just for a bit, because I wanted to see what else was out there but knew that California would always be home. I didn’t think I’d act after college. I wasn’t as funny as the Gay Justins or as hot as Allie and the thought of spending my twenties being sad about not even getting quirky best friend parts made me want to vomit. Then, to lighten the mood, I did my own impression of Will Ferrell’s impression of Harry Caray, which I’m sure was absolutely terrible, but Blake laughed out loud, and his smile was gorgeous, and I’d trade big-audience applause for that laugh any day.
Four hours in, I worried I’d misunderstood the situation. When were we going to make out already? Was there gum in Uncle Carl’s desk? My thighs tingled as I thought about Blake’s tongue in my mouth, but dawn was about a catnap away, and a mounting tiredness tempered the heat of the moment. Right as I thought maybe we were just going to doze off until morning, Blake eased my legs off his lap, and then his hips onto mine. He tasted like beer and spearmint, a combination that turns me on to this day, because of him? The couch didn’t fit us lengthwise, so after kissing for a while (that’s it, truly), we spooned on the floor and fell asleep.
In the morning, Blake borrowed my toothbrush – an intimacy I construed as true love indeed.
For the next several days, I indulged an insatiable desire to replay the best portions of our night together to anyone who would listen. The general consensus was that this was definitely going to be a thing. But when a week passed with no word, my friends’ once-fervent endorsements soured.
The odds of this being a forgettable one-off incident would have been greater had Blake not resurfaced just often enough to fuel my enduring infatuation. I forgot to mention – at that same party, while Blake and I christened Uncle Carl’s office, Ben and Allie got high together and a communal epiphany dawned: they should, like, totally hang out. I assume Ben’s epiphany included just him and Allie, no clothes. Allie’s epiphany, however, involved a massive overhaul of our social lives. And so commenced an era, during which we regularly hung out with Ben and his USC film friends, sometimes even Blake, mostly at parties, always varying degrees of inebriated. When Blake did show up, we invariably ended up flirting then making out – in Ben’s dorm room, on the beach, outside bars, at a Maroon 5 concert when they were still called Kara’s Flowers and the cost of admission was a one-drink minimum. I’d invariably wait for his call – this time – and it invariably never came.
At the end of our senior year, we planned to meet Ben in Venice for a bonfire. He showed up with two of his friends, but no Blake. Ben’s face was solemn, ridden with regret as he divulged: Blake had a girlfriend. Her name was Beth and she was a drama major at USC and very loud. Ben always thought it was going to be me. I think he meant that to be comforting, but it just made me want to punch his face.
After graduation, equipped with a BFA in Acting and no aspirations to act, I returned to Santa Cruz to live with my parents. I wrote press releases and program notes for the Shakespeare Festival at UCSC. I saved money and missed my friends and fantasized about Beth farting at an audition or breaking out with sudden-onset cystic acne the morning of her first screen test. I confessed these thoughts to Allie, who said I needed to figure out my life and overnighted me a batch of magic brownies. I applied to entry-level jobs in arts organizations all over the country. In August, evaluating offers for a program assistant position with South Coast Rep in Orange County, and in the communications department at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, I opted for the latter, figuring the farther away the better.
A lot happened then, because that’s how it goes in your twenties, strings of impulsive decisions unwittingly made, defining the tight trajectory of your entire future. In Minneapolis, I fell in love with seasons, the Twin Cities arts scene, and David, of course. We were engaged within a year of that Next Gen Modern event. I heard from Allie, who had heard from Ben, that Blake and Beth got engaged at around the same time.
In July of 2004, exactly five days before my wedding, a note from Blake arrived quite unexpectedly in my email inbox: I hear you’re getting married. That makes one of us. Beth and I broke up. Congratulations. He’s a lucky guy. My sticky brain, evidently not fully relieved of its faulty Blake-hard-wiring, spun: was this a sign? Timing was uncanny. I logged into David’s and my Crate & Barrel registry and saw that nearly everything we’d selected had been purchased. Signs were not a thing. David and I got married the following Saturday, in the Walker Sculpture Garden.
*****
Just before our first anniversary, David advanced to a director-level position at his company. This was major; he would oversee over a dozen developers and finally get a seat at the table. A sizable raise and massive stock option grant were also in order. His boss, Stan Schwartz, saw his younger self in David and had no small hand in facilitating David’s promotion. Stan was the most Minnesotan person I’ve ever known: he held season tickets for Gophers football and periodically invited us to tailgate along with his high school buddies; his four sons all played club hockey; and his wife, Kimber, taught scrapbooking classes from her art shed on their two-acre waterfront property in Deephaven. David didn’t have much in common with Stan, but he liked that Stan liked him and knew that his expedited rise within the company depended on Stan’s favor.
One unbearably humid evening in early August, Stan hosted a small congratulatory reception in David’s honor. It was casual, yet catered: pickles rolled in ham, Reuben sliders, a keg of Grain Belt. I nursed a glass of saccharine rosé, served to me on the rocks, and mingled with the wives, all of them a decade or two older than me, most advanced degree-holding stay-at-home moms. They found my job fascinating and raved about the Walker but, when pressed, conceded they’d never actually been. Once we ran out of things to talk about – this was before I had children – I excused myself and headed towards the chips-and-dip table, where Stan was bellowing jokes and David and a group of his colleagues responded with on-command laughter. As I approached, I heard David say: “Claire too! She puts a quarter of each paycheck into a little slush fund.” David avoided eye contact as he put his arm around my shoulders. All the men laughed, their brows sweaty and their armpit stains dark and moist. I laughed along with them.
In the car, I confronted David. “You think my savings account is cute?” I asked.
“I was joking, Claire. Stan was talking about giving Kimber an allowance and then someone said their wife just got a part-time job and she called her money hers and his money theirs, and I was just trying to stay afloat in the conversation.”
“You called it a slush fund.”
“Well,” David hesitated. One smart way to stay steady is to avoid conflict. “It was a joke. I’m sorry.”
“It was demeaning. I’m sorry I don’t have stock options or an employer-matched retirement account. I just get a regular income, and I save some of it. Is that a problem for you?”
“No, I’m not mad,” David said. NPR was on and he turned up the volume. “But it’s not like you use it to pay the bills.”
*****
The week after Stan’s reception, marital dynamics still fraught, I received a phone call from Myra Steinem, one of my former professors from Cal Arts. Myra had been hired as the Artistic Director for a small but well-respected theater company in Pasadena. She was the first woman to be offered this role. Her budget covered one full-time staff person and she wanted it to be me. I would be a Jill-of-all-trades: marketing, fundraising, casting, running lights in a pinch and probably bartending at opening nights. We would focus on amplifying female voices and revisiting the classics through a feminist lens. It was the opportunity I had dreamed of since I’d ditched acting but had never allowed myself to envision. I would get to be near Allie, all our college friends.
David didn’t get how moving to a more expensive city to earn less money could be my dream or what a scrappy theater company with two underpaid staff could offer that an endowed modern arts museum could not? These were the wrong questions. I visualized a widening chasm between us, taking on the shape of South Dakota, Wyoming, then all the states separating California and Minnesota. I tapped into my “slush fund” and bought a plane ticket to LAX. I booked my Friday flight on Tuesday and told David on Thursday night. Before heading to MSP on Friday morning, I went through my email archives and clicked Reply: Blake! I’m so sorry to hear about Beth and hope you’ve recovered some. I’ll be in West Hollywood with Allie for the weekend. Want to meet for a drink? It would be fun to catch up.
I arrived in Los Angeles midday, to a high sun, dry hazy air, and the smell of hot pavement. Allie and I spent most of the weekend cuddled in her bed, under the same purple duvet she’d had in college. I helped pick the best ten of her recent headshots, all gorgeous; deep-cleaned her fridge while she slept in on Saturday morning; and skimmed through her stacks of US Weekly and Back Stage West. On Sunday, my last night, she straightened my hair and lent me some strappy heels. “Have fun but please don’t fuck away your marriage,” she advised. “He’s just a dude, Claire.” We each did a shot of tequila.
Blake arrived in a red pickup truck. He looked good. Better than I’d remembered. More chiseled in the jaw but also older, maybe in a tired or sad way. He wore what Allie referred to as “everyman’s black going-out shirt” – fitted, long-sleeved, thin pale stripes. We faced each other awkwardly in Allie’s doorway and smiled, shy and amused and an inappropriate degree of excited. Blake opened the passenger door for me and we drove together to Dragonfly, a bar in Studio City, Blake’s choice. We sat on a burgundy velvet couch in the lounge, which was dimly lit by candles and warm gold lanterns hanging overhead.
I asked Blake how he was holding up in the aftermath of his botched engagement. He was grateful that Beth had cheated on him before they were married with two kids. He worried that he’d never trust a woman again. About his job, he said it was making him dumber but he didn’t want to be defined by how he paid the bills. I asked how the Pulp Fiction parody went and Blake sat up a bit straighter and his smile widened. “I can’t believe you remember that,” he said. He had called it Pulp Future and I could tell he was proud of it.
As our server delivered a second round of gin and tonics, I was overwhelmed by the actuality of Blake beside me. I felt more like myself. My phone lit up on the table. I flipped it open and read a text message from David: Thinking about you and the job. Has Myra offered it to someone else?
“Is that David?” Blake raised his fresh drink for a toast.
“Yeah. He just wants me to call him tomorrow.” We clinked our lowball glasses.
I texted David: Still out at a bar tonight. I’ll call you in morning before my flight. Then I put my phone in my purse.
“So, he’s like the world’s greatest programming prodigy, I hear,” Blake said.
“Are you jealous?” This was better than winning an Oscar.
“Does he know about me?” Blake asked. David and I had, of course, early in our relationship, suffered the standard epic conversation about our respective pasts. He was aware of my Blake infatuation, but its profundity was lost on him. For David, meeting me eradicated any of his own lingering questions. I suspect he thought our relationship had resolved any past ambiguities I’d harbored as well.
“He knows that once upon a time I liked you a lot more than you liked me, and from his vantage point, it all worked out for the best,” I said.
“Oh that old story,” Blake shook his head slowly, a coy admonishment. “Our timing was the catastrophe, Claire. Not our feelings.”
This was bullshit but I couldn’t help but love it. Star-crossed trumped spurned every time, and it gave some consequence to the unearned ease growing between us, aided by alcohol and nostalgia, intoxicating in equal measure.
We were the last ones in the bar and it was nearing 2 a.m. I tried not to stare at Blake’s lips, glossed with a shiny slick of gin. Our server had left for the night, leaving just the bartender to close. He blasted Coldplay and the AC in a passive-aggressive effort to galvanize our departure. I was wearing a spaghetti-strapped tank top, no bra. “You have goosebumps,” Blake’s gaze lingered at my shoulders.
“I’m fine.”
“I just want to touch you.” Blake leaned away from me on the couch and clasped his hands together behind his head. “I can’t believe you’re someone’s wife.”
I couldn’t either. I didn’t feel like someone’s wife.
“It’s your fault,” I said, and I meant it. I’d lost count of my drinks and a subtle rage bubbled in my stomach.
“I didn’t see it,” Blake said. He took both my hands in his. “I didn’t see this. I am clearly the one who missed out here.”
Later, we sat in his truck, our torsos twisted to face each other. I considered how the inevitable had blurred with the impossible, how alcohol had complicated things, because we wanted things complicated. Blake placed his hands on the sides of my face and when we kissed, it was familiar, and we did that cinematic thing where you start slow, then resist an inch and stare at one another before diving back in more deeply. But before the deep dive, my phone buzzed.
I pulled away and rifled through my bag. It was 4 a.m. and my flight was in four hours. I had missed three calls from David and seventeen texts from Allie. One, sent a couple hours before, said: Don’t hate me. David kept calling. I panicked. I told him where you are. Her last message read: ARE YOU DEAD IN A FUCKING DITCH???
I imagined Blake and myself getting into a drunk-driving accident and dying. We’d crash on the 101 with the HOLLYWOOD sign illuminating our mangled bodies, my crimson blood mingling with Blake’s on the windshield. David would be embarrassed and he’d hate me forever and hating me would soften the blow of becoming a 26-year-old widower. His next wife would be a lawyer or maybe a dermatologist, with a 401k, immune to sinking ships of druthers, her only weakness the crispy edge piece of tater-tot hot dish.
“Allie can pick me up here,” I said to Blake. “You should take a cab home.” He nodded, expressionless. I kissed his cheek, grabbed my purse, and unsteadily made my way to a bus stop bench a few yards away, where I sat down and called Allie. Blake waited in his pickup until she showed up and then he sped away down an empty Ventura Boulevard. A week later I received a package at the Walker: a VHS recording of Pulp Future.
While Allie and I drove back to her apartment that morning, gathered my stuff, and rushed to the airport, I didn’t call David. At the Northwest Airlines gate, I scanned the waiting area for the seat most isolated and fit for wallowing. And there he was – David, sitting in the row nearest the attendant counter, head hunched low, resting on his hands, folded in his lap. He’d taken that crack-of-dawn flight to LAX, on the plane that was about to turn around and return to MSP. He wore crumpled grey jeans and the blue “Bike to Work” t-shirt I’d bought him for his birthday in May.
“David?” My head hurt from gin and grief. I had imagined Blake intercepting me at the airport.
“Claire!” David stood up and practically sprinted the thirty feet between us, before wrapping his arms around me. He kissed my hair. “You should take that job. We can make it work here.”
“Didn’t you talk to Allie?” I asked.
“I don’t even care. You had every right to be mad. I fucked up. Let’s just look forward. It doesn’t matter.” David’s hands cupped my face now, softer than Blake’s. His eyes were dilated and watery, dark circles swelled underneath and dried sleep had crusted across his left lower lashes.
“Myra hired someone else.” That would be true soon enough. I put my arms around his waist and buried my face into his blue shirt.
Never during our flight back to Minneapolis, or that week, or in the seventeen years subsequent did David ask what happened between me and Blake. So you can see why his mentioning the film came as a bit of a shock. It was literally the first time David had said anything about Blake Bentley. Ever. In our whole marriage.
*****
I did not watch the film straightaway. Watching Blake Bentley’s first feature film all by myself sounded sort of dirty. I scoured some crusty dishes and started a load of towels. I missed Allie and texted her so. She was on location somewhere in Canada – something about studio tax credits and cheap grips. My phone vibrated on the kitchen counter: Have you watched it? I have been waiting too fucking long to discuss! Three dots danced underneath the message, and then: Now we’re both almost famous. ;)
I hauled my king-size down comforter to the basement, threw the towels into the dryer en route, settled into our faded microfiber couch. I unearthed the slender black remote buried between two couch cushions, scrolled through our various underused digital subscriptions until I got to Netflix, and started Metadata.
And… the film is about me. Me and Blake. Mostly Blake, actually, but there’s us, intense and aspiring and oblivious, overanalyzing the world and its discontents, dancing and drinking and swapping barbs then saliva. I mean, we – the real we – were different. But also the same? Two college dreamers drawn to one another, albeit unevenly? Embellished with all the cinematic trappings: first impressions and much-anticipated messing around and missed chances and almost-theres. Beck blaring loudly at a party; a scene filmed at the actual Dragonfly? And something I’d forgotten! But I’m certain it happened. They are outside the bar: the woman, married (alas), and the man, eyes opened. They each hold a cigarette, and the woman uses a match to light first his, then her own.
Him: I can’t believe we’re finally on a date, and you’re married.
Her: It’s not a date.
Him: What would you call it?
Her: An investigation. I’m collecting data.
Him: Ah. So it’s a metadate.
Except in my memory, I had been the one to coin “metadate.” I remember thinking that was very funny of me.
Of course the end is different. Not happily-ever-after different. The two succumb to a lippy embrace and then part ways, true enough to life. But it’s Blake’s story and so it’s about Blake and I’d never really thought about it before but I suppose Blake’s life did change after he drove away in his red pickup. The film sums it up in a very filmy way. Man is initially self-deprecating and forlorn, heart broken, dead-end job destroying his soul; then the woozy attraction, seeing himself through her eyes; the man sits up a bit straighter, yields more easily to laughter, his old lost self restored. A montage ensues: An airplane takes off in his rearview mirror. Closeup wistful grin. He types furiously on his MacBook and scribbles in his pocket-sized idea book; he pitches his idea, confident in the board room. Then contract signings, screenings, toasts. In the final scene, he places a framed award on his desk next to a smaller frame, containing what looks like a business card centered behind the glass. The camera pans in and we see: a matchbook from Dragonfly.
I couldn’t help but be flattered. Not every person is lifted out of life and put into a film, you know, enhanced with a fresh bob of curls, perky unbound breasts, and a gleaming set of pearly whites. Yet there I am: suspended in an enchanted series of frames or pixels or whatever magic it is that Blake toiled for two decades to perfect. And I don’t say “perfect” hyperbolically. Blake has perfected this story. Captured it wholly and lovingly. Layered on dimension and meaning that entirely eluded the version repressed in the recesses of my own memory. But then, it wasn’t such a turning point for me.
****
Later in the afternoon, I wondered if I should send Blake an email. The children came home on their respective buses and left their soggy snow layers heaped in the mudroom and I asked Paige to prepare a snack for her brothers. I withdrew back to the basement, to fold the towels and think about what I might say. Offer praise for a job well done? Say thank you? Or perhaps you’re welcome? It would be very crisp and witty, of course. Unsentimental, but gracious. I’d write simply to convey my admiration, and, conceivably, also to confess how strange it is to see oneself onscreen. How strange it is to see that an experience, our shared experience, from essentially a lifetime ago – which for me was quite distressing and disorienting and sad, and for me anyway, highlighted how my options had narrowed before I realized I had any – was for him, evidently, valuable material. All those details I’d held close and to which, some years, I’d fallen asleep, were for Blake a commodity.
****
David’s schedule doesn’t vary. At six o’clock, just before he was due to arrive, I heated up some leftovers for dinner and asked Archer to set the table. When David walked into the kitchen, he kissed my forehead and squeezed my ass. My therapist would call this a “bid” and on another day I might have welcomed the attention. As I ate my dinner and gulped down a hazy IPA, which David had poured into a pint glass for me, I looked across the dining room table and pondered my husband. I decided that, had I stayed in the red pickup and taken that theater job, my life really would have been no different. Frozen in time seems to be where I wield the most influence. I am no David or Blake. I don’t aspire or avail myself of the right things or wait for the right time. I don’t take or leave with much intention. And that knack for framing a loss as a gain – it has always been just out of reach. I don’t resent their successes. Systems are in place to ensure them.
It was my turn to put Lennon to bed. I sang him a showtune in lieu of lullaby, tucked him in, and kissed his salty forehead. David was standing in the hall outside Lennon’s door, evidently waiting for me.
“I saw Metadata,” he said.
“Oh,” it turns out I had not really expected that. “Did you like it?” I asked, suddenly aware of my hands, which I wanted to put in my back pockets but my yoga pants were pocketless.
“It’s about you,” he said.
I laughed a bit meanly, despite myself. “It’s about Blake Bentley,” I said. “But yes, some parts seemed to be inspired by real events.”
David opened his mouth to say something and then stopped. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, and on the exhale opened his eyes to meet mine. His shoulders – which I hadn’t realized were tensed – visibly relaxed. “Thank you for choosing me,” he said.
I was about to say “I didn’t have a choice,” because I really never felt like I did. But he seemed very earnest, so instead, I said, “Thank you for choosing me.”
On Friday evenings, we usually watch TV or play a board game or snuggle on the couch with a glass of wine and complain about coworkers or the weather or Republicans. If the indoor air temperature is suitable and we both happened to shower that day and no children loiter nearby, peppering us with a litany of made-up needs, we might end up messing around. But that night, I told David I was tired and wanted to go to bed. I had nothing more to say at that moment to him or to Blake Bentley.
Upstairs in my bedroom, I texted Allie: But what happens to the girl?
She wrote back promptly: Right?? Well, what do you expect. He’s just a dude, Claire.
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