Good in Bed

This? What was this? I unfolded the note completely, and a silver key fell into what remained of my lap. A car key. “The lease is up next month,” Adrian had written on the back of the piece of paper, along with the name and address of a Santa Monica car dealership. “Drop it off when you’re ready to go home. And enjoy!”

I got slowly to my feet, walked to the window, and held my breath as I raised the blinds. Sure enough, there was the little red car. I looked from the key in my hand to the car in the driveway, and pinched myself, waiting to wake up and find that this was all a dream… that I was still asleep in my bed in Philadelphia, with a pile of pregnancy pla

Maxi yawned, rose gracefully off the floor, and came to stand at the window beside me. “What’s going on?” she asked.

I showed her the car, and the key, and the note. “I feel like I’m dreaming,” I said.

“Least he could do,” said Maxi. “He’s just lucky you didn’t go through his pockets and take pictures of him naked.”

I gave her a wide-eyed i

Maxi gri

I’d expected Maxi’s cupboards to be bare, except maybe for the foods I thought that starlets subsisted on – Altoids, fizzy water, perhaps some spelt or brewer’s yeast or whatever the diet gurus had decreed they should be eating.

But Maxi’s shelves were stocked with all the basics, from chicken broth to flour and sugar and spices, and the refrigerator had fresh-looking apples and oranges, milk and juice, butter and cream cheese.

Quiche, I decided, and fruit salad. I was slicing kiwis and strawberries when Maxi returned. She’d changed into a pair of black pedal-pushers and a cherry-red cap-sleeved T-shirt, with big black sunglasses and what I took to be fake ruby barrettes in her hair, and Nifkin was sporting a patent-leather red collar studded with the same jewels, and a matching red leash. They both looked very grand. I served Maxi and then, in the absence of kibble, gave Nifkin a small portion of quiche.

“This is so beautiful,” I said, admiring the sun glinting on the water, the fresh breeze stirring the air.

“You should stay for a while,” Maxi suggested.

I shook my head. “I need to wrap things up and head back…,” I began, and then stopped. Really, why did I have to hurry back? Work could wait – I still had vacation time stored up. Missing a few prebaby classes wouldn’t be the end of the world. A room with a view of the ocean was enticing, especially given Philadelphia’s fitful, slushy spring. And Maxi was reading my mind.

“It’ll be great! You can write, I’ll go to work, we can have di

I wanted to jump up and down with the joy of it, but I wasn’t sure the baby would approve. It would be incredible out here. I could wade in the surf. Nifkin could chase seagulls. Maxi 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. “Ca

“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 na