He took her across Melrose to a place called Coffee Plus Food. It was almost closing time, so they were nearly out of coffee plus food. The joint was also blissfully empty of people. It was just the two of them and the cashier, a bored, unsmiling Australian chick. They sat at a round steel table by the tall windows. Josephine tried to pay, but Julian wouldn’t let her. She ordered three sausage rolls (“I told you I was famished”), an avocado salad, a coffee, and the last morning bun on the tray after he assured her that the morning buns were not to be missed, like an attraction at Disneyland.
“I’d like to go to Disneyland someday,” she said, devouring the pastry. Even Ashton’s Riley, who ate primarily kale, allowed herself the morning bun. It was crispy and caramelly, a cinnabun mated with a croissant and glazed with crunchy sugar. “It’s like love in a bun,” Josephine said, her happy mouth sticky. She said she’d have to come back for another one before flying back home, and Julian restrained himself from asking when such a hideous flight might take place.
“What do you do, Julian?” she asked as she started on the sausage rolls. “What do you teach?”
“Nothing, why do you keep saying that?”
She twinkled. “You left your house this morning dressed for school.”
Julian was going to tell her that he did indeed teach a story writing night class at the community college, but now wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. They were off for the summer anyway, so technically he wasn’t a teacher.
“Teaching is a noble profession,” she went on, the smile playing on her face.
“I know,” he said. “I come from a family of educators. I’m just not one of them.”
“So what do you do?”
“A bunch of things. I run a blog, I write a daily newsletter …”
“Ooh, a blog about what?” she said. “Teaching?”
Now Julian really didn’t want to tell her.
“Come on, what’s your blog called?” With buttery fingers, she took out her phone. “I’ll look it up.”
He wished he had named his blog, “Deep Thoughts from a Viking Lord.” Instead he was stuck with the truth. “From the Desk of Mr. Know-it-All.”
“I knew it! You tell other people how to live!” She laughed. “You have that look about you.”
“What look is that?”
“The fake-quiet-but-really-I-know-everything look.” She was delighted. “Is it like an advice column?” Grinning, she leaned forward. “Do people drown you in their suffering?”
Sometimes yes. “Mostly they write to ask how to get rid of birds that fly into their houses.”
“Not for advice on love, are you sure?”
He tried to keep a poker face. “It’s not that kind of blog. I’m not Mr. Lonely Hearts.”
“No?”
How could one maintain a poker face against such onslaught?
A few years ago, he started distilling his website into a daily newsletter. He picked a handful of questions, tied them up with a theme, and offered a handful of life hacks and pithy sayings to go along with them. The soul is a bird inside your house, Nathaniel West wrote. Better one live bird in a jungle than two stuffed birds in a library.
The young woman clapped. “I can’t wait to bookmark you,” she said. In her voice, even a word like bookmark sounded erotic. “Do you have advice for frustrated actresses?”
He wanted to impress her with his own inappropriateness by telling her to never go topless unless it was essential to the story. “Dress to the camera,” is what he said.
Flicking up the collar of her see-through blouse, she crossed and uncrossed her bare legs. “Done. Bring me my pasties and a fedora. What else?”
Did she just say pasties? Mon Dieu.
“Once,” Josephine said, “a casting director told me not to try so hard to be someone else. Just be yourself, she told me, and I’m like, you idiot. I’m auditioning for Young Nabby Adams on John Adams, isn’t the whole point to be someone else?”
Julian laughed.
“I get a ton of advice,” she went on, “especially after I don’t get the part. Don’t be so desperate, Josephine. Relax, Josephine. Have fun! Drop your shoulder! I’m like, where were you before my audition? If that’s all I had to do, I’d be winning a Tony by now.”
“How long have you been at it?”
“How old am I? Oh yeah—that long. I prefer stage to film,” she announced, like it was a badge of honor. “It’s more real. And I’m all about making it real.”
“So why do you come to L.A. then?” Not that Julian was complaining. But L.A. was a make-believe town.
“Why? For the same reason Bonnie and Clyde robbed banks.”
He laughed. “Because that’s where the money is?”
“Yes! It’s not acting I love, per se. I just love the stage. I like the instant feedback. I like it when they laugh. I like it when they cry.” She twirled a loose strand of her hair. “Do you like plays?” She batted her lashes. “Besides The Invention of Love.”
“Yes, that’s one of my favorites. Oscar Wilde is pretty good, too. I once played Ernest in high school.”
“I was Cecily and Gwendolen!” Josephine exclaimed with a thrill, as if she and Julian had played opposite each other. Grabbing his hands from across the table, she affected a stellar British accent. “Ernest, we may never be married. I fear we never shall. But though I may marry someone else, and marry often, nothing can alter my eternal devotion to you.”
The name Gwendolen made Julian stop smiling. Casting aside his enchantment, he politely drew his hands from her and palmed his coffee.
Josephine, puzzled at his sudden wane, pivoted and refocused. “Sorry, you were in the middle of telling me what you did for a living, and I interrupted you with myself. Typical actress, right? Me, me, me. You run a blog, you said? Sounds like a hobby, like it’s even less lucrative than acting. And trust me, there’s nothing less lucrative than acting.”
“I thought actors cared nothing for money, they just wanted to be believed?” At the Cherry Lane, she had made a believer out of him.
“That’s first.” She smiled grandly. “But being booked and blessed wouldn’t be the worst thing that happened to me.”
“Well, there’s money in blogging,” Julian said. “I get paid from Google ads, plus I run a pledge drive twice a year. Whoever sends me a few bucks gets my daily newsletter.”
“How many people pledge?”
“Maybe thirty thousand. And two million unique visitors to the website. That helps raise our ad rates.”
She became less casual. “Two million visitors? I may be in the wrong business. Who is our in that sentence? You and the famous Ashton?”
“Yes, the famous Ashton.” Who was probably calling in an APB on Julian at that very moment.
“Is he the other Mr. Lonely Hearts?”
Why did everything out of her mouth sound like she was playing with him? Playing with him like seducing him, not toying with him, though she may have also been toying with