He had taken the boat out on Sunday but felt none of the old excitement. If he could find a buyer he’d sell it. He shook the hands of his guests with a firmer grip than was expected, meaning to crush the life out of them. One of the pictures on the table in the center in the place was his daughter on a magazine cover. On The Rise was the headline, and four young men and women beneath it, faces, bodies, figures of a coming uplift. He remembered one of Kate’s quotes. “I find the movies to be a site of opportunity,” she had said. He had read the quote out loud to his wife. “Miss U.N.” he had said, resurfacing an old nickname. Kate had already captured the public’s fancy with a supporting role in Room For Improvement, a comedy about young teachers. Later that year, she had her first star turn, in a movie called Anything But Time that was described as an “erotic thriller.” He didn’t see it but he heard good things about it from Jack, his law partner. He could have done without the lip-licking but he wrote it off as subconscious. The other movies came one after the other, titles that sounded like racehorses: Presently Engaged, Wink, Sullivan’s Call. He began to attend them and was amazed not just at Kate’s abilities but at the live wire that ran through her. She bought herself a mansion and bought him the boat. Now, off the boat, in the room, listening to the decent people all around him speak in whispers, he felt his fists clench. He smiled helplessly, remembering the body going down into the earth. “My baby, my baby,” he said, for the first time since she was a baby. Famously he tried to stand but was pulled back earthward by gravity and grief. They would talk about it for years.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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