Therapy

and this baby looks like it’s gonna be a five-year pain in the ass. Anyway, why are you in the pits?... Uh huh... Uh huh... I kinda guessed... Listen, sweetheart, you won’t thank me for saying this right now, but honestly you’re better off without him... Sure I never liked him, but was I right or was I right? Didn’t I say, never trust a man who wears a gold cross round his neck?... He exploited you, honey... As soon as you’d like paid for his root-canal work, and the acting lessons, he dumped you... Well, of course you feel that way now, but you’ll get over it, trust me, I’ve been there. Wait a minute, I got another call. Don’t go away...
    Hi. That was Nick, calling from New York, just to say hallo... Yeah, just for a few days. He’s got this client who’s opening a play off-Broadway. Say, Stella, you want me to take your mind off your troubles with this really weird thing that happened to me yesterday?... OK, kick off your shoes and put your feet up and lend me your ears...
    It was about six o’clock yesterday evening. I’d just come in from a meeting at Global Artists, and showered and changed and was wondering whether to fix myself something to eat or call Sushi Express, when the phone rings and I hear this British voice saying, “Hallo, Louise, this is Laurence Passmore.” Laurence Passmore?
    Like the name means nothing to me, and I don’t recognize the voice. So I say, “Oh yes?” in a neutral kinda way, and the guy gives a nervous little giggle and says, “I suppose this is what disc-jockeys call a blast from the past.” “Do I know you?” I say, and there’s like a pained silence for about a minute and then he says, “The people next door? Four years ago?” and the penny drops. This is the guy who created the original British version of Who’s Next Door? Yeah. It’s called The People Next Door over there. When I was working for Mediamax they bought the rights, and he came over from England as like a consultant on the pilot, and I was assigned to look after him. But like the name “Laurence” hadn’t rung a bell. “Didn’t you have a different name, then?” I asked him. “Tubby,” he said. “Tubby Passmore, of course,” I said. He came into sharper focus at once: fiftyish, balding, stocky build. He was a nice guy. Kinda shy, but nice. “I never liked that nickname, to tell you the truth,” he said, “but I seem to be stuck with it.” “Hey,” I said, “Nice of you to call. What business brings you to L.A.?” “Well, I’m not here on business, actually,” he said. Brits say “actually” an awful lot, have you noticed? “Vacation?” I said, thinking he must be on his way to Hawaii or somewhere. “A sort of vacation,” he said, and then: “I was wondering whether you would be free for dinner this evening.” Well, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it would have been outta the question. Nick and I were out every night last week. Every night. But as it happened Nick was away and I had nothing planned and I thought, what the hell, why not? I knew there would be nothing below the line on this date... Because once, when he was here before, I made a play for him and he backed off... Yeah... Well, I’d just split up with Jed and I was kinda lonely. So was he. But he turned me down, in the nicest possible way, because he loved his wife... Yeah, there are such men, Stella. In England there are anyway... Well, when I said yes to dinner he was like ecstatic. He said he was staying at the Beverly Wilshire and I thought to myself, anybody who is paying for himself at the Beverly Wilshire is my kind of date, and I was just wondering whether I had enough pull with the maître d’ at Morton’s to get us a table at short notice when he said, “I’d like to go to that fish restaurant down by the beach at Venice where we went before.” Well, I couldn’t remember what restaurant he was talking about, and he couldn’t remember the name, but he said he would recognize it if he saw it, so I did the decent thing and offered to drive us down there. Venice isn’t my favourite place, but I figured maybe it was just as well I wasn’t seen at Morton’s with an obscure English TV writer  I mean it’s not like this guy is Tom Stoppard or Christopher Hampton or anything.
    So I put on something casual and drove down to Beverly Hills to pick up Tubby Passmore at the appointed time. He was hovering by the doors, so I didn’t get out of the car, just honked and waved. It