Romance Impossible(66)

The snow would be past his knees, but he didn't have far to walk, and I knew it was useless to argue with him.

Jill was using her keyring light to rummage for something in the kitchen. Matches, presumably. I was proven right when she returned to the dining room and started lighting a few of the candles, until one corner of the dining room was filled with warm, flickering light.

"Can't even see the ceiling," she said, tilting her head back. I glanced up, and she was right. Just endless darkness.

I sat down across from her and we stayed here in a silence that felt just as endless, stretching between us for miles and miles. Things I couldn't say. Things she never would.

And it didn't matter, really. If she loved me or she hated me, and I now suspected it was both - either way, there was no future for us.

I knew this, and I accepted it, for so many reasons.

But looking at her face in the candlelight, it would have been all too easy to forget.

"Do you ever wonder," she said, her knees curled up to her chest, "what would have happened if we'd never met at Giovanni's?"

I didn't want to go down this road.

"No," I said. "I don't suppose it ever occurred to me."

"Sometimes I do," she said, simply. "But I don't suppose you would have hired me."

"I might've."

She raised an eyebrow.

"I might've," I repeated, stubbornly.

"I don't know why I ever thought you'd forgotten me," she sighed. "Like it was some random happenstance, me ending up here."

"I hired you because you're talented," I said. "Driven. You think I hire everyone whose feelings I've hurt?"

"No," she said. "Maybe just the ones you feel bad about."

The lights flickered abruptly, and she let out a little gasp.

"Shit." She was laughing. "You'd think I would have been prepared for that."

One more time, and then they stayed on. For one minute. Two.

Outside, I heard the massive metal groan and scrape of a snow plow. Before long, there would be no excuse to stay here any longer. I felt desperate to make some kind of point, to make her understand - something. But I didn't know what.





***



Before I knew it, Lydia was handing us our tickets for Los Angeles.

"Phil says six more weeks of winter," she said, cheerily. "So you're getting out just in time."

"What have I told you about referencing superstition in my presence?" I grumbled, unfolding the envelope. Six a.m. flight. Fantastic.

"The one thing I don't get about that whole thing," Jill was saying, "is why six weeks? Specifically? Why is that his only unit of measurement for the seasons? You would think a psychic groundhog would be a little more range-y."

"Precognitive," I said, purely to be an asshole. "He doesn't read minds."

"Well he doesn't predict the weather, either, but as long as we're just accepting the basic premise." Jill squinted at her ticket. "Six a.m.? Seriously?"#p#分页标题#e#

Lydia shrugged. "It was that, or a three-hour layover in Chicago."

"Oh, well," said Jill. "I guess it could be worse."

It got worse.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Rechauffer





Everything sounds better when you say it in French. Don't just reheat cooked food; rechauffer. But if you can avoid it, don't reheat cooked food at all.





- Excerpted from Dylan: A Lifetime of Recipes





***





Jill





***





When we arrived at LAX, it was pouring down rain. "Pissing down," as Max so charmingly put it.

"Aren't we filming a bunch of outdoor stuff tomorrow?" I asked him, as we huddled underneath the shelter by the passenger pickup area.

"Perhaps not," he said.

As it turned out, that should have been the least of my worries.





***



After two straight weeks of spending the first forty-five minutes of your day sitting in a makeup chair, it actually starts to seem normal.

My makeup artist was named Una and she told me her life story over the period of several days, to the point where I felt fully qualified to write her autobiography. I thought I looked eerie, staring at myself in the mirror - my skin too smooth and plasticine - but on T.V. it was necessary.

Max told me this, and I didn't argue with him.

We filmed a lot of things separately, and in such a piecemeal fashion that it was hard for me to follow the narrative of the competition. I got to know a few of the restaurant owners fairly well, but a few of them kept blending together in my mind, to the point where I didn't dare attempt to call anyone by name.

The weather never turned on us again. The ground was a little soggy the first day, but after that, everything was beautiful.