My Hollywood Read Online Free PDF

with a boy Will’s age, by the chance of our goofy nanny, felt promising. Though I didn’t know what to say to Helen. She was not really my type—beautiful.
    We ducked into a coffee shop. The boys sat in their strollers snubbing each other. When we stopped at the park they ran, pushing to be first to the top of the slide.
    Looking at Will, Jeff said, “Where’d you get the … the outfit?”
    Will swooshed headfirst down the slide in the blue jumpsuit that looked like a gas station attendant’s uniform. I loved that one. When I’d bought it, Paul had gone ballistic.
    He groaned. “Those tiny things cost seventy dollars. And she brought home two.”
    “Size eighteen months and size three.” I’d skipped size 2. That was prudent. The Guggenheim I’d stashed away had paid for our move here, but Paul made it his job to preserve that fortification against my raids. It gave me pleasure, though, to write the check at the sweet children’s store. I disliked having to find the right moment to confess to Paul, whose mother was an outlet shopper. So I didn’t always. Confess.
    “Got that?” Jeff asked Helen, when I said the name of the store: Imagine.
    “I’ll remember,” she said, rummaging in her purse.
    “Or I’ll tell you again.” I liked it that I’d picked something Jeff Grant wanted. His approval seemed hard to get.
    Jeff handed her a pencil. “Let’s write that down.”
    “I buy Bing’s stuff at Ross Dress for Less,” Helen said. “You two could never be married. You’re too much alike.”
    Are we? I thought, the sun burning my arms. Jeff probably was impossible.
    Helen laughed. “But his craziness comes with his genius.”
    The putative genius nodded along.
    I was already talking myself out of him. I’d once thought I’d end up with a guy like Jeff. But I was thirty-three by the time I got married, old enough to know I wanted to make music. The difference was huge, a deformity that had its cost. Once, music had been enough for my whole happiness. (I named my tap concerto Rapture.) But then I’d begun to want a life. Mistake. Now I had one and was no good at it. So I won’t get that, I thought, watching Jeff, thinking of bells, their linger.
    The four of us stood at the swings, our boys pumping, a take-out latte in each mother’s hand. A middle-aged form of dating. It felt as if this new friendship could change us the way that, in my twenties, I used to think a guy would. Maybe, I thought, as wind dragged flecks of eucalyptus against my face, this would give us a thread of excitement. I didn’t imagine whispering under the sheets at night the way we once had or turning each other’s bodies in the gray dawn. But even dressing up to go out, talking with the bathroom door open, was something we hadn’t had for a long time.
    Helen and I sat on a seesaw, behind our boys. I didn’t know how hard to bump. Bing looked delicate, his teeth small and even, like corn. Helen’s hands absently reached up to her hair and made a deft braid. A girl stopped in front of her, belly out, the hem of her dress torn. “Could you do that to me?”
    “What do you say?”
    “Please.” She turned around and stood still. “Can you make a French one?”
    “Come on,” Will demanded, stranded on the up slant.
    Willie jumped down then, jolting Bing, and ran off to the monkey bars. Helen gave him a look, her hand still working on the careful immobile head. “I should have a girl,” she mumbled. I understood that they planned to have more. That was true of them in general.
    That day Will looked his best, wind riling his curls, a gift from Paul’s mother, who blow-dried her own straight. He climbed a play structure, manning a wheel. I jumped up to tell him five more minutes , a way I’d copied from an offhand mother. Another kid crawled near my shoes and I tripped. Will pushed onto the kid, almost horizontal, swimming in air. It happened so fast. I sat on the metal floor—the kid had tied his shoelaces with mine.