In Some Other World, Maybe: A Novel by Shari Goldhagen Read Free Book Online Page A

at all, let alone in their district. He’d only moved into the second bedroom of her Studio City apartment in December, and for the last few months, he’d been so obsessed with whether the pilot he’d filmed would be picked up that she couldn’t imagine he’d gotten around to filling out the forms.
    The more surprising thing Phoebe discovers, when she wobbles from her bedroom at 9:00 A.M. on November 7, is that Adam is awake, showered, and dressed in something other than the NYU T-shirt and track pants he’s been wearing every day since CBS officially, officially passed on Goners three weeks ago. Adam is wearing gym clothes, but clean gym clothes, like he might actually work out, as opposed to getting drunk or high and insulting the TV and all the actors who do have on-air sitcoms.
    “Is this that hotel off Lankershim?” he asks, gray eyes alert, no longer drugged and dilated, as he studies the Department of Elections mailer.
    “Yeah, the ExecuStay.” Phoebe’s not even sure she’s still registered, but it’s good to see Adam off their secondhand couch, so she tells him to give her a few minutes and she’ll come along. “Just lemme brush my hair.” She starts to run fingers through her short black bob, but he reaches for her hand.
    “Don’t—it’s sexy like that.”
    It is; she knows.
    After he booked the pilot and they started sleeping together, Adam had suggested she chop the heavy, straight hair that had hung halfway down her back since sixth grade. He’d said it would accentuate her features, make her more distinctive. Following the cut, she’d booked two crappy local print ads through her crappy modeling agency and had gotten even more phone numbers slipped to her at the hostess stand at Rosebud. But it’s been weeks since she and Adam have had sex and, as they never bothered discussing what it meant when they started screwing, they’d certainly not gotten around to analyzing what it means now that they’re not. Phoebe’s been waiting for him to say anything.
    His hand still on her arm, him noticing she looks good—this could be that moment.
    He lets her wrist go; it’s not.
    “When I was in high school, they let everyone over eighteen leave early to vote.” His voice takes on the gauzy nostalgia it has had since Goners was pronounced a no-go and he started idealizing the small Florida town where he grew up. “I don’t think my grandfather’s ever forgiven me for going for Clinton.”
    She’d still been seventeen in November 1992, but Oliver had been of age, and when they were in love and telling each other everything, he’d confessed that he’d been confused by the punch cards in the voting booth. Kissing him, she’d whispered they should go back to her dad’s house, because she’d “never fucked a voter before.” (She’d actually never fucked anyone at that point but was trying on her sexuality and liked the way it sounded.) Now that’s the kind of line she’ll throw out at an audition to show she’s tougher than she actually is, something to say when flirting with the bartenders and waiters so they’ll remember to tip her out at the end of a shift. With Oliver, it had been different—eight years ago, sex had been a concept linked to love.
    Adam suggests they walk to their polling place, since it’s just down the street.
    “ Nobody walks in LA, ” she sings in her best New Wave voice, and when he laughs, she feels herself smile, excited she made it happen.
    The natural light in their basement apartment is so limited that, stepping outside, she’s temporarily blinded by the sun. Tripping over broken concrete, Phoebe grabs Adam’s biceps for support. He pats her fingers. Neither one lets go when she’s stable.
    “Are you going home for Thanksgiving?” he asks. “Your father and your brother called again last night.”
    “So everyone can tell me I’m wasting my life? No thanks.”
    Adam shrugs. “I like your parents.”
    The feeling wasn’t entirely mutual. Six