Devin knew so many famous people. His mother was a Tony Award-Winning Choreographer for crying out loud. He grew up around all that crap—actors and dancers and artists and writers—all the most creative and world-renowned personalities that New York had to offer. He probably would have laughed at me for making a big deal out of knowing “guy at bus stop”.
Soon after that, around Thanksgiving, Trip had a small but meaty role as a male escort in Bonded . I hadn’t seen that one in the theaters, but the commercials for it ran nonstop and the buzz was pretty big. Even though Ella Perez was the big headliner star in that film, Trip was the one that ended up getting all the attention. It was a small part in a pretty big movie, and was a major turning point in his career (and apparently a major turning point for my subconscious, since my dream from the other morning was practically a shot-for-shot reenactment of his sex scene in that film).
The following fall, he had another supporting role in The Bank Vault , a huge Tarantino ensemble which was nominated for all sorts of awards. I watched the Golden Globes and the Oscars that year, hoping to catch a glimpse of Trip in a tux. But he wasn’t at either event and Bank Vault walked away with only a gold statue for sound editing.
According to the Page Six in front of me, he was the lead actor in Swayed , which was scheduled for release on October 5— my birthday— and was currently wrapping up filming on something called ReVersed down near Washington Square Park in the city.
Trip’s been in New York all these weeks?
I’d known that he was filming a movie “on location”, but I didn’t know that the location was New York . And not just New York, but Washington Square Park! The square was mere steps away from my apartment down in The Village and basically served as the backyard for my alma mater, NYU. I knew the area well. I’m sure I must have registered the white trucks and production equipment throughout the park, which were a telltale sign of yet another movie being filmed in the neighborhood. But between the big budget Hollywood flicks, independent features and New School student films, that scenario wasn’t so out of the ordinary on any given day in the city. A person learned to become immune to such things pretty quickly.
Lisa’s babbling broke through my daydreaming. “Wonder if he’ll be at the reunion. You got the save-the-date, right?”
“I did. I was going to ask you about it. Are we going?”
As Lisa prattled on about our former classmates, thoughts of my Bonded dream played through my mind. I’d earlier settled on the idea that I merely hallucinated about the movie because I had just seen it on DVD. Combine that with the reunion reminder, and my mind had simply sparked a memory about Trip’s and my personal sex scene from years ago.
But then I started to wonder if maybe I was actually psychic. Maybe I’d telepathically sensed his proximity and subconsciously invited him to slip down the street, seep through the cracks under my door and plant himself right into my waiting mind.
Wow. One mere mention of my ex-boyfriend and it already felt like my brain had begun to melt. I was starting to lose it. Bigtime.
“Jesus. Ten years,” Lisa finally sighed.
“Yeesh, I know,” I said, trying to reconstitute my grey matter. “Wanna start placing bets on whose asses got fat now, or should we wait until it gets closer to the event?”
Lisa folded her newspaper back onto the empty chair next to her, saying, “Hey. Lay off fat asses. Mine’s been expanding lately.”
“Yeah, but you can get away with it. You’re married to an ass man.”
Our salads came, and the two of us immediately attacked them with abandon. Mmm. Looked like I got some extra crispy bacon on my Cobb. The Westlake Pub made the best salads in the world, but the rest of their menu was pretty spectacular,