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this unexpected?” I ask through gritted teeth. “You’re suing me!” He doesn’t get up from his desk, like he normally would when a lady enters a room. He stays planted behind it, using it as a shield.
    The coward.
    â€œYou broke up with me and refused to talk to me,” Douglas says, matter-of-factly, picking a pen up from his desk and then examining it. He’s calm, cool. Which has the effect of making me even more angry than I was when I marched in. (And, yes, you read that correctly, I didn’t walk in, I marched.)
    â€œNo, you broke up with me by getting engaged to another woman!” I say, voice rising higher and higher with each word that comes out of my mouth. “It was only after you tried to humiliate me at my ex-boyfriend’s wedding that you even wanted me back.”
    â€œThat’s not true,” he says. “That’s not true at all. I realized that you were the one and so I came to the wedding as a romantic gesture.”
    â€œIf only that were true,” I say. “After I said ‘no,’ did you get back together with Beryl?”
    Yes, Douglas broke up with me and got engaged to a woman named Beryl. I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that he was cheating on me or the fact that it was with a woman named Beryl.
    â€œRight,” he says.
    â€œRight,” I say back.
    â€œRight.”
    â€œRight,” I say, but then realize I have no idea what we’re even saying ‘right’ to anymore. In fact, I think that he’s saying ‘right’ to something completely different than what I’m saying ‘right’ to. And clearly, you want your ‘rights’ to be right. Right? “Wait? What are we even talking about here? Why are you suing me?!”
    â€œBecause you’re writing a movie about my life,” he says, hands folded neatly on top of his desk. Then, looking me dead in the eye he says: “What, you didn’t think I’d find out?”
    And, no, the truth is: I didn’t think he’d find out. A tiny little part of me (the very, very stupid and naïve part, I’m now figuring out) thought that Trip and his wife could just make their little movie about my life quietly and no one would ever be the wiser. Not Douglas, and certainly not Trip.
    But the more I think about it, I realize that this is all because of that clip on Entertainment Tonight . If Ava hadn’t gone on Entertainment Tonight to announce plans of this film, none of this would have happened! Douglas wouldn’t have found out that my ex-boyfriend was making a movie out of my life and he would never have sued me. This is all Nancy O’Dell’s fault! Damn you, Nancy O’Dell! Why do you have to be so damned perky and report the entertainment news so well?! That’s it—from now on, I am boycotting that show. Yes, from now on, I will only watch Access Hollywood ! But, I digress.
    â€œ I’m not doing anything. How would I write a movie and get it produced? Why would I write a movie? I’m a lawyer,” I say. “It’s Trip. My ex-boyfriend Trip is writing the movie as a star vehicle for his wife, Ava. Remember Trip? If you’d just come with me to his wedding last spring, none of this would have ever happened.”
    â€œWell,” he says, “according to Entertainment Tonight , it seems that I did come with you.”
    â€œAbout that—” I start to say, only to be cut off by Douglas.
    â€œI knew it! Trip still doesn’t know, does he?” Douglas asks. “He actually thinks that that silly American colleague of yours is me?” Douglas throws his head back and laughs with a deep throaty thunder, as if this concept is the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. Which is ridiculous in of itself. You see, Douglas is laughing because he thinks that Jack is no match to impersonate him—that he, himself, is so fabulous that Jack isn’t