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leans up on her elbows. “Only it’s a legit station and
not Wayne and Garth’s basement.”
    “Interesting.”
    “How’s that?”
    “I thought that
would be beneath you at this point.”
    “I grew up around
here. Just over the hill and past that little Irish pub.”
    “I thought you
spawned somewhere.”
    “Funny.”
    But it wasn’t. Her
smirks emotes sticks and stones, dickhead .
    The pause in the
conversation gets nine months pregnant, and I have no idea where to go from
here, so I occupy my hands and mouth with my coffee mug.
    I check on Ulie
and see that he’s curled up on the porch, shivering a little. I feel bad for
the guy. It’s chilly out there. It’s chilly in here, too, but for different
reasons.
    “So,” Lauren
finally says, drumming those pristine nails on the tabletop.
    “So…” I nod in
that uncomfortable way that indicates I have reached the limit of things I can,
or want, to say to this woman. She’s right, you know. I did publicly apologize,
profusely and profoundly, for what happened on that Halloween night over two
years ago. Like I said, I earned the public’s scrutiny, and I’m trying
my hardest to get some payback for Chelsea, and for my reputation, and yet,
that doesn’t mean I have to become instant chums with someone who openly called
for me to commit hara-kiri in the middle of Times Square.
    Her words exactly.
She was brutal.
    And now she thinks
I’m simply going to pretend that the water under the bridge isn’t highly
flammable gasoline?
    As if.
    Or, maybe not.
Hell if I know. Do I have the energy to fight her? My therapist would tell me
it’s healthy—this “forgiveness” thing—and that I should sit down with a pen and
a sheet of paper, and write a lengthy letter to Miss Lauren Coeburn. I should
tell her that I’ve forgiven her; that I understand why she did it; she had
ratings to worry about; she had a team of writers feeding her lines; and I
should let her know that I understand how influential a motivated producer can
be, because I had gone through that myself with Carla Hancock.
    This scampers
around in my mind while she takes another dainty bite of her muffin top, which
is likely in direct violation of her personal trainer’s orders to prevent a
different type of muffin top, and I assume that she’s desperately trying to
savor this dietary break.
    “You want an
apology, Ford, I’ll give you an apology,” she says. “I’m sorry. There. But we
both know what this business is like. Obligations. Ratings.”
    “You gutted me,” I
tell her. “You were like Quentin Tarantino with your wordy violence. Here’s
you, and here’s me.” I accompany the last five words with a pantomimed stabbing
motion, then imitate a glorified blood splatter.
    “Don’t be such a
drama queen. It’s beneath you.”
    “I thought we—I
don’t know—I thought we had a thing.”
    “Meaning?”
    “We’d joked around
on Twitter. You had reposted some of my crap on Facebook to your fan page. Then
you…” I pretend like I’m jabbing a knife into my heart and then I fake a quick
death by slumping over in my chair.
    “Are we playing
charades? Two words, sounds like…giant pansy.”
    “I’m just saying
you could’ve dialed it back a little.”
    “Oh, please. It’s
all part of the game.”
    “I guess I thought
we were buds. Same team, fame team, you know?”
    “In this business,
we’re all playing solitaire. You know that. Regardless,” she says, pinching off
one last nibble of the cranberry muffin before she slides it across the table.
Roughly a tenth of it is gone. That’s dedication. I’ll give her that much. She
continues, “I really am sorry. To a point. We all play solitaire, and we all
dig our own graves in this business. I know you got caught up in the moment,
and… shit happens.”
    “Yeah.” I have no
argument. I pick up the remnants of her muffin and take a bite. It’s a helluva
lot better than the dry hardtack of a scone I’d been trying to suffer