At the dinner party she was seated next to a very attractive woman in her late twenties, a red head who introduced herself to Izzy as “Hi, I’m Lenore. I am an actress.” She put out her pale, slender hand for a finger shake and gave Izzy a quick glimpse of a dazzling, wide smile before turning away to the man on her left.
‘Well of course, you are,’ Izzy had wanted to say. ‘What else would you be?’
Izzy was married to an actor and, until shortly before she gave birth to her first of three children in 39 months (all boys) and attempting to keep them alive and well, had been one herself. She recognized, as had Lenore, that she was not in a position to help anyone’s career,nor was her husband Paul.
There were conversations and laughs all around the table, a mirthful group and Izzy really enjoyed being clean and having both shoes on with others who also had those qualities. People talked about movies and politics and the price of things at mutually known restaurants and also about movies and movie people.
Pretty Lenore had, apparently, quite a lot to contribute on almost all these topics. Just kidding, she knew a lot of dirt on movie people, even some who were seated not far from her.
She told many amusing anecdotes, some risque, others reductive and insulting for all the kinds of ways but so lightly, and so cleverly that no one could say: “Isn’t that a little racist homophobic ablest sexist ageist anti-semetic also anti-muslim body shaming slut shaming mysogenistic?” Also no one could say it because she was a guest and also, there’s an old saying in Hollywood: “You meet everyone twice, once on the way up and once on the way down”. No one knew what part of Lenore’s trajectory they had intersected her at. She was starting to do some impressive work on large and small screens so no one wanted to make themselves fodder for the next jokes at the next dinner party, in case either she was moving up or you were moving down.
People dovetailed on her remarks from time to time, the bold asked follow up questions.
After a course or two of the floor show Lenore seemed to suddenly remember that someone was sitting next to her on her left. Of course, that mousy little housewife whose name she could not for the life of remember.
For some reason she clinked her wine glass againt Izzy’s water glass on the table and turned to Izzy with a little girl selling pornographic girl scout cookes smile.
“You don’t say much, do you?” She said, her eyes actually crinkling, like in the magazine ads.
“Oh,” said Izzy softly. “We don’t speak. We’re Amish.”
Lenore tilted her head in charmed puzzlement then turned back to the wider audience an offered up another bon mot or two on a recently dearly departed.
Izzy’s silent husband Paul, her keeper of the vow, nodded to her that they should probably depart as well and they made their way out. Silently.