“Rough day?” Ivy asks.

  I laugh, because what else can I do?

  “Sorry about Jake,” Ivy says. “But I have some other . . . not-great news. I called Masha’s mother about that rabbi—”

  “And?”

  “Her dad took the phone and started speaking in what I think were Ukrainian expletives. Then he said the whole family would be blocking your number, and my number, too.”

  “You know, Ivy,” I say, lifting Gram Parsons and gazing eastward toward my home in the waning afternoon. “That might be the best way to deal with me. Everyone should block my calls and emails. Then I’d know where I stand, and you wouldn’t have to manage my expectations with phrases like ‘not-great news.’ ”

  “I just thought you’d want to know.”

  “Good night, Ivy.”

  “Good night, Olivia.”

  I decide to enjoy this bleak night at this exquisite inn I’ve always wanted to sleep inside. I’ll take a bath and light a fire in the fireplace, then Gram Parsons and I will find something either very good or very bad to watch on TV. Once the party moves on to the casino, I’ll have a Fisherman’s Platter and a bottle of overpriced white wine delivered from Bluewater Grill.

  In my Real Life, I’d call Masha or my mom. I think about the billboard I saw the other day—Lorena and Silver in matching mai tai outfits. I glance at my watch. It’s six forty-five on a Saturday night, the hour when the show takes live calls. I realize that at this very moment, my mother is helping total strangers with their problems, while she couldn’t care less about mine.

  Wait . . .

  I open a browser on my phone and pull up the website for her podcast. It’s far sleeker than the site Mom and I talked about building in the real world. Silver has taste. And strong commercial instincts. I’m not not jealous.

  I block the Caller ID on my phone and click the hyperlinked number on Lorena’s website. I hear my heart pound as I hold the phone up to my ear.

  “Call Your Mother Podcast Hotline, can you hold?” It’s Silver.

  Without thinking, I disguise my voice, giving myself a British accent with a slightly husky tone. “I can’t, actually. It’s important.”

  “Just a brief hold,” she says with a chill.

  “I beg your pardon, but I’m calling from London and it’s very late, and I need Lorena’s help.”

  “There are callers ahead of you.”

  “Tell her . . .” I start to say.

  Tell her it’s Olivia.

  Tell her it’s her daughter.

  Tell her I’m sinking like a cinder block and I need my mom.

  Tell her she’s the only one who can help me.

  “Tell her my many-eyed intuition led me to her starry night,” I finally say, quoting a line from what I know is Lorena’s very favorite self-help book.

  “What does that mean?” Silver says.

  “Just tell her. Please. Rather.”

  There’s a pause on the line and I think Silver might have hung up on me. I wonder how many other accents I have in my arsenal, how many times I’ll have to call back. And then the line clicks through and I hear the voice that’s been the honey in my life’s tea for almost thirty years.

  “You’ve got Lorena, but Lorena hasn’t got you!”

  For a moment I can’t speak I’m so grateful. Then, just before the words pour out, I remember to disguise my voice.

  “Thank you very much indeed for taking my call.”

  “What’s weighing on your soul, Many Eyes?”

  “There’s this man,” I say. “He’s been in my life for some time, but recently I’ve realized I can’t live without him. The trouble is, I’m not sure any of it is real.”

  “I’m listening . . .” Lorena says. For a moment it’s like we’re curled up in her bed.

  “Reality’s a fantasy,” Silver squawks.

  “Silver,” I say, “would you mind if we let Lorena speak for the rest of the call?”

  “A chair missing a leg falls over,” Silver mumbles. “But okay.”

  “You say the gentleman has been in your life a long time,” Lorena says. “How did you meet?”

  “In high school, ten years ago.”

  “High school sweethearts!” Silver says. “That’s adorable. You hardly ever hear of those anymore.”

  “She didn’t say they were sweethearts,” my mom intuits wisely.

  “We weren’t,” I say. “For a long time I thought I hated him. After high school, he seemed to get everything he wanted. I felt like I was sinking lower by the day. The one time we saw each other—at my best friend’s wedding—was a disaster. And actually, that disaster is still unfolding.”

  I hadn’t meant to tell this version of the story. I wanted to describe our lives as they have been in the High Life, to arrive at the rift I’m trying to mend in the world I’m in. But as I talk, I find reality and alternate reality are blending together. At first, I fear I’m botching the details of both stories into unrecognizability. But then I realize that what I’m doing is telling the truth of my heart. Not wholly here, nor wholly there, something harder to pin down. Something deep inside and ethereal.

  “Tell me what’s unfolding now,” says Lorena.

  “We reconnected, about a week ago. It’s been odd and unsettling, but also beautiful. Much better than I expected. He’s kinder than I knew anyone could be, especially him. And through him, I see myself in a different way.”

  I’m talking about our marriage, but I find myself thinking about our encounters in the real world, too. I read Jake wrong in the teahouse parking lot, and in my LEAF, and at the rehearsal dinner and the wedding.

  “And the trouble?” my mom asks.

  “The trouble is what I’ll lose by saying yes to this relationship. Is there always a trade-off with love?”

  “We all make bargains.”

  “But does it have to be so Faustian, so all or nothing and forever? How do you ever know if you’re making the right choice?”

  But I know even as I ask that losing my mother isn’t a deal I can accept. That isn’t on the table, because losing my mother would be losing my soul. The High Life has shown me what’s possible in love. It’s given me compassion for Jake at eighteen, when I let him hurt me. If I go home now and lose this Jake, I’ll have learned how not to hate him. And I’ll have learned how to love someone someday as completely as I’ve been loving him.

  “Have you told him?” my mother asks.

  “Told him what?”

  “If I can hear how much you love him, I’m sure he feels it, too. That kind of love is strong. Don’t sell it short. It can handle all your questions. Let him know what’s on your mind.”

  “My biggest fear is that I can’t stay here. With him. Or that I shouldn’t stay, that he’d be better off without me.”

  “Those are very different things. Let’s start with the first. Why don’t you think you can stay?”

  “I don’t know if it’s up to me.”

  “It’s always up to you.”

  My eyes sting with tears. I want to believe that. “Thank you.”

  “If I may be so bold, Many Eyes,” my mother says. “Are you scared of the relationship moving to the next level before you’re whole enough to handle the level you’re on?”

  She knows me, even when she doesn’t know it’s me. “Recently, he’s started talking about what comes next. You know, a family—”

  “The big F word.”

  “You can’t say family without asking, ‘Am I?’ ” Silver says.

  “Silver,” my mom says, “please.”

  “I want to get it right,” I say, leaning into all I feel. “I had a great mother. She was my hero. We used to laugh like crazy. She showed me it was okay to feel everything. She loved me through all my emotions, and I loved her through hers. She was strong. She was kind. She always seemed to know what to do. You only get one shot to nail it when you have a child.”

  “Oh honey, nobody nails it.”

  “You did.”

  There’s a pause on the line. I can’t take it anymore. My voice cracks and abandons all pretense of Britishness.

  “Mom—”

  “Olivia?” Confusion rings in her voice.

  “Please don’t hang up.”

  The line goes dead. Like a fool, I redial. And redial.

  Busy.

  “Aughhh!” I toss my phone hard at the wall. Then I scramble and dig it out from where it fell under the bed. I open my iHeart Radio app and pull up Lorena’s livestream, but they’ve gone to a THC-infused soda commercial.

  “What do I do now?” I ask Gram Parsons as a knock sounds on my door.

  It’s sunset and 7:06, which means everyone’s downstairs toasting Aurora with sabered champagne. Did she send one of her assistants to drag me from the room? If so, they’ll have to break the door down.

  “Olivia?” a small voice says.

  I stand, retie my robe, and drag myself to the door. Through the peephole I see Fenny. She’s in a bathrobe too, her hair in the same towel twist as mine. She’s holding her phone, lit up with a logo. I squint. It’s my mother’s podcast.

  I open the door. She looks at me wide-eyed.

  “Are you Lorena Dusk’s daughter?”

  * * *

  • • • • • •

  An hour later, Fenny and I are in my bed, taking turns scratching Gram Parsons’s belly. We’ve blown off the party in favor of room service and lots of wine. Two Fisherman’s Platters and a large carton of fries are arrayed about us. The Real Housewives of Albuquerque is on mute, and we’re polishing off a bottle of Pahlmeyer chardonnay. Fenny’s smoking a joint from a twenties-style cigarette holder.

  Even though the call with my mother ended badly, I’ve taken Lorena’s advice to heart. To practice telling Jake the truth, I’ve decided to try it out first on Fenny . . .

  Who’s scribbling something on the hotel notepad.

  “Are you taking notes?” I ask, leaning in a little blearily.

  “I’m making you a Pros and Cons list.”

  “I like it,” I say. “Old-fashioned.”

  “So far, under the pros of you staying in this life—I’ve got your marriage to Jake, your successful career, financial stability . . . Okay, and I know this item falls under the umbrella of marriage, but I’m going to make it a separate category, because it’s truly remarkable: Five orgasms. Am I missing anything?”

  I rack my brain. What else is good about this life? “That might be it. I mean, you seem really nice . . .”

  “No offense taken,” Fenny says, waving me off.

  I can’t tell if she’s humoring my realm-jumping revelations because she’s kind and trying to help me survive a nervous breakdown. Or if indulging the delusional cast is part of Fenny’s job.

  Or maybe she actually believes me. Which would make her either truly open-minded . . . or totally insane—probably a distinction without a difference.

  “Wait,” Fenny says, crunching into a panko shrimp. “What about Gram Parsons?”

  “He’s in both lives.”

  She shakes her head in amazement. “You can’t write this shit—not that I won’t try, fair warning.”

  I gaze at her meaningfully. “I want you to have it.”

  “So what’s better about your . . . real life?”

  “I have Masha. And my mom.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s everything. I’m broke and lost and I hook up with silly men, but I never feel hopeless about myself.”

  “Because you’ve got what matters—”

  “A deep, lifelong connection with women who love me for who I am.”

  “Your wolf pack.”

  I close my eyes, emotional with how much I miss them. I try to summon the last time my mom didn’t hate me, and the image that comes to mind is Lorena in her studio, the day I’d cried about Jake. She’d had the gyokuro waiting for me. We’d curled up together on my beanbag chair. She’d given me strength, just by being there, by reminding me there were bigger things to feel than hate.

  How did I ever hate Jake?

  “There’s one more thing I should mention about my Real Life,” I say, spearing a scallop with a plastic fork.

  Fenny waits.

  “Jake is famous.”

  “Come again?”

  “He has the highest rated talk show in the country. It’s called Everything’s Jake, and he does these absurd stunts, which I used to think were ridiculous, but now I see that they’re also profound. People quote him when they reconnect with estranged family members. They come on his show and open up to him. There are entire online forums of personal success stories devoted to thanking him. He . . . changes people’s lives. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. Where I come from, you can’t go anywhere without seeing his smile, hearing his jokes, feeling his light.”

  Fenny squints contemplatively. “I can see that.”

  “In this life we’re happy together, but he’s got a better thing going in my Real Life than he has here.”

  “You’re selling yourself short, Olivia.”

  “But it’s true. I’m not enough. Not compared with that.”

  “Which is why you pitched him so hard to Reisenbach on the yacht today?”

  “Curveball, low and away.”

  “I could have told you that would never work. Things here are different from your other life. For a reason.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because it’s such a good story. And stories create their own logic.” Fenny runs a french fry through ketchup. “And logic equals reasons.”

  “But we don’t have an ending.”

  “That’s because you’re still in the middle.”

  “How should our protagonist proceed?”

  “Hmm,” Fenny says, taking a swig of wine. “If this were a script, I’d ask myself, ‘What do the characters want and why?’ ” She hands me her list of pros and cons. “Why don’t you weigh these, on a scale of one to ten, according to importance?”

  While I get to work, Fenny rests her cheek on her fist and looks toward the TV, where a woman in turquoise jewelry dumps a pot of posole onto the head of her dinner guest.

  High Life:

  Marriage to Jake 10

  Successful Career 1

  Financial Stability 1

  Pentagasms 5

  Real Life:

  Relationship with Lorena 10

  Relationship with Masha 10

  Jake’s Success 10

  “It’s seventeen to thirty,” I say. “Did I just make my decision?”

  Fenny looks at my list, then at me. She nods. “The only question is how do you get home?”

  “Multiple orgasms clearly don’t work.”

  Fenny throws a piece of battered fish in her mouth and stands up. “Is there a man behind a curtain in this realm?”

  I nod. “In my Real Life he was a celebrity yogi. But here he’s a rabbi-slash-car thief. He married Masha and Eli.”

  “That weirdo from the wedding?” Now Fenny’s pacing. “Surely you can find him.”

  “Nothing’s worked so far,” I sigh and look at the list again. “If I could shift any one of these factors, everything would add up differently.”

  “Such as—”

  “If I could get Masha to listen to me. If I could get her to understand.”

  Fenny nods. “Then you could keep the pentagasm and your best friend.”

  “While I work on getting Lorena back, too.”

  “Two out of three ain’t bad,” Fenny says and pours the last of our chardonnay into my glass.

  “But . . . how?” I ask, swirling my wine, lost in contemplation.

  “Masha just got back from her honeymoon this afternoon,” Fenny offers, taking out her phone and texting. “Let me see what I can do.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Riding home on the Wet Dream the next morning, everyone’s hungover, including me. The chill in the air and overcast sky has me focused on one scenario: double espresso in the hot tub on the deck. Gram Parsons and I slip into the head so I can change into my black bikini. I grab a beach towel and a coffee to take outside.

  Last night, Fenny set a Tuesday lunch date for herself and Masha . . . which I will gently ambush. My goals will be twofold: try to get Fenny in the least amount of hot water possible, and see if there’s any love left between my best friend and me. If there is, then the math I did last night shifts in favor of the High Life.

  If Masha rejects me, I’ll have to face it. I’ll have to go back to the wild-goose chase for Rabbi Dan. I’ll have to forsake Jake.

  The hot tub is wide open, its jets on, steam rising into the air. I tie Gram Parsons’s leash to the handrail. His tail wags within his life vest. I climb a step to the hot tub and throw my leg over the side. Just as I slip into the water, Miguel Bernardeau and his girlfriend appear on the other side of the hot tub in matching skimpy suits, also holding coffees, also climbing in.

  “Ah,” Miguel says, as if Gram Parsons had just licked the rim of his espresso. “Olivia. I don’t believe you’ve met my friend Lucia.”

  “Hi, Lucia,” I say and give a little wave. She smiles and waves back.

  “Great party last night,” Miguel says as he reclines and closes his eyes.

  “Yep.” I sip my coffee and watch the massive wake behind us, then I gaze out toward Catalina, the condos of Hamilton Cove receding in the mist. I think about last night, about Fenny talking through my mess with me, waving her vintage joint holder in the hotel room. I think about the joint still in my purse back in Laurel Canyon . . . Then it hits me: If Rabbi Dan is anything like Yogi Dan, he might hang out at Milo and Lhüwanda’s, the Santa Monica weed café. Maybe I can find him there.