It came after Kate had hurried off to tend to Teddy. Our waiter was turning the pepper grinder, and the pepper was floating down over Jeff’s grilled chicken strips on mixed greens, when he said, “Look, I know I’m lucky.” It wasn’t the words, exactly, but how he said them. The look of humility in his eyes. The complex contradictory tones. I know I’m lucky. The subtext of it all being: I know what I’m not. I’m not a good actor. I’m overpaid to do something that ultimately keeps the masses fat and sedated. I believed everything that ran under those words. That was the moment when I started to like Jeff Slade. That was the moment when I felt the cost of nursing such an intense hatred, those times I’d turned on the television and thrown the boys’ stuffed animals at the screen whenever the camera cut to a close-up of that symmetrical face and those bee-stung lips.

We’d both won, after all. Jeff Slade got the money, the fame, the fast cars, the endless sex, the house in Hollywood, the Lakers tickets (court-side), and what did Tim Welch get? I got the girl. This thought brought the beginnings of a smile to my face. That was when I noticed a young couple sitting at a nearby table, staring at me. The young wife leaned over and whispered to me, “I’m sorry to bother you.”

“Yes?” I replied, sensing what was about to come.

“Can you tell us—” She gestured toward where Jeff had been sitting. “Is it him?”

Oh, yes, it’s him, and he’s in the bathroom taking a crap, just like you or me.

But I said no such thing. I nodded and said, “Yes, and isn’t he the best?”

“Yes, we love his show.” Then the wife punched her doughy husband in the shoulder and said, “See, I told you.”

What fun this was, dining out with the famous. What did sitting in such close proximity with Jeff Slade intimate? I must be someone, too.

Later, after much of the café had cleared, Jeff Slade and I had the following conversation while waiting for Kate, who was not to return.

“So, Tim, have you spent much time in L.A.?”

“No—”

“It’s incredible. It’s a wild place.”

“I bet.”

“Who do you want to know about?”

“What do you mean?”

“I find lots of people are curious about celebrities, stars. Is there anybody you want to know about?”

“Not particularly—”

“Who’s nice, who’s not so nice? Who gives the best head?”

I coughed up the water I’d just sipped.

Jeff Slade smiled. “Hint: It’s a famous director’s actress wife. Before her, it was a TV actress of some note who pretty much blew everybody. She does infomercials now. I’m not going to say their names, because I think that would be rude.”