Dave looked handsome in his open-neck white shirt with his gold cross glistening against his dark skin. Mom liked Dave, as far as I could tell. He wasn’t Jack, my old college boyfriend whom Mom hadn’t appreciated. I was sure she figured that at least Dave had a job and, given the way her mind worked, if Dave was financially solvent and I was with Dave, that somehow ensured that she would be financially solvent. Money had always been a problem with Mom. Once when I asked her why she never saved any money, she was unflinching in her response. “I have a family who loves me and I will never be homeless.”

My mom hated her friend Carolyn. I was always hearing about how competitive Carolyn was when it came to sales at work. To hear my mom tell it, Carolyn was diabolical and always out to steal a sale from her. When I looked at Carolyn, I just saw a timid Mormon mother of four who wore ugly shoes. How these two women had come together was a mystery.

“So how’s work, Dani?” Carolyn asked.

“Oh it’s been good, but crazy.” I told them a bit about Haley’s face always being a work-in-progress, thanks to her dermatologist. “On TV you never really get to see the actors close up, so you don’t ever get a real idea of what they look like. That’s why a lot of TV people can’t make the transition to movies. They don’t look that good all blown up on that big screen.”

“George Clooney does!” Mom exclaimed. “He’s the biggest movie star there is and he used to be TV’s top doc.” She recited this as if she were reading from a TV Guide cover from 1995.

“Well, George Clooney is a genetic freak, Mom. I mean, he’s a very handsome man. I used to see him on the lot when he would come play basketball with his buddies even after he’d left ER.”

“You’ve met George Clooney?” my mom asked, incredulous.

“I didn’t say I met him. I saw him.”

“I’ve met him,” Dave interjected.

“You have?” Mom asked.

Dave had our full attention now. “I didn’t know you’d met George,” I said. This was news to me.

“Well, I was at the Arclight once and we were leaving the theater at the same time. I was right behind him and he waited a beat to hold the door open for me. I said, ‘Thanks, man,’ and he said, ‘No problem.’”

“That’s not meeting him,” I said.

“It’s meeting him,” Dave insisted. “We talked, we spoke—that’s practically a conversation.” Mom and Carolyn were impressed. I knew the Clooney story would be repeated back in Arizona with the emphasis on “met and had a conversation” and no mention of the “door holding” extent of the encounter.