Requiem

There's a lovely guy I hired to do some publicity work for our company. He's the kind of guy who makes a new best friend in every conversation: you immediately think you've known him forever. He turns 50 next year, but looks considerably younger. He limps when he walks--one leg is three inches shorter than the other--and he just had a tooth yanked, and he's struggling with a hernia and something else that makes it uncomfortable for him to eat more than a little bit after a certain time at night. He is an only child, and his father died some years ago from cancer. Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of his mother's death. She just wasn't feeling right, and went to bed to take a nap, and her heart just turned off while she slept. His mother was his anchor.

Last night we spent some time at his mother's and step-father's home on the ocean, sipping iced tea with his step-father--another lovely, lovely guy: a big, gentle, white-capped Greek sailor. I think if I'd stayed any longer I would've cried, because they're both so lovely and so alone. He--my publicist--has a dog he loves, and a business he's building, and some money--he tossed around the notion of buying a $750K investment property in the Hamptons--and he puts the happy on a moment like nobody I've ever met. "It's all good," he says. But he breaks my heart: the limp is only a hint, if you're paying attention. It's been a long time since I've felt the urge to rush in and scoop the whole scene up in a hug, and fill up the space with love. I can't shake the image of these two men sitting in that house this weekend, missing the woman whose photo is mounted above the fireplace. I take my large family--warts and all--for granted.

We went together to a party at a designer's home in the Hamptons. Two homes, actually: side by side on the water, attached by candlelit boardwalks. Like something out of a magazine. Celebrities everywhere--lights so low that you could barely make out faces three feet from you. Definitely not my scene--I can't schmooze to save my life--but it was a kick to get to see. In home #2 the caterers were serving "special" brownies, and people were very, very happy.

I got home at 3:40 this morning and still couldn't sleep. She had to have been a special woman to make a boy like that, and to leave behind such gentle men. A tough deal, this whole business of life.