What Price Hollywood?

So I'm at this party the other night, a going-away party for a mentor/friend/boss at my daygig. She's moving on to a higher position within the company at another location, a big step and a well-deserved one. A few folks at the daygig organized the party, getting a few staffers to put together a band for the night, loading in food and drink, etc.. It was a great time.

Except...

This one guy showed up, a guy who used to work with us. I'll call him Bruce. I was friendly with Bruce while we worked together, he's a smart guy if a bit naive and immature. He brought his girlfriend, someone I'd hoped I'd never have to meet. I'd figured if I met her, I'd feel compelled to say something confrontational, even though she's the sister of a friend, whom I'll call David. Last year, when David and his wife got married, they invited Bruce to the wedding in another state. Bruce met and hit it off with David's sister, who happened to be the married mother of two kids under six. By the end of the weekend, Bruce and the married mother of two kids under six were writing poetry to each other. Since then, the married mother of two kids under six left her husband and her two kids under six and moved to New York to live with Bruce.

I don't know further details, whether the divorce is final, whatever. I get that people get divorced, I can read the papers, I've known people who've been divorced, I've heard the horror stories and witnessed some first-hand. It's my firm belief that with some marriages, you should have the big party when it's over. What I don't get about this situation is how this mother could leave her kids behind to live in a tiny apartment with a guy who---and since I know him and you don't, you'll have to take my word on this---is a goofball. Love is blind, yessir, and sometimes it's deaf and reeeeally dumb.

I can't imagine leaving The Prince behind in any circumstance. I had to sit awake just last night because I had a vivid nightmare about the two of us sliding down a hill and I couldn't hold onto him. Just when I was ready to go back to sleep, The Prince woke up and was crying because of a molar he's had emerging for a week. Since he was inconsolable, I laid down with him on the couch and we slept there instead. Most of the time, he's striving for his independence, but when he needs one of us, how could we be somewhere else, some other state, without any thought of returning? It makes me sad, and it's a good thing I haven't met these kids, because I'd feel more like the parental avenger I can hear knocking around in my heart and my head, screaming out in rage. It's heartening to know these kids have their father, they have their grandparents, my friend their uncle. They are not alone and they will move on with love and support from their family. If this were going to happen, if this woman was going to leave, there isn't a better or worse time to go. Just get out and don't bother them again. Live your life and don't weigh them down with the burden of you, because these kids will feel obliged to love you and you do not deserve their love.

I didn't confront her. I'm still too polite a person to speak badly to someone I don't know. Hell, I would have at the very least felt we should be introduced before I spoke word one to her. I'm rusty that way. But I did speak to Bruce, and here's where all this has something to do with The Push.

Bruce has a neighbor, a woman he's struck up a friendship with and who has brought him to dinner parties and such where he's met people he realizes are noteworthy in the arts, but he doesn't know how and he would run their names by me afterward to see who they were. His friend is a literary agent, apparently well-established. She reps screenwriters. She knows producers. There are details I haven't asked Bruce about her career, whether she works for herself or at a firm, whether she's looking for writers, etc.. When we saw each other more often, we spoke about him passing on a sample or two to her.

Bruce walked up to greet me at the party and mentioned that he's working on a treatment with another of our friends to give to the agent. He thought I'd be interested to know this because of our past conversations. I didn't respond, I just stared at him blankly. I'm positive that if I said at that moment that I wanted him to pass on a sample that he'd say yes, he would. I'm even somewhat positive that he was looking for me to ask.

And I couldn't do it. Not then, not with the married mother of two cavorting a few feet away.

My question is, could I ever?

I'm still wondering.