a balance--not too clingy, not too aloof. Neither of us had an interest in being famous, or all that rich. Mundane as it sounds, we wanted to do things we cared about, things that made us happy.
But I kept hearing that nagging voice. I couldn't stop California dreaming. Less often about red carpets and Cannes than about being on a set watching a couple of actors mouthing stuff I'd devised for better actors to say. Just a low-budget flick to limp onto the sixteenth screen at the multiplex. It wasn't that much to ask.
A little more than a year ago, I met an agent at a picnic, and she enthused about my script for a conspiracy thing called They're Watching, about an investment banker whose life comes apart after he improbably switches laptops on the subway during a blackout. Mob heavies and CIA agents start dismantling his life like a NASCAR pit crew. He loses his perspective and then his wife but of course wins her back in the end. He returns to his life battered, wiser, and more appreciative. Not the most original plot, certainly, but the right people found it convincing. I wound up getting a good chunk of change for the script, and a decent rewrite fee on top of that. I even got a nice write-up in the trades--my picture beneath the fold in Variety and two column inches about a high-school teacher making good. I was thirty-three, and I had finally arrived.
Never Give Up, they say.
Follow Your Dreams.
Another adage, perhaps, would have been more apt.
Careful What You Wish For.
Chapter 3
Even before the footage of me showed up in my morning newspaper, privacy had been hard to come by. My one haven--an upholstered interior, six feet by four-and-change--still required six windows. A mobile aquarium. A floating jail cell. The only space left in my life where someone couldn't walk in and catch me covering the tail end of a crying jag or convincing myself I'd make it through another workday. The car was pretty banged up, the dashboard in particular. Dented plastic, cracked faceplate over the odometer, air-conditioner dial barely holding on.
I slotted the Camry into a space in front of Bel Air Foods. Walking the aisles, I gathered up a banana, a bag of trail mix, and a SoBe black iced tea, which came loaded with ginkgo, ginseng, and a handful of other supplements designed to kick-start the bleary-eyed. As I neared the checkout lane, my eye caught on Keith Conner, gazing from a Vanity Fair cover. He reclined in a bathtub filled not with water but with leaves, and the headline read CONNER TRADES GREEN FOR GREEN.
"How's Ariana?" Bill asked, cuing me to move along. A flustered mother with her kid was waiting behind me, grinning impatiently.
A plastic smile flashed onto my face, instinctive as a nervous laugh. "Okay, thanks."
I set my items down, the belt whirred, and Bill rang me up, saying, "You got one of the last good ones, that's for sure."
I smiled; Flustered Mom smiled; Bill smiled. We were all so happy.
In the car I pinched the metal post where the button used to be and twisted on the radio: Distract me, please. Down the hill I veered around the turn onto lurch-and-go Sunset Boulevard, and the sun came on bright and angry. Lowering the visor, I confronted the photo rubber-banded into place. About six months ago, Ariana had discovered an online photo site and had tortured me for a few weeks by reprinting flashes-from-the-past and hiding them various places. I still found new pictures now and then, vestiges of playfulness. Of course, this one I'd discovered immediately. Me and Ariana at some intolerable college formal, me wearing a shoulder-padded blazer with, alas, cuffed sleeves, her in a poofy taffeta contraption that resembled a life-saving device. We looked uncomfortable and amused, painfully aware that we were playacting, that we didn't belong, that we didn't really fit in like everyone else. But we loved that. That's how we were best.
You got one of the last good ones, that's for sure.
I hit the dashboard to
But I kept hearing that nagging voice. I couldn't stop California dreaming. Less often about red carpets and Cannes than about being on a set watching a couple of actors mouthing stuff I'd devised for better actors to say. Just a low-budget flick to limp onto the sixteenth screen at the multiplex. It wasn't that much to ask.
A little more than a year ago, I met an agent at a picnic, and she enthused about my script for a conspiracy thing called They're Watching, about an investment banker whose life comes apart after he improbably switches laptops on the subway during a blackout. Mob heavies and CIA agents start dismantling his life like a NASCAR pit crew. He loses his perspective and then his wife but of course wins her back in the end. He returns to his life battered, wiser, and more appreciative. Not the most original plot, certainly, but the right people found it convincing. I wound up getting a good chunk of change for the script, and a decent rewrite fee on top of that. I even got a nice write-up in the trades--my picture beneath the fold in Variety and two column inches about a high-school teacher making good. I was thirty-three, and I had finally arrived.
Never Give Up, they say.
Follow Your Dreams.
Another adage, perhaps, would have been more apt.
Careful What You Wish For.
Chapter 3
Even before the footage of me showed up in my morning newspaper, privacy had been hard to come by. My one haven--an upholstered interior, six feet by four-and-change--still required six windows. A mobile aquarium. A floating jail cell. The only space left in my life where someone couldn't walk in and catch me covering the tail end of a crying jag or convincing myself I'd make it through another workday. The car was pretty banged up, the dashboard in particular. Dented plastic, cracked faceplate over the odometer, air-conditioner dial barely holding on.
I slotted the Camry into a space in front of Bel Air Foods. Walking the aisles, I gathered up a banana, a bag of trail mix, and a SoBe black iced tea, which came loaded with ginkgo, ginseng, and a handful of other supplements designed to kick-start the bleary-eyed. As I neared the checkout lane, my eye caught on Keith Conner, gazing from a Vanity Fair cover. He reclined in a bathtub filled not with water but with leaves, and the headline read CONNER TRADES GREEN FOR GREEN.
"How's Ariana?" Bill asked, cuing me to move along. A flustered mother with her kid was waiting behind me, grinning impatiently.
A plastic smile flashed onto my face, instinctive as a nervous laugh. "Okay, thanks."
I set my items down, the belt whirred, and Bill rang me up, saying, "You got one of the last good ones, that's for sure."
I smiled; Flustered Mom smiled; Bill smiled. We were all so happy.
In the car I pinched the metal post where the button used to be and twisted on the radio: Distract me, please. Down the hill I veered around the turn onto lurch-and-go Sunset Boulevard, and the sun came on bright and angry. Lowering the visor, I confronted the photo rubber-banded into place. About six months ago, Ariana had discovered an online photo site and had tortured me for a few weeks by reprinting flashes-from-the-past and hiding them various places. I still found new pictures now and then, vestiges of playfulness. Of course, this one I'd discovered immediately. Me and Ariana at some intolerable college formal, me wearing a shoulder-padded blazer with, alas, cuffed sleeves, her in a poofy taffeta contraption that resembled a life-saving device. We looked uncomfortable and amused, painfully aware that we were playacting, that we didn't belong, that we didn't really fit in like everyone else. But we loved that. That's how we were best.
You got one of the last good ones, that's for sure.
I hit the dashboard to
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