If You Were Here

by Jen Lancaster

  I get to a thirty count and then turn the router back on. I wait as each little green light lights up, and when I have a row of them, I know our Internet connection155 has been restored.

  Before I go back up, I poke around the few supplies Mac has stashed. We’ve got a couple of army MREs,156 a three-day supply of bottled water, a few first-aid products, and an Army Ranger survival guide. Apparently in the case of home invasion or nuclear holocaust, Mac might like to get in a bit of light reading.

  I walk over to the door and open it.

  Rather, I try to pull it open, but it’s really heavy. I put both hands on the knob and give it a good yank.

  Nothing happens.

  I jimmy the handle and then, using both hands, I pull on it while bracing myself against the doorjamb with one of my feet. The handle gives way, but unfortunately not in the manner I’d hoped. It takes me a couple of seconds to process that the knob has come off in my hand. Uh-oh.

  If nothing else, living in this house has made me resourceful. Instead of panicking, I root around in Mac’s tool bag and come up with an old pair of pliers. I use them to manipulate the pin of the door handle, simultaneously pulling and bracing again.

  This time the pin comes off in my hand.

  So I resort to my second option.

  Yelling.

  I shout with all my might and bang on the inside of the door with the pliers.

  What I quickly find out is that bombproof rooms are also soundproof rooms.

  I whip out my cell phone and attempt to call Mac, but I’m not getting a signal. Awesome.

  I start going over every inch of this room, because surely there’s some sort of two-way communication device in here. I mean, no one would put this much effort into a room and then ... And then I remember where I am. I am in the middle of the House Where Shit Goes Horribly Awry, and there is no fail-safe in this room.

  If I were to disconnect the Internet, Mac would know to come down here, but he’s not at his computer right now and probably won’t be for a while. The best that I can hope for is that he comes looking for me sooner rather than later.

  For lack of anything else to do, I settle on a metal cot covered in a scratchy army blanket and begin to read the survival guide.

  According to the manual, I should remain calm. Noted. I don’t think remaining calm while I’m in here is my problem. I imagine needing to remain calm will come into play after I’m out of here.

  As I peruse the chapter on planning and survival packs, I make a note that Mac’s kit contains neither a snare nor solar blanket nor water purification tablets. Also, Mac hasn’t stored pudding cups down here. The guide doesn’t say specifically that we need them, but I feel this is a serious omission.

  I wish I’d run across the chapter on contact dermatitis before now. That bit of knowledge might have gone a long way in educating me in why one should wear long pants to mow the lawn. In related news, poison oak leaves actually look an awful lot like regular oak leaves and should be retrieved while wearing gloves or with a rake.

  Ask me how I learned this.

  The guide provides excellent advice in regard to starting a fire. Good thing I’m not cold down here, because there seems to be a dearth of flint, convex lenses, spongy threads of dead puffball, or birch shavings.

  I’m greatly enjoying the “dangerous lizard” chapter. I can’t imagine I’ll ever need to put this learning to use, but if I ever get a lizard question in Trivial Pursuit, I’ll be all over it.

  Oh, Mexican beaded lizard,157 I’ve got my eye on you.

  A few hours into my captivity, I find myself sizing up the electrical panel. Possibly it’s because I’m so rife with new survival skills, or perhaps because I’m too much of a dumb ass to have thought of it sooner, but I’ve just discerned my means of egress.

  I pocket a flashlight from Mac’s supplies and walk over to the electrical panel. I open the metal box and systematically begin to flip every switch. The last tab I flip bathes the room in darkness, but I’m confident it won’t be for long. I switch on my flashlight and return to the cot.

  Less than two minutes later, Mac opens the door with his own flashlight in hand and he’s greeted by my bellowing,“Do not shut the door!” Mac prides himself on his inability to be spooked, yet odds are good my ethereally lit presence causes him to shart himself.

  “What were you doing in here?” he demands.

  I reach the junction box first and turn all the switches back. “Boning up on my survival skills.”

  After I fully explain the whats and the hows of my imprisonment, that son of a bitch has the audacity to laugh.

  “Yes, yuk it up. This is hilarious,” I snap.

  Mac wipes his eyes and tries to stop smiling. “Listen, I’m sorry, but it’s funny. You should call the Guinness book people, because you have to have set some kind of record for ‘number of times trapped’ by now.” He then goes on to list every time and place I’ve been stuck in the past five years and he starts to snicker again.

  I say nothing in response, instead just crossing my arms and tapping my foot, waiting for him to finish.

  “Are you done yet?”

  “Yes. No! The tub! I forgot about the tub. Now I’m done.”

  “Good.”

  I turn to leave, and Mac, who’s staying behind to fix the door, calls after me, “Where are you going now?”

  “I have to call Ann Marie back and I want to eat some pudding. But first, I need to punch Charlie in the head.”

  “I got the call. I got the call and I haven’t any idea how to proceed. What do I do? Where do I go from here?”

  I’m not on my usual cement bench today. Instead, I’m up and pacing back and forth, because I’ve got too much nervous energy coursing though me. “I mean, I’m thrilled and I’m excited, because this is everything I’ve worked for, but at the same time I’m scared, because now what? I mean, this is a life changer. This is big-time. Hollywood, baby!”

  Although we’re in late summer and the sun is high and bright, I feel chilled and I wrap my arms around myself. “I’m afraid; I guess that’s what it is. I’m afraid if I leave, then whatever’s unsaid, whatever isn’t working between Mac and me, is going to fester and decay and we’ll never be able to get back to where we were once upon a time.

  “Funny, I always thought that if we were ever going to break up, there’d be some huge incident, clear and unarguable. We’d suffer the marital equivalent of thermonuclear war, and bang! Mutually assured destruction. There’d be no question as to whether we should proceed in life together. But this? This isn’t one mass detonation; it’s a million tiny explosions, but we’re at the same crossroads.

  “I don’t know what to do. Persiflage Films wants me to hop on a plane tonight, right now, in fact, and be ready to start taking meetings tomorrow. But there’s so much to be said, so much to resolve . . . . Do I just go and hope we can work it out over the phone? Honestly, that seems like running away, and I already do that far too much. Or, like lately, I completely lose my shit and start yelling and throwing small, breakable objects. We’ve always been so good about talking things out, but now I’m so frustrated that I can’t seem to stop going from completely passive to overly aggressive. I’ve lost the ability to find middle ground.”

  I collapse onto the bench, suddenly exhausted by all the adrenaline dumped in my body after I found out that Persiflage actually agreed to meet my asking price for my books’ rights. My agents are currently hammering out the last few specifics on gross and net points and production credits and such, but the bottom line is, I’m about to be wealthy.

  The big catch is that the film company wants me to be an active participant in the process from start to finish. They’re buying not only my words, but also my “artistic vision.”158 They need me in LA as soon as possible and for an undetermined amount of time.

  “Mac wasn’t home when I got the call, and I couldn’t reach him by cell, so he doesn’t even know. Last thing he said was that he was going to th
e plumbing specialty store, so I imagine he’ll be off the radar for a while. I talked to Ann Marie, who doesn’t want me to do anything without her reading my contract—go figure—and to my family. Jessica and Claire are beside themselves, especially as Claire’s going to be the coolest girl in eighth grade when the film comes out. My mom was totally psyched, and Babcia, well . . . Babcia is Babcia.”

  No matter what the situation, Babcia’s reaction is totally unpredictable, and I find that charming. “Babcia’s exact words were, ‘Life not movie. Good guy lose, everybody die, love not cocoa all.’ I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but Jessica said Babcia signed up for a Netflix membership and she’s been watching a bunch of Kevin Spacey movies lately. Apparently she thinks he looks like her dead husband. Anyway, Jessica suspects this is some bastardization of a quote from Swimming with Sharks. Oh, boy, I can’t wait until she starts grilling me about who Keyser Söze is.”

  The truth is, I’ve been avoiding Babcia a little bit ever since Vlad ran off.The rest of my family knows about our current housing pre-dicament, but we didn’t want to tell Babcia because we don’t want her to worry.159

  I glance down at my watch and see that I’ve been away from home for a while now. “Time to go. I’ll see you next week. Or maybe not? I guess that’s still to be decided. Tell you what, if you could send me some kind of sign, I’d appreciate it. Bye for now.”

  When I get back home, Mac’s car is in the driveway, but I don’t see a sign of him downstairs. The dogs seem to be gone, too. I wonder if they’re outside. I search the backyard and around all the boxes in the basement. For good measure, I even peek my head in the panic room, but it’s just as I left it last week, save for the addition of a case of pudding cups.

  He’s not upstairs, either. Weird. Maybe everyone’s out for a walk?

  I’m still not sure what I’m going to do about leaving for LA, but just in case, I should probably toss in a load of laundry. Our new washer and dryer arrived not long ago, and every time I’m able to wash a sheet or towel in my house, as opposed to the Laundromat two towns over,160 I want to hug someone.

  There’s a small maid’s quarters off the laundry room, and when I pass it, I hear swearing. I wonder what he’s doing in here. This part of the house was one of the numerous additions, and it’s so awkwardly located that there’s no reason ever to come in here. Plus it’s built over a crawl space instead of a basement, so it’s perpetually hotter than the rest of the house.

  “Mac?”

  “Miiiiiiaaaaaa!”

  “Where are you?” I poke my head into the attached bath, and that’s when I find the dogs. They’re both staring into a hole in the floor and wagging their tails. I gaze down into it and, under a maze of new copper pipes, see Mac. “What the . . . ?”

  “Miiiiiiaaaaaa!”

  I can’t even begin to figure out what’s happening here. Mac appears to be—judging from his level of agitation—unharmed. But trapped. Clearly trapped. He’s down under the subflooring in the crawl space, and there’re a whole bunch of pipes blocking the hole in the floor between where he’s sitting and the bathroom above it.

  “Is there an explanation for all of this?” I ask. The dogs flop down on either side of me, still peering into the hole.

  “Yes, but can I have a bottle of water first? I’m dying of thirst.”

  “Um . . . okay.” I scurry to the kitchen, grab a bottle from the fridge, and trot back to the bathroom. “Do you want me to just . . . throw it down there?”

  “Yes, please.” He unscrews the cap and downs the whole thing in a single swig.

  “Is it safe for me to come closer? Did you fall in? Do I need to call the police?” Actually, I wouldn’t mind giving officers Older and Younger a buzz. Might be nice for them to see it’s not me doing the stupid stuff around here for once.

  “Yes, it’s safe, and no, I didn’t fall in. I cut the floorboards back to the joists, so anything you stand on is supported.”

  “Good to know.” I sit down at the lip of the hole and dangle my legs in. “So ... how was your day? Were the dogs well behaved? Did they finally want to play outside? Oh, and did anything interesting happen?”

  His voice gets a wee bit accusatory. “You wanted a working shower.”

  “Mmm,” I agree. “I did want a shower. But what I got is a husband doing the world’s largest termite impersonation. Tell me, are you drywood or Formosan subterranean?”

  “Not funny, Mia.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, honey. This is so funny.” There’s a certain amount of poetic justice here. I’ve been trapped in bathrooms a dozen times, but I’ve never actually been stuck under one.

  “Anyway, this shower was the quickest fix, because we’re not replacing tile or a tub surround or anything in the walls. All I needed to do was patch a couple of leaky pipes with new sections. I started doing the repair on the bathroom floor and I felt like I was working upside down. I thought if I climbed into the crawl space I’d have an easier time accessing all the pipes. And I did. Everything soldered together perfectly. Check out my work—it’s professional-grade.”

  “Do most professionals wind up piping themselves in?” I query.

  “I see you’ve discovered the one small flaw in my plan.”

  “Why don’t you just disconnect the pipes and pull yourself out? Isn’t that the most logical solution?”

  “Because it will ultimately be easier and faster to patch the floor than it will be to redo the pipes. What I need you to do is grab the cordless handheld saw and pass it down to me. That way I can cut myself out without damaging the joists.”

  I find the saw and Mac manages to extricate himself as quickly as promised.

  As we patch up the subflooring, we seem to have developed a tentative truce. This is the first time in a long time we’ve had a conversation without snapping at each other.

  And that’s when it occurs to me that the floor was a sign.

  We need the money to bring in an outside professional to get this house done if we’re to have any hope of a future together. I imagine we’d have to pay a premium to put up a whole crew of folks from an area outside of Vienna’s family’s reach, but as much as we love each other, we can’t continue to live like this. If our formerly rock-solid relationship is already on shaky ground after three months, I can’t bear to think of where we might be in three more. I hate to leave, but I think that’s the only chance we’ve got to stay together.

  Los Angeles, here I come.

  Chapter Twenty

  MOSE(Y) GOES TO HOLLYWOOD

  “Just so you know, I’m comfortable with nudity. Very comfortable. In fact, I prefer it. I’m, like, naked all the time in my apartment. My roommates, too!”

  I sneak little glances at everyone sitting at the table with me. As no one else seems on the verge of collapsing in nervous laughter, I guess they’ve all heard auditioning actresses say this stuff before.

  I’m sitting in a casting session. I’ve been in LA for about two weeks and we’re just starting to test people for principal roles. Since I’ve been here, we (meaning a big team of people who seem to know what they’re doing, and me, who does not) have done a lot of the legwork that happens before a film goes into production.

  Before I even signed on, financing was secured161 and now key personnel have been hired, casting directors have been engaged, scouts are checking out potential locations, etc.

  To be honest, I still don’t really understand the process. I tried to do research before I came out here but, surprisingly, Google didn’t have a lot of answers when I typed in, I sold my book to a movie studio for a whole bunch of money; now what?

  My agents are thrilled this film wasn’t only green-lighted but also fast-tracked, which is fancy movie talk for “going a bit too quickly for my liking.” Two and a half weeks ago I was staring into a hole in the bathroom floor, and now I’m in meetings with a bunch of suits estimating opening-weekend box-office sales. It’s surreal.

  On the o
ne hand, the more swiftly this process moves, the sooner I can go home to my husband and pets and albatross of a house. On the other, I fear we’re rushing and getting sloppy. Can’t we all have a minute to get our bearings?

  Also, and more important, I thought my job out here would be, you know, writing. I penned the initial screenplay for Buggies Are the New Black years ago between books, because I was told that everyone in Hollywood is lazy and that no one would want to convert my writing from a novel to a screenplay.

  Actually, I enjoyed the challenge, because it was fun to dabble in such a different medium. At first I was all, How different could it be? Words are words, but that’s not the case. When you adapt a book, all you have to work with is dialogue. You can’t really set the scene other than a line noting where the scene takes place. Plus, you’re not supposed to provide too much background in scene headings or include many parentheticals,162 because that’s for a director to interpret.

  I was worried that someone would get hold of my story and change it too drastically, so I wrote the screenplay myself to avoid all of that. Yet here I am in a casting session while some writer I never met gives my screenplay a “polish.” I’m told he’s going to be listed as one of the cowriters in the credits. Somehow this feels wrong.

  But in terms of wrong, nothing’s been more wrong than the parade of bimbos who have tottered through here today. Seriously, can we talk about Miriam for a second? She’s supposed to be a quiet, reserved, gentle Amish girl who inadvertently gets turned into a zombie. (Although, really, does anyone go zombie advertently?) But Miriam’s propensity for goodness is such that she keeps all her undead flesh eating to a minimum, and that’s how she earns Amos’s trust and love.

  Yes, I know her story sounds a tad Twilight-y.

  Yes, more than a little.

  I know.

  I know.

  I’ll thank you all to quit pointing it out, and did you ever consider that MAYBE I HAD THE DAMN IDEA FIRST AND THAT ASSHAT STEPHENIE—