by Amy Sohn
Gottlieb
From: [email protected]
Subject: meeting you
To: [email protected]
I got this e-mail address from Brian Smith at Empire Cryo. He said you were expecting to hear from me. So I’m your daughter. Is it as strange for you reading that as it is for me writing it? I’ve been wondering about you for a long time. It was hard for me to get around to this but now I am. Opening the conversation.
Gottlieb scoured the e-mail for clues—no misspellings (good) but scant on details or personality (questionable). He mused on the significance of “coat check” in her handle but couldn’t come up with anything. He figured she had recently turned eighteen, because you couldn’t contact a donor parent before then. Based on when he had started donating, the oldest she could be was nineteen. He had held out some crazy hope his daughter would get the Heartbreak Kid reference in his e-mail address, but it had come out in the seventies. Of course she hadn’t seen it.
He had written back that he was in L.A. on business but could see her when he returned to Brooklyn. To his surprise, she said she was in L.A., too. A daughter. Wow.
She asked if he wanted to meet while he was out there, and he suggested Canter’s on Saturday at two. It was an old-school Jewish delicatessen in West Hollywood. Gottlieb had eaten there with a producer on one of his early trips to L.A. and liked it. So much about the city felt new that he liked the idea of going someplace that had been around since the thirties.
She wrote that he should wear something distinctive so she could recognize him. “I’ll be in a gray CALLAHAN AUTO PARTS shirt,” he typed. It was a reference to the movie Tommy Boy, one of his favorites. CC had bought it for him as a gag gift, and though he had brought it to Hollywood, he hadn’t worn it yet, feeling it was too inside to go over well in a pitch meeting. Maybe someday he and his daughter would watch it together, the way he had watched it with Sam, getting him to do the best Chris Farley lines, like “That’s going to leave a mark.”
As Gottlieb was parking his car in the Canter’s lot, his phone rang. He pulled into a spot and answered. “It’s Topper.” On a Saturday.
“Hey,” Gottlieb said, thinking that if he sounded chipper, it might influence the news and turn it from bad to good. Until Topper said more, there was no information, just like Schrödinger’s cat.
“I’m trying to get Andy on the line,” Topper said, “but I thought it best to update you as soon as possible. So for months Deadline Hollywood has had posts about this Untitled Rex Levis project at Warner.” Rex Levis was one of the biggest comedy directors in Hollywood. He made gross, R-rated movies that teenage boys sneaked into and everyone talked about at water coolers. “They’ve been calling it Project Q. It was a spec by an unknown playwright. Rex bought it. Exclusive submission, not our agency, obviously. Because Rex has a first-look deal at Warner, he took it to Igor Hecht, and they’ve been developing it with the screenwriter for the past six months, with Rex set to direct. No one’s seen the script, but there have been a lot of rumors. A sex comedy involving twentysomethings, male-oriented.”
“Is this why Hecht was so weird in the meeting?”
“I’m getting there. So this morning on Deadline Hollywood, Nikki Finke leaked the first twenty pages of the script.” Topper sighed. “It’s called Bully for You. Adult man hunts down and takes revenge on his childhood bully.” Gottlieb felt like putting his mouth around the exhaust pipe. “If I’d known anything about this, I wouldn’t have had you guys come out here and pitch.”
The tan leather in the Cayenne seemed to rise up and suffocate him. “So what does this mean?” he said.
“It means that no matter what happens with Jed, even if he masterminds a comeback that would put Hugh Grant’s to shame, no one’s going to make your movie. This one has the top comedy director in the country on it, and it’s the exact same concept as yours. Hecht was probably deciding whether to buy your pitch just to kill it. And when the Jed thing happened, he didn’t have to. I’m sorry, Gottlieb. Write something new. Write a really good idea, but write the whole thing. This is the danger with the spec market: You run the risk that someone has a complete script with the same concept as your pitch.” Then he said the seven words that Gottlieb suspected would be the last Topper spoke to him: “I’m sorry. I’ve got to take this.”
Gottlieb clicked off. The frightening thing about the cascade of bad news was the way it all seemed to make cosmic sense. Somewhere deep down, he had suspected nothing would come of this trip. He hadn’t believed in the quality of his ideas, even in his own ability to direct. When Jed had signed on, Gottlieb had been excited, but it all felt upside down. Good things weren’t supposed to come to people who didn’t deserve it. Jed had picked up on his self-doubt and combusted on purpose. And the last bit about Rex Levis was the nail in the coffin.
He thought of his daughter arriving any minute at Canter’s. How could he meet her now? What could he say to her? She was looking for a role model, for some sort of larger meaning. That was why she wanted to meet her biological father. He had nothing to tell her, he was incapable of inspiring anyone. Not today. He was a shell. He had come to L.A. ambitious but felt as pathetic as one of those ubiquitous faces on posters advertising headshot services.
He glanced at his watch. Ten to two. He felt nauseated. He couldn’t go through with it. He started the engine. A car pulled into the next spot. It was a burgundy VW station wagon. There was something familiar about it. Then the door opened.
Hattie Rivera stepped out.
It’s Hattie was his first thought. He was happy. He had tried in vain to track her down, and now she was here, they were meant to see each other again, there was a reason he had come to Canter’s on a Saturday afternoon.
His second thought was How odd. How odd that Hattie Rivera is at Canter’s the same time I’m supposed to meet this girl.
He froze, his hand on the ignition key. Their eyes met through his open passenger-side window, and she looked down at his shirt and frowned, as though trying to make sense of it. It can’t be, her face seemed to say. Her eyes fluttered up to his, and her features collapsed with grief and confusion.
He saw his face in her face, the slightly wide brown eyes. The sharp chin. He saw himself in her. His reflection, his desire. Hattie looked so young, she looked like someone’s daughter, why hadn’t he seen that before, was this why it had been so strange in the hotel room, so incomplete yet all-encompassing? All the metaphors for love were familial. You complete me, it’s like I’ve known you all my life.
But she was Spanish or half Spanish. That name, Rivera, and the dark skin. He had imagined his daughter would be white. He had been narrow-minded. He was a father of biracial sons yet pictured his child as white like him, Jewish, even. In his mind only a Jew would pick a Jewish donor. And she couldn’t be nineteen. She looked twenty-five at least.
He thought of what he and Hattie had done together and felt something bitter and foreign in his throat. Oh God. A Jeep sped down Fairfax, windows open. Music roared from inside. Ease my mind with your real cool lines / Daddy, fill my soul with love divine. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, the blues singer, the one with seventy-five children.
He had to get away he had to go why had she picked him, she’d seen something, too, it was wrong what they had done, they had tasted each other and they couldn’t undo it. There could be others like Hattie, there could be hundreds, in other cities, young men and women, age twenty, nineteen, meeting each other, drawn to each other because of something in the face, a kinship, the affinity that you wanted to feel with the people you slept with, the missing half, the soul mate. He wanted to be alone, to make it all stop it had to stop it had to stop.
He backed out of his spot, unable to look at her again. He couldn’t, he was a coward. He threw a twenty at the attendant, who said something about validation. There is no validation in this town. “Just let me go!” Gottlieb cried. The gate rose up, and he drove not thinking and then he was on the 5 headed south and ou
t of town.
It took about two hours. In Encinitas there was a sign shaped like a Hindu temple with a painting of a guy surfing on it, tall palm trees rising up into the hill along the temple. SWAMI’S—CITY OF ENCINITAS. Gottlieb parked in the lot, which had vans and trucks with multiple boards in them, men, women, kids changing into their wet suits. A horsey girl in skintight yoga pants was doing backbends, her feet on a bench, her hands behind her on the cliff rail overlooking the ocean. He looked down at the blue-green waves. From this high, they seemed to move in slow motion.
He pulled on his wet suit, took the long set of stairs down to the beach, and paddled out the channel, popping over the small waves as they came. A cluster of guys in the water. He watched them for a while and saw that they were mostly going right. He paddled discreetly around the lineup to the left. In California most of the waves were rights. In Rockaway they were mostly lefts, so he had more practice on them. Some of the lefts were closing out, but there were a few that seemed tailor-made for him. Though the bigger waves were easily several feet overhead, he was determined to go for it. He wanted to put the fear and cowardice he felt at the Church behind him.
He sat on the board, facing straight out to the horizon, looking for his wave. Be careful what you ask for, a voice said from far away.
Fuck you, Gottlieb said to the voice.
The whole lineup seemed to activate toward the same purpose, and Gottlieb pivoted quickly to face the shore. That’s it. I’m going. That’s my wave. He charged hard and felt the curl lift him up, Jed’s Brewer board slipping down an ever steeper ramp. It was like being at the top of the Cyclone at Coney Island, the point of no return. His popup was perfect, smooth and quick, and he hurtled down the face, almost airborne for a second before the rail caught.
For one perfect moment he owned it. The left rose up like a translucent green curtain, and Gottlieb felt at one with it.
A voice to his right flashed by, screaming, “Wake up, asshole!” Gottlieb toppled face-first into the green wall and felt himself lifted, puppet-like, over the falls. A fantastic explosion of sound, color, and light. He was conscious of intense pain above his left eye. There was no gravity and little air in his lungs. He felt his leash yank his left foot back behind him, violently twisting his knee. His head slammed into the seaweed-covered rocky bottom of the reef. He tasted blood and kelp and thought of the sea urchin roe, uni, he had tried at Jed’s house. The gonads.
Just as quickly, he was thrown up, swallowing foam and water. Coughing, choking. There was something warm on his face, and he thought it was seaweed, but when he raised his hand to his forehead, blood came down over his left eye. Dimly, he saw the outline of the next huge breaker, poised above him like a vengeful hand. Choking, he was under again, spinning like laundry, the wind knocked out of him.
The cluster of surfers was far away; they didn’t see him. Harry and Sam would be fine. CC could tell them it was an accident, he had died doing something that he loved. It was their mother they needed, not their father.
He had been a bad father all along; it was why CC never trusted him. The boys would be sad at first, but, eventually they would get a stepfather who would take extra-good care of them, knowing what they’d been through. It was an act of generosity to leave them.
No. That was the bad version.
What had little Harry felt that August day at Dyer Pond? Had he tried to right himself and been unable to? Did he think Daddy and wonder why Daddy didn’t come? Was he surprised when a hand scooped him out of the water and he saw Theo’s face?
Gottlieb felt an instinct to rise to the top, to propel himself up and let out his breath in a big gush, to have a friend tell him how many seconds he’d been under. He wanted to be a child, but he wasn’t a child, he’d made a mistake. This was what he deserved for his sin, the sin of his emissions, the sin of his adultery, the sin of his fail—
There was a whoosh as he came up, like the noise a film makes when it stops and someone starts it again. The sky was bright, the air warm on his skin.
He vomited water. He was on the beach on his ass, a tall pimply teenager hovering over him. “Hey, man, you scared me out there. Are you okay? I thought you were drowned when I dragged you in.”
Gottlieb retched again and shakily rose to his knees, then decided against it and sat back down. His vision was double in his right eye as he wiped the blood from his left. He was surrounded by three or four guys. Someone pounded him on the back a few times and tied a T-shirt around his head.
“He’s okay. Needs a few stitches above that eye is all.”
“I’m okay,” Gottlieb heard himself say. “Just let me sit here for a few minutes.”
A kid who looked about ten—oh, the indignity of it—walked up to him with a piece of Jed’s Brewer surfboard. “Here’s your board, dude. What’s left of it.”
Gottlieb looked dumbly at the other half, still attached to the leash around his ankle. “Too bad,” the kid said, setting it down. “Brewer is an awesome shaper.”
After a few minutes Gottlieb stood up on his own. The cut above his eye stung and throbbed, but his vision was back to normal. “Can you make it up the stairs?” someone asked. He realized he was staring out at the waves, which looked small from where they were sitting.
“I think so.”
“You’d better take care of that cut,” the pimply teen said. “Go to Health Services on Second Street. You probably need a half-dozen stitches.”
“Thanks. Really. Thanks,” said Gottlieb, extending a hand to his rescuer, who gave a half soul shake.
Gottlieb picked up the piece of board, clutching the other piece to his chest along with it, the leash still around his ankle. He could feel the blood trickling down his face from under the T-shirt turban and held his free hand to his head to stanch it. People stared at him as they passed, asking if he was okay.
Yes. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. I’m okay. Thanks. Thank you.
In the parking lot, an old guy with a white beard was making his way toward the stairs, carrying his own long board. He reminded Gottlieb of the guy in San Onofre. All these Santas. Surfing skinny Santas. “You’re bleeding pretty bad,” Santa said.
“I’ll be all right.”
“I got something in my truck for that.” He insisted on carrying Gottlieb’s board stump and led him to his pickup. A German shepherd sat in the front seat. Santa rinsed Gottlieb’s cut with spring water and applied gauze and a bandage from a first-aid kit. How could people be so kind? Then he said, “Not too deep. I’ll give you a butterfly just in case, but it should close up on its own. You hit a rock?”
“My board, I think. It broke. Maybe the reef.”
“It’s big today. You’re new, huh?”
“I’m from New York. Brooklyn.”
“Oh yeah? Whatcha doing out here?”
“I had some business in L.A. But I’m finished.”
“Where you parked?” Santa asked.
Gottlieb nodded at the Cayenne, and they walked over together, Santa carrying the Brewer stump. The microBrew, he thought. He still had his humor. That had to be good. Gottlieb removed the Hide-A-Key from the fender and opened the car. Santa put the half-board in the Cayenne for him. Gottlieb thanked him, shook his hand. “I’m Aaron,” the guy said.
“I’m . . . Danny.”
“You shouldn’t go out again today. You let that heal first.”
Danny laughed at the thought. A genuine smile.
Aaron went toward the stairs. Danny changed next to the car. An old couple was sitting on the bench where the backbend girl had been. Weathered and WASPy. He poured water over his head, avoiding the bandage. He started to go around to the trunk to put his wet suit in and closed the car door to make room to pass. He heard an ominous click, and when he tried the trunk, it wouldn’t open. Goddamn automatic lock. “Shit,” he murmured. Aaron was out of earshot, halfway down the stairs to the beach. Danny tried the other doors. “Dammit!”
A young guy, a Josh Hartnett type with tous
led black hair, came over, wet suit half down his hairless chest. “What happened?”
“Locked my key inside.”
“You don’t have another one?”
“It’s a rental car,” he said. “I’m not from here.”
“You have triple-A?” No. “How can you not have triple-A, man? It’s only like fifty bucks a year.”
“I have lockout coverage on my auto insurance. I can call them. But my phone’s in there, too.”
“You hit your head?”
“Board hit it.”
“Oh, man, that’s the worst,” said Josh Hartnett.
By this time another guy had come over. This one was bleach-blond, with crinkled, tan skin, in his forties, Jeff Spicoli thirty years later.
“He lock his keys in?” Jeff Spicoli asked Josh Hartnett.
“I just need to call my insurance company.”
“I’ll do it,” said Josh Hartnett, whipping out a smartphone. “Who is it?”
“Geico.” The kid began to dial for him. It was an embarrassment of generosity.
“You don’t have to do that,” Spicoli said. “I got a break-in kit in my van.” Danny laughed, couldn’t help it.
Josh Hartnett had Geico on. He passed Danny the phone to give his information. Even after Danny returned it, Hartnett said he would wait till the locksmith came.
A third guy came along, with pale blue eyes and a mop of sun-bleached, dreadlocked hair. He looked like he had taken a lot of psychedelic drugs. He seemed to know the others. They called him Richard. Richard went through the questions. Locked out, yes, cut, yes, probably the reef, board broke.
Then Richard smiled slightly at Danny. He felt the hot shame of all these people staring and then realized they were only trying to help, there was no mockery here, their interest was pure. “What are you doing down here?” asked Richard.