“Yeah, yeah. It totally needs a tag or something. But the bigger problem is that this is supposed to be a pilot, so it needs to be an idea that can carry a whole series.”
“This would make a good web series,” I say, glancing around at our cozy setup. “Kind of like Lucy with her advice booth—but modern and with some grit.”
“That’s genius,” Marisol says. She turns to Raj. “I keep telling her she’s a genius, but she doesn’t believe me.”
“You think I don’t know this? She saved my screenplay,” Raj says.
“You guys, stop,” I say, though I have to admit it feels really good to hear I’m smart. After all, not one of the eleven colleges I applied to thought I was up to snuff. “But seriously, though. I think I’m onto something. Each episode could be a different client with a weird problem.”
“That’s a great idea,” Raj says. He’s wearing one of my favorite shirts. It’s a long-sleeve T-shirt with three buttons at the top. The shade of ivory looks so good against his coffee-colored skin.
“It is?” I ask.
“Sure. It’s an amazing concept. It’s so self-contained—and cheap.”
“That’s important?”
“Money is always important,” Raj says. “I’m going to need a kung fu expert to play my lead. Sometimes that costs money.”
“And this idea has a simple framework,” I say, getting it.
“Right. Damn, I wish I’d thought of it,” Raj says.
“You can have the idea,” I say. “Take it.”
“No way,” Raj says. “This is yours.”
“But your project is due on Tuesday. And it’s not like I’m going to do anything with it.”
He considers it for a moment and then seems to think better of it. “I’m not in the business of stealing concepts. Talking out my ideas at great length with a supersmart girl-woman, yes. But stealing, no. Besides, you should do something with it.”
“He’s right,” Marisol says.
“Improv something right now,” Raj says.
Marisol and I lock eyes. Hers are sparkling and I bet mine are, too. Why not? I think, feeling giddy. “Will you shoot us?” I ask, handing him my iPhone.
“Sure,” Raj says.
“Okay, I’m the therapist, and you have a problem,” I tell Marisol.
“What is it?” Marisol asks, totally game.
“It’s got to be kind of absurd but real at the same time,” Raj says.
“How about if you’re your boss and you’re wondering how to get your assistant to like you?” I suggest. “Because you’re actually afraid of what she thinks?”
“I can totally be Agnes,” Marisol says.
Raj gets a shot of our sign as Marisol and I take our seats on opposite sides of the advice table. I pull my hair back in a tight bun. Marisol smiles at me—a conspirator. She takes off her glasses, shakes out her hair, and applies a thick layer of lipstick.
Raj crouches down so that the iPhone is level with our faces. “Action,” he says.
“Tell me more about this assistant of yours. What’s her name again?” I ask, holding a pencil to the notebook.
“Her name is Miranda,” Marisol says in a perfect British accent. She sighs. “Miranda, Miranda, Miranda. She’s not a very good worker, and she doesn’t realize how lucky she is to have a job with me.”
“And you continue to employ her. Can you tell me what that’s about?”
“I don’t want to let her go until she admits that she admires me. Just thinking about her gives me a headache.”
“She’s both the headache and the cure,” I say, as a breeze lifts my hat from my head. “Oh!” I chase my hat down the beach, catch it, and return, breathless, to the table.
“You almost lost your hat, there, Doctor,” Marisol says, laughing.
“But not my head,” I say gravely. “And I think there’s a message in that. Let the wind blow off our hats, for perhaps they aren’t what’s holding our heads together after all.”
“Cut,” Raj says. “That was totally weird and completely perfect.”
In what feels like a bold move, he takes my hand. I don’t let go.
“Want to try another?” I ask.
By 2:00 p.m., not only do we have the first three webisodes recorded, we’ve also had several “clients”: a cute couple talking about who should move in with whom, a housewife wondering if she should have lunch with her high school boyfriend, and a pair of girls in sixth grade who wanted to put a spell on their teacher. There’s also been some dirty talk despite our sign. We’ve made twenty-three dollars in two hours.
We’re debating how to get more people to visit us, when I see someone walking down the boardwalk.
“No way,” I say. It’s Alex. He’s too far away for me to see his face clearly, but I know that walk. Even though he’s wearing a simple white button-down that every person who lives within a ten-mile radius of a Gap owns, I feel like I know that particular shirt. It’s definitely him.
But what is he doing here?
Without thinking, I stand. I can almost feel the workings of my eyes as they focus on him. This is so weird. I just had that dream about him last night, so it’s as if he stepped out of my subconscious. The air feels suddenly rich with the smell of the ocean. I can taste the salt in my throat. As he walks in our direction, a prickly heat radiates from my gut and I fall back into my chair.
“What?” says Marisol.
“It’s Alex.” I’m so shocked, I barely have enough breath to speak.
“We can’t understand you, honey,” Marisol says, bending toward me.
“I feel like she needs some smelling salts,” Raj says.
“Alex,” I say.
“Her ex. Oh, God,” Marisol says, looking up. “Where?”
“Wait, who?” Raj asks.
“The blond guy in the white button-down,” I say.
“Are you sure?” Marisol asks.
I look up. “It’s definitely him.” I cover my face with my hands and sink lower.
“What’s the big deal?” asks Raj.
Marisol whispers in my ear. “He’s coming toward us. He knows it’s you. Come on. Smile and wave.”
“I can’t!” I say.
“Yes, you can!” Marisol hisses. “You have to! You’re an actress—act!” I look up and wave as Marisol continues to whisper in my ear. “You’re Grace Kelly, the picture of elegance.”
“I’m the picture of elegance,” I repeat as Alex approaches. My stomach sinks as I remember that I’m sitting behind a sign that reads ADVICE: TWO DOLLARS A QUESTION. NO DIRTY TALK!
“Becca?” Alex asks, picking up the pace as he strides toward us. “I thought that was you. Nice glasses.” He laughs. “This is crazy!”
I push the glasses up on my head and stand. “Alex, I can’t believe this. What are you doing here?” I lean over the table and hug him. His hands on my back are stiff and nervous as he pats me. I am dizzy with the incongruity of the moment.
“I’m here for the Jones concert.”
“Oh,” I say, and feel a pinch in my chest that he’s still going—without me. “You didn’t sell the tickets?”
He shakes his head no.
“Who’d you come with? Your new girlfriend?” I can’t disguise the edge in my voice. If I have to meet his new girlfriend, I’m going to barf.
“No, I’m here with my roommate. I never said I had a girlfriend, by the way.”
“Whatever.”
“I’m Marisol,” Marisol says, stepping toward me protectively and placing a hand on my shoulder.
“Raj.” Raj nods hello. He’s off. His face has fallen so far, he’s almost unrecognizable to me.
And it’s so weird to have them standing so close together. I don’t like it. It’s like my old world—with all of its pain and history and longing—is bleeding into my new world, which for a moment felt so full of promise. I’m not ready for my old world to see my new world. I also don’t like the way that Raj is standing—his shoulders hunched,
his usually relaxed posture tense.
“Marisol, here, is booking commercials left and right, and he’s a filmmaker,” I say. I almost tell him about Baby Bear’s First Hanukkah, but think better of it.
“That’s cool.…So what are you up to?” Alex says. “What’s this all about?”
“Well,” I say, glancing at Marisol. Her brown eyes widen, urging me to make shit up. “I’m making a webisode.”
“Starring and directing,” Marisol says.
“I just hold the iPhone,” Raj says.
“Really?” Alex asks, his voice full of concern. I nod with too much enthusiasm and a shadow crosses his face. “Becca, do you…need some money?” He pulls a couple of twenties out of his worn leather wallet.
“NO!” I say. Oh, God. Doesn’t he understand how humiliating this is? He sticks a twenty in the can.
“We are not looking for handouts,” Marisol says. “We’re offering a service.”
“While making art,” I add, fumbling.
“Dude, you paid the fee—just ask a question,” Raj says. His voice sounds lower than normal, and he looks like he wants to punch Alex.
“Raj and I are going to take five,” Marisol says, glancing at her watch-less wrist.
“Huh?” Raj asks, looking pale.
“This is a union gig,” Marisol says, leading a reluctant Raj away. “We’re entitled to breaks.”
“This is nuts,” I say, shoving my sweating hands in my pockets. I’ve fantasized about running into Alex so many times. In none of those fantasies was I dressed like a Woody Allen character and sitting with a coffee can.
“It is what it is,” he says, looking at the ground. “Okay. Advice time. What should I get Granny Hopkins for her birthday? She’s turning ninety.”
Oh, Granny Hopkins. Alex’s most captivating relative. How I love her.
“Take her on a date. Somewhere really elegant. Pick her up at eight in a coat and tie.”
“Nicely solved.” His eyes flicker with recognition. “But you’ve always been good with presents.”
“It’s true,” I say, thinking of the last present I got him. A T-shirt from an amusement park that we both went to as kids, but was shut down a decade ago due to safety concerns. We both loved the roller coaster. I found the shirt at a Goodwill in Rhode Island. It took all my strength to hide it from him until Christmas.
“I brought that T-shirt to Stanford,” he says as if reading my mind.
“It’s a great shirt,” I say, and he smiles at me.
“It’s on the house.” I take his twenty from the can and hand it back to him.
“Take it. I insist. I’m supporting the arts.” His cell phone beeps with a text. He checks the message and replies.
“So, you’re okay?” he asks, eyes squinting with genuine concern.
“YES! I’m great! I’m acting. I’m directing. I’m following my passion. I’m doing what I love. But what about you? Are you okay? Do you like Stanford?”
“Yeah,” he says, his face registering surprise at the question, because of course he’s okay. He’s at Stanford, after all, fulfilling not only his parents’ dream for himself, but also my mother’s dream for me. “It’s fucking awesome.”
“Is it?” I ask, because although I can’t really explain it, something about him inserting the word fucking indicates that it’s actually not that awesome. Alex is not one to swear casually.
“I mean, it’s hard. But it’s Stanford, so…of course it’s hard.”
“Yeah, of course it is,” I say, holding his gaze.
“I’ve got to go. My roommate is waiting for me. I’m sorry about the phone call, Becca. I’m sorry that I wasn’t more…forthcoming.”
Alex and his vocabulary. As charming as it is, it’s also distancing.
“It was rough,” I say. He nods, and we hug again awkwardly.
“Take it easy,” he says, and walks away. A second later he turns around and says, “Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about your camera.” And then he’s off.
“So, that’s him,” Marisol says. She and Raj take their seats on either side of me.
“That’s him,” I say, kind of numb.
“I mean, he’s okay,” Marisol says. “If the whole Captain America thing gets your motor running.”
I stare into the middle distance.
“Resist the dark side,” Marisol tells me. “There’s nothing for you there.”
“He apologized,” I say.
Marisol snorts. “I should hope so. I mean, after that phone call.”
“You’ve been talking on the phone with him?” Raj asks.
“Just once,” I say. “It was awful.”
Raj nods. A little while ago we were holding hands, but I feel so confused and muddled right now.
“Good news, fungus fairy,” Marisol says. “Our scheme worked. Forty-three dollars. You can pay your rent.”
I check my phone. Please make an agent have called. Please let one of my headshots have landed me something. But there’s only a missed call from an 888 number, which I know is a robo-call from the phone company telling me I’m late paying my bill, and must do so immediately to “avoid a disruption in service.” I have an ache in my belly, and I hate that seeing Alex has created it. Being reminded of the pain of rejection upon rejection is like a punch in the gut. I sit in the chair and place my head in my hands. The Rastafarian’s drumming isn’t helping. For the second time today, I think I might pass out.
“Doll?” Marisol asks, rubbing my back.
“Yeah.”
“How about we make both our lives a little easier and you move in with me next month?”
“I’d like that,” I say.
She puts an arm around me. “We’ll sell my coffee table, and you can sleep in my trundle. How does that sound?”
“Like just what I need,” I say, and put my head on her shoulder, which smells like perfume, salt air, and just a touch of pig placenta.
“YOU WERE BEGGING? On Venice Beach?” Mom asks. I’m lying on my bed with my limbs bent and splayed in a pose of defeat, like an actor on a Civil War reenactment battlefield.
“I wasn’t begging, Mom. I was giving advice. I was providing a service,” I say into the phone. I sit up and stare at my Polaroids, which I’ve been sticking to my mirror in no particular order.
“On the beach?”
“Kind of. I was more on the boardwalk. But, yeah.”
“Whatever. It was outdoors. It was begging.”
“You wouldn’t say that if I’d been playing the flute in a velvet skirt,” I say, placing the picture that Raj took of Marisol and me next to the one of her doing a cartwheel on the beach. So far the collage looks kind of messy, but I’m messy inside right now, too, so at least it’s authentic.
“What was Alex doing there?” Mom asks.
“He was going to see that Jones concert that we’d bought tickets to back in June. He went with his roommate.”
I tape up the other two pictures I have from today, one of our bare feet in the sand, and one of Raj listening to me, his hand curled under his chin like The Thinker.
“He wanted to see you,” Mom says. “And I think maybe you wanted to see him, too.”
“It was a total coincidence,” I say. “I promise.”
“That you went to Venice, where the concert was being held?”
“The concert was in Santa Monica,” I say.
“Close enough—on the day you knew Alex had the tickets. I don’t know, honey. I really think you should come home.” I hear her spoon hit the side of her tea mug. She sips the drink, and I listen as she takes a bite of what I know is toast with apple butter on it, because it’s December and we always have toast with apple butter in the winter. I feel a pang, wishing I were with her.
“I can’t come home.” I’m surprised by my own certainty.
“What do you mean you can’t? Pack up your stuff, get on a plane, and come home. You can use my credit card.”
“I’m not ready to surren
der.” I close my eyes and fall back on my bed. “Besides, I’m in a play.”
“The bears one?”
“Yes,” I say, annoyed by her tone. “It’s a real play, Mom. And they pay me. And I have an idea for a web series.”
“LA is a big city. A big, expensive city. You obviously can’t afford it, honey.”
“Yes, I can. I made my rent. And Marisol and I are going to move in together. We decided today.”
“What about the college applications? You have less than five weeks. They should be just about done now. Are they?”
“Almost,” I say, though this is not the case at all. And it’s not just because I feel a little sick every time I open the Common App. It’s also because I don’t want to give them the chance to reject me all over again. And I’m not sure if I belong in college. What if Marisol is right, and I’m a genuine artist who doesn’t really need college? “I’m not ready to give up on acting, Mom.”
“Have I told you about my old classmate Caroline Windsor?”
“No,” I say. My feet are starting to itch again. I peel off my socks.
“We were tied for valedictorian in high school.”
“You can tie for that?” I ask, threading my fingers through my toes to get to the really itchy places.
“Sure. She went to Harvard. And then she became an actress. She’s a pretty lady, too. At least she was. Time has not been kind to her. All that hard living, I suppose. She crashed on couches and ate ramen long after the rest of us moved on. She had bit parts here and there, but she never had a break. The whole thing is very sad if you ask me.”
“Maybe her big break is right around the corner,” I say, putting her on speaker and carrying the phone to the bathroom so that I can wash my hands.
“Oh, honey, that’s the kind of thinking that got her in trouble in the first place. Grandma told me that she still asks her parents for money on a regular basis. At thirty-eight. A Harvard graduate. Can you imagine? At one point, she was a clown. From Harvard to the circus. She’s the antithesis of the American dream. You don’t want to end up like Caroline.”
“Jeez! Aren’t you being a little judgmental? Maybe she enjoys being a clown.” I remember that California Film School offers clowning classes, and smile to myself. It sounded fun to me. The hot water feels good and I decide to soak my feet. “Maybe she brings people happiness. Did you ever think of that? Besides, don’t you believe in me?”
Hello, Sunshine Page 15