“Hey, could I get some of that please?” Frankly asked from the floor by the open bathroom door.
“You sure you want it?” Annie said. “I might be getting a little bit of what Philip has.”
Frankly looked up to the bathroom, the waterfall of shit-piss water still rivering out like the toilet was projectile vomiting, and turned back to Annie. “Yeah, I think I’m gonna need something pretty soon here to take the edge off, if you don’t mind. Besides, we all smoked together last night, so…ya know.”
She shuffled over to Frankly on the floor, handing him the joint.
Gabe opened his eyes slightly. “Oh, man. I called the goddamn landlord like two weeks ago. I don’t know what happened.”
“I think I know what happened,” Frankly said from the floor, coughing up smoke and handing the lit joint back to Annie, who shuffled back to roll herself up in a ball on the couch, mumbling to herself something like, “Awww, man, now I got water on my feet.”
“Do you guys need me to do anything?” Milt asked, trying to be as proactive as he knew how in such a domestic disaster situation. Not his forte. This was the kind of thing Laney, being the man of the family, would have fixed.
“Yeah,” Frankly said. “Could you please get off my finger?”
Milt hadn’t seen that in moving closer to Gabe, he had stepped on Frankly’s right index finger. Gabe laughed, then coughed up some morning phlegm, spitting it onto the floor.
Milt probably wouldn’t have been able to do anything real to help anyway. Aside from using the plunger, he couldn’t do much with overflowing toilets. Getting out of the way and letting someone else handle it was the best thing he could do in such situations. Milt was a true master of delegating responsibility.
“I’ll try him again in a few hours, okay?” Gabe said.
“Well, we need to do something about this right now,” Philip said. “It’s still overflowing. Look.”
He pointed at the toilet, which was indeed still overflowing volcano-style, and Gabe leaned forward out of his doorway slightly and saw the mess. “Whoa, that is a lot of shitty water.”
“Is anyone else hungry?” Annie asked. “I might go for a breakfast burrito run to the taco truck down the street.”
“Nah,” Gabe said. “I’m going back to sleep. Hey, Philip, can you just turn off the water and, uh…we’ll deal with this later or something?”
“Yeah, I’ll have some chorizo in my burrito, babe,” Philip said to Annie before turning to Gabe. “You got it. Water off. Oh, man. It’s really wet in there.”
“You want me to go with you?” Frankly asked from the floor.
“Sure, I don’t give a fuck,” Annie said. “Let me just find a towel somewhere and wipe off my feet. Ich.”
Milt breathed in deeply and realized he had done absolutely nothing to help out the situation. He wondered if this was really his fault, though. The toilet had been apparently overflowing a lot, according to the people who actually lived here. He was only visiting. Just getting ready for what was likely going to be the biggest day of his life up to this point.
He couldn’t help but worry that this right here was a bad, bad sign.
CHAPTER 15
“So, who are we meeting up with again?” Frankly asked, gripping the wheel with one hand, and leaning back in his driver’s seat. Milt, on the passenger side as always, was looking out the window as they tooled through the urban landscape toward the newly renovated downtown LA gentrifying before their eyes.
“I’ve never met the guy, but Gil set me up to talk with him and his production partner about some idea a friend of mine and I have had for a while that Gil liked,” Milt said.
“And what is the project again?” Frankly asked.
Milt was craving a morning whiskey as succor for his slight hangover from the evening before and to forget the early morning maelstrom they’d all gone through together only an hour earlier as some kind of ragtag latter-day Goonies team.
“Basically, my friend Shaun wants to try to summit a series of the tallest mountains in the world,” Milt said, not turning away from the window, his head practically leaning on it by this point. “I think there’s like six or seven main ones that are kind of like the ones you ‘have to do before you die’ type of thing. We think we can get enough together from that to do a limited series or a doc.”
“And who are you again?” Frankly asked.
Milt turned to him now and saw he was looking at him as well. They had a minor staring contest, both exhausted, both slightly hungover, both trying not to think about all the brutal realities that came with the morning’s earlier lament-able episode.
“Keep your eyes on the road, man,” Milt said.
“You’re only saying that because I’m Asian,” Frankly said, shifting his weight and switching hands. Now he was only driving with his left hand.
MUCH safer, Milt thought.
Milt’s phone vibrated and he plucked it out of his pocket, expecting something either from Gil, Silverstein, or perhaps Jessica Chen. He wondered if she would actually show up to the screening after threatening for so long to do so. He wondered if she would try to steal the show or pass out black-and-white glossies of her over-produced headshots.
The fact that he never watched her show when he was younger—or, rather, when he was already getting too old to watch Balloon—made him feel eerily delighted in a way that also made him feel a little guilty.
“What is it?” Frankly asked.
“My dad,” Milt said, looking at his phone and yet another ridiculous animated GIF his dad had sent him.
For the past year or so, Milt’s dad seemed to only communicate with him via text message this way. Like a child who had just learned his first words and couldn’t stop with the recitation of them.
Milt’s dad would send meme after meme, animated GIF after animated GIF, usually making fun of Trump or some other trite and unimaginative gag, regardless of the fact that neither Milt nor his father were the least bit political or had ever once had a serious conversation about politics.
“What’s he say?” Frankly asked, erratically turning left down an alley to avoid the traffic.
“Nothing,” Milt said, clenching his left hand on the armrest between them. “Just a picture of the presidents on Mount Rushmore all throwing up and rolling their eyes at Trump standing before them.”
“Borrrriiinnng,” Frankly said.
“That’s my dad.”
“Why didn’t you invite him?”
“Well, I did send him some of the articles and things promoting the event and whatnot,” Milt said. “So, it’s not exactly like I was keeping it from him.”
“Okaaaaaay.”
“But I know he never reads that stuff. This way I can feel like I, you know, did my best but still don’t have to deal with him showing up. Besides, he’d never want to come up all the way to LA anyway. This way, we’re both happy.”
“Why not just tell him you’re here and that he should come?”
Milt thought about this, and there was quiet in the car except for some late nineties Flaming Lips playing off the car stereo that was probably from the same CD mix that Frankly had always played way back when Milt still lived in LA with him.
Good ol’ reliable Frankly and his CD mixes.
“Meh, not worth the trouble.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Frankly grumbled through nearly closed lips as though he were sucking on a matchstick.
“Mmm,” Milt said, actually considering how to put it. He knew Frankly knew what he meant, and he knew Frankly knew he knew. Frankly had lived with Milt all that time. They had taken a lot of drugs together; there’d been many evenings of heartfelt confessions and revelations.
Frankly and Milt knew everything about one another.
“This one time,” Milt started, “my dad had this huge party at his house.”
“He still in the one in La Jolla?”
“Yeah,” Milt said. “So, there was this party my dad ha
d for his birthday and there were all these people over at his house…”
“Mmmm hmmmm…”
“I just remember that everyone there, all his friends and employees and neighbors were…they all gave my dad toys for presents. Like kid toys. Not shit from Sharper Image or even Spencer’s or whatever. Toys toys.”
“Remind me, what did your dad do before he retired?”
“Sales.”
“Ahhh…”
“But, dude, it was my dad’s sixtieth birthday and all these people were giving him toys. And the thing about it was, like, at first it seemed kind of funny, because one after another he’d open these presents and they’d be a box of LEGOs or a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure, or a whole bunch of Matchbox cars bundled together. But then it was more and more clear, the people there hadn’t planned it. It was just something that happened organically because everyone was—”
“Everyone knew your dad really, really likes toys.”
“Right,” Milt said. “Everyone was laughing at first. But after the sixth or seventh present, they stopped. It was like the joke wasn’t funny anymore. Then it was like, This isn’t a joke.”
Frankly swerved to the right, making his way into another wet alleyway.
Milt clenched his left hand and teeth. He closed his eyes for a second, trying to drone out the fear and hangover. “When I was young, like before high school, he used to take me to these DIY comic book conventions and baseball card conventions and shit like that. He was into Magic: The Gathering and all that crap.”
“Sounds fun.”
“It was…when I was like ten. Then I got really bored of it, especially when we would always go out and get whatever the hot new videogame was, and he would always just end up playing it himself, you know? I’d be sitting there and would eventually go to the guest room and read. Then high school hit and I got really bored with all that stuff and moved on, but my dad clearly kept going with it. Which is fine. It’s his thing. It’s what he does instead of watching sports or something, I guess.”
Milt pushed the button to roll down his window and felt the wind rushing against his face. It smelled like hot dogs and truck exhaust. The tires of Frankly’s Civic were splashing against the drainage water of the alleyway they were dangerously zooming through.
Neither said anything for a pregnant few seconds of nothing but window breeze and the light sounds of the music playing softly now off the car stereo, the tires swishing through shallow water.
“It’s funny, there’s this one thing I always think about with all this stuff with my dad…”
“What’s that?”
“The other thing about the whole video game thing was that whenever we’d get a new game, he’d always want to read the instruction manual cover to cover.”
“Okaaaaay?”
“Like, he couldn’t even turn the fucking thing on until he knew every single control and move and whatever.”
“Riiiighhhht.”
“But me,” Milt said, “I never wanted to read the instructions. I just wanted to play. For me, part of the game was learning how to play the game while I played it. It made it more fun and exciting for me. But my dad needed to know exactly what to do and how to do it and where to go and all that shit.”
“Nintendo Power Magazine!”
“Right, all that nonsense. He would even call the hotline numbers for codes and tricks and shit.”
“What?! That shit was a rip!”
“Yeah, seriously. But my dad was totally into it. He had to know exactly what to do or else he couldn’t play the game. I was the total opposite. I didn’t want to know shit. I just wanted to explore and play and, I don’t know, like, get lost in the game. Neither way was better or worse, just different. My dad and I are just different people. In a lot of ways.”
“I guess it was your way of rebelling as a kid,” Frankly said.
“Yeah, it’s probably why I got out of all that geek shit when I turned twelve.”
“Except now you’re writing about it and making movies about it.”
“Well, he’s still my dad.” Milt sighed. “Shit’s in my DNA.” He glanced languidly at the side mirror beyond the window and knew. “Shit, we even look exactly the same. I can’t escape him.”
“Or Seth Rogen,” Frankly snickered.
“Not until the grosses go down or Rogen finally says something on Twitter that pisses off enough people. It’s still the same thing even today. My dad’s the kind of guy who chooses which book he’s going to read next based on the New York Times bestseller list. He figures out what movie he’ll watch according to the reviews.”
“Makes sense.”
“But it doesn’t! It’s stupid to do it like that!”
“Not to your dad,” Frankly said calmly with a twinge of tease. He loved goading Milt on and knew exactly how to do it.
“I do the exact opposite,” Milt said. “I go exactly against whatever that shit tells you. I can’t help myself. My dad still craves guidance like with the video game instruction manuals. If I ever got into playing video games again, I’d just throw the manuals away first thing.”
“Such a rebel still, hmm?”
“I see movies based on what the reviews don’t say.”
“That must be exhausting. And pretentious.”
Milt nodded, smiling. He got it. Okay, Frankly won this round.
“I’m only saying my dad and I were different when I was a kid, and we’re different now. Sometimes those differences can make it difficult to be around each other for too long or at important events like this.”
“So, what are you going to say back to your dad’s meme?”
“Nothing,” Milt said. “I’m gonna send him an animated GIF back.”
“Which one?”
“Hillary falling down the stairs over and over again.”
“Sounds like you’re not too different.”
“I love my dad. I respect him and admire him for a lot of reasons. But yeah…not…worth…the…trouble.”
Frankly was speeding up through the alleys now, rows of identical, white, smog-stained garage doors attached to an endless line of identical, sienna apartment buildings on either side of the car. They nearly caught some air going down and up a drainage ditch, and Milt finally said, “Easy, easy.…”
Frankly slowed down, though not much, and abruptly turned right to get out of the alleyways and back on the main street lined with the Korean street signs and businesses of K-Town.
Despite the fact the breakneck turn caused the car to wobble, Frankly didn’t bother putting both hands on the wheel, only shifting his weight and using his right hand once again.
“You really expect a lot out of people, don’t you?” Frankly asked.
“I definitely don’t want to die in this car,” Milt said, trying to be as insouciant as Frankly.
“Why not?”
“My mom. It’d kill her.”
“Mmm.”
“You know that managing editor I told you about from the last paper I worked?”
“Yeah, the one you guys called ‘Shitsmelled’?”
“He actually said to me, ‘You know, Milt, you can’t expect everyone else here to work as hard as you.’ He actually said that to me. Twice. Once in front of this other kid Silverstein I worked with when we were in the little fuck’s office.”
“Wow,” Frankly said, unaffected. “Twice.”
“Twice.”
“Twice,” Frankly repeated zombie-like. “The horror.”
“Seriously,” Milt said, “it’s like what I’ve been dealing with with this gal at CineRanchero and—”
“All right, all right, all right,” Frankly cut in. “I don’t need to hear all your complaining.”
“Hey, that’s anti-Semitic.”
This got a laugh from Frankly, who also granted a little relief from the accelerator as reward for Milt’s bon mot. “But really,” Frankly inquired, “aren’t you worried sometimes that you might push people you work w
ith too hard?”
“I’ve actually been thinking about this a bunch the last few months. Especially with all the stuff I had to do with all these people all over the country on the doc and this fucking tour. It’s come up here or there, and I’ve been wondering whether I’m too much of an asshole when it comes to these things.”
“Or anything at all for that matter.”
“You know what?” Milt said, ignoring his friend. “I realized I’d rather get yelled at for pushing people too hard than having whatever we’re working on fail because I’m not pushing people hard enough…. Then not only do I still get yelled at by everyone—in this case, fucking Gil Gladly—but also the fucking project FAILS too!”
“Okay.” Frankly nodded. “That actually makes a little sense.” Then he turned up the next Flaming Lips song, “Moth in the Incubator,” one of Milt’s and his old favorites.
g
It was a little past noon before Milt found himself at the table with Frankly to his side and Blake Douglas across from him with his buzzed haircut, meticulously groomed five-o-clock shadow, and onyx black button-up shirt open (two buttons) at the collar to reveal his bony, perfectly tanned skin.
They were all drunk by this point. Frankly and Milt had gotten to the restaurant Blake had recommended for their meeting about twenty minutes early, thanks to Frankly’s insouciant driving that minded not for most speed limits, yellow lights or, for the most part, other drivers. Blake’s production partner had not deigned to attend.
Frankly and Milt had probably had something like two doubles. It was hard to remember how many Blake Douglas had had after they had taken the recommendation of a fantastically delectable scotch that the Hispanic bartender in his posh hipster gray vest, pink bowtie, and Skrillex haircut/glasses combo had made.
Milt flashed on the swanky place they were in, the low chandeliers, the tasteful white walls, black-and-white checkered floor like they were in some kind of gourmet fifties diner knockoff. It was chic and New York. Only a few years earlier, when Frankly and Milt had gone to UCLA, the entire downtown area was verbally cordoned off from the kooky college kids, left there for the dregs only. Now here they were, the whole region having been gentrified on an epic level, and the place was, well, “trendy.” Meaning expensive.
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