“No one will watch it,” Figgy says to me.
I don’t shove my chair back. Or storm out. The angry adrenaline I came in with has been used up in the pitch. I appreciate that they were willing to hear me out. I feel like I fought a good fight.
“Do ya live here?” Sam asks.
“San Francisco,” I say. I look down and think of my mom, without me, in St. Louis.
“And Ryan?”
“Same. We’re roommates.”
“Nice one,” Sam says.
“No one will watch it,” Figgy says to Sam.
“You said,” I volunteer.
“But,” Sam says to Figgy, then winks at me.
“Never really stopped us before,” Figgy says.
“You around LA another day?” Sam asks.
“Until morning,” I say, feeling unsure.
Figgy and Sam stand. I thank them for taking the time, and then I reach over the table to shake Figgy’s hand. “We’ll give you a bell,” he says.
When I shake Sam’s hand he says, “What he’s saying is, don’t fuck off just yet. We’ll definitely call.”
Ten
I step outside into white-bright sun feeling elated. I pull out my phone to dial Ryan and right then my phone vibrates in my hand. A call from: Blocked ID.
I answer with an upbeat hello, and on the other end of the line Sarah says, quiet and distant and shy, “Hey. It’s me.”
My stunned response is, I hang up. And immediately wish I hadn’t.
Then, again, my phone vibrates in my hand, and I jump. But this time it’s just Ryan.
“This is fucked,” I tell him.
“What’s fucked?”
“Sarah just called me.”
“What?” he says. “That’s impossible.”
My throat seizes.
“Dude, I can’t imagine how hard this last year, year-plus, has been for you,” Ryan says. “When you compound losing Sarah with feeling like you could have done more. I’m just really sorry.”
When I’d called Ryan in London to tell him Sarah had jumped, his response was disbelief. I’d struggled to speak. My mouth opened, my throat clicked, and out poured a moaning cry that I’ve since come to understand as grief.
He offered to come, to get a flight out that night. But I told him not to. He told me to go somewhere. To be with people. I told him I would, but I didn’t. Not for weeks.
Now, more than fifteen months later, Ryan’s asking me, “Thomas? Is everything okay?”
I swallow hard, take a breath. “Yeah,” I lie. “Yeah.” And to distract before he asks anymore questions, I tell him, “I made the Anarchy pitch.”
“Okay?” he says, jarred by my lack of segue. “They didn’t hate it, did they? They seemed like they wouldn’t hate it.”
“They were effusive in their praise,” I say. “They said they’d call.”
“Don’t kid. Are you kidding?” Ryan says, followed by a harsh, all-phlegm cough. I hear him exhale after a deep swallow.
“Are you feeling better?”
“Let’s stay on one topic. This Anarchy news is huge.”
“They asked if we had a script.”
“What’d you tell them?” he asks.
“That we didn’t.”
“Shit,” he says. “Did you tell them we’ve started it?”
“We haven’t.”
“Right, but… Shit. You should have told them… In the future, if it comes up, just say we have.”
“Okay,” I say, turning toward my car.
“Regardless, it’s awesome,” Ryan says. “I knew you’d kill it.”
“You thought I’d blow it, and so did I.”
“No, come on,” he says. “I was only worried that you were still at Elsa’s.”
“Elsa?”
“The one with your phone?”
“Oh.”
“We talked for half an hour. She’s super rad. But more rad is what went down at Anarchy. You really just never know. You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” I say blankly, though Sarah’s call has me sideways.
“Then I’ll call Peter now to relay the news.”
“Okay,” I say from what feels like a great distance.
I hang up. Then walk to my car in a trance.
Eleven
At the hotel, I exit the elevator on the third floor feeling fragile, and right there in the hallway is Sarah. Her hair is storm-tossed. Her lips impossible faded roses. Her skin so pale it looks see-through. She’s crossed her arms so her hands grip her shoulders.
“I was so surprised when you called,” I say. “I’m sorry I hung up.”
Her brow goes dark with concern and her red-painted lips solder shut. She looks down then pulls a dry-erase marker from nowhere and writes on the inside of her left forearm, Go home.
“I can’t,” I say.
Sarah uses the inside of her right forearm to wipe clean the inside of her left. Then she walks past me into the elevator without a word or a touch. She pushes against its back wall, her head tilted down.
“I can go with you,” I say. “We can get away from all this right off.”
She looks at me point-blank while the doors close, doesn’t make a move to stop it.
I mash the elevator button too late to open it back up, then hustle into the emergency exit, rush down the stairs. By the time I’m on the ground floor, the doors are open, the elevator empty.
I get back in, take the elevator back up to the third floor. My shoulders tense as the doors open, hopeful she’ll be there. But this time there’s no Sarah.
I head to my room and sit on the bed with the door propped open, in case she comes back. Ryan calls twice, but I don’t answer, fearful of distracting from this delicate moment.
Thirty minutes later, feeling emptied out, I have to muster the will to stand and head to EveryOther Films in Beverly Hills for my 3:30 p.m. meeting. The final pitch of the day.
Twelve
In dusty white etching, the door reads: EveryOther Films, Los Angeles Office. My mind’s still in a haze when I walk in and am greeted by the receptionist—a young, twenty-three-year-old male pulled from a magazine ad whose spine is so straight, whose face is so symmetrical, I can’t help but search for some flaw that will help me relax.
“You must be Ryan Ahearn. Or are you Thomas Muller?” he asks, chipper and without blinking.
“Mullen, actually, and I’m Thomas,” I say, my energy zapped.
The receptionist, all smiles and daylight, says, “Oh, it says Muller here.” He makes an adjustment on his touchscreen.
“Ryan won’t be…” I start, but there’s no need to finish because the receptionist offers a closed-mouth smile and tilts his head in a way that says, Oh, poor Ryan!
“It’s no problem,” he says, as he pokes and sweeps his touchscreen with a flourish. Then he presses a button that makes a muted whoosh sound. “Wait just one second.” And that’s how long it takes.
Out of the glass door to my left comes a woman in her late twenties, her hair a dishwater-blonde bob. The sleeves of her off-white silk blouse are rolled to the elbow. “Thomas? I’m Carly,” she says, a genuine smile. She offers her right hand to shake and I see an elaborate tattoo peek out from the inside of her right forearm. I give her hand a firm squeeze. Her green eyes are highlighted by a delicate frame of black eyeliner.
“Have we met before?” Carly asks me.
“No,” I say, certain we haven’t. After Sarah, I spiraled. Then the move to San Francisco where I went from shut down to shut-in.
“Usually I can place people,” she says, taking me in. “You don’t live here?”
I shake my head.
“And you’re not on TV?”
“Definitely not,” I say with a snicker.
“Hmm. Y
ou’re very familiar to me,” she says, and realizes we’re still shaking hands. “Oh, sorry!” Carly laughs and looks down at her iPad. “And Ryan couldn’t make it?”
“He isn’t well,” I say.
“That’s too bad,” she says. “But it’s great you’re here, so welcome. If you can follow me.”
Carly leads me through the door to the left of reception, then down a short, bleach-white hallway. I try to pull my shoulders back, to breathe deep, to find focus. But I don’t want to be here. I’m on fumes after the early wake-up, plus the exclamation points of receiving mom’s call, of seeing Sarah.
We arrive at a glass-doored meeting room. Inside there’s a wide, glossy table lit with fluorescent tubes sunk into its glass top. Carly tells me I can have a seat. The big, cushy chairs recline with minimal effort.
“Would you like anything to drink?”
“Maybe a water?”
“On it,” she says, then spins around and exits the room.
Agitated, I sit back and tell myself: just get through it. After this, the day is done. I try to relax by staring out at the never-ending city through two huge windows that take up an entire wall. I try to feel something about the landscape, but it’s just buildings: beige and white and black and more beige. Topped by a flicked ash and aquamarine sky.
So my phone won’t distract from my meeting with EveryOther’s execs, I hold END until it shows a dorky, thirty-two-bit animation and powers off. I shove it in my pocket as Carly walks in and hands me a small bottle of Evian.
“You good?” she asks. I nod, but she doesn’t look convinced. “You’ll do great. They’re just people, like anyone.”
I nod again, this time a double-bob of my head.
“Good. So you know how this will go, in a minute you’ll meet our three decision-making execs. You’ll basically have ten minutes to impress them, and after that they’ll probably have a few questions—five minutes at the absolute max. My advice, not that you need it, is just stay relaxed.”
I am far from relaxed. All I can think is: head home. Don’t bother pitching this meaningless movie about nothing to a trio of rich nobodies. While my mom is dying.
“And, y’know, knock ’em dead,” she says. I down half the water in one gulp, put the cap back on, then set it down in front of me.
“Is there time for me to…”
“And here they are!” Carly says with maximum cheer, her words protecting me by resetting the room.
In single file, in walk three white men in blue suits, same haircut, same build, same expression, carrying identical notepads wrapped in leather binders. All as slick and rich-seeming as the entirety of this place. Each of the three shakes my hand and introduces himself. I don’t quite hear the first man’s name and am so thrown that the other names slip my mind, as if they never said them. Then we all sit. Across from the clones, my body’s thermostat accelerates to bake.
Two of them say, in unison, “Let’s get started.” Then laugh at the fact that they’ve said it in unison. It relaxes me, and I start slow but not too slow, and move through the pitch, uninterrupted. They laugh when I hope they’ll laugh, and widen their eyes when I hope they’ll widen their eyes. I finish strong and tell them, “That’s the lot.”
“I get it,” the one in the middle says.
The one on the left says, “It seems like you’re afraid of it being violent.”
“It’s more of a cartoonish violence,” I say. “If Lucas hits an alien hard enough so their pompadour wig flies off, they scurry back to their spaceship and stay there, ashamed to have disappointed Elvis. As he’s their ultimate deity.” They don’t seem to love my response. “So as to the level of violence, think PG-thirteen.”
“I’d rather not,” the one on the right says, and laughs at his own joke.
“And guns?” asks the one in the center.
“No guns.”
“I thought Elvis was a gun man,” Center says.
“Elvis often carried a gun,” I say. “But for this story, we feel like a lighter tone serves the story best.”
“People won’t get it,” says Right.
“You make it subtle, and people think they’re being made fun of,” says Left. “And people don’t like being made fun of.”
“I feel like it’d be more timely if it took place at the White House,” says Center.
“Excuse me?” I say.
“Well, in terms of translating globally, the White House is a place everyone’s heard of,” says Left.
“Over eight hundred thousand visitors a year,” says Right.
I tell them Graceland has 650,000 visitors a year, and mention that, more importantly, Elvis has nothing to do with the White House, outside a drop-in during the Nixon Administration.
“True, true,” says Center. “But by all accounts, Louis is just dropping into Graceland, so it’s largely the same thing, right?”
“Lucas,” I correct. “And, well, not exactly…”
“The aliens are terrorists, is my point,” Center says.
“Terrorists,” says Right. “I like it.”
“Topical,” says Left.
“And why wouldn’t they want to steal the White House instead?” Center says.
“Especially when Elvis is visiting,” says Left. “That’s a true score!”
“Nothing unites an audience like a common enemy,” says Center. “And these terrorists would give them one.”
“Extra-terror-estrial…” says Right.
“Love it,” says Left.
“Though maybe it’s not a film,” Center says.
“Go on,” says Left.
“I just feel like maybe it’s a video game,” says Center. “Or even an app.”
“An app?” I say, as Carly walks by outside. She looks through the half-frosted window. I don’t know if she can read the dispirited look on my face.
“Are they still making lunch boxes?” Center asks. “If so, this is definitely lunch box material.”
“A toy line is in this project’s future,” Right says.
“At least a Nerf gun featuring Elvis-saving velcro-tipped darts,” Left says. “Those things don’t stick to satin jumpsuits!”
Center looks at Left and Right, then checks his very expensive-looking watch and asks if I’ll excuse them for just one second.
“Sure,” I say.
“If you could just step outside.”
“Oh! Okay, yeah.” I make my way out of the room.
In the hallway, Carly approaches. “Everything okay?”
“Let’s say yes?”
She makes a face that says she’s sorry. “I don’t know what’s happening in there, but you need to believe in your idea. Don’t fold.” She looks in the room, then behind her before turning back to me. “What I mean is, I’ve been in that room before. Don’t let them manipulate you. It’s…kind of their thing.”
“You mean they change everything about your idea until it makes no sense, then suggest a toy line?”
“Uhh, yeah,” she says, a pained expression.
I let out a hard exhale.
“You good?”
I shrug, tell her, “I guess.”
She looks in the room, then back at me.
“They’re ready for you,” Carly says, and waves to them through the glass. “Good luck.”
I head back in.
“Please sit,” says Center, so I sit. “We’ve reviewed your idea and while it raises some immediate questions, we’ll be in touch with your agent right away about the possibility of moving forward.”
“Really?” I ask, genuinely shocked, and also unsure of what idea, exactly, they’d be calling about.
“Absolutely,” Right says.
“Thank you so much for coming in,” Left says.
They stand, so I do, and next we’re
all shaking hands. Suddenly, these men love me. Which is so confusing. Still, I force a smile, and while my hand is being bobbed and squeezed, I look out to see Carly through the glass, a disappointed expression, then an eyebrow raise that I read as, Told you.
Thirteen
Carly walks me to reception, where the smiley male receptionist validates my parking with a joy before unseen.
Carly leads me to the exit. “And last time, I promise, but we’ve seriously never met?”
“Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry to keep asking. Thanks again for coming in.”
I turn my phone back on as I head out of EO’s glass double doors, and while it comes back to life, I press the elevator’s down button. I call Ryan back. He answers right as the elevator doors open. As I step inside I tell him, “My mother is dying.”
After a breath he asks, “What the fuck are you talking about? Didn’t you tell me a year ago she passed?”
I press P1 as the doors close. “I mean, what the f—” he starts. But the signal’s gone. We’ve disconnected. “I’ll call you back,” I tell the dead line.
•••
I exit EveryOther’s underground parking elevator, and I stop when I see a text from Ryan:
This mom shit is a huge baffling bummer and i’m worried/angry/worried.
There’s no time to consider a response, because Elsa is there, waiting for me with crossed arms.
“I know,” she says, quiet, and shuffles over. “Ryan told me everything. I know. Okay?”
When I step forward like she’s not there, she follows. From behind, me Elsa says, “I know all about Sarah.”
“Know what?” I snap, turning to face her.
“How it ended. That she jumped. And I’m sorry.”
Ryan and his big fucking mouth.
“Why are you here?” I challenge, looking at her dead-on.
“Ryan said this is where you’d be.”
“So?” I say, and throw my arms up. “You don’t just show up!”
“He asked me to come check on you.”
“Well, I’m fine,” I say.
“I’m just trying to help.”
Collision Theory Page 4