This Is Where We Live

by Janelle Brown

  “She works too hard,” Luz continued. “I don’t think it’s healthy. I thought she’d go to this fancy school and get more personal attention, but the teachers here only care about the rich kids whose parents are on the board. All they do for my daughter is assign homework.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” Claudia said. “Anyway, I’ll write that recommendation. Promise.”

  Luz stood. “Well, I’ll go now,” she said. “I’m supposed to be in Los Feliz by five.”

  “Thanks for coming in,” Claudia said. From the hallway, she could hear heavy footsteps approaching, the lumber of a lazy self-satisfied bear. A woman murmured, and a man’s sonorous voice answered her, setting the windows vibrating in their sills. The Evanoviches, Claudia thought, and smoothed her hair instinctively.

  Luz set her jaw with a forward thrust. “These things are a waste of time,” she complained. “No one ever says anything I don’t know.” She snatched up her purse and scurried out of the room, giving Claudia only a few seconds to mentally prepare for the grand finale of her afternoon. She tucked the Chicken Kitchen bag into her tote, shook out the wrinkles in her shirt, and raced toward the door, her palms sweating, just as Samuel Evanovich’s heavy tread came to a stop outside her classroom.

  “You must be Mizz Munger?” Samuel Evanovich’s hand was enormous, a thick fleshy paw that swallowed Claudia’s hand, mangled it in a moist embrace, and then spat it out, flattened and sore. “We’ve been very curious to meet the new film teacher.”

  Samuel looked just like Claudia remembered him from Sundance, an imposing wreck of a man. His rolled-up shirtsleeves strained against meaty forearms, and the waistband of his khaki pants strained against a formidable belly. The black hair of his chest grew straight up out of his collar to merge seamlessly with the beard that grew down from his chin. He stood in the doorway to the classroom, blotting out the late-afternoon sun.

  Dwarfed by her husband, Bunny Evanovich looked like a surprised deer—a frail blonde with a shiny forehead that had been surgically pinned back toward her temples and an upper lip that looked like it had been inflated with a bicycle pump. She stood beside Samuel, flexing her wrists in small agitated circles. “Charmed,” Bunny offered blandly, but didn’t extend a hand.

  “Please, sit.” Claudia gestured them toward the stage. She tried not to stare at Samuel as he settled down across from her, his bulk drooping over the edge of the diminutive chair. She smiled at him, hoping her idolization wasn’t as transparent as it felt. “So,” Samuel said. “Tell us about Penelope. Tell us everything we need to know.”

  Claudia shuffled the papers on her lap. The paper containing her prewritten speech grew damp in her hands: Now that he was in front of her—Samuel Evanovich!—she’d completely forgotten the opening she’d memorized. “Well. It’s very clear that Penelope has a passion for film,” she began weakly, as she surreptitiously opened up the paper to remind herself of her lines.

  “Of course.” Samuel grimaced impatiently. He fixed his gaze around the room, taking in the movie posters, the stacks of scripts, the banks of DVD players buzzing in the closet. “She’s been making her own movies since she was three.”

  “She has?” Claudia had not expected that; it gave her a quick flush of admiration for the girl. Perhaps there was something still to be extracted from her; it would just take the right finessing touch to break through that prickly wall. “I’d love to see them. I’ll encourage her to bring them in and show me.”

  “She’s very private,” Bunny offered, in a voice pulled as tight as her skin. “She only shows her daddy. Not even me.”

  “Genius often expresses itself through introversion.” Samuel stood up and ambled over to the podium, where Claudia had lined up a stack of movies to screen for her students.

  “Introversion,” she said, trying again. She glanced down at her notes, but couldn’t find her place. “Well, I’m not sure that that’s exactly the word I would use to describe Penelope’s—”

  Samuel cut her off. “Altman was one of the shyest people I ever met. Except when you got some tequila in him. Christ, then he’d never shut up. You’d have to distract him with a hooker or something to get him to leave you alone.” He ran a finger along the spines of her DVDs. “Good grief, are you really going to show them Star Wars? Lucas is such a hack.”

  Claudia nodded as neutrally as she could. She longed desperately to banish the distracting Bunny, put Penelope aside altogether, and engage Samuel in a spirited debate about the history of American cinema. I’m one of you, she wanted to tell him. I’m not just a schoolteacher. “Well, I do think that the film offers an interesting study of the dialectic between chance and order. By the way, Mr. Evanovich—”

  “Samuel, please.”

  “Samuel, yes. I should confess that I attended your lecture at this last Sundance and found it very inspiring. Really, I’m quite an admirer, having directed myself”—she hated herself for blathering on like a hormonal fanboy but she couldn’t quite stop herself; it took all the effort she could muster to reel the conversation back to the appropriate topic: Penelope—“so I can only imagine the influence that your knowledge must have on your own daughter. Maybe you might try to use some of that influence to encourage her to be more—how should I put this—” She stuttered to a stop here, because Samuel had wandered back over and was pushing a finger under her chin, directing her face up toward him. He stared down at her, examining her intently.

  “You,” he said. “I know you.”

  “You do?” She looked over at Bunny, hoping her smile might defuse the awkwardness of this intimacy. Bunny was rotating her hands again, apparently more fascinated by the inner workings of her wrists than her husband’s sudden interest in her daughter’s teacher.

  “Yes.” He released her face and sat down heavily across from her. “You made that quirky little romantic comedy, am I right?”

  Claudia felt her heart hiccup in surprise. “That’s right,” she said. “Spare Parts.”

  “I saw it at Sundance. You did a Q-and-A afterward. You were rather … passionate, I recall. Talked a lot about cinema-verité techniques, the credible narrative.” His gaze was intense. She noticed, for the first time, how piercingly black his eyes were, like obsidian caves. Her cheeks were warm—was she blushing? She hoped not.

  “I’m flattered you stuck around,” she murmured. “I wish the rest of the moviegoing public had.”

  “Didn’t perform well at the box office, eh?”

  “That’s a bit of an understatement.”

  He reached up and wove a finger into the tangle of his beard, tugging it down toward his paunch. “I could have told you that.”

  “Oh.” Her stomach lurched unhappily. Was she the only person in the world who had been so blind to her own mistakes? “A few people liked it, at least. It got good reviews.”

  “It’s not that it wasn’t good,” he said. “It had lots of promise. You’re clearly an actor’s director; you really got that TV actress to work hard. No, it’s that it had no marketing hook. I would’ve played up the lesbian angle, myself. Reedited it to focus on that: a new American love story. Homo marriage is very on trend right now.”

  “Ah,” she said, not sure how to take this. “Well, I guess, all things in hindsight.”

  He threw his palms up in agreement and sat back. “So what are you working on now?”

  Claudia’s mind raced in circles; she wished she’d written something new besides a script that had already been rejected by every studio in town, but how was she supposed to find the time to write new material when this teaching job was taking up every odd minute of her waking hours? “Well, my most recent script is about human trafficking on the Mexican border,” she began. “It’s kind of a work-in-progress—”

  “Toughen up, cookie,” he interrupted her. “Never apologize for your own work. Why don’t you send it over to me, and I’ll take a look at it. I’m always looking for new material.”

  At first she wasn’t sure tha
t she’d heard him correctly; his words hewed so closely to the imaginary conversation she’d conducted in her head that she assumed she must have misheard. “Send it over?” she repeated helplessly.

  “Unless you have a copy with you?”

  Her hand rocketed instinctively toward the tote bag at her feet, as if her screenplay might be waiting there at the ready. Why hadn’t she thought to keep a fresh copy on hand? A small furry animal was clattering about in her rib cage, threatening to break free. “I don’t have it with me,” she said. “But I can messenger one over tomorrow.”

  “Penelope.” Bunny’s voice drifted faintly in. “We’re here to talk about Penelope, honey.”

  Samuel turned to Bunny, a surprised look on his face, as if just remembering her presence beside him. “Yes, Penelope. Of course, go-lubushka. Sorry, Mizz Munger—what were you about to say before I interrupted you?”

  Looking back, she would blame the giddy possibility in the air—the first true jolt of hope she’d felt since the day her film tanked, two months earlier—for shaping the response that came out of her mouth. It wasn’t that she was kissing Samuel’s ass, per se, or trying to make sure that she was in his good graces before he read her script: It was, simply, a case of unanticipated optimism gone awry. She was simply too dizzy with excitement to frame a negative thought about even her most problematic student. At least, that’s what she told herself in order to quiet her guilty conscience.

  “Right,” she said. “About Penelope: Really, she’s a rising star.”

  “Cheers.” Jeremy was holding his wineglass out to her. “To Samuel Evanovich’s new protégée.”

  Celebrating with a dinner out had been Jeremy’s idea. Restaurants weren’t really in their budget anymore, but Jeremy knew of a new no-frills BYOB Italian place in Los Feliz that was supposed to be cheap. Maybe it was, comparatively, and the setting certainly didn’t evoke a splurge—they sat at picnic tables bolted to a concrete patio, with a few strands of Christmas lights strung overhead for ambiance—but a $15 bowl of spaghetti certainly didn’t feel like a bargain. When had life become so expensive? It had snuck up on them, waited until they weren’t paying attention, and then walloped them with $12 beers and $120 tennis shoes and $350 traffic tickets. She felt like her grandpa Bernie, sometimes, who nattered on constantly about the days of nickel pickles and houses that could be bought for a few thousand bucks; but seriously, it wasn’t that long ago that she paid for her coffee with pocket change, and now it wasn’t unusual in the least to drop a five-dollar bill on a cup of aged Sumatra. It was as if the desire to live in a city, in close proximity to arts and culture, had become a punishable offense, your sentence being a lifetime of penury. What was the driving force that had pushed the cost of urban life so high? Was it the outrageously wealthy few who insisted on only the most expensive things, blithely flinging their money so far and wide that prices everywhere had risen to accommodate this indulgent minority’s whims? Or was it the inflated cost of essentials—the gas, the corn, the real estate—that forced businesses to jack their prices up in order to just barely survive? Was it flat-out greed or was it desperation? She wished she’d studied economics, because sometimes, without knowing any better, it felt like she was a dupe who was being played by a conspiracy of shop owners and restaurateurs.

  Still, she smiled and proffered her glass for Jeremy to clink. “No—to Penelope Evanovich, the best worst student a teacher could wish for. Let’s just hope Samuel reads my script before her midterm report card arrives in the mail.” She took a gulp of the four-dollar cabernet they’d picked up at the liquor store across the street. It tasted like rubber cement, but she wasn’t about to complain. There was no room in her life anymore for luxuries like wine that came with actual corks.

  “I’m sure he can look beyond that,” Jeremy said. He tasted his wine, made a face, and sat back with a smug expression on his face. “See? I said you were giving up too fast.”

  “I don’t want to get ahead of myself, though,” she worried aloud. “He reads a hundred scripts a week. He may never read mine. He could read it and hate it. He could read it and like it but not care enough to do anything about it. And it’s so serious. Really, I should have written something new—something with more commercial appeal—to show him ….”

  “Stop it.” Jeremy shoveled a forkful of spaghetti in his mouth. “I’ve read the script. It’s fucking brilliant. It’s a piece of art.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure I believe in art anymore.”

  Jeremy lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t believe in art.”

  “Everyone we know thought they were going to be artists. Painters or musicians or filmmakers or writers, somehow more authentic than everyone else, right? But really, how many have done what they thought they would? We were all so naïve. We live in an information age, not a truth age; the only way to really make it now is to sell out to the biggest distributor, pander to the broadest audience. So that means you direct a schlocky thriller for a movie studio instead of working on a little jewel of a film that no one will ever make, or else you go on a reality TV show or something—come on, Jeremy, that’s what it’s all about. Especially now. No one cares about art anymore. I mean, four people in the country saw my film, and it wasn’t even that edgy, comparatively speaking.”

  Jeremy stared at her, uncomprehending. “When did you become such a cynic?”

  “I’m not being cynical, I’m just being sensible. Point is, I’m not sure I should be pursuing a depressing drama right now. Maybe it’s not the best way to jump-start my career again. I need to play by Hollywood’s rules.”

  “Well, I think that Samuel Evanovich is going to decide you’re a genius and help you make your movie. And then you’ll change your tune. God, Claude, aren’t you excited at all?”

  “Of course I’m excited. But I’ve been pretty burned lately.”

  Jeremy smiled and reached across the table to grab her hand. She squeezed it back, letting his faith in her inflate her like a balloon, despite her better instincts. She smiled and drank her wine as a suicidal moth flung itself against the hurricane lamp on their table, trying futilely to immolate itself in the flame within. After a moment, the chattering self-doubt returned. “Before I send it in to Evanovich, I might just do a quick revise on the script to make it more palatable—maybe lose the Spanish subtitles or set it in Florida instead of Mexico. Add a more upbeat ending. Even then, it’s still a really, really long shot. Maybe I should just write something new, really quickly—”

  “You should be doing that anyway,” Jeremy observed, withdrawing his hand. “No matter what Evanovich says about this script. Wasn’t that supposed to be the plan in the first place when you took this job?”

  Claudia picked apart a meatball, found raw meat in its center and pushed it aside. “I know. It’s just—teaching takes up so much time. I had no idea. Really, these kids are so smart, I can barely keep up with them. Listen to this.” She reached into her tote and fished out a paper that Mary had just turned in. “Derrida insists upon the temporality of meaning in signification, extending to the cinema his notion of ecriture. What does that even mean?”

  Jeremy shuddered. “She probably stole it off the Internet. That’s what I would have done.”

  “Not Mary. It would never occur to her. Type-A overachiever. Do you know the difference between diachronic and synchronic? I had to look that one up too. No wonder I have no time to write a new script.”

  “Then quit,” Jeremy said. “Reprioritize. I hate that you’re working so much, anyway.”

  “You know that’s not an option for us right now.”

  Jeremy grunted, clearly regretting having started down this path. He leaned over and stuck his fork in her ruined spaghetti, and then looked up at her, waiting for her approval. She nodded, and he ferried a dripping strand back across the table into his mouth. They sat in awkward silence for a moment, ignoring the issues now sitting at the center of the table alongside the bread basket and red pepper flakes. />
  “So,” Jeremy began, wiping tomato sauce off his chin. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something. Aoki’s coming to town for a show next month, and she wanted to meet me for coffee, just a friendly catch-up, nothing big, and I said I would.” He paused. “If that’s OK with you.”

  It took Claudia a minute to respond. She picked through the content of this statement to arrive, finally, at the unspoken subtext. “So wait—since when are you talking to Aoki?”

  “Not talking! She e-mailed me, a week ago. Maybe two.”

  “And you took this long to tell me?”

  “I wasn’t sure how you’d react. I didn’t want to risk upsetting you.” He furrowed his eyebrows at her. “Are you upset? Please tell me you’re not. I really don’t want you to think it’s a big deal. I should have said something sooner.”