The truth is, I’ve been avoiding Babcia a little bit ever since Vlad ran off.The rest of my family knows about our current housing pre-dicament, but we didn’t want to tell Babcia because we don’t want her to worry.159
I glance down at my watch and see that I’ve been away from home for a while now. “Time to go. I’ll see you next week. Or maybe not? I guess that’s still to be decided. Tell you what, if you could send me some kind of sign, I’d appreciate it. Bye for now.”
When I get back home, Mac’s car is in the driveway, but I don’t see a sign of him downstairs. The dogs seem to be gone, too. I wonder if they’re outside. I search the backyard and around all the boxes in the basement. For good measure, I even peek my head in the panic room, but it’s just as I left it last week, save for the addition of a case of pudding cups.
He’s not upstairs, either. Weird. Maybe everyone’s out for a walk?
I’m still not sure what I’m going to do about leaving for LA, but just in case, I should probably toss in a load of laundry. Our new washer and dryer arrived not long ago, and every time I’m able to wash a sheet or towel in my house, as opposed to the Laundromat two towns over,160 I want to hug someone.
There’s a small maid’s quarters off the laundry room, and when I pass it, I hear swearing. I wonder what he’s doing in here. This part of the house was one of the numerous additions, and it’s so awkwardly located that there’s no reason ever to come in here. Plus it’s built over a crawl space instead of a basement, so it’s perpetually hotter than the rest of the house.
“Mac?”
“Miiiiiiaaaaaa!”
“Where are you?” I poke my head into the attached bath, and that’s when I find the dogs. They’re both staring into a hole in the floor and wagging their tails. I gaze down into it and, under a maze of new copper pipes, see Mac. “What the. .?”
“Miiiiiiaaaaaa!”
I can’t even begin to figure out what’s happening here. Mac appears to be — judging from his level of agitation — unharmed. But trapped. Clearly trapped. He’s down under the subflooring in the crawl space, and there’re a whole bunch of pipes blocking the hole in the floor between where he’s sitting and the bathroom above it.
“Is there an explanation for all of this?” I ask. The dogs flop down on either side of me, still peering into the hole.
“Yes, but can I have a bottle of water first? I’m dying of thirst.”
“Um. . okay.” I scurry to the kitchen, grab a bottle from the fridge, and trot back to the bathroom. “Do you want me to just. . throw it down there?”
“Yes, please.” He unscrews the cap and downs the whole thing in a single swig.
“Is it safe for me to come closer? Did you fall in? Do I need to call the police?” Actually, I wouldn’t mind giving officers Older and Younger a buzz. Might be nice for them to see it’s not me doing the stupid stuff around here for once.
“Yes, it’s safe, and no, I didn’t fall in. I cut the floorboards back to the joists, so anything you stand on is supported.”
“Good to know.” I sit down at the lip of the hole and dangle my legs in. “So… how was your day? Were the dogs well behaved? Did they finally want to play outside? Oh, and did anything interesting happen?”
His voice gets a wee bit accusatory. “You wanted a working shower.”
“Mmm,” I agree. “I did want a shower. But what I got is a husband doing the world’s largest termite impersonation. Tell me, are you drywood or Formosan subterranean?”
“Not funny, Mia.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, honey. This is so funny.” There’s a certain amount of poetic justice here. I’ve been trapped in bathrooms a dozen times, but I’ve never actually been stuck under one.
“Anyway, this shower was the quickest fix, because we’re not replacing tile or a tub surround or anything in the walls. All I needed to do was patch a couple of leaky pipes with new sections. I started doing the repair on the bathroom floor and I felt like I was working upside down. I thought if I climbed into the crawl space I’d have an easier time accessing all the pipes. And I did. Everything soldered together perfectly. Check out my work — it’s professional-grade.”
“Do most professionals wind up piping themselves in?” I query.
“I see you’ve discovered the one small flaw in my plan.”
“Why don’t you just disconnect the pipes and pull yourself out? Isn’t that the most logical solution?”
“Because it will ultimately be easier and faster to patch the floor than it will be to redo the pipes. What I need you to do is grab the cordless handheld saw and pass it down to me. That way I can cut myself out without damaging the joists.”
I find the saw and Mac manages to extricate himself as quickly as promised.
As we patch up the subflooring, we seem to have developed a tentative truce. This is the first time in a long time we’ve had a conversation without snapping at each other.
And that’s when it occurs to me that the floor was a sign.
We need the money to bring in an outside professional to get this house done if we’re to have any hope of a future together. I imagine we’d have to pay a premium to put up a whole crew of folks from an area outside of Vienna’s family’s reach, but as much as we love each other, we can’t continue to live like this. If our formerly rock-solid relationship is already on shaky ground after three months, I can’t bear to think of where we might be in three more. I hate to leave, but I think that’s the only chance we’ve got to stay together.
Los Angeles, here I come.
Chapter Twenty. MOSE(Y) GOES TO HOLLYWOOD
“Just so you know, I’m comfortable with nudity. Very comfortable. In fact, I prefer it. I’m, like, naked all the time in my apartment. My roommates, too!”
I sneak little glances at everyone sitting at the table with me. As no one else seems on the verge of collapsing in nervous laughter, I guess they’ve all heard auditioning actresses say this stuff before.
I’m sitting in a casting session. I’ve been in LA for about two weeks and we’re just starting to test people for principal roles. Since I’ve been here, we (meaning a big team of people who seem to know what they’re doing, and me, who does not) have done a lot of the legwork that happens before a film goes into production.
Before I even signed on, financing was secured161 and now key personnel have been hired, casting directors have been engaged, scouts are checking out potential locations, etc.
To be honest, I still don’t really understand the process. I tried to do research before I came out here but, surprisingly, Google didn’t have a lot of answers when I typed in, I sold my book to a movie studio for a whole bunch of money; now what?
My agents are thrilled this film wasn’t only green-lighted but also fast-tracked, which is fancy movie talk for “going a bit too quickly for my liking.” Two and a half weeks ago I was staring into a hole in the bathroom floor, and now I’m in meetings with a bunch of suits estimating opening-weekend box-office sales. It’s surreal.
On the one hand, the more swiftly this process moves, the sooner I can go home to my husband and pets and albatross of a house. On the other, I fear we’re rushing and getting sloppy. Can’t we all have a minute to get our bearings?
Also, and more important, I thought my job out here would be, you know, writing. I penned the initial screenplay for Buggies Are the New Black years ago between books, because I was told that everyone in Hollywood is lazy and that no one would want to convert my writing from a novel to a screenplay.