“That’s bullshit,” she gave him a playful squeeze.
“Of course it is,” he smiled back. “This is better than work. This is what people wish they were doing when they’re working.”
Beth slid off him and lay on her side, facing him, propping her head up with one hand. Her freckles seemed even darker afterwards, and she had that delicious smell of sex and so did he. He loved this moment best of all.
“It’s great, and I love it, too. But we have to be practical. Neither one of us is making any money.” She ran a finger around his belly button, traced the line of hair up to his chest. “If it weren’t for the residuals from my Captain Crunch commercial, we wouldn’t have made the rent this month.”
Why did she have to talk about this now? Why did they even have to talk about it at all? The rent was paid, that month was behind them. They’d deal with the next month when it happened.
“Something will come up,” Marty said. “You’ll get a series or a big movie, I’ll sell one of my scripts. We’ll make it.”
She kissed him, hard and desperate, on the lips then leaned over him thoughtfully. “I love you, and I believe in you, but we have to be honest.”
“Okay.”
“You haven’t finished any of your scripts,” she said, almost guiltily.
“I know how to tell a good story,” Marty sat up, turning his back to her. “I just have a little trouble writing them. I’ll crack it.”
She put her arms around him and pressed herself against his back. “I know, but until then, maybe you should think about doing something else.”
“I’m a writer.”
“But you can make $75 a script, reading for the studios,” she said. “Maybe, for a while, you could write less and read more.”
For months, he’d supplemented their income reading scripts and writing reports for executives too busy to read the stacks of submissions themselves. Reading that shit only made him more frustrated at his inability to finish a script of his own. He knew he could write better than these jerks. What scared him was that even if he managed to finish a script, some other frustrated writer, another “freelance reader,” would be the one passing judgment on him. And he knew from personal experience just how petty and vindictive they could be.
“You’re good at it,” she said.
“At reading,” he said. “I’m good at reading someone else’s script. I can’t write one, but I do a hell of a good job reading them. Wow. Now that’s a remarkable talent.”
“But you know how to make the scripts better, I’ve read your reports,” she said. “You could turn a lousy script into a great movie.”
“Someone else’s script.”
“It’s a real talent, Marty. Not a lot of people can do that.”
“That’s all most people in this town do, tell other people how good or bad their scripts are because they can’t write themselves.”
“All I’m saying is that maybe you ought to try it full time for a while, until you crack whatever it is mentally that you have to crack.”
“You don’t think I can do it,” Marty said, playing with his wedding ring. After nearly a year, he still wasn’t used to it. “You don’t think I can write.”
“I think we need to make some money. I think maybe if we don’t have to worry as much about making the rent, it will free you up to be more creative. You won’t feel as much pressure.”
That made some sense; he couldn’t argue with that. He was very aware that she was the bread-winner, that she was supporting his long afternoons staring at an empty computer screen. It did choke him up creatively. The wind choked him up creatively. A book out of alphabetical order on the shelf choked him up creatively. It seemed everything did.
›The truth was, there had been an offer. At one of the networks. An entry-level development position, reading scripts and books all day. He never told her about it because he knew she’d want him to take it.
“I love you, Marty. And I want you to be happy, to pursue whatever dreams you have.” She turned his head toward her and gave him a kiss. “I’m just saying it’s an option, that’s all.”
He nodded.
Beth kissed him again, got up and padded naked to the kitchen down the hall. God, he loved watching her walk naked, the casualness of it. How did he ever seduce her? How did he ever get her to fall in love with him?
The low rumble seemed to come hurtling towards them from a great distance yet arrived in an instant, unexpected and yet familiar. The whole house seemed to shiver, and then everything stopped, except for Beth’s shrieks. She ran into the bedroom, dove onto the bed, and crawled up Marty, clutching him harder than she ever had before.
“What was that?” she cried, her whole body shaking.
“Just an earthquake.”
“What do you mean, ‘just an earthquake,’” she said. “Holy shit.”
“It’s nothing.” Even the dog seemed undisturbed, yawning and stretching out across Marty’s underwear and socks.
“Marty, the whole house shook, the ground was moving. It wasn’t nothing.”
“It’s just an earthquake,” he said, “3.4, tops.”
“The ground moved, Marty. Shit. The ground moved.” She started to cry, deep, terrified sobs, burying her face in his chest like a frightened child. For a moment, he was confused; he couldn’t understand why a little shake had frightened her so much.
And then it dawned on him and he was ashamed of himself for not realizing it immediately. What kind of husband was he?
This was her first time. She’d never experienced an earthquake before.
How could he have been so dismissive? So unfeeling? He held her tightly, guiltily, kissing her, stroking her hair, over-doing it. “It’s okay. It’s going to be fine; it was just a small one. It’s perfectly normal.”
“The ground moved,” she sniffled. “It’s not supposed to.”
“I know.”
Beth was born and raised in Washington State, moving to California for UCLA, for Hollywood. She wasn’t born here, growing up with the regular rumblings, under the ever-present threat of the inevitable, mythical, horrible Big One.
That was one concept he certainly wasn’t going to share with her now.
“We can’t live somewhere where the ground moves,” she said. “We have to go, we have to get out of here. Someplace where the ground is
… is… grounded.”
“We can’t afford to go any where right now,” he said softly.
“As soon as we have the money, we’ll go,” she sniffled, lifted her head, and looked him in the eye. “You promise?”
“I’ll get a reader job tomorrow.” He kissed her and pulled her back down to him, knowing she’d forget about it in a day or so.
“The ground isn’t supposed to move,” she said again.
T here had been more earthquakes since then, but like most people who lived for a while in LA, she got used to it. Even joked about it, in that blase way Californians do, as he knew she would. But she wasn’t fooling him. She never could completely hide the fear in her eyes. Marty wondered what her eyes looked like now and quickened his pace.
It had been a long time since he told Beth that he loved her. Oh sure, he’d said it, in that rote, “good-morning, how are you?” kind of way. But he didn’t say it with feeling, not so she understood he needed her more than air. He knew he’d been withholding it and he didn’t know why. And now, more than ever before, it was important to him that she knew that yes, he loved her.
Above him, an enormous flock of birds flew towards the sea, the world for them unshaken, safe. The air would never fail them, would never fall out from under their wings.
The ground isn’t supposed to move. Everyone knew that. It was arrogance, and more than a little stupidity, to stay in a place where it did.
But what was Hollywood without arrogance and stupidity? You couldn’t manufacture dreams if you weren’t willing to live in one yourself.
Welcome to the flipside of the dream, asshole.
Now that Buck was gone, that little voice was back; not that they were all that much different. At least this one didn’t have a gun.
You promised her you’d leave and you didn’t. Just another broken promise in a pile of ’em, isn’t that right, Marty?