This Is Where We Live (17 page)

“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 that 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.”

“I’m not upset.” Was she? She had always prided herself on not being the jealous and demanding sort of girlfriend. It was one of the things she liked about herself, that she was the easygoing type, the kind of person who encouraged her boyfriends to stay in touch with their ex-girlfriends (even if, as in the case of Aoki, the thought of those ex-girlfriends gave her hives) and didn’t blink an eye when they made friends with other women. She’d always liked to imagine that the men she dated would say this about her—“Yeah, she’s totally cool”—and fantasized even further that perhaps her trust in them would, if the situation ever arose, be the reason why they would resist temptation. Also, she knew Aoki was insane. When Jeremy talked about her, his eyes grew haunted and seemed to sink back into his head: His ex was a demon whose exorcism had nearly killed him. She knew he knew better than to do anything stupid with her. So why, now, did his revelation make her feel like she’d swallowed a spoonful of vinegar?

“Honestly, I’m not upset,” she repeated. She reached for the wine again and filled her glass and then his. “But are you sure you really want to see her?”

“No,” he said. He focused his attention on the Parmesan cheese shreds that had melted on the edge of his plate, scraping at them with his fork. Husband and wife both studiously avoided looking at each other. “But I think she’s trying to apologize. Maybe it’s part of some twelve-step plan? And since she reached out and made an effort, I feel I should reciprocate. But look—if you say no, I’ll tell her I’m just not up for it.”

She took a long swallow from the wineglass and let the acid alcohol warmth spring upward to her head. The moth flapped against the lamp a few more times and gave up. “Well, I’m fine with it as long as you are.”

Jeremy’s stood up, leaned across the table, and pressed oily lips against hers. “I am so lucky,” he said. “I don’t deserve you.” His words were thin and cracked—was that a burr of disappointment she was detecting? But he grinned and then nibbled his way down her ear and neck to the electric place near her clavicle and let his lips flutter there, tickling her. His T-shirt was in danger of being soaked by the bloody remnants of her spaghetti.

“You’re right, you don’t deserve me,” she said, as she whinnied and gasped for air, finally pressing him away with the flat of her palm. “Can we order dessert now, please?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “We will spend the last of our children’s inheritance on a slab of premade tiramisu. And we will love it.”

She smiled back at Jeremy as he flagged down the waiter, but the truth was that she had lost her appetite for dessert. Surely, she’d done the right thing—so why did it feel like such a mistake?

Jeremy

THEY WERE THE OLDEST PEOPLE AT THE BAR. THE BAND MEMBERS
had collectively decided that Ben should pick a place to drink, correctly assuming that he was more plugged into LA nightlife than they were, and he’d brought them here, a tiki bar sardined full of tiny girls with interesting hair and boys wearing Tshirts for bands that had broken up before they were born. Velvet paintings of Mexican wrestlers hung askew over red Naugahyde booths. Kanye West blasted from overhead speakers, drowning out any possibility of meaningful conversation. The palm fronds that canopied the bar were limp with age.

Going out for drinks had been Daniel’s idea. “Let’s take a break from the practice grind and just hang out and talk,” he’d suggested that afternoon. Jeremy had been about to object, but really, didn’t they deserve a night out? Yes, the band still had work to do—they needed two more songs before they had a complete album—but look how far they’d come, in just a few weeks! Over the last half-dozen practice sessions, Audiophone had nailed down the chorus of “Mysterious Mrs. X” and finished a new and as yet untitled song with an addictive hook. Practices were happening on schedule, three times a week—not the daily practice Jeremy had initially hoped for, but a vast improvement nonetheless—and Ben had only failed to show up once. Some threshold had finally been crossed: The finish line loomed just ahead, only a short sprint away. He’d sent an e-mail to Julian Bragg earlier that week:
A FEW MORE WEEKS UNTIL ALBUM IS FINISHED. STAY TUNED
.

Emerson—still wearing his suit from work, woefully out of place even with his tie half undone—staggered back to the table with four tequila shots braced between his fingers, narrowly averting disaster on a step by the foosball table. He landed heavily in the booth next to Jeremy and slid sideways so that his mouth was just a few inches from Jeremy’s ear. Judging by his alarming breath, Emerson was already drunk.

“Drink up,” Emerson said, nudging a tequila shot toward Jeremy with the tip of his finger. Jeremy took a tiny sip and put it down again, ignoring Emerson’s look of aggrieved disbelief. He didn’t want to drink too much tonight. He was seeing Aoki in the morning, and it was going to be challenging enough to see her
without
a hangover. Aoki. Just thinking of her caused his nerves to jangle like a pocket full of spare change.

Claudia was being extremely accommodating about Aoki. He’d half expected her to get upset when he finally screwed up the courage to tell her, but he should have known that Claudia would be nothing but supportive. She had even
encouraged
him to get together with Aoki—said it would give him “closure”—although he sensed, in the clipped tightness of her words, a concern that contradicted her supposed indifference. Anyway, there was no reason for her to be jealous, was there? A friendly coffee with an ex-girlfriend: That’s all it was in the end, he wasn’t really doing anything wrong, so why did he feel like he was getting away with something? He’d spent the last few days being particularly attentive: bringing Claudia coffee in bed, massaging her feet when she complained about standing all day, even performing an act of sexual gratification of which he wasn’t usually very fond. Was he bribing her or thanking her? He wasn’t quite sure. Anyway, he wasn’t going to do anything stupid; certainly, not anything that would endanger his marriage. He would go tomorrow, have what was probably going to prove a benign, disappointing coffee with Aoki, and officially move on.
Closure
. Frankly, it would be a relief.

He looked around the room, noticing a clutch of black-haired girls in obscenely tight metallic leggings and vertiginous footwear who were posing with their cocktails in the middle of the room. They tossed their hair back over their shoulders and jutted their pelvic bones forward as they preened for an audience they refused to otherwise acknowledge. They had to be nineteen, at best. A decade and a half younger than he. Was he too old to be of interest to them anymore? He wasn’t quite sure how he’d landed here, age thirty-four, a married man, with a soft band of flesh permanently affixing itself around his waist and bruised-looking pouches forming under his eyes. His grip on the privileges of youth was tenuous these days, but he wasn’t ready to let go yet. He thought of the words of his father, Max—
You are only as old as you think you are
—and smiled at the girls. Just a test. They turned away, ignoring him.

Jeremy caught Daniel’s eye. “Do you think they’re even legal yet?”

Daniel shook his head. “Girls sure didn’t look like that when I was their age. I’m not sure I approve.”

“Jesus, Grandpa,” Jeremy said, cuffing Daniel on the shoulder, “come on. You make it sound like we’re half dead.”

“I don’t know why Daniel’s complaining.” Ben tilted his head to get a better angle on the Lycra-clad rears.

“They’re kind of like transvestites, parroting some weird idea of womanhood but getting it all wrong.” Daniel continued. “What ever happened to age-appropriate clothing? It’s sad, really. No one wants to just be a kid anymore. It’s the acceleration of youth. They go straight from birth to adulthood and skip adolescence entirely. They start prepping for college applications in nursery school. No wonder they’re all so jaded.”

“If they knew how much it sucks to be an adult, they wouldn’t be in such a rush to grow up,” Emerson said, his voice dark. He spun his shot glass like a top. It skittered off the edge of the table and landed in his lap, spilling tequila on his suit. He stared down at his legs. “Dammit.”

Jeremy offered a handful of damp napkins to wipe up the mess, but Emerson pushed them away. He swiped at his trousers with the side of his hand and then licked tequila off his palm. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to be wearing this again anytime soon.”

The expression on Emerson’s face stopped Jeremy cold. “Hey, is something up?”

Emerson looked past him to Daniel. Daniel looked down at his own tequila shot as Jeremy swiveled his head back and forth, trying to figure out what was going unsaid.

“We need to talk,” Emerson said. His breath hissed out of him in a long resigned sigh. “OK. First off, I was let go today. They closed our entire office. Two weeks’ severance. I didn’t even get to keep my laptop.”

Was it selfish of Jeremy that his first thought was
I guess that means he’ll have more time to practice now?
“Oh, wow. I’m really sorry,” he said.

Emerson slumped more, until his chin was nearly parallel with the top of the table. “It’s not that I couldn’t see it coming. I mean, you had to be blind not to see that we were a bunch of deluded optimists. The whole fucking country. There was no way reality would ever line up with our projections. My entire job consisted of shuffling imaginary money from one location to another, and making sure that the numbers only ever went one direction, but really, where did everyone think it was going to end, infinity?” Emerson picked up his shot glass, remembered it was empty, and put it down again.

“You’ll find another job,” said Jeremy. He softly patted Emerson’s shoulder. “You’re too smart not to. Things always end up all right in the end, especially for people like us. You just have to think positive.”

“You’re missing my point,” Emerson said. “That kind of wishful thinking doesn’t work anymore. I don’t think it ever worked in the first place. You can’t just
hope
things into being, it’s ridiculous.
People like us?
We’re just like everyone else, Jeremy. I mean, who’s going to hire me, with what money? There
is
no money, anywhere. It’s gone. It never really existed in the first place. It was just a mass hallucination. Seriously, we’ve all been living in some sort of fantasy world where everyone thought they were entitled to get everything they wanted without making any sacrifices, and no one would ever lose. Well, guess what: It’s over. And now we’re all fucked.”

Jeremy hated this line of thinking: Even over the last few months, as it had become clear that something radical had shifted in the American economy, even as his own mortgage situation blew up in his face, he had been able to convince himself that the bigger world crisis that he kept reading about in the newspaper didn’t apply specifically to
him
. After all, he hadn’t had a chance to cash in yet! He’d spent the last decade, the boom years, feeling entirely apart from the windfall that everyone else seemed to be participating in. Even when This Invisible Spot had been at the peak of its popularity, the money had paid the rent on a nice flat in the East Village and kept him comfortably in beer and organic apples but never made him rich—certainly, not if judged by the inflated cultural standards of wealth. He and Claudia had bought the cheapest house they could find, and they still couldn’t really afford it. No, the
real
money always lurked on the fringe of his existence—the modernist houses in the hills, the German cars, the designer sneakers, the front-row tickets to Lakers games. But he’d always assumed he’d catch up someday—that if monetary success was the implied birthright of his generation, he’d eventually get his percentage. And, yes, the economic reality of the new millennium was clearly Winner Takes All—you were either rich or broke, with an ever-widening gap in between—but he’d never considered the possibility that he would permanently end up in the latter category. Now Emerson was making it sound like Jeremy had missed his window entirely and was about to be handed the credit card bill for everyone else’s dream vacation instead. Jeremy refused to believe it.

“Look, I know you’re upset, and rightfully so, but don’t you think you’re being a little extreme? What goes down must go up eventually. Oh, wait. I guess it’s the other way around. Forget it. Anyway, you’ve got other things to focus on now, anyway. The band, for example. We’re so close! I mean, I can’t promise you a banker’s salary, but I bet we can be making a pretty decent living by the new year if we work it right. A good licensing deal could get us fifty thousand, even more, and there’s this guy, Julian Bragg—”

Emerson shook his head. “Yeah, the band. That’s the other thing. I can’t bankroll the band anymore. That studio space costs almost a grand a month, and I don’t even know where I’m going to get the cash to pay my own rent.”

The music on the jukebox changed; Jeremy recognized the thrashing, drum-heavy tune as belonging to a popular faux-ska band that This Invisible Spot had opened for back in 2002. They were a bunch of college-age twits who drank Red Bull and vodka and thought it was funny to try to set their farts on fire; they wrote songs with titles like “Blue Balls 4 U” and bragged about the blow jobs they got from their groupies. Those four shows were the worst of This Invisible Spot’s career; by the end, the two bands weren’t even speaking to each other. But the twits had gone on to heavy rotation on MTV
Total Request Live
and released two triple-platinum albums. They now traveled by private jet and dated Disney TV starlets.

“We can probably practice in my garage,” Ben offered. He showily scraped his hair back into a ponytail and glowered meaningfully at a girl walking past their table. “My roommates will hate me for it but I don’t like them anyway.”

Jeremy’s mind raced ahead, detecting new roadblocks. Moving the band’s practice location would set them back at least a week or two, and if Emerson couldn’t even afford studio rent, how was he going to afford the ten grand necessary to mix and master the album? “So it’s Ben’s garage, then,” he said, trying to sound upbeat even as he sensed the fractures opening around him, doubt flooding in. Daniel and Emerson looked like the end of the world had arrived, and Gabriel had just personally delivered the bad news. “I take it this also means we’ll need to start thinking about how we’ll pay to finish our album, right? That’s OK. We’ll just get creative about money, throw a fundraiser or something. We could put on a show, all proceeds going to the album.” He turned to Daniel. “Didn’t you have a friend who did something like that, to pay off a hospital bill?”

But Daniel was staring at the table, tearing his cocktail napkin, his mouth forming words that Jeremy could barely hear. The music was really far too loud, because through the static distortion of that lumpy bass line it sounded like Daniel had just said, “I think it’s time for the band to break up.” Surely, Jeremy had misheard. But the rest of his bandmates were all nodding soberly, or maybe bobbing their heads in time to music that Jeremy couldn’t hear.

“God, you guys really give up easily, don’t you?” Jeremy spoke quickly. “That’s just idiotic. We don’t have to spend a fortune on the album. We’ll do it on the cheap. I’ll call in some favors.” By now Jeremy was shouting to be heard over the music, which grew louder by the minute.
“This is what the musician’s life is all about, you pussies! It’s supposed to be hard! If it was easy everyone would do it!”

Emerson shook his head. “I’m too old for it to be cool to be broke.”

A group of girls had clambered up on the banquette next to them and were dancing barefoot on the Naugahyde. They waggled their limbs in exaggerated freedom, not concerned in the least about the fact that their drinks were sloshing on the heads of the people sitting below. Jeremy desperately wanted to climb up there with them, get deliriously drunk without worrying about the hangover, dance on the furniture without thinking of the security guards who would come over and tell them to get down, kiss a stranger and never ask her name. He couldn’t remember the last time he had done that. This realization, more than the news that the band was about to break up, triggered a wave of panic that made him want to vomit.

“It’s not just the money,” Daniel was saying. “I was already thinking it was time for me to quit the band. I can’t make it a priority anymore. Because of the baby, you know? I need to use any spare time I have to get extra freelance work—the newspaper’s talking about layoffs and I figure, just in case. I have an offer to ghost-write a celebrity memoir, and I think I should take it.” He looked at Jeremy with pleading, bovine eyes: “The whole life-of-a-musician thing is just not really feasible for me anymore. How am I going to go on tour with a wife and a baby?”