I furrow my brow. “I don’t think that’s what Goodnight Moon was about,” I say quietly.
“The kids’ book? Never read it. So let me make this clear in TV writer lingo.” He takes a beat, his voice somehow going gruffer. “They’ll sunset you.”
Bruce loves to grab sayings from TV shows and movies, usually ones involving cool and cruel crime bosses issuing directives to underlings. “Got it now?”
I swallow past the lump in my throat. I will not let Bruce hear me cry. “I understand. I know what sunset, used as a verb, means.” My heart is a limp doll in my chest, torn down the middle.
He sighs, and it borders on sympathetic. “The sooner, the better. And, hey, I believe in your talent. I’ll fight for you, kid.”
I’m not a kid. I’m twenty-nine. But that’s neither here nor there. “Thanks, Bruce.”
“Also, it’s just going to be you. No other writers for this,” he says, since most TV shows have a head writer as well as a team.
“I can write it solo. I write most of the key scenes anyway.” I swallow any remaining morsel of pride. “Any advice on how to proceed with the storyline for these six episodes?”
Bruce is the network VP in charge of my show, so he has a vested interest. The more successful the shows he brings to his higher-ups, the more money he makes.
“Yeah. Go make up some funny stuff, and don’t take too long.”
“Besides that.”
“Fine,” he huffs, and I imagine he’s tapping a pen on a too-big desk. “How about a bit with a monkey? Monkeys are always funny.”
“A monkey?” I ask, incredulous. “A monkey is going to save my show in six episodes?”
“Monkeys are comedy gold.” His tone tells me he’s dead serious.
“Should this primate be a recurring character or a new series regular?”
“Slap a diaper on him and make him a regular.”
That sounds like when you remember a show from your childhood as brilliant, but when you watch it again years later, you ask with abject horror what your younger self was thinking.
“Do you think perhaps a monkey in a diaper is old-school funny?” I ask, trying to let him down gently.
“I’m old-school funny, honey, and you’re new school. Your new-school hipster show about men and women just being friends isn’t cutting it. So maybe you ought to lean on old-school funny.”
Ouch.
I’ll have the bruise marks on my ego for days from that gut punch.
“I’ll do that, Bruce. I’ll work on old-school funny,” I say, since I don’t have any bargaining chips.
“But listen, Fin. I’m rooting for you. Maybe add a kissing scene too. Some flirting. Dress your lead in fishnets. You want to run anything past me, you know where to find me.”
“Thanks,” I say, but he’s already hung up.
I stare at the phone as if it’s a device from an alien planet.
Maybe I should have tucked it into my bathing suit. Maybe it would have been better waterlogged.
With leaden feet, I walk to my lemon-yellow, two-story rental home on the outskirts of town.
I unlock the door, my mind speeding away from me as I recall the bundle of enthusiasm the network execs wrapped me up in when they picked up the show after years of me pitching, writing, revising, getting rejected. Lather, rinse, repeat.
It’s about real life! We love it! Don’t make it like everything else on TV. We want something different! Be quirky! Screw the tropes!
That’s what I delivered for the first thirteen episodes—a baker’s dozen of shows that were critically acclaimed, but disastrously under-watched. The ratings are so low it feels like I could personally email every viewer and ask for tips for new storylines. Hell, I could visit their homes and serve them pancakes for breakfast while shooting the breeze on what they like and don’t like about Lane and Amanda, my hero and heroine.
My stomach rumbles as I lock the door, wanting those pancakes.
As I head toward the kitchen, shock still rippling through me, I wonder if there is un-mined comedy in pancakes. Some hilarious bit about that time Amanda went to a friend’s house and her friend served those terrible pancakes from Trader Joe’s that taste like soap, and Amanda called them soap cakes, and that becomes a bit on what to do when a host serves awful food?
Best friends and former roomies Amanda and Lane would laugh about it, and it would help them buddy-comedy their way back to living under the same roof.
But as I turn on the coffee maker, I don’t know if soap cakes are funny.
As the coffee drips, I don’t even know if Speedos are funny. And I should know the answer to that.
Most of all, I don’t have a clue how the hell I’m going to pull this off in a mere six episodes.
The ironic thing is that deep down in the squishy, soft part of my heart, I knew this was coming.
But knowing something is coming doesn’t make it hurt any less.
With a cup of joe in hand, I flip open my laptop and try to play with all the ways a lime-green Speedo can spawn humor.
2
Him
This is a foolproof blueprint.
I run through a drill one final time in the driveway of my brother’s home in Oakland. Everything goes off without a hitch. When I’m done, I hold my hands out wide, raise my eyebrows, and ask, “Am I ready or am I absolutely, no-questions-asked, one hundred percent good to go?”
“I’d say you’re ready, but are you really doing this?” My oldest brother, Ransom, marches up to me, a curious glint in his brown eyes, his infant son attached to his chest, courtesy of a Baby Björn.
“You don’t think I should?”
He laughs, shaking his head. “I think it could definitely work. But I also think a phone call could work.”
I cut a hand through the air. “No way. Phone calls are for guys who don’t make an effort.”
“That’s clearly not you.”
“Damn straight. I am the king of effort.” I narrow my eyes, the same shade as his. “Besides, didn’t you win Delia’s heart like this?”
He seesaws his hand. “Not entirely like this. But I did propose to her at the office and carried her out of there like Richard Gere did Debra Winger.”
“Minus the naval uniform.”
“Obviously.”
I point to his kid and the home behind them, the reminders that life can work out fantastically if you big-gesture a woman the right way. “So it worked.”
He holds up his left hand and wiggles his ring finger. “Damn straight.”
“And this will work.” I look at his son, talking in a singsong voice. “What do you think, Harlan?”
The three-month-old gurgles.
“Clearly, he agrees with me,” I say.
“Then you better hit the road. You need to be there at dusk. Timing is everything.”
It’s my turn to laugh him off. “I’m an engineer. I’m well aware of the need for precision timing. I built in time for traffic, for unexpected road closures, and for any other unforeseen circumstances.”
“You’re such a nerd.”
I smile proudly, owning it. “I believe I’m what’s known as a hot nerd.”
He rolls his eyes. “You do know you’re not hot, right?”
“We share the same genes so if I’m an ugly bastard, you are too.”
“Takes one to know one,” he says, clapping my back as we say goodbye in our usual style.
I let go and tap the hood of my Tesla, giving myself a final pep talk. “I’m ready. As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“I can’t believe it’s been eight years since you were a sophomore in college. I hope you wind up taking her to Nash’s restaurant tonight.” Our brother works as a sous chef a few towns over from where I’m headed.
I salute him. “I’ll report back later.”
I open the door to my car, switch my regular black glasses for prescription shades, and head up the coast.
May was the month when my college girlfriend issued her directive at the end of what was shaping up to be an epic night.
Try again when you get your act together. Show up when you know what you want.