The Rom-Commers

Chapter Ten

THE UBER DRIVERhad just left us behind in Charlie’s driveway when my phone rang.

It was my dad and Sylvie on FaceTime.

My first thought wasn’t even a thought. It was just a stomach flip.

Did she give him the wrong medicine? Did he have a drop attack? Did he catch his walker on the carpet fringe again?

I answered right there in the yard, forgetting both my bags at my feet and Charlie standing beside me.

But as soon as the call started, it was just ordinary: my dad and Sylvie, heads together to squeeze into the frame, my dad playing “Good Morning” on the tin whistle, and Sylvie shaking his maraca as she sang the lyrics.

Panic gave way to relief, and I was so happy to see their faces that by the time the song ended, my dad leaned closer to peer at me, saying, “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

Oh, god—was I crying?

I touched my face. It was wet.

“Nothing!” I said, smacking at my cheeks. “I’m just happy to see you.”

I forced a big smile.

Nothing was technically wrong, right now, after all.

“And is that your writer?” my dad asked, pointing through the camera.

“Dad,”I said, like Come on. He wasn’t my writer.

But as I turned, I saw that Charlie was closer than I’d realized, and as he shifted his attention to my dad’s face on the phone screen, I realized what he was shifting it from was me.

Had he been watching me cry?

Bad to worse.

“Hello, sir,” Charlie said, flipping his charm switch. “I’m so happy to be working with your daughter. She’s a heck of a writer.”

“Well, she certainly thinks the same about you,” my dad said, “judging from all the”—he frowned at Sylvie—“what do they call it?” Then he remembered: “Fangirling.”

“Dad!” I protested.

“I’m telling you, young man,” my dad continued, “if I had a nickel for every time this girl read a piece of your dialogue out loud to me over dinner, I’d have a whole hell of a lot of nickels.”

Charlie’s eyebrows went up, like he hadn’t realized my admiration for him extended to reading dialogue from his works aloud.

I wasn’t even sure how to protest that. I mean, it was true.

“Tell Charlie Yates about your tattoo of his face!” Sylvie called then.

Charlie’s look of surprise contracted into a frown of concern—but I shook my head, like Hell no. “She’s joking,” I said. Then, to be clear, “I do not have a tattoo of your face.”

“You do have a photo of him taped over your desk, though,” Sylvie said.

I should have denied that, too. “But that’s for writing motivation only.”

“Sure it is,” Sylvie said.

“How’s the writing going?” my dad asked, like a proud parent.

“We haven’t started yet,” I said, grateful for the change of topic.

Charlie jumped in, “We’re hammering out details.”

I took the wheel of the conversation and turned the attention off myself. “How are you guys? How’s everything there? What are Dad’s sodium numbers?”

“I knew you’d ask!” Sylvie said, and then she held up a Post-it with the number 716 on it. “Grand total of milligrams from yesterday,” she said, like Boom!, and then put her hand up in the frame for a high five.

I high-fived the phone.

“Stop worrying,” my dad said then. “We’re fine. Mrs. Otsuka’s having us over for dinner tonight.”

I pointed at my dad. “No soy sauce.”

My dad looked insulted I would even say it. “I wouldn’t dare.”

“We’re much more worried about you,” Sylvie said.

“I’m also fine,” I said then, not sure at all if that was true. And then, before I could decide, or god forbid cry again, a car pulled up in the driveway.

Logan’s Beemer.

“What the hell is he doing here?” I asked as Charlie and I stared at it.

That’s when my dad said, “We won’t keep you! You’ve got a fancy Hollywood life to lead.”

I blew kisses at the phone, and by the time I’d hung up, Charlie and Logan were staring each other down.

I walked up to them, and at the sight of my teary face, Logan said, “What did you do to her, man?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “My dad and Sylvie just called.”

“Is your dad okay?” Logan asked at once. He got it.

“All fine,” I said. “It just made me homesick.”

Logan got that, too. “Why didn’t you reply to my texts yesterday?”

“Because I was mad at you,” I said, like Duh.

“And what,” Logan said, looking back and forth between us like he sensed a newly formed alliance, “is going on here?”

Charlie let out a long sigh, and then conceded, “We’re working together.”

“What!” Logan whooped out a big laugh, and then he started pumping his fist in the air. “I knew it! I knew it!”

“That doesn’t make you forgiven,” I said.

“Uh, I think it absolutely makes me forgiven. I think the words you’re looking for are ‘Thank you.’ And to that”—Logan bowed—“I say, ‘You’re very welcome.’”

Charlie and I met eyes. Then Charlie said, “Your methods were extremely problematic.”

“Yeah, well. I’ve got two problematic clients,” Logan responded. Then he asked Charlie to confirm: “She’s doing the rewrite?”

Charlie nodded. “She is. Unless she changes her mind.”

Logan looked at me. “Do not change your mind. It just about killed me to make this happen.”

“I’m not planning to,” I said, lifting my hands. Then I added, “At the moment.”

“Okay, then,” Logan said. “Let’s go.”

Charlie frowned. “Go where?”

“To brunch,” Logan said. “To celebrate.” And then, when we hesitated, he added, “And to talk about the contract. Because there’ll be no writing—at all—happening here until we make this whole thing legal.”

WE WENT TOa fancy see-and-be-seen brunch place that Logan loved and Charlie hated (and that my airport-wear was hardly nice enough for), and the first thing I saw as the hostess led us in—and please just go ahead and take a deep breath right now to prepare yourself—was…

Jack Stapleton.

I’m not joking.

Jack. Stapleton.

A-list actor, Jack Stapleton. Sexiest Man Alive, Jack Stapleton. The guy on the billboard right outside the restaurant, Jack Stapleton.

Looking somehow better in real life? Wearing slacks with no socks and an Oxford shirt that fit him like it was spun from silk. And having brunch—I’m so sorry: if you happen to be holding a can of supplemental oxygen, please take a puff—with Meryl Streep.

The real people, I swear. In a real restaurant. Eating real food.

I’ll give you a minute.

I needed a minute myself, to be honest, but before I’d even started to take it, Jack Stapleton looked up, saw Charlie, rose to his full height, and stepped over to positively ensconce Charlie in a full-immersion bear hug.

“Hey, buddy,” Jack said warmly as he clapped Charlie on the back without letting go.

The hug lasted so long that the rest of us found ourselves looking around, and that’s when I met eyes with Meryl Streep, still seated at her place.

“Hello,” she said to me, lifting her fork in some impossibly cool hybrid between a wave and a toast.

Was that the most badass fork-based greeting I’d ever witnessed in my life? No time to ponder—because before I could stop myself, I was launching one big burst of nonpunctuated words: “Hello Meryl Streep I adore all your work and I am madly in love with you.”

To which she said, “Thank you,” as if people said that exact thing to her every day.

Which they probably did, right? Who are we kidding?

The full Yates-Stapleton hug shifted next into a side clamp, with Jack Stapleton, only a few inches taller than Charlie, tucking his head to try to ask a few private questions, even though we were all baldly staring. Everything he asked seemed like a follow-up to some other conversation no one else was privy to.

“How you holding up, man?” Jack Stapleton asked.

“Hanging in there,” Charlie said.

“Everything still good?”

“Everything’s still good. Yeah.”

“You’re following all their rules?”

Charlie nodded. “Trying to.”

“How’s the writing?”

“It might be”—Charlie glanced in my direction—“getting better.”

“You know I’m here for you. Day or night.”

“Back atcha, pal. Anytime.”

Then another bear hug, more back clapping, and a totally surreal moment when Jack Stapleton turned to me, held out a hand, and looked straight into my eyes like electroshock therapy to say, “Great to meet you. I’m Jack.”

And then there was nothing to do but sit blankly at our brunch table while Logan waved his hand in front of my face, saying “Hello?” before finally turning to the waiter and saying, “We’re going to need another minute.”

I was further—emotionally, spiritually, movie-star-wise—from my little apartment at home than I could even comprehend. Jack Stapleton just shook my hand like a colleague. Meryl Streep just wave-toasted me with a forkful of fruit tart.

It was another universe. One with too little oxygen.

Or maybe too much.

When the waiter came back, I still hadn’t glanced at the menu.

Logan just ordered for me. The Arabian buttered eggs.

Then Charlie turned to me and said, “You okay? Meeting Jack is a lot.”

I could have corrected him on feminist principle and said I was equally incapacitated by both world-famous actors. But I had more pressing business. “Are you friends with Jack Stapleton?” I asked. “Real friends?”

Charlie nodded. “I am real friends with Jack Stapleton.”

“But—why?”

Charlie shrugged. “I wrote The Destroyers. Which—”

“Launched his career,” I finished. “I know. But do all screenwriters become close friends with the stars of their movies?”

Logan snorted into his brunch sangria at that.

“He wasn’t a star when I met him,” Charlie said. “He was a struggling actor trying not to fumble his big break.”

“But how did you become friends?”

“How does anybody become friends? He went through some hard times, and I showed up for him—and then I went through some hard times, and he showed up for me.” Then he added, “We both like playing Warhammer 40K.” Then, in case that wasn’t enough: “Also, he didn’t have a car for a long time, so he needed lots of rides.”

Unbelievable.

“Did that really just happen? Did we just bump casually into Jack Stapleton and Meryl Streep having brunch?”

“This is LA,” Charlie said. “You’re gonna have to get used to that.”

“They’re filming a movie together,” Logan explained. “A romance about a younger guy who falls for—and goes on an erotic journey with—an older woman.”

“I will watch the hell out of that movie,” I said.

But Logan shook his head. “No you won’t.”

“Why not?” I said, like Don’t tell me what to obsess over.

“She gets run over by a bus in the end.”

I made a growl of disapproval. “How do you know that?”

“The writer’s a client.”

“Great. Then can you please ask that person to not kill off Meryl Streep?”

“He says it’s more realistic.”

“Really?”I demanded. “How many people do you know who’ve been run over by a bus?”

That’s when Charlie piped up. “Anyway, it’s not a romance.”

“What?” Logan said.

Charlie nodded, like Yeah. “Learned that yesterday,” he said, cocking his head at me. Then, looking mischievous, he said, “It’s not a romance unless everyone has an orgasm.”

“That’s not—” I started.

But Logan said, “Oh, I think that movie’s got plenty of orgasms.”

“If you don’t have a happy ending,” I corrected. Then I felt the need to stress: “An emotionally happy ending.” How was this conversation happening? To be extra clear: “An ending with the couple happily together. And Meryl Streep alive and well.”

“How old is Meryl Streep, anyway?” Logan pondered.

I sat up straighter and declared, “She is timeless.”

“The point is,” Charlie said, “if you murder Meryl Streep, it can’t be a romance—orgasms or no.”

Logan frowned, like Huh. Then he turned my way. “I’ll adjust my terminology. What is it, if not a romance?”

Were they teasing me? Either way, I stayed focused. “It’s a tragic love story. Or a tragic erotic journey. You’ve got to warn people, so they know what they’re getting going in.”

“Real life doesn’t come with warnings,” Logan argued, half-assedly.

“That’s why fiction,” I said, “is better than real life.”

We clinked brunch cocktails to that.

But just as we did, just as I was feeling a little bit valuable in the conversation, a guy in a backward baseball cap walked up to our table holding a Bloody Mary and raised it in a toast as he said, “Lo! Gan!” and then sloshed half a glass of tomato juice onto the white tablecloth.

Logan and Charlie glanced at each other, and somehow in that second, just from the vibe—and the backward baseball cap—I guessed who it was.

“Is this the girl?” Baseball Cap asked no one in particular, gesturing at me with that drink.

What was I? Ten years old? I waited for someone—Charlie? Logan? A waitress passing by?—to correct him with “woman,” but no one did.

Not even me.

Next, he leaned in my direction. “You must be Logan’s ex-girlfriend.”

So I said, “You must be Jablowmie.”

It was meant to be insulting, but he grinned. He swilled his drink, and then he raised the empty glass in another toast.

“Congrats on the new job! Isn’t nepotism great?”

This from the grandson of Christopher Heywood and the esteemed auteur of the Beer Tower series. I cocked my head. “You’d know best.”

He nodded, like Touché. Then he said, “I see you’re already busy ending Charlie Yates’s career.”

Was this happening?

“Great hat,” I said. “Where do you get those—with the brim on the back like that?”

“Okay, okay,” Logan said, in a tone like Cut it out.

I looked down, a tiny bit scolded, wondering if I should’ve taken a higher road, but then I felt Charlie looking at me, and when I glanced his way, his eyes were smiling.

But T.J. wasn’t quite done. “This is your romance expert?” he said to Logan. Then he looked me over. “No offense, but has she ever even been on a date?”

“That’s it,” Charlie said then, standing up and dropping his napkin on the table. “Knock it off.”

Was Charlie taller than I’d realized?

It felt nice to be defended. But T.J. was actually right. I didn’t have much experience with real-life romance. Even the quickest scan of my past made that painfully clear: The high school BFF I’d tried sex with for the first time—more like a science experiment than anything else—who later turned out to be gay. The fellow professor who I’d started seeing just as he left for a two-year sabbatical in Alaska—and who I got dumped by just as he returned home. A few attempts at dating that never got very far because I was always either tending to my dad, worrying about my dad, or on my way to the ER.

But that’s not to say I’d never been in love. I was not stingy with my crushes. I had a thing for the guy at the meat counter at the grocery store, and the doc who’d stitched my dad up after his last fall, and a cute young maintenance guy who worked at our building.

I fell in love all the time. Just… nobody fell in love with me back.

Fiction really kind of was all I had in the romance department.

But that wasn’t a weakness. That was a strength.

I had a theory that we gravitate toward the stories we need in life. Whatever we’re longing for—adventure, excitement, emotion, connection—we turn to stories that help us find it. Whatever questions we’re struggling with—sometimes questions so deep, we don’t even really know we’re asking them—we look for answers in stories.

Love stories had lifted me up, delighted me, and educated me on the power of human kindness for years. I knew a lot about love. A lot more, I bet, than all the people who took it for granted.

So it was fine. I knew who I was.

And I was not someone who could be insulted by some dude-bro named T.J. on his third Bloody Mary.

Though I did love that Charlie had just stood up for me. Literally.

Logan was busy shutting T.J. down. “Your table is waiting for you, Teej.”

T.J. turned to look and, sure enough, it was.

When he turned back, he looked right at me and said, “Welcome to Hollywood.” And then, before he walked away, he added, “You’re going to need to get that hair straightened.”

IN THE WAKEof that moment, Logan and Charlie pointedly shifted back to normal life, discussing the writing project at hand as if nothing had happened.

“We’re going to need a serious contract,” Charlie said. “I don’t trust you anymore. I should probably get a new manager.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Logan said, totally unworried. “You finally read her stuff.”

“But what if it hadn’t worked?” Charlie gestured at me. “You’d have crushed her.”

“You think I don’t know you? You’re not as mean as you pretend.”

“It was a risk,” Charlie said.

“Everything’s a risk. She needed a push. And so did you. And if you think I was going to let what happened just stop you from writing forever, you haven’t been paying attention.”

“What happened?” I asked.

The two of them looked at me, then at each other.

So I prompted, “You said you weren’t going to let ‘what happened’ stop Charlie from writing. What was it that happened?”

Charlie frowned, like he didn’t want to talk about this now. Or ever.

“You should tell her, Charlie,” Logan said. “It explains a lot.”

“It’s not really brunch conversation,” Charlie said.

“I can tell her later, behind your back, if you prefer,” Logan said.

Charlie sighed. Then he turned to me. “I got sick a few years ago. And even though I really am completely—fully—better now, I haven’t done much writing in the wake of it.”

“Any writing,” Logan corrected, gently.

“Any writing,” Charlie conceded.

Logan leaned in, like he was sharing a dark diagnosis. “He’s got the yips.”

I frowned. “What’s ‘the yips’?”

Charlie grimaced like he didn’t love hearing the term applied to him. “It’s a sports term,” he said, “for when an experienced athlete has a sudden, unexplained—”

“Performance problem,” Logan completed.

Charlie looked aghast. “I do not have a performance problem.”

Logan corrected: “An abrupt absence of skills.”

“Oh,” I said, like we were just learning vocabulary. “So it’s like writers’ blo—”

But Charlie gave me a hard look, like Don’t you dare.

I stopped mid-word.

Logan jumped in to fill the void. “We don’t speak the words for the writer’s equivalent. We just say the yips.”

“I don’t have the yips,” Charlie said. “I’m just… not writing.”

“Not writing at all?” I asked.

“I’ve written one thing since I got sick four years ago,” Charlie said, by way of an answer. Then he added: “The screenplay you’re here to fix.”

So… not writing at all.

Charlie added, “Everything that’s come out in the past few years has been old stuff.”

“Is that why you’re trying to get the Mafia thing going?” I asked next. “Because you don’t have anything else?”

“I also love the Mafia thing,” Charlie said.

“Is that why the rom-com is so unbelievably bad?” I asked then. “Because you… forgot how to write?”

“It’s bad because I didn’t want to write it. And I don’t like rom-coms.”

“But you…” I scrolled mentally through a hundred different protests. “You can make anything good.”

“Maybe,” Charlie said. “But I have to believe in it.”

Uh-oh. Please tell me I did not just agree to work on a rom-com with one of those men who do not believe in love. I almost couldn’t ask. “Did you believe in cannibal robots when you wrote about them?”

He saw where I was headed. “No.”

“What about aliens? Did you believe in those when you wrote The Destroyers?”

Now he was getting evasive. “I mean, the universe is a big place.”

“I’m thinking of that one alien with the elephant trunk. Did you believe that alien might be out there somewhere, living its best life?”

Charlie took my point. “Not exactly, no.”

“So what you’re telling me is, you can take the imaginative leap to get on board with an alien from another galaxy that somehow managed to evolve a trunk that is functionally and visually identical to the elephants of earth, but you simply cannot fathom two ordinary humans falling in love with each other?”

I let us all sit with that for a second.

“It’s just different,” Charlie said.

Logan nodded to confirm. “He’s lost his mojo.”

“It’s not lost,” Charlie said, rapping on his sternum with his knuckles. “I just can’t find it.”

“Yeah,” Logan said. “That’s what ‘lost’ means.”

“Right,” Charlie said, “I was thinking of the ‘dead’ meaning of ‘lost.’ Like, ‘lost at sea,’ or ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’”

Logan shook his head and said, “Writers.”

“Preaching to the choir,” I said, all deadpan and relaxed. But inside, I was on high alert. Charlie Yates had lost his mojo? How was that possible? This guy was the king of mojo. Was this a sign of the apocalypse?

That’s when I met Charlie’s eyes and asked, “You’re all better now health-wise, though, right?”

“Good as new,” Charlie said.

“What were you sick with?” I asked.

Charlie looked down, like there was something on his shoe he needed to check out, and then, glancing off in the distance like he might see someone he knew, in a beyond-casual tone, as if whatever came next was so boring it couldn’t even merit any follow-up questions… he said, simply, “Soft tissue sarcoma.”