Chapter Twenty #2
Elliot was crouching down to a corner in the fence and in the murky glow of the streetlights I could see he was working open a previously hidden access point in the fence akin to a cat flap. In seconds he’d slithered through it to crouch the other side and beckon me through.
“Are you joking?” I hissed at him. “This is insane.”
“You scared?” His deep rumble made my insides flip and I realized that no, with him, I wasn’t.
At least, not of trespassing. I was honestly more scared of what I would feel if I took him up on his dare.
But then I was also crawling through the gap, consumed with the need to be on the same side of the fence as him.
I pulled my body through and squatted next to him with a defiant nod.
“Good girl. Now ssh.” He put a finger to his lips again.
Good girl? Although London Lucie would have bridled at being addressed thusly by a man, New York Lucie kind of liked it.
In fact, New York Lucie was close to spontaneously combusting on the spot thanks to those two words.
Elliot began scaling the steep slope as if it were a gentle flight of steps, bracing himself against the trunks of the trees that lined the area.
My leg muscles protested rather convincingly as I pulled myself up after him.
This had better be worth it, I thought, although the view of Elliot from behind at this angle was probably reward enough. I shook myself; I had to stop this.
“Here we go,” he whispered loudly as he reached the top of the slope, parting the trees to step onto the main path.
Red-faced and trying not to curse as a branch thwacked my cheek, I emerged rather less gracefully from the incline. “All right, you got me up here.” We’d emerged onto a part of the High Line that was crowded by trees, blocking out much of the ambient light. “Now what?”
“This way.” We walked down the path until the trees stopped, opening into a broader platform that I recognized from my own wanderings.
Elliot then led me to a lowered seating area, bordered off by some more trees.
He grabbed my elbow, oblivious to the way his touch scalded me.
“Sit. Or don’t sit. But be quiet. And see. ”
Although skeptical, I did as I was told.
At first, I saw nothing out of the ordinary, just the darkened city with a muddy black sky above it.
But then I became aware of two things; first, that the sense of peace I’d experienced when I first came here was even more profound, and also that the city around Twenty-Third Street may have been dark but there were still glimmers of activity.
A light went on in the top floor of a tenement and I could clearly see a man begin to polish a huge mirror.
I wondered what on earth was going on his life that such a task couldn’t wait.
My eyes were drawn to a balcony on the neighboring building where a woman in a flowing nightgown paced with a tiny baby.
A bodega on the street opened its door and trumpet music billowed out, accompanying two girls in vibrant red dresses who danced down the pavement towards the subway.
It was oddly comforting, being this invisible witness to the relentless heartbeat of the city at night.
“This is officially the quietest spot on the High Line,” Elliot murmured. “I come here when I want to think.”
“At night?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes.”
“So, you’re regularly breaking into a city park?” I said in disbelief. “You’re really committed to your thinking time.”
“I have a lot to think about.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees.
“Like what?” The words slipped out before I even realized, and I rushed to add, “Sorry, your thoughts. Private.”
“No, it’s all right,” he said softly. “Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about my career, what I want my life to look like.”
I understood the all-consuming focus on your career, the preoccupation and the planning. “You have a job that millions would kill for.”
“Oh yeah,” he said with a bark of a laugh. “Ruben James’s right-hand man. Living the fucking dream.”
His tone was so bitter, it took me a second to come up with a response. “I get the sense you don’t believe that.”
“I did once.” He snickered. “RJ hired me when he saw my film for Tribeca festival. Declared me his protégé, that a few years with him would open doors.”
“And has it?” I asked.
“Well, it’s ten years later – do you see me making my own movies?” Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I get it.” More than he could imagine. “You should be making movies.”
“I know,” he said in a ‘well duh’ voice.
“No, really,” I said. “I watched The Song of You.”
“You did?”
“I loved it.” Those words didn’t do it justice.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
“RJ would be crazy not to give you the second director gig,” I told him. “If that’s what you can do with a short, I can’t wait to see what you could do with a full-length feature that has actual budget.”
“Can you keep a secret?” he asked.
I nodded.
“My buddy Josh from NYU heads up a directors’ collective called Stoof.”
“Stoof Collective?” I practically yelled. “They’re incredible! Lin’s tried to sign them multiple times for UK representation.” They were a buzzy outfit based in LA who specialized in boundary-pushing work for all manner of clients.
“I know,” Elliot said. “Josh was nominated for a Creative Emmy recently for a project I consulted on for him in my spare time. Now, he wants me to come on board as a director.”
I could hardly hide my excitement. “Elliot, this is huge.”
There was silence. Then, “I turned him down.”
Elation gave way to confusion. “Why?”
“I’d have to move to LA.”
“So move to LA.”
He hesitated. “It’s not that simple.”
“How is it not?” I retorted. “Elliot, this could be it, your break. Why the hell wouldn’t you take it?” The notion of Elliot not being in New York was strangely unsettling, but I pushed that aside.
He rubbed a palm over his face. “It’s my … my mom. She’s sick.”
Oh. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, no, it’s …” He cleared his throat. “I mean, thank you. It’s … the thing is … she’s an alcoholic.”
“Oh shit.” I slumped back in my seat. “It’s bad?”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “She struggles with, well everything. She can sometimes get hysterical and, honestly, she’s a danger to herself, as well as everyone else.”
Something occurred to me. “Is she why your lip was split that time?”
He nodded. “She didn’t mean … I was trying to get her to go to bed and she was gesticulating, caught me with her wristwatch.”
I winced in sympathy. No wonder he carried a self-help book around with him. “How long has she been like this?”
“Five, maybe six years. So, you see, I can’t go to LA. How can I?”
“There’s no one else who can help when you’re not around?”
“No,” he said softly. “My dad works. A lot. He tries, but … if he’s away then I have to just …” He waved his hands in the air. “Drop everything.”
The junket made sense now. “She was the emergency.”
“Mom got rushed to the ER.” His voice was so quiet I could barely hear him. “Fell and broke her ankle, but when I got the call I thought—” His voice hitched.
“You thought the worst,” I said.
“The worst … the worst is an ever-descending low point,” he said ruefully. “I keep thinking this is as bad as it gets and then something else happens, something even more disastrous and I just think, how much more am I meant to take? Like, when is my mom coming back to me?”
“I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say.
He looked at me, eyes fierce. “No one at work knows, apart from RJ.”
“I won’t say anything.”
“I’m not ashamed,” he said, defiantly. “That’s not why I don’t talk about it. I’m not ashamed of her.”
“I never said you should be,” I said.
“People judge, you know?” he went on. “They assume that because she’s an alcoholic that she’s a bad mom, that she doesn’t care about us, but that’s not true.” His voice cracked.
“Tell me about her,” I said. “Who is she, without the drink?”
“A firebrand.” Elliot smiled wistfully. “She loved to dance, any music at all, she’d start to move. Like, if a song came on the radio at the post office or at the market, she’d just break out into dance. It used to embarrass me as a kid, but I’d give anything to see her dance again.”
“Elliot.” I wanted to reassure him that maybe he would see his mother dance again, but I knew from my own experience that mothers weren’t fairy-tale characters who could be brought back to life if you loved them enough.
“She loved to play pranks, you know? Leap out from behind curtains and, man, the number of fake turds that we used to find around the house.” He laughed softly. “When I got into NYU, she was so proud of me.”
“Of course she was.” I’d never have guessed this was the weight he carried around with him. I’d assumed so much about Elliot Fox, but not once had I imagined he was dealing with such pain.
“Tell me about your home,” he asked suddenly. It was an innocent demand, but it stopped me in my tracks. My eyes drifted to the mother still pacing up and down the balcony, cradling her tiny baby.
The silence stretched and Elliot shifted in his seat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just – I’d like to talk about something else.”
“No, it’s fine,” I assured him. “Home … it’s a tough thing to define.”
“What do you mean?”
“For years home was my nan and me. Now it’s just me.”
“No siblings?”
“No.” Then I corrected myself. “That I’m aware of. My parents might have had more kids, I don’t know. But Nana Kath was all the family I had.”
“Your grandmother raised you?”
“She did.” My eyes grew hot. “Until about five years ago, home was her. Her and me.”
“Is she … did she pass?”
“Breast cancer. It was … quick.”
“Man.” His sigh was so heavy it ruffled my hair. “Now I’m fucking sorry.”
“Thanks.” I sniffed. “So, when people ask me about home, it’s a hard question to answer.”
“She must have been quite a lady to raise a kid by herself,” Elliot remarked softly.