Chapter 1
1
Two days before, Thursday, February 22nd
I was still in bed and had been snoozing the alarm on my cell phone diligently for what probably was a good hour and a half.
Don’t judge me.
I’m not necessarily lazy—if ever the procrastinator. But procrastinating is almost a duty when you call yourself a writer. And I’m that. More specifically, at the time of this tale, an in-between-gigs television screenwriter.
I was repeatedly snoozing my alarm in part because I was technically unoccupied and with nowhere to go until the 1 p.m. lunch meeting I had with my agent that day. She’d assured me she had good news and an offer. I was disinclined to believe that whatever the offer was could be considered good news. I don’t know how many times I had to tell her that I was not going to take a job as a writer on another broadcast network police procedural with no room for character development or relationship building.
I wasn’t that desperate. Not yet. My overall deal wouldn’t expire for three more months, and I was keeping my fingers crossed for a renewal. I still had some money left from the latest residual check from the two seasons I’d been working in an actual broadcast network police procedural with no room for character development or relationship building. The best-paid job of my career. I was working on my spec script—perhaps not while I overslept, but still pretty consistently typing. And even if at thirty-four I wasn’t proud to admit that I was a bit of a disappointment to my parents, I knew they’d still help me if things were tight.
The reason I was in no shape to wake up that unseasonably chilly Thursday of February was that I had gone to bed quite late the night before. But that’s irrelevant to the story right now. I may have to come back to it. I’ll do it only once it’s necessary.
I guess I should tell you now that I always aim for the truth. I’m not a so-called unreliable narrator, and none of my stories have ever employed one. If I lie to you, it’ll be because I’m also lying to myself. So you don’t need to mistrust me.
When I finally stopped my alarm that Thursday morning, I rose from bed, put the moka pot on the stovetop to get the coffee going, and went to the bathroom to take a shower. I was wearing my favorite plaid flannel pajama pants and a two-or-three-sizes-too-big UCLA T-shirt I didn’t recall having ever bought—and I had purchased my fair amount of merchandise from the university where I earned two degrees. I took the T-shirt off and couldn’t help myself. I smelled it.
See, I told you I wouldn’t do it, and I just did. I’m lying.
I didn’t just smell it. I inhaled its scent. I would have probably buried my face in it had the coffee pot at the stove not started boiling, alerting me that my dose of single-origin caffeine for the morning was almost ready.
I poured the coffee into a mug and allowed it to wake me up. Inside the fridge, I found a slice of the vegan Margherita pizza I’d gotten at Pizzanista a couple of nights before. I was patient enough to microwave it for a total of eleven seconds then devoured the lukewarm pizza with my hot coffee. I made my way back to the bathroom, still having breakfast. I was hoping for the water in the shower to finally be at the right temperature. Only it was still freezing.
I realized the water heater was probably broken, and at some point I’d have to call the company that managed the building so someone would fix it. I would normally shrug it off and get dressed, but I thought about the meeting with my agent where I would need to look mildly presentable. I was even thinking of forgoing my staple combination of sweatpants and flannel shirts and maybe stuffing myself into a pair of high-waisted flare jeans and a cropped T-shirt that Marta had gotten for me. Sure, I needed to shower before that. Even if it was a cold shower.
I cursed the day I had decided to lease an apartment in a 1930 Art Deco building. It had lots of charms but sometimes seemed to lack the amenities of the twenty-first century, running hot water being one of them at the moment. But it was too late to keep wondering if I should have taken a cookie-cutter, synthetic-carpeted unit in one of the many new apartment buildings that had popped up in DTLA over the past few years. I was here now, and I hated moving. Plus, I had other reasons to stay at the Eastern Columbia even if I didn’t want those to be acknowledged.
I was saved from the cold shower just then, as the fire alarm started blazing and fully roused me into wakefulness—something the strong espresso hadn’t managed.