17
THERE’S A KNOCK ON MY DOOR. FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE, I ACTUALLY USE THE peephole, hoping to get myself back in the serial killer podcasters’ good graces.
There’s a familiar hulking figure there, leaning against the wall, with something I can’t make out in his hands. “What do you want?” I say through the door.
“To apologize,” he says. He looks up directly at the peephole now, meeting my gaze, and I fall back onto my heels.
I take a breath, open the door, and start my tirade. “If you think you can—” I stop short, frowning at what he’s brought. “What are those?”
There is a stack of scripts beneath one arm, a bag of popcorn in the other.
I frown. “Are those . . . mine?”
“No.” He straightens. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m not used to having much time, so I use money to make up for it. Buying things for people instead of spending time with them. It works, mostly. I’ve gotten used to it.” He swallows. “That’s not meant to be an excuse. It’s an explanation. And I . . . I don’t want to be that person.
“I want to spend time with you, Elle,” he says. “I want to know you.” He looks down at what he’s brought. “I thought we could do something simple. A movie night. I found scripts for the newest releases.”
I told him that weeks ago. I’m surprised he cared enough to remember.
“I don’t have a TV,” I say, looking behind me. “It’s still in the box. It hasn’t been set up yet.”
He could easily suggest his place, but instead he says, all too eagerly, “I’ll set it up. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
“I . . . don’t have any furniture.”
That doesn’t seem to faze him. “I’m fine on the floor. That is, if you are.”
The idea of Parker Warren sitting on the floor, watching a movie on a television also on the floor, almost makes me laugh. “Really?”
He nods. “I told you. I just want to spend time with you. The rest doesn’t matter.”
You won’t be saying that when your lower back starts hurting, I think, considering how many hours I’ve spent sitting on this same hardwood, plotting my screenplay. We’ll see how long he lasts.
“Fine,” I say, opening the door, waiting to see any hint of disappointment that I didn’t suggest his place.
But I don’t see any. If anything, all I see is relief.
THE FLOOR SEEMS TO BE DETERMINED TO BE EXTRA UNCOMFORTABLE tonight, but Parker doesn’t say a word as he watches the movie, not seeming annoyed at the sound of flipping pages as I write notes in the margins of the script.
“Good line,” I say to myself, before pressing my lips together, not used to having an audience when I’m watching movies.
Parker only grunts in agreement, and my self-consciousness loses some of its gravity.
“This is the midpoint . . . right?” Parker says, glancing over at me. I’m used to him looking reassured, confident. There’s a bit of hesitance there.
I frown.
“It isn’t?”
“No, it is. But how do you know that?”
He turns back to the television. “I looked up some stuff about screenwriting. I wanted to learn a little bit about what you do.” He motions toward my sticky note plot monster a few feet away. “You use a three-act structure, right?”
I’m about to keel over. I nod, a little unnerved. “I don’t know the first thing about what you do,” I say, feeling like I’m coming up short.
He smiles. “I could explain it to you. But it might put you to sleep.”
Even though I have never had any interest whatsoever in tech, I’m surprised by my desire to know him. To know what it is he created. To know what he’ll be working on, after this summer. I shouldn’t.
Maybe I can want to know him and spend time with him, just for the summer. Maybe it really doesn’t have to mean anything. Like a one-night stand. Only without the sex.
“That’s perfect,” I say, shoving a fistful of popcorn into my mouth. “You can be my podcast.”
He raises a brow.
“I have to listen to one before I go to bed every night. It replaces the voice in my head, the anxiety. It’s the only way I can sleep.”
He nods, understanding.
I face him. “So, if you could just record yourself talking about your job in nice forty-five-minute segments, that would be great.”
He smiles again. I look toward the screen and am happy to see he paused it a long time ago. “I’ll get right on that.”
He unpauses it, and I keep scribbling. The movie’s plot is good, but it’s long. And I’m tired.
So tired, that I don’t make it to the end of it.
ONE OF THE RULES I LIVE BY HAS BEEN brOKEN. THERE WAS NO PODCAST, yet here I am, in the middle of the night.
With my head in Parker’s lap.
He’s slumped against the wall. His hand is in my hair. The script is folded in front of me, and my pen has rolled across the room. The apartment is quiet.
I slowly rise, but Parker must be a light sleeper. His eyes open immediately.
“That’s good,” I say, still partially asleep. “For the serial killers.”
He suddenly looks concerned. “What?”
“Being a light sleeper. It’s good. Maybe you would stand a chance.” I yawn. “I sleep like a rock. I always think, If someone murdered me in the middle of the night, I’d sleep through the whole thing. ”
“Elle,” he says, very carefully, “what the fuck are you talking about?”
“My podcast. The one I usually listen to. It’s true crime.”
“Ah.”
I frown. “I don’t know why, but saying that out loud . . .” I’m scared. Why am I scared? “I don’t want to sleep alone tonight.”
“Then don’t sleep alone,” he says, gently pushing me back down. I let him. And then I drift back into sleep.
THE DOOR CLOSES, AND I SHOOT UP. I’M IN MY BED, ON TOP OF THE covers.
I frown. Before I can wonder too long how I got here, Parker is leaning against the frame of my bedroom door.
“You really are a heavy sleeper,” he says. He’s holding a latte from his coffee shop. There’s a pastry bag in his hand.
“Weren’t we on the floor?”
He nods. “The whole night,” he says, wincing as he stretches his neck. “I carried you here a few minutes ago, when I went to get us coffee. It felt weird leaving you alone on the floor.”
“Oh.”
“It’s Saturday,” he says.
Usually, that wouldn’t be immediately obvious to me. When I write, especially on deadlines like this, I often forget what day it is, since I don’t take weekends. It’s like summer break in elementary school, all the days blurring together.
Now, though, I know. A schedule has taken shape. I feel every day of the week again.
“Do you already have plans?”
I shake my head no. Then I think about it. “Well, I was going to do something probably stupid.”
He looks unconvinced. “I don’t get the sense that you do anything stupid.”
I raise a brow at him. “ Most of the things I do are stupid.” I stretch my back. “Like insisting we sit on the floor.” And deciding I can potentially just have fun with Parker this summer.
“It was great,” he says, though I can tell his back is also killing him. “So, does the probably stupid thing have to do with your screenplay?”
I nod. “It’s going to sound weird.”
He waits, undeterred.
“There’s a part in my screenplay where the main character says, ‘X has the best pizza in New York City.’ And it’s kind of a running joke between the two of them, because he has another favorite.” I lift a shoulder. “I like to do research for my screenplays. It makes it feel more authentic—truer, in my opinion. It’s just one line . . . but to me, it matters.”
“So, you want to try all the pizzas in New York,” Parker says.
“Not all of them. There’s a list on some website.” I look at him. I think about the snack cabinet filled with healthy choices. I wonder if pizza is part of his diet at all. “Are you in?”
He shrugs. “Why not?”
WE TAKE THE SUBWAY. PARKER SITS THERE, STUDYING THE MAP WE made, complete with little pizza stickers across the city, indicating our stops, and I just look at him.
He’s wearing casual clothes. Or more casual than usual, at least. Slacks, a T-shirt, and shoes that look comfortable but are from one of those designers that don’t have labels.
He glances over at me. “What?”
“I’m wondering if you’ve ever taken the subway.”
Parker gives me a look. “Before a few years ago, I was paying myself barely enough to eat ramen. I was sleeping on my friends’ couches. I lived here for a summer during an incubator and literally—and I mean literally—rented out someone’s closet.”
That doesn’t make any sense. “Your company has been worth a lot for a long time.”
Parker nods. “True. But without a liquidity event, it was basically just a number. When the media started calling me a billionaire, I had less than a thousand dollars in my bank account and was living in my friend’s living room. It wasn’t until a little over three years ago that I was able to sell some of my shares in secondaries.”
“It must have been weird, then, going from not having a lot to having . . . everything. Overnight.” I think about Cali.
“It was.”
“So, what did you do with it?”
The subway car is nearly empty. He stretches his long legs out in front of him. “The first thing I did was pay off my mom’s mortgage. The second was get black-out drunk at a nightclub.” Sounds about right for any twenty-something with sudden access to that much money. He looks pensive. “Then I bought the nightclub.”
“You did not.” I don’t know why I’m surprised at all. “Let me guess. Your financial adviser was thrilled that your portfolio was so diverse .”
That makes him laugh. He shakes his head. “It was, apparently, a massive liability, and not good for my image either. The board made me sell it, but only after I had an amazing party with everyone I had ever met.” He sighs wistfully. “How about you?”
“Oh, are we trading first-time-we-bought-a-nightclub stories?”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “What did you do when you got your first big screenwriting check?”
“I cried.”
He looks confused. “From happiness?”
I shake my head. “No. I—I felt this immense sense of guilt. Like, if only it had landed a year sooner . . . things could have been different.”
He waits for me to continue. I’m not entirely sure why, but I do.
“My mom got really sick when I was in college,” I say. “By the third month of treatments, her life savings were drained. The new experimental trials, the medicines, they were all way too expensive. She didn’t have good insurance.” I swallow past the knot in my throat. “When I got that first check, I thought, If only this had come a little bit sooner, I could have paid for everything .”
Parker’s hand curls around my knee. “I’m sorry,” he says.
I try to smile. “After I cried, I transferred a big chunk of it to a charity Penelope and I volunteered at in college, then used the rest to pay off my student loans.”
Parker considers this. “You never dreamed of buying anything? You never wanted anything?”
There is one thing.
He waits. He must see it on my face. “Let’s hear it.”
I can’t believe I’m telling him this. “In college, I tutored a kid in English. His family lived in a navy-blue town house right on Gramercy Park. It had a skylight on the top floor and a marble kitchen, and sometimes, I would stand in front of it for a while and think, I’m going to write as many movies as I need to so that one day I can buy it .”
I don’t tell him how, when I had writer’s block or during stressful times, I would take the subway and walk around the park, staring at the house, as some sort of inspiration. Motivation. That just seems too sad to admit.
I don’t tell him that I’ve done it recently. That I’ve looked it up online, to see if maybe it might be on the market. It isn’t. Hasn’t been in years.
“I’m guessing they had a key to the park.”
“Yeah.” I always secretly hoped they would invite me, but they never did. And why would they? I was hired only to help with homework.
The train comes to a stop. “Ready?” I say.
He sighs before getting up. “Is this the time to tell you I don’t really like pizza?”
Our first stop is Patsy’s Pizzeria in East Harlem. The exterior is painted dark green. Articles hang in the windows. Families walk by speaking Spanish. We arrive right at opening, at 11:00 a.m.
There’s an option to sit or take out. I shrug. We choose the restaurant. It’s cash only. The tables are draped in white tablecloths, framed photos cover the walls.
“So,” Parker says, as we study the menu. “Are we going to order the same type at each place? Does that make it fair?”
“Yeah. We’ll just get whatever seems closest to cheese .”
We order the Old School Round pizza, which has a thin crust, tomato sauce, and grated mozzarella.
It arrives quicker than I thought it would. We grab a slice—me wincing as my fingertips get singed—then do an awkward cheer above the elevated plate.
Our gazes don’t break as we each take a bite. There’s a pause, a consideration, then we both nod at each other, chewing. Good, our expressions seem to say to each other. This is good.
There’s a char on the bottom, rough against my tongue. Just the right amount of cheese, hot in my mouth, melting across my taste buds. It pulls in perfect strands, trailing down my wrist. It’s delicious. I have to stop myself from going next door and getting a slice on our way to our next location, reminding myself that I will be approximately 60 percent margherita pizza by the end of the day. We head back to the subway.
Our next stop is L’Industrie Pizza in Brooklyn. A small cardboard sign says “This is the menu” above one of those blackboards with the stick-on letters. The first letter of every menu item is dramatically oversized. “Margherita” is missing the “g,” and that’s what we get.
Cookies are sold by the register. Pizzas are made right in front of us. Everyone I see behind the counter has short sleeves and tattoos. The ovens are stacked and have glass doors, pizzas crisping inside. This time, we order two slices instead of a whole pie. A guy with a mic calls our names when they’re ready. They’re handed to us on the thinnest of white paper plates. A few basil leaves are sprinkled on top, along with some curls of freshly grated cheese.
“Ready?” Parker says, and I have an excuse to stare into his green eyes again. Who knew trying out pizzas would turn into a test in maintaining eye contact? There’s an audible crunch when we bite, and that makes us both nod. Yes, this is what it should be, right? our nods say. This is the makings of a good pizza. Our gazes stay locked as we chew, as we compliment the slice, as we consider getting another flavor.
We do the same thing all day, but it never feels the same. It never gets old. Every time we’re trying a new variety—at Philomena’s in Queens, at Joe’s in Greenwich Village, at Scarr’s in the Lower East Side, at Emily in the West Village, at Rubirosa in Nolita—our eyes widen like it’s the first bite of the day. We spend a lot of time walking or on the subway. Sometimes we go back and forth through the city, inefficiently, because of opening times and new recommendations we get from anyone who sees our map. Everyone seems to have an opinion on the best places to try. Some, like Una Pizza Napoletana, open late and are nearly impossible to get into. There is one, though, that everyone insists we must make it to, even though the wait times are in the hours. That’s how, in the late afternoon, we make our way back to Brooklyn.
Lucali has a redbrick exterior and a striped green awning, looking like it belongs in a small town. Only a velvet rope in front of the door marks it as one of the city’s iconic restaurants.
Oh, and all the people.
It hasn’t even opened yet, but there’s already a line curling around the block, past a row of brownstones. I look over at Parker, wondering when he last waited in a line, wondering if this will be the moment he wants to head home. But he doesn’t look annoyed, not at all. We join the back of the queue and face each other.
“So,” I say. “Do you have a favorite already?”
He considers. “I do. But I don’t think it’s fair to judge until we’ve had this one.”
I nod. “Same.” I bite my lip. There’s something I’ve wanted to ask him all day. “Be honest. When was the last time you had pizza?”
“About twenty minutes ago.”
I give him a look.
“Five years, give or take.”
My eyes widen. “Really?”
“I never was a big pizza person. My mom is one of those people who doesn’t buy anything with preservatives in it. We never did delivery pizza or anything. Almost everything was made from scratch.” He looks at the brownstones. “She would come home after working all day and then be in the kitchen for hours. I always told her we could get something faster, that it would be fine. But she always insisted. She didn’t want us eating prepackaged stuff, and it’s not like we could afford restaurant food.”
“That’s why you learned to cook,” I guess. “To help her.”
He nods.
“And your dad?” I ask. I remember reading that both of his parents are still alive. There isn’t much about his parents online.
Parker laughs bitterly. “My dad was barely home, and when he was, he was in front of the TV. He never did a single thing to help her.”
“His job took him away from home?”
Parker looks at me. He almost looks . . . sad. “He was laid off when I was a kid and never got a job again. I don’t know where he went, but it wasn’t to work. He left when I was a teenager. Started a new life on his own.”
I swallow, realizing we might not be as different as I thought. “Do you have a relationship now?” I wonder if I’m asking too many questions—and how many of these I would answer if he asked me.
But he doesn’t hesitate before saying, “Only the type where he calls me when he needs a bill paid.” His jaw tenses. “I bought him a house and a car a while back, and sort of thought I would never hear from him again. I was so happy when he called one day. I thought maybe he just wanted to talk to me, but no. Someone wrecked his car. Somehow, he lost the house. It’s always something.”
“So,” I say, frowning, “that’s the thing we have in common, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Our dads weren’t around much.”
He looks surprised but doesn’t press. I don’t know why I’m even saying anything. I haven’t talked about either of my parents this much in a while. Him opening up makes me want to be more open too.
The couple in front of us are standing several feet away, deep in their own conversation. I take a steadying breath.
“My parents are both from Colombia,” I say. “They moved to California, and they didn’t have much. My dad was a student, and my mom got pregnant quickly. Then, just before my mom had my sister, they separated. At first, it was okay. My dad came around a decent amount. Then, I guess, he found something better. We saw him less and less, until finally . . . he was just gone.
“My mom’s English wasn’t great. It was hard for her to find a job. I remember helping proofread her applications when I was still in elementary school. Things were rough for a while, we moved a lot, but eventually she went back to school and became an accountant. She always found a way to give us anything we needed.”
It wasn’t meals from scratch, like Parker’s mom—we ate fast food probably way too much—but she always made sure we had enough and that we were grateful for it. For fun, she would find free activities, like the summer movie screenings in the park.
“Then, when I was in college, she got sick.” I hate talking about it. I always inevitably end up crying, and I hate crying in front of people. I look around in an effort to keep the emotions from surging up. Parker’s hand weaves through mine. His other hand is steady against my back. He’s got me, I think. “She died when I was a junior.” That’s all I can get out.
“That’s her necklace, isn’t it?”
I don’t even realize I’m touching it. I nod. “It is.”
A little before five, the line starts to move rapidly. Reaching the door feels like its own type of victory. It happens quicker than we thought it would, but only because we have solely reached the right to put our names down for a table. There are only ten of them. The estimated wait time is at least two hours.
The people in front of us do this every month. They’ve perfected the Lucali line, they tell us, as we mill around the entrance. “You should walk around and check out Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill while you wait. There are lots of bars and shops.”
We take the advice. We walk and talk about nothing and everything.
We pass a bookstore with a line that wraps around the block, just like the pizza shop. I recognize the books in people’s hands. Some readers even brought carts full of them.
“Do you ever think of writing books?” Parker asks.
“No,” I say. “You have to be on social media nowadays to get anywhere, and I would rather die.” I nod at the woman inside the bookstore, the one they’re all waiting for. She’s recording some sort of promotion on her phone. The moment she puts it down, her smile wilts. “Look at her. She looks miserable.”
We keep walking.
“So, if not books, why screenwriting?”
It’s a fair question. There are several types of writing.
“The first thing I ever wrote creatively was an alternate ending to a movie. Then, after that, I got really into reading and started to write chapters that I thought might turn into books.”
I pause. I haven’t told anyone this before. I’m anonymous; it’s not like I’ve done any interviews. Parker is waiting, interested.
“I can’t see images clearly in my head when I read. It’s called aphantasia. Or I’ve heard it referred to as ‘mind blind.’ I didn’t even know other people see full-on movies in their head when they read, until my sister told me. When I learned that, I knew the only way I would ever be able to see my writing was to have it be made into movies. So, I started writing screenplays.”
Parker looks far too fascinated. “And the first time you actually saw your story?”
“It was one of the best moments of my life.”
By the time we get the call that our table is ready, we both agree, It doesn’t seem like it’s been two hours, does it? though a quick look at the time confirms that, yes, it has been.
“I’m expecting the best pizza on the planet,” Parker says.
“I don’t even think I can eat another slice of pizza for the rest of my life,” I say, as we’re seated at a rustic table. The space is small. There are pizzas everywhere, more pizzas than there are people. I wonder if there’s a pizza max capacity.
“This is the final stop,” Parker says. “I think we should try two varieties.”
I repeat, “I don’t even think I can eat another slice of pizza for the rest of my life,” then proceed to eat three different slices as they come out.
It’s good. Wait-outside-in-the-summer-heat-for-two-plus-hours good.
When we’re done, and the check is taken care of, I sit back against my chair, satiated and, also, a little nauseated.
Parker is staring at me. “Can I take you somewhere?”
“More pizza?” I say automatically, my voice horrified.
He cracks a smile, shakes his head no. “Somewhere nearby. I have a surprise for you.”
I give him a look.
“It didn’t cost anything. Just a favor.”
We walk a few blocks to the subway and take the F from Carroll Street to York. Soon, the Manhattan Bridge is right there, above us. The buildings are brown and industrial. We pass Main Street Park and Pebble Beach. I’ve been here once, in college. Penelope and I took photos on the rocks, trying to get both bridges and Manhattan behind us. “Where are we going?” I ask, as we keep walking past everything.
“You’ll see.”
Will I? “My eyesight is pretty terrible,” I admit. “I blame all the reading in the dark and writing.”
“You’ll see it,” he promises.
And then, very soon, I do.
A carousel in a box, like a jewel. It’s lit up and empty, as if it’s waiting for us. I turn to him. I’ve seen this place before but never paid much attention. Right now, in this moment, it feels like the most beautiful thing in the city.
I break out into a smile. Parker can’t stop staring at me.
“What?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile like that. Like . . . you’re happy.”
I am happy, I want to tell him.
But it seems like giving him too much. So instead I say, “Should we get on it?”
There are tiny bulbs everywhere. The horses look handmade and hand-painted. There are dozens of them.
I choose a majestic brown horse with a golden saddle. Parker sits in the closest place next to it, what looks like a carriage. Before I can ask how it turns on, the ride starts moving. The exact music you would imagine starts playing. It’s whimsical. It feels like a fantasy.
The Manhattan Bridge is right there, filling our view. The water is dark. We might not be able to see many stars here, but the city lights make up for it. The other bridge is next. This, I think, must be the best way to see the skyline. I sit in pure wonder as we pass it all by.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful,” I say.
Parker says, “I have,” and I get the distinct feeling he’s looking at me. I don’t check. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to explore this feeling that’s been spilling through me since that night in the kitchen.
I might have made the wrong choice with my seat. The horses move up and down, and my stomach is currently at max capacity. “I—I think I want to get off the horse,” I say.
Parker gets off his chariot. He starts walking toward me.
“That seems like it’s against the rules,” I say. “A capital carousel offense.” I’m gripping the pole in front of me for dear life.
“Here,” Parker says, reaching toward me. “Let go.”
I shake my head. “No, I don’t think I can.”
“You can. Swing your leg to the side.”
I do as he says and then immediately slip off the horse’s smooth exterior. I gasp—but land safely in his grip. He slowly lowers me to my feet. We’re standing there, still spinning on the platform, in between horses rising and falling around us.
I’m looking up at him.
He’s looking down at me.
Maybe it’s the ride. Maybe it’s the view. Maybe it’s the day we spent together. But he starts to lean down toward me, slow enough to give me more than enough chance to stop it. But I don’t want to stop it.
Our lips are just inches apart.
Just before they meet, the ride slams to a halt, and all that pizza comes racing back up.