Chapter 5 #7
She pays another twenty dollars to park at the beach, and then leaves her Doc Martens and socks on the passenger seat and walks barefoot into the sand.
The Pacific is so different from the Atlantic Susan is used to.
It’s not just that it’s more blue—it seems deeper, more alive somehow.
It’s not a city beach like Riis. It’s more untamed than that.
To her left is a rocky cliff and behind her are fields of flowering succulents.
Susan goes right up to the water and touches it with her toes, jumping back when the ice-cold froth kisses her sharply.
She walks back a few feet and then sinks to the ground, sitting cross-legged in the white sand.
There aren’t many other people around, just a few families with young children.
The waves crash as seagulls swoop overhead.
The salt air twists itself around her hair.
The sand cakes and dries on her bare toes. Her eyes settle on the horizon.
And then, all of a sudden, just past where the waves are breaking, a dolphin jumps out of the water, sleek and sparkling in the sun.
“Oh my god.” Susan gasps.
And then there are more of them. And more, and more. A huge pod of dolphins is swimming right past the beach. Like Lisa Frank art come to life.
The nearby children start to scream with glee as they all run to the water’s edge, jumping up and down and pointing while their parents smile at them from their towels.
Susan has never seen dolphins in the wild before. Her heart feels like it wants to leave her chest and join them.
Before she realizes it, she’s on her feet, next to the children, screaming and laughing alongside them. They ignore her, which is probably for the best.
When the dolphins are gone, Susan sits back down and wonders what her life would have been like if she’d seen things like this regularly.
If experiencing awe for the earth and its creatures would have made her a deeper, better person, instead of someone who was always so sucked into NYC grind culture.
If she’d have an identity outside of work.
Not that there wasn’t beauty on Long Island; she just never sought it out.
Growing up, she and Katie didn’t go see the lighthouses or the state parks or the cuter, beachier towns out east. She wishes they had, instead of wasting whole days wandering Tower Records and getting Starbucks.
Even as an adult, while rich city people drove the whole LIE to get to the Hamptons and Montauk, she always stayed in the city for the weekends, her fear of missing out holding her captive in a prison of concrete.
Maybe when she’s back home, she’ll take herself on a little beach vacation.
She should at least, she thinks, check out Fire Island, which is supposed to be beautiful in the summer, though the thought of that many gay people on one strip of sand is also intimidating.
Besides: Now that she’s seen the Pacific, she feels addicted to it. She wants to drive up the coast and see the way the water changes as she goes.
Susan feels a new sense of reverence for something bigger than herself.
A higher power, Jonny might say. Her parents would say: Hashem.
She stares at the ocean for a long time, waiting for the dolphins to come back.
They don’t, but she does spot a seal, fat and happy as it bobs in place.
Eventually the light turns lavender and a chill fills the air and the families around her start to pack it in.
It’s time for her to pack it in, too. In a lot of ways.
It takes Susan over two hours to get back to Silver Lake. She did not think to factor in rush hour when she decided to go to the beach after lunch.
By the time she pulls up to Eliza’s house, the sun has set. Through the living room window, she can see Graham watching TV.
She lets herself in through the back and calls out, “Want company?”
“Definitely,” he says.
She leaves her sandy boots at the door. Inside, she makes her way into the living room, where the lights are dimmed and a vanilla-scented candle burns on a shelf in the corner.
There are two bowls on the coffee table, one with popcorn, and one with the largest green grapes she’s ever seen.
Graham is drinking tea out of a ceramic mug.
He moves over so she can sit beside him on the couch.
Eliza is nowhere in sight. He’s watching MSNBC, and mutes it when the commercial comes on.
“How was your day?” he asks. He’s wearing gray sweatpants and a matching hooded sweatshirt.
She tells him about Heather, dolphins, traffic. He listens with an amused smile on his face. “You’re really getting the full LA experience,” he says.
“How about you?”
“Saw some patients,” he says, vague but not dismissive. “Caught up on paperwork. The usual.”
“Where’s Eliza?”
“Don’t know,” he says. “You know how she likes to do her own thing.”
This is not something Susan knew, but she probably could have guessed.
“I’m glad you’re going to work on the film with her,” Graham says. “It’s nice to have someone who is familiar with the place and time she’s writing about.”
“I mean, doing social media is not really working on the film,” Susan says. “I’ll just be promoting it for her.”
“Take the credit, Susan,” he says.
“Fine.” She laughs. “Thank you. I’m glad, too.”
“Do you want tea?” he asks. His arm rests on the back of the couch, relaxed and calm.
“That actually sounds great,” she says.
He goes to the kitchen and comes back a couple of minutes later with a steaming mug. “Peppermint okay? That’s all we have.”
“Perfect.”
Rachel Maddow’s contoured face appears on the screen and he unmutes it.
They watch in comfortable silence together.
Susan puts her feet up on the leather ottoman.
Graham rests his hands behind his head. They laugh at Rachel’s wry jokes together, shake their heads in unison when she talks about the state of the country. They polish off the snacks.
It’s weird how comfortable Susan feels doing nothing with him, but she tries not to second-guess it.
It’s nice just to lie around, without any pressure or expectation.
She is starting to understand why Eliza chose this.
She and Graham have such a nice, quiet little life.
Susan wonders if she’ll ever have any such thing.
After a few days of hiking and green juice and natural wine–soaked dinners, Eliza is asked to join a production call with the film’s funders.
Eliza brings her laptop into the living room, and Susan posts up at the kitchen island, eavesdropping. Thanks to the house’s wide, arched doorways, sound carries perfectly, and she can hear everything.
The creative executive who made the deal leads the meeting.
“You know we love you and we love this project,” Susan hears the executive say. “But it’s just not the kind of thing we can pay for anymore.”
Susan recognizes Dave’s voice through the speakers. “Dude, what?”
There’s a long pause before Eliza demands, “Are you kidding me?”
“I’m really sorry,” the executive says. “We’re just going in a different direction with content.”
“It looks really bad to pull funding from a queer-led project,” Eliza says.
“I know.” The exec sighs. “Sorry, Liz. It’s not personal. It’s just, the team who measures this kind of stuff says our investment won’t be worth the return. There’s not an appetite for things like this right now.”
“Can we take the project elsewhere?” Eliza says. “Or are you just killing it?”
“It’s ours,” he says. “Sorry. That’s the contract. Maybe someday someone else here will want to do it. If the market for content like this changes.”
“This happens all the time,” Graham says. “It’s going to be okay.”
They are in the living room and Eliza is crying. Graham sits beside her, patting her arm. Eliza balls up her fist and hits the pillow next to her. She makes a noise like an animal being tortured.
“Let it out,” Graham says.
Susan, standing awkwardly in the doorway, is having trouble understanding how something like this could have happened. Wasn’t the deal already signed? How could funding just get pulled? And does that mean she’s out of a job?
She’s not sure she should be here for this moment. She wants to say something supportive, but instead what comes out is “I hate to be this person, but what does this mean for me?”
Graham and Eliza look up at her. “What?” Eliza says through her tears.
“Should I go home?”
“I don’t know yet, Susan,” Eliza snaps. “Do you think you could give us a minute to regroup?”
“The studio is killing the film,” Susan tells Jonny over the phone.
There’s a spider in the corner of her room in the guest house and, sitting on the bed, she watches it slowly begin a web.
She had no idea that funding could be pulled and end a project.
She assumed once it was green-lit, it would just move forward.
“What else is new?” Jonny says. “That’s Hollywood. The number of projects that never happen would blow your mind.”
“I guess I should come home,” Susan says.
“Oh, babe, no,” he cries. “Don’t you dare give up that easily. You made it all the way there. You need to see where it takes you. You don’t even know what you’ve learned from this experience yet. Don’t run away.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just because the project is killed doesn’t mean it has to die. It can come back to life as something else. It just depends on her contract, on what the buyer has the rights to. It’s not unlike selling an album to a label.”
There’s a knock on the door, and Eliza lets herself in.
“Sorry, Jonny, I have to go, but I’ll call you later.”
“Hi, Jonny,” Eliza calls, loud enough for him to hear.
“Hi, Eliza. Don’t break my baby’s heart again.”
Thankfully, Eliza can’t hear him. Susan hangs up.
“I’m sorry for yelling at you,” Eliza says, and then sits on the floor next to the bed. Her knees crack as she lowers herself.
“I deserved it,” Susan says. “I didn’t mean to make that moment about me. I know this really sucks for you.”