Chapter 3 - Elijah
ELIJAH
Today is the worst. I hate this day of the year.
I hate this time of year, and I hate that I hate this time of year.
I hate everyone and everything that conspires to make me hate this time of year even more than I already do, because my seven year-old son somehow still believes in Santa.
He is half Protestant and a quarter Jewish, so he also believes in the spirit of Hanukkah gift-receiving, and I want him to love the holidays.
I want him to believe in love and marriage even though his parents were really bad at them.
We weren’t even colossal failures at love and marriage—Alyssa and I were just mid at being failures in that department, which is so much worse.
But we made a great kid, and I want my son to be happy every day, all year long.
I would also be fine with him not being happy if that’s how he feels—because fuck happy—as long as he is safe and healthy and content and doing his best and living a good life and knows that he’s loved and wanted.
But the holidays can suck my holly jolly balls, and today is the worst day in the worst month of the year.
But my son is the best.
And this traffic is the worst.
And those tourists are the worst.
Oh yeah. Go ahead and slow down in the middle of the crosswalk to take a picture of that palm tree because it has Christmas lights wrapped around the trunk!
What a fucking miracle! A string of lights!
On a tree trunk! In the middle of a city!
What a fucking beautiful display of Beverly Hills holiday cheer!
And now the light is changing, and fuck you hard, Mr. Asshat Tourist in front of me!
“Dad. If you want to complain about the traffic and those tourists out loud you can, but you have to stop honking the horn.” Paxton sounds very concerned, and I did not realize I was honking the horn to the tune of the Mariah Carey Christmas song that’s on the satellite radio.
I hate the song, but that’s kind of funny.
“Your face looks really weird, and it’s scaring the people in the car next to you. ”
I slowly look over at the convertible next to me.
The driver and passengers do, in fact, look terrified.
Glancing at myself in the rearview mirror, I have to admit I did not realize I was bearing my teeth.
I do have great teeth, though. They’re not scary.
“I’m not gonna complain, buddy. Christmas lights are great.
Palm trees are amazing. God bless ye merry tourists. You excited about this party?”
“I guess. Do I have a present for Joshua?”
“’Course you do. It’s in the back seat.” I reach for the wrapped gift in the back seat and hand it to him.
“What did Elaine order?”
I have no idea what my assistant ordered because it was already wrapped when it was delivered. “It’s a surprise. He’ll love it. Elaine hasn’t let us down yet—am I right?”
Paxton stares ahead thoughtfully. Sliding his glasses up the bridge of his little nose, he says, “Elaine is married, right?”
“She’s been married for thirty-three years. That’s as long as I’ve been alive—can you imagine?”
“Does she like who she’s married to?”
“Most of the time, from what I hear. Why?”
He shrugs.
I’m about to ask him if he wants to talk about tomorrow, but the light changes and I have to honk at the idiot in front of me who is determined to make my son late for his birthday Christmakkuh party, and he really hates being late.
I don’t get Paxton to his friend’s house late, but that’s only because I’m an excellent, strategic driver.
LA holiday traffic is still a dick. I already hate the next seven hundred hours it’s going to take me to get to Burbank from here, and I can’t even roll calls because everybody will be eating cookies and online shopping instead of helping me get the shittiest movie script of all time greenlit.
I pull up into the circular driveway and put my car in Park. “You ready to party?”
Paxton sighs. “Sure.”
“That’s the spirit! Valentina is picking you up, okay? You’re staying with your mom tonight.”
“Yeah. I know. You’re coming to the party tomorrow night, right?”
“Of course. Wouldn’t miss it. You know me.
I’m gonna be the life of that party.” I do the raise the roof gesture, which people don’t do enough anymore.
When I was an exceptionally talented teen actor, I had a three-episode arc on the Disney Channel’s hit series That’s So Wizard.
I played a cocky wizard who was mean to Greyson Manning, so he put a spell on me that made me do late-nineties dance moves nonstop until I apologized.
I didn’t apologize until that third episode, so my arms got quite a workout.
My son gives me the side eye.
“Wanna bet?”
“You hate parties.”
“I don’t hate parties. I hate being around people at festive gatherings if they expect me to smile and pretend I don’t think they’re boring idiots.
But some of the people I despise the least in this world will be there tomorrow.
So it won’t be as horrible as it could be.
Probably. But don’t call people boring idiots,” I add, parentally.
“I don’t mind if you tell someone I call people boring idiots, though. ”
“Okay. Are you bringing a plus-person?”
“A what? A plus-one? You’re my plus-one, buddy.”
“I’m going to be pretty busy talking to the other kids. I think you should bring a lady with you. Remember the restaurant you took me to for om-e-lettes last week?”
He pronounces omelettes as a three-syllable word.
I never correct him. Partly because it’s so cute the way he says it and partly because I have no idea if I’m the one who’s been pronouncing it incorrectly or not.
“You mean the restaurant where you got up on the table and started dancing around, singing the theme song to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse?”
He shakes his head, trying so hard not to laugh. “That never happened.”
“Oh, I’m thinking about the other seven-year-old guy I had breakfast with.”
“Dad. What about the waitress at that place?” he continues. “The one with the butterfly on her neck?”
That woman was even older than Elaine. Why does my son want me to date someone my mom’s age?
I saw how worried he was about me last year when Alyssa started dating Barry.
So I went out with a few of the women my old friends from That’s So Wizard tried to set me up with.
Turns out those assholes were just doing some “Lazy Wingmen” comedy bit and I was not supposed to take it seriously.
Have they not met me? I take everything seriously.
I took those blind dates seriously. And I hated every single minute of them.
“You really don’t have to worry about me,” I tell my son. “Okay?”
He sighs again, and it looks like he thinks he’s failed at making me happy, and it breaks my heart. So I tell him what my dad never told me. I tell him this every chance I get.
“Hey. I’m really proud of you, buddy. You know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“You know what, though? You’ve got a really big, fantastic booger in the lower right quadrant of your left nostril, so we’re gonna have to take care of that before you get out of this car, okay?”
“For real?”
“I am so serious.”
“How come you didn’t say anything before?!”
“I was waiting to see if you’d figure it out for yourself.
Totally fine that you didn’t. It’s just hanging out there, super chill.
” I open up the middle console and pull out a Kleenex and a baby wipe, because dealing with that thing is going to be a two-step process at least. I hold the Kleenex up to Paxton.
“I wonder how long it’s been there.”
I don’t tell him it was there when I picked him up from school, because I know he doesn’t care all that much.
He’s seven. At least half the nostrils in his class have boogers in them at any given time.
But if it’s there when he sees his mom later, she’ll make him feel bad about it, and he’s anxious enough about tomorrow as it is.
He huffs, unfastens his seat belt. Then he removes his glasses and places them on the dashboard, acting like this is an unbearably cumbersome process.
I watch as he carefully rolls up the sleeves of his button-down private-school shirt and then opens the glove compartment.
He sprays hand sanitizer into one palm, rubbing it into both hands, and then holds his hands up like he’s about to perform surgery. “Okay. Kleenex.”
He can’t see himself in any of the car mirrors, so he flares his nostrils at me as I hand him the Kleenex and I watch him dig around up there, counting to thirty in my head.
Finally, he checks the tissue for treasure.
He finds it and then tilts his head back and purses his lips, giving me a clear view of his nostrils. “Did I get it all?”
“You sure did. Good job.”
He hands me the balled-up Kleenex, applies hand sanitizer again, rolls his sleeves down, puts his glasses back on. Then he looks at the clock on the dashboard and says, “Hey, Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you late for a meeting?”
“No, I’m going to the office to work on script notes, though. Why?”
“I think I need to fart, but it’s not ready yet. Can I do it in here?”
I lower all of the windows, turn up the fan and the Christmas songs. “Sure, buddy. Let ’er rip.”
One good thing about December 19 is there’s plenty of parking at the studio in the afternoon, so I get a prime space on the lot, right outside my office building.
Should there be a dedicated parking space with my name on it?
Yes. There should be. But this is not the Golden Age of Hollywood.
This is the age of Hollywood where a Best Picture Oscar gets you a seven-figure two-year deal at a major film studio, a feature in Los Angeles magazine, a decent table at Soho House any day of the week, and absolutely nothing.