Chapter 50
Ingrid drapes a wet cloth over her face at her vanity, feeling drained after the transfusion.
She doesn’t know why Maggie had to argue with her about the script.
She already let her take out the parts about Vivian.
It didn’t fool her for a minute that Maggie was trying to save that for her novel.
But she let it slide. Now, if she’d just write the rest of the thing Ingrid’s way already! She’s the expert here.
“How was it?” Kyle asks, walking into the bathroom.
“The transfusion or the script?” Ingrid mutters, taking the towel off her face.
She sees he’s got a bunch of tile samples in his hands, presumably for the ADU.
She lets out an exasperated breath, glancing into the mirror.
At least her skin looks nice. And her son’s safe.
They spoke to Connor this morning. It felt good FaceTiming him with Kyle.
Afterward, Kyle held her hand, the way he always does whenever they get off with Connor, the two of them bonded in their feelings of missing and worrying about their son.
“I’m not worried about the script! Just read the outline downstairs,” Kyle replies, setting the samples down and washing his hands.
Ingrid looks over, amused. “You read the outline?”
“Yeah, the clean copy. Not the one that was all X’d up,” Kyle says. “I liked it! Thought it was real original! The part about hacking the tax benefits of marriage? Some brave social commentary!”
Brave? Ingrid puts the towel back over her face and lets the water from it drip down her neck. She doesn’t need brave. She needs safe right now. Maybe with another writer she could do brave. But not a novice she made the studio hire.
Kyle walks over and taps her lightly on the shoulder. “C’mon, that line about needing a family Costco membership as a single person?” He laughs. “You gotta admit that was funny.”
Ingrid lifts a corner and peeks up at him. “It’s not supposed to be funny. It’s supposed to be fun! We’re trying to sell a female utopia!”
Kyle shrugs, then starts massaging her shoulders. It feels nice, and she closes her eyes, leaning into his touch. “Couldn’t it be both? Aspirational while still saying something about the world we’re in now?”
Ingrid tries to hold her tongue. If there’s one thing that annoys her more than studio execs who think they know story more than her, it’s husbands who think they know story more than her.
“What’s wrong?”
She doesn’t reply.
“Is this about the way she got the job?”
Ingrid nods. When she finally told Kyle what Maggie had maneuvered, he hadn’t initially reacted with the same ire as her. To him, Maggie was just throwing her hat in the ring. But he did eventually concede that he could see why Ingrid would be pissed.
“I know you don’t like how it happened. But you’re here now. And it’s not a bad script.”
Ingrid puts a hand over his, stopping the massage. As nice as it is, she doesn’t need him or anyone else telling her how to do her job.
—
Later that day, Ingrid finds herself in her daughter’s room.
She and Cassie still haven’t spoken much since the housecleaning incident.
She misses her. Crawling into Cassie’s queen bed, Ingrid pulls the soft comforter over her.
She remembers getting it for her daughter in Laguna Beach.
They used to go down to Pelican Hill together every year around Cassie’s birthday.
It was part of her birthday month festivities.
Ingrid remembers the two of them going into a store with a hundred types of balsamic vinegar.
Cassie guzzled the chocolate balsamic vinegar and asked how it was possible that chocolate could be so sour.
Ingrid laughed and told her that anything sweet could turn sour, too.
Once again, she thinks of Maggie’s script and how disastrous it will be for her if it turns out mediocre.
“Mom?” Cassie says, walking in. She’s holding some papers.
“Oh hey, honey,” Ingrid says, sitting up.
“What are you doing in here?” Cassie asks.
Ingrid notes the distance between her and her daughter. She’s suddenly nostalgic for the days when Cassie was little. She used to live for Ingrid coming into her room. Now it’s What are you doing in here? uttered with a demanding frown.
“Nothing…” Ingrid says, getting up. “I was just…stressed. You ever have one of those days?”
Cassie walks slowly over to her desk and sets down the stack of papers.
“What’s that?” Ingrid points.
“Just some stupid thing I wrote.”
Ingrid immediately reaches over for the pages before Cassie can stop her.
My Creepy-Ass Goblin TA
By Cassie Parker
The title takes her a second to process. But then she flips through the script, reading as quickly as she can, before Cassie can grab it back.
“Stop!” Cassie commands. “Mom! No!”
“This is good!” Ingrid declares, holding it out of reach as she moves around the room.
“No, it’s not. I uploaded it on this website for feedback for like three hundred dollars, and I only got a three out of ten rating…” Cassie says. “It’s trash.”
Ingrid gawks at her. “You paid three hundred dollars for feedback? When you could have just gotten it from me?”
Cassie gestures to her, Just give me back the pages.
Ingrid hands them back to her. “Do whatever you want. But I wouldn’t give up on it. Change the title. Cut your action lines. But keep the dialogue. Your dialogue is good.”
There’s a flash of surprise in Cassie’s eyes.
“Really?” Cassie asks.
Ingrid shrugs. “But what do I know? I’ve only made fourteen movies.”
She catches a tiny sliver of a smile on Cassie’s face as she strolls out of the room.