Chapter Five
I’d give Ruby this: She was a great audience to share my story with. She hissed and gasped at all the appropriate moments and practically cheered when I told her about the souvenirs I’d taken before leaving.
That night, we ordered shahi paneer and veggie pakora and Ruby insisted I display the ally award on the mantel.
She also made me watch her latest obsession, Vanderpump Rules, with her while she filled me in on all the context I needed.
Then she went to bed (alone, surprisingly) and I partially unpacked the car under the cover of night.
Next were all the texts I’d received from Brody throughout the day and managed to ignore.
Brody:
I just got your email. Let’s talk about this when I get back. But are you sure this is what you want?
I rolled my eyes at the thought of him secretly being relieved that he didn’t have to fire me himself.
Brody:
Sammy said you left today. Like for real. Are you serious, Vera? Can you please call me? Please?
A sick little part of me took glee in his panic.
Of course, I hadn’t left things a mess for him, but Brody barely knew how to function without me.
I’d been his assistant since college and went full time as soon as he could afford me.
He didn’t even have numbers saved in his phone beyond mine and a few others’.
The guy couldn’t figure out how to make a dentist appointment without me, let alone access his own calendar.
Brody:
You’re not answering and we’re off the grid camping for the next few days. Please get in touch with Erin or Savannah when you can. We need to talk.
Brody:
That’s great about The Wunderkind, though. I know you’ve been working on that thing forever.
Brody:
Hey, I just checked in with Erin and she’d love to talk to you before you follow through with the sale. Her assistant should be sending over some times to meet with you.
My script. Uh. Oops.
I may have possibly told a white lie in my resignation and said that The Wunderkind had sold . . . at auction. And that I needed to dedicate time to editing immediately.
Fuck. Brody’s agent, Erin, was an absolute shark.
The kind of person who fought viciously on her client’s behalf and had studios saying “Thank you, Mommy. May I have another?” She was an agent I’d absolutely die to have in my corner, but also one I definitely didn’t want to cross.
(For example: with a made-up offer from a made-up studio on a dusty old script that had sat like a fossil in my computer outside of a few adult-beverage-induced partial rereads.)
I sat up and took a sip from my emotional support water bottle, a huge metal cup some influencer had convinced me would change my life. (It hadn’t, but I was more hydrated, and I finally had a place to put all the incredibly niche stickers I could not stop buying from Etsy.)
I needed to look at the script. Now. Right this moment. It was the same urgency I felt when I’d walk past a pile of laundry for days on end and would suddenly out of the blue decide that it had to be dealt with at that exact (and usually inappropriate) moment.
A part of me thought that maybe I actually could send this script to Simon Shah and sell it in some perfect Cinderella moment and Brody would be none the wiser.
Or maybe I could take the meeting with Erin and say my original deal had fallen through.
She’d offer to look at the script and maybe see the potential there.
(First, I would have to edit with potential in mind and, god, that was a daunting prospect.)
But hey, maybe I could salvage this lapse in judgment and turn it into opportunity. For the first time in a very long time, something that felt eerily similar to determination ignited in my belly. What would Brody do in my shoes? He’d charm and woo and distract.
After slipping my flip-flops on and leaving Marlon to snooze, I snuck out to my car.
The property was quiet except for the fountains from the pool and the occasional applause from a late-night television show.
I’d left most of my things in the car. Somehow, bringing my belongings in meant I’d be here for longer than Ruby or I intended.
Thankfully, I had taken the produce from Sammy inside this afternoon, which Ruby had been impressed by. With the light of my cell phone, I sifted through the back seat full of bins and bags, looking for the pile of notebooks that I’d wedged my laptop in.
But it wasn’t there.
Forget being discreet. I began to unload everything in the car into the empty parking lot spot beside me like I was shaking out a shoebox full of receipts and movie ticket stubs. But nothing.
There were loose socks. A daisy-printed cardigan with mismatched buttons I’d replaced over the years.
A bag of snacks I’d lifted from the pantry.
The massage gun I bought myself for Christmas.
The vibrator I’d splurged on for Valentine’s Day after it went viral for its hilarious but convincing reviews.
(Sadly, it was still in the box.) And the blue hydrangea fascinator I’d worn to the Kentucky Derby party Brody hosted last year.
I even peeked inside my small jewelry pouch and found everything accounted for. Including the delicate gold band I found myself sometimes rubbing like a worry stone.
But no notebooks. No laptop.
I sat down in the back seat, my feet dangling out the car door.
No. No, no, no, no. It couldn’t just be gone.
I didn’t have money for a new laptop, but more importantly: my screenplay.
Surely it was in the cloud . . . or something. What was the cloud, anyway? Was it one specific place? Did it just hover? Surely, I’d emailed it to myself at some point.
Oh god.
I couldn’t sell a script that didn’t exist. Or only half existed.
Mentally, I began to retrace my steps earlier that day. This morning, I had the car all packed. Then I opened the package containing the award and I took it to the car. I put it on the floorboard . . .
But first I removed a pile of things from the car.
A pile of things that I placed on top of the trunk.
And left it there.
Oh, fuck me.
No.
The memory of Sammy waving her arms over her head as I drove away flashed through my head. I thought she was being especially emotive! Not that she was trying to flag me down and stop me from splattering my most precious possession somewhere on the road between Palm Springs and I-10 like roadkill.
This was bad. This was lie-face-down-in-a-pool-and-hold-your-breath-for-too-long-until-you’re-gasping-for-air bad.
My stomach tightened and then that same gripping heat spread to my chest. I lay across the back seat.
I would know if I’d backed up my documents, right?
Or maybe the laptop just did that for me.
Aren’t electronics supposed to be getting more and more intuitive?
Wouldn’t it know that I wanted to back up my work?
Oh my god. I was a sad old person who barely knew how to work a computer. I was the kind of person who should be taking Computing for Beginners at the public library. I might as well open up all my junk emails and send the contents of my bank account to the first Nigerian prince I came across.
I needed a plan. Smart people had plans. Plans led to solutions.
Tomorrow I would call Sammy or maybe Ruben. Maybe the laptop landed gently on the steep, steep incline of Brody’s driveway and it was perfectly fine. Maybe it wasn’t flung off the back of my car as I sped down the hills toward the highway.
Tears began to prickle at the corners of my eyes and then rolled down the side of my face, wetting the hair I hadn’t brushed in two days.
My mother knew how she wanted to die.
Ruby knew how she wanted to live.
And somewhere in between the two of them, I’d spent the last eighteen years in a holding pattern, waiting for something to happen to me.
Waiting for my life to begin. To become the person I was meant to be—whoever the hell she was.
And now the one thing I’d carried with me for all of these years, the one thing I could point to as something I’d done—something I’d completed—was gone.
But it wasn’t just the script. I didn’t just want to be a person with a job.
There was a whole life that had unfolded behind me full of stops and detours that I never got to take.
Instead, I’d kept my head down and never even bothered to become the type of person who would demand a raise or send a script off to an agent or put herself out there enough to meet someone who wanted a bona fide relationship that included a healthy sex life and dates in public and ordering takeout and going on weekend getaways and shopping at flea markets.
Instead, I’d let myself become the person who took care of everyone else, and that was it.
That was Vera.
She was a good girl.