The Rom-Commers(4)

We sat at our little dinette and chattered away and teased each other and enjoyed every second of being back together so much that I almost felt resentful in some tiny compartment in my brain that Logan Scott had called out of nowhere with that crazy Charlie Yates news and complicated things.

Today of all days.

The longer the evening went on, and the more we sat around chatting afterward, catching up and drinking root beer floats for dessert, the more the memory of that phone call faded for me. I felt a growing and peaceful sensation that the crisis had passed—that I no longer had to make any hard decisions, and life would continue on as predictable and normal and vaguely unsatisfying as ever.

I just wanted to be happy—simply, uncomplicatedly happy—for like one evening. Was that too much to ask?

Apparently so.

Timing really was everything, I guess.



* * *



YOU MIGHT BE wondering why my fifty-five-year-old dad had to use a walker to come greet my sister at the door. Or why we couldn’t go to her graduation. Or why his percussion instrument of choice was one maraca.

I will give you the same vaguely cheery, deeply oversimplified answer that we always gave everyone: Just under ten years ago, my father had “a camping accident.”

Pressed for details, I’ll add this: He was hit in the head during a sudden rockfall while climbing in Yosemite and got a traumatic brain injury—which left him partially paralyzed on one side, a condition called hemiplegia, and also suffering from an inner-ear issue that profoundly messed up his balance called Ménière’s disease.

That’s the long story short.

I’m leaving out a lot here. I’m leaving out the worst part, in fact.

But that’s enough for now.

That’s why my dad couldn’t be left alone. That’s why he moved through the world like he was ninety. That’s why I worried about him 24–7. And that’s why writing a screenplay with Charlie Yates in Los Angeles was totally, utterly, entirely out of the question.

I wouldn’t shirk my responsibilities.

I wouldn’t abandon my dad.

And I would not, not, not eclipse my baby sister’s potential by sticking her on medical duty in this six-hundred-square-foot apartment.

I wouldn’t. And I couldn’t …

Until I read the screenplay.



* * *



THE EMAIL FROM Logan with the subject “Apologies in Advance” hit my inbox just as Sylvie was settling in on the top bunk with Netflix and her headphones. Our PJs were on, the lights were off, and I stared at that attachment for a good long minute before finally giving in and clicking it open.

An hour later, I made it official:

Terrible.

We really would need a more terrible word for terrible.

First of all, it was—at least in theory—an updated retelling of the beloved rom-com classic It Happened One Night. Written by a person who had clearly never seen the movie.

If you haven’t seen it yourself, please do yourself a favor: stop whatever you’re doing and go watch it. This movie is ninety years old, and it still sparkles with life and vitality and charm. A down-on-his-luck newspaper reporter tries to help a runaway socialite travel by bus to New York in hopes of getting her exclusive story—and falls madly in love with her instead. Clark Gable is fan-yourself sexy, Claudette Colbert is sassy and gorgeous, and the romantic tension? You could eat it with a spoon. This is the road trip rom-com that launched a thousand road trip rom-coms—and it swept the Oscars, winning all of the big five categories, including Best Screenplay. It’s a titan of the genre. It’s practically sacred.

And Charlie Yates, my beloved Charlie Yates, my gold standard, my writer by which all other writers are judged, my absolute all-time screenwriting hero …

He mutilated it.

He besmirched it.

He desecrated it.

This thing he did—I don’t even want to say “wrote” … It had no spark, no build, no banter, no joy—and no scenes that even resembled the original movie. The title was the same, and the character names were the same. But that was it. Was he asleep when he wrote this? Was he in the middle of dental surgery? How could someone so good and so masterful at writing—someone who could make you root for serial killers, and believe in ghosts, and genuinely like cannibal robots—take something that was already working, and had been working for ninety years, and chuck its charming soul into a wood chipper?

I mean, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert had to be weeping up in heaven.

He had their characters going to a line-dancing competition.

A line-dancing competition!

Something was going on here. Did Charlie Yates have a stroke? Had a chat bot secretly rewritten the real script as a gag? Was Charlie Yates being held hostage somewhere and forced at gunpoint to write a career-endingly bad story?

But career-endingly bad didn’t even capture it.

This thing was apocalyptic.

And there it was. Somehow that was the tipping point for me.

Real life was allowed to be disappointing. Heck, real life was guaranteed to be disappointing. Living alone in a tiny apartment with my sick father? Teaching community college freshman English so we could have health insurance? Denying my own dreams so my overindulged but lovable baby sister could live all of hers struggle-free? All fine. I didn’t get to make the rules for reality.