Aaron
“You can just stay up front. I’ll show myself out, thanks.”
Immediately after delivering those instructions to the chauffer, I turn off the limo’s intercom. We’re finally fucking pulling into my gate, and I don’t want to see or talk to anyone—I just want to get out then go inside.
My nerves, usually tighter than steel, are just about ready to snap. It’s not like me at all and I can’t fucking explain it.
Every part of the trip seemed to take for-fucking-ever.
After we slow down oh-so-fucking gradually to a stop, I leap out of the limousine and walk purposefully to the main entrance.
What I need is a shower, a drink, and some perspective—preferably in that order. Although, maybe I should have the drink before the shower. I mean, realistically, I won’t get perspective until I can get some order into my thoughts.
With a sigh and a glance around, I finally unlock my front door.
For some reason, the mansion I call home seems awfully big and empty today.
I don’t recall ever feeling this way before.
The minute I shut the front door, my mobile rings. Without thinking or checking who it is, I answer the call.
“Yeah.”
“Hey, my friend,” a familiar voice comes through the phone speaker.
“Hey,” I reply, lifelessly. I shouldn’t have answered. It’s Bud Freeman, a director and an actual decent human being in Hollywood, but he’s among the billions of people I don’t feel like talking to at the moment.
“So how was the trip, my man?”
“Fucking awful,” I mumble, slipping off my shoes. I throw my keys on the foyer table and head into the main living area of my home, a home that feels awfully foreign to me.
Fuck, has it always been this huge? It seems like someone else’s house. But it’s mine, and there’s nobody else here right now—not even staff.
“Really?”
It’s almost fucking eerie, but I try to distract myself by talking to my friend who called the second I walked through the goddamn door.
“I got delayed leaving St. Maarten, fucking air traffic problem. I never knew the place was so popular.”
Bud only laughs, he probably knows better than to interrupt my flow of whining.
“Of course, it was no better flying into LA,” I continue my rant as I walk over to one of the bars and pulling out a bottle of scotch from the cabinet. It’s early, but I need a strong drink.
“I mean, we circled in the fucking air for so long I thought we might actually run out of fucking fuel.” I pour the drink into a glass, a double at least, and start drinking it neat.
The rust-colored liquid dances across my tongue and runs down my throat, igniting a trail of fire on its way.
“And when we finally landed, customs was a mess with no way around the lines. And don’t get me fucking started on the traffic—it made the usual LA traffic look like fucking Omaha’s.” I make myself stop ranting for a second.
It’s a nice distraction from...whatever it is I’m feeling right now, though I need another sip of scotch.
“Maybe you would have been better off just fucking walking, my friend,” Bud jokes as I swallow a good portion of the drink.
On one hand, I’m not in the joking mood. On the other, I’m reminded of something.
“Hey, I don’t walk from fucking anything…” I’m trying to quote from one of my movies, but, for some reason, the rest of the quote escapes me.
Try as I might to recall the full quote, it refuses to come to me.
A blank. I draw a complete and perfect fucking blank.
What the fuck is this about? I quote from my movies all the fucking time without any fucking trouble.
That’s also an especially famous quote I can’t remember, from an especially infamous movie.
“Well, why don’t you pour yourself a drink and have a calm-down. I won’t insult you by reminding you of the quote—you need a drink and a good sleep. Call me when you’re sorted out.”
After the call, I stare at the device in my hand, watching the screen turn itself off, almost willing that quote to come back to me.
But it doesn’t.
Fucking blank.
Only one thing to do.
I head for the shower.
Before anything else happens, I need hot water to wash away the dirt and grime from the trip home, from that reporter, from an entire experience which I can’t even start thinking about now.
When I finally emerge from the master’s en suite, I feel a little more human.
Dressed, and with another drink in hand, I wander to my screening room’s projection booth, and stare at the library of DVDs and Blu-ray discs. It takes me less than five minutes to find the film.
I turn the cover over and read the blurb.
Not one of my best work. Bad reviews, even worse in the box office. My one attempt at putting together a serious romance.
As usual, I didn’t take it seriously. Even though I contributed that line I can’t remember.
It made its budget back when people started laughing—midnight screenings, DVD sales and Rifftrax licensing all showed how much people liked to mock this little gem.
Like, watch this copy of my famous flop, The Thought of the Tear.
As I sit in the screening room, about to remotely start the projector, I’m still reading the Blu-ray case, including quotes pulled from reviews.
There were some things critics liked, or at least one thing, the line: ‘What we have is something real, and it’s not worth walking away from.”
How in the world could I ever forget that line?
At the time I thought it was a great quote to put into the film. Not only was it a great line, it belonged to a story told to me by my grandfather, and it definitely belonged in a romantic flick.
The old man used to love telling me stories about the way he courted my grandmother. Whenever he told a story when she was within earshot, she’d yell at him for stretching the truth. He may have embellished, but he knew how to make a story seem real, and immediate, yet somehow timeless.
I don’t start the movie—I just can’t.
Instead, I grab a light jacket and keys from the foyer closet and head out the door.
And I go walking.
In Los Angeles.
On a weirdly chilly evening.
I must be doing that for a fucking reason, though I’m not sure what it could be.
Despite the name, Sunset Boulevard does not feel very romantic when I end up there. The sidewalks are wide and mostly empty, and the late spring air is way too fucking brisk for LA.
For a while, I let my feet pound the pavement. I have no destination in mind—but I’m heading towards Hollywood proper. The sensation of a deep, uncontrollable sadness, powerful enough to make me collapse on the sidewalk in front of Meltdown Comics, starts threatening to engulf me entirely.
As long as I keep walking, I can keep it in the background. After continuing east for another ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, it fades far enough to ignore—for the time being.
Just before reaching Wilcox, I’m feeling especially numb. As exhausted as I was after the trip home, I just walked for miles, and I feel like I could keep going, and that fact scares me enough to stop me where I am.
There’s a small, kind of artsy cinema on that corner of Sunset, and I duck inside the lobby to stop myself from fucking walking any further.
Checking my watch on the way in, I see that it’s already close to fucking midnight. I honestly lost track, but, to my relief, the cinema looks open, and there’s a crowd streaming into the single auditorium.
And there’s a poster— that I’m standing right fucking next to—for The Thought of the Tears.
I guess I made it to a midnight screening after all.
As if drawn by some invisible force, I buy a ticket and enter the theater, before I can stop myself.
As I settle into a seat near the front, one of the few that’s left, I no longer need to stop myself. You won’t find me admitting this to anyone ever, but sitting in a darkened theater, with a crowd of strangers, and being collectively transported to another world while sharing the same perspective and experiencing the story together is about as close to fucking magic as anything else I’ve known in life.
As soon as the lights fade out and the production company logo comes up on screen, I know the magic is about to begin.
We’re transported, alright, but the laughter which starts over the opening credits does not let up. I should’ve known what to expect.
There’s laughter at every fucking line of dialogue, applause in weird spots, and people yelling shit at the screen.
I don’t mind it, mostly.
But when it gets to that one line, delivered woodenly with melodramatic music underscoring it, there are a few claps, a few fucking laughs, and I think someone whistles.
This might be the fate The Thought of the Tears deserves overall, but not that line—this can’t be its final fate.
That line deserves a better fucking picture.