They Saved My Sister and Let Me Drown, So I Took Hollywood novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Dry-Cleaning Bag

Every agent drops her by dawn, her brother Roman arrives with her clothes and a cash offer to come home, she refuses, and the stranger from the water is waiting downstairs with her notebook.

I slept on my college roommate's couch in Van Nuys with forty dollars, a folder and no phone.

She woke me at seven by dropping her laptop on my stomach.

"Your agent's office emailed me," she said. "Because I'm your emergency contact. Because you are a person who never updated that."

I read it with one eye open.

It said the agency was no longer able to represent me, effective immediately, and wished me every success.

"It's Sunday," I said.

"Your father works fast."

The second email was from the production company where I read scripts for pay.

The third was from a woman who had promised me a rewrite job on Friday.

All three had arrived before dawn.

I put the laptop down and looked at the ceiling.

"Are you okay?" my roommate asked.

"I'm scared," I said. "And I'm not going back."

She nodded slowly and went to make coffee.

I stayed on the couch and listed what I had.

I had a folder of pages and the contacts in my head.

I had a roommate who ran payroll for a car wash.

She kept a baseball bat by her bed, which was the most loyal thing I owned.

At eight, someone knocked on the door.

My roommate looked through the peephole and turned around with her whole face saying no.

"It's your brother," she said. "The big one."

I opened the door.

Roman stood on the landing with three dry-cleaning bags over one arm and a pastry box in his hand.

He wore the smile that sold forty million tickets last summer.

"Ads," he said. "You look terrible. I love you. Can I come in?"

"You can stand there."

He held up the bags.

"Mom packed your stuff. She was up at five. She wants you to have everything."

My mother had packed my clothes before breakfast, and she hadn't called me once.

I took the bags from him and handed them back into the apartment without looking at them.

Roman set the pastry box on the railing.

"Look. Dad isn't angry. He's embarrassed. You made him look small in front of forty people, and he's a proud man."

"I know what he is," I said.

"So here's what happens. Saturday is Mom's birthday brunch. You come, you hug him, you say you were stressed. Sign the paper, and nobody ever mentions it again."

He took an envelope from his jacket.

It had the Haverill Pictures logo on the corner, and I could see two thousand dollars in it without opening it.

"For rent," he said. "No strings."

"The string is the paper."

"Ads," he said.

"Roman, what did I get for Ironclad 2?"

His smile slipped half an inch.

"You were family. We don't do contracts with family."

"I wrote the third act. The bridge fight. The line you say at the end, the one that went on the posters."

"It was a team effort," he said.

"You thanked a gaffer at the wrap party and you didn't say my name."

He looked at the envelope, then back at me.

"That's not fair."

"Landon will be with Coralie by Christmas," I said. "You'll tell yourself you didn't see it coming."

"Okay, now you're just saying things."

"Maybe. Ask him."

I looked at my brother's face and thought of a different Roman, swimming away in the dark with his head down.

He hadn't looked back either.

It was strange how little it hurt to say the next part.

"I don't want your money. I want my name on my own pages, and I'm going to get it without you."

Roman took the envelope back and tucked it into his jacket.

For a moment he looked almost sorry, and then he looked at his watch.

"Dad called every agency in town last night," he said. "Every one. You think that's an accident? You'll be on this couch Friday begging for a pastry."

"I'll take the pastry now."

I picked the box up off the railing.

Roman's mouth opened, and closed again.

"You don't last a week without us, Ads," he said. "You never have."

He went down the stairs two at a time, and I heard his car start at the curb.

My roommate came up behind me and looked into the box.

"Is it good?"

I opened the lid.

Almond croissants, my favorite.

My mother had told him which ones to buy.

I shut the box before it could mean anything.

"We eat it," I said. "And then I need a pen, and a dime for the bus, and a plan."

"I've got the first two."

She walked me down the outside stairs so I could throw the empty box in the bin.

Somebody was sitting on the bottom step.

He rose when he saw me, a tall man with a white scar through one eyebrow and a battered notebook in his hand.

I knew the notebook.

I had left it in the pool house last night, and I had not thought about it once.

"Morning," he said. "You left this behind."

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