Part 13 (1/2)

No one said a word. We all just stared.

”Milo needs to be more in love with his new boyfriend?” I said.

”At least!” Mr. Brander said. ”Give him a live-in boyfriend, a mother with Alzheimer's, terminal cancer, and an interns.h.i.+p in Paris! Let's make it insanely difficult for these two boys to get together!” His eyes twinkled. ”Okay, maybe not, but you know what I mean. The point is, the harder they have to fight to get back together, the more obstacles they have to overcome, then the more the audience will love us when they finally do.”

We all sat there, sort of in awe of everything he'd just said. Behind the wheelchair, Lewis suppressed a smile.

Mr. Brander was absolutely right about my screenplay, and we all knew it - me, the stupid screenwriter who had written the whole d.a.m.n thing and never seen that incredibly glaring flaw, and the other producers, who had spent the last twenty minutes discussing it, but who hadn't said anything close to what Mr. Brander had said, despite it being the script's most obvious weakness.

In short, Mr. Brander was reminding us that he may have been older than the hydrogen atom - he may have gotten confused by too many names and sometimes even fell asleep in readings - but he still knew something about making movies.

I looked from Andrea to Justin to Evan, and it was like I could literally see the doubt leaving their eyes like little b.u.t.terflies fluttering off into the distance. My plan had worked! I'd distracted the producers long enough for Mr. Brander to finally rea.s.sure them that he knew what the h.e.l.l he was doing on this little movie of ours.

But the reality was, I'd been starting to wonder again about Mr. Brander myself. So the other good part of all this was that the b.u.t.terflies of doubt were fluttering away from me too.

Truthfully, I didn't really want to go home that night. Kevin was going to ask me about the reading, and I didn't want to lie to him, but I didn't want to tell him the truth either. I could just say, ”It went great!” and leave it at that, because it had been pretty great in the end. But we weren't that kind of couple. We didn't keep secrets (except dumb little ones, like secret cookie-binging and the occasional online cyber-s.e.x romp). But if I told him everything that had really happened, I knew he'd jump to all the wrong conclusions. The point is, I didn't want to have a fight about his negativity about the movie project, not now when I was actually back to feeling pretty good about things.

Anyway, when I got back to the apartment building, I saw Regina and Zoe, Daniel's sister, sitting in the courtyard next to the pool. Regina was stretched out in one of the lounge chairs with a screenplay on her lap, and Zoe looked like she'd stopped to chat on her way in from work. So Zoe had a problem with Kevin and me being gay, but not Gina and Regina? That didn't seem fair.

Even so, I stopped. There was no point in my not being polite.

”Hey, there,” I said.

They both looked over at me. They had different expressions: Regina looked fl.u.s.tered and Zoe's face darkened. The point is, neither one looked particularly happy to see me. Maybe I'd interrupted something between them.

Regina's mouth quickly segued into a friendly smile, but Zoe's didn't.

”Russel!” Regina said. ”What's up? Have a seat - join us.”

Now I didn't know what to do. Did they really want me to join them? On the other hand, I was still dreading seeing Kevin, so I sat down, but I felt stiff and out of place.

”Where you coming from?” Regina asked.

I told them about the A Cup of Joe reading, and also (briefly) that weird conversation I'd had with Kevin over the movie project before, and now how I didn't know what to say to him about how it went.

”Lie,” Regina said.

”Really?” I said.

She nodded. ”Maybe he'll understand, but maybe he won't, and it's not worth the ha.s.sle.”

I considered this, but then immediately thought: Should I really be taking relations.h.i.+p advice from Regina?

I looked at Zoe, implicitly asking her opinion.

”Oh, who the h.e.l.l knows?” she said. ”Tell him, or don't. What difference does it make?” I know this sounds like she was blowing me off, but it came out more like she was frustrated with her own life. Knowing Daniel, it was probably frustration with him.

”How'd you end up living with your brother anyway?” I said, but then immediately regretted it. I'd sort of spoken without thinking. What if their parents had died? What if she didn't like me a.s.suming she'd been talking about Daniel when she'd been so frustrated just then?

Her eyes latched onto me. There was still suspicion in them, but there was something else too: respect? She was impressed I'd figured out what had frustrated her. She didn't know that subtext happened to be my specialty, especially lately.

”Our parents were deported,” she said. ”More than ten years ago now.”

”Oh, man, that so sucks,” I said.

”But Daniel and I were both born here.”

”So they're U.S. citizens,” Regina said, and I nodded. It was interesting how Zoe didn't have the slightest trace of a Mexican accent, but Daniel did, even though it sounded like he'd spent his whole life in the U.S. What was that about?

”Anyway,” Zoe went on, ”Daniel was just a kid, but I was twenty-two, so we all decided that he and I would stay here, and I'd more or less raise him.”

”That's a lot of pressure,” I said, commiserating, and Zoe nodded. There was also an implied ”but” in there somewhere, but for once I didn't want to be the one to bring it up.

”We had a plan,” Zoe said. ”I'd get a job, and Daniel would go to school.”

But Daniel hasn't lived up to his part of the bargain, I thought. Or if he has, he's done the bare minimum.

”I've almost got him through high school,” Zoe said. ”Then I need to get him through college.”

Daniel in college? I thought. Not hardly. But I immediately felt guilty for thinking it.

”Well, Kevin and I said we'd help him with his homework,” I said.

Zoe's face instantly darkened again. ”When?”

”When he was in our apartment.”

”In your apartment?” Her face got darker still. She wasn't quite scowling, but it was close. I guess I'd known that Zoe didn't like Kevin and me, and I'd even known the reason why: Daniel had basically told us she thought her two gay neighbors were going to hit on her teenage brother. This wasn't even subtext anymore - it was outright text.

”It was last week,” I said, feeling guilty again, but not quite sure what for. ”He came to us. He knocked on our door.”

She held up her hands, sort of a surrender. ”I'm sorry. It's just...”

”He's driving you crazy,” Regina said.

Zoe nodded. ”I've worked so hard. And it feels like...”

”He's throwing it all away.”

She nodded again, tightly.

I looked down at Zoe's hands, now clasped together on her lap. The knuckles were white, and the fingers were rough and blistered, skin flaking. I still didn't know what Zoe did for a living - I'd a.s.sumed she worked in an office, but who knows? Maybe she was a nurse, or a teacher who cleaned up after small kids. Anyway, she was literally working her hands to the bone for Daniel, and he was too stupid to appreciate it.

Some part of me felt like I should be mad at Zoe for basically implying that Kevin and I were molesting her brother - or even interested in molesting her brother. But I wasn't mad, or even offended. In fact, she was breaking my heart. Zoe and I didn't seem to have much in common, but we both desperately wanted something: she wanted a future for her little brother, and I wanted my d.a.m.n screenplay to be turned into a movie - proof that I wasn't a f.u.c.k up, that I had something to say to the world, something the world wanted to hear.