“Ed, it’s real.” I lift my eyebrows, tossing my long blonde ponytail back over my shoulder. I make sure my facial scars come into clear view for him, illuminated beneath my desk lamp, a small reminder that I know exactly what I’m talking about.
Seated across my desk, Trevor and Kelly squirm in their seats, but not before blessed Trevor manages to offer me one of his kind smiles. He loves me. That’s why he’s here in this job—not just because he’s got fantastic story instincts, but also because he’s the one person in my life who can consistently truss me back together. Even though he’d be happy passing his days at Starbucks sipping lattes, writing and living off his trust fund, he spends them here working at the studio with me.
“So it’s real,” Ed says finally, extinguishing his cigarette in a Styrofoam cup of cold coffee. “But does it add to the story?”
“I think so,” Trevor pipes in. “I think everything Kelly can do to show how this killer’s obsession has escalated over time is key to the script.”
Then, without meaning to, I leave the room. Not physically, of course, but my mind flutters away. I’m eight feet high, pasted against the ceiling, floating there. Bobbing above them all, listening in. I’m watching her, down there; that girl at her desk with the Montblanc pen and the ruined face, lost in a company town, in her remote corner of an oversized studio lot.
This is what it’s like to almost die. The way you see yourself below, only there’s no warmth to what’s happening here right now. All that roaring golden power, that love from the other side, it’s always missing when I feel like this.
“Rebecca?” Trevor’s black eyes grow wide. He takes hold of me, tugs me by my feet back down into my body. I was a balloon, ready to drift away, and he held me tight, tethered me to this world.
Trevor pins me with his dark gaze. “Rebecca, what do you think about the killer dying at the end?”
I’ve told him how these anxiety attacks work, the way I feel disembodied, the floating sensation. If I’m lucky, the asthma that I feel tightening my lungs won’t overtake me.
“The killer dying,” I repeat, my whole body numb. Kelly looks at me, nodding, and I realize it’s her idea to change the way we’ve conceived the whole story. But Ben McAllister didn’t die. He’s up at Chino serving life plus twenty. And more important, he’s here; I live with Ben every day, all wound up inside of me like a ball of hard twine.
Ed’s BlackBerry rings, and he begins talking, already moving toward my office door. “Go with whatever Rebecca says,” he announces loudly, making his way past my desk. “It’s her baby. Time to wrap this one up.” Then, just like that, we are dismissed from his consciousness.
Kelly tries following in his wake, calling after him. Totally uncool, but she’s still a newbie. “Just think about it and let me know,” she insists, looking back at me.
But I know exactly what I think of an ending in which the heroine wins, the stalker dies, and everything is wrapped up neatly with a bow. “Too easy,” I murmur, staring at my Montblanc. “It doesn’t work because it’s way too easy.”
***
Reaching into my pocketbook, I retrieve a small medicine bottle of what my mama would call “nerve pills”. Anything to stop the out-of-body stuff for a while; I dispense a couple of tablets onto my desk. It’s been at least six months since I’ve needed these, and I say a quick prayer that I won’t need them again after today. Coughing, I dig around for my inhaler, too.
Trevor leans in my office doorway, slipping his headset back on. “Since when did development hell become worth that?” He gestures at my prescription bottle with a concerned expression.
“Since we started nudging up against my past in story meetings.”
“Ah, right. The Britney Spears solution,” he says. “Perhaps you could add head-shaving to your repertoire as well.” He laughs, but then his expression grows more somber. “But tell me, should I be worried?”
“Worried?” Such a ludicrous suggestion, even if I did nearly die in his arms three years ago. “Trevor, I am fine. Fine, fine, fine. So very fine.” And I mean it; the asthma didn’t even kick in this time, so something must be improving. “I’ve been feeling really good lately. Honest.”
His dark eyes narrow. “Which must be why your mother’s been phoning me weekly to check up on you.”
“No, she’s just convinced that one day you’re going to realize you’re straight and decide to marry me.”
“Well as your future husband, perhaps you won’t mind me saying it’s time you got out again. Started dating, making new friends.”
“I make friends every day.” I kick back in my chair. “After all, this is L.A.”
“Talent agents and struggling screenwriters don’t count, darling.” Then his dark eyes widen with irrepressible excitement. “Look, I know this really cute guy from my writing group—”