Collision Theory Read online

  “Oh, what’s your number?” she asks from behind me.

  I point at the black battery in her palm. “That’s my phone number.”

  “Oh, duh. Jeez. Okay, so call when you’re done,” she says. I nod, dumbfounded, obviously not understanding. “You call your number,” she says patiently. “I’ll answer your phone and get it back to you.”

  I don’t get it, but there’s no time to think it through as I back toward the elevator. Then I get it. “Oh!” I say. “I’ll call you on my phone. Yes, got it. Thank you!”

  The elevator bell dings, which spurs me to turn without another thought. I hop inside, then right as the doors close, it hits me: Wouldn’t it be easier for her to leave my phone with reception?

  “Wait!” I call out to her as I turn.

  But the doors are closed.

  Four

  Alone in an elevator that shoots me up to the fifteenth floor, I reach into my pocket to check the time on my phone, then panic—Oh, fuck! It’s gone!—before remembering, duh, it’s in the purse of a total stranger or being swept from dustpan to trashcan by a steadfast janitor.

  I step to the side and use the mirrored frame around the elevator’s doors to check in: my white shirt’s maintained none of the crispness from last night’s ironing and is trying hard to untuck from my jeans. I shove it back in, grab the lapels of my blue-white blazer to square the shoulders, then a quick check of my hair—a chestnut pompadour without the slick, highlighted by a thin streak of gray, just right of center. I tap the heels of my dull, black oxfords against the elevator floor, then do a close check of my eyes. They’re dark from so little sleep, tinged with bloodshot.

  Out of the elevator, I enter into the indistinct lobby of CollabCorp Productions, where I’m met by a wide-shouldered, midthirties man with a crew cut who’s wearing a buttoned, pin-striped blue suit. “You must be Ryan.”

  Which immediately throws me.

  “Oh, I’m Thomas, actually.”

  “And Ryan?” he asks.

  “They didn’t call to let you know?”

  “Who didn’t?”

  “Peter, I guess? Our agent. Sorry. I thought they’d let you know Ryan’s unwell and can’t make it.” I follow this with a pained apologetic expression. It’s clear now, I was dumb to come alone. I am so totally unqualified for this.

  “Hmm,” he says as two lines on his forehead deepen and darken, then he shakes my hand. “Well, thank you for coming.” He doesn’t introduce himself. It’s such a weird vibe, and I’m so rattled I don’t ask his name.

  He leads me into a plain, beige room with a group of four men and two women sitting in black leather chairs along one side of a conference room table. They all stand when I enter, and the taller of the two women says, “We were led to believe there’d be two of you?”

  Fuck me.

  I’m about to speak when the man who had led me into the room says, “The screenwriter couldn’t make it. So it’ll be just the one.”

  “The cocreator,” I say, trying to bolster my reputation. But in this world, I have no reputation. Which seems obvious to everyone. “I’m Thomas.”

  “Not Ryan, then?” the woman says.

  “No,” I say. Then a beat before I stupidly repeat my name.

  The woman processes this information with disappointment that surpasses that of the man who led me here.

  “But I’m pretty fun,” I say, to lighten the moment, which falls all-the-way flat.

  “Please sit,” she says with a forced smile.

  I sit and expect a round of hellos but it’s just silence.

  “Go on,” she says.

  “You mean…” I say, unsure.

  “We’re ready.”

  “Right. Well, hello everyone,” I say with a raise of my hand and a bow of my head. The response is light nods or nothing. Then silence. “So, I just start?”

  “Please,” the other woman says, like she’s already lost her patience.

  “So, the idea —”

  “So, it’s just in idea form?” one of the men asks.

  “Excuse me?” I ask.

  “There’s no script?”

  “Not yet, no. Just the outline and treatment. If you’ve had a chance to read those.”

  The man nods vaguely, which I take to mean three things: 1. he’s not read a word; 2. it was a rookie mistake to bring it up at all; 3. I should get on with it.

  “The idea is there’s a guy named Lucas Ramsdell, a thirty-three-year-old bummer of a guy…”

  “Is his being thirty-three imperative?” one of the men asks.

  “Maybe he could be younger?” another of the men suggests.

  “Well, maybe,” I say. “But the thing is, he’s a divorced mechanic who doesn’t pay child support for his two sons. So, I’m not sure…”

  “What else?” the tall woman asks.

  “Well, okay, so he finds himself in Memphis where he gets on a tour bus to Graceland.”

  “Graceland,” the second woman says, like she’s maybe heard of it.

  “Where Elvis lived,” I say, then scan the stoic faces of The Zombified Six.

  “Elvis,” one of the men says. “The singer.”

  “Yeah,” I say, and give it a second. “I hope I’m making some sort of sense.”

  The second woman says, “Does it make sense? I believe so.” She looks around the room. Everyone nods. “I, for one, appreciate your coming here.”

  She looks around and confirms, with nods, that my coming was, in fact, worth appreciating.

  I wait for quiet, then start up again, tell them, “And once inside the gates to Graceland, that’s when…”

  “Actually,” the tall woman says, “I think we’ve got what we need on this for now.”

  “Okay, because that’s basically just…”

  “We can let your agent know about our final decision. As you’ve mentioned, we have the outline and the treatment for reference.”

  “Oh, great, so you have read the treatment.” A quick scan of their faces and I see the only appropriate response would be to face-palm myself.

  “Yes, we have,” she says, very curt. “And I will say, it sounds very exciting.”

  “Absolutely,” says one of the men. “It’s a great, great idea.”

  “I love it,” says another of the men.

  I am so confused.

  The tall woman stands, then they all do.

  “Okay,” I say, standing, too. “Thanks for seeing me?”

  “Thank you,” the tall one says.

  No one makes a move to shake my hand, so I bow a goodbye and back out the door, where I’m intercepted by the guy in the pin-striped blue suit.

  “This way,” he says, and holds out his arm as a guide. I walk ahead of him, taking long, purposeful strides. When he says thanks for coming, I hurry out of CollabCorp’s front door with a wave and rush into the indistinct, fifteenth-floor lobby. When I find the elevator doors are open, I race inside, so thoroughly grateful that I don’t have to spend another second there. It’s a bonus that the elevator happens to be going down.

  When the doors close, a swarm of stinging wasps bursts loose inside my chest. I hate that I don’t have my phone, because I have no way to call Ryan to apologize for all my micro-fuckups that led to the brutal boot out the CollabCorp door.

  When the elevator hits the ground floor, I head to the exit with my head on a swivel, in case the stranger who promised to return my phone might still be local. But no luck.

  I push through the door into the whoosh and hum of the city, where I take a deep, rattled breath. By the time I’m back at my rental car, my initial desire to apologize to Ryan has been replaced by anger. I’m desperate to ask him what the fuck just happened. When I see there’s an hour and forty-nine minutes still on my meter, I can’t stop myself from loosing a c
leansing “Fuck that.” I get in the car and glance at the building I just came from. A shudder runs through me, like my soul is trying to shake off the last nine minutes of my life. But at the same time, I feel a weird sort of freedom, like I’ve escaped.

  Five

  With all kinds of time still left on my parking meter, I decide not to pull away just yet, and instead do a thing I haven’t done in over a decade: hunt for a payphone. I’m stunned to find one a block and a half away from me, and wonder how many payphones I’ve passed by over the last ten years that never even registered. How many things I see daily that I pass without any recognition. How I should pay closer attention to the details.

  I lift the payphone receiver and insert my credit card into the slot, so I can dial into my voicemail. The digitized voice of a woman I’ll never meet says: “Two new messages.”

  The first message is from Ryan, who asks, “Who’s the girl that just answered your phone? That’s fucked up. You okay? I wanted to wish you luck with CollabCorp, but instead this suspicious girl answers? So I’m a little freaked out. Ryan update: I’ve had to run to the toilet six hundred times since you left. Call me when you’re out. Bye.”

  The second is Ryan, again. “I just made that strange-o chick promise she hasn’t killed you. Has she? I hope you’re alive and I hope the pitch is going okay and that you can feel my support from head top to ham hock. Okay, I’ve gotta go throw up or worse. Call me back!”

  Relieved my phone is in working order, I stick my credit card back into the payphone slot and dial Ryan.

  “You haven’t been murdered!” he says when he answers.

  “Close enough. The assholes at that pitch meeting—holy fuck, dude. That was the most soul-harming three minutes of my life.”

  “Shit,” Ryan says, and I hear the air go out of him. Which ramps up my feeling of letting him down. “Only three minutes? So they hated it?”

  “It was weirder than that. Honestly, I’m not sure they’d ever heard of Elvis. Maybe I use his last name next time.”

  I hear Ryan breathing. “They didn’t like the Vaseline cathedral line?”

  “Didn’t get to it.”

  “Oh. Well, how’d they respond to the Pat Boone line?”

  “I didn’t get that far.”

  Another pause. More breathing.

  “But it’s right at the start,” Ryan says.

  “I’m telling you, it was super weird.”

  “Okay, of course. Yeah. I’m just…fuck.”

  It feels horrid, standing at this payphone, feeling like I blew it, being judged, being here all alone.

  “People can be real dicks,” he says. “But it’s okay.”

  “Is it? I mean, is it all going to be like this?”

  “I hope not. I guess it’s like anything, you’re not always going to vibe with people.”

  “Forget vibing—what about just, like, human decency?”

  “I know,” Ryan says, energyless. “I’m surprised Peter would think they’d be into it if they were that far not into it.”

  “I think they just weren’t into me. If you’d been here…”

  “Nah. I’m not star power,” Ryan says. “They don’t know my face. You could say you’re me in a pinch, and it’d all be the same. But if you want to bail on the last two and hold off until we can do this together, I mean, I get it.”

  “No,” I say, as a bolt of ego rises up in me. “I’m here, the meetings are set. I’ll do the next, then reassess.”

  “Alright,” he says, and any discouragement fades from his voice. “Sounds like you’re warmed up!”

  “I’d say overheated. I really want bad things to happen to those CollabCorp automatons.”

  “I like the passion!” Ryan says. “And the best way to stick it to them is nail the next meeting. Then they’ll wish they’d listened. My stomach’s cartwheeling, so I gotta go in a sec. But what’s up with your phone? And who’s that girl?”

  I tell him what happened.

  “So you let her keep your phone?”

  “I panicked because I was running late.”

  “All right,” Ryan says with a laugh. “Uh-oh. Bathroom’s calling. Gotta go! Ring me after the next pitch. Or when you get your phone back. Oh, god!”

  Six

  I dial my cell phone number. It takes two rings before the voice of the woman who promised to find my phone answers with, “Yes, hello?” Her voice is anxious and eager.

  “It’s Thomas,” I say. “The one who bumped into you. I own the phone?”

  “I know who you are,” she says. “Look, people have been calling asking for you. Your dad called and told me about your mom. He thought I was Sarah?”

  “Oh, no,” I say. But it’s my fault for telling my parents, during our weekly calls over the last year-plus, that I’m okay, that I’m doing well, in fact, that Sarah’s taking good care of me.

  “Y’know what, can we just meet, please? So I can give you your phone back?”

  It takes me a second to tell her, “Sure. Tell me where.”

  “I’m at six-one-two-one Glen Tower Road,” she says.

  I repeat the address.

  “Hurry, please,” she says. Then something else, but her voice dies out from a crackle of static, a rain cloud sucking up her voice.

  “Hello?” I say. “You there?”

  But she’s gone. I still don’t know her name.

  Seven

  I drive north on Beachwood Drive in a hurry, past palm trees, squat and lean, that hide a mix of low homes and styleless two-story apartment buildings. I lean forward to see the Hollywood sign laid out bright and high in the distance before I turn left onto a skimp of a street. I park in a cramped space between two compacts, then I find 6121 and the mailbox for E. Morris. Her place is the adult equivalent of a tree house positioned high on a hill.

  I feel myself withdraw as I climb up-up-up a bending wooden staircase grooved into a lush hill scattered with weak-stemmed flowers. My hope is we’ll race through pleasantries, I’ll get my phone, and go. But that seems less likely once I’m on her worn, petrified deck. E. Morris comes out of her front door and onto her deck, talking to someone on my phone, laughing.

  It gives me a moment to take my first good look at E. Morris. She’s dressed down, now, out of the business attire I saw her in less than an hour ago, and her paint-stained sleeveless T-shirt shows off too-thin arms. Her hair is a curly confusion of brown streaked with blonde. My guess is she’s no older than thirty-three, which is my age.

  “Uh-huh,” E. says into my phone. She mouths a hi! to me, mouths it’s your mother! “He’s right here. Yes, right here. Yep, he made it. Of course you can talk to him!”

  E. offers me my phone. Her smile is filled with hopeful possibilities. But the thought of talking to my unwell mother with a witness present makes me feel faint. I lean back to keep balance.

  “She’s in good spirits,” E. tells me.

  I take a deep breath, then take my phone. “Hello?” I say. My skin heats then cools.

  “She’s very sweet,” my mother says, her voice sounding weak, staggered with phlegm.

  I flash a glance at E. “I guess,” I say, a strain.

  Mom coughs like a grumble and my eyes go wet. She asks me, “Are you okay?”

  “I think so.” I put my free hand over my forehead, to cover my eyes, in case.

  “We need to talk,” Mom says.

  “Okay.”

  “Not on the phone,” she says. “I’d really like if you could please come home.”

  “Mom,” I say, and my voice cracks. “You know I can’t.”

  “Oh, Thomas,” she says, an appeal in her voice that’s able to mask any exasperation. “It’s been nearly two years.”

  Twenty-two months. But I don’t correct her. Instead, I take my hand from my face and close my eyes while
inhaling a long, slow breath. Then I hang up.

  E. looks at me, shocked. “Did you just hang up on her?”

  I can’t look her in the eye.

  “She needs you.”

  I feel a quick flare of anger rise inside me. “You don’t know anything about it.”

  But E. doesn’t back down. “I know she’s sick. I know Ryan keeps throwing up, and that you’re in LA to pitch a movie. So I know something.”

  “Thanks for getting my phone back,” I say, and slip it into my front pocket. Then I turn and head toward the stairs.

  “I’m sorry,” E. says, following me. “But can you at least tell me who Sarah is?”

  I stop, shake my head.

  “Can I guess?”

  I don’t react.

  “Is she your girlfriend?”

  I let out a swift exhale, then continue across the creaking deck toward the stairs.

  “Your wife?”

  “No.”

  “Who then?”

  “She’s no one.”

  “Well, she must be someone if that’s who your mother thought I was.”

  I’m at the stairs when I register something in her tone that makes me turn. When our eyes meet, hers are full of apology. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “You didn’t mean to?” I laugh, baffled by the intrusiveness of E.’s action. “Holy fucking shit.” I start down the stairs, away from this crazy.

  “Please don’t go yet,” E. pleads.

  I’m glad she stops me, so I can ask one last question: “Why did you even answer when my mother called?”

  “I thought it was you! Calling to get your phone back.”

  Which is fair. But. “And when it wasn’t, first chance you got, you said you were Sarah.”

  “I’m sorry!” says E. “Her voice was so brittle. Before I knew it, I’d said it. Then I felt like I couldn’t take it back.”

  “Why not?”

  “I know this’ll sound nuts, but I didn’t want to be a liar.”

  I can’t get away fast enough, but as I pound down the stairs, E. follows. “And then your father called. Then your mom, again…”