This Is Where We Live - By Janelle Brown Page 0,31

it was a dead end. There was no logic to that narrative. Where was the happy ending with the uplifting credit-sequence score?

“I just hope you don’t get cynical. Your sincerity is one of your greatest assets. It’s refreshing to meet someone nice, in this industry.”

“Yeah, well, clearly Hollywood has no interest in sincere. What I really need is to be more of a bitch.”

“Just hang in there,” RC offered. “You’ll figure something out eventually.”

But Claudia couldn’t just hang in there, not right now. The past weeks of stunning defeats had drained something vital away, squeezed her heart out like a sponge and left it dry and empty on a shelf. With her career on hold and her home in imminent danger—an intangibly wrong feeling in the air—something shifted inside her, so that when she thought of the days ahead she saw not a vista of opportunity but a minefield braced with barbed wire. She was growing cynical: There was a germ of anger-fueled pessimism inside her that she’d never really noticed before.

Extreme measures were clearly necessary. So she bit back her reservations about the teaching job and went in for the interview that same day. There she spent two hours talking with Nancy, and then three other members of the school’s hiring board, talking uncomfortably about her film’s critical accolades; about the short film that won her a student Oscar back at UCLA film school; about her time working in the production offices of the famous director. She emphasized the high school English tutoring she’d done back in her post-college days in Wisconsin, in the hopes of proving that she really was qualified to teach (what other option did she have?). And when Nancy called her back, that same evening, to offer her the job—“a probationary position, you understand; we’ll see how this first semester goes, make sure it’s a comfortable fit for both of us, before we talk long-term”—she’d accepted it with resigned gratitude.

Maybe she should have waited to talk it over with Jeremy, but it seemed better to accept quickly, before the pain of her decision sank in. That evening, while she waited for him to come home from work, she sat in the living room and polished off a bottle of shiraz. At first, she tasted defeat in the tannic dregs of her wine, but with a second glass, and then a third, it increasingly seemed like a heroic—and yes, grown-up—decision she’d made. Maybe safe and benign was the proper response to the days ahead. Maybe it would even be a relief not to be battling the film industry for a while. She’d salvaged something important by doing this, she knew: As painful as it was to take a conventional job, homelessness would be worse. That felt like a far more permanent fracture, cracking deep into her very foundation.

This job is only temporary, she reminded herself now: She would come up with a new script idea, devote her evenings to writing, wait out their crisis. By next year, she could be living RC’s comeback cliché, a plot device that—it was true—was nearly as popular in Hollywood as alien invasion destroys New York or man falls in love with hooker with a heart of gold. Still, despite the forced optimism, she sensed something ominous hanging in the air, something bigger than her: A global day of reckoning was coming. As she looked around the courtyard of Ennis Gates Academy, a pernicious little voice in her head broke into her reverie: Brace yourself. This is the rest of your life.

“You look lost.” She turned to see a middle-aged woman standing behind her, kinked to the right from the weight of the bulging hemp book bag hooked over her shoulder. Her cropped gray hair was spiked with gel, offset by red plastic cat’s-eye glasses with leopard-print earpieces.

“The teachers’ lounge?” Claudia said helplessly.

“Follow me.” The woman began a swift lurching gait across the quad, clutching the book bag to her side with one hand while reaching out with the other to shake Claudia’s. “Brenda,” she said. “Hunter. Philosophy and Ethics. Are you the new Modern Languages?”

“Film.” Claudia struggled to keep up with her, aware how slight her own tote—an Amoeba Records freebie bag, half-filled with some handouts and two DVDs—seemed in comparison. “I’m replacing John Lehrmann.”

“Oh, yes, John. The handsome fool. I never understood why everyone here loved him, and it turned out I was right, wasn’t I? Idiot.” Brenda gave Claudia a once-over. “You’re a cute young thing, aren’t you?