This Is Where We Live - By Janelle Brown Page 0,14

but honestly, the timing was off. Maybe it was just too smart. Audiences want popcorn fluff right now; they don’t want to think. Maybe you should retool your new script as a comedy instead.”

“But it’s a drama about human smuggling in Mexico!”

“Then write something new.” She could hear the impatience creeping into his voice. “It’s murder out there. You’ve read the stories. There’s no money anymore. The industry’s in the tank. The studios are running scared from anything that looks like it might require audiences to use their brains.”

“Pussies,” she hissed, surprising herself.

“Yes. Pussies.” There was a click on Carter’s end of the line. “Hey, I have to take this call. But don’t despair—get back to work writing. I’ll be in touch, OK?”

The line went dead. She sat there, clutching the phone in her damp hand. From far away, she could hear the line beeping at her, and still she sat there, staring at a blank patch of wall across the room. She picked a pen off her desk and flung it. It left a black mark on the paint just above the light switch and then clattered uselessly to the floor.

“Jeremy?” She waited for Jeremy to appear in the doorway, but a minute passed with no sound of footsteps coming her way. She pushed herself out of her chair, letting her frustration run naturally downhill toward its only available outlet: her husband. Where was he when she needed him?

“Jeremy?” she called again, as she walked down the hall to the living room.

Jeremy was sitting at their scarred dining room table, surrounded by bills. He held a letter in his hand and didn’t look up when she came in the room, not even when she crossed to stand directly before him. Vacillating between fury and misery, she felt the first tear escape from her right eye and dash down toward her nose.

“Well, that was—” she began, but then Jeremy looked up, and the rest of the tears dried up instantly. The last time she had seen him look this serious was when he told her his mother had less than a month to live: His face had the same flat quality, as if a horizontal line had been drawn across his features. He stared at her blankly.

“What is it?” she asked, wiping the solitary drop away.

“A notice of default,” he said.

“Default on what?”

“Our house.”

Somewhere in her chest, a trap door opened. “I don’t understand.”

Jeremy shook his head. “Well, the adjustable rate mortgage … it adjusted. Two months ago. Hard to believe we’ve already lived here three years. So we’re a little behind.” He shuffled the papers in his hand, stacking them neatly. “You know what? Don’t worry about it.”

“Wait—you haven’t been paying the mortgage?” Claudia could hear her voice growing increasingly shrill.

Jeremy looked down at the letter on the top of the stack, as if it might tell him what to say. “Our payments more than doubled, to thirty-seven hundred a month. And our savings are gone, and my salary at BeTee wasn’t covering expenses, and I figured the money from your deal was coming in soon so we could be a little late.”

“Our mortgage doubled? And you didn’t tell me? And you didn’t pay it?” Repeating his words didn’t imbue them with more logic.

“You were so stressed about your movie, I didn’t want to worry you even more. Anyway, I didn’t think it was a big deal to miss one or two payments. I used to do that all the time in my old place.”

“Your old place was a rental, Jeremy. Your landlord was your friend,” she said. The meaning of the notice finally sank in: “Does this mean—the bank is foreclosing?”

Jeremy looked down at the letter in his hand. “I don’t know …. There’s all this junk mail that comes from the bank ….” His voice trailed off and he looked up at her, hopeful. “But we’ll just pay it all off now. So. Did Carter have the deal signed? How soon are you getting paid?”

Claudia sat down heavily in a chair and stared up at the ceiling in supplication, noticing yet another new crack created there by the earthquake. The crack started at one corner, near the window, and darted diagonally across the room, ending just above the sliding glass door that led out to the deck. As Jeremy waited for an answer, Claudia lowered her gaze. She looked out the window past the tops of the eucalyptus trees. The wild grasses that grew up the hill