The Idea of Him

by Holly Peterson

  A few minutes later Tommy touched my elbow with his as he was taking notes. “Sorry,” he said. He pulled some Twizzlers out of his backpack, peeled one off, and offered it to me. “You’ll need some sugar to handle all this information,” he whispered, no longer any space at all between us.

  “By the second act”—Heller looked at Tommy and squinted at the candy—“your hero must commit to his or her adventure.” He made the line between Act I and Act II on the board thicker with repeated strokes of his marker. “This is Blake Snyder’s ‘promise of the premise.’ It’s at this point that Roy Scheider, the landlubber, heads out to open sea in search of his shark, or James Bond goes after Goldfinger.”

  I tuned out and instead divided my real life into three acts just like the ones on the board in front of me. My first act was set in stone up until the point where the heroine’s father dies tragically in a plane crash and her mother puddles into an even drunker and eventually fatal mess in the ten years that follow. I thought about my second act. The heroine chooses not to close the deal with her soul mate and sometime-lover James, marries a dashing but flawed man, has two children with him, but then is forced to reevaluate her past decisions.

  The problem with this premise was that it had no promise whatsoever, and I knew it. James was long gone, the push and pull of our friendship over the years having exhausted him and catapulted him to safety overseas.

  Next I glanced at Tommy O’Malley. Maybe Twizzler Guy was a little spicy decoy that a screenwriter would throw into the middle of the second act to fire up the plot. For the zillionth time that week, I tried to consider moving on from my pain over Wade’s newest betrayal and cheered myself up by noting that Tommy’s thighs, one now unnecessarily close to mine, were actually pretty damn epic. It didn’t hurt to window-shop.

  Heller turned back to the board and underlined Act III. “The third act follows hard upon your ‘everything is lost’ moment. By an hour, an hour fifteen, thirty, your hero should be at rock bottom. Intense drama. Passionate reckoning.”

  Rock bottom did not sound as good as passionate reckoning. Though logic would suggest that if the heroine did gather the strength to ditch the cheating husband, then someone else might just show up to save the day and provide the happy ending that Hollywood—and the world—so adored.

  If only life could be as tidy as Hollywood.

  Heller added drama to his voice to deliver the moral of the story. “After everything is lost, the hero picks himself up from the ashes, dusts himself off, and saves the princess or kills the shark before being killed. Hamlet finally stops kvetching and kicks some ass,” he said directly to me. “This should happen no later than page ninety, and from here it’s a sprint to the finish. No more equivocating, it’s payoff time. It’s fine in the first act to say I’m going after the shark. It’s another thing entirely to grab the gun and stare into that big jaw full of razor-sharp teeth as your boat’s sinking underneath you. Then it’s up to you, the writer, to decide how he fares.”

  Tommy raised his hand, revealing a sharp hip bone as his shirt came up enough to expose a Michelangelo muscle line that extended to his sweet spot below.

  “I still can’t figure out why all the professors keep hammering in that every movie has to be so formulaic. When I follow rules, my script turns into some lame Jennifer Aniston movie I never wanted to write.”

  Heller took offense. “Are you calling my attempts to help you structure your work a pedestrian . . .”

  Tommy seemed pleased to have gotten the reaction from Heller he was after. I watched him smirk and studied his looks: short, cropped dark hair and blue Irish eyes, and a slightly square forehead. More macho than handsome. A fragrant mix of rosemary soap wafted my way. I glanced behind his chair and saw his helmet and dark black bag. Maybe my way out of Act II was on the back of a motorcycle and I should just hop on with abandon. Wade’s behavior would certainly justify it.

  I turned my back on Tommy just then, as if to simply shut him off like a lightbulb. I had to focus on the lesson, or at least try.

  That tactic worked for about thirty seconds. “Truth is, most every movie does follow these rules; I just hate to be told what I have to do,” Tommy whispered, looking down into my eyes after I couldn’t help but look back at him. “It’s just going to mess with my head like the last class.”

  Tommy then turned his entire large body toward mine with his elbows resting on his knees as the class ended. The whole class had hung out by the student coffee bar just last week to celebrate his thirty-second birthday, but tonight he acted more inquisitive and attentive. His muscular limbs were spread wide, like some kind of human male mating call. He had thick eyebrows that matched his thick, dark hair, and he had an unkempt, rugged quality that read like a neon sign blinking DANGER. When we stood at the same time, bumping heads, he straightened up to at least six feet two.

  “You want to grab a coffee at a place I know down the street?” Tommy asked. “We haven’t been there yet.” The room had cleared out of our usual cohorts; he was not proposing coffee with the group, but a step into the outside world alone, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  “Sure,” I said and pushed out a breath.

  Tommy stood up, grabbed my jacket off the chair, and put it on me like he was already my boyfriend.

  “Let’s go. I think we’re going to need to make sense of this teacher and to decide whether we should take his advice or tell him and his screenwriting rules to go fuck themselves.”

  13

  Date with Destruction?

  Tommy was walking toward me with a steaming cup of cappuccino—just what I needed at ten o’clock at night—in the darkly lit Hungarian pastry shop four blocks down from our class near Washington Square Park. The shop had about twenty dusty tables in it, covered in mounds of candles with wax that had dripped over and over again in different colored layers. A few older professors and students stared intently at their laptops at tables nearby.

  “So tell me what it was like where you grew up,” Tommy said, handing a coffee cup to me. “I only know you didn’t spend much time in New York, clearly.”

  “How come you know that?”

  “Your manner; you don’t have that I own the world, cocky, New-York-born-and-bred thing in the way you talk—or walk, for that matter.” His eyes were locked on mine like a weapons system. I bit the inside of my cheek way too hard as he rubbed his stubbly chin. I thought about bolting for the door.

  “I guess,” I said, and I pulled my cardigan sweater tight up against my shoulders as if to defend myself. “I didn’t leave my fishing town in Squanto, Massachusetts, much. My mom was a housewife, kind of, when she wasn’t drinking. And my dad owned a tourist and work boat, anything to get out to sea, something he really loved.” And anything to get away from my mom. I wrapped the arms of the sweater once around my neck and still felt completely naked.

  “Is he still around? It sounds like not . . .”

  “Nope. And speaking of not, why not give Heller a break in class? Yes, he’s annoying, but . . .”

  “Well, I like to push his buttons, and he reacts so fast.”

  I was so nervous to be alone with Tommy; I had to throw questions back at him. “How come you started writing scripts? I only know you grew up here. Queens, right?”

  “The Rockaways; I’ve been in every home Hurricane Sandy destroyed. It’s a solid blue-collar area, filled with cops and firemen. Grew up a few blocks from the beach, just off the boardwalk.” His blue eyes sparkled extrabright against the reflection of his light Irish skin.

  “Were you thinking about writing back then?”

  “I was always writing in my head. I used to go to SoHo and buy movie scripts they sold off card tables on the sidewalks to see how it was done. I must have read Chinatown a hundred times.”

  “Is writing how you earn your living?”

  “Of course not. That’s the dream. I make money by consulting at these high-end New York restaurants where I help buy wines cheap a
t auctions—I don’t drink, too much of that in my family, but I learned a lot from working in my uncle’s liquor store, and I’m pretty encyclopedic when it comes to good wine buys.”

  We fell into an awkward silence as I tried to think of a safe topic.

  After a beat, he couldn’t help himself. “So your dad died recently?”

  “When I was sixteen, or just about.”

  “And your mom?”

  I took a quick sip of coffee and burned my tongue. “When I was twenty-two. The bottle killed her liver.”

  “That’s a tough break to lose both so young. What was your dad like? You’ve mentioned him a few times, seems you were close.”

  I took a more careful sip of coffee, mainly so I would have something to do with my hands, which were shaking. “He was amazing, you know? Larger than life.” I shook my head and looked into the cup, pacing my thoughts. “He was a great father, always taking me places in my imagination that few fathers make the time to do. If they even can. He used to read me a story from this old book of fairy tales, and then he’d tell me to recast it, and change the ending. If it was a sad story, he’d have me help him make it come out happy.” I blinked hard and rubbed a burning spot on my lower right eyelid.

  “I’m sorry he’s not around anymore,” Tommy said in a soft tone. “He must have been a great guy. How did he die so young?”

  “He was. And he died in a plane crash in the snow.” I let out a deep breath. I wish people just knew and wouldn’t bring it up. It still felt like a cancerous tumor inside that engendered empathy I didn’t even ask for.

  “I’m so sorry. I meant to focus on the good stuff in his life.”

  I turned to the bakery counter and read the wall menu behind a Hungarian girl who was wiping crumbs off the counters as if I didn’t hear him.

  Ten seconds passed, and he took a bite of his oatmeal cookie and looked right at me.

  When I didn’t respond at all, he took that as a sign that I wanted him to keep talking and dug deeper into the wound. “I’m sure it must have been tough, you were at such a vulnerable age.”

  I smiled wryly and curled my lip to fend off any show of emotion. “Then why do you keep talking about it?”

  “I’m sorry again. I’m scared to fly, if you want to know the truth.” He shrugged, trying to get less uncomfortable in my awkward presence.

  I turned to face him. “I was on the plane.”

  Tommy looked at me like I’d punched him in the stomach. He took a sip of his coffee, waited another long ten seconds, and then said softly, “Jesus Christ. I had no idea.”

  “A lot of people don’t know about that part.”

  “Any others you knew on the plane?”

  “Yeah. Two others. One was okay; one didn’t make it.”

  “Well,” Tommy said, emboldened, “did you ever write about it?”

  I looked at him blankly and shook my head.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Tommy said. “It could be powerful writing, that’s all.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  “All right.” He touched my arm. “Let’s talk about something else. What have you been working on since last class?”

  “You really interested?” I smiled, trying to think of a way to make anything I did sound compelling.

  “Unbelievably.” His crooked grin was warm and adorable, and I had to keep looking down to avoid his stare. He slid his hair down with the palm of his right hand, revealing a thick scar at the hairline that I hadn’t noticed before. It made me feel better thinking that his life hadn’t been entirely pain-free either.

  I suddenly felt like I was doing something illegal.

  “Tell me about your script: girl loses boy over baby,” he said, reaching across the table and brushing a crumb off my lower lip.

  I blushed.

  “Oh, you based this on someone you know,” he added, cueing in on my red cheeks as an invitation for his hand to linger at my chin.

  I looked down into my coffee. “Sort of. Other than the baby part, I guess.”

  “What’s his name?”

  I hesitated, then answered his question. “James. Kind of lifelong best friend with a few moments of complications, let’s say. Technically my first love, I guess, though we never really went out as a couple for real.”

  Tommy made a lazy circle around the coffee cup with his finger. “Still is someone who gets to you. I have plenty of those in my life.”

  “No more, not really,” I lied. “Moments of regret here and there, but he was just there, always.”

  “Like after your dad died.”

  “No, like when he died.” My throat constricted. “He was there, in the little commuter plane with his mother.”

  “Sorry. Wow.” He shook his head hard.

  I took a long sip of my coffee as we just sat there for a long moment of silence, he surely trying to come up with something to say while I remembered too much, too fast.

  JAMES AND HIS mom were buckled in the back row as a surprise when I’d finally stepped into the little Cessna.

  “Hey, Allie,” James had said. I could see the same fear of flying behind his forced smile. “Guess we’re, uh, going to some cabin together and it’s way cold up there?” He smiled all normal but raised his eyebrows, signaling something odd was going on.

  “Uh, yeah. Hi. Mrs. . . .” I looked at his mom.

  “Come on. Call me Nancy. I’ve told you that’s fine.”

  “Okay.” I sat down in front of her. No one said another word until Dad handed in his boarding pass outside and came onto the small commuter plane.

  “What are they doing here?” I feared displeasing him more than anything because he was gone at sea so much, but his inviting my secret crush on our special birthday trip without asking me felt unfair.

  “You know,” he’d answered, not looking my way as he struggled to find the worn-out seat belt all tangled in the metal beneath his seat. “Nancy and I just planned it last week since they were going to be up here visiting family. We thought it would be a fun surprise.”

  Just call me Nancy, she had said. The betrayal squared itself in that moment. I wanted to cry, but I also didn’t want Dad to see how scared and mad I was, not on behalf of my mother on the other side of the border, but for crushing my illusions that he was a good husband, the kind I would want to marry someday. I looked at his profile and tried to gauge whether his excitement was for the ice fishing with his buddies who were already up there or for the woman sitting behind me, because somehow I knew the answer and felt left out.

  James grabbed my shoulder on the side near the window where no one could see and leaned forward to whisper into my left ear, out of Dad’s earshot. “Buck up. He’s on one of his rolls. There’s no stopping him now.”

  “I hope so,” I whispered back. “I just don’t get why you two are here.”

  “Look on the bright side, then,” he said as I turned my head to see his eyes. “You won’t be alone when you freeze your butt off on the icy lake.”

  SOMEONE KNOCKED ON the wood of bar counter hard. “Hey. Helloooo? I asked you to answer one small question, please.” Tommy asked. “You just totally spaced out there for a minute. What happened to James and his mom?”

  “James’s mom. My dad. They died. James and I lived. Okay?” I forced a laugh to break the tension. With my sweater sleeve, I covered up the one ugly scar from that night located on the top of my wrist . . . a spot conveniently located that I had to look at one thousand times a day.

  “I could tell you about my messed-up script instead of all this?”

  “Fire away, Tommy.” I settled into my chair. And then, “Can we go someplace for a drink?” I interrupted a mere three minutes into his synopsis. “I need a glass of wine,” I said.

  “My script really is that bad, isn’t it?” He laughed.

  “No. I’m just a little, I don’t know.” I smiled at his eager face. “I just want some wine. I need to have a drink if I want to keep concentrating, as strange as that
sounds.”

  “Doesn’t sound strange, sounds good.”

  Yes, I was following his screenplay. Yes, he had heard the bare outlines of mine. Yes, we had been deep in conversation a bunch of times before about all the dead ends in scripts we could create for ourselves. But one phrase kept running through my brain and it went something like this: What the hell are you doing?

  “I know the perfect place,” he said and practically lifted me out of my chair and onto the street.

  Tommy and I walked in silence to a French bistro around the corner. He held the door open, and I walked inside to a dark room with mirrors behind bronze rods lining the top of the velvet banquettes. As hard as I tried to gloss over what was really going on, even I couldn’t convince myself that Tommy was simply a smart guy from class who helped me to open up about my feelings or my writing. Yet I willingly chose to stay here and not bolt to the next taxi on duty. We stayed a two-foot distance apart until we got settled at the bar, our legs magnetically inching toward each other.

  Tommy peppered me with more questions. “If you’re writing about lost loves, girl loses boy, that longing that can be so powerful, are you channeling this guy James? Fuck, you went through a lot with him.”

  “Yes, in a way.” I tried not to slug my chardonnay. “I mean, I’m trying to, and finding in writing, the longing is much more poignant than the actual scene of them finally hooking up.”

  “Speaking of channeling things, for so many girls, their love stories are so intertwined with the daddy thing.”

  I looked down at his hand millimeters away from my leg and pulled my knees together. “I’m not going to tell you about the accident.”

  “I’m not asking you to. It’s just that writing it down might exorcise it somehow.” And then he couldn’t resist: “That plane crash had to screw with your head when it came to guys, right?”

  I closed my eyes, and replied, “You really want to know how much?”

  14