I was dipping a cookie in icing, checking the color to see if it needed more green. Every year, in December, our block had a Christmas cookie swap, a ritual that had become one of the less disgusting parts of the holiday season.
I was home a lot and took care of things, the cooking and the house stuff. Before being home a lot, I'd worked on a TV show in Los Angeles. It was shot on two gigantic stages at a movie studio in Burbank, near a building shaped like a wizard hat that you could see from the Ventura Freeway. I was out there for a year, living in a canyon above Sunset, and missed my kid so badly that when I passed the playground of the elementary school in Toluca Lake I had to pull over, smoke a cigarette, and cry.
All day long, a dozen of us sat around a big table in a dark room writing a soapy drama about an inner-city hospital, for a guy who'd optioned my novel and wanted me to learn the ropes. He said I had potential, and he thought of what he was giving me as a priceless education, one that came with specific instructions like a Fabergé egg he wanted me to stick up my ass, to keep it safe. But then he got angry and forgot about the egg and kicked me so hard that it shattered, and while I was bleeding to death he blamed me for breaking it.
この記事は The New Yorker の December 19, 2022 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は The New Yorker の December 19, 2022 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
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