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ticket. He was probably hoping I wouldn’t be able to afford to come back. As of right this minute, there’s nothing pressing me to get back, other than my finances. I’m off for the summer. Classes don’t begin again until September, so I’m technically free for the next two and a half months. My accountant would like me to sell another screenplay. He thinks we could bring the back taxes current and pay off the last of my debt if I make one solid sale.
    My school would also like me to sell a screenplay. They haven’t come right out and said it, but they’d like it if, for once, the screenplay wasn’t just optioned, but actually brought to life. When they hired me, I had four active scripts on the burner. I had AMC and HBO flying me to location shoots on a regular basis. Nothing ever materialized. But Hollywood is like a puppy on drugs. It’s got ADD. I was only interesting as long as there wasn’t a dirty tennis ball bouncing across the floor.
    If Peter doesn’t cut me off completely, if he’s willing to help me out for a little while, I could go back to San Francisco with Nell when this is over and renew some old film school friendships. Or do a stop in Colorado for a few weeks with the girls, check out the documentary world, and then head west to my sister’s for August. I haven’t had time to myself like this without having to consider anyone else in years, in close to a decade. The feeling is unfamiliar. Not exactly unwanted, but not exactly longed for, either. And anyway, things with Peter might still turn around. He gets angry, then he gets over it. That’s what happens in a marriage. You say the meanest, most crippling thing possible to the person you ostensibly love more than anyone else in the world, and then you sit back and wait for it to pass.
    When I was little, my dad’s form of babysitting was to plunk me down in front of the Turner Network Television channel and then leave the room. If it was a classic, then it was appropriate. That’s how his logic went. I remember sitting through the entirety of Love Story all by myself one night. The whole house might have been empty. I have no idea. The sex scene was confusing. I was too young to understand what they were doing under those covers, only that he was on top and she was on bottom and I was embarrassed. Then there was that line. That famous line: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” I remember sitting up. I’d heard it before. I’d heard people quoting it and now here it was, in front of me, the source. That night, sitting cross-legged too close to the television, I believed I understood the words of that syrupy-faced girl with the long brown hair. I was eleven and those words belonged to the girl, not to the actress, and I felt sure I understood them as they were meant to be understood. I felt sure my heart was pure, as her heart was surely pure, and from the other side of the screen she was looking at me and talking to me . And what she was telling me was that people in love are incapable of hurting each other; that if you’re in love then you can’t mess up, even if you want to, because love—which is a mystical, magical force—gets in the way.
    Now, twenty-some years later, a full-fledged adult, I know I was wrong. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Being in love means you can hurt the other person all you want. Being in love means having a personal punching bag. That’s why you do it. That’s why you fall in love in the first place—to be the worst you can be and get away with it. Otherwise, what’s the point?

6
asleep on the plane
    I fall asleep before takeoff and have one of those dreams where you know you’re dreaming and you’re kind of enjoying it, but it’s also beyond your control. Like there’s this feeling of Ah, yes, I am asleep and wonderfully asleep and isn’t it funny how I feel different and even better and am somehow allowing myself to derive satisfaction from this fantasy life even as I know