Green Card

23 If You Bake A Girl A Cookie (Piper)

"Cut!" The director shouted and I rolled my eyes. This was the tenth time we'd reshot this scene today. I pushed out of my chair and strolled to the craft services table where Gary was shoving yet another donut into his mouth.

"I've said it before but I'm going to say it again in the hopes that, this time, you'll hear it," I started. "Why did we hire this new director again?"

"Because the old one quit," Gary answered through a mouthful of bread.

"But this guy in particular," I said. "Gary, he's terrible. It's like he thinks he's directing the next Titanic but this is a low brow sitcom on network television."

"What's your point, Clark?" He snapped, turning to me with a handful of donuts, annoyed.

"My point is that he isn't right for Basketcase. He isn't a comedy director. He doesn't have a clue what our fans want and our audience is going to be confused."

"Yeah? Did you learn that in all your directing classes? Listen, when you go to the Academy and become a credentialed director, you can come to me with your on set critique. Until then, shut your mouth and keep your pen to paper. Got it?"

"Yeah," I replied, frustrated. "Got it."

Then he turned away from me and stormed away back toward his office. I rolled my eyes and turned back to set, arms crossed while I watched the director instructing an actor on how to deliver a childish dick joke more dramatically. With a groan, I turned away and headed for my own office. I couldn't watch this today.

It had been a week since I'd left California and Lucas. He had tried to call me once the day after I'd left but I hadn't had the courage to answer and he hadn't tried again since. My mother had. She wanted to scold me, try to "talk some sense into me" but I just told her that I needed some space, some time to think,and hung up.

I'd thrown myself into work and found myself only depressed with the results. There was only so much effort one could put into mediocre comedy before one started to doubt everything one was doing with one's life. Though, I guess I wasn't just starting to have my doubts. In truth, I'd been doubting myself for a long time. NBC was the dream. Writing sketches for Saturday Night Live or hit comedies. I could grow there, meet important people, maybe even try out a drama or two, see if it was for me. Instead of stagnating on a low level network, stuck on the same series with ratings just above average enough to keep us running. It wasn't the dream. It wasn't even in the same category as the dream.

Not that I even knew what the dream was anymore.

It wasn't NBC. It wasn't Basketcase. Comedy in general had begun to lose its appeal. I wanted something real, I wanted something meaningful, something with substance, an actual storyline. But they weren't working on anything like that here and I didn't even know where to find it.

Hulu was hiring a writing staff for a new epic sci-fi series. That would have been cool. Crafting new worlds, creating something. But they would take one look at my resume and laugh. No one wants to hire a writer who doesn't know her genre. And besides, Hulu was headquartered in California and that felt like making a decision that I wasn't prepared to make yet.

I made it through the rest of the day staying away from set and then headed for the subway on my way back to my apartment. I scrolled through the roommate group text that had been buzzing, and I had been ignoring, all day long. It was Leah and Connor arguing about what to do for dinner. They'd settled on ordering out. Thai food. Apparently nobody felt like cooking.

I listened to music on the train ride home and then entered the apartment with my headphones still firmly in place. Leah and Connor left me alone as I passed where they sat in the living room to go to my room. I wasn't surprised. Before, they would have jumped me at the door, talking a mile a minute about the latest gossip they'd heard or the plans they'd made for the night. But, since I'd returned, we'd stayed in every night, eating take out while they watched me carefully when they thought I wasn't looking and tiptoed around any mention of the prior week of my life.