His red cock-mug.
With huge, round balls.
Jesus Christ.
He left the kitchen without another word, and I stood there, shocked, or in awe, or something else entirely, because I needed a moment to process before snapping back to reality.
2
Lana
I spent more time at the library than I planned. The book on Billy Wilder was three hundred pages, and I read almost all of it. I had come there for a chapter or two, to make some notes, but the more I read, the more I didn’t want to stop. Wilder had a way of explaining filmmaking that felt different from others. He wrote about characters that felt real, and he cared about human behavior, not camera angles. If I wanted to follow in his footsteps, I needed to learn from the best, and everything I read today confirmed that I was on the right track to becoming a great screenwriter.
By the time I looked up from the book, the library was half-empty, and the sun outside had started to disappear behind the buildings. My stomach growled, reminding me that the only thing I’d eaten since morning was a handful of pretzels from my bag. I closed the book, returned it to the front desk, and walked out into the warm Los Angeles evening.
Traffic was heavy, as always, but I didn’t mind. I had nowhere to be except the Griffith Observatory.
I wasn’t in a rush to get back home tonight, and I would take the city’s noise over the noise at Callan’s house any day. Getting away from there also allowed me to think of somethingother than the constant awareness that I was living somewhere I didn’t belong.
The parking lot was almost full, but I found a spot farther down the hill and climbed the path to the main terrace. The air was cooler up here, but I was smart enough to bring a sweater for later. Even if LA never really got cold, I was someone who got cold as soon as the sun didn’t shine.
I looked around for a good place to sit and eat, found an empty bench near the edge, and sat down. Groups of people stood near the railing, taking pictures of the view. A couple was kissing next to the coin-operated binoculars, and two kids chased each other across the pavement.
This was normal.
Normal people doing normal things.
Unlike Callan and his freaky friends, who had sex every damn day.
Honestly, how do they even do that?
Not that I knew what sex felt like, or ever had the pleasure to get addicted to it like Callan, but how good could it actually be?
Wouldn’t that start hurting with time?
I mean, you surely get sore with time, no?
I shook all those thoughts aside and let out a heavy sigh before focusing on me and this moment.
My sandwich was squished from being in my bag all day, but it still tasted fine. Cheese, tomato, and a bit too much mustard to make up for the lack of turkey. I ate it slowly, savoring every bite as the sky grew darker.
I thought about the money Callan had thrown at me this morning. Two hundred dollars for a missing pack of turkey. It wasn’t generosity born out of guilt. He was just being a rich, careless asshole, thinking that giving me a large amount of money would’ve been enough of an apology.
A simplesorrywould’ve done it.
But no…he solved everything with money.
I hadn’t touched it. The bills were still folded in my bag, right next to my notebook. I planned to give it back to him because I didn’t want to owe him anything, and I had no clue what to do with that much money anyway.
Sure, I could’ve gone to one of those fancy places in the city where they made Poke bowls for twenty bucks, or smoothies that cost more than a full bag of groceries, but it felt wrong spending that much money on myself.
When the sun and my sandwich were gone, I walked inside the observatory to get a quick look through the telescopes. People stood around the exhibits, reading plaques about stars and orbits, and I just walked around for a while, enjoying the quiet.
Upstairs, the line for the Zeiss telescope was short. I waited for my turn, hands shoved in my sweater’s pockets, and when it was time, I went up the few steps and looked through the lens. The volunteer next to me said it was aimed at Saturn, and I could clearly see the planet’s rings brightly. I could see four more tiny moons around it, glowing dots in the black. It looked far away and unreal, but what struck me was how still it was. Nothing like the constant noise of the house or the mess of people that came and went every week.
“Living up there would be so peaceful,” I whispered.
“Yeah, until you realize there’s no Wi-Fi, and your snacks keep floating away.”
