“Well. I may not have a phone or a kazoo, but what I do have is faith. I have faith in me and you. I have faith that we’ll be fine. Even though we don’t have wine. Wait. Sorry. I switched into rhyming mode. I just know that someone will come by eventually and you won’t miss Paxton’s call.”
He scrubs his face with both hands, and it’s like the sound of his stubble is tickling my ears. But his anxiety is hugging my heart. “I can’t believe I forgot about the door.” He leans back against the door and slides down to sit next to me, his long legs bent, resting his arms on his knees. He unbuttons and rolls up the sleeves of his very nice white shirt and continues, “I think I should say that I have zero regrets about what just happened. You deserved to finally experience that.”
That makes me snort-laugh. “I am also very pleased.”
He grins. “I mean, it seems to me you wereincrediblypleased.” He goes back to frowning. “But I can’t believe I forgot my phone. I really want to see how excited Paxton is when he finds out about the presents. And I need to make sure Alyssa has the stuff I sent for his stocking.”
I reach over to hold one of his hands. “His Santa presents?”
“Yeah. I mean, I know Alyssa and Barry are taking presents for him too—I just want to make sure he gets mine… This is the first year I’m not seeing him on Christmas Day.”
I give his big hand a squeeze. “For someone who hates Christmas you care an awful lot about Christmas.”
“Only for Paxton. He’s such a good little guy—I just want him to get everything he wants.”
And my brain is now fully back online. “Elijah. This is it. This is exactly what the script needs.”
“Hero gets stuck in a supply closet with a hot chick?”
“No. It needs a kid.”
He squeezes my hand and then stands up and starts pacing. There’s only enough room for him to take one step to each side, so it looks like he’s dancing and I think that’s great. He’s nodding as he considers this, but he’s clenching his fists like he’s angry. What a weirdo. “Say more.”
“The hero’s already divorced, but he should be a divorced dad. Instead of a bare Christmas tree, there’s one paper handmade decoration hanging from a branch when he wakes up from that dream at the beginning. He gets recruited by the organization that monitors alien activity, gets abducted by the aliens, and he’s just trying to get back home so he can give his kid the presents. It’sDie HardmeetsMen in Black. Except the main alien misses his family back on his home planet too. Or…”
“Yes?”
“It could beThe GrinchmeetsLilo and Stitch.”
I can actually hear the cash-register sound effect in his head. “Keep talking.”
“Like a buddy movie with a recently divorced dad who’s really grumpy and an alien he just happens to come across. He reluctantly rescues the alien dad from some situation to be determined.”
“Go on.”
“Hides him in his crappy divorced-guy apartment.”
“LikeE.T.for grown-ups.”
“Yes! In the prologue the hero is a kid trying to communicate with aliens, and we overhear his mom telling his dad she’s worried because he doesn’t know how to talk to girls but he’sspending all his time trying to talk to aliens. Cut to the present when he clearly hasn’t learned to talk to the woman he loves, but he did grow up to be some kind of space-technology person. The alien wants to get back to his planet because he misses his family…
“Maybe the divorced guy isn’t a dad—maybe he’s separated, not divorced from his wife because she wants to start a family and he doesn’t. He’s a workaholic. Maybe he learns from the alien’s perspective about how beautiful Christmas is and how wonderful it is to have a family. He uses his special skill to help the alien get home. Then his wife comes home to find that he’s decorated the whole house for her, and he tells her he wants to have a kid… See what I’m saying?”
He suddenly stands very still and stares down at me like he’s angry, but I can see the wheels spinning. “I am picking up what you’re putting down, Curly.” He locks eyes with me, and I don’t say anything because I don’t want to intrude upon his executive thought process. I can tell that his brain is calculating audience quadrants and budgets and casting potential. He spins around on his heel, opens one of the boxes of pens he was tossing around earlier, grabs a pad of neon-pink sticky notes, and begins maniacally scribbling. He scribbles and scribbles and scribbles. Keeps pulling sticky notes off the pad and slapping them onto the edge of the shelf. “I really wish I had my phone or the good sticky notes right now,” he mutters. “But this will do.” He keeps scribbling. “This will do.”
Finally, he writes on another sticky note, stabs at it, with a period, slaps the pen down, and gets onto his knees in front of me. “You are such a brilliant genius.” He takes my face in his hands and kisses me with so much passion, it startles me.
“Thank you,” I exhale.
“Thankyou,” he says between kisses. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” His hands are all up in my hair when he pulls backto say, “I could pitch this to the president of production. Go over Steinberg’s head and get that project greenlit based on the new concept alone. But then I run the risk of losing creative control, and I like this project now, so I want to hire the right people.” He stares deep into my soul. “Do you want an associate producer credit?”
I don’t even have to ruminate on this. “No, thank you.”
Now he’s the one who’s startled. “What? Why not?”
I caress his surprised face. “I appreciate it so much, but I don’t want some token film credit. Just pay me for my notes.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “You do realize there would be a producer fee, right? Up front.”
