“How do you accidentally sell a script?”
“Well, funny you should ask. I went with Teddy to a meeting at the Hope Channel because he wanted to look like he had an assistant. Ya know, to impress the execs. He was supposed to pitch them three different scripts he’d bought the rights to, but then he had a little bathroom emergency because I forgot to ask for dairy-free creamer in his coffee that I mobile-ordered on our way to the studio.” I paused for a moment, thinking back to that day. “He actually takes his coffee black, but the girl at the counter messed it up and when I went to get it fixed, she was crying because her pet iguana died and then I had to talkto her about it, because pet loss is something that no one takes seriously enough. I don’t know what I’ll do when—”
“Sunny,” he said, almost smiling, in a way that was meant to rein me in.
“Right. So we were running late. He chugged the coffee without thinking, and turns out Teddy Ray Fletcher is lactose intolerant and hadn’t taken a Lactaid because he wasn’t prepared to be poisoned by his favorite employee on a normal Thursday morning. So he made a run for it mid-meeting and I started rambling to the Hope Channel execs.”
“You? Ramble? Surely not.”
“I know you think you’re being cute, Todd,” I told him.
“Okay, so what’s the pitch?”
“Well, one night when I was here duringDuke the Hallsand literally everyone else in the cast and crew were boning one another, I went to the Dirty Snowball and I was sad. And probably a little horny. But mostly sad. You know all about being sad and horny.”
“You’re lucky I like being teased,” he said as he finished off his eggs and leaned down with his elbows on the counter, his full attention on me.
“And this stripper from the North Pole was in there on her night off. We started chatting and buying each other drinks, and okay, yes, I was definitely trying to hook up with her. But anyway, she told me about this local legend, but she was foggy on the details because this story has been passed around so many times. It’s like that game telephone.”
“So you pitched the story to the Hope Channel execs? Must have been a good story.”
“I don’t even remember what I said to them, honestly. I was just riddled with guilt and all I could think about was how I hoped Teddy made it to the bathroom. Spoiler alert: he did, butit was the woman’s bathroom. He was embarrassed, but I was like, ‘Bathrooms don’t have genders, Teddy.’”
Isaac narrowed his eyes at me and this time he even grinned.
“The legend!” I said. My ADHD was really out for blood today. “Okay, okay. The quick and dirty version: It’s the 1940s. World War II. A postman driving a truck full of Christmas letters and presents gets stranded on Christmas Eve in a blizzard outside of town. It’s foresty! And mountainy! And he’s faced with either freezing to death in his mail truck or freezing to death on a snowy mountain road, and just when he’s given up all hope, an angel appears and guides him to a pretty little house, where a young woman is just sitting down by the fire with a nightcap. And she’s sitting down alone because her husband is off fighting in the war, and she hasn’t heard from him in over a month, and she can’t bear to be around her family and pretend that she’s not sad and scared and all that. So she hears a pounding on her door and opens it to find the postman and the angel who—you’re never going to guess this—is her missing husband!”
Issac’s mouth fell open, his expression totally rapt. Even Mr.Tumnus had paused his explorations to listen to the story.
“Also, according to Comet the stripper, there might have been an angel threesome once they got to the woman’s house? That part is possibly a Comet invention, but I totally included it in my pitch, because hot. Anyway, the woman and the postman wake up the next day and the angel is gone. The woman receives a telegram two days later telling her that her husband’s body was found in France, just before Christmas Day. But she got to have one last moment with him, thanks to the unlucky postman and the magic of Christmas.And,” I added, almost forgetting the best part, “the mail truck appears in the middle of the town on Christmas morning with all the presents inside! Christmas for everyone!”
“Wow.” The word was breathy and awestruck, and I thought I even noticed his eyes slightly watering. “That’s... one hell of a pitch.”
“It’s a Christmas miracle,” I told him. “But I don’t know enough to write a whole goddamn made-for-TV movie.”
“So you’re here to dig around for inspiration?”
I nodded. “And facts! I need to find out if this Christmas miracle is the real thing or just local lore.”
He took my empty plate and rinsed it off along with his before putting them in the dishwasher. “Well, stay here for as long as you need, Sunny. You’ll barely even notice I’m here.”
I knew he meant that as a good thing. He was offering me uninterrupted time to write and really dive deep into this story in his beautifully over-the-top mansion, but it still made me feel a little sour for some reason.
“What about you?” I asked. “What is everyone’s favorite pouty bisexual doing hidden all the way up here? And with no staff to speak of?”
“I wanted to be alone,” he said. “In a different place. Plus the snow makes everything so quiet. Sometimes it’s so quiet that even my head is silent.”
“I’m not quiet.”
He shook his head, his hair brushing along his jaw. “No, Sunny, you’re not.”
“And that’s it? A new quiet place?”
He stepped back and hoisted himself up onto the counter. “And I’m five years late on my newest album. It’s the last one I have under contract and then I’m free. The label is breathing down my neck. I guess the my-wife-died get-out-of-jail-free card expired.”
“So you went looking for quiet to find your own sound?”
His eyes crinkle at the corners. “You could say that. Or you could say I thought I could spit out a cheesy Christmas albumand be done with music forever after that, but the only song idea I have so far is about deforestation at the hands of the Christmas tree industry.”
