Isha, Unscripted, page 6
Isha: Thank you.
He didn’t respond immediately and I moved on to a recent slew of Amy’s emails and texts. She’d . . . already heard from them. Oh my lord. This was as nerve-racking and insidious as opening college admission emails. They almost always started out the same way.
As Rogue sunbathed and watched butterflies float around her, I skimmed the length of the email.
Yep. The producers had not been impressed. That much was evident, but to see it in writing made it that much harsher, more concrete, final. Forget the last nail in the coffin! The coffin was being dropped into an infinitely cavernous grave for all eternity.
My chest tingled and tightened. An anxiety attack was about to hit hard.
I had really thought this could be the one, the moment, the producer for me. I’d thought if I was determined and worked hard and learned from the best, that I would make it.
Rogue trotted to my feet and cuddled up to me, probably sensing my anxiety as she often did. Humans did not deserve dogs, but she was warm and soft and everything I needed.
“Come on, little girl.” I let her back inside and she trotted alongside me the entire way to the hall until we reached the bottom of the stairs. She went ahead first but stopped every third step and glanced over her shoulder in that very model Yorkie fashion to make sure I was still there and following.
“Good girl.” Always looking out for me.
After emptying my tote and putting everything away, I made sure Rogue was set before running the family’s errands. As soon as I returned, I put away the milk and washed the produce and laid it out on drying towels before scrubbing a sink full of dishes.
Everyone had disappeared. Mummie texted that they were all at mandir to set up for tomorrow’s program and invited me to join. Also, there were leftovers on the counter. It was her famous handvo—a loaf made from ground rice and lentil batter mixed with shredded cabbage. Because she knew my favorite part was the near-burnt sesame seed crust, she’d saved most of the chewy top for me. This was one of those million nice mom things she did.
And then she added a curt reminder to show her my list of applied jobs tomorrow.
Wow. Like homework, huh?
My phone pinged with another text. My heart dropped into my gut and the blood drained from my face, my head light and dizzy.
It wasn’t from Mummie. But from Amy. She . . . thought it was time to part ways.
I swallowed and, with shaking hands, finished drying the last dish. Trembling fingers scrolled through Amy’s words.
Yep. She had absolutely broken up with me via text. She might as well have been an ex-boyfriend, all eager to make things work one minute and bam! Goodbye message hours later.
Ugly dread reared its head, clawing through my guts. Rejection always hurt, but a three-year relationship ending like this was staggeringly painful. I should’ve seen the signs. The gradual loss of attention. Neglecting emails, missing phone calls. The vagueness. The lack of enthusiasm.
This morning had apparently been our Hail Mary and I hadn’t even known it.
I responded to Amy. First asking if we could chat. Then deleting the message and asking if all submission rights for Priyanka’s story reverted to me or if she would finish off the sub process with this last script.
In the end, I decided it was best to put away the phone and not respond.
Replying when emotionally charged was a bad idea.
Also, I couldn’t see straight through blurry eyes.
I wiped my tears and looked skyward for a second. Damn. Was this what a gut punch out of nowhere felt like? I bowed over and heaved, stopping myself from crying, from feeling loss.
No. No agent was going to reduce me to this. In fact, how dare she. How dare she be this cruel and unprofessional. I mean, right after a big blow?
I stumbled into my room, desperately clinging to anything to solidify my need to pursue screenwriting, and instead dropped face-first into bed.
If I could manage to shut down my brain, that would be a magnificent feat.
My eyelids finally drooped as residual adrenaline and anxiety crashed into one another like a gruesome demolition derby match. Savage and macabre, laying any energy to waste.
Sleep. What a marvelous reset button and a few priceless hours of not having to deal with the disappointment that was my life.
* * *
—
I must’ve slept hard because I awoke to Rogue staring at me with the need to potty, an empty house, and Rohan blowing up my phone with texts. The pings from message alerts reverberated through my room, a haunting of unread words.
Half-awake and without checking the time or the messages, I rubbed my face, put on my glasses, and walked Rogue downstairs. I started a cup of coffee, not caring what time of night or day it was, then went to the back door.
Sleep had helped my headache and had eased the anxiety, but reality prowled closer to the forefront of my thoughts as I took a sip of coffee and started to wake all the way up.
Oh. Crap.
I closed my eyes and shook my head, recalling Amy’s text. A million little creepy crawlies sprouted underneath my skin as my stomach churned something sour.
All right. This couldn’t be the end-all.
I caught the time as I dove into confronting the loads of messages inundating my phone. Five o’clock came around as I read through Rohan’s texts.
Isha: How did you finish editing so quickly!
Rohan: Come on, woman, don’t insult me. But now you can send it off to those producers from this morning.
I bit my lower lip. How to tell him that they’d already given their verdict and that he’d hurried for nothing? Worse yet, that it had been the catalyst for my agent dumping me and what was the point? My time was up.
Rohan: I can come over and show it to you. You can tell me if I need to change or add anything. Not gonna lie, though, it’s as perfect as perfect can get.
Isha: That’s amazing! Can’t wait to see it. Thanks for the hard work! I gotta treat you to something.
Rohan: I’m actually at that Indian taco food truck. You want something?
Yeah. Food was always the way to go. I had no idea what to expect, but when my cousin came around thirty minutes later, my taste buds swam in fusion heaven with an unusual mix of Indian and Mexican ingredients working remarkably well together.
“Oh my lord, this is amazing!” I sang while eating at the table, an array of food containers spread out in front of us. Nothing like food to act as a balm over searing wounds of rejection.
“Told you. I only recommend the best food places in Austin,” he said around a veggie bite. He was definitely blossoming into a foodie, and the mere invitation to a place he deemed worthy brought all the excitement.
Delicious and spicy! Woo! A little too spicy. I needed the sweetness from iced tea to cool off my taste buds.
As I listened to him pick out every spice and herb and go over his theory of how this food was made, I wondered aloud, “You’d be great with a career in food, you know?”
“If only my parents thought I had the discipline for that,” he responded, his shoulders deflating slightly.
Sometimes I questioned if our parents were too honest, or if they didn’t believe in us because we weren’t living up to their expectations. Would Rohan be more decisive if others believed in him the way I did?
“What?” he muttered, side-eyeing me.
I gave a soft, small smile. “Nothing.”
After we finished eating, Rohan connected his laptop to the TV and played the edited segment.
His work never ceased to amaze me, and I watched in awe. To put it simply, he’d recorded me giving a presentation pitching my work, but his angles and editing made it into art.
“This is your best work,” I confessed, even as sadness bubbled up into my chest.
He regarded me for a moment, quietly, his gaze piercing my skull and reading my thoughts like an open website.
“Was it that bad? This morning?” he asked, leaning his back against the couch and pulling a knee to his chest. “Oh, man. Did you really need the video that badly?” He hit his back against the couch arm while Rogue cuddled against his side and looked up to search his face, as if she were trying to figure out what had him so stressed.
I quickly replied, “Oh no! It wasn’t you, trust me. I don’t think having this segment would’ve made much of a difference.”
“What happened, then?” he asked quietly, and petted Rogue as she rolled onto her back for belly rubs. No matter the mood, that little demand of hers always made me smile.
“Just what I said. I wasn’t prepared or in the right state of mind. Too many mishaps. I arrived late, armpits sweating up a tsunami, spilled coffee on a producer, babbled, missed the major arc points.”
Rohan sucked his teeth like he felt my mortification.
“Yeah. The main guy never even touched the proposal. And the coffee guy was wearing nice clothes.” I covered my face.
Rohan leaned forward, hanging on my every word.
I let out a pent-up, hot breath. “I might’ve tried to pat down the pool of coffee on his crotch.” I tilted my head while saying this and grimaced.
“Oh, damn!” he said, part horrified but also trying not to laugh with the way his mouth twitched in a forced frown. “You and random crotches, though.”
My skin was on fire just remembering the incident.
Maybe if I hadn’t been out drinking and singing drunk karaoke, or had set my alarm, maybe if I had had everything prepared for a moment’s notice, then maybe I’d still have an agent. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. None of these maybes changed the facts.
“And then . . . my agent dumped me.”
A deafening moment of silence stagnated in the air, but there was something to be said about getting things out into the open, off your chest by expressing your thoughts to someone else. In my head, everything was chaos and torture and the end of the world. Saying it aloud helped me to realize perhaps it wasn’t so bad and could’ve been much worse. So what, one meeting bombed. It wasn’t going to end me. Right? Right?
“Oh, man. I’m sorry. Can you talk to her? Work it out?” Rohan asked.
I gave him a sorrowful smile. “It’s like saying can’t I work it out with a boyfriend dumping me after years of trying to make it work and just not getting anywhere.”
“Ah. There are other agents, though?”
“Sure, but it was difficult getting this agent. I’d need a new script for another agent, and I don’t have another story in me right now. Now I have absolutely nothing to defend myself with when my parents demand that I leave this all behind.”
He grunted and said, “It’s okay,” right as the familiar Bollywood ringtone of his phone went off. He checked his phone and swiped to read and responded and did a few other things.
“Hmm. Maybe it was for the best?” he said.
I glanced at him.
He quickly added, “I mean, that agent wasn’t taking you anywhere. She hadn’t sold anything for you. She was wasting your time. And you need a champion. Nah, scratch that. You deserve an Avenger.”
“You’re sweet.”
“Maybe a Tony Stark? Or a Thor? I know you like those white boys.”
“Oh my lord . . .” I cracked a smile, imagining having my own personal Thor as an agent.
“You’re not giving up, are you?” he asked, putting away his phone.
I sighed the heaviest breath imaginable. That was a loaded question with a loaded answer. “I’ve been doing this for years, all through college, a degree even, so many failed scripts and pitches and queries and subs. I fought against the passive-aggressive comments and looks and stuck to this. I fought my parents for this. I strained our relationship over this. I really thought I had something this time. I really thought this was it, that something would come from all of these struggles.”
He tapped his chin and narrowed his eyes. “I’m going to take that as a no.”
Right, because he was the one person who would never allow me to give up.
“Since you’re not throwing in the towel and will continue to follow your dream and make it after all so that your story of adversity will inspire others, I have a plan.”
I lifted my head and watched that slightly evil but completely mischievous smirk change the entire look of his expression. “Uh-oh.”
“Just hear me out, okay? Forget these douchebag producers and your waste-of-space agent. We’re going to show them how much they screwed up and how you don’t need them anyway. You know what? I’m glad you retaliated and threw hot coffee at their faces.”
“Absolutely not what happened, but okay.”
He placed a hand to his chest. “In my soul, I know it was. Let them play their games. We gotta take matters into our own hands. I mean, your parents are forcing you to take a job you don’t want and say goodbye to your dreams. That’s soul-crushing, and I can’t sit by and watch you get shoved down a tunnel of depression while some pointless job leeches your creativity. We have to get this done. You can’t let them drag you away. Not like this. Not ever.”
My chest warmed at how fiercely he believed in me. Without him, I might’ve lost to familial pressure long ago. “Sure. I’ll bite. What are you proposing?”
“Matthew McConaughey.”
“Oh boy. This again?”
He waved off my remark. “You know how Matthew McConaughey was your professor at UT?”
“No one forgets that. I don’t let them.”
“He has ties to producers and writers.”
“Mmm-hmm . . .”
“What if we get him to read the script?” he asked casually, as if getting a superstar actor and director to take time for me were simple.
“And what’s that going to do?”
He threw his hands up, startling Rogue so that she shot him a death glare and then went back to being petted. “Sorry, girl.” He looked back to me and asked, “Are you joking? A former student of his with an extraordinary script and he’s not worth a shot?”
I rolled my eyes. “So extraordinary that production companies are fighting to the death for it? Some of my old classmates sold so fast! One had six producers in a bidding war that led to a million-dollar advance with Netflix. Can you even imagine that!” I cringed, hating how envy lurked inside me this obscenely.
“Yes. I can. And I can also imagine you buying me my own taco truck with that kind of advance. Listen, can you really let writing go?”
I flinched. Even now, with my emotions drowning in rejections and upheaval, a story struggled to climb out from the darkness. No, I couldn’t let writing go. I was a creative. And creatives needed their art the way they needed air. Lacking one or the other was inevitable death.
He snapped a finger. “Your friend from college. Veronica? You said she loved it.”
“Yeah.”
“And you trust her judgment. She keeps it real but also her opinion is valued because she works in the industry.”
I nodded.
“I read this script, too. You used to write about white Americans and comedy. This time you wrote about Priyanka and her struggles and some funny moments but some real truths for what it’s like for brown people to make it when they’re straddling two cultures and getting shoved aside by the system. I felt seen. This script is phenomenal,” he said, deadpan.
My breath caught in my throat. The belief he expressed in those words floored me. “Oh . . . thank you. But you’re not just saying that?”
He shook his head. “Nope. You know me. I keep it level because you need honesty to be your best. If you battle out all the uglies with your CPs and your agent polishes it with her pro-level expertise, then the producers should be getting the best quality possible. This is it. This is your script, and I will die on this hill over it.”
My lips quivered into a shaky smile. Bro to the end. “So. What’s Matthew McConaughey got to do with this?”
Rohan grinned so hard that I could practically see his monumental plan unfolding in his head. Oh boy. What was I getting myself into?
Chapter 6
Rohan declared, “We’re going to get McConaughey to read this. He’s going to fall so hard for this script that he’s going to attach himself one way or another: as producer, writer, director, actor, whatever. I don’t know if he does all of those things, but sure, why not? This script will move him to fit into every one of those positions.”
“No way. Him falling for the script, even reading it, is impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible when you’ve got the hustle acumen of top Hollywood writers,” he replied so matter-of-factly that even I wanted to believe him.
I wasn’t sure I even knew what acumen meant or if he’d used it correctly, but Rohan pretty much slept with a dictionary and right now, he was in his awe-inspiring, hyped, we’re-going-to-make-it-after-all mode. The level of determination in his tone and the apex look of faith in his eyes was making it near impossible for me to back down. This was part of his rallying cry, his fervent belief that got even the most cynical believing with him.
Hype-man was an understatement.
Excitement brewed in my bones, but it had a long way to go before fully emerging from the throes of borderline depression. “How exactly do we even get a meeting with him? Not like he’s teaching this semester and I can just hop on over to his campus office. He probably wouldn’t even respond to my emails, if he even checks his staff email. I mean, is he in Austin right now? Isn’t he working on a film in L.A.?”
“Yes, but he’s here for the weekend.”
