Page 4 of The Second Chance Cinema
Nolan had played the statement off casually, but Ellie knew it was the reason for their chat. Months ago, they had met at a matcha bar, and he asked to hear about her new projects. After reading those projects, he’d suggested a catchup at his office to share “a few thoughts.” Now, his smile attempted to ease the blow of her newfound okay-ness.
The smile almost worked. Nolan was the distinguished caliber of handsome she would never go for; he smelled like a high-end casino and dressed in traditional British menswear despite a growing collection of modern office furniture. In the five years Nolan had been her agent, his black hair had been overtaken with gray, he’d become a father to a feisty toddler, and he’d gotten annoying about wine. All differences aside, Ellie trusted Nolan’s opinions on her career. He was the only person who was honest about her television show being a flop before it launched.
“Look,” Nolan said, “you’re going to break through this funk.” He tossed the scissors down and they clattered onto the Noguchi coffee table. “You just need to knock on some new doors and hunt down your voice.”
He made finding her voice sound violent.
Nolan sank into an oddly shaped Scandinavian chair and crossed his hands over his knee. He reminded her of an actor playing a therapist. “It’s all too comfortable right now,” he said. “It’s your passion that’s missing.” Ellie let her mind wander off to the weather, her dinner plans, and hypothetical desserts she would never bake, before she asked the inevitable.
“When was the last time the stories worked?”
Nolan looked at the floor. So rarely did he lose his je ne sais quoi, but he truly hated direct confrontation, Ellie knew. “The piece about Finn’s Bar,” he finally admitted. “That was the last really good one.”
So, two years ago. Two and a half, actually.
Ellie’s recent pieces should’ve been electric. A music shop that once sold a keyboard to Carole King and an ice cream store with flavors named after the owner’s family history both had potential. The fact that those places ended up closing was on her. She felt the weight of their failure, the suffocating responsibility of not being able to do something for the five, soon to be six, businesses that shuttered since she’d written about them. Soon, their legacy would be left behind, traded for pour-over coffee shops or food halls with generic, chipper names: The Hello Factory. Shindig Food Community.So much for her magic gift of sparking revivals. Ellie had a streak of bad luck she couldn’t seem to shake.
Nolan seemed to pick up on her defeat. “Just find something you’re obsessed with,” he suggested. “Unhealthy obsession’s a good look on you.”
Ellie, the text she received in the parking lot said.I hope you’re well.She unlocked the car and tossed her purse onto the passenger seat. The message had the cadence of a stranger, but it was from her father.Naomi said we should send an engagement gift—and he added the gift emoji there—but we’re not sure what you’re like.
What you’re like, Ellie read again. The typo was an understatement. Since her engagement months earlier, her best friend, Jen, had thrown a lively karaoke celebration for their friends, and her mom had offered to plan a more formal engagement party. This text, however, was only the second wedding-related peep she had heard from her dad.
Ellie didn’t want a gift from him or the stepmom she’d met a handful of times. An occasional check-in about the wedding would’ve been nice, though. She had shared the news over email, since her dad couldn’t be reached by phone, which removed all the warmth and excitement from the announcement and turned it hollow. He’d replied with a simple “Congratulations.” As usual, there weren’t any follow-up questions. There was no offer to help.
Even small interactions with her family reminded Ellie that her special day could never be normal. Recently, she had woken up from a nightmare that every chair on her side of the aisle would be empty. Because just as the text had accidentally given away, these days, they barely knew her at all.
As she pulled out of the parking garage and crunched over the remnants of fall leaves, she decided to go to the only place that would put her at ease and cast her family drama from her mind. All Novel Things was the perfect little bookstore, with shelves that were huddled too close together, a free tea station, and nooks that invited the reader to stay a while. Finding her own book there and imagining the other shelves and mantels it lived on in readers’ homes was a sacred experience for Ellie. Shehad started this ritual when all those first reviews came out for her TV show, calling it “pretentious and removed.”
Today, though, her book wasn’t in its usual spot.
“Hi,” she said to the bookseller at the front desk. She’d never seen him there before. “Can you help me find a book? It’sThe Compendium of Forgotten Things.”
“We used to have that one,” he told her. “I don’t think we stock it anymore.”
“Since when?” Ellie asked. She’d missed the memo on this news. There had been several copies of her book when she last visited a few weeks earlier.
The bookseller shrugged. “We’re a curated shop. We don’t really carry a lot of coffee-table books anymore.” He said it like she was asking for a BeDazzler, not a book.
“It’s not exactly a coffee-table—”
The bookseller repeated that it was a “curated” store. Ellie started to hate the word she’d used so often herself. “Coffee-table sales must really be down, huh?” she asked.
“Not really,” he said without looking at her.
“Well then,” Ellie lamented, watching him check the price on a kid’s embroidery kit. She must’ve looked silly to him. What did he think of her vintage, 1970s ocean-blue sweater with bell sleeves? He was wearing silver hoop earrings and a stylish cropped vest. He had a mullet. She needed to relearn what was trendy. The wordtrendywasn’t it. “People need something to set on their coffee table, right?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Minimalism is in. You know, less clutter.”
Clutter.
The places she loved most were now considered clutter. What if she had to watch them—slowly and excruciatingly—turn off their lights one by one? What if she’d given them a little bit of hope only to have it taken away? Ellie feared what it meant for them, and her, to become irrelevant.
Ellie tried not to show Drake how heartbroken she was when she came home that evening. She adored their new, old home. Their blue-gray house was snugger than most Queen Anne styles and was “completely falling apart,” as Drake put it. Despite his assessment, she could tell he secretly loved all the home improvement projects it required, the storied architecture, and the wraparound front porch where she often found him sitting in the mornings before work. When they first toured the house, he insisted it would be difficult to find modern hardware to go with a structure built in the early 1900s. Still, he surprised her by suggesting they place an offer on it a few days later. Ellie thought the house looked like a castle, the curved windows in her office, the high tower with a spired roof.
Drake waved at Ellie when she walked inside. The phone was curled under his neck as he unpacked a box of glassware. Three months into the unpacking, they still had random boxes waiting to be opened. Ellie enjoyed the intentional process of holding each item to discover where it wanted to live. Drake was eager to put everything in its place as quickly as possible.
“No, Mom.” He chuckled. “It’s not calledhaunting. It’sghosting.” He looked at Ellie and pretended to take a sip out of a pint glass before setting it on the floor. “Because they’re two separate things. Haunt is what a ghost does. Ghost is when a living person stops responding.” These simple moments Ellie sometimes caught between Drake and his parents on the phone—snippets of him explaining modern pop culture or engaging in nonsensical debates— underlined what she was missing in her own family. “Anyway, I’ve got to go, Mom,” he said. “Ellie is home.”
