Winter Jacket: Finding Home by Eliza Lentzski Page A

like yourself shouldn’t have to pay to see girls take off their clothes.”
    I didn’t know how to react to Sonja’s words, and she’d said it with such a serious face, I didn’t know if she was teasing me or being overly friendly. “I suppose I can just ask the Internet.”
    “You could do that,” she confirmed, “or you could check out a bar called the 323. It’s named after an LA area code. Some of the girls I work with split their time between professional partiers and dancing there. There might be some other gay-friendly clubs around, but I know that the 323 has a weekly ladies’ night with female dancers.”
    “323,” I repeated, committing the name to memory. “I’ll check it out. Thanks for the tip.” I glanced once at the screen of my phone and noted the time. “I should probably be getting back. I have a phobia about being late,” I unnecessarily added.
    “And I’ve got to bring these scripts to the casting director,” she said, standing from the table. “They’re auditioning guest spots next week. You know, in case you ever thought about being an actress,” she said with an exaggerated flutter of her eyelashes.
     
     
    After lunch, I stopped off at the bathroom to wash my hands. I was just finishing up when I heard what sounded like sobbing coming from one of the toilet stalls. I bent over to see a single pair of black combat boots in the last stall.
    I knocked lightly on the closed door. “Is everything okay in there?”
    The crying abruptly stopped. “I’m fine,” a voice sniffled.
    The toilet flushed, and I stepped backwards when the door creaked open.
    Aviva, one of the writers on my team, stepped out of the bathroom stall. She was a petite woman and only came up to my shoulder; everything about her was small except for the thick-framed glasses perched precariously on her nose. Her stick-straight hair reached the small of her back, and thick black bangs cut across her forehead.
    She walked stiffly towards the row of faucets and began to wash her hands. She avoided her own reflection, but I could tell her brown eyes were red rimmed and swollen.
    I lingered in the bathroom, unsure if I should leave her alone, or if I should continue to pry into her well-being.
    She spoke before I could make a decision: “I heard this kind of thing happened; I just never thought it would happen to me.” Her chin and bottom lip trembled with barely contained emotion.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked again.
    “A Page One Re-write.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m still new to this; I don’t know what that is.”
    Aviva pursed her lips and finally regarded herself in the vanity mirror. “Troian told me to open the script to page one and start re-writing.”
    “The only good writing is re-writing,” I routinely replied. It was something I’d always told my students.
    “Re-write. Every word,” she said flatly.
    “Wait. Every word?” I echoed.
    Aviva tore off some paper towel and dried her hands. She crumpled up the waste in her fist and threw it into the trash receptacle with unneeded force. “Welcome to Hollywood.”
    I ran into Troian outside of the writer’s trailer. Sonja flanked her side, no longer burdened by the heavy stack of scripts.
    “Did you really tell Aviva to re-write her entire script?” I demanded.
    Troian’s eyebrows crunched together. “I just told her over lunch. Geez,” she remarked, “I knew gossip traveled fast on set, but I didn’t think it was that fast.”
    “I found her crying in the women’s bathroom.”
    “Oh.” Troian cleared her throat uncomfortably and threw a furtive glance in Sonja’s direction. To Sonja’s credit, she knew without being asked to make herself scarce.
    “It happens sometimes,” Troian continued when Sonja was out of earshot. “But it’s not personal. You know how it is; you can’t get attached to your writing. They’re just words on a page, not your first born child.”
    I loathed the peer editing