Winter Jacket: Finding Home by Eliza Lentzski

team.”
    The girl—a cute redhead with a freckle-specked nose and dark sapphire eyes—stepped into the room.
    “Elle, meet Sonja the intern,” Troian introduced. “Elle’s taking over for Derek on the writing staff.”
    “Intern,” I echoed. “Does that mean you’re a student?”
    Sonja bobbed her head. “I’m in grad school at UCLA—in their Master’s program for film studies. I’m an aspiring writer, or director, or cinematographer. I haven’t decided yet,” she said with a shrug. “That’s why I’ve got this internship.”
    “But not an actress?”
    “God, no. Have you seen these freckles?” She crossed her eyes and wrinkled her lightly freckled nose. “They don’t translate well on screen. That’s why I’ll be staying behind the camera. Way behind.”
    “Doris Day had a face full of freckles,” I noted, “and she still became one of the biggest movie stars of her generation.”
    Sonja blinked once. “Doris who?”
    I shook my head and chuckled. “What kind of riffraff did you hire, Troian?”
    My friend held up her hands. “Don’t look at me. I don’t get a say; I’m not that high up on the food chain. Which, speaking of food, I’m gonna need blueberries and a coffee refill.”  Troian tapped the side of her ceramic coffee mug with a short, polished nail. “Elle, do you need something?”
    “No. I’m good.”
    “Coffee and blueberries,” Sonja nodded. “Coming right up.”
    “That’s not the same coffee girl as before, is it?” I asked when the perky assistant left through the office door. I distinctly remembered there being a lot more eyeliner on Troian’s assistant from when I’d visited in late spring.
    “No. Sonja’s brand new. They’re only around for a year internship and then we get a new one. She’s cute though, right?”
    “I didn’t notice.”
    Troian didn’t look up from whatever she was working on. “She’s too old for you anyway.”
    “You’re hilarious,” I deadpanned.
    “Glad we’ve got that settled. It’s incestuous enough in this place without you sleeping with the interns.”
    “Plus, I have a girlfriend,” I pointed out.
    “Semantics,” she dismissed. She reached into a deep drawer in her desk and pulled out a stack of paper.
    “‘Girlfriend’ isn’t semantics,” I protested.
    “Save your word smarts for the job.” The mountain of paper thumped on the desktop.
    “What’s that?” I was almost afraid to ask.
    “Your homework. They’re scripts for episodes seven through twelve, and they suck.”
    I grabbed one of the top stacks and began to flip through its pages.
    “We’ve been writing nonstop since you decided to come out here and we’ve got six solid episodes in the can, but now the other writers are stuck. Tapped out. Everything is derivative. Nothing but clams. I need you to look over what they’ve got and see if you can breathe some new life into it. No pressure, but I need your unbiased eye.”
    “Can I take them home or are these top secret and can’t leave this trailer?” I asked.
    Troian pushed out a long breath that ruffled the hair framing her thin face. “You can start a bonfire with them for all I care.”
    “That bad?”
    “They’re not bad, per say, just not very good, which is why we’re slammed with re-writes. They want to go over another table read of episode seven by the end of the next week. Think you can punch up that script by then?”
    I picked up the hefty stack of paper. “Yeah, but I’m gonna need a raise.”
    As staff writer, I was technically low person on the totem pole. I was expected to do everything that the others on the writing staff did—pitch story ideas, read and make notes on scripts, go to all run-throughs, re-writes, and shooting days—I was just paid less than the other people sitting around the writer’s table.
    “Good.” Troian stood from her desk and grabbed her cell phone and some of the script copies. “Now that we’ve got that settled, let’s go meet the rest