Old Carrie Fisher is way more entertaining than young Carrie Fisher. She takes off her shoes on Craig Ferguson's show, and they're just silly, talking, and that's her JOB. So weird.
But anyway, watching talk shows is a weird not Julie like thing to do, but it kills the 20 minutes of exercise and it's funny.
So I had gotten the kids to school, done the exercise, trained the new horse and played with the old horse, gotten 100 year old Poppa up, washed/dressed/fed, and just sat down to start writing the new thing I'm working on, converting an old script I wrote to a novel. Then the phone rings and it's Lou, my old boss.
"Juliet." He says, with that actory, urgent throaty voice.
"Lou," I say, straightening up. "Oh my God, wait, let me put on a tie," I say, deferring to his greatness.
"JJ, the rain is coming. I'm worried about my gutters. Do you have any free time today?"
I look at my legs in pjs, the three hours ahead of writing vs Lou. I think of the bank account.
"I can come right now," I say.
I dispatch myself to Burbank, after putting on sturdy sweatpants and an extra sweatshirt, the one with the front pocket where I washed my new phone. I stick my old phone inside, take a plate of cut up pears (that I cut up) and some fresh laid eggs for Lou (that I did not lay).
Big blue sky not like Los Angeles, like somewhere wide open like Wisconsin, so in my mind passing cow fields and talking to my friend Netty on the phone. She's in an actual office, like an office job, which if you knew her is like Tinkerbell taking out the trash or something. Sparkly meets death. But anyway.
I get to Lou's and he answers the door in a puffy jacket because his house is freezing but it looks like he got a haircut. I tell him "I'm on the phone!" like I'm a bigshot and I whisper "let me get the ladder" but he points where it is and the blower and he takes my pears, already eating them and I'm on the roof, finishing my phone call where we're talking about something stupid like mapping out our futures, with my hands in gutters. I pretend I'm a very old lady when on the roof to remind myself not to trip and fall and tumble down into hedges. I picture it many times while wielding the leaf blower and feeling like a powerful underpaid immigrant man.
At some point my phone falls out of my pocket on the edge of the roof but I do NOT lunge for it and death. So phone goes down like phone before it, and I hope for the best.
I get down and climb ladder and dig hands in wet mushy gutter and this job is just like working with Poppa. Hands in wet mushy stuff, digging it out, throwing it down. I am in fact, well trained. What comfort to know what you are doing, and to be able to relax. Joyful, in fact.
I find my phone in the bushes, victory. Phone still has familiar phone face. I set the ladder up in the last place not fixed by me, and have to tunnel through the spidery branches of a pink blossomed tree to reach the last gutter. At first I'm trying not to scraped by the viney tree and then I realize, hey, I'm in the thick of a tree, with my flower friends. Look at my company.
It's like being at a wedding.
Lou calls me in and says it's chilly, have a cup of joe, so I go in and he says rinse off your hands, so I go do that, putting the ladder away, coiling up stuff, and dawdling a second because dawdling is the only time doorways get any attention.
Then I go out in the hippyish yet "formal" living room and Lou has set out tea mugs and a plate of biscuits and he's sitting in the comfy chair next to the couch where we never sit, and he never puts out food and drink, and I look at him and say
"Am I fired?"
And he says, "Have a seat!"
So I sit in my dirtyish pants on the cushy couch in the emptyish room and suddenly I'm totally laughing because yes, here I am, on a talk show.
Might as well go for it. I'm pretty sure he's the host because he's the established older rogue actor, and I'm the girl from the ladder with flowers for friends. I drink my tea which is usually plain black and he must've put honey in it because it is nasty but I try and think he's helping me, it's good for sore throats if I had one, so I swallow it cringing but he's so nice to have me on his SHOW, so he starts talking about Marty Landau and the Actor's Studio, where he teaches and we're off talking about breath and tone and Mamet and John Malkovich and writing and directing, and he's asking what's your next project, and I'm killing it this is my best appearance so far, I try his biscuits which he admits did not come out right and while he's talking I put it in my sweatshirt pocket to save it for the chickens.
I get time to enjoy him, we sit and talk like we never sit and talk, he's always at his computer usually and I'm never sitting, always putting something away, or organizing or on a ladder in the garage or decorating for Christmas or cleaning out a cabinet. This is the new year, and this is the beginning of weird new things.
Like watching talk shows and then suddenly -- being a surprise guest.
And then he hands me a check and sends me home early, to the farm. And the children.
So I can write tomorrow.
