One Chance

Tim and I sat in the filing room that doubled as our “office.” There was a dusty, metallic smell to the room and a hushed silence that hummed in my stomach. The internship was a rare one, with a real productions company, and my nervousness was renewed each day when I settled into the quiet. The silence was cut by the sound of our nearest neighbor answering the phones, acting as the gatekeeper, shifting out the telemarketers from the important executives. As the afternoon progressed, her tone would shift, the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles showing through in her voice as “May I ask who’s calling?” became “May I ask who’s calling?”

From our little office, we would lean out and talk with her, our oracle to understanding the office, as we called her, always quickly retreating to our office when we got a new assignment. It was a nice office, although cozy. Eight filing cabinets lined two walls of the room. A desk took up the third wall, and the width of the room was only enough to accommodate the door on the fourth wall. In the space that was left in the center of the room, we managed to cram two relatively nice chairs. At first, we used the chairs we had found in there. One squeaked at the slightest movement; the other had arm rests that had long ago been picked at until the jagged metal beneath poked through. Tim and I switched off on who bore the pink-and-red scratches on the backs of his or her arms until Frank, who had a profound understanding of the company that much surpassed our own brief interaction with it, noticed our predicament. We were in the midst of taping pieces of Kleenex over the jagged-- our sad attempt to spare our arms-- when he happened to walk by.

“Why don’t you take another chair?” he asked, sweeping his hand back at the cavernous space of the office where the interns didn’t venture. But for the promise of new chairs, and with Frank’s assurance that it was allowed, we were willing to wander out of our small office to the back rooms. Tim and I were wide-eyed as we softly walked through the dark rooms, past the empty desks. People once worked here. They left their papers on their desks, their sticky notes with important things to do on their walls. They had left it like a horror movie, the kind where you see people’s eyeglasses and photographs and know that they didn’t pack up and leave, they were killed in the basement and now may or may not be reanimated as the ravenous undead.

But the lure of new chairs drove us on. With childlike delight we examined the hidden treasures that we found: chairs with cushions, chairs with wheels, chairs that tipped back just enough to let you prop your feet up against the bottom rung of the desk. Frank watched in amusement as we wheeled our precious cargo back to our small filing cabinet and made the exchange. For that matter, Frank went on, why shouldn’t one of us use one of the back offices?

But that was a step too far, at least for me. I remembered the lists, filled with cryptic reminders, “Review Dog Script” and “Pick up copies.” These traces of things that must have seemed so important, once, to someone, did they ever get done? Did anyone know the difference? “Oh, it’s no problem, here,” I said quickly. I spoke for both of us, hoping that Tim would agree.

“It’s easier for people to reach us up front,” Tim said, much to my relief. “And I think it helps if we’re both together.”

And it was true. People loved leaning into the small room for anything from just checking up on us to giving us a new assignment. Halfway into our internship, our supervisor leaned into our small filing cabinet and gave us an incredible opportunity, the kind of opportunity that interns dream about while they photocopy scripts and write coverage. As though it were no significant assignment, our supervisor calmly told us to write up a pitch for a sequel to send Sony for approval. We played it cool, up until he left, and we turned to each other with barely contained excitement. Tim and I each had our own outlook on the situation. Tim chose unbridled optimism.

“This is it, Kara, this is it,” he would periodically say, pausing with his fingers frozen over the keyboard as he marveled at the opportunity. “This is our big chance, right? I just know something is going to happen.”

And my reaction? I, for my part, chose paralyzing fear. This was apparently it, the once in a lifetime chance that moves an intern from relative obscurity to being a director, or something like that. But I couldn’t see past the possibility of failure to even glimpse the chance of success. What would happen if we met with the director and turned in our pitches and were flatly, completely rejected?

The room was equipped with only one painfully outdated iMac on top of the cluttered desk, so I had my personal laptop propped up on my knees. I stared down the blank Microsoft Word document and my fingers typed, sentences and paragraphs unfolding in a muddled tangle that was so heavy with self-doubt that I could feel the weight of it in each line. The hours scampered by, and so did the drafts. I made and discarded a handful of ideas, then went over the old ones until I found one I was satisfied with. I changed it around, simplified it, shortened it and then stretched it out, uncertain of something even as simple as the length. I adjusted margins and font size. I played with the title. And all the while, I made myself sick thinking about the consequences of a wrong decision. Los Angeles is a make-you or break-you town, and I had a feeling I was about to be broken.