Short Fiction | ‘A Hot October Day’

A hot October day, driving east on Oakwood in a fugue of rage. You know it if you’ve felt it. Anger that feels like something alive inside of you, pounding against your sternum. Brutal fantasies, the grinding of teeth. I seek solace in the streets. Noah calls, wanting to know how the assignment is coming. He knows the money isn’t great, but these are hard times for our business. “I’ve been having trouble focusing,” I say. “Since the massacre.” 

“Oh God, it’s awful, I understand. But you can’t let it get to you. You gotta keep moving.” 

“Aren’t we more about therapy and being in touch with our feelings?” 

“Someday a real tragedy might hit and knock you off your feet, save some of your writer’s block for then,” Noah advises. 

I look out the window. It occurs to me that Fairfax draws close. I will soon see the Judaica shop on my right. In an instant I decide that if the small lot obliges, I will park and put on tefillin. In the same instant I wonder if I’ve been driving to the Judaica shop all along, without knowing. 

A Jew adrift in Los Angeles finds an uncanny respite in the strip-mall Judaica shop. The soul is calmed by the bewildering inventory of gilded books and candelabras crammed into the shelves. I’ve been inside this one enough to know the shopkeeper. He’ll ask me what I’m seeking, and when I tell him I’m “only looking,” he’ll grunt and understand. He and I will both know then that I seek his knowing hand in wrapping the tefillin straps around my arm and head. As it is a mitzvah for him to help me in the ceremonial wrapping and prayer, he and I both know that he will, whether he is in the mood for it or not. 

On this day the first miracle unfolds: the parking lot obliges. I squeeze into the last remaining spot just vacated by a matte black G-Wagon with an Israeli flag waving from it. Judaica shops are opportunistic, seasonal stock dictated by the holiday calendar, and this being October of 2023, a new fold-out table has been set up inside for a display of Israeli flags and Magen David paraphernalia for sale. It is undoubtedly because of the circumstances that I find the shop to be buzzing with more customers than I’ve ever seen. Nothing sends a wayward Jew rushing to make sense of the eternal homelessness of his soul like a massacre on the other side of the world. Nothing reminds him of his eternal home like that odd ritual of wrapping straps and boxes around the arm and head.

In keeping with the circumstances, there is even a small line of wayward Jews like myself who’ve stumbled in from the hot October day, seeking tefillin. I join the line. One after another, the shopkeeper wraps straps, guides prayer. When the occasion comes, the shop resounds together in a unified Amen. 

When my turn comes, the shopkeeper asks my Hebrew name and where I am from. I do not remind him we’ve met before, that he asks me every time. I have an unplaceable feeling that he and I are as likely to never see each other again as we are to become deeply, spiritually bound; either possibility leaves little reason to interrogate anything beyond the ritual at hand. 

So the ritual is done, and like a relapsing junkie, I feel the mysterious jolt of the ancestral echo. 

After, the shopkeeper asks if I want to buy my own tefillin and I tell him, “No, thank you.” He asks if I want to donate to a cause that will send tefillin to a poor Jew in Eretz Yisrael and I tell him, “No, thank you.” The shopkeeper gives up and begins the ritual anew with the young man standing behind me. 

Back in the hot October day, I cross the blacktop toward my car, and that is when the second miracle comes to pass: I see Danny Groth across the street, on his way into Canter’s Deli, a rolled-up Hollywood Reporter in hand. 

Danny Groth is an old man known to occupy a corner booth at Canter’s from which he answers the questions of anyone willing to sit and ask. Frankly, I’m surprised he’s still alive. He didn’t look healthy when I sat across from him years ago, and he looks no healthier now. What I remember of him: Danny Groth wears sunglasses at all times, inside and out; he rips and dumps one Splenda packet after another into his iced tea and stirs with nervous devotion, as if the tides of space and time depend on it. Legend goes that he was once a power player. He rose from paparazzi to PR agent to producer and he has a Wikipedia page to prove his ascension, but I imagine he wrote the page himself. 

Seven, eight years ago, Noah egged me on to pitch Danny Groth. I had a meeting coming up with a studio, and it was Noah who told me there is no better place to eat chocolate rugelach than Canter’s and no better place to practice my pitch than in the back booth with Danny Groth as my audience. To wit, that is Danny Groth’s function: you, young hustler, with pitch or business idea or dream of any kind, may sit across from the wise sage and articulate the notion before him; Danny Groth will offer you advice through Jewish and golf metaphors and beyond. Beyond pipe dreams, I heard, many even talk out their personal affairs. Woes, marital troubles, moral quandaries. But his specialty is/was Hollywood ideation. Give him your elevator pitch, he’ll give you his read on the green. 

So, back in the 2010s, my pitch imminent, I stepped inside Canter’s with its strange autumnal faux stained-glass ceiling and smells of cured meat, and found Danny Groth at his back booth already seated with a Hollywood pilgrim. I’d been alerted to this possibility and had been told to take a seat at the small two-person booth adjacent, the unspoken waiting room. So I sat there, and as I sat, I was afforded whiffs of pastrami-mustard and a clean earshot of the conversation unfolding behind me. The young, tattooed woman seated with Danny Groth, I gleaned, was practicing her comedy routine: 

…So I’m holding my baby Emma when I remember an argument I got into with my mother-in-law about whether babies have kneecaps, and I think I should really look that up on my phone and get to the bottom of it! Problem is, I’m holding Emma, right? I only have two hands. So I do what any good mother would do and put Emma on the ottoman so I can do my Googling. I set her down and I swear it’s only been a half-second when somehow Emma—who has never shown the slightest interest in rolling, mind you—thrusts herself off the ottoman and two feet down to the well-padded carpet below. Of course, the distance of the fall and the carpet’s padding are my emphasis, not Emma’s. Emma is wailing. Like, she’s screaming a scream I’ve never heard before, shrieking bloody murder. And I realize in that moment as I scoop Emma up off the ground that I’m standing at a crossroads. Any minute now my husband will be running in shouting, “What’s wrong, what’s wrong?!” and I’ll be in a position to explain. The question, the way I see it then, is will I or will I not tell him the truth. I can simply say, “I have no idea what’s gotten into her, she’s just freaking out for no reason!” Or I can tell my husband, “I set Emma down on the ottoman because I wanted to Google whether babies have kneecaps to prove your mother wrong and she fell.” And while these possibilities are flying through my head, Emma looks up at me and says… “You let me fall you stupid cunt.” I’m shocked, of course. My baby just spoke. And what’s more, she called me a “stupid cunt.” Who taught her such language? And as absurd as it sounds, the first thing I think to say, my maternal instincts really kicking in now, is “Hey, missy, watch your language!” But before I can say a word and I’m sure my husband will be rushing in any second now, Emma tacks on, “Of course babies have kneecaps, Grandma is right.” It’s as I’m processing this that my husband finally tears in and shouts, “What’s wrong, what’s wrong?!” Emma is back to crying now, the little faker, and the only thing I can think to tell my husband is the truth: “Our daughter just called me a stupid cunt.” 

Danny Groth, who’d been chuckling at the appropriate moments over the course of the bit, offered a big-bellied laugh at the punchline. “That’s good, very good! Great delivery, great timing, not too rushed. I really love it.” 

“I dropped the whole thing with my husband’s work call.” 

“It was shoehorned in there, this is better. And you also changed ‘bitch’ to ‘cunt.’ Much better.”

 “Yeah? It’s kind of a hard word, isn’t it?” 

“Oh yes, ‘cunt’ is so much more evocative. Spiteful.” 

“Is the ‘maternal instincts’ line funny?” 

“Carrie. Stop it. Don’t change a word, you’re gonna do it tonight like you just did for me and you’re gonna have the whole room dying.” 

Danny Groth and the comedian kissed each other on either cheek like Europeans or whoever kisses each other on either cheek, and then it was my turn. I was not called upon. I never would be. I needed to take the next step myself and sit at Danny Groth’s open booth, or someone else would. 

He was ripping open a Splenda packet and dumping it into his tea without offering the slightest acknowledgment, and just as I was about to introduce myself, he spoke: “She’s funny, huh?” 

“Oh yeah,” I said, faltering, unsure if I should acknowledge my eavesdropping. 

“She’s gonna be at Jetpack tonight, she’ll crush it,” says Danny Groth. “Oh yeah, she’s going places.” He stirred his tea, tore another, dumped another, stirred some more. Right then, there was nothing more I wanted than to pitch this man and hear him say those same words about me: Oh yeah, he’s going places. Dreamers place great stock in even the subtlest hint of foretelling. Stand outside an acting class, grab an actor, read their palm, tell them that they’re destined for greatness, and then run off without a word of explanation—and that actor will drive himself into the ground and carry with him till death the memory of the gypsy who saw his destiny in his palm. 

“So,” said Danny Groth. “Who are you? What’s your story? What you got?”

“I’m a writer and director and I got a pitch for you, Mr. Groth.” 

“Danny Groth. Not Danny, not Mr. Groth, just Danny Groth. You’re fresh off the boat, aren’t you?” 

“The boat?” 

“Los Angeles. I can see it in the twinkle in your eyes. You haven’t been here long.” 

“I’m moving next month.” 

“My goodness, you’re unscathed. What brings you to Canter’s Deli a month before the big move?” 

“I’m taking meetings—” 

“Good for you! Meetings! And you’re only visiting. The water bottle tour? You direct an award-winning short or something?” 

“I’m actually pitching a film to a studio—” 

“Mazal tov! Are you Jewish?” 

“Yes, I am—” 

“Welcome! You know some Jews will try to tell you that Israel is our holy land, but it’s right here kid, so welcome, welcome home.” 

“Thank you.” 

“Now your pitch, come, please, let’s hear it.” 

“It’s a sci-fi, actually. Set a few hundred years from now—” 

“Stop, stop there. If it’s sci-fi, I don’t care if it takes place tomorrow or ten years or a thousand years from now. I want concept, character, stakes, the year is window dressing, I’m already bored. Not actually, but I’m telling you for your pitch, don’t start it with the year, it’s not a history lesson. What’s it called? Your movie, what’s the title?” 

“Yeah, so, it’s called Masada and these aliens have come to Earth and conquered humanity, because they’re basically humans but much smarter and with much more powerful weapons.” 

“Okay, I’m with you.” 

“When the aliens first landed, they conquered and divided humans into two classes, ‘Stars’ and ‘Stripes,’ and the aliens told humans that ‘Stars’ would rule over ‘Stripes,’ and they made little marks on their foreheads so they’d know who’s who, and now we’re several generations into this, into the future’s future, and at this point, humans have kept up the Stars-and-Stripes caste system even without the aliens’ help. So when the movie begins—” 

“The movie hasn’t started yet?” 

“Not yet—”

“Go on.” 

“So the aliens eventually decide that humans, both Stars and Stripes, are not worth keeping around. So they’re going to wipe them off the face of the earth. But before they ever raise a weapon, they tell the Stars it’s time to wipe out the Stripes, and what follows is a bloody civil war, man against man, and so the movie starts after this war has almost ended except for some small holdouts and skirmishes—” 

“The movie still hasn’t started?” 

“No, this is backstory—” 

“If you say so.” 

“So humanity has been broken down and now the aliens are stepping in to finish off the extermination and that’s when our movie starts. It’s 2,400 A.D. but you don’t care about that, I know, and a tribe of Stripes who’ve survived the civil war keep up their own unique religion—” 

“Are they the chosen people? That’s okay if they are! There are a lot of great ‘chosen people’ narratives besides the Jewish one. Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter.” 

“The movie doesn’t actually answer that question.” 

“Oh, bold. So tell me, what does happen in this movie?” 

“This tribe of Stripes is called the ‘Sethryn.’” 

“Sethryn, Slytherin, Sith Lord, Satan. They’re the bad guys?” 

“Not quite. The Sethryn believe it is their duty to resist the Stars, the aliens, and even all other Stripes, to the bitter end—” 

“Masada!” 

“—and bow to no god but their own, who they believe will protect them and save them when the time is right—” 

“A messianic bunch. Do the Slytherin Sith Lords have their own Jim Jones-type leader, I wonder?” 

“They do, and so the movie starts with—” 

“Here we go!” 

“—the Sethryn have taken over the castle of their former Star overlord and they’re taking cover there and then they’re basically put under siege by a big army of Stars supported by a battalion of aliens—” 

“Who look like you and me.” 

“Right. The tribe is surrounded on all sides. A bloody end is inevitable. And the Sethryn refuse to capitulate, because of their religion. But as far as comps go, I think it’s a little bit like The Purge, where there’s this ‘big idea’ world-building made a bit more contained through this siege framework. That’s the crux of the film—” 

“It sounds complicated. And it doesn’t sound like a film. I don’t even know what ‘the crux’ is in your quote-end-quote pitch.” 

“Well. It’s no more complicated than what I just told you—” 

“What you just told me was complicated, very complicated.” 

Here, I hesitated, considered my words. And then I said, “Do you think if I could distill the backstory, it would be more interesting?” 

“Could be. What happens in the end? Do they all kill themselves? Drink the Kool-Aid?” 

“Not all of them.” 

“Then why’s it called Masada?” 

“Because I like the way the word sounds.” 

“Fair enough.”

“Really, the main character is a mother. And her two children, a boy and a girl. And they’ve heard rumors of a stronger tribal resistance miles away, and while the Sethryn are planning their communal suicide in the third act, the mother must escape with her two children and outrun both her own tribe and the armies that have surrounded them in the siege.” 

“An ‘escape’ narrative with stakes. I’m leaning in, a half-inch. But it still sounds complicated. Sounds more like a graphic novel. Those are selling right now. Is there any IP?” 

“No, I made it up.” 

“Good for you. Now you gotta convince Checkbook-Man that he should write you a big, big check for this thing you made up.” 

“That’s why I’m practicing my pitch on you.” 

“All I can say is good luck. If it was my checkbook, I wouldn’t be writing any checks. I was always risk averse in my day, and it’s only become more risk averse since then.” 

“Okay. But how can I change your mind? Not your mind, but the studio’s mind. Who I’ll be pitching tomorrow.” 

“You’re not in the business of changing minds, my friend. You’re in the business of convincing Checkbook-Man of what he believes to be true, of making him feel smart. You’re in the business of making Checkbook-Man feel like your idea was actually his idea, so that when all the hundreds of writers and directors out there tell the story they made up, Checkbook-Man remembers the one that made him feel very smart and bold and, most importantly, right all along.”

I squirmed and said, “That doesn’t sound like what I signed up for.” 

“Do you see a sign-up sheet? Let me ask you a question. Do you play golf?” 

“No.” 

“Alright, forget golf, I’ll tell you a story. Kid sits across from me a few years ago, your age, studied astrophysics at Stanford and now he wants to write movies. He tells me he’s sitting down that afternoon with the head of film at Imagine and he says, ‘I have two ideas and I don’t know which to pitch.’ I say okay, let’s hear both and I’ll give you my honest two cents because that’s all I’m worth after all. Then the astrophysicist screenwriter dives into this long preamble on Pitch One about how he’s been thinking on it for a long, long time and he knows it’s a little bit involved but if you bear with him, it’ll be worth your bother. And then he dives in, in earnest, and the pitch holds up about as well as his meandering preamble. It’s this verkakte thing about I can barely remember what honestly, and I have a photographic memory, too. Seriously, I do! When I was in college, I had a sit-down with the CIA because they wanted to see if they could use me to memorize documents at local communist meetings. That’s a true story, and I’m telling you because I remember everything I see and hear, but I do have a small case of prosopagnosia which means I can’t remember faces so well, they sometimes look like a big swirling mess of eyes and noses, but if you tell me half of a pitch I heard in 1992, I’ll remember how the pitch ends. I’m telling you all this because the kid’s idea was so complex, it was either so fucking clever that I simply couldn’t keep up or it was so verkakte that my photographic memory decided it wasn’t worth the storage. It was a time-travel thing that had to do with a cave and a multidimensional-traveling astronaut who runs into a family of sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South, I don’t know, you get the point, and so at the conclusion of his pitch, I raise my eyebrows and hold my cards close and say, ‘Okay kid, let’s hear the second one.’ The second one I remember well. It was a tooth fairy horror film. And at the conclusion of his elevator pitch, he says, ‘Well which do you like better?’ And I say, ‘The second one.’ And he looks me dead in the eye like I’m trying to prank him so I say, ‘Seriously, the second one. You take that first idea, write a seven-hundred-page novel, but do not pitch that anywhere until your name is Christopher Nolan.’ Then the astrophysicist screenwriter gets very haughty and tries to convince me why I’m wrong and I say, ‘Stop. Kid. Save your breath, I don’t need convincing. You don’t like my advice, don’t listen to me, do whatever you want.’ He says, ‘Okay, I’m pitching the first one,’ and then he tears off. No problem. Couple of weeks later I see his name in the trades. He sold the tooth fairy script for seven figures.” 

At the conclusion of his story, Danny Groth signaled the waitress for a refill. I didn’t know what to say, and it seemed apparent by Danny Groth’s silence that it was either my turn to speak or to leave his table. “What’s the movie called?” I asked at last. “The tooth fairy one.” 

“It’s called wallpaper, it never got made,” said Danny Groth. “Sitting on the shelf. A tax write-off for the studio.” I guess Danny Groth could see this unexpected epilogue had moved me in some way because he then said, “Don’t worry about our astrophysicist screenwriter, he’s been working ever since. Doing some video game adaptation now. Nothing produced yet, but he’s making a handsome living as a working writer.” 

I couldn’t help myself. I had to interrogate. I said, knowing it would provoke something: “I wonder what would’ve happened if he’d pitched the astronaut. I’d rather see that movie.” 

“It’s not a choose-your-own-adventure, I’m afraid.” 

“You’ll never know what could’ve been.” 

“I think our astrophysicist screenwriter sleeps okay at night.” 

“Can I tell you a story?” I asked Danny Groth, surprised by my own boldness, or foolishness. Danny Groth looked tickled. 

“I would love nothing more than for you to tell me a story.” 

“When I was in high school, I was walking down an alley behind a liquor store, wandering, really, and I saw someone had spray painted something on the wall. It said, I wish I was who I was when I wished I was who I am now. Kinda cool, huh?” 

“Cool,” said Danny Groth, deflated, like he was expecting something juicier. 

“It struck me. And it still haunts me. Every time I find myself wandering now, I remember those words.” 

“What do those words mean to you?” I imagined Danny Groth asking me, but he said no such thing, and so I was left telling him: “I think life’s too short to not do things from the heart.” 

Danny Groth guffawed derisively and spoke: “Who said our astrophysicist isn’t doing it from the heart? Just because he’s getting paid? I’ll let you in on a secret. People don’t get paid well to half-ass things. They get paid well because they work hard, and hard work requires heart. I’m sorry if that doesn’t align with your worldview.” 

Danny Groth was starting to annoy me. His unattractive features, which had previously amplified his mystique, were beginning to repulse, beginning to stoke resentment. How can an old man so homely be so confident? With these petty thoughts coursing through me, I began to feel as exposed as the deli meats wasting away behind the front glass of this twenty-four-hour deli. 

“Let me ask you a question,” said Danny Groth. “Why do we do what we do? It is a question we must all answer for ourselves. Because there’s a lot of easier things we could be doing but we’re not, we’re here, struggling, so why do we do it?” 

“I can’t imagine doing anything else,” I said. Danny Groth looked at me for a long while, as if wanting for more. His bulbous form shifted in the booth and his face changed with it, eyeing me from behind those mirrored sunglasses as if he was able to read the truthfulness of my answer by scanning my face. “You’re afraid of death,” he concluded. 

My impulse was to challenge Danny Groth here, but I lost sight of a retort. “Isn’t everyone?” I said, unsure if I believed it. 

“Not death, dying, but Death. Death is a life without you in it. So, you want to leave something behind. A tooth fairy horror film isn’t gonna cut it. It’s gotta be aliens and zealots of the year 2,400 or bust for you, doesn’t it?” 

I was no longer entirely sure what we were talking about, but strangely, for the first time in that sit-down, I felt as if Danny Groth was upset with me, as if the loathing was now mutual. Gone was the lackadaisical, water-off-a-duck’s-back spunk. Now it was unequivocally time for me to take my leave, I thought, and just as I moved to do so, Danny Groth’s spiteful facade wilted. “So,” he announced, like coming out from a small stroke, “what else you got? Pitches. Anything else to tell the studio execs?” 

I hesitated and then answered: “I got a few things. But I’m gonna run with Masada.” 

“Good for you,” said Danny Groth. “Just don’t start with the year 2,400. Please. For all of our sake.” 

I pitched Masada to the creative executive at Lionsgate the next day. She said it sounded cool and asked me to email it her way. I sent it that same day with a little note of thanks. I followed up a few weeks later. And then I followed up a couple of more times in the weeks to come. I never spoke to the creative executive at Lionsgate again. 

I didn’t make any tooth fairy horror film sales, but I kept refining Masada, until I found a way to shoot a contained version of it on a shoestring budget, as they say, on a friend’s ranch in Utah. The film premiered at South by Southwest, and now it’s been optioned and is being adapted into a TV show at Netflix, but I have no creative involvement. I’ll get a fee if it gets a series order. 

A hot October day, I walk into Canter’s and see Danny Groth at his usual table with Splenda packets and iced tea and a well-worn Hollywood Reporter. He almost looks like a tableau, a diorama of a stuffed, extinct species at the Natural History Museum. There is no one at his booth, and I dare approach. “Mind if I sit?” 

“Please!” 

“I know you’re not good with faces, but we’ve met before.” 

“Help me remember,” says Danny Groth with a smile that seems softer, gentler, wiser than when we last spoke. 

“Masada,” I say. 

“Great title. Crisp. Evocative. At Netflix now, right?” 

“That’s right.” 

“Mazal tov.” 

“How are you?” 

“Me? Great. My swing is still butter. I can’t complain. Which is to say, I could complain a great deal but it would all be hot air because really, what’s there to complain about?” He grins, takes off his sunglasses, sets them on the table. I see his eyes for the first time. “So what brings you in?” he says, expectant, hopeful. 

“Oh, no forthcoming pitches. Just thought I might get a bite to eat, and I saw you sitting here, so.” 

Danny Groth looks briefly dejected, as if looking upon the sunset of a day he’d like to relive. I wonder if perhaps he’s no longer who he once was, if the sage allure of yesteryear has gone the way of the dinosaur. 

“I was actually at Atara’s, putting on tefillin. Something about the moment,” I say. 

“Yeah?” he says disinterestedly, losing a bit of his charm in having discovered I am not explicitly there to see him, to seek his wisdom, his two cents. 

“The massacre,” I say. “I don’t do it regularly, I don’t even know how. But the massacre made me feel like doing something.” 

“Ah, well a mitzvah should be done in times of joy and hardship. I’m sure the Tribe of Sethryn would tell you the same.” 

I am dumbfounded by his recollection. “Sethryn,” I repeat. “Did you see my film?” 

“No sir, I remember. I have a perfect memory.” 

He’s the real deal, Danny Groth. Maybe not always right, but he’s the first to admit it, isn’t he? Not in the business of convincing, just stating the facts and sometimes, when you solicit it, offering up his two cents. 

“I think Netflix’ll shelve it. After all that’s happened. A sci-fi inspired by historical slaughter in the Middle East might not play well in today’s market,” I say. 

“What we do lives and breathes alongside the affairs of the day,” Danny Groth opines, tearing open a Splenda packet. “We are culture-makers shaped by culture. Hollywood imitates life, and life, Hollywood.” 

“True, so true,” I say, and then I lean in with more to tell him, the back booth our confessional: “To be honest, it’s got me pretty upset. The massacre.” 

“Oh, it’s terrible. I gotta niece in Tel Aviv,” says Danny Groth, but for some reason I feel as if he doesn’t understand, as if I’m not getting through to him, or anyone for that matter. “It’s how it goes over there. They live with it.” 

“I don’t know how. I’m on the other side of the world. And I’m struggling. I’m having nightmares.” 

Danny Groth offers nothing, defiant. He slides his sunglasses back on and looks away, as if from a bad-tempered child. 

“I take it you’re not too bothered,” I say. 

“I’m not losing sleep,” says Danny Groth with a sigh. “Not over things I can’t control.” And then he looks back at me from behind his mirrored lenses and tacks on, “I learned that one from Hollywood, a long time ago.”