ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching

Book Two, Chapter 37: Art, Business, and Christy

Joshua doesn’t often talk to me of Christy, but on our walk today, he does.

“She wants me to buy the Charles Street house. Her plan is to come in after I’ve finished the repairs. She’s tired of the L. A. battlefield.”

Oops.

“If she comes to town, I’d have to buy a bed, a refrigerator, groceries. We’d fight. We fight wherever we are. I don’t want to live here. My life is in L. A.”

“What do you think, Joshua?”

“I’ve already signed a sales contract with Cindi. I can’t go back on that. That would not be cool. Her husband has already ordered drywall. I was at peace with my decision until I talked to Christy. . . . What do you think, little mama?”

Joshua has said he wants to rent a guesthouse in Burbank, with enough money in hand to invest in himself.

He keeps talking. “If we live here, I’d still have expenses even though I own Charles Street. Taxes, insurance, and utilities would average at least three-fifty a month. Food and gasoline’s another five hundred. I can’t find acting work here. I’d have to find a job dealing cards at a casino. Something like that. I’d be giving up unemployment compensation. Plus, I’m only five credit years away from Screen Actors Guild benefits.”

We take a seat on a bench facing the park’s tennis courts. A man wearing June bug-green biker shorts bangs a tennis ball against a backboard.

“Christy’s ready to give up her dream, but I’m not. I’m an actor. I have credentials. I can get a better agent, new headshots, a wig, whatever I need. Between shooting two independent films and coming back here for Daddy, I haven’t watered my career in three years. That’s why it’s dried up. It needs watering. Christy doesn’t even have an agent. With her, it’s all or nothing.”

A white-haired man with matching mustache, wearing baggy corduroys, strolls our way. Ernie had white hair and white mustache. He wore corduroys. His were baggy, too. This man’s walking a black dog with white muzzle and arthritic legs. The man smiles as he passes, and Joshua waves to him.

“Daddy was a true artist, but he was also a businessman. He could do both, but he didn’t let the business overwhelm the art.”

No, he didn’t. Writing was more important to Ernie than money. Money, to him, meant freedom . . . and freedom, to Ernie, meant writing.