Work Text:
Micheltorena Stairs
1:43 PM
Diane takes another hit, releasing vapor in a slow cloud, and turns to Todd, thinking of saying something about how good some Magpie’s Softserve would be right now—or maybe it was something about smoke rings and Gandalf and pipeweed, who can be sure—but Todd’s not there.
She’s supposed to be doing research for a GirlCroosh article about the hidden stairs of Silver Lake, and Todd’s supposed to be doing product testing and creating buzz for his new line of pipe-shaped vape pens. But after passing the Hobbit-style pen around a few times they were too out of breath to go any further than Larissa Drive, so they’d just been sitting in the dirt of the curb on the cement landing, fantasizing about what foods and drinks sound the best right about now. And now Todd’s gone.
It takes her a second to realize she’s panicking. Heart racing, blood rushing in her ears, whole body clenched. Todd could be anywhere. She takes deep breaths, scrolls through her contacts with a hand that wants to clench and tense, finds his name, hits the green “call” button—but the call goes straight to voicemail.
“Hi Todd, it’s Diane, Nguyen obviously, but you can see that, you have caller ID, everyone has caller ID, so you know it’s Diane. Anyway, I was wondering where you are? You were just here on these steps and now you’re gone and I’m kinda freaking out so please come back or call me or something! This is Diane by the way!”
She pulls up her texting app next. She stares at it for some time—minutes, maybe—while her brain composes and then discards a dozen different texts. “Aren’t you a writer?” she asks herself out loud, startling a possum with a baby bjorn into collapsing on the ground in a motionless heap.
By the time Diane has typed and sent, where r u?, the possum is back on her feet and scampering up the painted stairs. She’s past the six steps decorated to form a heart, onto the chalky pastel ones now. Pale green, marshmallow yellow, baby blue.
There’s a hopscotch diagram painted onto the pavement on the landing in front of her. An alligator in a Fallout Koi tee is watching his kid, no older than six years old, jumping along the tiles. He’s avoiding stepping on the large seam in the concrete. The squares of the diagram are three different shades of blue. Diane knows the name for each one: arctic; sapphire; cobalt. She knows the words to describe many things, but not the ones to connect to the people around her.
Her next instinct is to call Bojack. Bojack used to know things like where Todd would be at a given moment. Her mind conjures her contact photo for him—which for some reason is that old snapshot of him sneezing, though she can’t remember changing it from the cover of the Season 1 VHS boxset of “Horsin’ Around.” But Bojack’s in rehab, and does she really want to talk to him, anyway? Of course not.
She already knows who she’s going to have to call instead, but she tries Princess Carolyn first, just in case. The line rings, and rings, and rings, for so long that the phone disconnects the call.
Well, she tried.
Muddy Paw Coffee Company
1:55 PM
Diane is in front of a coffee shop on Sunset Boulevard, clutching two iced Americanos, when she sees Mr. Peanutbutter’s cyan Maserati rolling toward her. He has his head out the window, his tongue lolling out, the breeze in his face, his sunglasses uselessly pushed onto his forehead. His eyes are half-closed in enjoyment. He looks beautiful like that.
He also looks like an idiot.
The car pulls up and she hears the click of the doors unlocking. She gets in, sets the coffees in the cupholders, tucks some hair behind one ear, and says, “It’s really unsafe to drive like that, you know.”
She’s not sure if she’s trying to pick a fight or what. But Mr. Peanutbutter must be in a good mood because he just grins and says, “But it’s so much fun! I can smell everything this way, you should try it.”
Diane chuckles a little despite herself. “Maybe I should drive.”
“But you don’t know where we’re going!” This is true, and he’s already rolling up the windows and turning on the air conditioning, his eyes on the road ahead of them.
“Where are we going?” she asks, looking out the passenger window and trying not to notice that one of his ears has flipped inside out.
“There are some places Todd and I have talked about going, I thought I’d check out some of those, some of his favorite places, see if anyone has seen him.”
They seem to be headed in the direction of Mr. Peanutbutter’s favorite sporting goods store, though, the one that has the best tennis balls, so she says, “Todd’s favorite places, or your favorite places?”
He’s still smiling, and his voice is pleasant, upbeat, as he says, “Todd’s of course. You asked for my help finding Todd, right? That’s what I’m doing!”
Okay. She can do this. She can hang out with her ex-husband and pretend to be pleasant. She can be an adult. “Right, of course. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome!”
God, his voice is so cheerful. And his stupid ear is still flipped over.
The silence drags on. Palm tree after palm tree scrolls past the window.
“So, um,” she says at last. “How’s Pickles?”
“She’s great! She says hi, by the way.”
“That’s… nice.” She looks at her hands folded in her lap. “Uh, I say hi, too.”
“Great! I’ll tell her.”
Quiet again. Just the sound of cold air from the vents, the chatter of the city outside.
They pass a bistro where the two of them went on a date once. They’d gotten into an argument about the meaning of the word succulent—spurred on by the vertical plant installation that covered one wall—and then gone home and had energetic make-up sex on the couch in the TV room.
“How’s your apartment?”
“Oh, it’s great!” Diane says immediately. She wonders if she sounds like she was just thinking about having sex with him, if it shows on her face. “Really great.”
“That’s great!”
“Yeah! I got a new throw pillow.” It had been a freebie from GirlCroosh, but it’s still a new throw pillow. It’s covered in sequins and emblazoned—incomprehensibly—with the slogan Beat, Slay, Dove.
“Great!” Mr. Peanutbutter says heartily.
Diane takes a drink from her coffee. The slurping sound her straw makes seems unbearably loud in the little car.
It’s not quite as long before Mr. Peanutbutter speaks again, she thinks. The pause was almost brief enough to not be awkward. “We tried making peanut butter and pickle sandwiches,” he volunteers.
“Oh?”
“You know, because of our names!”
“How were they?”
“Terrible! Those flavors don’t go together at all.”
Diane’s mouth quirks up into something that’s almost a smile. “That’s too bad.”
Old Zoo Picnic Area, Griffith Park
2:08 PM
“We should have brought a picnic!” Mr. Peanutbutter says brightly, at the same time that Diane says, “This place is creepy.”
Their eyes meet, and then they both laugh. “Seriously though,” she says. “Why would Todd want to go to an abandoned zoo?”
“PB Living was trying to acquire it to turn it into a co-working space and night spa,” he replies, sticking his head into an artificial cave. Diane’s not sure how purchasing part of Griffith Park was supposed to work, but can imagine that a night spa is meant to be a counterpoint to a day spa. “Just imagine that these picnic tables are massage tables!”
The picnic tables are thick concrete, and look cold and bleak, so it’s still not really a pleasant image. They’re in a blocky cement grotto that she thinks might have once been a bear enclosure. It reminds her of 1960’s Star Trek, of styrofoam rocks, of movie and TV sets she’s been on—she almost expects to turn around see craft services. God, she’s been on so many sets. How is this her life?
She looks over at Mr. Peanutbutter. He’s given up any pretense of searching and is doing cartwheels on an open patch of pavement.
“I can’t believe people still think zoos are acceptable,” she says, turning to inspect a metal cage.
“Oh c’mon, they’re fun! And educational!”
“We might as well be touring an abandoned prison.” She represses a shiver.
“Like Alcatraz?”
“Well, I guess so,” she admits. She’s still not sure when Mr. Peanutbutter is actually drawing a thoughtful parallel and when he just stumbles into saying something insightful. Her judgment on the matter varies depending on how charitable she’s feeling. “Let’s go, I don’t think Todd is here.”
She looks up and Mr. Peanutbutter is standing right in front of her. She hadn’t heard him come back over to her part of the grotto. The afternoon sunlight behind him backlights him in a golden halo. His eyes are very bright and very large.
Without thinking she reaches for his face. He reaches for her at the same time and their arms get tangled together.
“Oh, sorry—”
“I was—”
“—I just—”
“—going to say—”
“It’s your ear,” she says finally. He tilts his head at her. She points. “It’s inside-out.”
He rights himself and flicks his ear back to rights. “Oh! Thank you.”
She shuffles her feet, scrapes one shoe across the pavement. “Um, let’s try the next place.”
Yamashiro Hollywood
2:42 PM
“I think this restaurant is closed right now,” Diane says, peering out the window of the parked car.
“It is,” Mr. Peanutbutter says, with that always-smiling radio DJ voice of his. “We’re not going to the restaurant.”
She tamps down on something that isn’t quite disappointment. Mr. Peanutbutter had taken her to a wedding at Yamashiro once. They’d been dropped off at the foot of the hill and tried to race each other up the stairs. After the ceremony they’d sneaked out to the Japanese-style gardens. The night was lit by crimson paper lanterns and string lights. He’d pushed her against a red-painted railing and they’d necked like teenagers.
Now they’re here in the glare of daylight, wandering through the manicured topiary and perfectly curved ponds. Like so much of LA, it’s completely fake. The main building was supposedly based on a real palace in Yamashiro province, but in reality, the architecture is a mishmash of Japanese, Chinese, and pan-Asian elements. She’s pretty sure no one involved with the project, back at the turn of the 20th century, was actually Japanese. The brothers who commissioned the project were German-American.
She starts composing a GirlCroosh article in her head about cultural appropriation and LA landmarks. If she turns it into a listicle, it could get a decent number of hits, so if she goes to Chinatown for those soup dumplings she’s always craving, she could probably claim they’re a business expense and get Stefani to reimburse her.
“Over here!” Mr. Peanutbutter calls.
She follows his voice past the golden Buddha statue to the section of paved garden where Mr. Peanutbutter is crouched.
“What is that?”
“This is what Todd wanted to see,” Mr. Peanutbutter explains. “Isn’t it neat?”
“Oh, wow.” It actually is really neat. Among the trimmed trees and tidy hedges and slabs of undulating concrete is a section of greenery crammed with miniature plants, figurines, seashells, and delicate formations of driftwood and stones.
“This guy who lives in the neighborhood set it up as a shrine for a friend of his who died,” Mr. Peanutbutter explains. “Look, there’s a little Godzilla!”
“Is that a tiny samurai?” She bends over to take a closer look.
Mr. Peanutbutter picks up a toy soldier and starts crab-walking it toward the samurai. “Watch out, me and my army buddies are gonna getcha!”
“We shouldn’t mess up the shrine,” she says, but before she knows it, she and her militia of snail shells and tiny plastic dinosaurs are engaged in an elaborate battle to protect their driftwood fortress from Mr. Peanutbutter’s army of fake bugs and toy cars. It ends in a tentative ceasefire when they have to stop and fight off a rampaging Godzilla and Mothra.
The Echo Park Time Travel Mart
3:42 PM
“Oh,” Diane says when she sees where Mr. Peanutbutter is leading them. “Todd likes this place?”
“He built a robot a while ago but it didn’t turn out how he’d hoped,” Mr. Peanutbutter explains, opening the door to the shop for her, “and I told him they have Anti-Robot Fluid here!”
“You know time travel isn’t real, right?” she asks, pushing her glasses up on her nose. She’s pretty sure he does know that, but she’s distracted. She used to volunteer at the literacy tutoring center that’s also housed in the storefront, then ghosted them when she got busy dating Mr. Peanutbutter, and she doesn’t want anyone more dedicated to the nonprofit to recognize her and tell her off for abandoning them.
“It sure is fun though!” Mr. Peanutbutter replies cheerfully, eagerly inspecting a plaid can labeled Mammoth Chunks.
It becomes quickly apparent that Todd isn’t there, but Mr. Peanutbutter wants to do some shopping. He ends up getting every available type of pre-packaged robot emotions—“for Todd’s robot”—and a t-shirt for himself that says Future Adult. Instead of trying to figure out whether this is a case of irony of self-awareness, Diane smiles at the guy ringing them up and says, “Hey, we’re looking for our friend, Todd. He’s a human, yay high, yellow beanie, red hoodie?”
“Oh yeah, I know Todd.” The guy is an aardvark with a septum piercing. He’s chewing bubblegum, the sharp wintergreen flavor overwhelming every other scent in a three-foot radius. He blows a bubble, then pops it. “He volunteers here on Thursdays. Haven’t seen him since last week, though. Cash or credit?”
“Oh wow, thanks!” Mr. Peanutbutter says, handing over a credit card.
“Yeah, thank you,” Diane agrees. “Um, y’know, I used to volunteer here too.”
“That’s cool. Want a receipt?”
“Sure! I love receipts. You get to look at them and remember all the great things you bought, and how much you paid for them!”
“I’m going to start volunteering again,” Diane announces.
“Cool. There’s a sign-up for orientation on the website. Have a nice day.”
Diane’s already had the orientation, but she decides not to get into it.
Galco's Soda Pop Stop
4:15 PM
“Is this a store that only sells soda?”
“Yeah! Isn’t it neat?”
“And Todd said he wanted to come here?”
“Well, you know how Princess Carolyn loves that celery flavored soda—”
“I didn’t know that, actually…”
“—well this is where she gets her orders from. Todd comes here to pick it up for her sometimes.”
“Of course he does.”
“Hey, look at this! It’s John Lennon soda!”
“No, look, it’s Leninade.”
“Like John Lennon! I wonder if all the Beatles have flavors?”
“No, Lenin, like Vladimir Lenin? The Russian politician? See, it has a hammer and sickle for the logo. Which is really distasteful, actually, millions of—”
“Diane, over here! It’s a Shirley Temple in a bottle!”
“So it’s cherry soda.”
“No, it’s a Shirley Temple!”
“A Shirley Temple is just soda water with cherry-flavored syrup in it.”
“No, it’s ginger ale and grenadine.”
“Which is cherry-flavored syrup.”
“No, grenadine is made from pomegranate juice.”
“No, it’s cherries.”
“It’s pomegranates.”
“I’m telling you, it’s cherries!”
“Why is it so hard for you to believe that I know something you don’t?”
“It’s not—”
“Let’s look it up, how about that?”
“Fine, look it up!”
“Okay, I’m looking it up! Siri, what is grenadine syrup made of?”
“It says cherries, doesn’t it!”
“‘Authentic grenadine syrup is made from pomegranate juice sweetened with sugar and flavored with a few drops of lemon juice and orange-flower water.’”
“So I was wrong, sue me!”
“I don’t want to sue you, I want you to admit that I was right!”
“I said I was wrong!”
“Which means that I was right!”
“Ugh, you are such a child!”
“I’m a child? You’re the one who has to think you know everything about everything, and god-forbid there’s one thing that—”
“I don’t need to know everything—”
“—but no, you’re an intellectual, you—”
“—like there’s something wrong with being educated—”
“—like I’m the irresponsible one, when you’re the one who got high and lost our friend—”
“—you aren’t obligated to me, if you don’t want to be here, you can go back to your girlfriend, girl being the—”
“—Pickles is a great girlfriend—”
“That has nothing to do with—”
“—and what’s wrong with being young, anyway? What’s wrong with wanting to have fun and enjoy things?”
“Of course you think there’s nothing wrong with pursuing an impossible youth-obsessed ideal—”
“Not everything is about your hot takes on Hollywoo culture!”
“I’m not trying to make a hot take, I just think it’s rich for—”
“Oh, and now it’s about money!”
“Y’know what? I’m done. I’m going to go wait in the car.”
“Fine!”
“Fine,” Diane snaps.
As she storms out of the store, she hears Mr. Peanutbutter call, “Erica! Look at you, you old so-and-so. Is that real snakeskin?”
When she gets to the parking lot she remembers that she didn’t have a set of keys to Mr. Peanutbutter’s cars any more, and would have to stand out there waiting for him to come out.
LACMA
5:23 PM
They don’t say a word to each other the entire drive to their next stop. Mr. Peanutbutter is drinking a juniper berry flavored soda and Diane wishes she had thought to buy something at the soda shop. Even though it’s been more than three hours since her last hit, her mouth still feels dryer than usual. She glances at the watered-down remains of her Americano and sighs.
The sun is already setting. The weather is so mild, it’s easy to forget it’s the dead of winter. The short days are the only concession LA gives to the season. Now the sky is turning a dim periwinkle, with clouds highlighted in lavender, magenta, mauve, and apricot. Some of them are smears of cotton candy, others craggy puffs of popcorn, the rest gnarled rocks and mountains that span the horizon.
This, she has the words for. So why not for other things?
Mr. Peanutbutter parks the car and she follows him down the sidewalk.
“Hey,” she says quietly, a block later. “Are we going to LACMA?”
“Just the outside. Todd likes the lamps.”
They fall silent again. Soon they reach the art installation, an outdoor arrangement of over two hundred vintage street lamps. The rows of white lamp posts with their bright white bulbs echo the lines of the palm trees that dot the road.
“How do you know all these places where Todd wants to go, anyway?”
Mr. Peanutbutter weaves through the lampposts. He shrugs. “Just picked it up from talking to him.”
He hooks an arm around one of the posts and hops up, so he’s balanced on the curved base. He shuffles his sneakered feet along the little ledge that the decorative molding makes, so that he circles the outside of the pole. Then he leaps to the next one, landing on the ledge of that, too. He circles it, then jumps to another, then another, glee writ large over his face.
It’s already clear that Todd’s not here. They should leave. But she’s not ready for another argument, so she just watches him jump from pole to pole.
He notices her watching and turns to her with a toothy grin, the many lights reflecting in his big brown eyes. “Diane, look how long I can stay off the ground!” he calls, and continues his circling and leaping.
Diane thinks of the boy playing hopscotch on the landing of the Micheltorena Stairs, of Pickles Aplenty, of a battle between toy cars and dinosaurs being interrupted by a Godzilla attack, of Mr. Peanutbutter’s three ex-wives. She imagines Mr. Peanutbutter growing physically older and older, white fur streaking his golden coat, his voice deepened and made more authoritative with age. Beside him is Pickles, now Diane’s age, her eyes hard with malice, telling him it’s over, she wants a divorce. Then her mind supplies him with a new girlfriend, someone younger still than even Pickles is now, someone who only knows 9/11 from history textbooks and thinks that Titanic was just an old movie.
And where is Diane in this daydream? She doesn’t know. She can’t picture it. Bojack’s deck chair, maybe. An apartment in Brooklyn, or Portland, or Denver. A flat in Silver Lake. A cottage in Santa Monica. No, none of that is quite right.
Finally, Mr. Peanutbutter completes whatever roundabout circuit he was making of the lampposts and hops to the ground, bouncing on his heels. “Okay, I have one more place I can think to try. I would have gone there first, but it’s kind of out of the way.”
“How did you decide what order to go to these places in, anyway?” she asks. They didn’t exactly travel in the most efficient way, though she’s not going to point it out now. They’ve doubled back and forth across the city at least twice.
Mr. Peanutbutter starts walking back toward where they parked. He smiles and says, “I have a system. Other than this next place, I was going in order of likelihood. He’ll be at the next spot, I’m sure of it!”
“If you say so. I’m getting worried. What if he’s in trouble?”
Mr. Peanutbutter shakes his head, still grinning as he climbs into the driver’s seat. “It’s Todd! What kind of trouble could he get into?”
Various LA roads and freeways
6:31 PM
They’ve been back on the road for some time, exhausted their repertoire of small talk—Mr. Peanutbutter talked about a voice-acting gig he did recently, Diane explained a pitch she was working on, and they discussed Todd’s pipe-shaped vape pens—and stopped for gas when Diane asks how much further it is to where they’re going.
“Another half hour, I think.”
“Okay.”
“Is that okay?”
“Yes! Yes. Let’s just… find Todd.”
“Okay,” he agrees.
They lapse into silence. Diane thinks of turning on the radio, but that seems like another argument waiting to happen. She looks straight ahead at the dark road ahead, the brake lights of the car in front of them. When she glances to the right, she sees the white lines of the lane divider whiz by. Looking at those lines at night, especially in LA, always gives her the uncomfortable feeling she’s in a David Lynch film.
“I’m sorry I was an ass about the grenadine,” she says, looking straight ahead.
She thinks she sees Mr. Peanutbutter turn his head a little to look at her. “Aw, that’s okay.”
“You just—I mean. I.” She clenches and unclenches her fists. “I feel like—like I don’t know how to act around you. I don’t want to fight but I don’t want to just let things lie, either.”
“I hear your apology, I acknowledge it, I accept it, and I treasure it. And I hear that you don’t want to fight, and I feel—I also don’t want to fight. So I wonder, why do we keep fighting?”
Diane sighs and turns back to the Lost Highway-esque flash of white lines on pavement. “I don’t know.”
A few minutes later, she tries again. “I feel—I felt frustrated. I thought I was going to have a chill afternoon getting high with Todd. I wasn’t expecting to be trekking all over LA with my ex-husband. But that’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I feel” —she takes a deep breath— “I appreciate you coming out and driving me around to look for him.”
“Is that what I am?” he asks quietly. “Your ex-husband?”
“Among other things,” she says, finally turning to catch his eye. She gives him a small smile.
Mr. Peanutbutter grins back, his tongue slipping out of his mouth.
22049 Devonshire St.
7:11 PM
Diane peers at the road signs. “Is this Chatsworth? What are we doing here?”
“Yeah!”
“What are we doing here?” she asks again. “This is a residential neighborhood!”
“See that red barn over there?”
She looks where Mr. Peanutbutter is pointing. She can make out a big, dark shape that might be red. “Uh, I guess so. But what—”
“That’s where the actor who played Mr. Ed was born!”
“That’s where Bamboo Harvester was born?”
“Yep. It should be a historical landmark!”
“Why would Todd want to go there?”
“Oh, you know Todd! He’s obsessed with famous horses, just like you.”
“I’m not obsessed with famous horses—”
“Well, maybe not obsessed,” he allows. “But I mean, you wrote two books about famous horses! That’s a lot of books, Diane.”
“I guess it is,” she allows, taking a moment to relish what could be construed as an acknowledgement of her work.
They’re still several dozen yards from the barn when someone runs into the middle of the street. The glare of the headlights illuminates a red hoodie and yellow beanie.
“Todd!” she yells. It is Todd, though over his usual ensemble he has on a pair of knee-high black boots, a crimson brocade coat, and a huge, velvety hat.
Mr. Peanutbutter hits the brakes. Todd seems to realize all at once whose car it is and rushes toward a passenger door. He tries to open it but it’s locked. He tries again and pulls the handle just as Mr. Peanutbutter hits the unlock button. This happens twice more, both men growing increasingly frantic, until Todd scrambles inside.
“Drive, drive, let’s get out of here!”
Mr. Peanutbutter complies. Diane turns to get a look at Todd. “Are you… dressed as a pirate?”
Todd pulls off his eyepatch and and tri-corner hat, eyes wild. “No time to explain! A bunch of angry macaws are about to fly out of that barn, and we want to be as far away as possible when they do!”
They peel away, back toward the freeway. “I’m glad we found you, Todd.”
“Yeah.” He sighs. “How’d you know where I was, anyway?”
Mr. Peanutbutter grins. “Just lucky.”
Diane’s Apartment
8:27 PM
Diane collapses on her couch. Her head hits the sequined pillow, which she thinks is filled with buckwheat or upcycled ergonomic acrylic pellets or something else weird but environmentally-friendly. She just wants to turn off her brain, to fucking relax, but she can’t stop going over her whole afternoon with Mr. Peanutbutter. Or thinking about how if she doesn’t move soon she’s going to end up with sequins in her hair. Christ, it’s almost as bad as glitter.
Also there’s something digging into her side. She digs around in the couch cushions, trying to find what’s poking her. Finally she thinks to try her jacket pocket.
Damnit. She still has Todd’s Hobbit pipe.