We’re at a North Hollywood McDonald’s, our fingers greasy from French fries, on my first unsupervised visit. My car won’t start and I’m afraid to call my son’s mother. Instead, I’m telling him about the movie I’m going to write. “It takes place in the future.”

“Outer space?” His eyes light up. His shirt has a spaceman-dinosaur windsurfing on the rings of Saturn, a smear of ketchup on the sleeve. 

“Well, yes and no.” My movie is set entirely on an uninhabited planet. No shots of strange ships blazing between stars. No scenes of brave space repairs, lives floating on a string. Not even a scene of an earthbound ship crashing into a hazy atmosphere. “It’s more of a character study. They’re miners. A father and a son.”

“What are they mining?”

“Well, they need minerals for rocket fuel.  They’re stranded. They need to get back to their home planet.” 

He thinks about this. “Are there monsters in your movie?”

I look at him with his Happy Meal. “Well, there’s climate change, which is a systemic monster.” My son wants to go to the Lego store, and I can’t afford it. But this movie could change everything for us. 

Goodbye, one-bedroom on Victory Boulevard. So long, instant ramen. 

“Can I be in the movie?”

“If your mom lets you.”

But who am I kidding? I’ve never written anything, not a movie—I can just hear his mother—not a child support check, either. Whenever I sit down to write my screenplay, I see nothing. Hear nothing. Feel nothing. No characters, no uninhabited planet, even. Just blankness. 

“Do they fix the ship?” my son asks. 

“They fix it together.” 

“And go back to their home planet?”

My teeth hurt. I failed my drug screen again, and I’m not sure what will happen. I reach over my son’s Happy Meal and put my arm on his shoulder. And now I have another idea. A good one.  This movie takes place right here, on earth. The man is a new father, like I was. He has a nice family. A decent car that starts every time. But he has a gambling problem and a drug habit. It’s more about drugs than the gambling, but the gambling is a close second. The father tries the best he can. He tries and tries.

One day it clicks. He quits the drugs and stops the gambling. The car starts. I want to tell my son about this other movie, but outside the McDonald’s, my piece-of-shit car sits waiting for a tow, and the characters dissolve into the North Hollywood heat, leaving me with nothing but the smell of grease and the quiet sound of a boy waiting for a miracle.