The phone sat at the edge of the desk like a relic pulled from the sea, a rotary dial, scuffed plastic, coiled cord wrapped twice around itself. James stared at it for a while before picking it up. Not because he didn't know what to say. Because he knew exactly what kind of voice he needed to use.
He dialed slowly. The hum of the line came alive, distant and analog, then clicked as it connected.
"Hello?" Her voice came in gently, layered with surprise and a quiet readiness to worry.
"Hey," James said. "It's me. Just wanted to check in."
A pause, then relief. "James. I was starting to wonder if you remembered we existed."
"I know. Sorry. Things have been… fast."
He heard the creak of a chair on her end. Probably the kitchen, next to the window. She always sat by the window when she was anxious. The light there was softer.
"Well," she said, "you left with a suitcase, and then not a word. I assumed either film school swallowed you whole or you found a way to blow the inheritance on magazines and jellybeans."
"I haven't spent a dime on jellybeans."
"Ah, so it's magazines, then."
He smiled. "Actually, no. I've been meeting with a lawyer. I'm starting something. A company."
The silence tightened, but it didn't snap. "A company."
"Yeah. Small. I want to make movies. Independently."
Another beat of quiet. Then, softer: "You always said you would. You were ten years old, sitting on my living room floor with a notebook and a black crayon, telling me you were gonna make a movie someday."
"I was a little dramatic."
"No, you were determined. That's different."
James shifted the phone to his other ear, glancing down at the open envelope on the desk. Inside, the letterhead read: Reiner & Company – Estate Law. The appointment was in two hours.
"You sure you don't need anything?" she asked. "Groceries, or detergent? I could bring."
"I'm good, really. I'm eating fine."
"And you're being safe? Burbank's not exactly a crime-free paradise."
"I haven't been mugged yet."
"Yet."
There was affection in her sarcasm. Not forced. Earned.
"I just wanted to call," he said. "Didn't want you thinking I'd disappeared."
"I didn't think that," she replied. "But I worry. I raised you long enough to earn the right."
"I know," he said quietly. "Thanks."
"Well… call again soon. Even if it's just to lie and say you're eating vegetables."
"Promise."
They hung up without a goodbye. They never said goodbye. Just a mutual understanding that the conversation paused, never ended.
James set the phone down, not gently, but not abrupt. Then he took a slow breath, straightened the folder under his arm, and walked out the door.
The lawyer's office was six blocks east, past two gas stations, a pawn shop, and a funeral home. It didn't matter what the sign said outside Reiner & Company or Law Offices of Daniel Reiner.
The building looked like every other sun-faded, tired structure in Glendale. Brick with brown trim. Old window blinds that didn't quite close. And a parking lot that smelled like hot tar.
Inside, the walls were yellow with age, and the carpet was patterned in a way no one had ever chosen on purpose. A secretary with big glasses and long nails led him down a hallway into a cramped room stacked with legal pads and ashtrays. Daniel Reiner sat behind a desk that looked like it had outlived four wars.
"You're the Rowan kid?" the man asked without looking up from his paperwork.
"Yes, sir. James."
"You've got good timing. I was just looking over the trust renewal for your January disbursement." Reiner finally looked up, squinted, and motioned for James to sit. "So what's this about starting a company?"
James sat, posture perfect. "I want to open an independent film production company. Using the trust. I'm here to get it done properly."
Reiner blinked once, then reached for a legal pad. "You got a name?"
"Fantasy Pictures."
Reiner's pen stopped just short of the paper. "That sounds like something from a brochure."
James met his eyes evenly. "It's going to be a real company."
The older man grunted. "Well, hell, kid. You want to make movies, make 'em. Let's talk about what you're gonna need. And what it's gonna cost."
James didn't smile. He didn't blink. He just listened as the man began to speak in terms of forms, licenses, bank records, mail handling, tax ID numbers, and business structure classifications. Words like sole proprietorship, federal EIN, and liability protection spilled out in quick succession, each with a price tag and a processing window.
The notes came quickly, but the timeline came slower. Paperwork. Appointments. Verifications. What James had assumed might take days was clearly going to take weeks. At least.
But he didn't flinch. Didn't shift. He kept writing until the pen started to feel warm in his hand.
He wasn't directing yet. Wasn't even writing. But this was what building looked like Paper and ash.
The weeks passed the way paper yellows slowly, imperceptibly, until you notice the corners curling.
It began with a clipboard. Reiner had handed it to him during their second meeting without fanfare. "You want to make this thing real, here's what you're looking at," he said, tapping a yellow sheet with a chewed-up pen. "Legal structure, tax forms, bank registration, address on file, phone number, everything stamped and filed. The IRS doesn't take promises."
James took the clipboard like it weighed something. Later that night, he laid it flat on his desk and stared at the checklist for an hour without touching it. Not because he was overwhelmed, but because he knew exactly what every step meant: a tether. To the system. To the world. To this life.
He moved methodically, one errand at a time.
Office space came first. He walked Burbank for days, checking corkboards in shop windows and handwritten signs taped to door glass. One landlord tried to rent him a condemned florist's closet for two hundred a month. Another asked if he was "running porn or politics." James left both without argument.
On the twelfth day, he found it a squat, two-story building tucked between an electrical supply store and a barber shop. The rental office was quiet, the air stale with carpet cleaner and someone's lingering cologne. The space itself was small but still had two rooms a toilet and small kitchen space, and nothing special. A frosted window, a mismatched desk, a phone jack with two dead spiders curled in the socket.
But the price was right: $120 a month, cash only, no lease term beyond first and last month up front.
The landlord, a tall man in a brown cardigan with one eye slightly off-center, barely glanced at him. "You planning to live in it?"
"No. It's for a business," James said.
"What kind of business?"
"Film production."
The man blinked. "You're in movies?"
"Trying to be."
"You sell anything dangerous?"
"No."
"You got a phone?"
"Not yet."
The man handed him a key. "Then I don't care what you do."
Next came the post office a corner storefront off Victory where retirees argued with clerks over stamps and box sizes. James filled out a PO box application under the name Fantasy Pictures and paid for six months in advance. The woman behind the counter handed him a stack of mail-forwarding forms and said, "If you get any fan letters, I want a signed headshot."
He smiled. "Deal."
The bank, though that was the beast.
Reiner insisted on a dedicated business account. No mixing funds. "You want this to look clean to the IRS, you treat your company like it's not you," he said.
James set an appointment. He wore a collared shirt and carried every document Reiner had told him to bring: trust papers, license, company registration, proof of address. The bank lobby was quiet when he arrived, all brass fixtures and the faint smell of ink and cologne. A manager named Janice met him after a fifteen-minute wait.
She was polite, mid-forties, and visibly confused as soon as he shook her hand.
"You're… Mr. Rowan?" she asked, glancing at the file.
"Yes, ma'am."
"And you're eighteen."
"Yes, ma'am."
She opened the file folder, reading through his documents. Her eyebrows twitched at the trust amount, but she said nothing.
"You're starting a production company."
"Yes."
"No business partner?"
"No."
"Do you have any prior credit?"
"No."
"Have you opened an account before?"
"My guardian opened one for me when I was thirteen, but I haven't used it in years."
She closed the folder and folded her hands.
"Look," she said, her voice low but not unfriendly, "you're clearly very organized. And you've got the paperwork, which is more than most. But I need to be straight with you, a business account this size for someone your age is going to take time. The bank will want verification. We'll have to run approvals through Sacramento, possibly D.C., depending on the amount being moved. That's going to be days, not hours."
James nodded once. "Understood. What do you need from me today?"
She hesitated, then smiled. "A signature. And a little patience."
He gave her both.
It took nearly ten days before the account was officially active. But when the call finally came and she confirmed it was open routing number, account number, the whole thing he felt the first real piece of the structure fall into place.
At night, back in his apartment, he returned to the sketches. The logo had started as idle shapes on scrap paper, but now the pencil lines were more defined. He experimented with a torch, a spire, a gate, a name written in thin serif capitals that bled into shadow.
It took nearly a month. Four weeks of slow, grinding paperwork, half-hour walks, locked office doors, waiting rooms, call-back slips, and repeating the phrase "sole proprietorship" to clerks who raised their eyebrows when they saw his age. But it all got done. And on the morning of February 2nd, 1978, James walked out of Reiner's office with a slim blue binder under his arm.
Fantasy Pictures was now a legal entity in the state of California.
Not an idea. Not a hope. Something with form and filing dates and a physical address. Something that could be taxed, sued, or invested in. James stood on the sidewalk outside the law office and let the morning sun hit him. It was warm, and the wind carried the scent of cigarette smoke and citrus from a vendor across the street. He didn't smile. But something in his shoulders relaxed for the first time in days.
He didn't go back to the office. Not yet. He went home.
The apartment was as he left it faintly dusty, window open half an inch, pages of old sketches scattered across the desk like fallen leaves. He took off his jacket, poured a glass of tap water, and sat down with the only drawing that still mattered.
He unfolded the clean version, the one he'd copied from countless pencil tests and drafts. The lines were inked now careful, even, not shaky. Centered on the page was a castle silhouette, tall and angular, more fortress than fairytale. Its towers stretched into a night-sky arch a semicircle drawn not with a perfect curve, but the slightly uneven stroke of something hand-shaped, like a wand. At its peak was a flicker a barely-there glint, like a spark just beginning to catch.
At the bottom of the semicircle, in precise black type, was a single word: FANTASY.
He stared at it for a long time. Not with pride with calibration.
He adjusted the paper on the desk, centered it under the lamp, and leaned back.
The phone sat quiet in its cradle. The mailbox was empty. The new office sat unused on the other side of town, waiting for a voice, a script, a breath of life. James didn't reach for any of it. Not yet. The page in front of him was the first breath. The rest could wait one more night.
He finished the water, closed the binder, and pinned the logo to the wall above his desk with a thumbtack.
He sat back a thought, "What to do next ?".