Everything Leads to You (13 page)

I’m trying to listen to what Rebecca’s telling us but the list of tasks are swirling through my brain and soon I’m feeling sick. I guess it shows because Charlotte leans over to me and whispers, “You can freak out later, but not until we’re in the car.”

I nod and swallow and Vicki hands me a platter covered in cheese and fruit and little slices of bread, but I pass it to Charlotte without taking anything. All I keep thinking is seven weeks, fifty-two garage sales, and sixteen estates; that’s what it took to find
one
sofa. And now I have fewer than four weeks before our first day of shooting, when Juniper’s apartment needs to be entirely finished and George’s house needs to be well underway.

And I’m wondering what I’m doing sitting here when I should be in West Hollywood begging to borrow plants, or searching for artwork to hang on Toby’s walls, or ordering wallpaper for George’s kitchen. They’re talking about renting lights, what kinds they’ll need, what day they should get them. They’re talking about the camera and the lenses and the style of cinematography. None of this has to do with me, and all I can think of is how I will barely have enough money to buy the wallpaper, which means I’ll need to put it up myself, and that if I mess up I won’t be able to afford more panels.

Then the door swings open, and like an answer to all of my worries, Morgan strides in.

“Hey, you made it,” Rebecca says, and I feel Charlotte stiffen next to me, and for once I’m not wondering if Morgan wants me back and am instead wondering how much I will be able to get her to do for me.

Morgan perches on the edge of the sofa.

“One liner?” she asks, and Rebecca hands her the schedule. She glances at it and nods.

“Morgan’s going to help us out when she can,” Rebecca says. “Mostly she’ll be helping you, Emi.”

I nod and blush because around the others I can act like I know what I’m doing, but Morgan knows how inexperienced I actually am. I don’t know why she recommended me for this.

When the formal part of the meeting is over, Charlotte leaves to ask Rebecca about details—how we’ll transport furniture, whether we can thank people who donate set elements in the credits, that sort of thing.

I ask Morgan if we can talk outside and she says sure and follows me out to the jungle patio.

“What did I get myself into?” I ask her.

“Is that how you say thank you?” Morgan says.

“Thank you,” I say, “but this is crazy.”

“It’s an excellent script. This group is insanely talented. Charlie shot a film that went to Toronto last year. Grant and Vicki have worked on really important films. Do well on this and you’ll get some serious recognition.”

“Okay,” I say. “I just need to know how to do well.”

“You already know that. You just have to move faster. I have so much preproduction work to do for
The Agency
that I can’t commit to Theo and Rebecca, but I’ll help you out with as much as I can, so tell me what you need.”

“I’m going to need some wallpaper.”

“Easy.”

“I’m going to need to have pots hung from a ceiling in a way that won’t cause permanent damage.”

“I can rig that up.”

“I might need some things upholstered.”

She smiles. “It’s a lot quicker that way.”

“Fifty-two garage sales quicker. I should have figured that out.”

She shakes her head. “You’ll learn these things. Show me what you have in mind.”

So I show her what I’ve gathered and she looks serious as she listens, and when I’m finished she says, “This is why I recommended you.”

That sentence? It sounds as good as
I want you back
.

“The film is going to be a big deal. You know about the casting already, I’m sure. Benjamin James, Lindsey Miller . . .”

Hearing her name these stars makes everything feel simultaneously more real and more dreamlike.

“I know,” I say. “I can’t believe this.”

“People are willing to work their asses off for practically nothing when the material is good enough,” Morgan says.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask her. “Is this out of pity?”

“No,” she scoffs. “You’ve earned this. If I couldn’t take the job, I wanted you to have it. And this way I get to stay involved.”

She glances at her phone.

“Look, I have to run,” she says. “But call me for anything. I mean it. And just let me know when you start getting materials and I’ll figure out when I can help you get them up.”

Back inside, Charlotte is typing on her laptop as Theo talks to her.

“This girl knows what she’s doing,” he says when I join them. “I might have to borrow her from you once in a while.”

An hour ago, I might have cried at this prospect, but Morgan has made me confident so I say, “It would be selfish of me not to share her.”

“I have to follow up with Rebecca about something,” Charlotte says. “Then I’m ready when you are.”

I take out my phone to check the time, and on the screen is a text message from Ava
: Halfway through the screenplay!

I write back,
Do you love it?

She says,
Yes.

Then I join Rebecca and Charlotte and listen as they go over the budget. Basically, we’re going to talk our way into procuring most of the things we’ll need, but we’re saving a little money by using Toby’s place for Juniper’s apartment.

“Theo,” I call, and he comes back over to us. “Do you have any leads for George’s house and the grocery store, or should I start those searches?”

“I have a few places in mind for George’s,” he says. “I’ll make us some appointments. But in the meantime if you find some possibilities go ahead and schedule some of your own. We’ll go look at them all together.”

Charlotte and I arrive home to a package leaning against Toby’s front door, and even before we’ve stepped inside I’m already ripping it open. Each sheet has its own line drawing of a plant, hand tinted in subtle greens and whites and browns, with its Latin name printed in small letters at the bottom.

Juniper’s botanicals, even more perfect in person.

~

Later that night I get a call from Morgan.

“Guess where I am,” she says.

“Um?”

“Screening Room Five. You know Harvey? The projectionist? He’s getting today’s footage ready for the execs tomorrow.”

“Sounds like Harvey’s a good friend to have.”

The executives and department heads get invitations each day to view the footage from the day before. Gathering in small screening rooms to watch multiple takes of the same scenes from various angles and points of view might sound tedious to some people, but I’ve been dying for an invitation to the dailies since I started interning. Space is limited and I’ve never gotten to go.

“There’s more,” Morgan says. “Today they shot scenes eight and twenty-two.”

I’m so immersed in
Yes & Yes
that it takes a moment to remember what these scenes were. But only a moment.

“Holy shit,” I say. “How does it look?”

“It’s your room,” Morgan says. “I wouldn’t start without you.”

So twenty-five minutes later I’m walking into a projection room that is empty besides Morgan and her new buddy Harvey, a guy probably in his sixties with thick glasses and a comb-over. When I thank him for letting us sit in, he tells me he’s just doing his job, but it’s clear that he’s loving having us as an audience. I doubt he usually takes his time the way he is now.

“I’ve set up the dailies almost every night for forty years,” he says. And then he proceeds to tell me forty years’ worth of stories. All the famous films of which he’s seen every take, all the stars who needed a dozen takes to get something right.

“Did you ever show dailies from a Clyde Jones movie?” I ask.

“Sure did.
Silver Stirrups
. Not his finest film, but certainly his last one. He should have quit while he was ahead. Before that one was
Midnight River
. Now
that
would have been going out with a bang. But even in
Silver Stirrups
he only needed a couple takes for each scene. He was a real professional.”

At that, Harvey ascends the stairs to the projection room, leaving Morgan and me alone.

“Clyde Jones?” she asks. “Are you suddenly into Westerns?”

I just shrug. I’m not even tempted to say something evasive like,
I’m asking for a girl
, or
He reminds me of someone
. Even though saying those things would be true, there is something about how I’m feeling right now that makes me want to keep quiet about it. Something about Ava I want to protect. Every time I’m reminded of her it feels like I’m keeping a secret. Not only about her famous grandfather but about her crooked smile and her raspy voice. About her hesitations and her confessions and her focused, private thoughts.

Morgan is heading toward seats in the center and I follow her, sink into the plush red velvet. Some of the most influential people in the business have sat in this screening room, probably in this exact seat. I check out the console between us and see that with a press of a button I could call up to Harvey and ask him to play something over or speed through something else.

A scene begins but it isn’t of the music room yet.

Harvey’s voice comes out of the speakers: “I have to go through scene sixty-eight before I get to the ones you’re here to see. It’s a quick one, though, so hold on to your hats.”

Morgan laughs.

“This guy is amazing,” she says.

I turn to see her face, lit by the screen.

“I like him,” I say.

“Yeah.” She smiles at me. “I do, too.”

“I couldn’t tell if you were being sarcastic.”

“You should hear his other stories. Katy and I ended up at a bar with him a couple weeks ago. He shut the place down.”

On the screen, the father is entering the living room of the house in a hurry. The first shots follow his face closely. But then the next shots show the room. I recognize Clyde’s highball glasses resting on a gleaming bar cart. The sofa and rugs and chairs are all in muted tones and around the room are pops of color: red roses in a vase, full-color family portraits on a wall, a mostly turquoise globe.

It’s easy to see what Ginger was doing when she planned this room. Every detail that we notice is important. The flowers a reminder of the couple’s anniversary. The globe an indication of the distance about to come between them. The portraits depicting the happy family so we can see how much they stand to lose by the misfortune about to strike them.

Even before the scene changes to the music room, I realize why Ginger replaced my green-and-gold sofa with Clyde’s gray one. Then the clapper flashes onscreen,
Scene 8, Take 1
, and there is my room, larger than life, and my entire body is flooded with my own wrongness.

Ginger has used the same strategy in this room. Almost everything is muted except for the important parts: the music stand to show us the daughter’s talent, the trophies to show her youth and innocence. My sofa would have commanded too much attention for Ginger’s concept, and while her choices are not the ones I would have made, I can see that they make sense. They work well for this film.
Really
well for this film, in fact.

My sofa would have looked great if this room were in isolation, but it’s part of a film where every scene will be cohesive. When Ginger told me that she was the production designer she probably wasn’t just on a power trip. She was probably trying to tell me that she was the one with the vision for film, that she knew every aspect of the sets and the locations. As an intern I knew only a sliver.

I thought the music room was mine but it was always hers.

“How does it feel?” Morgan asks.

I’m embarrassed to know that I was wrong, to remember the things I said and how ridiculously young I must have seemed to Ginger. And I’m sad to see what this room could have been if I’d had complete control over it. How close it is to my version of perfect. But somehow, I’m also proud of it. I may have just been an intern, fulfilling someone else’s vision, but I did it in a way that was my own. It’s possible that no one else would have chosen that particular music stand or that poster. The sheet music is still scattered and I love the messiness of it, how it feels lived in and more authentic than the living room.

And then there is the simple, pure thrill of seeing my first work on a big screen in a private screening room on the lot of a major studio.

I take a breath, overwhelmed by all of it. What I feel is too complicated to explain to Morgan, so I just smile and let her interpret that however she wants to.

~

Forty minutes later we are in the parking lot, standing in between our respective vehicles, trying to brush off the awkwardness of having watched countless takes of a girl losing her virginity. Morgan leans against the side of her truck, and since I’m standing on the passenger side of my car, I figure it’s never too soon to begin the unlocking process.

When I emerge from the passenger’s seat, she reaches for my hand. Against my better judgment, I let her take it. I feel the familiar tightening somewhere below my stomach when I think of all the times she’s touched me. Maybe I’m supposed to step into her now, like so many other times when she took my hand. Maybe we’re supposed to be kissing, bodies pressed against the truck. But instead I just stare at my hand in hers until I find my voice.

“What are you doing?”

“Are you going to make me ask you?”

“Ask me what, exactly?”

She shakes her bangs out of her eyes and really looks at me.

“If you’ll come back. I want you back.”

I close my eyes and when I open them again I make sure that I’m looking at something other than her.

This conversation isn’t that different from the five others we had before getting back together. But it feels different, because wanting someone is not the same as loving her, and now I understand that Morgan does not love me. When you love someone, you are sure. You don’t need time to decide. You don’t say
stop
and
start
over and over, like you’re playing some kind of sport. You know the immensity of what you have and you protect it. So I look into Morgan’s eyes, and I say, “I can’t do this anymore.”