Everything Leads to You (24 page)

“That’s so nice of you,” I say, but the truth is that the place has no soul. I haven’t seen a single scratched floorboard.

“Don’t you think it’s great?” Ava asks me a little defensively, and I don’t want her to be defensive, because doesn’t she deserve this? After everything she’s been through, shouldn’t she end up with a dream house on the rooftop of one of the most exclusive buildings in Venice?

“It’s beyond great,” I tell her. “We just need to get it furnished. Let’s go look at the view again.”

Back outside, everything feels less sad. The skaters are doing tricks on the street below us; the Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica pier spins and spins; from somewhere in the distance comes laughter.

“Can you believe it?” Ava asks. “Last night I was living in a shelter. A few months ago I was living in my car, sleeping under overpasses, hoping no one would find me.”

“You were untethered,” Jamal says.

“Yeah,” she says. “I guess. I never thought of using that word before.”

“Marcy used it on me,” he says. “I hadn’t thought of it either.”

“Who’s Marcy?” Charlotte asks.

“One of the counselors at the shelter.”

“The only nice one,” Ava says.

“Not the only nice one. The least strict one. The youngest one.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ava says. “We never have to go back.”

“So you’re going to live here, too?” I ask Jamal.

“Nah,” he says. “She wants me to, but it’s not in the master plan.”

He smiles when he says it, looks out over the ocean. I don’t question him until later on, after Ava has fallen asleep on one of the outdoor sofas and Charlotte has taken a chair on the other end of the roof to e-mail one of her future professors about something. Jamal and I are sitting together a few feet away from Ava, still looking over the water.

“So explain this to me,” I say. “You could live in a shelter or you could live here, and you’re choosing the shelter?”

“This place is crazy nice,” he says, “but it wouldn’t be real for me.”

“But you could live here for free, right? Quit your job? What would you want to do if you could do anything?”

He smirks. Shakes his head.

“What?”

“Not everyone’s like you,” he says.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t get upset.”

“I’m not upset.”

“We’re friends now, right? So I can tell it to you straight.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say, trying not to feel hurt already.

“We don’t all have it figured out. We don’t all have internships and college all lined up and our parents’ credit cards.”

“I don’t have my parents’ credit card. I make my own money.”

“For some things, yeah,” he says. “But we don’t all have
dens
with pictures from the ghetto in
frames
on our walls.”

“It’s not like that,” I say. “That makes it sound terrible. My parents care about that stuff, they spend all their time teaching people about it. My grandfather—”

Jamal holds his hand out. I stop.

“I like your family,” he says. “Your mom told me about a lot of stuff I didn’t know.”

“And she called you handsome and graceful.”

“She did,” he says. “And I’ll always love her for it. But my point is that we don’t all have brothers getting us fancy jobs in movie studios.”

“I get it,” I say. And I do. But I still don’t want to hear it, don’t want to think about the conversations he and Ava must have about me when I’m not around to defend myself.

“What I’m saying is this: The shelter got me my job. And I finally got promoted so now I even get to work decent hours, on the floor, not doing stock. The deal is I work there until I have enough money saved up to get a place, and then the shelter hooks me up with an apartment. I keep the job, I pay part of the rent, and the shelter pays the other part. It’s not something I’m trying to get out of. It’s not just for the money, even though the money is something I need. I’ve seen the building where I’ll live. It’s cool. Near downtown on a quiet street. I need to start my own life and it can’t be here. I mean, look. This might work out for Ava, but I’m still a kid who’s only been to the beach one other time in my life.”

“You mean Venice Beach?”

“No,” he says. “I mean the ocean. I mean
this
.” He extends his arms toward the coastline. “This.”

“But you grew up here,” I say. “How did you only come once?”

“If you’d ever been to where I grew up, you wouldn’t call it ‘here.’”

“What’s it like?”

“Pawn shops. Check-cashing stores. Liquor stores.”

“Sure,” I say, because these places are everywhere.

He holds up his hand as if to say,
Let me finish
, so I shut up and look out at the dark sky and listen.

“Empty buildings,” he says. “Guys on the street all day. Fields covered in trash. Street signs full of bullet holes. Boarded-up windows. People who look decades older than they are. Grandmas who just take every tragedy like it’s expected, just take another kid into their houses and act like it’s not crowded already, like it isn’t a burden to feed another one.”

“All right,” I say. A concession. He’s speaking like he’s in a trance, like he could go on for ages, but also like it hurts him.

“Guns,” he says. “Guns everywhere. I got my first gun when I was twelve. A gift from my cousin. We went out onto the street and I shot it into the sky. Everything went silent.”

“So what happened?” I ask. “Why did you leave?”

“My grandma died. I was in the foster system once, before she got custody, and I sure as hell wasn’t going back again. There were plenty of ways for me to make a living in the neighborhood, but I didn’t want her looking down from above, shaking her head in disgust.”

“What about the rest of your family? Do they know where you are?”

“Pops is locked up. My mom’s dead.”

“So is mine,” Ava says.

I don’t know when she woke up, but she’s sitting now, pulling a hoodie over her legs, and Charlotte’s walking back toward us, sitting down next to her.

Jamal turns to Ava, eyebrows raised in skepticism, but she doesn’t elaborate.

“All right,” Jamal finally says. “It can be that way. But it’s the other way, too.”

“What do you mean?” Ava asks.

“I mean Caroline is dead, but Tracey is alive. That’s rough, but you still have one mother.”

“But she doesn’t want me.”

“I don’t know about that,” he says. “We’ll give it some time. Check back soon, you know?”

“When you really want to find someone, it isn’t that hard. I should have known all along that she wasn’t looking. I feel so stupid.”

“There’s nothing stupid about wanting to be loved,” he says. “Believe me.”

We sit together for a little longer, and then Charlotte and I get up to go home.

“You’ll help me decorate, right?” Ava asks me. “Figure out what to buy? After the filming is over, I mean. I went to this place to try to buy a mattress today but I didn’t know what I wanted, and it would have taken a few days to get delivered anyway, so after a while it just seemed pointless. I left without choosing anything.”

“Sure,” I say. “I’d love to do that.”

“We have the read-through tomorrow,” Charlotte reminds me.

“Right,” I say. “Ava, are you ready for that?”

She nods.

“We’ll see you then,” I say.

Before Charlotte and I step into the elevator, I turn around to get a last glimpse of them for the night: two formerly homeless kids, sitting in front of a bare rooftop penthouse with an empty bottle of champagne.

Chapter Eighteen

I wake up nervous.

Today is the day all the actors assemble in Theo and Rebecca’s apartment and read through the script from the first scene through the last. This usually happens earlier in the preproduction schedule, but because Ava signed on so late, it’s happening now, just two weeks before the shooting begins.

I should have told Ava what to expect from the day. Should have told her how important it is. I start to worry that I’ve gone overboard with all the Clyde stuff. What if she takes her rags-to-riches glory too far? What she wore yesterday was the perfect costume to score a penthouse, but today shouldn’t be an act. As an unknown in a lead role, she has a lot to prove.

“She’s going to be fine,” Charlotte says as we climb into her car.

“But what if she shows up like all hung over or something?”

“She wasn’t even drunk last night. How would that be possible?”

“I don’t know how it would be possible. All I know is that my stomach hurts for her.”

“Just relax and focus on your own job. Let Ava’s stomach hurt for itself. Or, even better, trust that she’ll do well. We have no reason to doubt her.”

And when we get there, I see that Charlotte, as usual, is right.

Ava is making the rounds with Rebecca as her guide. She is holding her hand out to shake, confident but modest, professional but warm.

The actors are gathering around the table while members of the crew find spots to sit on the periphery. Charlotte and I scavenge two chairs just as Rebecca and Ava reach us.

“No introductions necessary in your case,” she says.

Even though we were together yesterday and last night, seeing Ava in this context makes my heart race. She smiles at us and widens her eyes, almost imperceptibly, but enough to let us in on the secret that she’s a little bit nervous. I watch as they move on to meet Grant and Vicki, who apologize for the bad timing but whip out their measuring tape anyway.

“We still have
all
your costumes to figure out,” Grant says as Vicki measures Ava’s waist. “Nice tank, by the way,” he adds.

Her outfit is deceptively simple: tight jeans and a silk navy top that makes her shoulders look amazing. A couple of bangles hang off one wrist and delicate gold earrings appear every time she brushes her hair from her face. When she steps away I notice her signature boots and think of them kicked off on the Marmont floor, when we were sitting so close to each other.

I wonder, again, if I made a mistake.

Charlotte and I get out our scripts and pens. This is only the second time I’ve been included at a read-through, and the first time I was surprised by how much I picked up on that I hadn’t when I read it to myself, even though I had studied every scene. So I’m ready to be inspired, to be reminded, to find new opportunities to bring the sets to life.

Then, behind me, I hear Ava say, “Hi, Morgan. So nice to meet you.”

I can’t help it: I turn to see them.

Rebecca is the one talking but Morgan is looking at Ava, and I can only imagine the things she is thinking. When she told me about the vastness, I’m sure that the Avas of the world were what she was imagining: talented and gorgeous, utterly free and a little bit wild. But as Morgan looks at Ava, Ava turns to look at me, and I suspect that the Morgans of the world are not who Ava would want in return.

At least I hope they aren’t. I allow myself to believe that flirtatious and fickle isn’t what Ava wants. That, more than invitations to Hollywood parties and Silver Lake brunches, Ava wants someone who will love her back.

“All right, everyone.” Theo’s voice carries through the room, a happy, festive thunder. “Please take your seats.”

Soon, the chatter dies down; the people all settle.

“Look at you all,” Theo says.

We have filled the apartment, everyone smiling.

All the actors for all the speaking parts, from Juniper and George to the nameless customer with only one line, sit around the dining room table, Ava, Benjamin, and Lindsey next to one another at one of the heads. Those of us in the crew have taken over the adjoining living room. Charlie and his volunteer camera operators and key grip got here early enough to snag the sofa. Michael and his brother sit on the floor. They got here the latest because Kim, the USC student who is assistant directing, forgot to tell them about the meeting until a couple hours ago.

“Everyone always forgets the sound guy,” Michael grumbled as he came in, but even he looks happy now.

As the weeks have gone by, word about the project has been spreading. Instead of our bare-bones crew we now have a script supervisor and an onset photographer, who stand, holding hands, in the doorway, peering into the dining room. We have gaffers and a best boy and three grips who will set up the lights and keep track of equipment; they sit next to the buffet eating cookies and sneaking glances at Ava and Benjamin. There are others, too: a girl with pale blond hair who looks about my age, a guy with an ironic mustache. I don’t know what they’ll be doing yet but they have notebooks out and look ready to work.

“Can you feel the energy in this place?” Theo asks. “My God, it’s beautiful. Most of you are doing this for free. Those of you who are getting paid are getting nothing close to what you’re worth. I know that and I thank you. Sincerely. I thank you. I couldn’t imagine a better group of people. If I had ten million dollars to make this movie, I would still choose you. I mean that.”

He takes a breath, extends his arms to the people at the table.

“These actors,” he says, “are about to stun us with their talent. Let’s begin.”

He and Rebecca share a love seat, each of them with their own copies of the script.

Rebecca begins to read:

“Scene one. Interior. A small Los Angeles grocery store. Bright summer light shines through the windows. Juniper, 19, stocks jars of baby food in an aisle. George, mid-40s, stands behind the register staring out the window. Enter Miranda, in a blue dress. She picks up a red plastic basket, a grapefruit, a box of oatmeal, a bar of chocolate. She falls. Juniper drops a jar of baby food. End scene.

“Scene two. Interior. Grocery store. Juniper stands behind the cash register. George places lemons in a basket near the window.”

Ava has the first line. I can feel everyone in the apartment holding their breath.

“The jar cut her ear,” Ava says. She has her script open on the table but she isn’t reading it.

Benjamin James, however, has his eyes fixed to the page when he responds, “It did? I didn’t notice.”