Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
The Sony Studios lot reminds me of a well-manicured college campus.
Bright green lawns and narrow pathways winding through neatly arranged office buildings and art deco facades.
Everywhere I turn, I see dozens of executives, heads in their phones, rushing to work.
I struggle with my map, making my way past enormous soundstages and out of the way of honking golf carts.
The restaurant on the studio lot is packed.
I arrive six minutes late, covered in a thin layer of sweat, from a mixture of nerves and rushing in the heat.
At the host stand, a willowy woman smiles.
Her teeth are just the right amount of crooked to be charming.
I find myself mourning them—in the small moments it takes her to check my reservation and let me know “I have a table by the window for you,” I’ve already pictured her landing an acting job, quitting the restaurant job, and scheduling an appointment for veneers.
“Thank you,” I say and follow her to the empty table.
The willowy woman hands me a menu and within seconds, a waiter named Tucker takes my order.
His smile is jittery and his white shirt is clean but wrinkled.
As Tucker sets down my iced tea, my eyes wander the room, taking in the yellow daisy centerpieces, the floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto the perfectly manicured lawn.
I gaze out onto the busy sidewalk watching two women say goodbye.
Their embrace is quick and neat and when they break apart, I lose my breath.
The space between them has opened wide enough to reveal a man, tall and broad shouldered, exactly like Jasper.
He’s far enough away to be blurred at the edges, but I can make out a familiar posture in the way he nods as he listens to a woman in a red-and-white-striped sundress.
Is she an actress? A girlfriend? Is that really Jasper?
It can’t be. He’s in London. Or Paris. Or New York? Not L.A.
I stand to get a better look but by the time I get close enough to the window, he’s pressing his cheek to the woman’s, then turning away. It all happens so quickly. The man who might be Jasper is there for a moment and then absorbed into the crowd, gone.
I drop back into my chair, relieved Allison Kidd isn’t here yet to see my cheeks flush or my hands shake.
Could it actually be him? And what if it is?
Do I run after him? To say what— just saying hello so we can have one more goodbye ?
I bow my head and pretend to look for something in my purse so no one can see me closing my eyes and catching my breath.
The familiar sharp urges are still there—the ones telling me to go after him for no other reason than to be near him for a few extra minutes—but so is the patio at the Chateau and Oliver’s twinkling blue-green eyes.
Allison enters the restaurant and Jasper leaves my mind—I send him away.
Everyone has a doppelg?nger. I must have discovered his.
I recognize Natalie’s producing partner from my Google search— Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline —always the same two photos used in rotation: an outdated corporate headshot with a tight smile and arms crossed and a red carpet shot, Allison and Natalie in an embrace, Allison so petite that her entire frame tucks neatly into Natalie’s.
She’s Ivy League all grown up, toned arms in a sleeveless black dress, and just the right amount of jewelry and confidence.
“Diana! You’re real!” She gently squeezes my shoulders and sits.
“Not that I doubted you were. But your voice from the interviews—I’ve been so lost in it, it’s so otherworldly.
” She narrows her eyes and suddenly I can’t decide if I’m a pleasant surprise or an alarming disappointment. “How’s L.A.? How’s the hotel?”
“It’s gorgeous. Thank you so much.”
“Ugh. We should have lunched there!” Her hands are in constant motion, a man’s gold Rolex swinging from her tiny wrist. “I love the Chateau. I’m going to kill my assistant.”
“This place is great too. I’ve never been on a real studio lot.” This is a lie. As a kid, I spent long afternoons riding shotgun with my mom to auditions at studios all over L.A., trying to read a Thomas Guide and get us there safely. Then sitting in the car for hours while she was inside.
“Ha, yes. Isn’t Hollywood beautiful? With all its bumper-to-bumper traffic?” She doesn’t laugh at her own joke exactly but smiles wide enough to let me know that I should. “And how was Disneyland? You did the whole VIP thing?”
“We had the best day, thank you.”
“It’s the only way to do it. You’ll never go back.”
It’s become a familiar, repeated sensation on this trip—the feeling of jumping the line.
Sitting across from Allison, I worry I’ve missed a step.
Someone is going to show up at the table and remind me I’m not supposed to be at this lunch.
I’m supposed to be the assistant who in about forty-five minutes will be yelled at for picking the wrong restaurant.
“So. Natalie, who we all love, turned me onto Dirty Diana, which I now love, and you, who I know I’m going to love…”
“That’s very kind.”
“Honestly? I don’t think I can make another bullet-train-fast-furious-dinosaur-explosion saga. Don’t tell anyone I said that. I’d be fired.”
For the next several minutes, Allison sprinkles candor onto everything she says with the intended effect of putting me at ease.
It works—but more effective is the way she squints across the table at me when she talks, like she needs glasses but is in denial, and the way, when yet another executive stops by our table to say hello, her eyes go momentarily flat with exhaustion.
I find it easy to picture her in an endless loop of pitch meetings and her mind somewhere else.
When our salads arrive, she cuts to the chase.
“You seem like a no-bullshit kind of person.”
“It’s an aspiration.”
“So I’m going to be very honest with you and if it scares you away, it scares you away.”
“Okay,” I say, already scared.
“We’re going to offer you a decent amount of money for your life rights, which will then become our life rights.
We will tell your story how we want to tell it.
You will have very little impact on the storytelling.
Likely all the ways we could make you happy about the script would be at odds with making a movie that succeeds, which will always be our number one priority.
I just want to be up front so you know what you are getting into.
” She stops long enough to pick at the chicken in her salad.
“It won’t ever go the way you think it will. And it might not ever go at all.”
“Got it,” I say as if it all makes perfect sense.
“Any questions? About me? About the process?”
“Why would a person say yes to this?”
She smiles. “You’re funny. Oh, well, your business will most likely explode, in a good way. You’ll be a brand.”
“And what’s the brand that sells movie tickets?”
“Good questions and who knows? What sells today most likely won’t sell a year from now. The good thing is, sex always sells. And Nat, obviously. Her numbers are dependable.”
“So I should what? Take the money and run?”
“No. You ask for a producer credit. Dammit. Don’t tell anyone I said that either. Ha!” She reaches across the table and gives my hand a squeeze. “See? You get people to say what they shouldn’t, even in this town. You’re going to weather Hollywood just fine.”
—
On the ride back to the hotel, I float into an alternate universe where my life is made into compelling storytelling then wonder about telling Oliver that I saw Jasper. Or that I think I saw Jasper. People think they see people every day. Is it even worth mentioning?
The traffic along La Cienega slows to a crawl. As if she can sense I’m near, my mother texts me.
Are you here?
Of course she somehow knows I’m already in town.
My body tenses. Information has always held power with my mom.
A sure way to a fight is to hear something before she does and keep it to yourself.
If a distant cousin graduates from high school and you don’t immediately drop everything to tell her, it is a declaration of war.
The joy of a former neighbor’s new baby is immediately ignored if I’ve known longer than she has.
There is no worse person to be than the last to know.
I was actually about to text you. We made it!! Double exclamation points.
Her reply is swift. How long have you been here?
My lie is equally quick: Just landed.
Were you going to tell me?
Of course.
I’d love to see my granddaughter. If that’s all right with you.
My shoulders are nearly at my ears.
Great. I’m sure she’d like that.
I’m shooting all afternoon so why don’t you bring her by set? She’ll get a kick out of seeing me in my element.
I take a deep breath and hit the thumbs-up. There isn’t anything I’d like to do less.
—
The film set is a dusty, flat piece of land near a series of small, desolate caves once used in the original Batman television show.
Today it functions as a grad student film location, cheap and easy to secure.
Oliver and Emmy follow me out of the rental car, each of us instantly mourning the loss of air-conditioning.
“Here we are,” I say, falsely chipper for Emmy.
“This is it. Set.” Camera equipment and sandbags are scattered around in the dirt in random lumps, and sunburnt actors sit on beach chairs they must have brought from home.
Craft services is a card table with shriveled baby carrots and warm water bottles tucked behind a large rock.
The crew all look like college students, and like the actors, they’ve wilted in the sun.