Chapter 22 Verity #3
“Yeah, Lucia?” Canon folds his arms over his chest and studies the dark-haired woman.
“Thank you.” She blinks watery eyes, but firms her lips and goes on.
“It feels like I’ve been waiting my whole career for an opportunity like this.
You say we’re filling in the colors, and I keep seeing all these beautiful melanated bodies swishing and swinging and doing the Lindy hop and the snakehips. ”
“Exactly,” Canon laughs. “That’s it.”
“We get to re-create the Savoy,” Richard, the production designer, jumps in. “That massive, glorious ballroom. Just the glimpses I saw in those clips have my wheels turning.”
“And the music,” Monk interjects softly. He looks up at Canon. “There is this scene where Tilda and Dessi meet Gladys Bentley, right?”
“Yeah.” Canon nods. “Verity found a diary entry where Dessi wrote about seeing her perform at the Ubangi Club.”
Monk’s eyes don’t flick to me when Canon mentions my name, but he continues. “There was a song she’s really famous for. It’s called… damn, trying to remember the title.”
“‘Worried Blues,’” I mutter.
Monk’s eyes cut to me then, and I’m surprised sparks don’t fly I feel that look so sharply. Like iron striking iron. “Yeah. ‘Worried Blues.’ I think we could add that as a number.”
“Fantastic idea,” Canon says. “Verity and I have some spots marked in the script where music makes sense to us, but I knew you’d go through and identify where we could add a few numbers, songs that will build out the score.”
“We’d need the right voice for it,” Monk says, eyes narrowed and fixed at a point over Canon’s shoulder. “Gladys was incredible. She literally sounded like a trumpet when she scatted.”
Canon’s question and offer to dream uncorks the bottle on everyone’s ideas.
Lucia asks him to play one of the dance numbers again.
The production designer takes out his laptop and starts a schematic for a few set pieces.
Linh even asks if I can send all the material I have about fashion of the era, including any photos we have of Dessi throughout the years for reference as she works on designs and sourcing wardrobe.
I’ve never been part of a process like this.
I knew Canon was an incredible director, of course, but tonight I learned that he is also a terrific leader.
He has a reputation for being controlling, and maybe once we’re on set, he will be—a tyrant about being prompt and prepared.
But here, tonight, with this team of creatives he has built so much trust and chemistry with over the years, he lets them run wild.
He fosters a creative process that moves and shifts and roams, not steered by any one person, but feeding from us all.
After an hour or so of brainstorming, the group reluctantly starts to leave the theater and drift outside.
We’ve been here for hours, and Graham has to practically push them all out.
Lucia and I are in the kitchen laughing about how grueling the routines she’s envisioning will be for the poor dancers when Monk walks in.
He stands at the counter and stares at me, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.
I keep talking with Lucia, and even angle my body away so I don’t have to see him at all.
Lucia’s conversation begins to falter the longer he just stands there, and her eyes flick over my shoulder to Monk every few seconds.
A wry grin works its way onto her expressive face.
“I, um, think Mr. Bellamy wants a word,” Lucia says, tossing her Diet Coke can into the recycling.
I finally level a glare over my shoulder at him, but his face remains expressionless.
“Really great meeting you, Verity,” Lucia says. “Looking forward to working with you.”
She punches Monk’s shoulder playfully. “This’ll be fun. Haven’t seen you since that last project two years ago.”
“That movie turned me off musicals.” He chuckles. “Only Canon could lure me into something even close again.”
“Well, glad he did,” she says. “You’re the best. See you guys later.”
When she leaves, a thick silence descends on the kitchen. It’s suffocating, pressing against my ears and clogging my throat like fog.
“What?” I snap, brows bent into a frown.
“That’s how you talk to an old friend?” Monk asks with a straight face.
“Oh, I thought we ‘dated in college.’” I hit him with the air quotes and let my hands land on my hips. “Why would you even say that?”
“Should I have said we used to fuck?”
Something I’d like to ignore stirs low in my belly.
“Um, you could have said we’ve met,” I offer, frowning up at him, “or just said nothing at all.”
“Nothing?” His laugh rings harshly in the empty kitchen. “You thought I was gonna pretend we didn’t know each other? We’re adults. I don’t like to pretend or keep secrets.”
“Not putting our business out there for the whole crew to know is not keeping secrets. It’s being discreet.”
“Oh, I’ve seen your version of discreet, Verity.”
The words carry a bite so sharp it takes me back to that bathroom stall at Top Dog.
“Why are you being such an asshole about something that happened over a decade ago?” I ask. “I wasn’t even at Finley a full year, and we were together even less.”
“Next you’ll say we barely knew each other.” He lifts one brow. “That how you want to play this?”
He’s right because it felt like I already knew him the night we met. Not the details that came later—his favorite movie, the song he sang at his grandfather’s funeral, what he’d save in a fire—but something more elemental that drew us together immediately. Inexorably.
“I don’t want to play this any kind of way,” I say after a moment to gather my scattered thoughts. “I want us to get past it. You knew more about me in a few months than anyone ever had, and I knew you. I just messed up. I was young and reckless, and I messed up.”
“It took a lot for me to trust anyone the way I trusted you, and you were… What we had meant a lot to me. I know it wasn’t the same to you, but—”
“It was.”
I shouldn’t have said it; should let him go on thinking I was some cheat who took what we had for granted, but hearing the hurt behind his harshness, I can’t. He flashes me a look so scornful, I press my hand over my heart, as if that would protect me from the daggers he’s shooting at me.
“This would be easier,” he bites out, “if you’d stop lying to me. Stop pretending it was something it wasn’t. Like you said. We were both young and I expected too much.”
“Okay. Whatever,” I sigh, closing my eyes to block out the enmity in his. “I don’t know what I can do to make this right, but I do know we won’t get through the next six months of this shoot if you can’t let it go. We both have to let this go if we’re going to work together.”
I lean against the counter and wearily push the hair out of my face.
“This film is the most amazing thing that’s ever happened in my career,” I admit, deciding to drop my guard and share something true.
Something real. Something I hope will break through that wall his anger erected between us.
“Telling Dessi’s story feels like something I’ve been waiting for all my life.
Canon has assembled the kind of stellar team Dessi deserves, and we’re both a part of that.
Can we get past our shit long enough to not just tolerate each other, but truly work together?
Because if we can figure out how to do that, we could do something special. For her.”
He searches my face, and maybe what he finds there steals his fight. The tightness around his mouth loosens and he drops his gaze to the floor.
“You’re right,” he says. “It’s rare that we get to tell a story like this. It’s a shame that a life as rich and uniquely American as Dessi’s has been buried.”
“Erased. Dessi and artists like her were used for their gifts and then discarded, forgotten.” I pause and look at him with as much sincerity as I can. “We get to make that right in some small way.”
“Yeah.” He nods. “We do.”
“So… truce?” I ask, holding my breath like I’m defusing a bomb.
For a few tight seconds, I think it’s impossible; that too much has passed between us for this to work, but Monk is an artist first. Maybe I offered the one thing that could make him set aside his resentment, at least long enough to do Dessi justice, because the tight mask his face has been every time I’ve seen him since that last night eases.
At least long enough to show me the man I fell for. The man I broke.
After a moment, he extends his hand to me. “Truce.”
With a grin, I accept, and the simple contact steals my breath just like it did all those years ago the night we met. A familiar strike of lightning. An irrepressible spark. His eyes catch mine, the only acknowledgment that he feels it, too.
“Looks like you guys are making peace in here,” Canon says, watching us from the kitchen entryway, his gaze bouncing between Monk and me.
“All good.” Monk drops my hand and sports that now-familiar smirk. “I’mma bounce, but I’ll get you my thoughts on vocalists for some of the stuff we’ll need.”
“Alright.” Canon fist-bumps his friend and watches him leave before turning back to me. “The two of you gonna be able to pull this off without killing each other?”
“Guess so.” I shrug and let out a humorless laugh. “At least I think now we’re going to try.”
Canon doesn’t quite look convinced, and I can’t blame him because, even though I feel a little lighter as I drive home, neither am I.