IX CJ
IX
CJ
As soon as I sit down at the desk in my office, there’s a knock at the door. Once, then twice.
“Come in!” I yell, expecting Brianna, who I asked to come give her opinion on a few different furniture options we pulled for Tom’s secret city bachelor pad.
Instead, it’s Jack.
I stand immediately as he enters, like I’ve been caught in the act of something other than trying to organize my thoughts and my tasks. I watch his eyes take in the cluttered room, closer to a walk-in closet than a true workspace. There are swatches of paint on the wall so I can see what each looks like after it dries, knee-high piles of paper, props we almost certainly won’t need but that I keep around just in case, spare bits of discarded wood, various types of glue. My office is the place for everything the art department chews up and spits out. It’s the clutter that I try to keep out of the rest of my life.
“Sorry about the mess,” I tell Jack, like this is unusual. As though I would have tidied if I had known he was coming. I grab a stack of files off the floor and shove them in my desk drawer, the Sisyphean equivalent of using a paper towel to absorb the ocean.
“Please. The mess is what I came for,” he says, eyes roving the walls. “Are these your set designs?” He looks at the giant blueprints pinned to the wall, grasping his chin between his thumb and forefinger.
I join him. “They are.”
“I know I’m biased”—he glances in my direction now—“but the one you did for Nick’s little Long Island shack is especially brilliant. It reminds me of the house from REDS —the Croton-on-Hudson one that Jack and Diane have.”
This is what made me shut down in the hallway. This callback to our shared cinematic references and the night we established them. But it lands differently behind closed doors. We’re still very much at work, but I’m not worried about another member of the crew noticing my heart skip a beat.
“A three-hour movie about communism starring Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, and Jack Nicholson? Script doctored by Elaine May? And it turned a profit? Could never happen today.”
“One of the most romantic movies of all time,” Jack replies. Our eyes are on the wall, and we’re standing at least a foot apart. But I feel his presence warming the entire length of the left side of my body. “The way Beatty did it is the dream,” Jack continues quietly. “To have a production company and start projects from the ground up. To be hands-on and only make things I really believe in.”
I nod. This is the first I’ve heard Jack say this, but it feels like information I’ve sensed all along. Of course he wants to be behind the scenes too. The way he carries himself on set, that he stops and speaks to everyone, that he never asks a PA to drop everything and fetch him a macchiato. He has the nonthreatening charisma of the old-Hollywood actors I’d grown up admiring, Gregory Peck or Robert Redford.
He turns to face me abruptly, arms crossed, one hand on his chin. “Listen, I have a favor to ask you.” He clears his throat, and I wish I didn’t find his bumbling quite so winning. “This is the biggest role—really, the most authority—I’ve ever had in a film. And I think—I hope—I can use it to learn as much as possible.”
I wait.
“Including production design.”
I peer at Jack curiously. He bites his lip, and my eyes rest on his teeth. There are plenty of stars who double as “producers,” but those are often vanity credits meant to please difficult egos. I’d heard of actors invested in the experience, who want to know how a film is built from the ground up, but this is my first time meeting one. It feels like encountering a unicorn.
“You can ask me questions,” I offer, and I know I sound noncommittal. But I’m worried that letting even a drop of enthusiasm into my voice is leading myself on, opening the door to imagining that this could turn into something more than a classroom experience for him. Maybe it can be like exposure therapy. Spending a little bit of time together to make doing so feel normal, mundane even.
I force myself to say what I’ve been dwelling on since the first day of filming. “And, you know, whatever happened between us... was so long ago now.” I get the words out as fast as I can. “If you could do me the favor of not mentioning it to anyone.”
“Absolutely, of course not,” Jack says just as quickly, as if to beat the idea away with a stick.
I pull what I have to say next from deep within the recesses of my stomach. I owe it to him and to myself. “I should tell you... we met that night... under very different circumstances.” The words catch on their way out. “I didn’t want to say anything at the time, but my mom was... really sick.” I force myself to speak about this as vaguely as possible so that I don’t summon each painful memory of the time.
Jack’s eyes crinkle, and his jaw slackens as he takes in this information and leans his body slightly toward me. I need to keep talking so he can’t say “I’m so sorry” because I can’t stand to hear this from one more person, and especially not him. “She died not long after we met. But that night—it was sort of a bright spot during a very tough time. So, I just wanted you to know that. To thank you for that.”
He takes his time before responding, and his obvious comfort with the silence between us feels almost alarmingly intimate. “I’m glad... that I could... be there for you,” Jack replies, seemingly cutting and pasting his words together from a longer draft in his head. He uncrosses his arms and lifts his hand, like he might reach for me.
“I’m happy to help you, if I can,” I say, eyes on his palm. “Ask me any questions you want about production design. Please don’t hesitate.” My abrupt transition to this cordial, professional tone makes me feel like I’m fleeing the scene of a crime. But it’s not like I could stay there either.
Jack takes it in stride. “That would be brilliant. Thank you.”
I reach for his hand and give it a nice, firm shake. This will feel normal soon , I think. Any second now, this will feel normal.