27. Watch Your Back
27
WATCH YOUR BACK
Jules
We’re shooting on one of the bridges over the Seine. It’s a pivotal scene where our heroine debates her next move with her best friend. I go through the motions like a robot, executing every request Solange makes of me till lunchtime rolls around. The harder I work, the faster I move, the more perfect I do every task, the sooner—perhaps—she’ll forget what she saw this morning.
When we take a break, she tips her forehead to the ribbon of water snaking through the city where I stupidly fell in love. How cliché am I? Traveling to Paris for work and falling for an older man. He might not be emotionally unavailable, but he’s unavailable all the same.
“There’s a café I like a few blocks away,” she says in the crisp tone of a woman accustomed to being in charge. “We’ll walk,” she says.
More like walk the plank .
This isn’t a simple work lunch to pass the time. This is a correction. Or worse.
We pace along the waterside, passing bouquinistes in green wooden stalls peddling very French-looking posters of the Moulin Rouge and the Eiffel Tower. Solange makes idle small talk about New York. “It’ll be good to be back there next week. I need the faster pace of Manhattan.”
“I can see that,” I say, wishing she’d get to the point and dreading it at the same time.
“I like the go-go-go rhythm of New York,” Solange says as a tour boat lolls by in the river, tourists snapping photos of the sights from the deck. They’re so far away, I know no one can reasonably capture us. But if they did, I imagine the picture would be labeled Before The Shoe Drops .
“You’ll be there, I presume?” she asks.
Unless you get me fired.
Is falling for someone in the business a fireable offense? I don’t think it is, for all the reasons Finn pointed out, but logic doesn’t stop the scenarios unfolding in my head over my office-adjacent romance.
She’ll tell Bridger, and he’ll be disappointed. My stomach roils at the thought. I’ve already been living with my father’s disappointment for years—I don’t know if I can stomach his too.
She’ll have me removed from the production. Can she though? Bridger’s company is producing the show, but TV production hierarchy can be a tangled skein.
Solange stops at a stone parapet along the river. Quickly, I scan the scene, and I’m safe enough from my thoughts. There are too many layers of steps and staircases heading down to the river for my mind to imagine terrible things.
But my mind doesn’t have to because reality supplies them.
“Jules,” she says, in a sharp, clear tone. The chitchat is over.
“Yes?”
Solange stares over the water, a faraway look in her eyes. “When I was younger, probably your age, I fell in love with an older man.”
Oh . That wasn’t what I was expecting. I swallow past the uncomfortable knot in my throat. “Okay.”
“He was in the business. A director. I didn’t report to him,” she says, and for the first time, she doesn’t sound cool and together. She sounds like she’s reminiscing. Like she’s wistful. “He was…”
She shakes her head like the thought of him is too much to bear. She squeezes her eyes shut briefly, as if she’s erasing the images of him, then turns to me. “He was wonderful, and I was swept away.”
Clearly her love story doesn’t have a happy ending. “What happened?”
I brace myself for her to say she lost her job, or he was Harvey Weinsteining.
“Nothing,” she says.
I furrow my brow. “Nothing?”
“Like I said, he wasn’t my boss. Just like Finn isn’t yours. There are degrees of separation.” Her comments are both reassuring and not. She’s saying the insulation is ultimately irrelevant. “But that’s not always what matters.”
I say nothing. She called this meeting. I’m just waiting for the blade to drop.
“I don’t want you to lose your way,” she says, and now her pensive tone has vanished, replaced by a passionate one. “You’re a hard worker. You’re diligent. You’re focused. That matters more than talent in this field.”
“So I’m not a good coordinating producer?” I ask, even more confused.
“You are. A good producer is a hard worker, diligent, and focused.” She sighs heavily. “But men like that? Older, confident, established, rich? They don’t face risks like we do as women. They aren’t building their reputations. They’re untouchable. But us?” She points to herself, then me, and it’s strange to be included in this sisterhood now. “We only have the work we do to build on.”
My skin crawls. I hate that she makes so much sense.
Her eyes pin me with a newfound intensity. “You and he—you’re in different places, Jules.” Something in her voice says she’s imparting vital knowledge to me. Woman to woman. Passing it on down the line with a plea— don’t get involved at your age with a man who’s already worked his way up .
I suppose it’s one thing to fall for a guy who’s young and hungry and scrappy, and entirely another to fall for a man who’s made it. Who has a family. Who might not want the relentless questing of my young heart.
But I say nothing. I don’t want to reveal too much of myself to her or too much of my heart.
Solange seems undeterred by silence. She simply adds to her point, “I want you to find your own way. I don’t want you to rely on a man.”
“I don’t rely on him,” I say, defensively.
“I know. But soon, you will. I can see it in your eyes,” she says. “I saw it this morning at the café. You’re quite taken with him.”
The knot in my throat turns into a lump, one that threatens to break.
“There are so many people out there wanting your job, wanting this opportunity you’ve made for yourself,” she says.
I think I get it now. “You’re saying watch my back ?”
She gives a resigned smile. “Yes, I am. I don’t want you to lose your focus, or for someone to steal it.” She waves to indicate whoever is out there, wanting my job. Unnamed, unknown people. “You’re tenacious now. Don’t lose your tenacity because a man makes your life easier. I lost mine for a while, and it took me years to build it back.”
“But you’re in a great place now,” I say.
She gives an oh please look. “I’m forty-seven. It’s not easy.” Then, after a pause, she adds, “Correction—it’s especially not easy for women. Do you know what I mean?”
My skin tingles with understanding at last. She means fuck the patriarchy . She means it’s a man’s world, and women have to work harder, fight harder, and never get complacent. “I do,” I say, wishing I didn’t.
She lifts a hand almost like she’s going to squeeze my shoulder, but then drops her arm to her side. “Finn Adams can have anything he wants, and I don’t mean women. I mean companies, businesses, and choices. All we have, women like you and me, are our choices.”
Translation: get my shit together and stop being a starry-eyed girl.
“I understand,” I say.
“Good. Let’s have lunch.”
That’ll be fun.
Lunch isn’t fun. But it’s eye-opening as she lets me into her world, sharing behind-the-scenes tidbits on productions she’s worked on, telling tales of the business. With something like the pride of a self-proclaimed mentor, she says, “I see big things for you.”
The message is clear: choose work because love won’t last.
She’s probably right. Not for the reasons she’s said, but for even more complicated ones.
Ones I shouldn’t ignore any longer.
Finn and I were never destined to be real. It was only ever role-play with him.