Chapter Two
I turned my phone off and knocked on Cassie’s trailer door. My hands were dry and my white nail polish chipped. I’d have to
show up to Kate’s party looking like a feral cat of a human. There’s something about being around actors that makes me stop
caring and enjoy the balm of being human wallpaper. It reminds me about the blissful bodily freedom one had as an eleven-year-old
tomboy. I knocked again. No answer.
“Can I come in, honey? It’s Elise,” I said loudly, while hopping up and down and trying to see in the tiny trailer window.
It occurred to me that Marlon and I had been referring to her as Cassie so much that I forgot her real name as soon as it
entered my brain. I hadn’t seen the sci-fi show she was most famous for, but judging by the ferocity of its fan base, it had
been a hit. I hoped she wasn’t in the middle of blowing the Ben stand-in pounder because that would be embarrassing.
Silence.
“The writer. Elise.”
I kept hopping like an idiot until the door opened slowly.
It smelled like Palo Santo incense. She scurried back inside, leaving the door ajar, the sound of her feet barely making any noise.
Until you’re around a lot of actresses in person, it’s hard to imagine just how thin they are, ghost-like whisps, really.
The counters were littered with LaCroix cans and La Mer skincare products; a giant gift basket from her first day sat rejected with all the fruit removed and flowers wilted.
Would she notice if I pocketed the box of fancy Sonoma chocolates that I knew cost forty-five dollars for a box of four truffles?
My hand got halfway there when Cassie looked up from where she’d fallen on the fake suede couch.
A mascara-streaked face emphasized her recent ego bruise.
“I’m not usually so unprofessional, I swear. I just needed a minute.” When she wasn’t acting as Cassie, she spoke like Ariana
Grande, a high-pitched, super-fast imitation of a little girl’s voice. I’m calling her Cassie because to wrestle two names
for a minor character would be confusing, right? Also she could be a Cassie. Annie? Andrea!
“It’s OK, let’s go through the scene together, how about that?”
“OK,” she said, pausing the flat screen TV on Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride. I leaned my back against the mini kitchen counter.
“I’m going to be Ian, and we’ll just do a little read-through together. OK?”
“OK,” she said, staring out the window, still lying down like a Victorian lady on a fainting couch as though I didn’t have
the power to fire her.
OK, I could only get the ball rolling on firing her, but still.
I had a little power.
“How about we stand up as though on our marks, and just talk it through.”
She stood up and faced me, arms crossed.
“You’re falling in love with Ian at this point in the arc. Falling in love feels like being cracked open, doesn’t it?”
Her face was blank.
“You’ve been in love, right?”
She made a puzzled expression. “I guess?”
“You’d know it if you had,” I lamented, getting a flash of me a decade earlier, standing in the forest in the pouring rain, my arms around Buckeye as we kissed for the first time.
The feeling I had all through my body was something like Oh, this is why we’re alive!
This is the feeling we should stay alive for!
Cassie had picked up her phone and was scrolling.
“Let’s run the lines and see what happens,” I said, as I took her phone and placed it down beside the expensive food she’d
never eat.
“I guess I just wanted an excuse to spend time with you, Cassie. You make me feel alive for the first time in years.”
“Oh Ian,” Cassie said, a bit like a soap opera actress jonesing for a smoke break.
This was the kiss line. There was no heat between us. She was as wooden as I was, someone who hadn’t acted since my eighth-grade production of Fiddler on the Roof. I felt like I was slow dancing in seventh grade. It was torture.
“I think the problem is we need to bring the line back that was cut this morning. You need to say, “I’m just scared to risk my heart, Ian.”
“Yes, I miss that line, it’s what anchored the moment.”
Suddenly I liked Cassie Annie Andrea. I would go to war for her. Maybe I should watch her werewolf zombie vampire show. Oh, the writer ego. We were interrupted by a forceful knock on the trailer door,
but instead of a harried production assistant, Ben appeared. Easygoing, calming presence, our legit small-town boy. Cassie’s
face lit up. Somehow he was even more handsome when forced to be less than a foot and a half away from me. Usually, people’s
features get weirder close up, but he could really be cute from every angle, even in a tiny trailer.
“Hi, Ben, I’m Elise. The head writer.”
“Of course, I know,” he said, taking my hand in his hand for a conciliatory shake, holding it longer than one normally would.
“I never forget the writer.”
Damn. I’d hoped he’d be an idiot. His hand in mine felt like mildly pleasant electrocution.
“Ha, most people do. It’s a director’s world and I’m just living in it . . .” I was usually great at banter. How was my banter so weak? “We’re just going over the scene in a lower pressure situation.”
“Great. Maybe I should do the scene with you, and Andrea can watch us.”
“Oh, I’m not an actor. I was just reading your lines for lack of anyone else. But I did think we needed to bring back Cassie’s
line that was cut this morning.”
“OK, great. You do that, Andrea will watch us. Just pretend we’re dancing and I’ll lead.” He pulled me close and I felt a
blush creeping up my neck to my ears. Can I exit the planet but also stay right here forever? I was even thinking in romance movie language.
We spoke the lines. I could barely speak mine, I was so caught up in the way he gripped my side. I looked right into his eyes,
feeling him pull me toward him. He pushed some hair out of my eyes and looked into my soul, pausing before he leaned in as
if to kiss me. Our lips got so close that my eyes closed and I felt it in my toes. It was all I could do not to lean in and
make it happen. He surely felt it too?
“See?” he stepped back, clapped his hands together. “Now we should try.”
I tried to fall back down to earth as Cassie and Ben did the scene again, and I covertly popped a million-dollar dark chocolate
truffle. Turns out money does make everything taste much better. This time it was like they were dancing and he was leading,
and Cassie became a person who understood that falling in love was named that way because it did throw you off your axis.
And when the kiss came in rehearsal, they actually kissed. The chemistry was right. I would have clapped but the AD chirped
in my earpiece and soon I was leading them back to their marks, feeling as though I was carrying a broken vase I’d just glued
back together and was trying not to drop again. I was hopeful they could both bring the right amount of heat to the moment.
Somehow Jason looked like he’d been mainlining Monster Energy drinks and shooting small animals on the break.
I had a brief, hopeful moment that perhaps a cardiac event would befall him.
But they did the scene, and it was perfect.
We were all glowing in how great it was, until I turned to see Jason, expecting relief on his ragged, tortured-artist face, but somehow he looked angrier than ever.
“Look, I’m glad you finally came to life as a human woman, but that line was cut! Are we going back in time?” He slammed his
empty drink can down on the pavement. A PA grabbed it and scurried away like a little raccoon busboy.
“Elise told me to,” Cassie mumbled.
“Elise is not the director!”
He looked at me and I practised everything I’d learned from women’s empowerment podcasts. I stood up straight. I looked him
in the eye. I did not betray the fact that I felt like a tiny, wounded, exhausted bunny rabbit in my soul.
“Jason, this is my fault. I meant to discuss this earlier, but the scene doesn’t work without Cassie’s line. We don’t know
what the emotional stakes are for her unless she makes it clear. Surely you can see how much better the scene was just now
with it kept in.”
His face contorted and somehow got angrier? The furrow between his eyes deepened, the redness reached peak crimson. The bunny in my soul yelled at me to hop back to
my little trailer.
“Oh, surely I must. Why must everything be so goddamn on the nose? Is this An Exposition for Christmas? Jesus Christ!”
“I really think I have a valid point for keeping it in,” I said, my stupid voice shaking.
“I agree,” said Ben, as though he were stepping between two idiots in a bar fight. I wanted to hug him. “It’s less about exposition
and more about Cassie finally telling Ian something vulnerable and true about herself. It allows Cassie to be a more fully
formed character instead of just a random hot woman, you know?”
Jason’s independent movies had been critiqued for their shallow portrayal of women. I knew this would piss him off.
“Oh, are we letting actors have opinions now?”
Ben lifted his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I just thought I’d share how it felt, but you’re right, you’re in charge.”
There was a phantom bro implied at the end of his sentence, the way men de-escalate subtly. But I didn’t want to back down.
“Why don’t we do the scene again with the line and maybe you’ll see what we mean?” I asked, as gently as I could. Jason turned
around and made a big show of taking a deep breath. I had just fixed the “Cassie is a robot” problem. I was sure he would
recognize that the scene had gotten better if he just saw it a second time and it wasn’t a surprise. I don’t know why I thought
I could just launch into it without buttering him up first. The production assistants and crew had been skulking around like
orphans in a Dickens novel all day. We’d been getting along, the director and I, most days because I’d kept my mouth shut.