21. Anna
ANNA
Danny's house is a small white cottage two blocks from the beach. There's a bike on the porch and a chalk drawing on the front path that might be a dog or might be a horse. Luke rings the bell.
Jen answers. Dark hair, no makeup, flour on her shirt. She's pretty in the way that has nothing to do with trying.
"Come in, come in." She holds the door open. "Sorry, we're a disaster. Brian decided today was a good day to finger paint the wall."
"It wasn't a good day," Danny calls from somewhere inside.
"It was not." She takes the wine we brought without looking at the label and puts it straight in the kitchen. "You want water? Beer? I made lemonade for the kids but it's actually really good."
"Lemonade's great," I say.
Luke says the same.
She pours it like she's known us for years.
Penelope toddles in from the hallway in a diaper and one sock and stops when she sees us. Stares at Luke. Looks at me. Looks back at Luke. Walks over and hands him a plastic dinosaur.
"Thank you," he says.
She walks back out.
Danny comes in drying his hands on a dish towel. "Sorry. The two-year-old runs this house. We just live here."
Dinner is pasta. Danny eats carbs. Luke and I look at each other.
A big pot of it in the middle of the table, with bread.
Brian talks constantly about a movie he saw that has robots in it. He tells us the entire plot including the ending. Danny listens like it's the first time. Penelope eats approximately four pieces of rigatoni and then falls asleep sitting up.
Jen catches her before she tips over.
"She does this," she says, carrying her out. "Give me two minutes."
She's back in three, pours herself more wine, picks up the conversation exactly where it left off.
Danny tells a story about a shoot he did in Budapest years ago that went badly wrong.
Jen has clearly heard it before. It was before the kids — she went with him.
She adds details he's forgotten. Corrects him on one.
He concedes without argument, like a man who has learned which battles matter.
She puts her hand on his arm while he finishes the story and leaves it there.
Nobody performs. There's nobody to perform for.
Later we move outside. The yard is small and strung with lights and there are two kids' bikes against the fence and a half-deflated soccer ball and a little plastic slide that belongs to Penelope.
We sit out there until it's late. Luke and Danny fall into something easy, trading stories, laughing.
I watch Luke laugh and think about how rarely I've seen it. Real laughing. No audience.
"Are you going to Morocco?" Jen asks me. "Oh, we haven't discussed that."
Luke shrugs. "Um, maybe."
"We're going for a month, when the kids are out of school. I've never been so that will be cool."
"I have a lot of auditions now," I say.
Jen is sitting here making plans of what we could do there together. "Then a hammam," she says. "A real one. Some terrifying woman scrubs us until we're reborn. Then the desert. Stars. Camels. Scarves. The whole embarrassing tourist fantasy."
Luke doesn't say anything.
Nobody does.
"So, you're bringing the kids too?" Luke asks.
"Yeah, I think it's good to have them exposed to other cultures at a young age," Jen says.
"I say no but I'm overruled," Danny says.
"I don't know how you do it," Luke says.
"Ah, you figure it out," Danny says.
"He means, I figure it out," Jen says.
"She figures it out. You don't want kids?" Danny says.
"No, I can't imagine."
Jen shoots me a look.
I keep my mouth shut.
"Never?" she says.
"Nah, not for me."
"Really?" Jen says.
He shakes his head.
"Let it go, babe," Danny says.
Luke doesn't look at me for a while.
The freeway is empty on the drive home. The city dark on both sides.
"I had too much pasta," I say.
"Me too. It was so good."
"She's great."
"Yeah."
"I'm going to hang out with her."
"She'd like that." He changes lanes. "She used to work in finance. Before the kids."
"You believe her?"
I think about the way Jen moved through that house. Not performing contentment. Just in it. "Yeah," I say. "I do."
We drive for a while.
"Jen's going, huh?" I say.
"Sounds like it."
"I think the point is them being together as a family."
"Yeah, I guess."
"Do you want me to go?"
"I don't know when she's going to see Danny though. It's going to be really long hours," he says.
He doesn't say anything else the rest of the ride home. I watch the lights on the freeway whiz by.
I've moved most of my things into his room. His bathroom. Like a real girlfriend.
I don't sleep.
I think about the dinner tonight.
Then my thoughts drift to my nude scene. I lie there and watch the ceiling go from dark to grey and run the scene in my head for the hundredth time. The blocking. The marks.
My character is a woman coming apart at the seams and I know her, I've lived inside her for months, and none of that helps. It's just me and the ceiling and the fact that in a few hours I'll be on camera with my clothes off. I'll pretend it's Luke I'm with.
Somewhere around five I stop pretending and get up.
I'm tense in the shower.
Tense on the drive. The city is still half-asleep and I sit in traffic I don't need to be in because I left too early because I couldn't stay in the house anymore. I think about calling my mother. I don't. I think about what she'd say and I definitely don't.
Delia calls for a pep talk.
Then Chloe. I let them talk. I say the right things back. I'm fine. I'm ready. It's just work. I've said it enough times that I almost mean it.
The makeup artist is chatty and does my face in the chair while I stare at myself in the mirror. Same face. Same person who passed the bar. I keep waiting to feel ready. It doesn't come.
I go to my trailer.
There's a craft services spread outside and I grab a plate on the way in without thinking.
Eat it. Go back for another. I'm not hungry — I'm the opposite of hungry, my stomach has been in a knot since three a.m. — but my hands need something to do, and eating is something to do.
Crackers. Cheese. Some kind of miniature quiche.
I eat four of them standing over the little trailer sink and then feel sick and sit down.
The waiting is the worst part. It's always the waiting.
I know the blocking. I know where my hands go.
I know what stays covered and what doesn't. I know all of it and I've known all of it for two weeks and none of it helps because knowing is not the same as doing and doing is not the same as being done and right now I'm still in the part where I'm just a person sitting in a trailer eating miniature quiches and trying not to think too hard about what I'm about to do.
I eat two more.
I call Luke.
"I'm terrified," I say.
"I'm coming. Text me where."
He's there in an hour. Knocks on the trailer door and comes in and doesn't say anything about the demolished craft services plate or the fact that I'm clearly in the middle of stress-eating my way through the morning. He just sits across from me and takes it in.
"How many of those have you had?" He nods at the plate.
"Don't."
"I'm not judging. I'm asking."
"A lot."
He nods. Lets it sit for a second. "You're terrified," he says. "But your character is terrified. So you're already there."
I look at him. "That's actually helpful."
"Don't sound so surprised."
"Are you going to eat any of these or just watch me spiral?"
He reaches over and takes a quiche. "Both," he says.
The set is small. Closed. Maya, the director, checks in with me before we start, calm and specific. She doesn't tell me it's going to be fine. She tells me what we're going to do and asks if I have questions. I don't.
I ask if Luke can stay. Everyone agrees. Even Tom Burka, my scene partner.
Luke stands off to the side, out of the way, and I don't look at him, but I know he's there. That's the whole thing. Just knowing.
I do the scene.
It's awkward the way a medical exam is awkward. Nothing romantic about the mechanics. Hit the mark, find the light, say the words. Maya calls cut twice to adjust. She is quiet and precise. Nobody makes it weird.
Eighteen takes. Different angles, different setups.
Masters and close-ups. Six hours total. My body on camera in a way it has never been on camera before, and somewhere around take nine I stop thinking about that and just work.
The scene is the scene. My character is scared and exposed and trying not to show it and I know how to do that.
Turns out I've known how to do that for a long time.
Luke watches the whole time. Staying for six hours. Watching me be seen like that and not looking away. There's something in that I don't have a word for.
When we're done, I change back into Anna Simons.
"Thank you for coming," I say when he finds me.
"You did good."
I don't feel good or bad. Just numb.
When I get home, he already has a movie on.
A romantic comedy I've never seen, from a few years ago. It takes me a few minutes to place the face in a small supporting role.
"Is that bellboy you?"
"My first role."
It is absolutely him. Younger, looser, doing a bit as a guy who works in a flower shop and gives terrible advice. He's funny. Genuinely funny. I didn't know that about him.
I pull my knees up and watch. He pretends to be annoyed and watches too.
I fall asleep before it ends. I'm aware of it happening, that slow sink, and I don't fight it. I'm tired in a way that goes all the way down.
In the middle of the night he carries me upstairs. I'm mostly asleep, just conscious enough to feel it — his arms, the quiet of the house, the way he sets me down carefully like something he doesn't want to break.
He gets in next to me. Doesn't say anything.
I fall back asleep with his arm across me.
"Luke, I want to go to Morocco with you."
"Okay."
"The whole time."
"Good." He squeezes me tighter.
It's a perfect ending to a hard day.