28. Luke
LUKE
In Morocco the light hits different. It comes off the sandstone hard and flat, bleaching the color from everything except the shadows. The buildings look older than memory. Like they'll still be standing long after we're gone.
The production sprawls across the desert.
Three hundred crew.
Two units shooting at once.
Trucks. Generators. Cables snaking through the sand.
A basecamp the size of a small town.
I've worked on big sets before.
I've seen the cranes. The trailers. The money.
But standing here, watching a hundred people move because someone yelled action, I feel it in my chest.
This isn't an audition.
It isn't a guest spot.
It isn't another almost.
For the first time, I look around and think:
This is happening.
The days have a shape here.
Four-thirty alarm. Coffee from a machine in the basecamp tent that tastes like it was made by someone who has never enjoyed coffee. Into hair and makeup by five. On set by six before the light gets too hard.
We shoot until the heat makes it impossible. Break. Eat whatever craft services has managed to produce in a desert. Back at it when the afternoon light softens. Wrap around eight. Food again. Lines for tomorrow. Sleep.
Do it again.
The physical stuff is relentless. Ronny flew out for the first two weeks and nearly killed me before he left. My body has adapted to things I didn't think it could adapt to. I sleep like I'm dead every night.
It's the best I've felt on a set in my life.
We shoot the hotel scene.
The one Anna and I rehearsed in the kitchen. The one where Chris tells Marilyn he loves her knowing she's about to leave.
The set is dressed perfectly. A room that looks like it exists at the edge of something — the kind of hotel room where people say true things because they know they won't have to live with them tomorrow.
Rebecca and I run it once for blocking. We don't say much to each other.
Then Max calls action.
I can't live without you.
Anna in the kitchen. Script open between us. Her reading Rebecca's lines with her eyes on the page and then looking up at me at exactly the wrong moment.
I tried and I keep coming back here.
Anna on the couch with Zeke's head in her lap, looking at the city like it owed her something.
Anna in the bathtub saying I love you like it cost her everything.
I kiss Rebecca.
Rebecca feels it. I can tell by the way she adjusts — leans in slightly, her responses becoming less technical and more received. She stops acting and starts listening.
We shoot it eleven times. Each time with the kiss.
On the eleventh take Max says cut and doesn't say anything for a long moment.
Then: "That's the one."
Rebecca looks at me. Smiles. "We're going to make a good film."
I nod. That was all the acknowledgment I needed from the biggest star in the world.
I go to my trailer.
I sit there. That was the scene. The one the audience needs to feel. The one I'm getting eight million dollars for.
Everyone treats me different since the restaurant scene. The crew doesn't talk to me as much. They nod now instead of saying hello. I nod back. It's like I belong to another group.
Everyone but Danny.
Jen arrives on a Friday.
No kids — they're still in school. Just Jen.
Danny meets her at the basecamp entrance. I watch him from across the lot.
He sees her and his whole body changes. Not in a dramatic way. Just — settles. Like something that's been slightly off center finds its place.
She says something when she reaches him. He laughs. He pulls her in.
Just that.
We have dinner that night, the three of us, at a restaurant in the medina that Danny found his second week here. Low tables. Good lamb. A courtyard open to the sky.
Jen asks about the shoot. She asks good questions — specific ones, the kind that show she actually read the script. She and Danny talk over each other the way they always do, finishing thoughts, correcting details, laughing at things that happened before I arrived.
I watch them across the table.
They're the same here as they are in Santa Monica. That's the thing. The cottage, the yard, the half-deflated soccer ball — none of that made them what they are. They just are this wherever they happen to be.
"How's Anna?" Jen asks.
"Fine. She's good. You haven't talked to her?"
"No, not with the kids. I called her, she didn't call me back."
"Maybe she got a job."
"You don't know?" Jen says.
"We've been missing each other."
"You okay?" Jen says.
"Yeah," I say. "Just tired."
She looks at me the way women look at men when they know tired isn't the whole answer.
"He's a bona fide movie star now," Danny says.
"Right."
"I'm serious. You can feel it on set. They treat Rebecca differently."
"Yeah, Rebecca."
"Now you too."
"Really? Like what?"
"They call you Mr. Wolfe now. Mr. Wolfe we're ready for you. Mr. Wolfe can I get you anything. You haven't noticed that?"
"They're teasing."
"No, they're not."
I try her that night from my hotel room. Eight p.m. here. Noon in LA.
It rings out.
I don't leave a message.
Rebecca finds me after we both wrap early one day.
"Drink?" she says.
The hotel bar is quiet at this hour. Low light. A few crew members at the far end. A pianist playing something that nobody is listening to.
We order. She has wine. I have water.
"How are you doing?" she says. "Really."
"Good. The work is good."
"The work is great." She looks at her glass. "I meant the other thing."
"What other thing?"
She smiles. Patient. "Luke. I've been working with you for two months. I know when someone is somewhere else."
I look at the bar.
"It's a girl? It's always a girl."
"There's a girl."
"An actress?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, the worst. Actresses are the worst. Don't date an actress."
"Too late."
"Does she work?"
"She's just starting to."
"Is she the one?"
"I don't know. Define the one."
"Are you thinking about her when you're kissing me?"
"That's how you decide?"
"I knew it was time to leave my husband when he stopped being the one. Now, it took another four years to physically leave, but that's when I knew."
"What took so long?"
"I had two affairs. I'm sure you've heard."
"It's hard to separate what's real from what's fake anymore."
"The lines are very blurry," she says.
I look at the pianist.
A couple across the room has been taking pictures of us nonstop.
"Word of advice."
"Sure."
"If you care about her, prepare her for what's coming."
"What's coming?"
"You and me. And you can't stop it. You can only prepare her. Or it will crush her. It didn't crush my husband. He cheated first, by the way."
I laugh.
"I heard that, and I just can't believe a man would cheat on you."
"That's what I said." She laughs. It's the same laugh I've seen from her in movies. No different.
She squeezes my arm once.
"Goodnight, Luke."
She leaves me at the bar.
The bar empties out around me. The pianist finishes and packs up. The bartender wipes down the far end of the counter.
I pick up my phone.
I call Anna.
It rings.
"Hey, you."
"Hey," Anna says.
"Miss you. Wish you were here."
"I miss you too."
"How's Zeke?"
"He sits by the door crying."
"Aw. What are you up to?"
"I'm reading a pilot. What about you?"
"I'm good. Tired. Hey, you know I wouldn't cheat on you, right?"
A long pause.
"Okay. Why are you saying that, like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like there's a but coming."
"Well, I'm single, technically, and Rebecca's single now, not to mention this is a big cast with a lot of actresses. There will probably be rumors about me, her or someone."
"Got it."
"Good. Like I said, wish you were here. Changed your mind about coming?"
“I want to,” I say. “But I have a lot going on right now, you know how it is. Delia and Steve are keeping me busy.”