38. Luke
LUKE
Anna stands at the window looking out at the medina, one hand on the glass, taking it all in.
My phone buzzes.
Steven.
I answer.
"They want to recast," he says.
"I'm here. In my room."
I sit down on the edge of the bed.
"They don't give a shit. They've already had conversations with two other names. The bad boy reputation is back, Luke. Full volume. Walking off a film mid-production — it doesn't matter why. It looks like the old you."
"This was different."
"I know that. They don't care." A pause. "Delia's working it from her end. But right now the studio is furious, and Max is furious and insurance is involved and we need to fix this fast or you lose the film."
He hangs up.
Anna turns from the window.
She read it in my face before I said a word.
"They want to recast."
She sits down beside me.
"Is there anything you can do?"
"I need to sit tight and let Delia and Steve handle it. That's their job."
I pace the room until Delia calls back an hour later.
I put her on speaker.
“There's one person who can fix this," Delia says.
"Who?"
"Rebecca Anderson. If Rebecca goes to the studio and says not to recast, that she wants you — in the middle of all of this they're not going to upset her. She's the star. You get Rebecca, Rebecca gets Max and the studio will follow. Remember all the studio cares about is their money."
"I can't ask her that," I say.
"Why not?"
I look at Anna.
Anna looks back at me. She shakes her head. "Do it," she says.
"Anna—"
"Go to Rebecca."
"You're sure?"
"This is sweet, but can you get your ass over there?" Delia says.
"I'm on my way."
I hang up.
I stop at the door.
“I have leverage.”
“What?” Anna asks.
“It’s would cost a lot more to replace me than recast.”
“Do not mention that. It will sound like a threat.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“Just don’t sleep with her.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
I head to Rebecca's room.
Rebecca opens the door in a hotel robe, script in hand, reading glasses on.
She looks at me.
"What are you doing here?"
"I need your help."
"You have a lot of nerve," she says.
"I know."
"Do you?"
"Yes."
She steps back and lets me in.
The room is larger than mine. Script pages spread across the table. A half-eaten plate of food on the nightstand. The particular organized chaos of an actor deep in a production.
She sits on the edge of the chair. Doesn't offer me a seat. I take one anyway.
"Talk," she says.
I tell her everything. Anna. Montana. The pregnancy. What I walked off set for and why. I don't dress it up. I don't make it sound better than it was. I just tell her the truth.
She listens without interrupting.
When I'm done, she's quiet for a moment.
"And you want me to clean up your shit?"
"You're the only one who can. I'm out of options."
She takes her glasses off. Sets them on the table.
"What do I get out of this?"
"We're making a good movie. Maybe great. It goes to shit if they replace me and you know that."
"You're not irreplaceable."
"What do you want? What can I do?"
She looks at me for a long moment.
She calls Max's room.
She dresses without saying a word to me.
We walk down to Max's room.
Max's room is larger than both of ours.
He looks at Rebecca when she walks in. Then at me. The expression of a man recalibrating.
His large computer screen has six images of actors that could replace me. He doesn't try to hide it.
"Sit down," he says.
We sit.
I try to say something. He stops me. "I don't want to hear from you."
Rebecca does the talking.
She tells Max she wants me back. The production shutdown was the right call given Danny's injury. Max and the studio needed to look into what happened. It had nothing to do with Luke.
Max says the studio needs to hear from her directly that she's fine, that the film is fine, that the best work of the production is still ahead.
"The studio is pissed," Max says.
"Do they want me pissed?"
She says it like it's already decided. Because with Rebecca Anderson it is.
Max listens. He looks at me once, briefly, and I don't say anything.
When she's done, he picks up his phone. He calls the studio president. Mark Davis.
I sit there watching two of the most powerful people in the film industry dismantle a problem on my behalf.
Rebecca lays it out calmly and precisely.
Danny Rivera got hurt, and it was a terrible incident.
Production shut down for a few days to deal with it.
At the same time Luke, with permission from Max and the studio, went to Montana because he found out his girlfriend — the love of his life — is pregnant.
Being decent people with good hearts they let him go, since production was shut down anyway, with the promise he would return immediately. Which he did.
"How about that for a story?" she says. "Who says Hollywood has no heart?"
She looks at Max.
"Two million comes out of his salary," Mark says.
I close my eyes and swallow.
Rebecca doesn't even look at me. "Fine."
"Are you on board, Max?" Mark says.
He looks at me like he's had enough of my existence.
"I'm on board," Max says.
A pause on the line.
"Hold on," Mark says.
We wait. Rebecca pours herself a glass of sparkling water. Max stares at the wall. I look at my hands.
"We're okay to move ahead," Mark says.
"Thank you, Mark," Rebecca says.
"No more delays, Max. Go make a great movie."
The line goes dead.
Max looks at both of us. "Let me get back to work."
"I hope she's worth it," Rebecca says.
"She is."
I hug her.
"Thank you," I say.
"Thanks, Max."
"First thing in the morning," he says.
I leave the room.
Anna is on the bed, shoes off, reading something on her phone. She looks up when I come in.
"Well?"
"We're back on."
She screams.
Not a polite scream. A full thing, both hands over her mouth, feet kicking the bed. I laugh before I can stop myself.
"You're sure?" she says.
"Six a.m. tomorrow."
I call Delia. I don't know what time it is in LA and I don't care.
We get Steven on the phone.
Steven picks up half asleep.
"What time is it?" he says.
"We're back on Sentinel," Delia says.
Steven screams.
I've never heard Steven scream.
I walk them through it. I tell them about the two million dollar hit. Steven is pissed I didn't call him to negotiate.
"I couldn't, Steven."
Delia makes a sound I've never heard from her. High pitched. Uncontrolled.
“Did you scream Delia?” I say.
“I don’t scream.”
Anna is watching me from the bed with her hand over her mouth trying not to laugh.
"Okay," Delia says, back to business in four seconds flat. "Anna — how long are you staying?"
I look at Anna.
"A couple of weeks," she says. "Then I need to get back to LA. I'm getting close to no-fly days because of the baby."
"Please, no more drama from you two. I have other clients."
She hangs up.
Steven is still on the line.
"Luke," he says.
"Yeah."
"Don't ever do that again."
"I won't."
He hangs up.
That night we find a restaurant in the medina that Danny told me about weeks ago.
Small. Quiet. Tiled walls and candlelight and the smell of something slow-cooked that has been going all day. The owner seats us in a corner without recognizing either of us which is the only thing I wanted.
We eat. We talk. Not about the film or the studio or social media or any of it. We talk the way we used to talk in the house — the real conversations, the ones that went until the house went dark around us.
She tells me what she wants to name him.
“What about Axel?” I say.
Anna lowers her menu. “For a baby?”
“For our son.”
“Our son is not being named after a motorcycle part.”
“It’s strong,” I say.
“It sounds like he sells fireworks out of a van.”
I lean closer. “What about Jack?”
She stops.
“Jack Wolfe,” I say.
The name hits different. Real.
“It’s not awful,” she says.
I smile. “You love it.”
“I said not awful.”
I take her hand. “Jack.”
“I feel like that’s an actor name, Jack Wolfe?” She checks her phone.
A beat.
“What about Blade?”
Anna stares at me. “You should stop now.”
We argue pleasantly about it for twenty minutes.
We don't decide anything.
We talk about how the baby will change out lives. We both know we have no idea what we’re talking about and we love it.
Outside the restaurant the medina is alive — voices and music and the call to prayer somewhere distant, the smell of spice and smoke and something ancient underneath all of it.
We walk back through narrow streets, her hand in mine, the city pressing close on both sides.
This is the life, I think.
Right here.
Back in the room she stands at the window again.
The medina below, the lights of the city going on forever, the particular dark of a Moroccan sky with no marine layer to soften it.
I come up behind her.
She leans back into me without turning around.
My hands find her waist. She covers them with hers.
We stay like that for a moment — the city below, the quiet of the room, her back against my chest.
Then she turns.
She looks up at me in the low light.
Something in her face that has been braced for a long time is not braced anymore.
I've been with a lot of women.
I know how to do this. The mechanics of it. The moves that work. I've been doing it since I was seventeen and I've never once had to think very hard about it.
This is different.
I don't know how to explain it except to say that everything I've ever done before was for me, even when I was trying to be good at it. Especially then. The performance of generosity. The ego of it.
I kiss her slowly and I mean it.
She kisses me back and I feel the difference.
Not in the kiss itself but in what I want from it.
I don't want to impress her. I don't want to be remembered.
I just want her to feel good. I want to be the reason she feels good tonight in this room in Morocco with the city below us and a son between us who doesn't have a name yet.
I want to give her something she keeps.
We move to the bed.
I take my time. All of it — her neck, her shoulders, the place below her ear she can't hide her reaction to.
Her body is different now, fuller, changed in ways that are still new to me, and I pay attention to every part of it like I'm learning something I don't want to get wrong.
Her breath catches. Her hands find my hair.
I slow down when she slows. I follow when she pulls me closer. I stay where she wants me to stay until she tells me otherwise.
Her eyes stay open and on mine the whole time.
No performance. No distance. Just her looking at me like she's making sure I'm real.
I stay there until she goes over — slowly, completely, her whole body present in it, her hands gripping mine hard. The sound she makes is low and private and not for anyone else.
I follow her.
Afterward we lie tangled together in the dark, her head on my chest, both of us breathing slowly back to ourselves.
My hand rests on her stomach.
She covers my hand with hers.
I've never felt anything like that in my life.
I don't say anything.
I just hold on.
Six a.m.
The desert is still cold at this hour. The light coming up flat and hard. Crew moving. Equipment rolling.
I look at the schedule. We're reshooting the love scene with me and Rebecca.
I'm taken to set by a PA.
I go over to Max. "Thank you for reshooting this."
"That's what the two million bought you," he says.
I find my mark.
Rebecca is already there.
She looks at me.
"Ready?" she says.
"Yeah," I say.
Max settles into his chair.
"Action."
We do the scene a dozen times. I know it's going well because Max doesn't say a word. And a few crew members have tears in their eyes.