Chapter Sixteen Caroline #3
Up ahead was the Labor In Vain bridge and just next to it was the small dock belonging to the Palmer Preston house.
She could see there were a few cars and a truck parked along the side.
A small tent had been set up on the dirt where the dog walkers usually congregated, underneath the tent was a folding table, maybe serving coffee or sandwiches, and even from forty yards away Caroline could see that the people milling about were part of the film crew, all dressed in jeans and black t-shirts in the blazing heat.
Another greenhead buzzed by Caroline’s face and as she waved it off, she felt a searing pain on her shin.
A fly was biting her, but she couldn’t extract her leg from the cockpit to kill it.
“Fuck!” she screamed, rocking back and forth and nearly capsizing.
She was bleeding, she could feel it. “Goddamn it,” she muttered to herself.
She turned the bow upstream toward home and started paddling, but the current was much stronger than she had expected.
She rowed hard, but another fly landed on her shoulder, and she swatted it away and in the ten seconds it took her, the little kayak had been swept back again.
The fly circled and then flew down into the cockpit toward her feet. “Go away! Go away!” Caroline screamed.
She was being pulled backward, faster and faster, the tide sucking her little kayak closer to the bridge.
She jammed her paddle into the mud and pulled her legs out of the hull, hoisting herself from the boat and into the waist-deep water.
It was impossible. There was no way she could row home until the tide turned.
She was starting to cry in frustration, and she dragged the boat over to the muddy shore and stood, dripping, waving away flies and trying to figure out what the hell to do.
Greenheads loved wet skin, she remembered, and her bare legs would soon be covered in welts.
“Are you okay?” called a woman in a baseball hat and sunglasses. She clambered down across the muddy rocks from the tent. She was wearing an earpiece and holding a half-eaten sandwich. “You’re bleeding. Do you need a ride?”
“Oh, yeah.” Caroline smiled miserably. There was something ironic about the whole thing: the Palmer Preston film team saving her after sending her to this horrible little town in the first place. “That would be amazing.”
“Let me call someone.” The woman pulled a walkie off her belt. “Ned? Can you bring your car down by craft services? Ned?”
“Oh, no, never mind…” With mounting horror, Caroline realized what she had done. Somehow Caroline had managed to conjure Ned Clark, like an evil genie from a lamp.
Ned pulled up to the bridge ten minutes later dressed, as always, like he was about to win a new round of funding from a venture capitalist fraternity brother, wearing a white linen shirt and leather belt.
To his credit, he didn’t look altogether shocked to see her and he helped Caroline haul her kayak off the riverbank and onto the roof of his car, not seeming to mind the brown water that ran down his sleeves.
“If you wanted to see me you could have just called. You didn’t have to come spy on production.”
“I wasn’t spying.” Caroline frowned. “How would I know you were here? You’re a literary agent, not a gaffer.”
“Sure.” Ned raised an eyebrow. “What are the chances a producer would be on the set of his own film?” He handed her a bottle of Poland Spring and while she wanted to rebuff him and his single-use plastic, her own metal water bottle was empty, so she accepted it with a nod.
“I didn’t realize greenhead season had started.” Caroline wiped at her shin, smearing the blood with her hand.
“The location scout says that out in the marshes they get the greenheads a few days early.” Ned opened the passenger door and Caroline climbed in, noting the expensive leather interior, the air conditioning blowing quietly. He buckled his seatbelt and started the car. “I heard you sold a novel.”
Caroline had spent so much time hating this person that it was oddly perplexing to be in his presence, like meeting Vladimir Putin in a pottery class, or sharing a park bench with Elon Musk.
She felt both deflated and righteous and didn’t know what to do with her face.
“It’s based on the story in the New Yorker. ” She shrugged nonchalantly.
“Congratulations.”
Caroline looked at him like he’d dropped to one knee and offered her a rose. He was being inappropriately sincere. “Thanks,” she muttered.
“So, do you always row your boat outside the homes of women who hate me?” Ned asked archly.
“Palmer Preston’s first wife isn’t your biggest fan?”
“Nope. She actually threatened to sue us. Obviously, the studio lawyers have been through all this before, so I don’t think she has a leg to stand on. I mean, if the royal family couldn’t stop them from making The Crown, I don’t think Preston’s ex can stop a movie that his estate wants to make.”
“Why doesn’t she like it?” asked Caroline curiously.
“The script focuses heavily on Tarbox. That book ruffled a lot of feathers.” Ned drove slowly down the sun-dappled road, curving past the grassy field full of dog walkers, past the hiking trails and houses nestled in the woods.
It was annoying to see he was a comfortable driver.
She’d been hoping an adulthood of taxis and subways meant he was as impaired as she was.
“I didn’t realize people had mixed feelings about Preston’s books.
It seems like he’s such a big local hero.
” The town of Greenhead found any excuse they could to celebrate the man.
They had a ceremony when they cut down the tree by his house, they had a party on what would have been his birthday, they probably had an envelope of his hair clippings in some barber shop for all she knew.
“You have to remember how scandalous that book was—affairs, abortion, partner-swapping—everyone was talking about it, trying to guess who was who. Even though Preston had disguised his friends, everyone knew who they were, and everyone was talking about them.”
“Did people get mad at him?”
“Absolutely,” Ned said. “People got divorced because of the book. When he first moved to Greenhead there were twelve couples who were all part of his gang, six at the center. Preston was the ringleader, the social chair. They spent every Sunday playing volleyball or tennis, drinking and dancing. There were always parties, hard drinking. People slept around. It was the sixties. But a lot of their friends say those marriages could have survived if it weren’t for the scrutiny that came from the book. ”
“Because when he published Tarbox he told everyone’s secrets.”
“I don’t think he meant to. But Greenhead is a small town. It was even smaller then. Out of the twelve marriages in the group only two of them survived the scandal.”
“Does that disturb you? Making a movie that’s going to upset people?”
“I suppose.” Ned considered. “But I represent the estate. Preston chose his grandson to helm the estate. He didn’t choose his ex-wife. We have to assume there was a reason for that, that he felt his grandson would serve his memory better. And the film does important things for his legacy.”
“Once a writer is dead it’s hard to know what they might have wanted.”
“It’s morally gray,” Ned agreed. “But that’s art. Art is supposed to challenge us, to make us uncomfortable.”
“Hmmm.” Caroline reflected. Was her story making readers uncomfortable? Or just the subjects? “Would there be a situation where you wouldn’t make the movie? Where the human cost was too great?”
“Sure,” Ned said slowly. “Are we talking about the Preston movie, or are you talking about your novel?”
“Yeah,” Caroline said sheepishly. She tried to drink her water, but her heart was beating quickly, that terrible anxiety back in her chest.