Chapter 28
The LA office of the casting company I worked for was vastly different from its counterpart in New York.
I no longer worked in an office building, but in a small house in North Hollywood.
My boss was funny and smart and took every single person she talked to as seriously as they took their craft.
However, the number of times I said, “I’m not sure if we have the bandwidth to take on this project; let me circle back,” was disturbing.
After only a couple of months, I overheard one random manager say to an actor, “Did you not want to look skinny today?” and then follow it up with “You’re a prop, sweetheart, try to make it look good,” and I decided it was time to move out of casting.
If I were going to have any creative say in storytelling, I needed to work directly with producers and in development.
I had a few ideas, but I wasn’t going to assume anyone would listen until I proved I could make other people’s ideas a reality.
That meant I needed someone to take a chance on me and sponsor my visa; otherwise, I would be shipped back to Canada.
I got a job with an older independent film producer named Dan Burke, who had jet-black hair and a salt-and-pepper beard that fell halfway down his neck.
His shark eyes were as alarming as his hair dye.
I thought it was strange when one of his questions during my interview was “When did you realize you were pretty?” but I shrugged it off as a question from an older man of a different generation.
His company had produced two award-winning films that I loved, and he was going to sponsor me.
My discomfort grew when Dan opened his jacket by casually propping his hands on his hips, revealing a handgun holstered to his side during meetings.
It seemed strange to me how it always magically happened when the conversation wasn’t going his way, but again .
. . a different generation? I didn’t know what to tell myself.
Ben grew increasingly wary after I told him that Dan was encouraging his team to take yoga together at lunch.
“Is it just the women he’s asking, or the men in the office, too?” Ben asked through the phone as Zoe and I were unpacking our new Beachwood Canyon two-bedroom apartment.
“I don’t know. There are barely any men on our floor. It’s this strange gray area where I don’t know what’s happening. I think he’s just weird.”
“Are you going to do it?” Ben asked.
“I don’t know. If everyone in the office is doing it, and I’m all up-tight, what does that look like? I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to. I don’t want to get sweaty at work.”
Ben groaned loudly. “I don’t like this.”
“Do you think I like it?”
“No, obviously not.”
I heard a light knocking on Ben’s trailer door. He was filming on location. His pilot had just gotten picked up for a full season order, and his hours were just as ludicrous as mine.
“Hold on,” Ben said to me.
I heard him open the door, and a cheerful voice bouncing in the background. “I’m here to take you to set.”
“Okay.” Ben pressed his mouth back to his phone. “I gotta go. I’m sorry. I’ll call you later on tonight, though, okay? I love you.”
“Okay. I love you, too.” My shoulders slumped.
Zoe pushed herself through my bedroom door and hung her body half off the frame. She held out my lucky golf ball. Her thick, dark bangs hung over her eyes, and she forced them back by blowing through her lips. “Where do you want this?” she asked.
It was the golf ball from the Women’s Long Drive competition when I was a kid. It had traveled with me from Vancouver to New York to LA. It was always with me, and I had no excuse for keeping it all these years, other than that I couldn’t let it go.
“Oh, um . . .” I looked around. “Maybe the car? Let’s put it in the cup holder or something for the traffic gods.”
“Yes. Love it.” Zoe noticed that my phone was on the bed. “Where’s Ben?”
“He got called to set.”
“Oh, shitty.” She pinched her mouth together. “Are you okay?”
I sat on my bed and threw my clothes on the floor. “Yeah. It’s just . . . we haven’t talked much lately, and when we do, we’re in this weird dynamic. Like, I think both of our hearts are broken, but we can’t say that out loud, so we say ‘I love you’ instead.”
Zoe sat on my bed and pressed her hand into my leg.
I continued, “I just feel a bit empty right now. Sometimes it’s easier to miss him than to talk to him and walk away feeling even more empty.
” I shook my head and closed my eyes. “I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have left.
I shouldn’t have left him. I shouldn’t have left New York.
I just . . . I miss him, and I made a mistake. ”
“You didn’t make a mistake. You love Ben, but you stopped growing in New York. Listen, Dan Burke is a dirty dick, but right now you’re working on a movie that the entire world will see one day.”
“I’m just an assistant, Zo.” I sulked.
“You didn’t break through in New York. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.
You didn’t make it. And you didn’t in Vancouver, either.
And right now, in LA, you’re getting the chance.
And I know it’s hard. And I know people suck.
And I know you’re just an assistant. But you’ve made it into the room, Ellie.
Sure, you’re standing at the back, but you’re in the room.
This wasn’t a mistake. Every choice you make is preparing you for when opportunity hits.
You’re smart, you’re scrappy, you’re good at the politics, and you have no idea where this job is going to take you.
You don’t know who you’re going to meet along the way.
You don’t know who is going to read your scripts.
You. Don’t. Know.” Zoe slapped my leg and stood up.
“As for Ben, have phone sex. Get on FaceTime and shove your vagina right against that screen.”
I laughed and covered my eyes with my arm, still lying on the bed.
The next time Ben and I talked, we were on the phone for only three minutes.
The time after that was five minutes. The time after that, three again.
We had only been apart for a handful of months, and I could feel him fading into a past version of my life, a version I was saying goodbye to and was slowly losing touch with.
I found myself cycling through a memory of a conversation I had on my twenty-fourth birthday: Sometimes you can’t go back. It’ll never be what it was. And experiencing that with the same people, but without the magic . . . it would break my heart.
Every time I spoke with Ben, the magic slipped and fell between us. It was stuck somewhere between New York and Los Angeles. I could feel myself breaking.
“What are we doing, Ellie?”
I could hear Ben crying softly through the phone. I had driven up to Mulholland Drive to look out at the cityscape below me. It was a city I had dreamed about. It was a city I had had nightmares about. I clutched my lucky golf ball in my hand and held back my tears.
“I just think we need to live the lives we’ve chosen,” I sobbed.
By the time I was in Los Angeles for six months, the magic was gone . . . and so was Ben.