“Completely. Haven’t been more sure about anything in my life. Should have told David years ago, all of it. If I’d been a source in his article, he could have published it months before. The pervert probably tried and succeeded in assaulting and harassing other people during that time, and I could have helped.”
“Elena, you know why you did what you did,” my dad reminded me.
“Yes, and there’s not been a day when I haven’t regretted it.” It was true. I breathed deeply again, but I felt better just by saying what I did. “Reach out to the cops. Tell them I’m ready to offer my testimony about David. And Papá, I’m gonna talk to him.”
“I’m not going to tell you not to do it, cariño. You should have probably done it months ago.” Dad showed his wisdom once again. “You may not want to tell your mom about it, though.”
“I don’t care what she thinks.”
“Are you sure about that?”
My dad had a point, but I wasn’t keeping quiet any longer. I sent him a hug and hung up.
Now where the hell was David.
23
Dashing Henry’s death, the onslaught of articles, the chats with my dad... They were all bringing it back.
It had been an evening more than two years before. I was on the set ofLA Misconductsas the first script for the show with the “Written by Elena Freire Valls” credit was being shot.
I was ecstatic. I didn’t mind the late hour, the overtime, the bad food, or even the honey wagon—we were shooting a street sequence. I was pumped, happy, and proud.
We’d been shooting a sequence where Henry’s character was walking around the downtown area of Los Angeles and looking for an old acquaintance. He found him and tried to get some information out of him. It was a straightforward enough sequence. Henry had probably shot thousands similar to that one. If nothing else,LA Misconductswas a formulaic show. We were told repeatedly by the network execs that that’s what made the show work. People wanted the same rehashed recipe week after week. The predictability brought them comfort. There were enough unpredictable things in life already. And I could relate to that.
And yet, despite the familiarity of the scene, Henry was having problems delivering the dialogue. He was getting frustrated too.
After shooting the same lines over eight times and not getting a definitive take, the director was getting frustrated as well. We broke for lunch, which was technically dinner but you would call it lunch, even if it was 7 p.m., because of showbiz lingo and union regulations.
The director suggested cutting some stuff out of the script so the sequence would be similar but would have Henry go over fewer lines. I agreed. Henry suggested he and I could work it over lunch at his trailer—of course he had a trailer while everyone else was eating under a wall-less tent the production team had put up a few hours before. To be honest, I think the writers had a trailer too, but I hadn’t been able to find it.
Henry also had his own catered food, so I thought I may find something tastier there than at catering. I was wrong.
Henry was going through a hard paleo phase, and the options at his trailer were limited to almost completely raw steak with an insignificant handful of fresh berries, nuts, and arugula leaves with no dressing.
That was probably the beginning of my vegan ways. The red meat made most of the plate, and I’d never been one for beef without lots of starchy and vegetable sides. But the food wouldn’t end up being the worst part of the evening.
We went over Henry’s lines again. I even offered to run the lines with him if he wanted. He half laughed at me, half got offended. Bear in mind that I was a baby staff writer talking to a two-time Emmy veteran. I gathered that screenwriters don’t normally offer to run lines with actors—and they don’t.
I proposed to trim a couple of things that would leave the script looking almost the same. He dismissed me. That’s when I realized he hadn’t asked me there to talk shop and fix a few lines.
We were seated at the three-seat sofa in his trailer. I had the pages on my lap and only then I realized how minuscule the whole setup was. He drew nearer, sitting impossibly close to me.
“Why don’t we put this aside for a minute?” he said, grabbing the script from my hands, touching them in the process, and leaving the pages on a nearby table.
My body jolted at the contact, in a bad way. He was too close to me. His breath smelled of burnt coffee and dead cow. I could count the pores on his nose. I was paralyzed with something that still, to this day, is difficult to describe—horror, fear, shock, surprise at what was happening and how bad I was at dealing with the situation.
One of his hands was on my knee, and I knew he was not going to keep it there but would make advances toward my thigh. His face got so close that his pores were gigantic even with full TV make-up on. Wasn’t he supposed to have a good dermatologist? Some of the best skin doctors in the country practiced in Los Angeles, and Henry had enough money to employ one full time. Can you believe the idiocy of what I was thinking?
Now I realize that shock had me frozen and thinking absurdities. For months after, I just felt stupid—and guilty.
He could have gotten away with kissing me because of how much of a paralyzed gazelle in the headlights I was in that moment. He touched my hair with his free hand and that felt so intimate—and so wrong—that I finally snapped out of it.
I put a hand on his chest and pushed him away, catching him off guard. I stood quickly.
I didn’t even think and went straight for the door. I started running once I was out of the trailer and didn’t stop until I got to video village. The director and some of the camera crew were eating there, but their backs were to me and they didn’t see me arriving in a rush.
I was trembling. What would have happened if the door in Henry’s trailer hadn’t been so close? If it had been locked? If I hadn’t been able to leave so quickly?
