Page 59 of The Spirit of Love
Another dinner with Rich and Jude. I should have brought my own clipboard to note my own catastrophes. I hand Ivy my bag and troop past several squat sage-green Joshua trees, eager to drown my futility in tea at craft services.
I’ve got my Earl Gray just the way I like it and am about to take my first sweet milky sip when my phone rings. Edie.
“Did you make it to JT?” Her words come out in a rush. “No flat tires? You’re watching out for scorpions? How was dinner Friday?”
“Wow, how much coffee have you had today?”
“You know the desert makes me nervous,” she says. “Ever since my hero-dose mushroom trip. Please, no drugs while you’re there. They hit different in the desert.”
“In fact, I am far too sober,” I tell her. “No scorpions in sight. I’ve only been on set for sixty seconds, but somehow nothing’s gone wrong yet. And dinner was…surprising.”
“What does that mean? You didn’t end up crying in the president’s bathroom again?”
“That wouldn’t be surprising.” I drop my voice to a whisper. “I was seated next to JDS.”
“Uh-oh. And?”
“And it turns out he might not be as horrible as we thought he was,” I say.
“We?” I hear her snicker through the phone. “I don’t mind being proven wrong. Unless it involves my mother-in-law. So does this mean you’re calling off the warpath?”
“TBD.”
I break off because Jude is walking past me. He looks over and waves. For some reason, his face lights up, and I remember what it was like to talk to him at dinner, how there were moments when it felt like we were the only two people in that candlelit dining room. When our conversation became so engrossing, it was like the rest of the party disappeared.
“He doesn’t know he stole your job, Fenny,” my sister says.
I close my eyes and nod. “But I do.”
And a small part of me needs to see the ripple effect of this injustice before I abandon my warpath.
“Just putting it out there that I like this warpath less than a hero dose with a scorpion chaser,” Edie says.
“Yeah, but you’re not here. Give the kids a kiss for me!”
I hang up to find Jude walking toward me.
He looks different in the desert. A little bit unbuttoned,untucked, in his blazer and T-shirt, eyes shaded by a baseball cap. It’s ninety-five degrees out here, too hot to wear anything more formal than cutoffs and a tank top, so I didn’t even bother with my hair. His eyes run over my legs, which makes me wish I’d put a little more effort into getting ready this morning.
“Did you put on sunscreen?” he asks.
“Yes, Mom.”
“Sorry, you just look like you burn easily. And the sun out here is…” He notices me side-eying him. “Okay, Mom is shutting up. I’m glad you’re here. Can I show you something? Get your thoughts?”
Jude walks me toward the Chrysler, explaining how he intends to shoot the master shot of Aurora speeding up to the edge of the cliff. He describes the medium shot of her face through the windshield and then shows me the marker for her close-up where she’ll get out and say her lines. It’s not how I would have shot it, but I can see it working. There’s more than one way to skin a zombie.
“Can we talk about Aurora’s dialogue?” he asks. “She’s got the line about having the amygdala on ice.” He pauses and gazes up into shockingly blue sky. “I wonder if there’s something missing.”
“There was more,” I say. “Once. We cut it. Rich wanted fewer words, more nipples.”
Jude rolls his eyes. “The scene is complicated by the fact that Aurora’s not delivering the amygdala directly to Buster—”
“Right.” I nod. “She’s handing it over to Miguel, who might be the love of her life—”
“Or at least the next season.”
“That’s what I was going to say.” I laugh.
