Page 61 of The Spirit of Love
The kid nods, but he doesn’t look convinced.
What is Jude’s problem? Buster wasn’t nervous until Jude put the idea in his head.
Tempted as I am to kick back and enjoy the upcoming meltdown, I take in the full scene. Sound guys muttering and shaking their heads. Jonah still arguing with Jude. Buster clearly about to blast off on a rocket of nerves any moment.
My phone buzzes, and I assume it’s going to be Masha and Olivia, sending pics from the plane Olivia should be jumping out of any minute, wearing a bachelorette veil. Instead, it’s a message from Summer, Amy Reisenbach’s chef.
It’s a picture she must have taken at the dinner Friday night. It’s Jude and me. We’re seated at the table, sardines-close. We’re turned toward each other, talking animatedly. My hands are expressive, and my eyes are sparkling. Jude’s grinning, too. He looks more relaxed and comfortable than I can remember ever seeing him. In the picture, we look like old friends.
I look up at him now, looking far less comfortable. I don’t know what got into him, but if Jude fucks up today, do I get my job back sooner? Or does it simply diminish the show I care about?
And suddenly, I know what to do.
“Buster,” I say. “What do you think about letting Jude in on our secret?”
“Do we have to?” Buster says with a note of relieved surrender, the way my nephews sound when they’re exhausted and are finally made to go to bed.
Buster, Jude, and I gather under the tent.
“What’s this about, Fenny?” Jude sounds impatient.
I hold up a finger, take out my phone, and open the Calm app. But of course, I don’t have service out here. I wrap one hand around my adder stone, and I decide Idohave other worlds at my fingertips. Jude doesn’t have to believe they’re real to let them work their magic.
“Everybody close your eyes,” I say.
And they do. I guide Buster and Jude through a five-minute meditation, set on a nature-filled island of my imagination, cribbed partly from my trip to Two Harbors with Sam. I give them the hummingbird, the baby eagles in their nest. I populate the world with a herd of stunning deer. I give them snorkeling across untouched coral reefs. I give them all the stars in the late-summer sky. I peak my eyes open toward the end and find Jude looking at me. His expression is cryptic, but then, before I can wonder about it, he smiles.
He mouths,Thank you.
The grimace on Buster’s face has smoothed. It’s time to wrap the meditation, to release everyone back to the scene at the cliff’s edge.
“I don’t need the net, Jude,” Buster says as we walk back to the shoot. “I’ve blocked the scene with Fenny a bunch of times before.”
“You have?” Jude asks, shooting me a quizzical look.
“I’m grounded. I’m ready to go,” Buster says.
“Great,” he says, eyes still on me. “Me, too.”
Chapter Sixteen
Production dinners are a mixedbag. At best, they can be a release valve at the end of an exhausting shoot, a way to blow off steam with the production assistants over company-expensed dumplings and inside jokes. But tonight, with Rich staying over, and with Jude’s traveling team of set bros already pregaming loudly in the room next door to mine, I am feeling a strong urge to bail.
Even though Jude hasn’t turned out to be as bad a director, or person, as I feared he would be, I don’t think I’m quite enlightened enough to sit around another table praising his work today.
I shower and watch the sunset from my west-facing room—always the best fifteen minutes of any trip to the desert. Then I duck past the windows of the 29 Palms Inn restaurant, through which I see Ivy currently dictating place settings to two local teenage servers. I catch a cab back to town and slip into the Joshua Tree Saloon for a burger, beer, and some Old West–style solitude.
The walls of the saloon are made of clapboard and hung with desert relics, bull skulls, saddles, and rusted road signs from a hundred years ago. There’s a rock band setting up on a tiny stage in the corner and a stretch of open barstools opposite the pool table. The last of the day’s sunlight struggles through the smokedglass windows as I sidle up to the bar and peel a laminated menu off its sticky top.
The bartender, a pretty Latina woman with a silver septum piercing, smiles my way. “What’s your poison?”
“A burger, medium rare, and a Sierra Nevada.”
I open Instagram, and the first thing that pops up is a video Olivia posted of herself and Jake screaming at each other as the two of them leap out of a plane, holding hands. The caption reads, “One week until we take this fight into forever. Can’t wait to marry you, Glasswell.”
I can’t believe they’ll be married in a week. I can’t believe a week ago I thought about bringing Sam to the wedding as my date.
What would Sam look like holding my hand as the two of us jumped out of a plane? What would he look like in a tux, on a dance floor, with me in his arms? All things I’ll never know. I don’t mind going to Olivia’s wedding solo. I’m used to that by now. Even back when I was dating Eric, he made it clear that my friends were my business, that he’d be glad to hook up after I was done spending time with them.
