“I’m glad you feel that way.”
“I do,” I say. “I also have a couple of changes I would like to make to the rest of the set in order to make this new direction cohesive.”
“I’m listening,” she says.
“First of all, I don’t think the poster works anymore. Now that it’s a more polished room, I think we should go for more professional-looking wall art. I was thinking of this framed Miles Davis poster.” I show her an image on my phone.
“Yes, I approve. What else?”
“The music stand,” I say, trying not to sound bitter. “I know we both love it, but—”
“The music stand stays. Emi, I know you feel like I changed your entire concept for the room but I didn’t. We can strike a balance between stylized and naturalistic here. You can pull that off. Take the afternoon to make the changes you want, and I’ll go down to look at the end of the day.”
So I take the afternoon.
As I’m going back through the room, thinning out the stacks of sheet music, rearranging the decorative objects, I keep thinking of Ava’s exit. She disappeared as quickly as my sofa did, and with barely more warning. I thought that we would at least have her phone number, but Charlotte told me it was blocked, which means that it’s up to her to get in touch with us if she ever wants to see us again. And why would she? We’re just two random girls who happened to discover something that belonged to her. Now she has the letter and if she chooses to learn more she can. She doesn’t need us. I try to talk myself into feeling glad that we got to play a small part in something so interesting. Something that was part of real life.
But, self-delusion aside, I can’t handle the thought of this being over.
So when my phone buzzes in my pocket, even though she never had my number and it would be almost impossible, I am overwhelmed by an irrational, electric hope that it’s her.
“Hello?” I say.
“Emi?” a woman says. I don’t know who she is, but her voice doesn’t have the raspiness of Ava’s, and I feel stupid for even hoping. “This is Rebecca. We met the other day. I’m Morgan’s friend.”
“Yeah, of course,” I say. “Hi.”
“I’m calling to offer you a job.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I’d love to tell you about it if you have time.”
“Sure,” I say. “That sounds great. When did you have in mind?”
“Five o’clock today, if possible.”
I take a step back and look over the room. It looks pretty good, and I think it’s what Ginger wants it to be.
“Yeah,” I say. “I actually just finished work for the day, so I’m free.”
~
I meet Rebecca and her boyfriend, Theo, at a café in Silver Lake. They’re sitting outside against these brilliant blue tiles I love, drinking matching cappuccinos.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” Theo says, speaking with a prominent accent that I’m fairly certain is South African. “Rebecca has been raving about you.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” She nods and smiles at me, these cute tiny lines forming by her eyes.
“You should hear her go on and on about the sofa,” Theo says.
“They didn’t end up using it.”
“What?” Rebecca gasps. “Oh no.”
“I know, right?” I say. “That trip out to Pasadena was all for nothing.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” she says. “But what did you do?”
“Honestly? I had a meltdown. And then I spent the afternoon today figuring out how to make the room work with what my boss chose.”
“But it looked better before, I imagine,” Theo says. “The way you had envisioned it.”
“Definitely,” I say. “But it isn’t my movie, you know? I don’t get to make the calls. I understand how it works and I can appreciate my boss’s point of view.”
I’m switching into interview mode now, because I don’t know what they are going to offer me, but I do know that Morgan and her friends do really cool projects, and Rebecca and Theo just have that thing some people have that makes you want to be in their company, no matter what they’re doing. I have a portfolio to build and experience to gain, and if Rebecca saw what I did and liked it, then maybe she’ll let me do more of what I’m good at.
“Yes, but what if you had a situation where you knew that the choice you made was the right one. Let’s say, then, that someone tells you to change it to something hideous. And let’s say that the person making the call wasn’t even in the art department. Totally didn’t know what he was talking about. What would you do then?”
I don’t know what the right answer to this question is. Maybe it’s a trick because he hates it when the people who work for him are defiant, or maybe he wants someone who can stand her ground. So I just answer honestly.
“I guess I would take a little while to think about it. I’d really consider his point of view. And then, if I was still certain I was right, I’d tell him no,” I say. “I’d explain why.”
“And if he said, ‘Do it anyway’?”
“I’d try to explain again.”
“What if he said, ‘I’m the boss, listen to me.’”
“You’re saying he’s not in the art department?”
“Yes.”
I hesitate. I think about what Ginger would do, if the film director or a producer tried to change one of her concepts after she had worked so hard on conceptualizing and planning. After it all had been approved. She wouldn’t let anyone get away with that, no matter how powerful or intimidating he might be.
“Then I’d tell him that he hired me for a reason, and that was because I know what I’m doing and I’m good at it,” I say. “I’d insist, I guess. I’d insist that it stay that way as long as other people whose artistic visions I respected also agreed that it was good.”
Theo leans back and smiles.
“I like you,” he says.
“See?” Rebecca pokes his shoulder. “He was afraid you were too young.”
I shrug. “Yeah, I get that.”
“But Morgan said you were strong willed. She’s very confident about you. We tried to hire her. She was in a seminar I taught when I was in grad school, and I’ve always loved her work. But she’s double-booked as it is. So I asked her for a recommendation and she told me about you.”
“I’m grilling you because I need someone who won’t be afraid of me,” Theo says.
“Are you the director?”
“Yes, I am. Rebecca is producing.”
“And you need a . . . ?”
I don’t want to make a fool out of myself if what they’re looking for is an intern and what I say is something much more prestigious. I’m hoping they’ll say it’s a set dresser job. It would take me years to get that position in a studio, but it might be possible that a small film would take a chance on someone like me.
“Production designer,” Rebecca says.
“What?” I say.
“Well,” Theo says, “basically, your job would be art department.”
“You could hire one person to help you,” Rebecca adds. “But I know that isn’t much. It’s a huge job. A huge job. And the pay is disgraceful, and we begin shooting in four weeks.“
“Four weeks?”
“Afraid so. But we would give you so much creative freedom.”
“Here,” Rebecca says. “Take the screenplay. Just give it a read and see if it speaks to you.”
I don’t even say anything. I just take the screenplay out of her hands and open to the title page. Yes & Yes, by Rebecca Golden and Theo Fitzgerald. And seeing their names there floods me with gratitude. I am touched. This is their film, their money, their effort of love, and they are willing to trust me with so much if I say yes.
“I’ll read it
,” I say. “I’ll read it tonight.”
“I hope you enjoy it,” Rebecca says.
“Of course she’ll enjoy it,” Theo says. “Can’t you see? She’s our kind of people. She has the love.”
~
For some reason, I don’t tell Charlotte. As soon as I walk into the apartment I slip my bag, with the screenplay inside, in the corner of Toby’s living room and then I join her on the patio where she’s staring at her computer screen.
“What are you working on?”
“I’m enrolling for classes,” she tells me.
“What are you taking?”
“A bunch of GE stuff. But also Intro to Museum Studies.”
“So fun,” I say. But I really thought Charlotte would switch over to film studies once I got her the job at the studio. I thought “the love,” as Theo put it, would be contagious, especially since Char is so good at everything she does and has the perfect mind for the production side of filmmaking. But I guess her attention to detail and impeccable social graces will serve her well in the museum world.
“You’re already registering?”
“I leave in a month and a half.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Don’t you need to pick your classes soon?”
“Probably.” I shrug.
“You should know when your registration date is.”
“Yeah, I’ll look it up.” Everything seems less urgent for me since I’m staying in LA for school, and now, with the fantasy of a production design job hovering within reach, school almost feels unnecessary. But I know it’s not. I know it’s going to open the world up in a new way. Soon I’ll be able to sit with my parents and watch TV, well schooled in all of their critical theories. It will be nice to keep up with them. And I’ll learn so much more about the history of film and production design. I’m not naive enough to imagine that I know all there is to know about how films are made.
Still, I don’t want the summer to end so soon.
“Have you thought about what we should do with the apartment?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “But I can’t come up with anything epic enough.”
“I know,” I say. “It sucks. Let’s go get tacos and sit on the beach.”
So, after Charlotte finishes her college stuff, we walk to our favorite food truck, and then head to the ocean, dodging roller bladers and skaters and bicyclists, kicking off our sandals at the edge of the sand and making our way to an open, welcoming spot to eat and watch the sun set over the ocean.
“What’s even in Michigan anyway,” I say to her. “Lakes? So what.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” she says.
We hear a buzzing and both of us reach for our phones. Morgan hasn’t texted me in three days. My screen is blank.
“Look,” Char says, and holds hers out to me.
This is Ava. Are you and Emi free tomorrow? I have something to show you!
“Tell her yes,” I say.
“Should we have her come to Venice again?”
“Sure,” I say. And then I change my mind. “No, actually. Let’s meet at the Marmont!”
Charlotte laughs and shakes her head.
“The Marmont. Okay. Something tells me that’s not the kind of place Ava usually goes.”
I snatch Charlotte’s phone away and type, Meet us at the Chateau Marmont. Sunset and Havenhurst. Hollywood.
Charlotte peers over my shoulder.
“You know the cross street by heart?”
“Of course.” I say, handing her phone back. “Is it weird that I feel relieved right now? It was kind of awful to think it was over.”
“I don’t think it’s over,” Charlotte says. “There’s so much we don’t know yet. I kind of feel like it’s only over if she doesn’t ask us for anything, but it’s possible she’ll need help figuring more out, and if that’s the case we should help her.”
“I hope she asks us,” I say. “There’s no way Clyde Jones’s granddaughter should be living in a shelter and working the overnight shift at Home Depot. It’s, like, against the laws of the universe.”
Charlotte laughs.
“I really liked her.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Charlotte says.
“No, really,” I say. “Not only because she’s, like, heartbreakingly beautiful. She told us things about her life. She wanted to stay and hang out. She doesn’t even know us. Not everyone would do that.”
“Yeah, I liked her, too,” Charlotte admits. “We’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
The sun hovers low over the water, the clouds around it all pink and violet.
“I’ve been wondering,” I say. “You know what I said the night we found the letter? How I felt like there was something significant about it?”
“Yeah, I remember. It’s the only time you’ve ever said anything like that.”
“I’ve just been thinking that maybe Ava is someone I’m supposed to know.”
“Know?”
“It isn’t just because she’s so pretty. Or because of Clyde. I know it sounds crazy but I swear there’s this thing about her. I feel like I was meant to know her.”
Charlotte traces circles in the sand.
“You don’t think she’d be interested in me,” I say.
“I’m not saying that.”
“Yeah but you aren’t saying anything. That says a lot.”
“You should give yourself some time to get over Morgan. Start slowly.”
“Why do you have to be so practical?”
“One of us has to be. We could end up being Ava’s friends.”
“I’ll need more of those once you’re gone.”
“I’m not going to be ‘gone.’ I’m going to be away for college.”
“But then who knows. You’ll go be an amazing museum director somewhere. You could end up in New York. You could end up in Chicago. This might be it for us, right now, on the beach. After this everything will be different. You’ll forget your love of palm trees and fear of snow. You’ll spend all your time in a fancy office bossing people around and discovering stolen seventeenth-century sculptures.”
I have a lot more to say, but Charlotte is pushing me over into the sand.
I try to continue in spite of her assault: “You’ll be recruited by the Louvre. You’ll live in Paris and marry a handsome Parisian who is, like, half French, half Moroccan, and looks exactly like my brother and when the time comes to renew your American citizenship you’ll say, Who needs les États-Unis anyway? Sand in my eye!” I gasp.
She stops pushing me and stands up.
“Let’s go,” she says. “You’re ridiculous and I have work to do.”
I stand up and follow her.
“You’ll start saying that American movies are stupid, all spectacle and no substance, completely overlooking the hundreds of beautiful, quiet films that come out of the US every year, let alone the fact that spectacles are, in themselves, incredible.”
Charlotte stops walking and turns to face me. She puts her hands on my shoulders.
“I’m going to Michigan because it’s the best school for what I want to do. I don’t know where I’ll go when it’s over. But you will always be my best friend, and I will never be the kind of snob who says that all American movies are stupid. If I ever make a gross generalization like that, please point at me and laugh until I feel sufficiently humiliated.”
“Okay,” I say, and a tightness forms in my throat. She smiles at me, a smile of sympathy and her own sadness, too.
I didn’t even mean for this to be a heartfelt moment, but I guess I need it. It sucks to lose your best friend, even if only to distance. Even when it isn’t really losing her at all.
~
I start reading at eleven thirty, when Charlotte is asleep. I’m lying on the couch with a small brass l
amp (snagged from my grandpa’s garage) turned on so the light doesn’t wake her up. The average screenplay is between 90 and 120 pages, one page per minute of screen time. This one is 111, which means that I will be able to get through it tonight, or at least get a good-enough sense of it to know whether I want to take this insane opportunity.
By page three, I’m infatuated.
Yes & Yes has two main characters, Juniper and George, both of whom work in a small Los Angeles market. George is in his mid-forties, and as the screenplay unfolds we learn that he’s been living in Oregon but has moved back to Los Angeles, into his childhood home, to care for his ailing father who ends up dying and leaving George the market. Now George is in a slump. He’s still living in the house he grew up in even though his parents have died, and he’s working in the store, something he never intended to do.
Juniper, who turns twenty in the film, wants to be a botanist. She’s taking community college classes while working in the market, and she’s been having a rough time since her elderly boss got sick and died. He had treated her like a daughter and she needed that because she’s a lonely and kind of fragile person.
Here is the moment everything begins: A woman, Miranda, walks into the market, picks up a basket, begins to roam the aisles. She takes a grapefruit, a box of oatmeal, a bar of chocolate. Juniper is shelving baby food only inches away when, without warning, Miranda drops to the floor and has a seizure. Juniper drops a jar of baby food and it breaks. George sprints over from his post at the register. A customer calls the paramedics, and as they wait for the sirens to come Juniper and George sit by her, both of them captivated and afraid.
Juniper and George don’t fall in love. Instead, they become friends. They bond over this experience and as they’re sitting around wondering who Miranda really is with a fervor that borders obsession, they’re really talking about what they imagined their lives would be and how their real lives aren’t measuring up. They learn about themselves and each other.
Finally, at the end, Miranda comes back into the store. She doesn’t even acknowledge them, which makes sense because even though it was a significant moment to Juniper and George, Miranda was having a seizure. She doesn’t remember them. She buys her fruit and then she leaves, and they’re stunned and feel slighted but we know by then that it was never really about Miranda. It was about the two of them all along.