Everything Leads to You (14 page)

“Oh,” she says, letting go of my hand. “I thought you wanted to.”

I’ve never been on the lot this late. Most of the buildings are completely dark, only a few lights shining from offices. I met Morgan only a few buildings over, by a set built for a TV show, and it was bright and hot and I was a newer and more confident version of myself. I was the girl people wanted to kiss. I didn’t know what it felt like to be unwanted.

“To you I was just a girlfriend in a long string of girlfriends,” I say. “But it was something else for me.”

“You had girlfriends before me.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

I can almost hear Charlotte telling me that Morgan was my first love, telling me that it’s over. And if Morgan needs me to, I’ll repeat both of these things to her so that everything is clear and final. But soon she says okay and she doesn’t ask me anything more. I guess she knows already. My one-sided love was probably obvious to everyone all along.

She sighs and then smiles. And even though the smile is just further proof that I don’t matter that much to her, I find myself relieved. I don’t feel any trace of the satisfaction I once imagined would come with turning her down. I just feel tired and a little bit sad.

“So what happens with you now?” she asks. “Is there someone else?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “There might be.”

“That sounds like a yes.”

“No,” I say. “Really. Nothing has happened. I’ll be shocked if anything ever happens.”

“That’ll make one of us.”

And then she’s stepped forward, she’s put her arms around me. It’s a good-bye, so I hug her back, breathing in the tangerine shampoo that I will associate with her forever, remembering how we used to shower together in her tiny blue-tiled bathroom after days spent by the pool, and how in the beginning, when things still felt easy and right, holding her close like this—underwater, in the sunlight, in the quietest nighttime hours—was the best feeling in my life.

When she starts her truck I start my car, too. But after she’s pulled out and disappeared, I turn off the engine again. In the parking lot, I sit for a long time, nothing but stillness and darkness through the windows.

Then I dial Charlotte.

“Okay,” I say when she answers.

“Okay?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”

This time, I know exactly what I mean.

“Oh,” she says, after a few seconds of silence. “Good.”

Part 2

THE LOVE

Chapter Ten

“I read it twice,” Ava says, dropping her purse on Toby’s couch and perching on the armrest. “I’ve never read a screenplay before and it took me a while to get used to it. But once I did the story just took off. All of the characters feel so real.”

“They do, right?” I say.

“I like how it’s so focused on all these tiny details. Like the baby food jar that cut Miranda’s ear.”

“We were thinking you could sit in the orange chair,” Charlotte says, attaching the camera she borrowed from her mom on its tripod.

Ava takes a seat as I tell her that I agree.

“It’s like this intimate peek at life through all these details, and that’s part of why the sets are so important, even more important than they are in other films, because so much of how the characters see the world is through these small objects and observations that other people wouldn’t make.”

“This looks good,” Charlotte says, and when I join her behind the camera I discover that “good” is an understatement. Maybe she is talking about the lighting and the framing of Ava’s face, but as Ava goes over her lines I find myself captivated. Some people who are great looking in real life just don’t look right on-screen. The attractiveness doesn’t translate. But Ava looks even more beautiful through the camera. Even without makeup, even though she isn’t aware of us at the moment as she turns the pages of the screenplay, she is luminous.

But the question hovers over the room: Can she act?

“Should we run through it?” I ask her.

“We can record it a few times, right?”

“Sure,” Charlotte says.

“Then let’s just start. I practiced a lot today and I just want to dive in. If that’s okay.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” I tell her. “I’ll read George’s lines from over here. And when you look up, look toward me instead of directly into the camera.”

She takes a deep breath. She sets the screenplay in her lap. “I’m ready.”

Charlotte presses a button and the red light of the camera begins to flash. She nods at Ava.

“My name is Ava Garden Wilder and I am reading for the part of Juniper.”

She shifts in Toby’s orange chair and sits a little straighter. She glances at the screenplay. Closes her eyes. Opens them again.

She begins.

JUNIPER

Listen. I don’t think it’s stupid. I think that sometimes people want something so much that they manifest it. Or at least they try to.

GEORGE

That’s kind of you.

JUNIPER

No. It’s not kind of me. It’s just what I think.

(Pause)

Okay. I’m going to tell you about this thing that happened to me once. I’ve never told anybody.

GEORGE

All right.

JUNIPER

This was, like, two years ago. I was taking Botany 101 and we were studying Ranunculaceae and I was obsessed with them. Like, they were all I ever wanted to look at. And I was walking home, up Divisidero to my shitty little rented room, and I passed a flower stand, and there was a bouquet of them. Really gorgeous ones. They weren’t cheap and I was almost broke. It was a choice between dinner and flowers and I chose flowers because it was a dark time in my life and my room was hideous and my heart was broken and I needed something beautiful. The florist was an immigrant, probably in her thirties, and her English wasn’t great. I told her I wanted the flowers and she nodded and said something to me that I didn’t understand. And then she said, “I love you, okay?”

GEORGE

Really?

JUNIPER

Yes. And she repeated it. “I love you, okay?” she said. And this thing happened. I suddenly got the sense that everything was going to be okay, that I was going to be okay. It might have felt to me like the world was crumbling. I may have been totally alone and broke and doomed in all my relationships, but this could happen. This florist could see something in me that would make her profess this. I didn’t have to understand where it was coming from; I could just accept it. So I said, “Thank you.” And I smiled at her. And she looked confused for half a second but the confusion passed and she took the flowers and wrapped them up and I gave her the money. She said good-bye, and I thought, How amazing. To tell me she loved me and then just go on with her job.

GEORGE

That’s a great story. Nothing embarrassing about it.

JUNIPER

I’m not finished. I started walking home. It was raining by then and I kept thinking about the florist. I wondered what country she was from, how long her journey to California had been, who she left behind and who she took with her. For once, the rain wasn’t cold and the panhandlers weren’t begging. I stopped and looked at myself in the reflection of a café. I remember thinking that I looked like the kind of person I would want to know if I just happened to meet myself. That might not sound like a big deal to you, but . . .

GEORGE

No. I understand how that could be a big deal.

JUNIPER

Suddenly, everything was so pretty. The rain, the shiny sidewalks, the downtown skyline. And especially my ranunculus. I lifted them up to see them.

(Pause)

They were wrapped in this terrible tissue paper with tacky pink cursive that said “I love you” all over it.

GEORGE

(Softly)

Oh.

JUNIPER

Yeah. She hadn’t been asking my permission to love me. She had just assumed that the ranunculus were a gift for someone I loved. And who, presumably, loved me, too.

GEORGE

So what did you do?

JUNIPER

(Pause)

I threw them away.

~

We are all silent. Charlotte turns off the camera. Ava sets the screenplay, still open to the scene, next to her on the chair. I look toward the patio, in the direction of the ocean, and try to identify the feeling that has taken me over.

It’s an ache. A heavy sadness. The kind that is brought on by heartbreak and then perpetuated by everything that reminds you of the way it’s broken. The kind that feels impossible to shrug off or tuck away. But there is another feeling, too, surfacing, and soon I discover that it’s the kind that makes the heartbreak almost something to savor because it is so simple and true. Like the Patsy Cline song on the night this all began. Like the most gorgeously written screenplays. Like the most graceful performances.

And then I feel myself break into a smile, and when I turn to her, I see that Charlotte is also beaming.

The answer is yes. Ava can act.

“Let’s try it again,” Ava says. “I want to pause longer before I say ‘I threw them away.’”

“Fine with me,” Charlotte says. “But you did a really great job.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It seemed perfect to me.”

And her performance isn’t the only thing perfect about this situation. Everything we’ve been planning is coming together. Here she is: Clyde Jones’s legacy. And as I watch Ava go through the scene three more times, each time capturing the emotion in a way that I imagine is even better than what Theo and Rebecca are dreaming of, I become more and more sure that we are witnessing something important.

Not only will
Yes & Yes
be a great film, but it has the potential to introduce the world to Ava Garden Wilder, and Ava Garden Wilder to the world.

When Ava feels satisfied and we have finished recording, we sit and watch the different takes and choose the best.

“When will you give it to Theo?” Ava asks.

“I’ll send it tonight,” Charlotte says. “But I’m not sure when he’ll watch it. It could be a couple of days.”

“The question is,” I say, “should we tell him who you are right away, or should we save it for after he’s seen it and is narrowing people down.”

Ava cocks her head.

“Who I am?” she asks.

“Clyde Jones’s granddaughter,” I say.

Ava tugs at the frayed hem of her cutoffs.

“I don’t know,” she finally says. “It’s just . . .”

“What is it?” Charlotte asks when she doesn’t continue.

“I wasn’t good enough?” she asks.

“What do you mean?” I ask. “You were great.”

“It’s just that I don’t think I want them to know,” Ava says. “If I’m going to get cast in this movie I want it to be because they think I’m right for the part. If I get it, I want to get it because I’m good.”

Even though this isn’t what I expected, I tell her I understand because I know how she feels.

“I always wonder whether I get to work on the cool projects because of Toby,” I say. “Most of the interns never even get to give their opinions about the sets, let alone design a room. Usually I don’t worry about it, but every once in a while I start to doubt myself.”

“But now you have this film,” Ava says. “So you must have really proven yourself.”

I shrug. “It’s pretty much the same thing. I got this job because of Morgan.”

“Morgan?”

“Her ex,” Charlotte says with disdain.

“My ex who happens to be a brilliant set designer with way more experience than I have.”

Charlotte rolls her eyes.

“What are you disputing?” I ask her. “The level of experience is a concrete fact.”

“The brilliance is debatable.”

“Not really. You need to learn to separate the artist from the person.”

Ava laughs an uncomfortable laugh.

“Maybe I should change the subject,” she says.

“Thank you!” I say.

“I was thinking. Would it be okay if I tagged along with you sometime while you worked? I’d love to see what it’s like behind the scenes. Whether or not I get the part.”

“It might be boring. It’s just a lot of looking through books and magazines and shopping and trying to talk people into giving me stuff for free.”

“There’s even Dumpster diving sometimes,” Charlotte adds. “Which can be gross.”

“And going to garage sales and estate sales at their closing time to see if we can get great deals on things.”

Ava smiles. “That doesn’t sound boring to me.”

But it’s hard to believe that Clyde Jones’s granddaughter, who now turns out to be an amazing actor herself, wants to tag along with me while I bust my ass on this project. Still, she seems genuine, so I tell her that the day after tomorrow might be a fun day. I’ll be location scouting for an exterior to use for Juniper’s apartment because the outside of Toby’s apartment is too nice for a single twenty-year-old who goes to school and works part-time in a grocery store.