Screen Play (22 page)

Ellen brought out our food, and Luke said grace over it. Then he said, “Well, since we’re talking about who we are, you should probably know that I don’t feel like I have a right to myself anymore. I don’t call the shots. I may not always be a logger, or a bush pilot, but if you can see the biggest part of me is that I am not my own, then you pretty much have me figured out.”

“So, we’re both servants. I think He gives us the desires of our hearts. Do you ever feel like the desire of your heart is to be with someone, but it’s also to give that dream to God at the same time? Two opposite desires, and they swirl around each other?”

“Harper, I know without a doubt that God has my best interests in mind at all times. I used to live with the tension of my hopes versus God’s, but I’ve seen His care for me too many times to worry about it anymore.”

It was cold outside when we left Earl’s, a billion stars shimmering in the night sky. The dinner and talk had made us tired, but we didn’t want to leave each other’s company.

“What do you want to do now?” I asked.

“I can find you a hotel room. Come back and pick you up in the morning. I’ll drive you to Portland. There will be lots of flights going into LA.”

“I’m not ready to say good-bye to you now and then only see you for an hour in the morning.”

Luke tempered his steps as we walked across the gravel parking lot, crunching the stones beneath his feet when he stopped. I watched Luke’s pensive eyes, both of us anticipating his next move.

“There’s a twenty-four-hour coffee and donut place not far from here,” he said, modest and chary. “I want to spend time with you, too. I just think we should stay around people.”

“I agree.”

The Jeep’s two bright headlights unveiled the mysteries of the dark road ahead until they fell upon a neon sign welcoming us to the donut shop. As we parked, I could see inside the coffee shop. A man and his young son ordering donuts at the counter. Two women in a booth, having coffee. Above us, the stars pierced the upper atmosphere like torches, and a shy moon watched over Eugene. Luke invited me to sit closer without words. He’d be fine if I chose to stay on my side of the Jeep Cherokee, but I didn’t want to. Instead, I shifted my head so it rested on Luke’s shoulder. “You’re so good at taking care of people. You go where they are and bring what they need. And then you came to me. You came to my rescue. How did you know I needed you?”

“I needed someone too, Harper. God sent you to me by sending me to you.”

We kissed, our first, and the best kiss I’d ever had. Maybe it was the darkness. Or perhaps it was the fact that we both accepted that God ruled our lives and had given us this extraordinary day. But in memory, it was the character of the person. I had discovered something about Luke McCafferty that I could never learn from a computer screen: He was a good man.

I watched him, my eyes adjusting to the moonlight to make out his profile. I wasn’t sure why God had been so kind to me, but that night I didn’t think I’d ever be alone again, and I marveled at the feeling.

We awoke at sunrise, stiff and sore from sleeping only a few hours sitting up in a Jeep. I dreaded the day. Airports and good-byes and questions about when we’d see each other again. I’d found my soul mate, and everything inside me screamed to stay with him, but there were things to be done. I had to think about finding a new place with Avril, and there was that little movie I was about to start filming.

A painful rush of longing pulsed through my body when the United jet left Portland International Airport behind in a swirling cloud of dust and exhaust. I was living two dreams, both classic Hollywood stories. I was the woman who found true love where she least expected it, and the down-and-out actress on the fast track to success.

Looking at the world from thirty-one thousand feet, I thought about James, living alone in his house by the ocean, the only man I knew who’d also lived two dreams, once.

If only the closing credits could have rolled across the screen of my life, right at that moment. Then my story was guaranteed a happy ending. But life’s not like the movies, and the only way we learn the ending is to live it

~
Twenty-five
~

The studio sent a car to pick me up on the first day of rehearsals. I couldn’t help but think of Helen Payne and her daily dozen roses as I sat in the back of a white stretch limousine, reading over the latest script for
Winter Dreams
, which had been couriered over to Sydney’s beach house the night before.

We did a read-through around a large table in a conference room at Joseph’s production company while a dozen executives looked on, jotting notes or typing away on their laptops. During the lunch break, Joseph’s assistant, Marcie, took all my measurements and dozens of photos of my face and figure with a digital camera. I met with a publicist for the film, Emily Long, who conducted an extensive interview with me. Emily wanted information she could “leak” to the entertainment media.

“It’s the first step in promoting this film. We want to market you as the ‘mystery woman,’ Joseph Hagen’s newest find.”

Joseph also introduced me to the Century Pictures Studio VP, Paul DeAngelo, who greeted me warmly and told me how highly Joseph had spoken of my performances in New York.

“I’m looking forward to seeing good things,” he told me, and I took it as an encouragement, thanking him.

“If there’s anything the studio can do for you, a bungalow to stay in, a driver to transport you around Los Angeles, just contact me directly.”

“That’s very generous. I’m actually staying with my agent right now. She lives right near the beach, so it couldn’t be better.”

“Yes, I can imagine that’s ideal. Have you ever spent the night out on the water?” he asked.

“No.”

“The studio has a yacht docked at Marina del Rey. If you ever want to take your friends out to relax, call me, and I’ll make the arrangements. Here’s my card,” he said, and I took it like a golden ticket, my connection for getting anything I wanted in Hollywood. “My office and cell numbers are on there. If you need anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask.”

We rehearsed four more hours after lunch, including a break to test makeup for how my character would look at the beginning, middle, and end of the story.

Marcie asked Joseph if there was a particular look he was going for since the storyboard sketches looked reminiscent of Hitchcock films in the 1950s. Joseph only said, “It will look like Hagen, not Hitchcock.”

We wrapped our first rehearsal sharply at six, and the driver picked me up again to take me home to Sydney’s.

“How’s it going, Miss Movie Star?” she asked when I walked in the door.

“It’s fun, exhausting. I met Elijah Navarro, studio people, we did hair and makeup, met with publicity, costume measurements.”

“Just like New York, Harper, you’re joining a work in progress. Everything was up and running, except the leading lady. Now it’s time to move.”

That night, the studio called to warn me that the writers were making script revisions. There would be new lines every couple of days for the next week, which kept me on my toes and helped to distract me from missing Luke.

“Harper, your character feels elated, overjoyed, and deeply connected to Angel,” Joseph said to me on the third day of rehearsals. “She’s lost everything important to her, now she’s in California. Life, as we know, is very good here. I want the audience to
feel
what Meredith’s feeling. I want you to give them the sense that she’d been under duress for the longest time, but she’s coming alive again.”

“Right,” I said, scribbling notes in the script margin.

“Okay, let’s try again from the top of the page. And action!”

Meredith:
Where did you come from, Angel? How did you know I needed you?

Angel
: Let’s just say I had it on good authority.

Meredith:
I’m serious. When everything was falling apart, you suddenly showed up. It’s kind of a miracle.

Angel
: I go where I’m assigned. You needed someone to bring you in out of the rain. So here I am.

The script called for Angel to stare at me without saying anymore, but the writers had given Elijah a new line not in my printed version of the script.

Angel:
He sent me to you so I could send you to Him.

I looked up from my script and into Elijah’s eyes. He didn’t seem to be acting, but talking to me directly. I couldn’t tell if he’d broken character. I glanced down the long conference table to our senior writer, Barbara Ward. She was still buried in her script. I thought Elijah might have been ad-libbing, so I decided to follow in kind, theater training, speaking the words that came naturally to me.

Meredith
: I want to be loved. Is that on anybody’s agenda?

My eyes were fixed on Elijah, his tabloid-familiar face reminding me just a little of Luke. The rebel bad boy, he was content to play hooky with the script and make it up as he went along too.

Elijah
: That’s all love ever wants. That’s how you know it’s love. If you can’t live without someone, can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything but be with them, that’s when you know you’ve found the real thing.

Chills shot up my neck like cold icy fingers.

Joseph looked at us over the top fold of his script, over his senatorial half-lens eyeglasses. He flipped the pages back and forth, looking for our dialogue.

“Where is that? What are the two of you reading from?” he asked. “I don’t have these pages.”

“It’s not there, Joseph,” Barbara said. “They were improvising.”

“Well, that didn’t work for me. Let’s keep to the script everybody. Pick it up at ‘He sent me to you.’”

Elijah smiled at me. I wondered about his story, if reading these lines about God and His love for mortals gave him chills too.

Meredith:
I don’t want to be alone anymore, Angel. I’ve done that.

Angel:
Who’s saying you have to? Just get it through your head. My role is temporary. I’m here for only one purpose and that’s to see you through a dark hour. I’m not here to fall in love with you. When my work on earth is done, you and I will say good-bye.

I felt my heart jump with fear. What if this story mirrored
my
fate with Luke? I’d joked that he was an angel. What if he were, like the movie script said, only temporary? I lost my focus for a moment. Fortunately, Joseph had seen enough for the day.

“Okay, cut. Next week, we begin shooting, and that’s where we’ll work out all the blocking,” Joseph said, his thick European accent staining his words like varnish. “We’re done for today. Nice work, everybody. The script is flowing nicely. I like what I’m hearing. Enjoy your last free weekend.”

I didn’t stay after rehearsal, but politely waved to my acting partner and left through the conference room door. As I stepped out into the studio back lot, I felt tears threatening my eyes when I considered for the first time the possibility of losing Luke.

I paged my driver and started walking toward the studio gate. Then I called Luke, too. Just wanting to hear his voice.

“Hi, it’s me,” I said.

“Hi, I wasn’t expecting a call from you. What’s up?”

“I’m just leaving rehearsal and I felt the urge to call you. You’re going to think this is silly, but I miss you, and wish we were together right now.”

“I was just thinking about you, too. You sound out of breath. Are you all right?”

“I don’t know. I just got worried. Something came over me.”

I saw the driver ahead of me, parked as close as he could behind the curb barrier. I realized I’d accidentally come out the wrong side of the building. He opened the passenger door, and I thanked him silently and climbed inside.

“Where are you now?” Luke asked.

“Just leaving the studio. This feeling came over me like
what if
something were to happen to someone I care for very much. That scared me.”

“Tell me what you need right now.”

“I want to see you. I want to know when that will be.”

“How long does it take to shoot a film?”

“Six weeks, six days a week. Sometimes seven.”

“You mean we can’t see each other for six weeks?”

The thought took the floor out from under me. “I can’t wait that long.”

Luke paused. “Harper, let me call you in a few minutes, okay?”

We hung up. The limo was caught up in traffic, eight lanes of bumper-to-bumper cars going nowhere on the Los Angeles freeway. I turned to the Lord, prayed, trying to lower my blood pressure. A moment later my phone rang. Luke.

“I’m leaving Eugene within the hour. I’ll be in LA by seven tonight. I’m flying commercial; it’s faster.”

“Are you sure? I mean, I feel so silly. I can help pay for the ticket, I don’t want you to …”

Luke laughed.

“What’s funny?”

“It just struck me how many times I’ve flown somewhere to deliver goods to a couple who sounded desperate for a taste of home. Tacos, cheese and crackers, ribs and sauce. I’ve never actually been the thing that’s being requested before.”

“It’s kind of a lot to ask you to come down for a visit.”

“There’s nothing I’d rather do, Harper. No place I’d rather be.”

After we hung up, I reached for Paul DeAngelo’s business card. Its corners were bent, and I found it easily in the bottom of my bag. I punched in the numbers for his cell phone and waited.

“This is Paul.”

“Hi, Paul, this is Harper Gray. Remember when you said I should call you if I needed anything? Well, I have a small favor to ask of you …”