Shards of Glass (13 page)

“I’m fine.” And I burst out laughing again like some crazed hyena.

THE PRODUCERS WATCHED the dailies and decided that my trembling body looked great. Because we didn’t have any lines, it would be easy for them to dub over with music and sound effects. However, my unprofessionalism did not go unnoticed by the director. Tension was in the air, which only made me want to laugh even more. Like being at class in school. I managed to hold it in, but the director was watching me with a stern, sharp eye.

The next scene we had to shoot was our first kiss. I decided to really go for it. Cal was gorgeous and sexy and as sweet as could be—I couldn’t have been luckier. The scene was taking place in the back of a limo. The limo—which had been adapted especially for the shot—was even bigger than a real life limo. I was topless, wearing little nipple covers called pasties. The shot would only show my shoulders and be cut just above my breasts. All very technical but it was in my no nudity clause. Cal had to pretend he was sucking my tits. There was to be a hard close up on his mouth as the camera followed his trail from my bellybutton up, a cut to a close-up of my rapturous face, then back to Cal’s tongue traveling up my shoulders and neck to our mouths.

I didn’t even know where we were in the script; half of it made no sense to me anyway. The storyline was all over the place. Jonathon was pretty psychotic; one minute loving, the next shunning me. My character was a wimp—I’d have told this Jonathon character to fuck right off a long time ago. But Simon didn’t want us straying from the script even by one word. A far cry from how Daniel had envisioned us ad-libbing and improvising.

I got into position, stretched out on the limo’s back seat. The lights were so glaring I couldn’t see a thing, just felt hot. Two cameras were pointed into the limo. Cal was on his knees, his body twisted at an angle. Very unnatural, but apparently it looked great through the lens.

“And . . . action!” Simon boomed.

“You. Are. So. Hot. Baby,” Cal panted, tracing his tongue around my navel and clinching my waist with his large hands, careful not to set off my ticklish spot.

I don’t know what came over me but I gritted between my teeth, “I’m not your baby, Jonathon.”

“Cut!” cried Simon. “Janie, what the hell! That’s not your line!”

“I don’t have any lines in this scene, Simon.”

“Exactly! So what are you doing?”

“Trying to bring some life force into my character. She’s so—”

“Submissive?”

“Yes.”

“She’s
meant
to be submissive, Janie. That’s the whole
point
!”

“There’s submissive and there’s boring,” I quipped.

“Just do your goddamn job please, so we can all go home.”

I found myself rolling my eyes like a wayward teenager but then quickly pretended I had a stray eyelash so I didn’t appear like I had an attitude. “Fine, I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”

“Quiet on set please, going for a take!” the AD called out. “Camera ready? Sound ready?”

“Ready.”

“Camera rolling.”

“Take two, scene thirty-one.”

“And . . . action!”

Cal started his stuff again. I should have felt turned on in some way, but I wasn’t. Not Cal’s fault at all. I squirmed in the seat and started pretend groaning and biting my lower lip. This was not what I trained at Juilliard for; my mother would be rolling in her grave. I writhed around like a porn star, remembering the scale of my debts, knowing I had to shut my smart mouth and just get on with it. I moaned again and flexed my hips up toward Cal. In my peripheral vision I saw he had a boner.

Well, at least one of us was into this.

We took a short break and Cal said in a low voice so only I could hear, “You know, Janie, if this were Woody Allen you might get fired.”

“Even though we’ve already shot so much footage? It would be too expensive to fire me now.”

“Woody sometimes fires actors almost midway through the shoot, if he thinks the actor isn’t right for the part.”

“Oh.”

Cal went on, “They do mid-shoot replacements all the time. Harvey Keitel had already started filming
Apocalypse Now
, but got fired and was replaced by Martin Sheen.”

“Providential, really—it wouldn’t have been the same without Martin Sheen.”

“Apparently Harvey had an attitude.”

Like me.
“Oh,” I said again. I thought of Daniel once comparing me to Kate from Shakespeare’s
Taming of the Shrew
. He didn’t mind it when I challenged him though—when it had to do with work, anyway. He thought it was healthy for actors to have opinions and questions. But I knew that a lot of other directors, with less confidence in themselves, would interpret it as cocky or arrogant. Like Simon.

Cal went on, “One of the most famous firings in movie history was Eric Stoltz—you remember him? He was originally set to play Marty McFly in
Back to the Future.
They’d even filmed forty whole minutes screen time with him, but they decided he was too serious for a comedy.”

“Wow, Cal, I didn’t know you were such a movie nerd. And I also didn’t know that kind of thing happened, at least not to that extent.”
How naïve could I be?
I could just see that was where I was headed. So much for my fleeting film career!

“You’re doing great though,” he said, “don’t worry about it.”

The truth was, I
wasn’t
that worried. I mean, I was—I wanted to do a great job and not be the laughing stock of Hollywood, but I also felt deceived by this business. Everything felt so mechanical, so inorganic. The director treated us like puppets and paid far more attention to the lighting, or if my hair or something was shadowing my face, than the acting. The takes were short, which meant the editors would have a lot of work to do. It was hard to get into the flow of it. Filming felt like a game of American football. Stop, start, stop, start. I didn’t feel as if I were offering anything except my body and my face—I wasn’t being nourished as an actor. As an artist.

I now wished Daniel hadn’t abandoned the project. It would have been different with him. Artistic. Creative.

Damn
Daniel Glass. Why couldn’t I rid him from my thoughts? He invaded every part of me, even when I was working.

Especially when I was working.

11

T
HE NEXT DAY, I was summoned by Samuel Myers himself. I knew what would happen next: I’d be unceremoniously fired. They probably had the contract so air tight that I had compromised something somewhere and wouldn’t get all my fee. And who was I to try and sue? A nobody. Just a little, itty-bitty actress in the big greasy wheel that was Hollywood. I’d go back to my moldy apartment and start auditioning for plays again. Maybe I’d even need to beg for my old waitressing job back, although I doubted they’d take me. I’d been foolish. Not grateful enough. And now I was going to get my comeuppance.

I had one hour before I needed to leave for our “meeting” . . . the
firing
. I sat on the living room floor, playing Barbies with Hero. Star was in the kitchen with Jake, both making lunch. They did things like that; cooked meals together. I wondered if that would ever be me. Maybe Cal would be up for making meals with me, although in my fantasies he’d do all the cooking.

“This is my Computer Engineer Barbie,” Hero told me, holding up the blond bombshell doll, who was wearing pink plastic glasses. Hero was a strong little thing, all of six and a half years old, already a veteran movie star. She knew all about hitting her mark, camera angles, even which side of her face looked best. “This is my naughty side,” she had told me last week, pointing to the left side of her face, “and this is the cute side.”

“Oh yeah? And which side gets the ice cream?” I asked.

“The cute side, for sure.” She blinked her long lashes at me, and swept a hand through her Shirley Temple curls. Scary. She knew the power she had already, especially when it came to her doting dad.

She now sat cross-legged on the floor, arranging her dolls and teddies, her lips pursed in concentration. We were making a school.

“I heard all about this Computer Barbie,” I said. “Apparently she gets the boys to fix her computer and doesn’t do those kinds of things for herself.” I thought of myself, letting anyone, and everyone, cook for me. A real live Blanche Dubois.

Hero fiddled with her doll’s synthetic golden hair. “Oh, she knows how to fix her computer. She knows
a lot.
She just asks the boys because she’s too busy.”

I grinned although Hero’s serious face made me bite my tongue. “Oh yeah? What’s she busy doing?”

“She runs her own company, of course. She can’t do
everything
herself, she has boys working for her.”

“I like your take on that, Hero. Very interesting. Very astute.”

“What’s astoot?”

“It means that your Barbie is a lot cleverer than people give her credit for,” said her mom. Star was standing at the doorway, watching us. “Never underestimate a pretty face. When she gets guys to do stuff for her, she has a reason. Lunch is on the table.” She clapped her hands. “And . . . action!”

Like mother, like daughter, I thought with a smile.

CAL CAME TO PICK ME UP in his Mustang convertible. He insisted that I didn’t go to the meeting alone. Not that he’d be coming in with me, but at least he’d be there, waiting for me when I came out (probably in floods of tears), realizing what an idiot I’d been to bungle up my one big chance.

“Everything happens for a reason,” he said in a gentle voice, as he drove out of Star and Jake’s driveway.

“That’s such a cliché,” I mumbled.

“Clichés are clichés because they’re nearly always true.”

“I have a sixty thousand dollar student loan to pay off,” I said. “Plus bills, rent et cetera. Why couldn’t I have kept my big mouth shut?”

“Because you have a strong personality. You are who you are, Janie, you can’t fight it.”

“Simon hates me.”

“No he doesn’t, he’s just under pressure to come in under budget.”

I looked out the window at the view passing by. We were on Pacific Coast Highway, the ocean shimmering on our right, and palms taller than skyscrapers kissing the bright blue sky. New York would be cold and tough. I’d gotten used to luxury at Star’s house, the warm breeze, the great views. I’d miss this. All because of my attitude. Oh well. Hollywood obviously wasn’t my path in life.

Cal turned to me and squeezed my hand. “You’re amazing, Janie. You’re different.”

“Different, like how?”

“Good different. Quirky. Kind of cocky, but vulnerable at the same time. Like you don’t care but yet you do. I can’t explain. But if they do let you go? Promise we can still hang out.”

“Sure, I’d love that.”

He shuffled in his seat. “You know, I have to admit after yesterday, after our sex scene in the limo, you kind of really
got
to me.” He was silent for a beat and added, “I dreamt about you last night.”

My smile tipped into a sardonic smirk.
Oh yeah, did I know all about dreams.
“A sexy dream?”

“
Very
sexy.”

I noticed Cal had another stiffy straining through the fabric of his jeans. He spotted me eyeing his crotch.

“Shit, sorry, just thinking about my dream has gotten me all aroused again.” He laughed. “I hope I’m not being crass.”

“I’m flattered,” I let him know.

“Janie, I kind of really tried to keep this professional between us, you know, getting involved during filming is not always the best idea in the world, but now . . . ”

“I’m going to be fired?”

“Hey, we don’t know that for sure.”

“I think we do. You saw Simon whispering to George yesterday. He’s fed up with me. It’s so over for me.”

“Janie, I’d like to take you out. Get to know you better, off set. I thought we could maybe go for a little road trip or something? Go up PCH? Santa Barbara? Get away for a couple of days.”

Cal was such a gentleman. Not only had he opened my car door for me but was asking my permission to date me. The old fashioned way. He was salt-of-the-earth. A nice, mid western boy with manners and morals. I’d been so wrapped up with my Daniel obsession that I hadn’t given anyone else a chance. Mainly because I hadn’t met someone I’d found attractive in New York, amongst the plethora of gay guys and short actors with chips on their shoulders. Cal was different. A breath of fresh air.

I laid my hand on his muscly thigh. His erection stood back to attention the second I touched him. A good sign if ever there was one. I was sick of the unrequited love bullshit. Not once had Daniel ever hinted at asking me out after his wife died. Not even for a coffee. And kissing me, when I was offering myself up so wantonly like fruit on a platter, did
not
count.

“You know what, Cal? I’d love that.”

He heaved out a heavy sigh—he’d been holding his breath, waiting for my answer.

Finally I’d found a man who was real
boyfriend
material. Not some OCD perfectionist freak like Daniel, who was in love with another woman anyway—even still—and would be for years to come.