He stared at her for a long time.
“Are you well?” she said to him when he still said nothing.
“Who are you?” he finally asked, searching her face with a look of wonder. “How do you know all of this? You’re too beautiful to know all this.”
Because I live and breathe this, she replied, but not out loud.
In truth, she loved it all, the battles on the film set, the sweat and the tears. One prepared for it like one went to war. When she was young, she would walk to the video store and rent an armful of films at a time. She’d watch them from Friday night to Monday morning, blinds drawn, devouring all the old classics, films from the French New Wave, works by the Russian masters, titles from the Italian giants. She laughed at how her shell did not mirror the inside, how that exterior of hers did not match her brain. But then, thinking back over people she knew, when did it ever?
She looked up at his face then to find him still staring at her, with an expression she knew to be desire. She met his eye and swallowed. He was damn handsome. For a second, Sofia felt a little intimidated, but then she reminded herself she was damn handsome, too. She looked into his soft blue eyes and smiling face. She bit her lip.
The next day on set, Jack fired his cinematographer, a sarcastic older man who had been undermining him, and replaced him with a young German cameraman who had just won an award in Europe, recommended by Sofia’s agent. For good measure, he also replaced his first AD with an all-business woman recommended by Sofia. Both crew members were still shooting his films for him today, and Sofia became his sounding board, and his friend.
That first night at Jack’s house, they did not kiss—they barely touched the whole night—but they talked about movies for hours, and when she finally called a cab and wished her director good night, she knew something much larger than a film was beginning. Over the next few months, Sofia fell in mortifying, terrifying love. She possessed no memories of that time except the ones spent in his company. She must have brushed her hair, washed her clothes—breathed—during that time, but it was as if the hard drive of her brain had decided these moments were insignificant, inconsequential to the operating system, and deleted them all. All that remained of that time for her was him smiling at her, laughing with her, finally kissing her.
HER RECALL OF this first meeting was interrupted by the sound of crunching, as Jack deposited the last bite of a protein bar into his mouth. It was an American brand he liked—perhaps the production had shipped a crate in for him. Jack chewed, then exhaled a little burp that he covered with his fist. The little emission both disgusted and comforted her; she had never seen him burp in front of a stranger. In this repulsive but intimate action, he at least treated her like they remained together.
She tried to think of something to make him feel better, to distract him from his work woes. “How’s the Aston Martin? Does he miss me?” she asked. His eyes lit up and he put down his phone.
“I got it detailed at this auto shop in Los Feliz. You should see the rims.” He spoke at length about the new exhaust, how the car purred now. Sofia sighed, gratified she still knew his passions. She nodded and smiled as he talked, buzzing inside with little leaps of ecstasy at having Jack all to herself for a few minutes.
Then Courtney walked over. “Hey, guys,” she said, before performing a double take. She squinted and seemed to study Sofia’s face from several angles. Sofia swallowed, recalling the extensive secret restoration work Derek had performed on her face. Courtney opened her mouth, and Sofia prepared herself to be called out—her no-makeup makeup exposed to everyone—but then Courtney closed her mouth and said no more, possibly, thankfully, thinking better of it. Sofia breathed a sigh of relief and made a note to thank Derek later, not only for his makeup wizardry but also his cunning grasp of interactress politics.
Courtney smiled at her instead and seemed to take a different tack. “Sofia, sorry, you don’t mind, do you?” She pointed to the floor. “You’re on my mark. We’re behind?”
“Oh goodness, sorry. Yes, of course,” Sofia replied.
“You understand, Sofe? We’re busy,” Jack said. “We’ve got work to do.”
“Sure! We’ll talk later,” Sofia replied quickly. She suddenly felt stupid, like a thirty-eight-year-old child. She felt like reminding everyone she had been working on film sets for fifteen years. A runner showed her off the sound stage.
She sat down on a chair and watched the rehearsal. After a minute, Courtney seemed to look over.
The runner returned. “Sorry, that’s Ms. Smith’s chair,” he said to Sofia.
“Oh, no problem,” Sofia replied. She stood up. “Show me where my chair is—I’ll sit on that.”
He stared at her, then looked around. “There isn’t one.” He seemed terrified.
She saw he told the truth. Four directors chairs sat near the monitors, each with a name printed on the back in white letters. One read Courtney Smith, another Jack Travers, and another two had
