A FEW HOURS passed in happy uneventfulness. Rehearsal wrapped for the day and Sofia returned to the truck to change and go home. When she stepped inside, she gasped. “When did these arrive?” she asked Derek, who was washing makeup brushes in the sink.
“About twenty minutes ago, Ms. Wentworth. They’re so beautiful.”
Derek told the truth. Three dozen long-stemmed roses were arranged in a crystal vase. Dew covered the cherry-red blooms and glistened in the afternoon light.
“Who are they from?” he asked. “There’s no card.”
Sofia did not need a card to know who’d sent them. “They’re from Jack,” she said.
“Such a beautiful color,” Derek said. “Such a glorious shade of red. I can’t put my finger on where I’ve seen it before. It’s the same shade—”
“As my hair,” Sofia whispered. She tucked a strand of her red tresses behind her ear and stared at the flowers on the table. Her heart raced. Jack always used to give her red roses like this, the same color as her hair, when they first started seeing each other. She could not catch her breath.
Sofia’s phone rang. Dave Croft’s name appeared on screen. Dave! She thought of answering—it might be something important, something to do with Jane, but she let it go to voicemail. Dave would understand. If he had news, he’d leave a message. She watched the screen and waited. No voicemail popped up. She shrugged; he’d call back. She glanced at the roses again. This was going to be a great shoot.
Chapter Thirty-Six
If Sofia had been asked to locate the turning point in her marriage, the moment when things changed, an event from four years prior would have come to mind.
At first, she and Jack had dedicated themselves to making their Hollywood relationship an exception to the rule. “We’ll do things differently,” they said, noting in sanctimonious tones the long list of Hollywood unions that ended in divorce, and vowing to do better than those couples.
Jack’s role as director required him to remain in Los Angeles for months at a time, to oversee postproduction, screenings, meetings. Meanwhile people put Sofia on jets and sent her wherever crew labor ran cheap and the US dollar went far, to Eastern Europe mostly, and even Australia in those days.
Sofia returned to LA every chance she got. One time, she found Jack on the floor of an edit suite, in the midst of a panic attack—his worst one yet—over the edit of the Batman sequel. The movie had come in at almost five hours long, and Jack was crippled by indecision over which shots to lose. Sofia sat with him in that windowless room, soothed him, and gently suggested to him to let this or that shot go, applauding him whenever he made a decision.
In truth, Jack overthought things. A good director made decisions, even if they were the wrong ones: the act of deciding was the important part. Sofia was not like him; she knew innately what to do. She knew how to tell a story with a look, a shot, a word. She watched him on the floor of the edit room, trembling and close to tears, and shook her head at why he did it to himself, why he had convinced himself that this career was what he wanted. Sofia loved him, so she always helped him. They completed the edit together.
The film succeeded. Sofia and Peter had built on the chemistry they’d had in the first movie, and the scriptwriter added real heart this time, above the usual convoluted comic-book plotting. The trade papers reviewed the film in celebratory tones, declaring it an action masterpiece. The film broke records, earning the highest box office ever for a sequel, and Jack was feted everywhere he went.
It was at about this time that things seemed to change.
They went straight into preproduction on Batman 3. They shot it and wrapped, and the edit loomed once more. Jack struggled, and Sofia sat with him again, night after night in the edit suite. Jack asked her to be at the studio screening, and she gladly attended, but sat in the back of the room so as not to be in the way. She glanced at the back of his head as he watched the cut on the big screen above. He relaxed his shoulders. The movie looked good. She smiled, happy for him. He’d be in a great mood later.
As she turned to leave the theater, an executive leaned over to Jack in his seat and spoke to him. Sofia overheard the words. “Does the carpet match the drapes?” The executive pointed to the screen, where Sofia, as Batgirl, jumped into frame, her flame-red hair dancing across the screen. Sofia stiffened. She turned to Jack and inhaled, waiting for his rebuttal. She wanted to hear how Jack Travers dressed down pissants who insulted his wife.
Jack seemed to pause and look around. Some other executives snickered. He looked to them. “No,” he replied. He chuckled. That was all he said. The darkened room erupted with laughter.
Sofia left the theater. She spent the morning in the edit suite, tweaking the cut, helping Jack with everything. Then she went home and cried. When Jack arrived home a few hours later, she confronted him. “Does the carpet match the drapes?” she asked.
He looked like a guilty child who had been caught stealing a cookie. Then he grew defiant and angry and waved her away. “What could I do? They’re the money.”
“I’m your wife,” she said.
He doubled down
