Bootycall Page 10

  “It’s page forty-two. You’re gonna be Renee.”

  “Ok,” I say, finding the name on the sheet. “Shall I start?”

  “Sure.”

  I clear my throat a little.

  “’When you said you would come back to fight, for him, I never thought it would be like this?’”

  “’I never said what I was fighting for,’” Dylan says, and his voice is suddenly like a battering ram to my senses, strong and powerful, an earthquake of emotion. I jerk back when I hear it, shuddering as I stare at him, as if in disbelief at how he sounds.

  His eyes remain on the page, and he gestures for me to continue. I shake off the shock and turn my eyes back to the page.

  “Um…ah…sorry… ‘If you’re not fighting for your brother’s cause, what are you fighting for?’”

  “You. Just you. Nothing else but you.”

  I look up at him, the words so potent, so full of earnestness that I’m not sure if he’s talking about the script anymore. Whatever he’s saying, I believe that he means it. That it’s just me. That I’m on a far-off planet, face to face with the only man who can save it, torn by the fact he’s doing it for the wrong reasons, and that we can’t be together, but impossibly in love with him.

  I look up at Dylan, whose gaze is pained and caring, like he really loves me, like he really means it. He allows himself another brief nod to the script, and I suddenly fall back into reality just enough to cast my eyes down and see the next line.

  “Ahem…um…‘Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. Promise me.’”

  I look back up, but Dylan’s just staring at me now, his face inches from mine, his mouth parted in a gesture of long-held pining, his eyes sad but focused, eyes that soften only for me.

  “’I don’t need to. You already knew.’”

  My head spins, my mouth goes dry, my fingers clutch the script tightly and my toes curl. Dylan moves closer and I close my eyes, bracing myself for his touch, preparing myself to explode when he touches the fuse.

  “Dylan!” comes a shout from somewhere just outside the trailer, followed by loud rapid thumps on the door. “Dylan! Are you in there? Heard you were back!”

  Dylan’s face breaks into his normal, relaxed, semi-smiling expression, and I reel back for a few moments, still unsure of what’s real and what isn’t.

  “That’s Charlie. I need to speak with him. Well,” he says, tossing the script onto the counter and standing up, “that was good. I want that scene to go a bit quicker, but thanks, anyway.”

  “Um…yeah. Sure. No problem,” I say, offering a weak smile and nervously pushing my hair over my ear.

  Dylan makes his way to the door. I stand up, and he gestures at me to sit back down.

  “I’ll be back in few minutes.”

  I hover for a second, wondering if I should let him go, the question of trust hanging in the air, unspoken, but clear nonetheless.

  Dylan nods, and I laugh weakly. It sounds dry and empty. I settle back down, unable to bring an element of conflict between us after the moment we just shared. Dylan winks at me and leaves. I let my head drop back onto the seat.

  I should ask for a raise.

  Dylan returns after a few minutes carrying a foil-wrapped package in each hand.

  “You hungry?” he says, closing the trailer door behind him.

  “I could eat a horse.”

  “I’ve only got tuna and ham,” he winks.

  “Tuna,” I smile.

  Dylan tosses me the sandwich and drops onto the couch opposite me, tearing off the wrapping and taking about a quarter of his own in one bite.

  “Not bad for craft service leftovers, right?”

  He chews happily for a few moments, his eyes settling on me as he does so. I glance back at him and start smiling – however much I don’t want to – before turning back to concentrate on my own food. He gulps loudly then reaches over to his mini-fridge and takes out two bottles of water, sliding one over to me.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Are you still mad?”

  I pretend to chew as I think over the best answer.

  “No,” I say.

  “You must be a very strong, forgiving woman.”

  I laugh and pick at my sandwich.

  “It’s not that – as flattering and as cheesy as that sounds.”

  “Why then?” Dylan asks, before taking another gigantic bite from his sandwich.

  I take a few moments and a sip of water before answering.

  “Well,” I say, slowly raising my eyes to his, “to act like you did today, you have to be either a complete asshole, or…” He tilts his ear towards me, as if eager to hear the rest. “Angry, frustrated…and maybe a little anxious.”

  “Anxious?”

  I nod, and he wipes a hand over his face as if what I said was incredible.

  “About what? No, wait, don’t tell me. The ‘big comeback.’ The huge ‘Christopher West’ film, which is depending on my shoulders to carry it. Oh! The pressure! Am I really good enough? Do I still have it!? And so on and so forth.” He’s going for sarcasm, but I can see the very real worry beneath it.

  “You joke, but I don’t think it’s too far off the mark.”

  “And why then would I jeopardize everything by doing something like that?”

  I finish chewing, put the sandwich down, and look at Dylan sincerely.

  “I think you want to fuck things up deliberately so that you can stay in control, and not have them be fucked up for other reasons. Maybe it’s better to be the ‘wild man’ actor who blew a movie because he was crazy, than the honest actor who tried to do something great and failed at it.”

  Dylan’s smile drops, and he looks up as if genuinely contemplating it.

  “That’s good,” he says, waggling a finger at me. “That’s really good. Do you believe that could be it?”

  “Maybe.”

  Dylan breaks into a smile.

  “Then that’s what I’ll use as an excuse next time.”

  I snort a laugh and shake my head as I pick up my sandwich again.

  “And what about you?” Dylan says, after gulping down the last of his sandwich. “Since we’re playing ‘therapist.’”

  I concentrate on sipping more water.

  “What about me?”

  “Why do you think they chose you for this job?”

  I screw my face up in a sudden expression of confusion. Why did they choose me for this role? It had been my first question when they told me about it, and since then I’ve been so busy trying to do the job properly, I hadn’t stopped to think about it again. I pass off my confusion as an incredulity that Dylan would ask the question, but I don’t know if he buys it.

  “It was probably the financial department’s idea, and I work in the financial department, so…”

  “Yeah,” Dylan says, waving what I said away like it’s just noise, “but why you? There are plenty of other people who work in that department. Why not a higher-up? Why not an admin? Why not someone who is actually a personal assistant? From what I was told, you never worked on a project half this big. So why you?”

  I look up at Dylan, whose eyes are glinting and sparkling with the thoughts he’s not expressing.

  “You obviously think you know, so just say it.”

  He screws up his foil and tosses it into a wastebasket on the other side of the trailer – annoyingly getting it inside – before turning to me as he picks at his teeth daintily.

  “They think you don’t know how to have fun,” he says.

  I shake my head in confusion.

  “Excuse me?”

  “They think you’ve got a stick up your butt. That you’re a square, a stickler for the rules. They saw the way you tie your ponytail real tight, and the way you button your shirts all the way up to the top, and they thought you’d be the perfect person to keep a guy like me away from anything exciting.”

  I sigh and shake my head again in a gesture of defiant disbelief, but I don’t say anyth
ing. I can’t say anything: Dylan’s probably right, and hearing him say it out loud makes me feel a little embarrassed.

  “I know how to have fun,” I say, almost aggressively, as if I’m arguing with a lifetime of preconceptions rather than Dylan, “it’s just that my idea of fun isn’t wild Hollywood parties full of phonies and drugs.”

  “What is your idea of fun, Ms. Clarke?” Dylan says, in a mock news anchor voice, relishing my defensiveness.

  “I like…reading. Art…photography. Yoga…hiking. Actually talking to my friends.”

  “Wow,” Dylan says, drawing the word out, “sounds like a real blast of a Friday night. Somebody call the cops.”

  “Ok,” I say, adamantly holding my hands up, “maybe that is why they chose me – so what? So I’m not a Hollywood schmoozer who’s going to get all starry-eyed at your ‘big, bad wild man’ routine. So I’m not the kind of person who feels like they have to impress everyone by going to the ‘best’ parties. So I’m not the kind of person who’s seduced by the drugs and the booze and the fame and the glamor. So what? Is that such a bad thing?”

  Dylan focuses the laser beam of his gaze on me, the shine disappearing and being replaced by something else, something that’s deeper, darker, and seems to run all the way down to his soul.

  “No,” he says, holding my eyes, “it’s not bad at all. It’s the best thing about you.”

  My breath starts fluttering out of me, pushed by the butterflies in my stomach. Once again I feel like I’m losing all sense of time. It’s not just the things Dylan says, it’s the way he says them, his voice so confident that I would believe anything he told me, his eyes focused on me so intently the rest of the world may as well not exist. I try to gather my senses and think of something diversionary to say but Dylan brings me back to reality.

  “Come on,” he says, as he slams his bottle of water on the table like a first beer, “let’s get out of here.”

  “Where to?” I say, bewildered, as he jumps up and starts making for the trailer door. “We should probably talk over the film schedule.”

  Dylan spins around to face me.

  “Fuck that. I’m sure you’ve memorized the entire thing, and since you’re going to be at my side from dusk til dawn I don’t have to.”

  “Well where are you going?”

  “We are going to have a little fun.”

  “Oh no…”

  “Oh yes,” Dylan says, eagerly stepping out of the trailer. I frown for a second before following him, a half-step behind as I try to keep up.

  “It’s the last free time we’ll have before shooting,” Dylan explains, as he strides across the lot towards his bike, “our last hours of freedom. Tomorrow, the work starts, and it’s all going to be on your terms. So for one last time,” he says, searching for the helmet in the prop cart, then offering it to me, “we’ll do it on mine.”

  My shoulders slump and I drop my head.

  “Really?” I say, almost pleading. “Can we not just go somewhere for coffee? That’s fun. Or…I dunno…watch a movie?”

  “Sure. Then we do a crossword puzzle together and share a cab back to the retirement home. No. Look, I need to blow off some steam – and it’ll be good for you too. I’ll show you my idea of a good time, it’ll help us get to know each other better. It’ll be…catalystic.”

  “Cathartic. Though catalyst is probably more accurate.”

  “See, we’re already working together. Come on.”

  I reluctantly take the helmet – though not without hitting Dylan with the most disapproving glare I can muster – and get on the back of his bike. He revs it gleefully.

  “Where are we going?” I shout over the roar of the motor.

  “Vegas!” he screams, and before I can protest, we wheelspin away from the movie set in a dramatic cloud of burning rubber.

  Chapter 9

  Dylan

  I don’t slow down. If I do, I know she’ll say something. Voice another note of concern about going out the night before shooting, another question about a night even I have no plans for, another hesitation. Gemma can’t go with the flow – and for all my faults, that’s one thing I’m an expert at.

  The only time I stop the bike and put my feet on the ground is when we reach our destination: the private airstrip. It takes all of three seconds for Gemma to leap off the bike, take off her helmet, and begin telling me all the reasons this is a bad idea.

  “Where are we? Is this an airstrip? I can’t go to Vegas, Dylan. I have to submit some budget forms, and anyway, I’m still dressed in my work clothes. I can’t go to Vegas looking like this.”

  I take my time getting off the bike, and when I look at her face, and the mixed tones of anxiety, panic, and helplessness across it, I almost feel sorry. Not for taking her to Vegas, but for the fact that she can’t let herself enjoy it.

  I wave at the steward who’s waiting outside one of the hangars. He nods back, a well-worn routine, as impromptu trips are something of a habit of mine.

  “I’ll have the hotel put some stuff out for you, they usually do a pretty good job of choosing nice stuff.”

  “There’s no plane here,” she continues, the pitch of her voice getting higher and faster, “we can’t be waiting around for—”

  She’s interrupted by the thrum of engines as the jet taxis out of the hangar and rolls up the strip towards us. She looks at me, her eyes full of defeat, then covers her face in her hands.

  “Gemma,” I say. “Hey. Look at me. It’s just a night out. We’ll have a few drinks, play a few hands, and then tuck ourselves up in bed. That’s all it is. It’s barely a one hour flight, so we’ll have plenty of time to get back tonight for an early bedtime and make our call tomorrow, which isn’t until—”

  “Ten am,” Gemma says, softly, mulling it over. She sighs. “Ok. But you’ve got to promise me that’s all it will be.”

  “Sure.”

  She stares me down, her jaw tense. “I mean it. No getting drunk. No crazy…unpredictable…wild…ness. You will be responsible and pleasant. Promise me.”

  “Yeah. I promise,” I say, laughing.

  Seconds later we’re walking up the extended steps into the plane, nodding a greeting to the prim flight attendant.

  “Good evening, Mr. Marlowe.”

  “Hey, Rachel. This is Gemma Clarke. My…colleague.”

  “Hi,” Gemma says, somewhat embarrassed, and for the first time I truly realize just how unused to the high life she is. We make our way into the cabin and sit opposite each other on the luxury seats.

  It’s not until we’ve taken off, ordered a couple of stiff drinks, and made the arrangements for the hotel in Vegas that she leans back into her seat and stops glancing around like she’s looking for an exit. She stares out of the window, and I take the opportunity to really appreciate how beautiful she is. I can think of a dozen actresses who would kill for eyes as mesmerizing as hers, for lips so delicate they look like brushstrokes – hell, most men would kill for a face like that.

  I sip my whiskey, and before I know it, I’m thinking out loud.

  “Some women have the kind of beauty that hits you like a punch, and starts to fade soon after. Other women have looks that don’t seem like much, but under the right circumstances can take your breath away. A few have the kind of beauty that takes a long time to appreciate, but when you do, it never dies.” She turns her face from the window to look at me. “But you…you’ve got all of it. Every kind of beauty going.”

  She holds my eyes for a second, a tremble in her lips so slight that I wouldn’t notice it if I wasn’t studying them so intently, then she rolls her eyes and puts her drink on the tray.

  “Please, that cheese is way too strong for this wine.”

  I laugh and turn away.

  “You really aren’t a stargazer.”

  “What do you mean?” she says.

  “Nothing. I just thought you liked movies – most people who work in Hollywood do.”

  “I’m no different.”


  “So why do I feel a regular Joe when I’m with you? Most people tend to treat me either like a fragile vase, or the Queen of England.”

  “Doesn’t your ass get sore from all that kissing?”

  “It does,” I laugh, taking another satisfying sip of whiskey. “It most definitely does.”

  We both look out of the windows, though I’m only pretending, and I see the change in her face, as if a cloud is lifting from it, and she’s allowing something deeper to show.

  “I love movies,” she says, still staring out the window, “I just think actors are overrated.”

  She turns and notices my raised eyebrows, laughing nervously.

  “I mean…I’m not saying acting’s easy – and I know it’s important. It’s just…” She looks around as she thinks about what she’s about to say, then notices how eagerly I’m waiting for her to finish and relaxes a little. “My dad worked on movie sets; designing and building beautiful, amazing things. I used to spend a lot of time on sets myself. I saw how many talented people it takes to make great movies: screenwriters, camera men, gaffers and grips, editors, costume designers, electricians, makeup, prop masters, production assistants – I could go on forever. There’s so much artistry and hard work that goes into it – but it’s the actors who get all the praise.”

  I shrug. “I can’t argue with that. Although it’s the actors who get criticized, too.”

  “Sure, I know. But the way people talk about actors,” she says, leaning forward, hands flying as she makes her point, “you’d think that they just make it up as they go along. That they just ‘invent’ their own characters and improvise.”

  “I agree.”

  Suddenly she looks down, as if catching herself opening up and feeling a little ashamed of it.

  “Sorry. You’re not really the person I should be saying that kind of thing to.”

  “No, I think you’re absolutely right.”

  She sips her wine and looks away, as if looking for a change of topic.

  “But,” I continue, “I still don’t understand one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Well, if you’re so into movies – and obviously you think a lot about them – why are you working in the financial department? That’s like…I dunno…working in the fork factory because you like food.”