by Julie Wright
“Thanks,” I texted. “I appreciate you.”
Ben didn’t text back immediately. I reminded myself that it was okay, that we were just friends and he didn’t owe me anything as far as consistent communication went. I thought about the call he took from Alison. What if she was the sort of girl who read her boyfriend’s texts from other girls. What would she think of my conversations with Ben? I ignored the radio silence from Ben and got back to work.
During the week, I finished the edit on Sliver of Midnight and received a personal letter from Danny letting me know how spectacular he thought I was. He even used the word spectacular.
The film would be going out to test audiences in the next week. Dean came in every day but never again beat me into the office. He made a point of entering the editing studio as soon as he showed up so we could discuss tactical decisions he’d made during the night, even though he’d told me something entirely different the day before. I wondered if he traded his time at the nightclubs to time rethinking each and every frame of the movie.
Ben finally texted me again, nothing personal, just a movie quote. “Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.”
I gave myself a full day of thinking about it to come up with the movie, but finally gave up and Googled it. The quote came from Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s—the book, not the movie, which is why I hadn’t recognized it. I wasn’t sure what Ben meant by it. Did he mean me? Did he mean him? When I texted him back the answer, I asked him why the Audrey Hepburn reference, though I did not ask what he meant by the quote itself.
His response came immediately. “I heard you had an ‘eye’ for those sorts of quotes. Anyway . . . can I ask you an important question?”
Had I told him I named my eye Audrey? Possibly. When you spend a few years working directly with someone every single day, things are bound to come up in casual conversation.
“Why are you smiling?” Adam asked.
I was in the studio kitchenette making myself a cup of herbal tea. “Just reading a text from a friend—from the guy who helped us get Dean home from the bar, in fact.”
“Oh, cool. He seemed like a nice guy. His girlfriend is stunning.”
Right. I’d forgotten Adam would have met Alison as well. “She’s not his girlfriend,” I said.
He popped a pod into the coffee maker. “She looked like it when I saw them together at the movies the other night.”
I stiffened as if someone had filled my veins with concrete. “The other night?”
“Over the weekend,” he confirmed. “Turns out he and I both live close to that new complex with the VIP theater. I’ve seen him there before. I just didn’t know who he was.”
Why did those words “together at the movies” cause a physiological reaction in me?
I’d meant to respond to Ben’s request to ask me a question with something clever or smart or at least with another movie quote that might stump him, but the news of Alison still being an active player in his life took the wind out of my sails. I swiped the page of texts off my screen. I didn’t want to encroach on another woman’s territory, and if we kept playing texting games, the chances of becoming emotionally tangled in him were colossal. A little distance would be good, if only so I didn’t get the wrong idea about our friendship again. I was glad to still be friends with Ben, but with all the work I had to do, I could text him later.
“Ahh . . . Do I detect a look of disapproval in your eye? Tough beans, buddy, ’cause that’s the way it’s going to be.”
—Holly Golightly, played by Audrey Hepburn
in Breakfast at Tiffany’s
The problem with later was that later didn’t come because with two movies, countless commercials, and the extra help the TV series Gray Skies demanded from me, I found myself overwhelmed with grueling work. Ben texted again asking how things were going. I shared the excitement and buzz that Sliver of Midnight was generating and thanked him over and over for his help, but I didn’t allow us to engage in the banter that felt dangerously close to flirting. Instead, I asked how Alison was doing with her career. He responded that she had some good prospects coming up and that she actually wanted to meet up with me sometime and ask for advice. The conversation was enough to assure me that he really was still seeing her, which meant I had to forget how good he smelled.
I had a career. Ben had a girlfriend.
It was just that traces of his scent filtered to me from the weirdest places. And I made the unfortunate discovery that trying to not think about someone meant you had to think about them quite a lot to continually remind yourself not to think about them.
Over the next two months, Sliver of Midnight became a phenomenon, and every compliment that came my way made me twinge with guilt that no one would ever know that someone else spent an entire night of his life working on it as well.
Because the test audiences loved Sliver of Midnight, and because a lot of what they loved were things Ben had taught me, even if they weren’t things he did directly, it meant that I thought about Ben all the time. The press junket went off so well, it almost felt scripted. The press had nothing but glowing reviews and contagious excitement, and all the buzz would be worth a lot in advertising as the trailers hit theaters. The first reviews coming in from the press directed a message to the Academy to prepare to give all the awards to this one flawless film.
The film I had been a part of creating had been declared flawless. So why wasn’t I happier?
It was while at my grandma’s villa when my obsession finally found a voice.
“Who is he?” she asked.
“Who is who?” I didn’t look up from my laptop where I was scrolling through toothpaste options. She’d been tired a lot lately, so we’d switched our plans from going out to the farmer’s market to staying inside, watching a movie, and doing her grocery shopping online together. For an extra ten dollars, we could even get the groceries delivered.
She snapped my laptop screen closed and forced me to look at her. “Who is the reason for you sighing like an asthmatic?”
I lifted my screen and shook my head. “There’s no sighing here. We’re deciding between the ultra-white and the gingivitis fighter, though I don’t know if you should trust a toothpaste tube with muscles.”
“You know what I mean.” Her usually spiky white hair laid flat over her round head. She’d been so tired she hadn’t wanted to bother with her hair or her makeup. When I tried to pry information about her health out of her, she waved me off with a psh noise and said, “A woman of my age has a right to be tired every now and again!”
My phone buzzed. Grandma snatched it up before I could. “Is the person texting you the one making you sigh?”
Her question sucked another sigh from me. How did she know stuff? Did they teach emotional-information extraction at Grandma School or something? I didn’t bother trying to take my phone back, not wanting to wrestle an old woman, especially when she would read my texts whether or not I granted her permission.
The truth was that Ben had been texting all day to say he’d heard the latest review of the movie, and he wanted to tell me how proud I’d made him. He also wanted to set up a meeting between Alison and me.
“How about tomorrow? Would you be able to meet tomorrow?” was his texted request on the screen, along with my response of, “I’m helping my grandma tomorrow night.”
Grandma read the messages and then turned to me with her getting-into-trouble smile. She started typing on my phone.
I made a grab for it, but she evaded my reach and kept typing. “Grandma!” I wailed as she stabbed her finger onto the screen with a finality that proved whatever she’d written had been sent.
I narrowed my eye at her. “Why do I have the feeling that I really regret teaching you how to text?”
She shrugged and handed me back my phone. I read her message: “But I’d be happy
to have some company. We’re doing charity work. Want to come?”
“Grandma!” No matter how much angst I put into my scolding, the woman refused to look guilty. “Why would you do that?”
“To find out who we were dealing with. A man not willing to do charity work is a man not worth sighing over.”
The phone buzzed in my hand with Ben’s response.
If anything, the noise made me glare even harder and her grin even wider.
“Don’t you want to know what his answer is?” she asked.
“No! He wants to bring his girlfriend over so we can talk shop. You’ve just invited both of them to join us tomorrow.”
Her smile dropped. “Guess I should’ve scrolled up on that conversation.”
“You think?”
“Don’t get mad. At least I’m admitting my error.”
Unwilling to let my current grumbly mood go, I read the rest of Ben’s message. “Charity sounds awesome. I’m sure Alison would agree, especially since she’s so excited to meet the woman responsible for the movie that’s Hollywood’s new favorite thing. What do you want us to do? Where should we meet?”
“Well,” I said to Grandma with another sigh and genuinely feeling as asthmatic as she’d accused me of being, “at least now you have many hands to make light work for your charity tomorrow.” I read her the message and then waited for her to tell me how to respond. Like it or not, Ben was bringing his girlfriend to hang out with me. I would have brewed up a monster illness to excuse my absence from the whole mess, except that it was for charity, and Grandma had been acting so strange lately that the last thing I wanted was to leave her alone to work on a project she’d depended on me for help.
She shifted as if she wished she could brew up her own monster illness to excuse herself from my presence. “Um . . .” she began. “It’s not exactly work. It’s more of a charity ball. A masquerade ball, to be exact. I’ve already got your costume, so you won’t have to worry about that part.”
“A ball? A masquerade ball?” Grandma hated it when I repeated her like some kind of puppet, but the words had to be repeated to make sure I understood them properly.
She nodded, her apology evident in the slump of her shoulders and her sad eyes. “After we talked a while back, I thought about Audrey and what I could do to be more like the woman I admired. So I joined the Audrey Hepburn Society.”
“You joined a fan club?” I tried to keep the worry out of my voice, but her announcement made me want to call my mom for advice on how to handle all the odd things going on with Grandma: the move, how exhausted she got when we did activities together, and now joining a fan club?
“No!” Some of the spark and fire returned to her eyes. “I joined the Society. It’s not the same thing at all. I made a donation to UNICEF, and if the donation is large enough, you get to be a member of the Audrey Hepburn Society.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. Grandma easily qualified as a wild card. No one ever knew what she planned to do next. “How much of a donation?”
She smiled, showing off the white of her flawless dentures. “Let’s just say I’m a Guardian now. So are you. I would’ve joined the inner circle with my donation, but I decided to split it and do half in your name. Merry Christmas.”
“It’s not Christmas.”
“Oh. Well, then . . . happy birthday.”
“It’s not my birthday.” I tried to put us back on track. “I am gathering by your incredibly evasive answers that you spent a lot of money with this endeavor.”
“Of course not.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“I invested a lot of money.”
Did a sigh of relief come with a refund? “Grandma! Can you afford to be doing stuff like that? Please don’t tell me you just blew your entire retirement.”
“What? Afraid for your inheritance?”
“Don’t get sassy!” I repeated the phrase I’d heard from her since I was a child. “You know I don’t care about an inheritance. I care about your future. Your quality of life. Grandma, you mean everything to me. If something happened to you, I would never recover.”
She put her soft, wrinkled hand on my cheek. “I’m fine, Silvia. I have enough to live quite extravagantly for at least a decade now that I’ve sold my house and moved into a space that’s more reasonable.”
“What if you live longer than a decade?” A sense of panic welled up in me. What if she didn’t last longer than another decade? The idea of losing her so soon filled my heart with stone.
“Well, if that’s the case, I’ll simply live slightly less extravagantly. All right?” She cupped my chin and forced me to meet her gaze. “All right?”
“All right.”
“Good. And don’t go telling your parents about any of this. They won’t understand. They’ll think I’ve lost it and declare me incompetent and put a stop to my plans of extravagance before I can even start them.”
“We wouldn’t want that,” I said. She seemed so confident and rational. Maybe I wouldn’t call my mom after all.
“Of course not. Especially since I’ve already bought us a table to the masquerade ball.”
Right. The ball. The one she had inadvertently invited Ben and his girlfriend to attend. In my worry over her, her possible bankruptcy, and worse, her possible nonexistence in my life, I’d forgotten the problem at hand. “So, let me get this straight. You bought a table? To a ball? And you don’t already have the spots filled for that table?”
“We are attending a charity ball, after all. Every penny will go to charity. I bought a whole table because being charitable means giving more than you need to. And while the table wasn’t full, if your friend brings a date and you bring a date, it will be. It’s a masquerade. You’ll all need costumes. Well, you won’t. As I said, I have one for you already.”
“How many people can sit at this table?”
“Ten.”
I frowned. “So who else is coming?
Was that a blush crawling up her neckline? “I have friends. I’d better have friends, or who’s going to help carry my casket when I die? I need at least six.”
“Grandma!” My frown deepened. When had her humor become so dark? I, for one, didn’t find it at all funny.
She must have found it hilarious, because she laughed. But then she sobered. “I’m sorry about butting into the situation with your boy there. I won’t do it again.”
I absolutely did not believe that promise as far as long-term actions were concerned, but at least she was likely to behave for the short term. “It’s okay. You didn’t know. But now I have to respond to him. Do you really have room for his spare?” I asked.
“Only if you’re bringing a date, too. He can’t come with a plus-one if you’re coming alone.”
I considered my options before answering. “I’ll find a date. I might as well get this meeting over with sooner rather than later, since he’s determined she and I meet up sometime. If we’re all wearing masks, maybe it’ll be easier.”
She shot me a look of sympathy and apologized again. I waved her off and smiled. The whole conversation reminded me that she might not be around in another decade. That sobering thought made the current moment more meaningful and the issue with Ben less horrible.
I texted Ben with the information regarding the ball, the need for costumes, and that, yes, Alison was also invited. His responses were all generally excited—excited to see me, excited to do something so fun, excited for my movie that was doing so well, excited Alison would finally get to meet with me.
Excited.
I was not excited.
Because I had to find a date, and the only man I wanted to go to a ball with was the one who was going with someone else.
“At midnight, I’ll turn into a pumpkin and drive away in my glass slipper.”
—Princess Ann, played by Audrey
Hepburn in Roman Holiday
Morning came, and I still didn’t have a date. Every person who could possibly work as a date for my current situation was either in another relationship or would get the wrong idea and think I wanted a relationship. The one person I would have called for a situation like this was Ben. He was already going. And he was bringing a date.
Grandma insisted I had to have a date, too, but why? Bringing a guy wouldn’t get me a guy, so if that was her plan, she was wrong. Besides, I didn’t want just any guy. I wanted one who fit with me. It seemed far better to take my time and continue to be picky than end up in a situation that was not ideal.
To fulfill Grandma’s stipulation and satisfy my own sense of self, I decided she would be my date. I didn’t want a fake date, and I couldn’t imagine anyone I’d rather go with.
Ben called that afternoon in a panic. He called, not texted, which only proved how desperate he really was. “I don’t know what to do about a costume. I don’t have anything that would be appropriate,” he said before I’d even finished saying hello. “I scoured the internet about masquerade balls, and nothing I have will work.” Ben, who normally acted so casual about everything, was practically shouting into the phone.
“Just wear a suit and go to the costume emporium in East Hollywood and buy a mask that covers half your face. I doubt they cost more than ten dollars,” I said, checking my watch. Grandma had requested I arrive at her house early so she could dress me. She apparently wanted to make up for never having had a Barbie as a child. I was already running late.
“That’s just it,” Ben said. “I don’t own a suit.”
“Yes, you do,” I argued. “Every guy owns a suit. How do you go to premieres if you don’t have a suit?”
“You know where I work. Our movie premieres involve balloons and hot dogs, not caviar and paparazzi.”
“Oh.” I thought about it for a moment before realizing that my grandmother would have something. She’d worked in movies for a lot of years and had become fluent in all kinds of disciplines. Her specialty was makeup, but she understood hair and wardrobe as well. And she’d loved costume parties back when Grandpa was alive. Certainly she’d have something that would work for Ben. And it gave me an excuse to see him alone for a few minutes. Before I offered any solution, I asked, “Is Alison having a similar problem?
