Everything Leads to You

by Nina LaCour

  “Every day. I’m going to need it after that for viewings.”

  “Three is quite early.”

  “And if someone rents it before then, the deal’s off.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, if someone signs a lease.”

  “This isn’t what you said on the phone,” Theo says.

  “Put yourself in my position. I need to find a renter. What if I find someone to sign a year lease but they need the place right away. Am I supposed to say no because you need it for a week?”

  Theo’s hands fly to his head. Towering above her, he says, “Please. If you will. Put yourself in my position. How can I accept an agreement that could mean that even if I were halfway through the week of filming, I could have my location pulled out from under me. Then I would have half the scenes that are meant to take place in this house completed, but the other half undone. What would I do then?”

  Patricia is fazed neither by his impressive stature nor his argument.

  “I have to make a living. A hundred a day is a real bargain. I can give it to you day-by-day but that’s all I can do.”

  “So you’re saying that I have to decide whether it’s worth this so-called bargain you’re offering me for a piece-of-shit house with water damage and stained carpets to risk losing days of shooting to a hypothetical renter?”

  He’s yelling now, and Patricia’s hot pink mouth is hanging open and I try to lighten things up by saying, “Well, looks like we’ll be moving on, right, Theo?” in a kind of happy-go-lucky lilting way.

  And then when no one responds I walk to his car and wait by the passenger-side door.

  ~

  After venting for half an hour as we inch along the 405, Theo finally falls silent. I let him have a few minutes and then I say, “So is it safe to change the subject?” and he says, “Please do.”

  So I ask him about scene 42, the scene Ava read to audition for the part, because I’ve been thinking of what they told me the day I accepted this job, that they had envisioned the entire scene playing out as Juniper tells the story: the flower stand and the florist, the city street.

  “Right,” he says. “We ran out of money. It was one of the easier things to cut. But even with a spectacular Juniper, it’s a long time to hold an audience’s attention.”

  “I’ve been thinking of ways to create the illusion of a set.”

  I’m taking a risk by bringing this up because really what I’m suggesting is a directorial decision and I don’t want to overstep. And it’s also a departure from the style I showed him and I don’t want him to doubt me. But he tells me to go on, so I take the chance.

  “Well, there’s the possibility of really tight shots, close-ups of hands, flowers, the tissue paper, Juniper’s face, and the florist’s face. We could shoot it basically anywhere outdoors because we wouldn’t see much of the background.”

  “Interesting,” Theo says.

  And even though I know interesting can be a euphemism for “terrible idea that I will disregard immediately,” something in the way he says it makes me think that he doesn’t mean it that way, that the concept really does interest him, so I keep going.

  “I think it could work because it’s kind of the way memories are. They’re private, and shooting them so close would convey intimacy.”

  Theo runs his hand through his wavy brown hair. His phone rings and I see it’s Charlie, the DP, calling, but Theo hesitates before answering and instead ignores it.

  “Go on,” he tells me.

  “What the scene is about, at least to me, is Juniper finally trying to connect with someone. Instead of spending all this time obsessing over a stranger, she realizes that making a real connection with a real person—not just an illusion of who someone might be—is worth taking a risk. So she tells a story that has the potential to humiliate her. She shares a memory. It’s a huge moment in the film so it would work for it to be stylistically different. It wouldn’t even be as good to show a wide shot of Juniper at the florist because it would look like everything else. This scene should look and feel like a memory, and we could pull that off—you could pull that off—by cutting between her sitting in the break room telling George the story, and the close-ups of images that help us feel the story.”

  “I’m liking this,” Theo says, and then his phone rings and it’s Charlie again and he tells me he has to take it. “Let’s work on this concept,” he says as he answers. “Come up with some things to show me.”

  As he talks Charlie down from some kind of lens crisis, I think about what I could include in the scene to convey memory and sadness, and soon I am thinking about the set I would create if this were a movie about me. If I were trying to show people how it once felt to be with Morgan I would show the shimmering blue water of the pool at her apartment, and the line she rigged on her back deck because her unit has a washing machine but no room for a dryer. All those tank tops and pairs of bright underwear in the sun. It would be a soft nostalgia, a faded romance.

  But the Yes & Yes scene isn’t only about sadness; it’s about yearning, too.

  Yearning is a red-haired girl sitting on the hood of her silver sedan, reading about Marilyn Monroe. A cherry orchard at night, houselights at a distance. It’s the painstaking neatness of a paint-by-number sunset, a yellowed letter held between graceful fingers, a cautious step into the sun-filled lobby of a famous hotel.

  It’s the way I feel every time I think about Ava.

  Soon I’m feeling the same ache that descended after Ava’s audition, and then a similar urge to savor it. Out the window, downtown Los Angeles comes into view, that sprawl of tall buildings in the smoggy haze, the people too far away to see. In a year or so some of those people might enter a theater to watch our film. The lights will go down, allowing them to drop into themselves for as long as the movie lasts. And if I choose flowers that are the perfect shade of red, tissue paper with words subtle enough for them to overlook at first and then, later, clear enough to make them cringe, they may find themselves feeling the same way I am now. We’ll all be feeling for Juniper but actually feeling for ourselves, for how it is to be heartbroken, how it is to be alone, and maybe, if we’re lucky, how it is to be ready to open ourselves up to the fragile hope of something new.

  ~

  Charlotte laughs forever when I tell her about Theo and Patricia.

  “He said all that? No way.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “He had a minor breakdown. I thought he was going to start kicking things.”

  “Poor guy. We should find him somewhere perfect.”

  “I actually have an idea,” I tell her. “I thought of it when we got back, but Theo was pissed off again and didn’t feel like talking. You know when you try to cheer someone up but it’s clear they aren’t in the mood? They want to wallow for a while? That’s what he was doing. Anyway. What if we ask Frank and Edie?”

  “That’s a great idea.”

  “I know. I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before. I guess I just got swept up in the film and forgot about them for a little while, but their little cottage is sort of perfect.”

  “Yeah,” Char says. “It’s totally an old-person house but it’s nice. Is it coral?”

  “I can make it coral. That’s no problem. I just don’t know if Edie would be up for it. She seemed pretty set in her ways.”

  “We could buy her cookies and drop by.”

  “Brilliant. Plain cookies.”

  ~

  An hour later we are armed with a dozen sugar cookies in a pink box, on our way to Long Beach.

  “I wonder if Frank and Edie know who Lenny is,” Charlotte says.

  “We should ask them. Maybe we should call Ava and see if there’s anything else she wants us to try to find out.”

  Charlotte smirks at me.

  “What?” I ask. “It’s her family
we’re trying to find out about.”

  “You’re right. Do you want me to do it?”

  “Sure.”

  Ava picks up when Charlotte calls, and I listen to Charlotte explain why we’re headed to Frank and Edie’s.

  “We thought we’d ask them about Lenny,” she says. “Just in case they remember him. Is there anything you want to know? Yeah, Long Beach. Ruby Avenue. Um . . . yeah, I guess that would be okay. All right, I will. See you soon.”

  “She’s coming?” I ask.

  Charlotte grimaces. “Not the most professional move on our part.”

  “Yeah, not really,” I say, exiting the freeway and turning right onto Ruby Avenue. “But it’s okay. We met Frank and Edie under strange circumstances. We don’t need to get super-professional with them all of a sudden. And at least she’s part of the film now.”

  When we get to the house, the station wagon is in the driveway; the front door is open.

  “Hello, Frank and Edie,” I call inside. “It’s Emi and Charlotte.”

  “Is someone there?” Frank calls. I can see him working his way out of his chair and walking over to us.

  “Girls, hello!” he says from halfway through the room. Soon, he is standing in the doorway, welcoming us inside.

  “We brought you guys cookies,” I say.

  “Plain ones,” Charlotte says.

  “Edie will be thrilled,” Frank says. “The perfect afternoon snack. She’s getting her hair done right now. Gretchen, our daughter-in-law, takes her every Tuesday. Such a sweet girl.”

  We follow him into their living room and it’s even more right for the film than I’d remembered. The plastic-covered maroon couch, the careful piles of magazines. Frank has the wood-paneled television tuned in to a Dodgers game, a vintage TV tray with brass legs set up in front of a mint green easy chair. Everything is old but in such good condition. I take a closer look at the TV tray—the top of it is a fruit basket design in a muted color palette of gold and—yes—coral.

  “Frank,” I say. “I’m here with a request.”

  “Oh?”

  “Last time we were here I believe that we told you what our jobs were.”

  “Yes, you did. Every time Edie reads something about The Agency she talks about you. Very exciting. And you’re both so young.”

  “We started working on a new movie. It’s very small but we hope it will get picked up by a big studio after it’s been made.”

  “It’s called Yes & Yes,” Charlotte says. “The script is really beautiful.”

  “I’m the production designer,” I say, and I get such a thrill from saying it that actually gives me goose bumps. Frank is watching us deliver this information so patiently, looking at us with these wise old-man eyes, turning his ear just the tiniest bit toward us when we speak so that his hearing aids will work.

  “I was wondering whether we might be able to use your home in the film,” I say. His white, wiry eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

  He turns his head to survey the room as though he’s expecting to find himself suddenly elsewhere.

  “Here?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “Unfortunately, we have a limited budget and could only offer you a hundred dollars per day, but we have a very respectful crew and we’d only need five days. And maybe it would be exciting to see your house in a movie?”

  “Why our house?” he asks, so I explain the part to him and I can tell that he likes the idea of it because he keeps looking around in awe and saying, “Who would have guessed?” and smiling.

  “I’ll talk to Edie,” he says. “It’s fine with me, but you know who’s in charge around here.”

  He winks, and just as I’m winking back, Ava calls, “Hello?” from the doorway.

  “I can’t remember the last time I had so much unexpected company,” Frank says.

  Charlotte says, “This is Ava.”

  “Come in,” Frank says, and when Ava steps inside I get goose bumps again but for an altogether different reason. Her hair is swept off her shoulders with bobby pins. She’s wearing a camisole as a tank top, a light green satin that makes her eyes even brighter, makes me want to be nearer to her.

  “Hi,” she says to all of us, and the rasp in her voice is enough to make me swoon.

  But then I remember what she’s here for and that I didn’t have time to give Frank any warning.

  “Frank, remember how we were looking for Caroline Maddox last time we were here and you told us that she had a baby?”

  He nods yes.

  “We found her. This is Ava.”

  Instead of turning to Ava he looks harder at me. At first I thought he might not have heard me, but then I realize that he’s just taking a moment to process this news, and I feel a trace of what I felt when I opened the door to Ava that first night. Like I’m trespassing again.

  “I hope it’s okay that I came,” Ava says.

  He finally turns to her.

  “Sure, sweetheart. Sure. Come into the living room. Let’s have some of these cookies.”

  He turns off the TV, and I feel even worse because clearly all he wants is to watch the Dodgers in peace and here we are ruining it.

  Charlotte places the pink box on the coffee table next to all the magazines and opens the top. The cookies glisten up at us. Frank reaches for one.

  “I suppose you want to hear the whole story.”

  “If it’s okay,” Ava says. “The woman who adopted me never told me what happened.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  Frank takes off his glasses. He rubs his eyes.

  “I don’t like to think about this sort of thing,” he says. “When I was a young man I fancied myself a philosopher. I enjoyed thinking about the tragedies of life. I thought all the feeling out of everything. But not anymore.”

  “I’m so sorry, Frank,” I say. “We didn’t mean to upset you. We should have called before we came. I just got the idea about using your house for the movie and—”

  “It’s all right,” he says. “So I’m upset. So what? It’s your life.” He glances at Ava and nods. “If you have a right to anything in this life, it’s to know your own history.”

  He takes a bite of the cookie. Takes his time chewing and swallowing. We sit in silence and wait.

  “So this is what happened,” he says. “When Caroline first moved in she would tease me about the state of the garden. Pitiful, she told me. You think you can do better? I asked her, and, well, she showed me. In a matter of weeks she cleaned it up, got it blooming. We would have long talks sometimes when we were out there working. She was a dreamer. Always imagining an extravagant future. A penthouse overlooking the ocean. That’s what she wanted someday. But for the time being, we had an arrangement about the flowers. She was to keep them pruned and watered, and we would help her out with the rent. She did it for a little while. But then she took a turn. It was clear just to look at her. Soon the garden was overgrown and the flowers were starting to wither. We hadn’t seen Caroline around for a couple of days. I started getting upset. Edie wanted me to take the responsibility away from her, but I knew she couldn’t afford the full rent, especially with the baby. With you, I mean.

  “I had been calling her, you see? Calling and calling and she wouldn’t answer. But I knew she was around. Her car was in the lot and at night she’d have parties. Some of the neighbors would complain and once in a while Edie would go up there but I never wanted to get into it. You see, I really liked her. I thought she was the sweetest girl. She only showed me her sweet side. Maybe that’s why I looked the other way when she was a few days late on the rent and when she didn’t do the gardening she was supposed to. I was getting to the point where I was going to have to give into my wife, you see, and raise Caroline’s rent.

  “I called that morning but, no surprise, there was no answer. And then later on, in the early
afternoon, we heard sirens. They aren’t too unusual for this area, but they got louder and louder and then stopped right outside, and I went out there and asked the paramedics what was going on. Told them we owned the building. They said they got a call about someone in apartment F and I said, ‘I’ll get the key.’ I ran up after them—I wasn’t such an old man then, you know—and I opened the door and they let me follow them in. The baby was crying. You were crying. I could tell something was very wrong. And then there she was, your mother, Caroline, and there was no mistaking that she was dead already.”

  We’re quiet for a minute. Ava looks pale. I want to reach out and hold her hand but something keeps me from it.

  “Did you find out who made the call?” Charlotte asks.

  “No,” Frank says. “We never did. But it was made from the apartment.”

  “So someone was in there, alive, when Caroline had already died?” Charlotte asks.

  “That was my understanding.”

  “Maybe it was Tracey,” Charlotte says.

  “Or Lenny,” I say.

  “Lenny? The name doesn’t sound familiar.” Frank shakes his head. “It could have been anyone, though. I wasn’t acquainted with her friends. Actually, there’s one thing I could check.”

  He leans forward. Charlotte walks to his chair and offers him her arm.

  “Thank you,” he says, and she helps him stand.

  “We have these files over here. All of our old tenants. Everyone has to provide the name of a person to contact in case of emergency. We’ve never been good about clearing it out.”

  He opens the drawer of a black metal cabinet and in spite of myself I make a mental note that we’ll have to take it out of the room when we shoot. It’s a cool piece, but too office-like and altogether the wrong color.

  “Here we go,” he says, and we all lean forward to hear him. This could lead us to Lenny, whoever he is, or it could lead us to someone else entirely, someone who knew them all and could answer all our questions.

  He adjusts his glasses. He squints.

  “Tracey Wilder,” he says. “Should I write down her phone number and address?”