by Lisa Ferrari
I unsheathe my knife.
I pop up behind him and hold my knife to his throat. “You’re dead.”
The looks on everyone’s faces are priceless.
I sheath my knife, take the cup of coffee Scott is drinking, and down it.
It’s not coffee.
It’s whiskey.
I remember what Kellan told me that night on the beach when we trained with the SEALs; he said to be a smart ass and to talk a lot of shit and I would fit right in.
“Haven’t you got anything stronger?” I ask. I sit down on the log next to Kellan, kiss him on the cheek, and try to act casual. I’m holding Scott’s empty mug in my hand. My hand and arm are covered in dried blood.
Everyone is still looking at me, and at Scott, who just got punked by a girl, when another Ranger comes staggering into camp from roughly the same direction in which I came. I think his name is Dwayne or Darrin. Something with a D.
He looks at me and, between deep breaths, says, “What the fuck?”
“What?” I ask.
“When did you get here?”
“Just now,” says Scott.
“Actually,” I say, “I got here a while ago. It took me about twenty minutes to sneak up on you.”
“She snuck up on you?” Dwayne/Darrin asks.
“Maybe,” says Scott.
“Damn, dude,” says Dwayne/Darrin, “you’re getting soft.”
“I’m getting soft?” Scott asks. “Where the hell have you been?”
“I was chasing her but I lost her.”
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Scott pours himself another mug of whiskey. “We sent Dwayne up the mountain with you last night to keep an eye on you so you wouldn’t get eaten by a mountain lion or accidentally slice your own throat with that knife. He was on the chopper with you and hopped out one side while you hopped out the other side.”
“You were up there with me all night?” I ask.
“Yep.”
This is disconcerting news. I thought I was alone up there. Knowing I had cover in the form of an Army Ranger, who is wearing a backpack no doubt full of food, water, a satellite phone, and first aid gear just shy of a defibrillator, angers me. Had I been alone and truly on my own, surviving would have been more meaningful. But having Dwayne there means I was never in danger.
“Fuck,” I say, chucking the empty mug in the dirt.
“What’s the matter?” Kellan asks.
“Call the chopper,” I say.
“What for?” Scott asks.
“I want it to take me back up to the mountain. Alone this time.”
“Why?” Calista asks.
“Because I thought I was alone up there. I didn’t know he was up there watching out for me. That cheapens the whole experience. It totally negates my whole G. I. Jane bad-ass mountain-chick thing.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” Dwayne says, “I couldn’t keep up with you on the descent. I’ve done the Iron Man Triathlon in Hawaii every year for the past nine years and you lost me. You’re one fast lady. Christ, I thought you were dead. I couldn’t understand how I’d lost you. I thought you must’ve fallen off a ridge or something. I was coming here to tell Scotty that I fucked up bad. And here you are, sitting by the fire, half drunk.” Dwayne turns to Scott. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you were ordering Domino’s?”
Chapter 29
PRODUCTION BEGINS.
And it’s madness.
Controlled chaos.
Barely controlled.
Kellan and I have individual meetings every day with an acting coach, followed by rehearsals with the other actors. After only a week, we have the entire script memorized. Every day we wake up at 5:00 a.m. and do our cardio and resistance training and are at work by 8:00. We usually work until 9:00 p.m.. We go home, eat, train, eat, shower, and go to bed. We try to be in bed by 11:00. It’s usually after midnight.
The first month is rough. Meetings, meetings, meetings. We live at the Paramount lot. Four hours of sleep per night ain’t cutting it. (I went through high school on four hours of sleep per night. I don’t know how I did it.) Waking up in the mornings is often difficult for me. I find that I’m angry and cranky most mornings, and Kellan and I don’t speak until I’ve had coffee and have somehow managed to dress myself and we’ve begun cardio and I’ve woken up a bit. Kellan is amazing. A sweetheart. An angel. I’m a bitch. Ungrateful and petulant. A child. With a rapidly-growing caffeine addiction-cum-tolerance. Plus, Kellan and I haven’t made love once. We haven’t partied at all, either. We work three out of four weekends, and Aaron gives us one Sunday off; I sleep 14 hours straight, wake up, eat, and take a four-hour nap in the warm and fuzzy Jacuzzi. The extra sleep helps me gain perspective, namely how astronomically lucky and fortunate and blessed I am to be where I am right now, and to be with the people I have around me. But, 24 hours later, I’m exhausted and cranky once more. The first month is rough.
The second month is rougher. Actual shooting begins (they call it principal photography). I shoot my first scene. Thankfully it’s with Kellan. It’s us in our home (which is a beautiful white set built on a soundstage), discussing day to day stuff. I’m so nervous that my first dozen takes are worthless. Aaron comes to me and tells me I’m too nervous and that he can hear it in my voice. My voice is shaking. I need to relax. Kellan has me do a bunch of push-ups and sit-ups and lunges while everyone takes ten.
It helps. The exercise works out some of the nervous energy.
But a voice inside me is screaming that I can’t do this and that I should run away, that I’m failing, and that every person on-set knows this. In response, my instincts are telling me to eat, to eat anything and everything (I desperately want a bowl of hot cherry pie and melty vanilla ice cream), or to smoke some weed because it’ll at least get me out of my head and will quiet the voice telling me to run.
But these are crutches, a desire to turn to food or pot, and are inappropriate coping mechanisms learned over many years. My instincts are wrong because they were formed in trauma. So I do my best to ignore them.
Kellan leads me onto the set and we sit down in two white chairs in our white kitchen. Everyone else is off having coffee and pretending they’re not watching us, so for the moment we are alone. Kellan gives me a pep-talk and helps me pretend that we’re at home, just the two of us, talking the way we always do, instead of being on a soundstage surround by 150 people, all of whom stare at me as I say my lines each time Aaron calls “Action!” from behind his monitor. Kellan says the problem is that I’ve built this up in my mind and I’m sabotaging myself. He says that I’m actually to be commended.
When I ask what the heck for, he explains that I am attempting to do something virtually no one has ever done, which is to star in a mega-super-ultra-blockbuster movie as a first-time newbie actor, and that 99.999 percent of actors have been acting for many years by the time they reach this point, so they’ve had several thousand hours to learn how to act. Whereas I am learning on the fly.
I counter that we spent all that time rehearsing and memorizing our lines so I should be able to do this.
Kellan says memorizing lines in an office is a far cry from acting on-set where we must get into character and become the person saying the lines.
This distinction helps me. Up to now, I’ve been Claire saying lines. I need to be Nisa Jones, ace pilot and super-cool space chick, and wife of Rence Jones, hunky space cowboy guy. I need to get into Nisa’s head the way I do when I’m writing. I ask Peggy, the script supervisor, to see her copy of the script. It’s covered in notes and lines she’s made in pencil, so she can help Aaron and, later, the editors, figure out how to piece the footage together in order to maintain continuity. But what I’m looking for is Nisa’s words, her intent, her meaning, what it is she’s trying to say to Rence, the man in her life, her best friend and lover. I re-read the scene, deconstructing it, looking at it from Nisa’s point of view and
creating a context in which this is all happening. For us, it’s our first day on set, dressed in full wardrobe and make-up, surrounded by lights and cameras and long ropes of thick black electrical cables that have been taped to the floor but which I constantly somehow manage to trip over nonetheless.
But for Nisa, this is another day in her life. She’s a newlywed, and she and Rence have been together for several years. They live together. This is their house. Their home. This is the place they chose together. She loves it here. And they live here. Together. This is where they wake up, together, every morning. It is the place they look forward to returning every evening, so they can take a shower and eat dinner together and watch a little entertainment and drink a mug of hot tea before they get up from the sofa and go brush their teeth and get into bed together, where Rence spoons Nisa nice and tight, and she hears him take several deep, cleansing breaths as he relaxes and finally lets down his guard long enough to sleep for the night.
Aaron returns to set and finds me sitting alone in my kitchen. Kellan made a quick trip to the men’s room.
“You okay?” Aaron asks me. He’s holding a cup of steaming coffee. The red plastic coffee stirrer is between his teeth and poking from his mouth, the way a cowboy chews on wheat. He does that a lot.
“Fine. Why?”
“I dunno… You seem… different.”
“I’m good.”
Aaron turns and walks quickly to his First A.D. (Assistant Director), a blond-ponytailed woman named Diane. Diane wears a headset, carries a clipboard, and shouts a lot. She runs the set so Aaron can focus on directing. Everyone listens to her.
Diane shouts, “Okay, places, everyone! Pictures up! Everyone settle!”
The crew return to their places, which is pretty much staring directly at me.
But for some reason I find it amusing this time, rather than terrifying. I no longer feel like I’m naked on America’s Got Talent, waiting for Simon to eviscerate me for the entire country to see.
Kellan comes back. He kisses me and sits down beside me.
Aaron has us run the scene from the top.
It goes well. I do better. Kellan flubs his line so we begin again. We get through the entire scene on the second take.
It’s quite apparent that everyone is shocked. The new girl actually did it. There’s still a long way to go, of course (a long way), but she did it; perhaps this billion-dollar project isn’t going to be a complete shit show after all.
AARON HAS US run the scene a dozen times more.
Which seems excessive but, hey, he’s the director.
We manage to get the first scene by lunch. Aaron says he’s happy with it. We all walk over to craft service (where the food is served) together and while we eat he says we probably should’ve started with some physical stuff. He and Rami concoct a scene in which I’m jogging. We shoot it after lunch. We jump in a van, drive out to the L.A. river aqueduct where they filmed Grease, and Aaron hangs out the door of the van with a camera on his shoulder as I jog along behind him. Another guy in the van flies a drone in the air all around me. I do my best to ignore it.
Aaron says it’ll only take an hour.
It takes six.
I’m running for about four hours.
He says the scene is flat, so we keep trying.
Finally, he gets the setting sun behind me and he’s excited because it’s a visual metaphor for the sun setting on my old life.
He’s right. It’s a good idea. I just wish we could’ve saved the running until sunset. By the time we’re heading back to Paramount, I’m cold and shivering because I’m dehydrated. When we get there, they have a paramedic waiting. He shoves a big thing of orange Gatorade in my hand and I chug it while he inserts an IV drip in my arm to help me rehydrate.
I’m ready to head home when Aaron says he wants to get some exterior night shots tonight. He asks me if that’s cool.
Fuck no it’s not cool. I can’t keep my eyes open and I’m ready to puke. I’m weak and lightheaded and quite possibly more thirsty than I’ve ever been, despite the IV saline drip I’ve just had.
But everyone is looking at me, waiting for my answer. Why this is up to me I do not understand.
But I don’t want to come off as someone who isn’t a team player.
Plus, a major Hollywood director is asking me to work with him. I’d be stupid to say no. So I say, “Sure.”
“Cool,” Aaron says, and everyone goes back to work in a flurry.
At some point, Calista hurries past me on her way to somewhere (I didn’t even know she was here). She shoves a huge coffee-flavored, B-vitamin-infused, all-natural, stevia-sweetened energy drink in my hand without a word. But she winks and smiles and I know I did the right thing by saying yes to Aaron.
WE SHOOT ALL night.
Aaron doesn’t need Kellan and tells Kellan he can head home, but Kellan stays on-set with us.
With me.
He coaches me between takes and makes sure he’s in my eyeline, which I quickly learn is the direction in which I’m looking during a take. A take is one roll of the camera. Aaron likes to do a lot of takes. He says he learned it from Kubrik, who was famous for his large number of takes. Sheila insists Aaron doesn’t have time to do 100 takes of each scene. She sits in her director’s chair (her producer’s chair?) with her name on the back, along with Rami and a bunch of other people. They watch my performance on a monitor while Rami goes back and forth from the little tent to the set where he can work with me in person.
After every take, Aaron says, “Let’s try it again.”
Each time Aaron says, “Let’s try it again”, Sheila pulls off her glasses and screams at Aaron that it was fine and to move on because we only have two years to do five years’ worth of work.
Aaron is calm and quiet when he talks to me, which is good. But he shouts and argues with Sheila, which stresses me out.
During a five-minute break, I ask Kellan about it. He brings Sheila and Aaron and Rami over for what he calls a palaver, a word I’ve not heard in ages, and explains that their shouting is stressing out their star.
Sheila and Aaron laugh. They assure me that this is their process. They fight like cats and dogs the way brothers and sisters do. But it’s fine. It has nothing to do with me. It’s Aaron’s job to make the movie. It’s Sheila’s job to make sure the movie gets made. The difference between those objectives is the source of their tension and the reason they’re shouting all the time. They assure me that I’m doing great and to ignore them.
I agree to try.
BY SUNRISE, WE are finished for the night. Not because Aaron is satisfied but because we’ve been shooting for almost 24 hours and Sheila is freaking out over the amount of overtime they’re paying everyone. Aaron says he doesn’t care. Sheila asks if he wants this to be the world’s first two-billion-dollar movie, because that’s where we’re headed.
Aaron tells me to find a place to nap for an hour and then we’ll start the day.
I’m shocked that we’re not all going to go home and sleep and begin tomorrow morning. But I keep my mouth shut and nod.
Kellan and I head out to our trailers.
I find the one with my name on the door.
My very first trailer!
Squee! comes to mind.
Kellan’s name appears on the trailer next to mine. As if we need two trailers.
We climb the three steep steps into my trailer. I take a few minutes to inspect every inch of it, the bedroom, which has a door for privacy, the bathroom, which has a shower, the little kitchen (Kellan says it’s a galley), and the front where there’s a table and chairs and a mirror with lights around it, presumably for hair and make-up.
We flop onto the built-in sofa which Kellan says is also a bed, which I guess compliments the queen bed in the rear of the trailer.
Kellan and I sit together, quietly, not speaking. The silence is wonderful. Kellan takes my hand. I take his in return.
&
nbsp; I reflect on the last 24 hours. So much has happened in so short a time.
Kellan’s entire body twitches.
I look over and his head is back, his eyes closed, his massive, muscular, sexy legs outstretched.
I find myself staring at the bulge in the crotch of his jeans.
It occurs to me that we haven’t made love in . . . I’m not sure how long; a month?
It occurs to me that I’m horny, and I suddenly want Kellan’s big, thick penis in my hand. I unbutton his jeans and lower his zipper. I hope he doesn’t wake up. Not yet.
I gently lower the waistband of his boxers, revealing his soft, brown pubic hair and penis. It’s big. Every time I see it I’m surprised by how big it is.
I lean sideways and rub my face against Kellan’s abdomen, his six-pack. I rub my nose in his pubic hair. It’s so soft; he must use conditioner on it.
I use my mouth to scoop up his penis. I swirl my tongue around the head, especially the underside by the opening of his urethra, the little sensitive spot called the frenulum. I read about it in sixth grade in a dictionary.
It’s not long before Kellan stirs. He moans. I think he’s still asleep. But then his eyes open. He looks down at me and smiles.
I slide onto my knees and take the length of him into my mouth. Half of his penis slides into my throat and I feel it getting hard, growing erect and getting bigger.
I press my lips against his abdomen and bury my nose in his pubic hair. I stick out my tongue and lick his scrotum.
Kellan grabs fistfuls of my hair. “Oh, God, Claire. Oh, God, you’re going to make me come.”
I unbutton my pants and push them down to my ankles as I stand. I kick them off, straddle Kellan while I’m facing away from him, and lower myself onto his erection. It takes my breath away.
I rest my hands on Kellan’s muscular thighs for support as I slide up and down on him.
His big, strong hands immediately seize upon my buttocks, rubbing and kneading. I love that.
Kellan reaches around and massages my clitoris. Wow. Now I cry out. I’m the one who’s going to come.
Kellan is so, so deep inside me at this angle, and I want us to come together at the same time.
