My Unscripted Life

by Lauren Morrill

  I open my eyes and attack my paints. I grab all the cool, dark colors from the case and start squeezing them onto the palette, mixing with the brushes. Then I turn back to the blank canvas and take one more deep breath.

  It feels like time disappears in the span of that breath, and before I know it I’m staring at four finished canvases with a fifth on the easel. There’s paint streaked up and down my forearms and caking my hands. At some point I’d ditched the brushes and started using my fingers for a rougher, less refined look. Inspired by the attic set they’re building just outside the door, I finger-painted a crude version of the peeling wallpaper pattern I caught a glimpse of through the opening. On the floor next to it is a canvas painted midnight blue with swooshes and swirls of beige, an interpretation of the sawdust floating through the warehouse next door. Next to that are three more, each covered in paint and definitely abstract.

  “Abstract expressionism. Cool.”

  I recognize the voice immediately, but it’s still hard to believe it’s real and talking to me, so I turn to confirm. Yup, standing there in a pair of dark skinny jeans and a tissue-thin gray V-neck is Milo Ritter. His Ray-Bans are tucked into the V of his collar, pulling the shirt down just enough to give me a glimpse of the tan, taut skin of his chest. I feel like a frat boy staring like that, so I force my eyes to go anywhere but his chest. Focus on the words, I tell myself.

  “It’s actually more abstract impressionism,” I say.

  He cocks his head at me, an unasked question on his face, and I send a silent thank-you to Mrs. Fisher for her insistence on the study of art history. I continue, “Abstract expressionism is devoid of representation, like Jackson Pollock, but this is meant to be slightly representational, hence abstract impressionism.”

  Milo stares at the canvases, so I step back and try to take them in with his eyes. It’s something Mrs. Fisher always encourages. When you’re creating something, it’s really easy to just be in it, but it’s important to try to see it how an outsider would, because 99 percent of the time art is viewed without the artist standing there. If your art requires an explanation, it’s not done, she always says.

  “You sound like a MoMA docent,” he says. I feel like he’s mocking me, but I choose to ignore it.

  “I’ve never been,” I reply.

  “To MoMA?”

  “Yeah. I mean no,” I say. This is the longest conversation we’ve ever had, and I’m still having trouble speaking. I take a beat, then try again. “I haven’t even been to New York.”

  “Lucky,” he says. His eyes are still on my paintings, but I can see he’s not really looking at them now. His thoughts are somewhere else.

  “Lucky? Seriously?”

  He snaps out of whatever brain bubble he was trapped in. He turns his gaze to me, and his bright blue eyes nearly knock me over like they have magnetic properties. “What, you don’t like it here?” he asks.

  “I like it fine, but it’s not New York. Or Chicago. Or Los Angeles. It’s not even Atlanta or Nashville. It’s quiet. And boring. Did I mention boring? It’s boring.”

  “There’s something to be said for quiet and boring. It must be nice to be anonymous.”

  “Uh, no,” I reply, shaking my head at him. “You seriously think small-town life is anonymous?”

  “Well, yeah.” He shrugs.

  “Tell that to Bryce Johnson. In second grade he wet his pants while wearing green shorts, and now—ten years later—anytime anyone wears green shorts they still get called Pee Pants. Bryce Johnson would be more than happy to explain to you how not anonymous small-town life can be.”

  I can’t believe I’ve just said “pee” to Milo Ritter, or that I’ve told him the story of Bryce Johnson (poor guy). But I don’t have to be embarrassed, because for the first time since I’ve met him, Milo’s lips curl up into a smile. A real one, and it grows bigger, his lips parting to show off his perfectly white smile, and the next thing I know he’s laughing. It’s a real laugh, too, the kind where you try to hold it in but it escapes out your shoulders.

  “Anyway, I can’t wait to go to New York. I need some excitement in my life,” I tell him when his laughter slows, but as soon as I’ve said it, his smile disappears. That blank expression, a mask if I ever saw one, is back in place.

  “Excitement is overrated,” he snaps, and I physically recoil, as if his words have reached out and slapped me.

  Before I can respond, Ruth appears, huffing and sighing and shaking her head. “Everything is pushed, which sucks, but it’s bought us an extra day,” she says. She shoots a quick quizzical glance at Milo, then turns her entire focus back to me. She looks around for the sketchbook, which she finds where I hid it beneath the script binder, then holds it up. “You can work on this on Monday. I’m going to have Rob come look at these”—here she gestures to my canvases, but gives not a single hint as to her appraisal of them—“and I’ll let you know what he says. You’re done for the day.”

  I look over at Milo, but he’s already turning on his heel and headed out the door. Whatever moment we had is gone. Whatever cracks formed in his facade, he patched them. He’s back to being a walking black cloud, and that black cloud is walking away from me.

  On Monday, I return to the prop room ready to attack whatever Ruth throws my way. But when I walk in, my canvases, which I’d left leaning against the wall to dry, are in a stack next to the easel. I pick one off the top and find that the one beneath is smudged and smeared from the one that was on top of it, and the ones underneath it all suffered a similar fate. Two of them are actually stuck together. They must have been stacked on Friday, not long after I left.

  Ruth comes in behind me with a fresh stack of canvases. “Uh, yeah, so Rob came in to take a look, and he hated those.” She waves her hand at the stack of canvases like it’s a pile of hot garbage. My stomach does a somersault, my breakfast feeling like it’s inside a salad spinner. I swallow hard to try to calm it, but I can’t do anything about the itch I feel in the corners of my eyes, a sure sign that tears are imminent. I turn my head so Ruth won’t see in case they start to spill over. “He wants you to give it another go. This time he wants more right angles and more primary colors.”

  If I weren’t feeling quite so much like a puppy who’s been scolded with a rolled-up newspaper, I’d tell her that this was information I could have used on Friday. I mean, this was just a simple assignment. I would have followed those instructions if I’d had them instead of wandering off after some ridiculous muse and then getting slapped down. I try to shake it off, but the feeling is hanging heavy around my neck.

  I take a breath to make sure my voice won’t waver. “Right angles and primary colors? So, more Mondrian?”

  There’s a pause, but I don’t dare look at Ruth to see her reaction. I’m still just barely keeping my tears in. “Uh, sure. Whatever,” she says.

  I wait for the standard scurry of footsteps toward the door, the sign that Ruth’s headed off wherever it is she’s needed. As soon as I hear the door slam shut, I squeeze my eyes closed tight, letting the tears that have pooled there spill over and run down my cheeks.

  I didn’t even want this job in the first place. I wanted to spend my summer as far away from art as possible. That first day Rob had said “runner-type stuff.” If I’d known I was going to have to draw, to paint, I would have run, all right. Far, far in the opposite direction. Towards SAT prep or that boring office job Dad suggested. Hell, I would rather have been a camp counselor, and I hate heat and the outdoors. For a split second I consider quitting. I imagine how good it would feel to walk out the door and away from the stack of ruined canvases forever. Reject them like they rejected me. But I can’t do it.

  Instead, I wipe my cheeks with the sleeve of my shirt, blow my nose into a scrap of paper towel from the work table, and then place one of the new blank canvases on the easel. He wants Mondrian? That I can do. And then if he hates it, it’s not me. It’s Mondrian, and that’s definitely not my problem.

  I wor
k until half the canvases are filled, until I no longer notice the tangy, earthy smell of the paint. I have no idea how long it’s been, because my phone is in my bag and the prop room is like a casino: no windows and no clocks. I lose all sense of time. It could be tomorrow for all I know.

  With my fourth canvas half filled with primary-colored grids, I pause to roll out my neck and crack my knuckles, left hand and then right. I hear the door open and shut behind me, but it’s not Ruth’s telltale scurry. Instead it’s the slow strut of someone much taller and more relaxed.

  “Ripping off Mondrian?” asks Milo.

  I experience what I can only describe as my emotions just grinding to a halt, then spinning their wheels, little dust clouds rising up as my anger grows. When they finally shift into drive, I whirl around so fast little droplets of red paint fly from my brush and spray both the canvas and the wall behind it.

  “You should wear a bell,” I snap.

  His lip curls. “What’s your problem?”

  “What’s yours?” I say, the words coming out all angles and sharp edges. I can feel my ears get warm and a snarl start to curl my upper lip. I get that he’s going through something right now, so I’ve overlooked the dour attitude, the blank stares, even the flat-out rudeness. But to walk in here and insult my work? When I’m trying my best? When I’m just trying to do what’s asked of me?

  This must read all over my face, a whole novel opening with my snappish retort, because Milo recoils. The blasé mask he’s been wearing since I first met him cracks a bit, but he quickly puts himself back together. His expression is impassive.

  “I was just making conversation,” he says with a little shrug, just a tiny movement, but I can tell it’s a telegraphed effort. It’s not coming naturally to him. No, he’s having to try to be this much of a jackhole. And somehow that just makes me more angry.

  I give him a big, obvious eye roll before staring him down hard. “No. You weren’t. You were being snide. And rude. Which I’m coming to realize is pretty standard from you, but I’m done with it.”

  “I’m, uh—” He stumbles, the cracks in his mask now fully crumbling. I can see a bit of red start to appear in his cheeks, and he shifts from one foot to the other, his hands digging deep into his pockets. But I’m not looking for an apology. What I want is to be left alone.

  “Why are you even in here?”

  He’s been fidgeting like a toddler in church, but then he pauses and looks up at me, blinking. “What?”

  I sigh. “Props. Why are you here?” I gesture around the cavernous room, just him and me and rows of shelves full of inanimate objects. “There’s nothing and no one here for you.”

  “Exactly,” he mutters under his breath.

  “What was that?” My voice rises in volume, so the question bounces across the polished concrete floor.

  And then it’s all gone. All the anger, the cool facade, the blank stare, and the snarl. He glances down at the toes of his shoes and shakes his head slightly.

  “You want to know why I come in here?” He finally looks up, his blue eyes locking in on me. “For starters, there’re no windows in here, which means I don’t have to worry about someone peeking in, maybe pointing a camera. In here, no one suddenly stops talking when I walk into the room. In here, no one stares at me or gives me sad looks like I’m some abandoned puppy. In here, no one bothers me.”

  That’s when I know for sure that the Milo I’ve seen this week is not the real Milo. Not even close. Yes, he’s heartbroken, maybe even feeling the lowest he’s ever felt. But even then he’s had to work to be the impenetrable jerk he’s been walking around as since I met him. There’s nothing about it that’s coming naturally to him. He’s acting his butt off and filming hasn’t even started yet.

  But still, there’s something missing, something he’s not saying. There’s something I’m not quite getting.

  “Okay, but don’t you have a trailer?” I ask.

  His eyes drop back down to his toes, and his voice comes out just barely above a whisper. “Yeah, but in there, there’s just no one.”

  For a moment, there’s not a single sound in the room other than the industrial air conditioning softly humming through the vents.

  I take a deep breath and let it out long and slow. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I know you’re, well, I…” I pause, not sure if I should acknowledge his paparazzi problem or not. I decide to go with not. “I’m just having a bad day, that’s all.”

  He glances over my shoulder at the canvas on the easel, then appraises the three I’ve got leaning against the wall. Finally, his eyes land on the stack of discarded canvases from Friday, the ones he complimented. He sighs, his eyebrows knit together, his lips pursed.

  “Me too. Bad week, actually. Bad month,” he says. He dips his hands back into his pockets, his shoulders rolling in until it looks like someone’s let the air out of him. “I need comfort food, and I think you do, too. Let’s go.”

  I couldn’t be more surprised if he spoke to me in Sanskrit while dancing the tarantella. And unlike the other day, when he marched off toward lunch without a word, this time he stops at the door, holding it open for me. It takes me a second for my feet to catch up with my brain, which is screaming, Go! Go! But eventually I drop my paintbrush into the cup on the table, wipe my hands off on a stack of paper towels, grab my bag from the floor, and follow him.

  ANGLE: ON A PILE OF DISCARDED CANVASES.

  END SCENE

  ANGLE: ON DEE’S PHONE. A text message from NAZ appears on the screen.

  Pic of Benny. Make it happen.

  And in case you need a reminder:

  Disengage heat-seeking missiles

  “So where are we going?” I ask as I click my seat belt and he shifts the car into drive.

  “Just this place I heard of,” he replies. We emerge from the industrial area into downtown, and Milo hangs a left toward Poplar Street like he’s lived in this town his whole life.

  We ride mostly in silence, since I’m apparently not needed for any directions. I try to keep my eyes forward, or out the passenger side window, but every few minutes I allow myself a sneaking glance in Milo’s direction. I notice that despite the driver’s seat being pushed all the way back to make way for his lanky frame, his knees still seem bent and cramped in the tiny sports car, and he’s drumming on the steering wheel to a tune in his head. A million questions are running through my head.

  Soon, we’re pulling up beneath one of the live oak trees dripping with Spanish moss that line Poplar Street. The summer sun hasn’t quite set behind the neat rows of downtown buildings, but the trees provide a nice canopy that makes you forget, for just a moment, that you’re living in a giant sauna.

  I fling the door open and start to climb out, but the low profile of the car plus my denim pencil skirt has me performing a Cirque du Soleil routine just to remain upright without showing off my underpants to the little old ladies power-walking by. I finally get myself to standing with one heave on the roof of the car and a slightly embarrassing grunt, but a rock that’s kicked up into my sandal causes my knee to buckle and I pitch forward. I fling my hands out to catch myself before I face-plant on the curb, but Milo, tall and solid, interrupts my trajectory.

  My hands are flat on his chest, and the rest of my body follows, pressing into him nearly head to toe. I breathe in the scent of detergent and cologne and something smoky on him, and I have to work to suppress the happy sigh that’s just waiting on my lips.

  I glance upward to see his sparkling blue eyes looking back down at me.

  “You caught me,” I say.

  “Yup,” he says, and suddenly my bones feel like they’re made of my mom’s homemade strawberry jam. Despite Naz’s warning and my own resolve to not turn into a puddle of fangirling goo, I can’t help it.

  Swoon. Swoony swoony sa-WOON.

  Steadying myself and pushing away from his chest is maybe one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, other than having
to run the mile in gym. But I do it, because I can’t think up a proper reason why we should spend the entirety of our dinner standing in this parking spot pressed up against each other. And if I tried, I’d worry that he’d find me creepy and never want to hang out with me again.

  Oh, but if I could…

  Milo holds the door open to the Deluxe Town Diner, home of the best burgers in Wilder and my favorite place to eat.

  “Wait, have you been here?”

  “Uh, yeah, on my first day in town,” he replies, not meeting my eyes. There’s something zooming around in his head, but I can’t seem to grab on to it, so I make my way through the door.

  Despite being the absolute best restaurant in town, it doesn’t look like much, that’s for sure. Big windows, and booths running across the front that are covered in sparkly red vinyl, which I know from many trips is cracked and peeling. There are already a few early birds, all of them regulars, parked on the stools that sit beneath the counter. A craggy, middle-aged man in a trucker hat and jeans that do not quite meet the bottom of his Jimmy Buffett tour T-shirt is perched on a stool nursing a cup of coffee.

  “Hiya, Roy,” I say as we make our way past him toward my favorite booth. Roy owns the music shop on the far end of the square and lives in the apartment above it. Whenever he’s not at the shop, he’s here. And when he’s not here, he’s at the shop tuning pianos or polishing brass. He’s as much a fixture at one place as the other.

  “Hey there, Dee,” he replies, never taking his eyes off his biscuits and gravy. In fact, no one pays a bit of attention to me or one of the most famous dudes in America walking through the Diner. That is, not until a blond head pokes out from the door to the kitchen, a big smile spreading across her lips. I can tell from the way her eyes get wide just for a second that she recognizes him, but she quickly adjusts her face so as not to betray anything.