Pretty as a Picture

by Elizabeth Little

  I figure I’d feel pretty sheepish down the line if it turned out the internet had the answer all along, so I go to Google and type in, Who killed Caitlyn Kelly?

  The first thing I learn is that Caitlyn was twice unlucky: Not only was she murdered, but she was murdered in 1994, just two weeks after Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, and back then we weren’t as practiced at holding multiple media-worthy murders in our collective consciousness at one time. Even the Philadelphia Inquirer could only find enough space for a near skeletal write-up:

  CAITLYN KELLY, 19, DAUGHTER OF PHILADELPHIA BUSINESSMAN MICHAEL KELLY, WAS FOUND DEAD LAST FRIDAY ON THE GROUNDS OF A LUXURY HOTEL ON KICKOUT ISLAND, A POPULAR SUMMER DESTINATION FIVE MILES EAST OF LEWES, DELAWARE.

  I guess you would have had to do something really special to break into the news that summer. But—I click on a few more links—all the details of Caitlyn’s case are unremarkable. She was college-aged, which wasn’t young enough to be truly shocking; she was majoring in drama, so the what-could-have-beens weren’t particularly impressive; and she died from regular old everyday blunt force trauma.

  She must have been beautiful—we are making a movie about her, after all. But maybe that didn’t matter as much before social media.

  Still, I can’t quite believe there isn’t more information online. Has the true crime crowd really not heard of this one? Maybe that’s the reason for all the NDAs. This is probably the only murder that doesn’t already have a podcast.

  The cat jumps up on the bed and drags the corner of her mouth against the edge of my laptop.

  I wonder—

  I return to the search bar and type in two new words:

  Anton Rees.

  Generally, I try not to google people I work with. I prefer to pretend I’m not personally complicit in propping up the celebrity-industrial complex. But this is an unusual situation, and Tony has many fans of the Extremely Online persuasion. If his cult of followers is substantial enough to keep two competing subreddits going, I figure there should be some information about the film online.

  I hit enter.

  I regret the decision as soon as the results come in.

  It’s not just the fanboys who are talking about Tony—it’s everybody. His very famous wife has just very publicly left him.

  I scroll quickly through the first few stories that pop up. It’s mostly the usual stuff: breathless, secondhand, hyperbolically punctuated. “Annie’s heartbroken!” friends say. “Tony’s devastated!” sources report. According to one outlet, they’ve already reconciled and are trying for a biologically improbable baby. According to another, Annemieke’s hiding out at their summer home outside Amsterdam. Several gossip blogs claim that just yesterday, Tony was spotted French kissing a twenty-year-old plantfluencer in the parking lot outside Bristol Farms.

  The least believable detail: Representatives for both parties are officially asking for “privacy during this challenging time.”

  I keep scrolling, skimming more or less the same story over and over again. At the bottom of the first page of search results is a provocatively titled link to a British paper I’m usually too embarrassed to read, but since I’ve already abandoned all my scruples, I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t click on it, too.

  I’m lucky I do—it’s the only article to mention the movie:

  “Tony’s basically broke,” an extended family member reveals. “He’s always put money into his own films, and sure, that’s fine when you’re making cozy indies, but he’s putting millions into this new project, and eventually Annemieke got fed up. She gave him an ultimatum: ‘The movie or me.’ He picked the movie.”

  I set my laptop to the side and reach for the cat. I settle her on my chest, right under my chin, so I can pretend it’s just her weight I’m feeling pressing down on me.

  It’s one thing to work for a famously demanding director. It’s very much another to work on his passion project. If he’s willing to leave his wife for this movie, what else might he be willing to do?

  FIFTEEN

  When Isaiah knocks on my door, it feels like I’ve only just nodded off. I squint up at him through lashes still sticky with sleep.

  “Not a morning person?” he guesses.

  I glare at the windows, scowling at the light squeezing in between the louvers. “It doesn’t feel like morning,” I grumble.

  “In LA it isn’t. Anjali wants you downstairs to meet with someone she calls Scripty?”

  I rub my eyes. “Yeah, that’s the script supervisor.”

  “Can you be ready in a half hour?”

  “I can be ready in half that.”

  He nods. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”

  I pad into the bathroom. One of the many things I enjoy about being an editor is that no one expects me to come to work in full makeup, so my morning routine is basically my evening routine.

  Shower, floss, brush my teeth, floss again, wash my face, comb my hair, check under my nails to make sure I didn’t miss anything, scrub them with a nail brush anyway, put on clothes.

  Today I finish by applying two coats of mascara because I read that’s the easiest way to look “put together” (whatever that means) and swiping on the thirty-dollar organic lip balm Amy introduced me to. Apparently ChapStick dries out your lips? I don’t know. I can’t really tell the difference, but Amy always seems happy when she sees me using this stuff.

  Fifteen minutes later, I step out into the hallway. Isaiah makes a grand show of checking his watch. “I thought you’d never be done.”

  I shrug, self-conscious. “All my work clothes match so I don’t have to waste time worrying about what to wear.”

  His mouth moves like he wants to say something to that, but he changes his mind.

  He takes me down to the lobby and deposits me in the hotel’s business center, which Anjali appears to have appropriated as her command center. It’s a substantial room, large enough for a warren of computer carrels, a twelve-foot conference table, a wet bar and kitchen area, and at least two dozen fake plants—not to mention the ten or so PAs milling about. It smells of carpet cleaner and hot ink.

  Anjali catches my eye and waves me over. Next to her is a young black woman practically groaning under the weight of an armful of binders and folders and papers. As soon as she sees me, the woman staggers forward and dumps the materials on the conference table. A binder tumbles open, papers spilling out in a rainbow of colors.

  She mutters something under her breath but makes no move to tidy them.

  I twist my hand in the hem of my shirt.

  Anjali points at each of us in turn. “Marissa, Scripty. Scripty, Marissa.”

  The woman—the script supervisor—gives me a tired smile.

  “Scripty’ll take you through what we’ve shot,” Anjali says. “Tony wants you up to speed ASAP.”

  Scripty sighs. “Of course he does.”

  Anjali thrusts a hand behind her. A PA places a sheet of paper into it, which she passes on to me. It’s a call sheet.

  “He wants you both on set—”

  I start. “What?”

  “—call’s at four.”

  I glance down. “Wouldn’t my time be better spent looking at footage?”

  “They’re still repairing the projector,” Anjali says. “You’d be in the way.”

  “I do have a laptop, you know. It has three whole USB ports.”

  She dimples. “You’re funny.” She presses something into my hand and spins me by the shoulders until I’m facing the conference table. I look down. She gave me a can of soda.

  How did she know I drink regular Coke?

  Scripty’s waiting with her hands on her hips, gazing mournfully at the materials strewn across the tabletop. She’s pretty—really pretty—built like a ballerina, long and lean and muscled and conspicuously graceful: All her body’s bounda
ries seem to taper to a delicate point. Her eyelashes are so thick, I bet she could donate half their bulk to kids with cancer and still star in a Maybelline ad. I glance across the room, then realize with a rotten, sinking feeling I recognize from middle school that, like Scripty—and Liza and Anjali and Carmen and Valentina—the PAs could have stepped straight out of an aspirational Instagram feed.

  Everyone on this crew is otherworldly beautiful.

  I should’ve known it was a three-coats-of-mascara kind of morning.

  But I should be proud to work on a production with so many female crew members. Unless maybe I should be concerned that they’ve only been hired to meet certain aesthetic standards? No, it’s unfair to assume beautiful people are lacking in substance. Models are people, too. I read that somewhere.

  This would be so much easier if Amy were here to tell me what I’m supposed to feel.

  I slump into a seat and angle my body in Scripty’s direction. I lift my chin and try not to be jealous of her cheekbones.

  “My real name’s Kim,” she says after a moment.

  “My real name’s Marissa.”

  We both fall silent. I look off to the side and think, very hard.

  “So have you worked with Tony before?”

  She lets out a strange laugh that prickles the back of my neck. “No, this is my first time—and my last.”

  I sit up a little. “It’s that bad?”

  Her lips give the barest impression of a smile. “Tony never hires the same script supervisor twice. It’s one of his ‘things.’”

  “Do all positions have the same level of turnover?”

  Kim tilts her head, thinking. “No, not everyone’s miserable. There’s an inner circle. Like Daisuke and his guys—”

  “That’s the DP?”

  “Yeah, they’ve been together forever. Same goes for Anjali.”

  “Wait—really?”

  She nods. “She’s produced his last five films, I think.”

  “But I’ve never heard of her before—and I spend half my life on IMDb.”

  “That’s because she’s only ever credited as his assistant.”

  “Oh.”

  We both look down at the table. After a moment, I reach for my soda.

  Kim clears her throat. “Anyway, he and Paul had only done—what—three movies together, I think? So you may have big shoes to fill, but they’re not, like, impossibly large.”

  I take a sip of soda to give myself time to formulate my next question. Normally, I work too closely with the director for the crew to risk taking me into their confidence. But since I’m new, maybe Kim would be willing to open up to me—

  “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” I say, “but do you know what happened there? No one told me why Paul was fired.”

  Kim picks up a pen and twirls it in her fingers. “I’m not exactly sure. Paul’s a bit of a character. Sleeps during the day, works all night, communicates mostly by Post-it.” She points the pen at one of the items she dumped on the table, a bulging plastic pouch filled with fluorescent yellow squares. “But he was good at his job. I never heard Tony say anything bad about him.”

  She starts twirling the pen again, this time in the opposite direction.

  “But I never heard him say anything good, either.” She shrugs. “I don’t think he was fired because of his job performance. Even for Tony, it’s a little early in the process for a director and editor to disagree.”

  I drag my eyes up from the pen. “So you don’t actually know what happened?”

  “Well, Paul can’t exactly tell me his side of the story—unless he wants to mail me a Post-it.” She squares off her script and sets her hands on the table. “Now, the first thing we should—”

  “But if you had to guess.”

  Kim relents. “There was one scene.”

  I let my heels bounce beneath the table while I wait for her to go on.

  She tucks a curl behind her ear, two lines forming between her eyebrows. “So, at a certain point, I started ranking the scenes by how many Post-its Paul gave me. One to five Post-its, the footage was probably in good shape. Five to ten, I was going to have to go back to my notes. Any more than that, I’d just send Tony in to talk him through it—not that it ever helped.”

  When she doesn’t continue, I glance up at her. “Are you waiting for me to ask how many Post-its he gave you for this one scene or are you just prolonging the suspense?”

  The corners of her mouth drop. “Forty-seven,” she says. “He gave me forty-seven Post-its.”

  She fishes a shooting script out of the pile and slides it over to me. I run my thumb across its edge, counting six different colors of paper, which means we’re on our fifth revision. A familiar sight: Amy likes to run her writers ragged, too.

  “Turn to page sixty,” Kim says.

  EXT. ENCHANTED WONDERS AMUSEMENT PARK — DAY

  The sort of summer day that, years later, will make you question your own memory, because surely nothing real could ever feel so perfect, so vital, so rich with sensual promise, when the sea breeze is a hand running restlessly through your hair and all around you are sounds of pleasure and revelation, and the afternoon light limns the curve of a beautiful girl’s neck and you can’t help but wonder what it would feel like to put your mouth there, if her skin would taste like sunshine, if the world would taste like sunshine.

  I look up at Kim.

  She heaves a sigh. “I know.”

  “Who wrote this?”

  “I’ve never heard of him. Unpublished novelist, probably.”

  I flip forward, scanning ahead, finding walls upon walls of text. Each scene is described in stultifying detail. The weather. The light. The blocking. The cut of Caitlyn’s clothes. The tenor of Caitlyn’s voice. The shape of Caitlyn’s lips.

  Description, description, description.

  Caitlyn, Caitlyn, Caitlyn.

  “Is it just me, or does this guy—”

  “Have a fixation? Not just you.”

  “Did he know her or something?”

  She shakes her head. “Men don’t talk that way about women they actually know.”

  I turn back to the script, skimming, searching for the action.

  CAITLYN

  [wicked and shy and sweet all at once]

  Took you long enough.

  Behind them, in the distance, the roller coaster begins its run, clambering to the top of the initial rise.

  TOM

  Well, that sort of thing takes planning. It takes time. You can’t just ask a girl out like it’s nothing.

  The roller coaster is close to the top now . . . The first car is just beginning to round the peak . . .

  CAITLYN

  Are you trying to tell me I’m something?

  TOM

  Something else, maybe.

  The roller coaster SCREAMS down the track, tearing through a 360-DEGREE VERTICAL LOOP, careening into a DEAD MAN’S CURVE. It rockets into frame behind Caitlyn and Tom——and it is here the eagle-eyed viewer sees him, staring at the glowing, happy couple:

  BILLY LYLE.

  “—a bitch of a scene,” Kim’s saying. “I guess Liza hasn’t eaten sugar since like 2013. We had a spittoon under the table, but she could never find the right moment to duck down and hock out the cotton candy, so it was impossible to sync the coaster from take to take. Plus, they fired the 2nd AD halfway through the day, which means we didn’t have anyone to direct the extras, and Anjali couldn’t keep Tony from taking over and talking to them—so now half the island’s SAG eligible.”

  She takes a breath.

  “And I haven’t even mentioned the derailment.”

  I look up. “The what?”

  “Right? The roller coaster jumped the track. It wasn’t really that big of a deal—no one was hurt—but still. The guy we
brought in to get it back up and running told us the coaster had actually been closed in ’94, and Tony flipped his shit because that sort of mistake does not fly with him, you know? Anyway, that night, after he watched the dailies, he fired Paul and half the art department.”

  I let the script fall to the table. “I’m amazed there’s any crew left. Who else is gone?”

  Kim digs a legal pad out of her bag, flips to the third or fourth page, and runs her finger down the margin. “An assistant props mistress, a wardrobe assistant, three sound guys.”

  “Don’t forget makeup,” a PA whispers as she breezes past.

  “Right,” Kim says, grimacing. “Penelope. That one hurt.”

  I wince. Sorry, Freckles.

  Kim reaches for a pencil and scratches something out.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  “We’re running a pool. Who’s next to get the boot.”

  “Who’s the odds-on favorite?”

  She hesitates, then flips it around to face me. I lean forward to read the first name on the list.

  The Unlucky Bastard Who Has to Cut This Fucker

  I open my mouth. “That’s—”

  “Yeah, we kind of assumed it would be a dude. Our bad.”

  “Is that what you think? That I’m the next to go?”

  Kim studies the list with a glum expression. “No, my money’s on Gavin.”

  “You don’t sound too happy about that.”

  She sighs and puts the pad back in her bag. “Anjali likes to make it seem like she has eight million other actors raring to go, but between you and me? Gavin’s the only one the studio would get behind. If he goes—poof! So goes our greenlight.”

  “You’re telling me Liza May can’t get this movie made on her own?”

  Kim shrugs. “It has something to do with China, I don’t know.”

  “But she won an Oscar.”

  “And he played a hot wizard one time.” She gives me an impatient look. “You work in Hollywood. I shouldn’t have to explain this.”