by Julie Wright
I sat on the arm of the red chair opposite the couch and waited to see what his response would be. I was no longer worried about the quality of my work. Ben had declared it my best and then improved on that best. The cut was clean and as close to final as humanly possible.
What interested me now was Dean’s reaction to a now-impossible-to-ignore deadline.
He remained lying on his back with his eyes closed for the several moments it took his cloudy, muddled head to translate my words into something that made sense to him. Then his eyes snapped open.
There you are, Mr. Thomas, I thought.
He squinted against the light, his hangover evident. “That’s today?” His hoarse voice reflected the horror that I felt was appropriate, considering the circumstances.
“Yes, Dean. That’s today.” It was the first time I’d taken the liberty of using his first name. His old-school Hollywood attitude never left room for me to speak informally to him, at least not while he was sober and quasi-lucid.
The old-school Hollywood attitude no longer mattered to me. I had created the product without his help or input. That put me on equal enough terms to be on a first-name basis.
He sat up slowly, holding his head while trying to shake it at the same time. “No. It can’t be today. It’s next week.”
Adam returned with a coffee in one hand and the water mixture in the other. Dean reached for the coffee first, but I got to it before he did. I swiped the coffee and handed Dean the water mixture. “Here. I had Adam make you a hangover helper. Drink this. Then you can move on to your coffee.”
He squinted at me. I couldn’t tell if it was because of the light or if he was trying to glare at me. Either way, he took the water concoction from my hand and drank.
“That tastes terrible.”
“Probably,” I agreed. “And yes, the meeting is today.”
He put the water cup on the table and reached for the coffee, which I relinquished. “But we haven’t really worked on it, yet.” He looked like he might throw up. I motioned to Adam to get him a garbage can, just in case.
“No. We haven’t. But I have. It’s done. I just need you to watch it and sign off on it and present it to Christopher and Danny.”
He narrowed his eyes even more as he looked me over, apparently unconvinced by what he saw. When he opened his mouth to speak, I decided if he called me Sara one more time I was going to take Ben’s advice and slap him again.
Instead of saying anything, he checked his phone, likely to get a concept of time, put his coffee cup to his lips, drank it dry, handed the cup back to Adam, and said, “I’ll need another of those. And another of that nasty drink, too.”
Adam peeked at me as though ownership of his services had transferred to me. I nodded my approval, and he scurried off to do as told.
Dean noticed the exchange and grunted. “Looks like I’m going to have to retrain my assistant. So, Silvia Bradshaw, let’s go watch our movie.” He lumbered to his feet, cringing with each movement, and then added, “Let’s keep the volume on low, though, okay?”
I didn’t respond but followed him to the editing studio, where I occupied the same seat I’d had the entire night. Dean may have gotten my name right, but his calling the creative effort I’d spent over three months working on “our movie” grated on me.
I brought the studio back to life, adjusted the panel sliders, and hit play.
Unlike Ben, who was entirely passive when viewing a film, Dean grunted a lot. The grunts might have been good noises. They might have been bad noises. They might have been the grunts of a man who only knew how to make caveman sounds. There was no way to tell for certain. But I’d spent four months being called the wrong name, ignored, and left to my own devices. If his grunts became anything more negative, I would punch him in the trachea. I wasn’t dirt under Dean Thomas’s feet. This job was supposed to be a “wish on a star, dream come true” for me. There was supposed to be pixie dust and blue fairies and maybe even a godmother or two because why not?
Instead the job was a lot of lonely.
There was no collaboration like I’d expected to find in a larger studio. The studio was too divided into various projects. There wasn’t any feeling of apprenticeship or mentoring between Dean and me.
Quitting wasn’t an option. Where would I go? My career meant too much to me to just walk away. Sure, Mid-Scene Films would probably hire me back, which, given everything, sounded pretty good.
But it was ridiculous. Why would I ever want to go backwards in my career? I wanted to move up, not back down.
I thought about it as I watched the fruit of my labors play out on screen.
Who would ever go back to subpar equipment and outdated software? Or return to an office that was done in a brown decor that dated back to the seventies?
The answer was easy. Anyone who knew Ben would want to go back.
Benjamin Armstrong. Seeing him again, spending a night with him in intense collaboration and creativity, reminded me of all that was awesome about Ben.
Ben and his serious eyes that looked like ice in the shade and his dark hair that always had the look of being finger-combed because he ran his hands through it when he was thinking. And Ben was always thinking. I’d missed his habit of calling things “proper” when they were the way he felt they should be, the way he knew bizarre trivia, and the way he stayed calm even when everything else in the world felt like it was beyond repair. He’d shown up at the club and immediately turned the crazy into something rational. He’d stayed with me rather than leaving me to fend for myself. He’d worked with me.
I wondered why we hadn’t hung out more since I’d left Mid-Scene. Except Ben had acted strangely toward me at the last, which made being around him hard. He’d been the one who pushed for me to get the job with Portal Pictures. And when I got the job, he’d acted unhappy. It insulted me that he couldn’t be happy for me and the new opportunity presented in my life.
Who wanted to be around people who couldn’t be happy for their friends’ successes?
The whole situation, now that I thought about it, was proof that stupidity didn’t end with adolescence. Grown-ups got to be stupid, too. Considering the circumstances in hindsight made me wonder . . . who was the stupid grown-up in our scenario? Me? Him?
“This will work.” Dean’s voice cut into my thoughts.
“What?” Had he been talking long to me? I had no idea since I’d zoned out, thinking about jobs and Ben and possibilities.
“This version of Sliver of Midnight will work just fine. There are some changes I would make, obviously, if we had time, but . . .” He checked his phone. “We really don’t have time, do we?” He slapped the counter and pushed up out of his chair. “This will work.” He looked a lot better than he had when he’d first entered the studio. What kind of mess had he expected to walk into?
“Will you put your digital approval on it then?” I asked.
“Oh. Right.” He sat again and moved his chair to the main computer where he entered his password to verify his digital stamp of approval.
While he finalized his signature, I asked, “What changes?”
“Hmm?”
“You said there were obvious changes you’d make if we had time. I’d like to know what those changes are.”
He flustered and floundered before cutting off the conversation with an abrupt, “It hardly matters. There isn’t time.” He loaded the first cut onto the company server so we could access it from the theater and stood. “We need to get going if we’re going to be on time.”
I agreed, but after looking at him standing, there was no denying the man looked rumpled and a little on the homeless side.
“Dean?” I said as he moved toward the door.
He turned to me. “What?”
“Do you keep a change of clothes in your office?”
He lifted his
eyebrows as if to send a warning that I had better tread carefully, but as I pointedly looked at his clothing, his gaze followed mine and his brows knotted above his nose. He grumbled something that might have been agreement and bustled out of the room as if I’d caused him a terrible inconvenience.
I made a mad dash to my own office and pulled a long sweater off the back of my chair. It was a nice sweater and would cover up a lot of the grunge of my own outfit. I grabbed my notebooks and phone in case I needed to do any scheduling or messaging. Adam, as Dean’s personal assistant, should have been coming with us, but when I’d exited my office and went to wait by Dean’s office, I noticed Adam’s desk remained conspicuously empty.
Knowing Dean would be another few minutes, I checked the kitchen, which was a graveyard of abandoned cups. Adam, the little miscreant, had ditched his post and his duties and left the work for me.
Shrugging, and forcing myself to accept that Adam was not my personal responsibility—and neither was the kitchen—
I returned to Dean’s office to wait.
Dean tossed open his door, nearly throwing me into cardiac arrest, and nodded at me as if to say, “Well, let’s get on with it.”
I pushed off the wall that had been holding me upright and led the way to the studio golf cart that would take us to the theater.
Christopher and Danny were already there. A small entourage of assistant directors and other people who were pivotal to the future of the film hovered near them.
Dean greeted them with firm handshakes and big smiles. It was only because I was watching closely that I noticed the tightening around Dean’s eyes when Christopher boomed out a hello that must have hit all the pains of a hangover. Good for Christopher.
When Dean failed to bring me to the attention of the directors and assistants, I put out my hand to Danny. “It’s so nice to see you again!” I said warmly.
Danny was my favorite of all the people present—at least of the ones I knew. His light-brown hair looked like he’d toweled it off after stepping out of the shower and it just stayed that way, sticking out in every direction but managing to not look absurd. No one pulled off that hairstyle the way Danny did.
He gave me a one-armed hug. “Good to see you, too, Silvia!” he said in a way that made me feel legitimately welcomed. He gave an extra squeeze before letting me go. “I look forward to see what you’ve done with our baby.”
I smiled. “You have a lot to be excited about it. I think you’ll be glad you sent her to finishing school, Danny.”
“Finishing school.” He clapped my shoulder, nearly knocking me off my toes. “I like that.”
Christopher wasn’t a hugging kind of guy, but he energetically shook my hand and expressed his excitement over the film as well.
Danny interrupted my moment with Christopher by saying, “Did she tell you she’s calling editing cuts finishing school? That’s funny, isn’t it?” He laughed; Christopher smiled. I laughed, though it was more from sleep-deprivation than because I felt genuinely funny.
“Well, we’re looking forward to seeing your work.” Christopher echoed Danny’s earlier sentiment.
Dean heard the comment and hurried to interject. “I think you’ll like what you see, gentlemen. I’ve worked tirelessly on this project. Sliver of Midnight has been my top priority for months.” He smiled big for the director and producer. “But let’s stop talking about it. Let’s prove it to you.” He swept his arm toward the theater entrance.
I blinked and shook my head. Had he really just done that? Had he really just cut me out of the film I had worked tirelessly on for months and that had been my top priority? Had he really taken full and complete credit for something he’d had nothing to do with?
Yes. Yes, he had.
But he wasn’t going to get away with it. People always said that my ability to call people on their crap was my superpower.
It was time to get super.
“This is my second and last encounter with you lunatics.”
—Jo Stockton, played by Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face
Everyone else filed in, but I held back, crossed my arms over my chest, and stared at the man who’d spent the night passed out on the ugliest couch on the planet while someone else did his job.
He noted my stance and lifted his eyebrows. “You have something to say, Bradshaw?”
“You’ve worked tirelessly? You? And to call it your ‘top priority’ is a bit of a stretch, since the most work you’ve done on it is watch the end result of what others have done.”
I almost said the end result of what I had done, but I wasn’t going to be like Dean Thomas. I was not going to take all the glory when it didn’t all belong to me. And I didn’t care that his jaw worked or his bottom lip jutted out at me like a petulant toddler. I was mad, and the fact that I was tired meant that all filters were down.
My eye socket burned behind the glass eye. I hoped it wasn’t going to start leaking blood like something out of a Stephen King story.
Dean’s jaw continued to work as he stared at me. He moved his head slightly from side to side as if testing the different angles under which I could be viewed. He finally sucked in a deep breath through his nose and said, “I understand your irritation. But the fact remains that I am the editor. You are the assistant editor. My name will come before yours in the credits every single time until I die and you get promoted. And until that happens, the words will always be either me or we when we’re discussing the work done on any project. I get credit because I’ve been here longest. I’ve helped build this studio into what it is today. It’s my tenure and my right. Get used to it, or get a different job editing video production for some mom-and-pop marketing firm somewhere. Do we understand each other?”
“I understand you, but I don’t think we understand each other just yet. I understand your irritation,” I said, throwing his words back at him, “and I understand how this industry works. But I need you to understand how I work. I worked. I get that you will be receiving unearned credit on this film. But I had better get credit as well. I refuse to be left off. Especially when you couldn’t think of one change you would have made in the film. If you can’t even offer a single thoughtful critique, then you do not have the right to remove me from my intellectual property.”
I had moved close enough to smell the stink of his night and morning on him, but backing down at this point would have defeated the purpose, even if the reek of him made me want to gag. I thought about my grandma, of having to face her and tell her I hadn’t stood up for myself. I thought about Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady finally getting a backbone by the end. Playing nice had landed me in this position. It was time to find out what playing tough got me.
“Hey! You guys coming?” One of Danny’s assistants came out to check on us.
Dean started to respond, but I spoke over him. “We’ll be right there. We’re just working on a little collaboration.”
The assistant nodded and disappeared behind the double doors.
Just in case anyone was still in earshot, I leaned in and whispered, “I am never to be left off, or next time, I won’t bother pulling you out of a bar at midnight and making sure you wake up on time for a review. And don’t think that leaving Portal Pictures would mean I’d have to go work for some obscure marketing firm. I’m good at what I do, and I will not be undervalued.”
I stepped back and took a cleansing breath that my yoga-going best friend would have praised me for. “Now that we truly understand each other, I think we’ll be good friends, don’t you? At the very least, we can respect each other.”
I walked away from my boss, certain he’d never been put in his place by any woman in his life.
If I was being honest with myself, the conversation would never have happened except that lack of sleep had turned me into a wild thing.
Maybe being tired was the best thing to ever ha
ppen to me. I’d never been such a doormat in my entire life until I started working with Dean Thomas. No job was worth the loss of self I’d felt every day. I took a shaky breath of relief, deciding I’d never again cower because of that man. I would be standing up for myself from now on.
I entered the theater and sat behind and to the side of Christopher and Danny. I sat behind them so I could observe them during the film. And I sat to the right side so nothing was outside of my periphery. Sitting in the middle of a room meant half of it disappeared from my view. Sitting to the left meant the entire room disappeared. People from the unobserved side of the room might speak up and startle me because I’d forgotten they were there. Sitting where everyone and everything remained in my visual field made my life vastly easier.
Dean seated himself next to Danny, and when Danny joked that he’d been hoping for me to sit by him, Dean offered a tight smile and a casual glance at me from over his shoulder. He might have been prepared to make some snarky remark about my prickly and antisocial behavior, but the lights dimmed.
Sliver of Midnight filled the screen.
I think I stopped breathing.
Everything changed when a film went from the computer screen to the big screen. All the details that felt insignificant and ignorable, but that had taken me painful hours to fine-tune, made all the difference on the big screen.
What I’d done with Danny’s movie made him forget to breathe, too. I could tell by the way his shoulders stopped moving and by the small smile of wonder and awe that stayed unchanging on his face. Christopher’s reaction wasn’t too far different.
They were captured from the first moment.
The film played out on-screen. The small audience reacted with the ebb and flow of timing. They laughed when the wave peaked. They breathed in relief when the wave pulled away. Ben’s voice whispered in my mind. “A film that lives on in the memory of the audience is the one that breathes like a person. You take picture and sound like a human takes lungs and air, and you make them work together until they breathe.”