‘What do we need to cover?’ asks Astrid, pouring hot chocolate from her flask.
‘Voice, plot, character, dialogue and theme,’ I say, jotting these things down in my notebook.
‘That gives us a five-week course.’
‘Right, and I reckon eight spaces in a group, so—’ My phone rings. I’m out of my seat faster than if I’d sat on a scorpion. ‘Withheld number.’
Astrid claps her hands in excitement. ‘Could be Caroline,’ she says.
‘Hello,’ I answer.
‘Mike wants to Skype tomorrow,’ says Caroline, without introduction.
‘Seriously?’ I ask, mouthing OMG at Astrid who indicates for me to put it on speakerphone.
‘He’s read the rewrite. He likes it. He wants to sit down face to face.’
I catch Bat Shit Crazy looking up, seemingly listening.
‘Wow!’ I say, very excited and extremely terrified.
‘Can you? Four o’clock our time.’
‘Caroline, of course I can!’ I look to Astrid for reassurance that she’ll be happy to cover for me. She casts me a look that I interpret as, ‘Of course, you idiot, when has anything been more important in your entire life?’
‘That’s what I thought,’ she says, and hangs up.
‘You’ve done well, girl,’ beams Astrid, giving me a killer hug. I meet Bat Shit Crazy’s eye fleetingly and, for a split second, I swear, her lips form the faintest of smiles.
‘Crikey,’ I whistle, a little dazed, looking out the window to the red buses rolling by. ‘I’ve waited my entire life for this moment.’
‘Right,’ says Astrid. ‘The moment when everything could be about to change for ever!’
14
I’m not going to deny it, I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself as I skip down the steps of the National Theatre auditorium. Astrid suggested I do something to take my mind off my meeting with Mike Steinfeldt tomorrow, and a trip to the theatre seemed like the perfect escape.
When I find my seat, a guy sitting in the row behind catches my eye. He’s wearing Woody Allen style glasses in bright red plastic, which are probably the epitome of cool but to me scream pretentious arsehole! Plus, he’s sporting a hipster beard; I fight the desire to tear at it. Inching past fellow audience members to get to my seat I lose my balance and all but fall into the lap of an elderly woman with bright red lipstick and even brighter yellow teeth.
‘Not easy, huh?’ says the hipster, in an annoying, nasal New York accent. His voice triggers a memory I can’t quite grasp.
‘Right,’ I say, taking off my coat.
‘It’s Sally, no?’
Suddenly the memory jolts back to me. It’s the guy from Ed and Verity’s New Year’s party who told me there were too many hacks in Hollywood writing sequels. Someone I really hoped I’d never have the displeasure of meeting again. I rack my brain for his name, but it doesn’t come to me.
I shake my head and stuff my coat underneath my seat.
‘Well, you must have a lookalike, cos you’re a dead ringer for a girl I met at a party.’ He speaks at a volume that enables most of the theatre to hear our exchange.
‘Wasn’t me.’ I bob my head in that way that indicates, oh well, that’s that, I’ll sit down now, which I do. I jiggle about in my seat, trying to make myself comfy, which, given the guy next to me is huge and spilling over onto my space, is difficult.
‘Are you sure we haven’t met?’ the hipster continues, leaning forward.
‘I really don’t think so,’ I say, wishing he’d drop the matter. I pray the guy next to me isn’t about to offer to swap seats the way the guy on the plane does in When Harry Met Sally. He doesn’t. At least that’s something.
‘I’ll let you know if it comes to me.’
It’s a relief when the lights go down and the play begins. But throughout the first act my thoughts wander away from the action and to Mike Steinfeldt, and Will, and even Hipster behind me. I’m glad when the interval comes and I can get up to move around for a bit, to clear my mind.
‘Bit of a squeeze,’ says the guy next to me, having returned with three tubs of ice cream.
‘Right.’
‘Nobody likes to get stuck next to the fat guy.’
‘Not at all,’ I say, meaning to imply ‘that’s not the case’ but instead sounding as if I agree with him. He doesn’t seem to notice.
‘What do you do?’
‘I work in a little bookshop in Brixton.’ I’m not much in the mood for the I’m A Writer conversation.
He glances into his empty ice-cream pot, more interested in its lack on contents than in me. I may as well have ‘loser’ tattooed on my forehead, a feeling made all the more intolerable by the growing awareness that Hipster is staring at me again.
‘Good to be comfortable,’ says the guy next to me, trying to remove his shoes, toe pressed on heel.
To add to my misery Hipster starts tapping the back of my chair with his foot in time to the music he’s listening to through his ginormous headphones, and the smell of sweaty feet begins to invade my personal space. I pick up my programme, glance at my watch and hope the second half is swifter than the first.
It’s four in the afternoon the next day and I’m sitting at my dining table, having tidied every millimetre of the flat, trying to pass the time, waiting for Mike to call. I drum my fingers, rearrange the flowers, and fiddle with my phone, which has a text from Caroline that says simply:
Good luck, Nina – don’t fuck it up!
I watch the street below, pick at a mini flapjack, wishing I’d bought coconut bites, and drink countless cups of tea.
Then, just as a bit of coconut lodges itself in my teeth, my iPad begins to burr. My heart leaps into my mouth and my hands start shaking. ‘Here goes nothing.’
Mike appears on the screen. He’s a handsome, forty-something man, wearing a crisp striped shirt. I tuck my hair behind my ears, and swallow back the sensation that I might vomit into the pot plant.
‘How are you?’ he asks.
‘Good,’ I say, my mouth suddenly free of any moisture and my right eye beginning to twitch.
I stare at his salt and pepper hair, which is so neat it looks as if it’s trimmed every other day. His tan is flawless, making me think that when he’s not making movies he’s on the beach in California playing volleyball in his shorts, high-fiving all the other movie execs in his well-heeled circle of friends. I bet he drives a Corvette. ‘Your changes are excellent.’ He picks up the script, my script! ‘Harry living downtown, and Sally living uptown as an author feels right.’ He flicks through the script, nodding. My heart pounds. ‘The opening cut-aways of everyone preparing for the wedding are strong – Truman phoning Harry and calling him Dad, Anna zipping up her bridal gown, Sally checking her wedding outfit in front of the mirror, it says a lot while needing very little dialogue.’ He skips over a few pages. ‘The Astoria for the wedding venue is a bit grand, we should change that.’
‘We could use the Puck building?’ I say tentatively, thinking it might be nice to use the location where Harry declared his love to Sally at the end of the movie.
‘Too close to the original. We need somewhere that’s more, you know,’ he motions with his hands, ‘Now.’ He looks to me for suggestions. Not knowing New York that well, I draw a blank. ‘Andrew,’ he calls. Andrew must come into the room because next I know Mike’s asking him, ‘Where are all you kids getting hitched these days?’
‘The Foundry,’ says Andrew, off camera.
‘What is that?’
‘Metalworks in Queens.’
‘Use it,’ says Mike, clicking his fingers at me. I scribble it down, like a fresher in her first lecture, even though the romance in Truman and Anna getting married in a metal factory doesn’t exactly ring true to Ephron.
‘And Sally,’ he continues, his dark eyes squinting as he looks back down at the script. ‘I think she needs to be with someone.’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘I don’t
think she’d feel as strong in herself as she did when she was married.’ I jot down everything he says, word for word.
‘The wedding scene is much better but we have to think about whether it’s going to be a Jewish ceremony and, if not, how Harry feels about that. And these divorced couple interludes are great, a fantastic throwback.’
‘Thank you.’ My shoulders drop marginally in relief.
‘And then there’s the ending,’ He taps a finger against the script and thinks for a while. I hold my breath, terrified that he hates it. ‘Tell me why you chose for Harry and Sally to stay divorced.’
‘Because Nora Ephron never felt they should marry in the first place, and because I’ve always thought Harry and Sally were both too strong-willed and opinionated to make their marriage a success.’
‘Right. Just be aware that sometimes the writer doesn’t wind up with the ending they want. Sometimes it’s a compromise between writer, director and audience. Everyone has to be satisfied. And my feeling is the ending should be more open…’
‘An ambiguous ending?’
‘Right, we leave the audience to make up their own mind whether they get back together or not. Then everyone’s happy, right?’
‘I guess,’ I say, happy to work on the idea.
‘See what you can do but don’t lose sleep over it. Endings always come. We’ll find the right one.’ He takes a swig from his Starbucks cup. ‘Oh, and by the way, Rob likes the script but he wants to ramp up the comedy.’
I’m sorry. Backtrack! Did I hear correctly? Did Mike Steinfeldt just say Rob Reiner likes my script? ROB REINER HAS READ MY SCRIPT?! Mike continues as if nothing untoward has just happened even though I’m having a minor coronary in my kitchen. I’m still totally freaking out when his assistant calls over the intercom, ‘Javier, on line one.’
‘I gotta take this.’ He throws up his hands indicating that our time is up. ‘Work on Sally’s new relationship, the ending and the humour, and we’ll be getting somewhere.’
‘Of course. Thank you.’
‘No problem,’ he says, as his finger comes towards the screen to hit the red button, putting an end to possibly the biggest moment of my life and enabling me to breathe once more.
15
‘You’ve oiled the door,’ I say to Astrid, as I enter the shop on Monday morning having had the weekend off to go to a family Christening out of town and work on the script.
‘Better, right?’
‘Definitely. And the window looks great. It must have taken ages.’
In the window is a giant 3D heart made out of hundreds of red paper hearts on strings and, flying through it, two of Astrid’s homemade love-birds. Under the window, outside, is the barter scheme we’ve been discussing: bring in ten used books and get something new half price.
‘How was the meeting with Mike?’ she asks, rummaging through a big box of Valentine’s themed stuff while trying to keep out of the way of several browsing customers. The phone reception at the Christening was patchy at best; it’s been agony not being able to talk to her until now!
I tell her about how nervous I was, how it went well in the end, and the subsequent changes I made. I decided to create a classic Ephron transition guy – successful but bland – whom I named Philip, which seemed suitably plain. I also added little comic touches and the ambiguous ending, which hardly required any dialogue changes at all, just a bit of suggestive body language from Harry that flipped the entire ending.
‘He told me Rob Reiner has already read my script!’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘Nope.’ I beam uncontrollably.
‘Oh my God, Nina – you’re living your dream!’
‘I am,’ I say, reflecting on the Herculean task required to make it happen. ‘Turns out dreams require a lot of work.’
‘You’ll get there.’
‘I know, I just have to keep my eye on the prize.’ I go to arrange red-spined books in the shape of a giant heart on the shelves behind the counter.
‘All in the name of proving Will wrong. Ooh, check it out,’ she whispers, looking out of the window. I turn to see a busty female in a nurse’s uniform ringing Mr Love’s doorbell. ‘A little Valentine’s Day lovin’?’
‘Yuck, yuck, yuck!’ I say, putting my fingers in my ears and squeezing my eyes tight.
‘Oh, come on,’ she laughs. ‘What’s the poor guy to do if he can’t get a little action on Valentine’s? It’s more than I’m going to get, that’s for sure.’
‘Are you kidding? Aidan always does something romantic for you.’ Last year Aidan surprised Astrid with a long weekend in a gypsy caravan in Somerset.
‘We’ll see; he’s being really weird at the moment. You know at New Year, when he didn’t come home…?’
‘When he took off with the boys?’
‘Except it turns out, he didn’t; he went for a long walk on his own and came home around dawn. He did it again last week.’
‘That is weird. Why d’ya think he’s doing that?’
‘He said that sometimes he needs to clear his head. He used to do it when we were students, when the pressure of exams was getting to him and weed wasn’t enough. Do you remember?’ she asks, but I only have a dim recollection. ‘Anyway, the point is, he’s doing so much overtime trying to pay for the kitchen that I’m not sure he’s realised that it even is Valentines.’
I’m about to sympathise with Astrid when Bat Shit Crazy arrives, carrying a box of books.
‘Are these for the barter system?’ I ask as she places them on the counter.
‘Yes,’ she says, in a whisper, fingering the writing workshop leaflets on the counter.
‘Thank you.’ I browse the hardback spines. When I look up she is already at the door. ‘Wait, you’re entitled to—’ but before I can tell her she can have something half price, or ask if she’d like to sign up for a writing class, she’s gone.
‘Bat shit crazy,’ says Astrid, cutting heart-shaped name-tags out of card.
‘Do you think we should be doing more for our needy customers?’ In the box she’s left I find The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri and some David Mamet plays.
‘We’re helping just by being here.’
‘Maybe,’ I say, putting the books into order of category. ‘You know, there’s some interesting stuff in here.’
‘Bat Shit Crazy definitely has a story.’
‘That ring alone suggests a history.’
As we’re finishing the final touches to the Valentine’s decoration, the postman arrives, with a red envelope addressed to me. I examine its every inch, excited and curious to know who it’s from.
I can’t remember the last time I received a Valentine’s card. Will didn’t believe in Valentine’s Day. He said it was a ‘purely commercial venture with nothing to do with love whatsoever’. My head agreed but my heart longed for some small romantic gesture. ‘I don’t see how you can be disappointed,’ he’d say each year when I’d look dejected after he’d arrive home empty-handed. ‘I told you I wouldn’t be doing anything so you wouldn’t be upset’. Deep down I knew he was right and I’d have respected him sticking to his principles if he’d have thought to do something romantic at some other point in the year, like my birthday. But Will didn’t do romantic.
‘It’s not in my DNA,’ he’d say, and I’d go to the bedroom to watch When Harry Met Sally and kid myself into believing that one day he might have a Harry moment, where he’d see the error of his ways and run through an entire city to tell me exactly how much he loved me and how he wanted the rest of our lives to start as soon as possible. Lord, I was blind.
‘Who’s it for?’ asks Astrid excitedly.
‘Me.’ Astrid looks the tiniest bit crestfallen. ‘Aidan will send something later, or have something for you at home.’ Usually by this point in the day Aidan has sent forget-me-nots, hash-brownies and an envelope concealing a surprise trip.
She takes the envelope from me and inspects it. ‘It must be from Will.’ ‘
Why would Will be sending me a card after what went down between us at New Year’s? He’s with Carmen and besides, that’s not his handwriting.’
‘Someone else could have written it. He did say he wants to be “friends”.’
I screw up my face. ‘Friends don’t send each other Valentine’s cards.’
‘They do when friends isn’t all they really want to be,’ she sings.
‘Astrid,’ I shoot back. ‘Have you been drinking funny tea again?!’
‘Who else could it be from?’ she asks, becoming all matter-of-fact.
‘Mum? You?’
‘It’s got a London postmark.’
‘Well, that narrows it down,’ I say sarcastically, taking it back and giving it a sniff, as if this will shed any light on the matter.
‘Open it,’ she urges.
I carefully unseal the envelope and take out the card. Immediately I know whom it’s from. My heart sinks. Astrid was right. I show her the image of two elephants with their trunks entwined. It’s definitely from Will. He never did miss an opportunity to mock me about my stature.
‘So insulting!’ she says. ‘What’s he written?’
Inside it is empty, bar a small question mark.
‘He hasn’t.’
‘Weirdo.’
‘Indeed,’ I sigh, deflated not to have a real admirer; I’d have rather it be from my mum than from Will.
‘You need to get on with that rewrite and show him exactly what he’s missing, and where he can shove his insults and wandering willy!’
‘Yes,’ I say, taking one last look at the card, wondering what Will is playing at.
16
‘What is that on the driveway?’ I ask Mum, in her kitchen, looking at the black and chrome motorbike with chopper handlebars that’s gleaming in the sun.
‘Your father’s midlife crisis,’ she replies, sticking a skewer into an M&S stuffed joint of lamb in the oven.
‘Mid?’ sniggers Astrid, who’s sitting on the counter.
‘Hello, Astrid,’ smiles Dad, coming in the back door. I’m relieved to see he isn’t wearing leather or sporting a ludicrous moustache. He looks brighter than usual. Astrid jumps down to give him a hug.
If Harry Met Sally Again Page 9