The Siren

by Katherine St. John

  I didn’t want to let the bumpy start ruin my day, but it pissed me off. We’d rescued the bitch from obscurity with a job I knew she needed, and one day in she was already acting like a diva, like she deserved to traipse in whenever she wanted while the entire production waited around for her. Though in the back of my mind I did wonder if Felicity was really the one to blame for their tardiness. In the brief interaction I’d had with the two of them together thus far, it struck me that Stella relied mighty heavily on this pretty young assistant she’d snuck onto the film budget last-minute. According to what Cole pulled out of them on the beach yesterday, they’d known each other only two months. How much could you really know about someone after two months?

  I took a deep breath in through my nose and let it out through my mouth like my therapist taught me. Everything was fine. This was all part of production: anything that could go wrong would. Stella was in the makeup chair now, and the sun wouldn’t set until six thirty, so we’d have enough daylight left to wrap the outdoor scene we had to shoot in the afternoon. We were so close to the equator that even in summer the days and nights were nearly even, which meant if we had anything to shoot outside, we had to run on time and pray the weather behaved. So far at least, the weather was behaving as predicted today.

  “Nice cargo pants, half-pint.”

  I spun to see Cole, smirking as he eyed my camouflage cargo pants. “They’re useful,” I returned, patting the pockets. “Lots of places to put stuff.”

  “You should pick up a few things in the gift store.” He gave me a friendly pat on the back. “Take whatever you want. Just tell them it’s on me.”

  What the hell? Before I could think of a response, he was gone. I was insulted, but also begrudgingly grateful for the opportunity to buy a few things more suitable for the tropics without spending an arm and a leg. Though damned if I’d replace my beloved cargo pants.

  I patted the sweat trickling down my brow with a napkin and smeared another bagel with cream cheese, not bothering to toast it first. I’d been up since 4:30 a.m., and I was starving. I knew that I was stress eating and I really should step away from the craft service table before my ass no longer fit in these cargo pants, but I gave myself a break. First day of shooting always tied my stomach in knots.

  Normally the scenes in a film would be shot completely out of order, dependent on the availability of locations and actors, but the very few locations and actors we had on The Siren allowed us to shoot largely in chronological order, a gift for which all of us were grateful. So we were starting today with the scene in which Stella’s character Marguerite and Cole’s character Peyton first meet, on a photo shoot where he’s the photographer and she’s the model.

  It was a set within a set, so the lighting was complicated and already taking more time than we’d allotted, which only added to my anxiety. Six weeks was such a short amount of time to shoot ninety pages; we’d need to shoot fifteen pages a week, or three pages a day. It might not sound like much, but when you added up the lighting setup for every camera angle of every scene—and judging by his storyboards, Jackson wasn’t a director that skimped on angles—every minute was precious.

  “There you are.” Francisco appeared on the opposite side of the table in a pressed button-down, his swoop of black hair pomaded into 1950s Elvis perfection, an open MacBook Air perched on his forearm.

  “Where’s your walkie?” I asked.

  “Oh, there aren’t enough for me to have one. Bottom of the totem pole over here, you know.”

  “I’ll fix that. What’s up?”

  “I just spoke to Tawny Crawford’s people and she’s confirmed for the role of Cherry. I’m booking her flights now. She’s working in LA through Saturday, so I have her on the red-eye Sunday night to Miami, then the first flight out Monday to get here in time to shoot.”

  “Why the red-eye?” I asked. “That’s gonna suck and could put us in a tight spot if her flight is delayed.”

  He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. Money. Of course. “Okay.” I sighed, frustrated. I liked treating my people well, and this budget austerity program brought on by Steve’s mistakes was death by a thousand cuts. Of course, if Cole hadn’t spent five grand at the bar on Saturday night, we could have afforded to ensure our actress arrived well-rested and in time to shoot her scenes. “Oh, I meant to ask you.” I came around to his side of the table and lowered my voice. “You did the paperwork for Felicity Fox?”

  He nodded, inclining his head toward mine. The great thing about us both being short was that we could easily whisper out of earshot of the taller people.

  “That’s her legal name, right? I mean, she’s not using a stage name or anything?”

  He shook his head. “No. I’d remember that. Why?”

  “Nothing.” I waved it off, not wanting to set off any alarm bells if she was in fact who she said she was. “She just looks like someone else. Can you forward me her paperwork?”

  “Sure.”

  I noticed the sweat rings beginning beneath his arms. “Why don’t you work out of the office in the hotel lobby today? Or wherever you want.”

  “Oh my God, that would be amazing. You sure you don’t mind?”

  “Not at all.” I smiled. “It would be a travesty to ruin that shirt, and the Wi-Fi over here is spotty at best.”

  “Thank you, thank you! I’ll keep you posted.” He snapped his laptop shut and scurried away before I could change my mind.

  My walkie crackled to life with the Irish brogue of our assistant director. “Two minutes for camera.”

  Price was a scrawny, ginger-haired Dubliner who was only in his late twenties but was probably the most mature person on the set. He had a wife and three kids back in Ireland and a head that remained cool as ice while the flames of hell raged all around him. I’d worked with him on a music video in the UK a few years ago and hired him every chance I got since. He made me feel calm. Calmer. No matter how I fronted, no part of me was actually calm.

  Balancing my plate in one hand, I unhooked the walkie from my buckle. “How many minutes on Cole?”

  “Five. Stella’s double flying in.”

  We didn’t have the budget for actual stand-ins, opting instead to use production assistants with vaguely similar build and coloring to the actors for lighting purposes, but after the snafu this morning, I graciously accepted Stella’s offer of Felicity as her proxy while she was in makeup. Stella did not do her own stand-in work, she’d informed me in no uncertain terms. Irksome, but Felicity was game. I still wasn’t exactly thrilled by her presence, but she was here now, and I could use all the help I could get. Also, I knew makeup would probably take a while, as Stella and Cole both needed to look fifteen years younger in the scene, so I welcomed the unpaid labor.

  I stuffed a last bite of bagel in my mouth and dumped my plate in the trash, sneezing. The empty shipping warehouse we were filming in had briefly been used as a makeshift soundstage for the fourth Gentleman Gangster movie, and Cole had bought it when he purchased the Genesius Resort. But the stage was dustier than advertised, and the air-conditioning we’d paid premium for the benefit of using was so loud that we couldn’t turn it on when we were rolling sound; nor could we run it at the same time as the lights because of the power pull, so we had to take AC breaks to cool the space down. At least the building was big enough to double as our de facto home base and storage for equipment, props, and wardrobe. Anyway, we’d be shooting out of here and on location most of the time, in the beach house meant to belong to Stella’s and Cole’s characters, Marguerite and Peyton.

  I skated around a grip taping down electrical wires and threaded my way through a forest of light stands to join Jackson and Price at video village. Jackson sat in a director’s chair staring at the set while Brian worked with the gaffers to light what was supposed to be a photo studio in New York for the flashback sequence. None of the three monitors were live.

  “Where’s the feed?” I asked.

  “Communication prob
lem,” Jackson answered, tucking a wisp of dark hair behind his ear. His hair had grown out while he’d been down here the past month and was now nearly chin-length. “They’re working on it.”

  A voice erupted from the walkie in Price’s hand. “Makeup for Price.”

  “Go for Price.” Price headed off in the direction of the makeup room.

  I pulled up a director’s chair next to Jackson. “How ya feeling?”

  He’d become almost skeletal during the stress of preproduction. But now he looked healthier after a month on the island away from his father, who, I couldn’t help but notice, treated him more like an employee he didn’t particularly trust than his only son. One evening a few weeks ago, after they’d nearly come to blows over Cole’s insistence on rushing to production despite it being hurricane season, I’d suggested to Cole that perhaps it would be better if he cut his losses and let the film go. Or at least delayed until the winter. He about ripped my head off, shouting at me that I had no idea what it meant to be a father.

  He was right. Mine was hardly an example.

  I’d made the same suggestion to Jackson the following day, even going so far as to volunteer to put the script in the hands of the few producers who would still take my phone calls, but was met with grim determination. “It’ll come together,” he’d insisted, rubbing his perpetually bloodshot eyes.

  I felt bad for him. I guessed he wanted a relationship with his father and had thought the film would be a way for them to connect, but he was sorely mistaken. Today, though, Jackson’s army-green eyes were clear. “Glad we’re finally about to roll on this beast.” He smiled.

  “I was nervous about not being down here to oversee preproduction,” I admitted, “but everything looks great.”

  “Yeah.”

  Nervous was an understatement. So far though, I was nothing but impressed with Jackson and his team and grateful for all they’d taken off my plate. The locations they’d found were perfect, the equipment had all made it through customs without a hitch, the permits were in order, and the craft services table was miraculously better stocked than on most higher-budget films I’d worked on.

  Felicity emerged from the shadows onto the set wearing Stella’s wardrobe for the scene: a gauzy silver dress that was nearly sheer beneath the lights. I noticed the crew guys trying not to heed her impossibly Barbie-like proportions as Price guided her toward the couch, where she curled into the corner and tucked her feet beneath her. One of the wardrobe girls covered her with a robe, but Felicity shrugged it off. “It’s hot,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  The monitors fuzzed, then popped to picture one after the other. “Monitors are up,” I yelled to Brian. He gave me a thumbs-up.

  The image on the monitors blurred, and when it refocused, Felicity’s face filled the screen. It just wasn’t fair. Somehow she was even more beautiful on camera than she was in person: her skin smooth and unblemished as a baby’s, the light glancing off her cheekbones and the angle of her ever-so-slightly upturned nose, her dark eyes dancing when they found the lens. All of which only conspired to make me more suspicious of her.

  “Jesus,” Jackson muttered, transfixed.

  She had undeniable star quality. Stella possessed that quality years ago, when she first began. But she’d been diminished by years of misfortune, made vulnerable and wary, and her light had dimmed. Her reduced state could work though, in this role. If she could pull it off without giving in to vanity.

  “Find yourself a muse?” I teased.

  He dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “Girls that pretty rarely have any talent.”

  I raised my eyebrows, taken aback. In the months I’d worked with him, I’d never heard him utter anything quite so spiteful. Regardless of how much I sometimes wished talent could be singular and evenly handed out at birth, I knew it not to be true. I’d seen far too many models become actresses who obtain degrees from Ivy League schools, then marry into royalty and raise more money for charity than any of their royal predecessors. Okay, maybe that was just the one—an unfortunately lovely woman who deserved it all—but there were plenty of other examples of successful multihyphenates, not all quite so lovely. I tried not to think about it too much; I found my own life tedious by comparison.

  Truth be told, it was a little dispiriting working with the gods and goddesses of our time, no matter how nice they were—though of course it was always worse when they were awful. I’d read about the dangers of evaluating ourselves against the impossible ideals represented by magazines and social media feeds, but I liked to think that if I weren’t shoulder to shoulder with celebrities all the time, I wouldn’t be as vulnerable to comparison. Without Felicity lounging in all her glory out in the bay, I might’ve been excited to flaunt the fruits of my CrossFit classes. Without the signs of Cole’s fortune all around me, I could’ve felt proud that my salary was above average for someone in her early thirties.

  But Jackson had far less reason than I to bitch; he was in fact one of the gods, a prince of Hollywood. No other kid from his graduating film school class was directing a feature starring an A-list movie star. And on top of it, he was pretty good-looking too, with his father’s square jaw and Roman nose and his mother’s olive skin and deep-set eyes.

  So while I myself was not thrilled that Felicity had hitched herself to our payroll without my noticing and I still wasn’t sold on her motives, I felt compelled to say something.

  “Killed by a model in a past life?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Raised by one. My mother had no soul until she developed wrinkles. Cole still doesn’t, if you haven’t noticed.”

  I stared at him, trying to think of a kosher response. “Sorry.” He shook his head. “You’re right. That was uncalled for. Don’t listen to me. This is the closest I’ve been to my dad in a long time—or, ever—and it’s…an adjustment.”

  I could relate. “If it makes you feel any better, I had a similar experience working with my dad,” I confessed. “But let’s not take it out on this poor girl.” I gestured to Felicity. “Don’t want to judge a book by its cover and all that. We don’t know anything about her.”

  He nodded, and we turned back to the monitor, watching as Felicity’s face broke into laughter over something a gaffer said. “There’s something familiar about her,” Jackson mused. “But I can’t place it.”

  “Hmmm,” I said. “Madison thought she was someone else too. An actress she’d been in class with.”

  “Well, she doesn’t recognize me, so…” He shrugged.

  Cole stepped onto the set swathed in the monochromatic black of his character and shaded his eyes from the lights, looking toward us. “Anybody have pages?”

  Jackson groaned audibly. Of course Cole had put off memorizing his lines until five minutes before we rolled. Price called for pages over the walkie while Cole ambled over to Felicity and massaged her shoulders. On the monitors, I could see a flicker of distaste flash across her face before she quickly covered it with a friendly smile.

  Shit. This wasn’t the nineties. What the hell was wrong with him? Everyone knew his reputation as a “method” actor who didn’t break character while on set, but come on. Felicity was just a stand-in, and the guy didn’t even know his lines. He couldn’t exactly claim to be living in the skin of his character. He had to step into the twenty-first century or we were going to get sued. Yet another fun conversation I was going to get to have with the boss I’d apparently attempted to bed.

  Before I could come up with an appropriate solution that wouldn’t get me fired, a production assistant mercifully handed Cole his sides, occupying his paws and rescuing Felicity from his clutches. He sank onto the couch next to her, his shoulder grazing hers.

  Vigilance didn’t come as naturally to me as it did most women in film, having been sheltered by my father’s power my entire life. Until now I’d never been harassed by a colleague, sexually or otherwise, because no one wanted to incur the Wrath of David, who had quite a temper and an arsenal of d
irt on seemingly everyone in Hollywood. Not that he would have noticed or cared. In fact, if someone assured him the molestation of his only child would ensure a profit for any of his films, he would likely give his famous half shrug, the left side of his mouth downturned, acquiescing with a dismissive flick of his wrist. Whatever it takes. In the long run, of course, he was the one I should have been afraid of.

  How my mother was ever married to him, I had no idea. And from the time they finally broke up when I was four, she valiantly made excuses for every recital and birthday party he missed, never once attempting to correct my conviction that he was Superman. She enforced the rules and made my lunches, chauffeured me and helped with my homework, while he’d swoop in for a few hours every few weeks to take me to premieres where movie stars fawned over me, I realized later, to get into his good graces. Naturally, I wanted to work in Hollywood when I grew up, just like him, never be a teacher or a mom, like her. Even after years of manipulation and verbal abuse as his employee, I was not fully disabused of the illusion of his grandeur until he brutally murdered my career.

  “Where’s Stella?” Jackson demanded of no one in particular. “We need to get Stella in to do a blocking rehearsal. She doesn’t have to be camera ready.”

  I activated my walkie. “Taylor for Price.”

  “Go for Price.”

  “We need Stella for blocking. Makeup and wardrobe can finish after.”

  “Copy.”

  Jackson strode onto the set and turned an apple box on its end to sit in front of Cole and Felicity. I looked on, curious, never actually having seen him direct outside of the audition room. I’d watched the experimental short film that had ostensibly convinced his dad to fund this, but I had no idea what his on-set style would be.

  “Taylor.”

  I turned to see Price shaking his head. “What? Where’s Stella?” I asked.

  “She says she doesn’t do blocking rehearsals until she’s camera ready.”