by Lisa Ferrari
“Would you like a drink, Claire?” Sheila asks. “Espresso? Mocha? Smoothie? Wheat grass? Iced tea? Bourbon? The sky’s the limit.”
I don’t want to be high-maintenance, so I say, “Iced tea sounds good.”
“Coming right up. Kellan?”
“Same.”
“You got it.”
Sheila goes to the adjacent kitchen and whips up two tall glasses of iced tea complete with raspberries, a wedge of lime, a wedge of lemon, a wedge of orange, and an actual sprig of mint. She tops it with a long, elegant sundae spoon and a long, thin red straw.
I taste it. “Oh my God, that is good. That is the best iced tea I’ve ever had.” I then proceed to chug the whole thing.
“Refill?” Sheila asks. She appears delighted.
“Yes, please.”
Sheila refills my glass. I begin eating the raspberries out with the long spoon.
Sheila invites everyone to come and sit. People come out of their offices and come and sit on the sofa or in a chair at one of the desks or on the desk. There’s at least 20 people.
“Have you ever done any acting, Claire?” Sheila asks.
I’m sitting beside Kellan, and Sheila is across from us.
I should probably say that I’ve been acting since I was a child and that I’ve done Summer Stock (no idea what that is!) as well as loads of background work and that I’ve studied the Method at several revered conservatories. But that’s all crap, so I decide to be honest. “I sure haven’t. This is all a brand new adventure for me.” I smile and try to enjoy my tea while trying not to show the dread resonating throughout my entire body. This is the moment Sheila could say thanks-but-no-thanks.
“Good,” she says, much to my shock. “You’re a blank canvas. No bad habits to unlearn. Well, don’t worry a bit about your experience, or lack thereof. From what Rami and Aaron told us, you’re a natural.”
Kellan says, “Claire is a very talented writer. She has a degree in English Literature from a very good private school. She prefers contemporary writers to the classics, but she’s well read. So she understands characterization and conflict and drama and all of that.”
Holy Hemingway poop. I am at once dazzled and humbled at how totally awesome Kellan makes me sound. I wish I felt the same way.
“That’s right,” says Sheila, “the guys mentioned that you write. They said they might like to have you take a crack at their script. If they ever get it finished.” She smiles at them pointedly.
Rami and Aaron share a look. Rami has his laptop on his knees and has been typing this whole time. “It’s coming,” he says. “We’re working on the third act right now. It’s almost ready.”
“Anyway,” Sheila continues, “things are looking good. Spacenight performed better than even we anticipated and we’ve got financing in place for the new picture, so that’s a major hurdle cleared. We’re looking at principals now. Kellan is more or less a lock, as I believe the guys explained at the club, so it’s really a matter now of finding the right woman to play opposite him. At this point, several other leading ladies have expressed interest. I’ve received calls from each of their agents, and their managers, but it’s still too early to tell. The frontrunner appears to be Calista Roth. And you, of course. Heather, do you want to tell Claire a bit about the role?”
I take a moment to absorb what Sheila has just said.
Several leading ladies? All of whom have agents and managers?
Holy cannoli. I am so out of my depth. What am I even doing here?
And… Calista Roth?
Calista-perfect-legs-Roth?
She’s huge.
She does movies, she does burger commercials, she’s in magazines and calendars, she’s all over the Internet, she guest stars on TV shows. I have been sitting on my sofa many, many times and have seen Calista on my television.
You’ve got to be kidding.
I privately freak out while I sip my tea and try to act calm.
“The basic premise,” says Heather, who has finished her meal and is holding a mug of tea in both hands, “is a shipwrecked couple on an alien world, hunted by savage, scary mother-effers. You will be reading for the role of our heroine, whose name we still don’t know…” She looks pointedly at Aaron and Rami the same way Sheila did earlier. Everyone smiles. I’m starting to like these people.
“It’s coming,” says Aaron. “We told you, it’s either Nisa or Riley. At present we’re leaning toward Nisa because it sounds good with Rence. Rence and Nisa? Or Rence and Riley?”
“What’s their last name?” I ask. Everyone looks at me. Um, shit; I kind of can’t believe I just asked that.
“What difference does it make?” says Aaron.
“All the difference in the world,” I reply. “At the club, you said they are newlyweds, right?”
“Right.”
“So the matter of their last name would be on their minds. If they just got married, she just took his last name. Unless she’s progressive and decides to hyphenate, or she decides to keep her own last name for professional reasons. What does she do for a living? Does she sit in a cubicle all day or is she a well-known actress everybody thinks is dainty and helpless? Either way, they would have had at least one conversation about it. Assuming they’re a traditional couple, they would have just recently filed their paperwork for their marriage license and she’d be in the process of getting a new I.D., new driver’s license, new pilot’s license, new social security card… All that stuff. Credit cards, ATM cards, or whatever the futuristic equivalent is in this futuristic world you guys have conjured up. All that stuff would have to be replaced with updated documents that reflect her status as the new Misses Nisa Jones or whatever and–”
“Wait,” says Aaron, “what did you just say?”
“I said the new Misses Nisa Jones or whatever.”
“That’s perfect!” He turns to Rami. “Dude, that’s it! Nisa Jones. It’s exotic but common, beautiful but relatable. Why didn’t we think of that? We’ve been arguing about last names for the past week. Nisa Jones. I love it. What do you think, Ram?”
“I love it. Nisa and Rence Jones. Or should it be Riley Jones?”
When no one immediately answers, I say, “I like Nisa.”
“You do?” Aaron asks. “Why?”
“It’s more original. Riley is good, too. But it’s not that uncommon. I’ve heard of girls being named Riley. Plus it makes me think of that expression ‘the life of Riley’. My mom says that. It has a bit of a negative connotation, like a guy named Riley who is pretty much a rich, lazy a-hole who sits around doing nothing all day, being wealthy, which is fine, but he’s not contributing anything to society. He’s just sort of a hedonistic pig who has underpaid, disgruntled people waiting on him hand and foot. Plus, Rence and Riley Jones is cute, like one of those couples who have their first names that rhyme or start with the same letter. Cody and Jody. Tom and Tracy. Rence and Riley. It’s cute. Either name is probably fine. It’s the execution and the way the actress you guys choose plays the part and the way she makes it come alive. That’s what people are going to remember. But I do think Nisa is a bit… sexier. Plus, think of the nicknames for each one. Couples always have nicknames for each other, especially by the time they’re married. Rence would call Nisa something short, like Neese, N-I-S. He calls her at work and says, ‘Hey, Neese, how’s your day goin, babe?’ And she’d be all like, ‘I’m fine, babe. How are you?’ ‘Fine. Ready for our trip?’ ‘So ready.’ And she’s got all these images in her head of spending two weeks on some distant, tropical planet with her new husband, the love of her life, right? Taking long walks on a beautiful blue-sand beach under a cotton-candy-pink sky by day and making intense, passionate love every night. Little does she know that they’re going to get tractor-beamed onto a planet full of cannibal predators that would make Schwarzenegger crap his cammo pants. Anyway, I vote for Nisa. But you guys do whatever feels best. It’s your story. Your names are on it.”
Sheila turns to
Rami and Aaron. “Hire her. You said you needed someone to punch up the dialogue. I think that someone needs another glass of my famous Busby Berkeley iced tea.”
Sheila stands and refills my glass. She adds even more raspberries this time.
“Thanks.”
“It’s called Paradise Tea. I order cases of it from the Shadowbrook up in Capitola. Have you ever been there?”
“No, I sure haven’t, but I love Santa Cruz.”
“Me too.” Sheila turns to Kellan. “Take her to Santa Cruz and for dinner at the Shadowbrook. Order the baked brie with jalapeno-mint jelly appetizer. You won’t regret it.”
Heather clears her throat conspicuously.
“Oh poop,” says Sheila, “I did it again. We’re working on speaking in the positive rather than the negative, which is something I tend to do. So, order the appetizer. You’ll love it. How’s that?”
Heather gives her a thumbs-up. “Perfect.”
“Cool,” says Sheila. “So you guys want to read?”
“Oh God,” I say out loud without realizing I’ve done so.
“Don’t worry, sweetie,” says Sheila. “Just have fun with it. Rami and Aaron loved the way you guys did it before. Just give us more of that and we’re good.”
Kellan and I both stand up to read. Sheila wants to see the cliff scene again. Kellan and I start doing burpees and jumping jacks and a bunch of pushups. Everyone has their scripts out.
One guy is sitting behind an impressive-looking camera, preparing to actually film us. Aaron instructs us to stand in front of a white wall where a coffee table has been placed, then moves close to the camera guy and watches us on a small monitor.
“Is that a real camera?” I ask.
“Thirty-five millimeter Panavision,” says Rami. “A lot of directors are going away from digital and back to celluloid. Right, Aaron?”
“Apatow, Nolan, Spielberg, Tarantino, Abrams… I wouldn’t be caught dead shooting on digital. It has no soul. Film is forever.”
“Until the silver nitrate causes the film to disintegrate inside the can and thousands of works of art from the Golden Age of Cinema are lost forever,” says Rami.
“That doesn’t happen anymore,” says Aaron. “And most of those old movies were restored.” He turns to Kellan and me. “You guys ready?”
“Ready,” says Kellan.
I’m not sure if it’s the sudden bout of exercise or my nerves or the three glasses of iced tea, but I kind of want to puke. Instead, I say, “Ready.”
“Okay,” says Aaron, “here’s your motivation. As we discussed at your first reading at the club, it’s a couple hundred years into the future. You two are on your honeymoon, okay? You got married and your honeymoon is on another beautiful planet in Alpha Centauri. But something goes wrong. And your space ship ends up on an uncharted planet and you guys crash land. But you’re an ace pilot, Claire. And you manage to land the ship without both of you dying horrible gruesome deaths. And it’s devastating because your ship says ‘Just Married’ in big white letters on the back, and now here you guys are on this weird, unexplored planet and your ship is fubar and the radio is jacked and you’re all alone and you don’t know what you’re going to do.”
“What’s ‘fubar’?” Heather asks.
“Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition,” says Aaron. “It’s from Tango and Cash, with Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone.
“But then,” Aaron continues, “the hostile, terrifying natives find you and you guys go on the run and they’re hunting you, right? And there are all these weird creatures and strange plants and trees, and you guys have to negotiate it without dying. And the super-scary predator aliens are hot on your heels, like those things who come out of the ground in the Guy Pearce time machine movie. And they want to eat you. They want to eat you alive. So you guys are running for your lives. And you come across a scrap yard full of ships. You realize they’ve been luring humans here for decades and they’ve been eating them, and there are bones everywhere. And you guys find a ship that still has power and you find a video log distress call by the occupants recording their last will and testament, right, and they got interrupted by these… these THINGS, right? And the fuckers ate the people in front of the camera, ate them alive, man, and it was horrible, it was the most awful thing you’ve ever seen in your whole life and you can’t get it out of your head and you’re scared, man, you’re really, really scared. You guys have been on the run for three days and you’ve barely slept and you haven’t eaten because everything is weird and you don’t know what to eat and all you had is protein bars but those are long gone, and now you guys come to a gigantic cliff with a waterfall and there’s nowhere else to go, and you guys have to jump. You’re on the cliff and you’re surrounded by these monsters. And you’re looking down at the water below and you know it might kill you but at least it’s like Romeo and Juliet, right? It’s you guys deciding your fate together, rather than letting those aliens eat you alive feet first. Remember, Claire? Viktor Krum, right? Hostel Two, right, where that guy was eating his leg and he was still alive. Remember?”
I nod. I remember it all too well.
Aaron points to the table. Kellan takes my hand and we climb up.
“So, you two are there, on the cliff, running for your very lives,” Aaron continues. “You’re ready to jump, and you’re huffing and puffing and your heart rate is through the roof and you’re panicking because you know this is it, right? You could totally die right now. Ready?”
Kellan and I nod. Aaron is so intense, so good at motivating us, I’m actually kind of scared.
“Roll sound,” says Aaron. A guy with a microphone and an audio deck slung around his body says, “Speed.”
“Roll camera,” says Aaron.
“Rolling,” says the camera guy.
“And… action,” Aaron whispers. He’s so intense.
I think back to the night in the club, trying to remember how I read the lines the first time. I look over my shoulder, and up at the ceiling, pretending there are vicious, disgusting-looking alien cannibals chasing me so they can eat my feet while I scream.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the big black camera, with the guy looking into the eyepiece. The sound guy is watching his recorder.
I look down at the floor and imagine we’re up on a cliff a hundred feet high. I get close to the edge of the table, trying not to fall off.
Kellan grabs me and pulls me close.
He presses the full length of his body against mine.
As always, he’s so warm.
His penis is pressing against me.
Focus, Claire. Alien cannibals are chasing you.
I look over my shoulder and imagine freaky red eyes and alien jaws dripping smelly saliva. “They’re coming.” I look down. It must be hundreds of feet. We’re going to die. But we have to jump.
I’m getting worked up, the way I did in the club. I can feel tears pricking my eyes. It’s even more intense than our first audition. Everything then was new and uncertain. I channel all my uncertain emotions, all the awful stuff I had to deal with from Stacy and my mom and Beth when they more or less convinced me to break up with Kellan because I wasn’t good enough.
But that was then.
Now, it’s about us. Kellan and me.
We’re further along in our relationship now. I know Kellan better. I’ve told him that I love him. And he’s told me that he loves me. I’m perhaps a bit closer to being his wife, the way Nisa is to Rence. I imagine a future with Kellan. A permanent future, one in which we live together officially in the same house and are a real married couple. We’ll go to bed every night, together. We’ll wake up every morning, together. Our house will be our home. No more feeling like I’m squatting at his place. I imagine a future in which we have a family. Happy children who have Kellan’s eyes, his physique, his confidence, his courage. Maybe a little of my creativity. My love of books. We have everything we could ever want, and we’re happy.
And then I imagi
ne losing all of it.
All the promise.
All the hope.
All the happiness.
Everything I’ve already seen and fallen in love with, even though it never was.
Because we’re going to die here today. Now.
And it’s unbearable.
“I don’t… know… if I can do this,” I huff. My voice quivers with heartbreak. Married less than a day…
I continue looking down at the perilous depths, then up at the aliens closing in. I wait for Kellan to say his line.
“You can.” His breath smells like raspberries.
I look up at the aliens. I can hear them now, grunting and making their inhuman noises. I turn to Kellan again. “I’m scared.”
My voice cracks. My lips are shaking.
Kellan puts his arms around me.
“It’s okay to be scared.” He looks deep into my eyes. “We’ll do it together.”
I look up, into Kellan’s eyes. Those cornflower blue eyes that make me ache, and my heart melts.
I’m not standing on a table auditioning for a bunch of Hollywood people.
I’m with Kellan.
And only with Kellan. Lost forever in those eyes.
Relief comes, knowing I’m with him. A tear drips out of each eye and I smile.
Kellan smiles back.
He kisses me. Hard, with passion, and suddenly I want him. I want him badly. This overrides the fear, conquers it, and I kiss him back hard. Our hands move up into each other’s hair and find one another’s face. My lips part and our tongues meet. Tentatively at first. Understanding and desire is communicated silently between us and our mouths open wide. Kellan thrusts his tongue into my mouth. I moan as I accept every bit of him.
Finally, at last, but all too soon, we part.
Kellan presses his forehead against mine and closes his eyes.