Close Ups and Mess Ups

by Natasha West

  In the not-useful category were my dad, Deborah and Robbie. We were allowed a few tickets for family and I’d asked them to come down in the expectation they’d all be too busy, but somehow, they’d said yes. A two-hour train journey, just to see a ten-minute play I’d directed? I was astonished, pleased and worried sick they wouldn’t think it was any good. I was supposed to be concerned about all the industry people, but they were strangers. If they didn’t like my work, I wouldn’t be faced with the silent disappointment in their eyes as I hugged them goodbye. It felt like a far deeper concern than the immediate worry of whether I could get work after I graduated.

  I couldn’t keep fiddling with my clothes any more. There was no more to do with my hair and my light make-up was complete. Time to face the music.

  ‘Allie’ yelled Victor as I walked into the bar of the theatre. There was a pre-amble drinks thing before the show kicked off and I was supposed to mingle with the crowd. I was deeply glad to see Victor before anyone else. He seemed like the least complicated person I could speak to right now. I didn’t want to compete with him, impress him or sleep with him. I was grateful for the purity of it.

  ‘You came’ I said as we hugged. ‘Are all the producers here?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. If it’s a networking thing, we’re all here’ he said dryly.

  ‘I could use a tip or two on that’ I told him.

  ‘No you don’t. Your work’s going to speak for itself tonight.’

  ‘That’s what worries me’ I told him, half joking. I’d gotten Shane in the right headspace earlier. But could he pull the performance out again?

  I saw Cameron milling around, talking to a couple of other writers. I went over and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Nervous?’

  Her head whipped around, and she smiled to see me. ‘Terrified.’ She leaned in close to my ear and said, ‘I’m glad you’re not angry at me.’

  ‘Why would I be angry?’ I asked her.

  ‘No one likes a gossip’ she explained. ‘But I thought you should know. I mean, if you wanna keep seeing her, you should. But I didn’t want you to go into something with her without all the information.’

  I shrugged. ‘Well, I’m not a shoot-the-messenger type, if that’s what you were worried about.’

  We lapsed into a mildly awkward silence and then Cameron said, ‘I can’t wait to see the play.’

  ‘I just hope it meets your expectations.’

  ‘I know it will’ she said confidently. And then her little finger brushed my hand, light, but intentional. Oddly, I felt myself go a little pink. ‘Everyone’s going in’ Cameron noted, and I watched the crowd begin a slow mill toward the theatre entrance. Cameron turned to me and said, ‘Break a leg.’

  ‘You too’ I said. And then I did something that surprised me. I kissed Cameron on the cheek. Anyone around would have passed it off as friendly and even I tried to believe that’s all it was. But Cameron licked her lips and flicked a look to me and I knew, I wasn’t being a friend and she hadn’t taken it that way. This was how it had been from day one. We’d never been real friends. We liked each other.

  But I was seeing Ashley. Or, not seeing but…

  Oh for Christ’s sakes, I admonished myself. This was exactly why I’d taken my vow at the start of the year. To avoid drama that wasn’t on a screen or a stage. I’d seen all this coming and somehow, I’d still fallen into the trap.

  The room cleared out as everyone went to get their seats and I saw the people I’d been looking for. My family. It was initially odd to see them around school and industry people, but then they hurried over and gave me their greetings. ‘This is so exciting!’ Deborah said, coming over to me with a hug and a kiss. My Dad looked as stoic as ever, but he said ‘Best of luck with it all.’ Robbie punched me in the arm and said, ‘Good luck, Sis! Hope you don’t fuck this up.’ All standard behaviour. I began to find their presence a comfort amidst the uncertainty of the next few hours.

  ‘Thanks for coming’ I told them. I suddenly felt a desire to cry. I could tell my Dad picked up on it because he loudly asked, ‘Shall we go in?’ God bless the miserable bastard, he’d saved me from an embarrassing display. We walked in.

  My play was the last billed, so I had everyone else’s plays to watch and compare with while I grew ever more anxious about how I measured up. Although I did take a moment of non-selfishness to note that Janey’s play, about a woman trying to announce her cancer at a family gathering, was good. I was pleased for her. And then I was envious.

  Then it was my turn. On they came, Shane and Greg, in the darkness. But I could pick them out as they took their first positions. The lights came up and they were off.

  I don’t know that I really heard a word either of them said for the first minute. I was too focused on how they spoke than what they said. Shane seemed to have gone backwards. He was back to being his droopy, wilting self. What he’d had this afternoon, it wasn’t there now. I gave up on the whole thing. If it was crap, it was crap. There wasn’t anything more to be done.

  And then it happened. I saw Shane turn away from Greg, walking to the front of the stage. I was in the front row and when Shane seemed to meet my eye. I didn’t know what to do so I looked up at him and we had a few seconds of heated eye contact. Boom, it was there again. Tension, buried anger. That fucker hated me, I suddenly understood. I thought he was going to jump off the stage for a second, maybe scream into my face. But then he turned it on Greg and the play suddenly lifted off. I watched as the thing took shape, starting to feel real, passionate, good.

  After the lights went down, the audience applauded loudly. I knew it wasn’t just for my play, they were cheering us all on. But it was easy to think for the briefest of moments that it was all for me. I shook it off quickly. No one was clapping me. They were clapping the plays in general. Take your head out of your arse, Parker I told myself sharply.

  It was over. Time to meet the public.

  Back out in the bar, I headed for my family first. I had to give them my full attention from the off, it was only right. My brother was beaming, ‘Fucking hell!’ he cried as he saw me. My Dad slapped him lightly on the arm and said, ‘Watch the language.’ Robbie frowned at him and then turned back to me. ‘Yours was really good!’

  ‘You think so?’ I asked him, bracing for some sarcastic punchline. We loved each other but we were never soppy with each other. We expressed love through affectionate yet merciless mockery. But it didn’t come this time.

  ‘I loved it’ he told me sincerely.

  I was unsure of how to react, so I turned to Deborah. ‘It was rather dark, but I liked it too’ she said. That was classic Deborah, she liked to keep it light. But she’d tried to enjoy it for my sake and that meant something to me.

  My dad just said, ‘Not bad.’ I’d hoped for a bit more, but I hadn’t really expected it, so that was just as it should have been.

  While I stood chatting with them, I saw someone very unexpected at the edge of my vision. That copper hair and the height, you couldn’t miss her. Ashley was here. She must have come in after I’d sat down. But what was she doing here? There were limited seats and not everyone could get a ticket. I wondered if I should say hello but I’d yet to reply to her text a few days ago and I felt weird about it, weird about her.

  What I really wanted to do was ask her what had happened. But I couldn’t do that for two reasons. No, three. Firstly, it felt a bit accusatory to go over and start pumping her for information on her romantic history. Secondly, I wasn’t certain she’d tell me the truth if I did ask. Thirdly, it was none of my business. We didn’t talk like that. We had a good time together, but we didn’t have that type of relationship. There had never been any kind of deeply personal quid-pro-quo. She never started one, so I took her lead.

  That left me without a clue how to speak to her right now. I could just be normal, be like we always were, a little flirty, a little funny. But I didn’t know how to do that in light of this new revelation about Jack Jarvis’s public me
ltdown and her part in it. It had knocked me completely off kilter.

  She saw me and waved. I waved back at her and then turned away. I have no idea if she cared that I didn’t gesture her over. I had to assume not, because the next time I saw her, she was talking to one of the VIPs, the Head of Development at Distortion Films. She looked pretty involved. I realised she probably hadn’t gotten a ticket for the showcase after all. She’d just come for the networking.

  Victor suddenly appeared, saying, ‘Oh, here she is’ to someone and I turned to see him walking toward me with a lady in tow. ‘Allie, I’ve got someone who wants to meet you. This is-’

  ‘Rose Perry!’ I exclaimed. I knew full well who she was. She was an indie director who’d made a little horror movie at the beginning of her career that I was completely obsessed with, Runner Eight, a film about a woman sucked into a competition where she has to run for her life through a maze designed by a sadist in order to win the money she needs to pay for her daughter’s essential medical treatment. At the end of the movie, she has to murder another contestant to win, which she does, albeit unwillingly, only to go home and find that her daughter has died in her absence and that she’s gone through all that for nothing. It was taut, shocking and deeply disturbing. I’d been fourteen when it came out and I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it for days afterward. That doesn’t sound like it would be a happy memory, but it was for me. It had made me fall in love with horror movies. Now Rose did bigger movies, but I never forgot that first one, the impact it had on my younger self. ‘I can’t believe you’re here’ I cried, grabbing her hand to shake it, knowing I was being totally uncool. But I couldn’t help it. She was Rose Perry, for crying out loud.

  ‘And you’re Allie Parker?’ she said. Was this happening? Did Rose Perry know my name? ‘I loved your play’ she went on. ‘I thought you did a great job. But Victor here was telling me that horror’s your real thing?’

  I nodded fervently. ‘Yeah, it’s… It’s what I want to do when I graduate. Make movies like yours’ I told her. I was being a massive dork and I knew it, but I didn’t seem to be able to be the tiniest bit cool. I was too busy being a fangirl.

  ‘That’s very kind’ she said with a modest laugh.

  I realised that in a second, Rose Perry was going to move on to talk to someone else and I possibly only had moments to make an impression. ‘I don’t suppose you ever take on interns, do you?’ I asked sheepishly. ‘I’d love to be on one of your sets. If I could watch you work, it would literally be my dream.’

  God, Allie, calm down. You’re going to scare the woman!

  But Rose didn’t seem at all perturbed. ‘Actually, maybe you could help out on my next movie?’ she said casually. ‘It shoots in six months and I could do with a second assistant. It’s a big budget for this one, my biggest yet, and I need all the help I can get’ she said, fishing out her card. ‘You’d be doing really crappy work, mainly fetching me lunch and snacks, but if you think you could get something out of it, gimme a call’ she said, handing me her card. I took it from her as though it were made of gold. ‘I’ll definitely call’ I told Rose.

  ‘I hope you do’ she said and then looked over my shoulder, seeing someone she knew. ‘Oh, I’m being summoned’ she said. ‘Great to meet you though, hope to see you again’ she said and swept away. As soon as she was out of earshot, I turned to Victor. ‘Victor, you fucking angel’ I squealed at him.

  ‘Just don’t forget me when you’re a bigshot’ he replied. ‘And now I need a drink. Talking you up is thirsty work.’ He headed to the bar.

  ‘Was that Rose Perry?’ asked a voice from behind me.

  ‘Cameron!’ I cried, excited to see her. ‘You just helped get me onto her next set.’

  ‘How did I do that?’ she asked, bewildered.

  ‘By writing a great play that got me on her radar. I’m probably going to be her assistant on her next project. Or one of them, anyway.’

  ‘That’s a big deal’ she said, awestruck. ‘I love her films, especially Runner Eight.’

  ‘Right!?’ I cried. I should have known that Cameron would get it.

  ‘Last orders’ came the cry from the theatre bar. I was shocked. It was eleven already? After my family left, I was supposed to be working the room. Instead, I’d spent the rest of the evening talking to Cameron. I couldn’t help myself. She was just so easy to be with, once she dropped her shyness and let you in. Still, it was a little naughty to let the night slip away from me.

  On the other hand, what more could I possibly have done with my night than get my first job after graduation on a Rose Perry film? Answer: Nothing.

  But the night was over, time to go home. ‘You walking back?’ I asked Cameron.

  ‘Yeah, wanna walk with me?’

  I nodded. I wasn’t too sure what I was doing with Cameron, drinking with her, walking home with her. I knew now that there was too strong of an attraction to ever be platonic buddies. But here I was, late at night, escorting the lady home like the honourable knight.

  When we got outside the theatre, I turned to say, ‘What’s the quickest route?’ But before the words made it out, I saw something in Cameron’s eyes and then she came toward me, pushing me down a side alley, her hands slipping around my head and she kissed me deeply, without reserve. I couldn’t do anything but kiss her back. I didn’t want to do anything but kiss her back. We went hot and heavy in the alleyway for a while and this time we weren’t drunk. It wasn’t booze that was making this happen. It was something else altogether.

  Eventually we broke apart and Cameron whispered, ‘I’ve been thinking about doing that for a long time.’

  ‘Then why were you so frosty after the last time?’ I asked.

  ‘I was scared’ she told me. ‘I didn’t think you were that into me, so I was trying to keep you at a distance, so you wouldn’t realise how much I liked you.’

  Thinking about it, she had a point. I’d been unsure about my feelings at the time. But it seemed different now. Everything I’d thought to be true had been turned on its head a thousand times over and now here we were, me and Cameron. Was I ready for it? I didn’t know. But maybe it was time to give it a shot. ‘Your plan worked really well’ I told her wryly.

  ‘Far, far too well’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Wanna come back to mine? I won’t kick you out afterwards this time, I swear’ she said earnestly.

  I pretended to think about it. ‘If you can promise me a kiss and croissant in the morning, I’m all yours.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Way.’

  ‘Oh my god, I told you it was a good idea to come here. Didn’t I?! Didn’t I tell you?’ Robbie demanded eagerly.

  ‘It’s only an assistant job’ I told Robbie, trying to be cool about it. He was sitting on the edge of my bed, having arrived thirty minutes earlier. He’d wanted all my news first. So I told him about calling Rose Perry the day after the showcase (now somewhat calmer) to confirm that there really was an assistant job for me after graduation. Robbie was now trying to take credit. He didn’t deserve all of it. But he had been the one to get me to take the leap to come here and that wasn’t something I took lightly. ‘But yeah, you told me’ I admitted.

  ‘I ask only one thing in return’ he said solemnly. ‘When you make your own movie and you win an Oscar, I should be the very first person you thank.’

  ‘Of course I’ll mention you’ I said with an eyeroll. ‘But you might be getting just slightly ahead of yourself-’

  ‘No, not mention. Thank. First’ he said. And then he pretended to wipe away a tear from his eye, looking at some invisible audience. ‘I’d like to thank the Academy for this award. But I can’t. Because Robbie Parker is the real reason I’m standing here today. Everyone else can go to hell.’

  I grabbed hold of his arm and twisted it around his back. He laughed and shrieked at the same time. ‘What I’ll tell the Academy is that I once caught you trying to stick your GI Joe where the
sun doesn’t shine’ I shouted, as he struggled in my grip.

  ‘I was three, Academy’ he yelled, as I pulled his arm tighter. ‘I was just experimenting, and it didn’t take!’ Robbie managed to twist himself around and locked my leg in his elbow crease, squeezing mercilessly. I screamed in pain and bit his hand. He let go quickly and fell back on the bed, laughing breathlessly. ‘Truce!’ he begged.

  ‘Alright, alright’ I accepted, tired out from the brief tussle.

  ‘All that fighting’s made me hungry now, when do we eat?’ he asked. That was Robbie. Always on the verge of starvation.

  ‘Come on, let’s get chips.’

  In the local chippie, the queue was long. The place was full of fellow students, some I knew, some I just knew of. It was Easter break but plenty of people were still around. ‘Do you want mushy pees or curry…’ I started to ask Robbie, my words lost as someone I hadn’t seen in a little while walked in. Ashley. She joined the end of the queue and I spun back to Robbie, trying to press myself deeper into the line.