VANCE: A Movie Star Romance

by Lucy Lambert

  Anytime anyone found out what I did and studied, the only thing they wanted to know was what famous people I met.

  As far as the general public was concerned, movies really were just some sort of magic. Something that appeared at theaters out of nothing.

  He knocked on the door, knocking me from my mental rant. I let him in. He handed me a sleeved and steaming Starbucks cup.

  Even just smelling it woke me up a little more, as though I could inhale the caffeine.

  “How’d the shoot go?” I asked, as we sat down at the dinette table.

  Danny shrugged. “Okay, I guess. I don’t think you want to hear about the shoot, though.”

  “Oh? And what is it I actually want to hear about?”

  I sipped my coffee. It was still a touch too hot, but my body didn’t care. Once I got a taste of it, I wanted more.

  He’d forgotten my order, though. Normally I got a house brew and put one sachet of sugar in along with a dash of cream. This tasted like it had at least three sachets in it and it had almost enough milk to qualify as a latte.

  However, I hadn’t paid for it. And as a student for years now I knew the last thing I should do is refuse free food.

  Many of the PAs supplemented their meals with ample eating from the craft services table at the studio.

  “How about that journalist dude talking to literally everyone on set, trying to learn more about you?”

  I spat up some coffee. “What?”

  “Yeah. I think you’re going to be in the news. Well, maybe on a few movie news sites, maybe some gossip stuff. I mean, I don’t think you’re gonna turn on CNN and see your picture…”

  “Danny! Focus! Did he talk to you? What did you say?”

  Danny smiled, then took a good, long draft from his own coffee. He’d taken the lid off so that it could cool down faster and he stared at me over the white rim of the cup.

  “Of course he talked to me,” Danny said after he set his cup down, “I did say he talked to everyone, remember?”

  “Well fess up. Or maybe I’ll stop ‘helping’ you with your jobs.”

  “Hey, hey, take it easy. Why so serious? Look, I just told him the harmless stuff. UCLA student, from some Podunk place back east, loves movies, wants to make movies, loves Vance Tracker…”

  I grabbed his wrist. “What? You said what?”

  “UCLA student, back east… oww!” he exclaimed, as I dug my nails into his wrist.

  “The last part, Danny, the last thing you said.”

  “…that you like Vance Tracker?”

  “Danny! What the hell? You know I hate that guy! I hate him so much!”

  My stomach growled. I grabbed my bowl of cereal and spooned some into my mouth. I grimaced; it had already turned to mush.

  Just like my life, apparently.

  “Yeah, well, I could tell the guy wanted something good for his story. What’s better than a super fan getting rescued by her dream man?”

  I stood up. I took a shaky gulp of my too-hot coffee. It burned on the way down my throat. Burned so good.

  In fact, all of me shook. “Super fan? Please tell me you didn't actually say super fan.”

  Danny shrugged, “I’m gonna plead the fifth on this one, I think. What’s the big deal?”

  “If you can’t see what the big deal is, then I don’t think my explaining it is gonna help. I don’t like Vance. Not at all.”

  “No one seems to like him after what he did last summer. No one with two X chromosomes, anyway. I don’t see what the big deal is about all that, either. Lot of yelling and hurt feelings over nothing, if you ask me. I never liked Sandra Livingston much, anyway,” Danny said.

  Just like a guy would think.

  “Danny, did you actually see any of the coverage, or see it live? Or did you just read about it on Reddit afterward?”

  Danny shrugged.

  I continued. “I know feelings are hard for you to understand. But just put yourself in Sandra’s place. Everything’s going well for you. You’re with the person of your dreams. Then he dumps you on live TV. He dumps you so hard and fast and bad that the video goes viral and no one talks about anything else for a week.”

  Danny couldn’t look me in the eye. “Seems like it helped her career pretty nice…”

  “It’s not about careers! He crushed her, and then just expected everyone to go on like they had before.”

  Danny’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead, and he gave me a strange look.

  “Taking this all a little personally, aren’t you?” He said. He hid the beginnings of smug satisfaction behind another sip of his coffee.

  “Not at all,” I snapped right back at him. I took another gulp from my own coffee. The near-scalding sensation really helped clear the fuzz out of my brain.

  I continued. “Vance destroyed a lot of people’s trust that day. People who’d been fans of him for years. Sure, he was always the bad boy type, but he’d never done anything so cruel before. It really showed people another side of him. A side that no one liked.”

  “Then why didn’t you go back to the co-op office at school and ask them to put you on a different project?” Danny asked.

  “Because…” I said. I turned away from him, not wanting him to see my face.

  “Because?”

  “Just because! I may not like him anymore, but he’s still a huge star and working on one of his films will look great on my résumé.” Yes, that sounds good. Good work, I thought with an inner eye roll.

  Danny shook his head, that smug smile still tracing his lips. He grabbed my laptop and faced it towards him. The keys rattled while he typed something rapidly. His finger whisked across the touchpad and he tapped once.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “This,” he replied. “Sure looks like a woman who hates a guy.”

  He spun the laptop around. My eyes widened until they hurt. My stomach, still thankfully empty of most everything but a few mouthfuls of coffee, tightened like a fist.

  I completely forgot about that guy with the camera!

  He hadn’t forgotten about me.

  It was TMZ, or one of those TMZ-like sites. I didn’t really want to check at that moment.

  There was a picture, and below it the caption even said you could click it for an Ultra HD version.

  Not just any picture. But a picture of Vance Tracker in his Allied soldier ( I didn’t know which, as I’m not really a war buff) getup, his arms wrapped heroically around a woman who looked overwhelmed by his presence, the side of her face pressed against his deep chest.

  The woman was me.

  Vance’s smile in the photo was confident, relaxed, maybe even caring.

  I didn’t even have to close my eyes to remember the way he held me in his arms. And, now that I thought of it, I could even remember the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, which had been as equally calm and confident as his smile.

  “Having a moment?” Danny snickered.

  I gave him a sidelong glance that I hoped suggested that my foot and his ass were going to have a moment if he didn’t shut up.

  I squinted at the text. Vance Tracker, Saving Lives and Stealing Hearts On and Off Camera at Latest Shoot.

  Then I looked again at the rest of the caption on the pic. We don’t know her name, but we wish we were her. Look at those arms, yowza! This is the girl after Vance rescued her from a ladder about to fall. Think she set the whole thing up? They’re just so cute together!

  I lips did their best to squeeze into the tiniest line possible. There was some fluff speculation article underneath it, but I couldn’t read anymore.

  I slammed the screen closed a little harder than I intended. Inside, I cringed and hoped that nothing broke.

  “You guys do look good together, you know,” Danny said. I thought I heard something else there. Jealousy? No, Danny and I are just friends. He knows that.

  Mandi poked her head in through the doorway. “Everything okay in here?”

  “Just fine. Danny
just wanted to deliver some coffee and head out. Didn’t he?”

  “Well, actually…” he started until I pinched the back of his arm. He bit back a yelp and stood. “Actually, yeah. Got all that… schoolwork… To do. Glad to see you’re okay.”

  I walked him to the door and opened it for him. He stepped out and turned back around, about to speak.

  “Thanks for the coffee, really. And the info. I’ll see you on the set tomorrow.” I closed the door.

  Then I went back to the dinette table. Just looking at the laptop sent my heart pattering.

  Opening the laptop made my heart thud hard enough I thought the Foley guys could use it as a sound effect in the movie. Maybe to simulate machine gun fire.

  The screen woke up right where I left it, showing that picture of Vance holding me.

  This is bad, I thought. So bad. At least they don’t know my name. Yet. I knew these types; they could find out anything they wanted about you. If they wanted, that was.

  I hoped it would all end with this little snippet. I even kidded myself that maybe the piece didn’t get much interest.

  This was one reason why I went into the production side of movie-making rather than the acting side. I didn’t want that sort of notoriety, that constant prying in your private affairs that came with such a public life.

  I wanted to be a name in the credits at the end of the movie, nothing more.

  Maybe this is the worst of it, I thought.

  It wasn’t.

  I got an email asking me to show up at the set as early as possible. Like four A.M. early. And for once, I didn’t mind.

  That nap I took threw off my schedule, so I was actually wide awake to catch the bus, which was empty. Just me, the driver, and the little advertising placards backlit by their fluorescent lighting that told me about tooth whitening and exciting new real estate opportunities. They went well with the aroma of sweat, perfume, and cologne all permanently imbued in the cloth-covered seats.

  There was something a little sad about an empty bus. A bus was meant to be full of people. I kind of wished there were others there, to keep me from my thoughts a little longer.

  Will things be weird? I wondered.

  I saw the glow in the sky above the studio before I saw the studio itself. It was a halo of light, and the bus hurtled towards it like a moth drawn by a fire.

  The bus actually let out right in front of the studio gates. I flashed my ID to the guard at the booth, and he let me in.

  If the bus was dead, the studio wasn’t. Golf carts shuttled people around, their electric engines whining. PAs herded a crowd of extras all dressed like they were from the 1940s into one of the warehouses. Wheezing trucks moved heavier equipment.

  I made my way to Stage 9 again, letting myself in through the side door. My skin prickled when the cool breath of the AC hit me.

  I went to Mitch’s back office, going from the massive vaulted ceiling of the warehouse proper to an area that looked like it belonged in an office tower.

  Mitch didn’t sit at his desk. He rarely ever sat. As the set manager, he corralled and herded many of the other teams, and he was also in charge of the interns and co-op students from all the various film schools that gave the studio much of its free labor.

  He stood by a large, unopened wooden packing crate that made the whole room smell vaguely of pine. One hand held a huge coffee mug while the other looked at a bill of lading or some such, presumably to do with the crate.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He looked up at me. “Erin! Doing better now?”

  “Yeah, much. Extra sleep and all that. I’d really love to get back to work, though.”

  My shoulders tightened. I wondered if Mitch might bring up the whole picture fiasco. I didn’t want to hear any more about it.

  He went and grabbed another clipboard and leafed through the pages on it. “Got you off set today, until lunch at least. You’re going to help costumes sort through this stuff.” He jerked a thumb at the packing crate.

  Simultaneous sensations of relief and frustration coursed through me. Relief, because if I spent most of my time with the costumes department, I probably wouldn’t see Vance - and frustration, because I wanted to see the filming.

  “Something wrong with that?” Mitch said.

  “No, no. Of course not,” I replied. “What’s in the crate, anyway?”

  “Uniforms,” he said.

  I never made it to costumes.

  Another PA I’d never worked with before arrived at Mitch’s office with a hand truck to take the crate away, and I followed.

  The PA, a young guy with a prematurely receding hairline, kept glancing at me.

  “What?” I asked. Though I was afraid I already knew.

  “You’re that girl from the picture, right? The one Vance Tracker saved?”

  “No, that’s another girl who looks exactly like me who works here,” I snapped.

  We’d been traveling down a service hallway, lit by a string of fluorescent tubes and filled with cold air that prickled against my skin.

  We approached the double doors leading to the smaller warehouse that housed the costume department’s things.

  I turned to the other PA, meaning to apologize. Before I could, the door swung open. It was Mitch.

  “Erin, they need some extra hands on set. Could you go over, please?”

  The PA and I shared a glance and I looked back at Mitch. “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure. You’ve been requested by name. Sanders radioed me and I ran over here to catch you before you got too involved in the uniform sorting.”

  I swallowed hard, not sure what to say. Troy Sanders knows who I am? Knows me by name? My stomach swirled.

  The thing was, I couldn’t kid myself that it was because I was such a good production assistant. I did my job the best I could, and loved doing it.

  But I knew, as did Mitch and my fellow PA, that the real reason was Vance.

  Mitch frowned. “Isn’t working on set what you wanted? Because I can radio back and tell Troy you’re not available…”

  “No, don’t. I’ll do it. Just still a bit groggy I guess. Not enough caffeine this morning,” I said.

  “You can never have enough caffeine in the morning, take it from me,” Mitch replied, then he stepped to the side and held the door open, “They’re still here in 9. Better hustle.”

  I hustled, moving past Mitch and into the storage area beyond, which turned out to already be mostly full of rows and rows of hanging costumes. The place smelled of mothballs and cotton.

  I knew my way around the building rarely well, and soon I found myself back at the sound stage The castle wall with all its green screens still stood where I’d left it.

  I saw the red banners draped down its side, and a brief wave of vertigo washed over me when I recalled teetering back and forth twenty feet in the air on a ladder.

  The camera crews laid down a single length of track by another set. It would allow a camera mounted to it do perform the aptly named tracking shot, the rig gliding along beside the actor.

  There was also a long crane to allow filming from a height.

  The set lights on their tripods directed their glare at the new set, which was a room that looked like it was supposed to be an underground bunker, the walls stippled grey to replicate concrete.

  There was an old-looking table in the room, along with more old fashioned desk lamps. At the back wall was a rack loaded down with period-accurate guns.

  As I watched, more and more crew members arrived. They set up more lights and added more items to the set. Some of them worked on mounting the cameras to the track and the booms.

  Then Troy Sanders spotted me. He caught the eye of a tall, bald man wearing a headset and then nodded in my direction.

  He was Brad Mills, the director of photography for the film. He decided on camera and light placement, with input from the director.

  He waved me over to where he stood by a small bank of computer screens. “Erin
, I take it?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Have you ever handled lighting before?” he asked.

  “No.”

  I took this opportunity to take a quick glance around. I didn't see Vance anywhere, which I found odd.

  If he wanted me here, wouldn’t he also be here?

  Brad’s lips pressed into a tight line and he frowned, clearly as confused as I was.

  “But I took a class on lighting at school. It included some practical work. And I was pretty close to the crew on my thesis film who did the lighting.”

  That was something of an exaggeration. The lighting “crew” on my thesis film had been a slightly overweight guy named Devin. His lighting equipment consisted of a single lamp borrowed from the school’s storage. On several occasions, he’d forgotten to plug it in.

  I’d been the one to plug it in for him. That was the extent of my practical lighting experience.

  But I had studied lighting in several different classes.

  “That’s something, I suppose,” Brad said, not sounding particularly convinced.

  “But I’m a fast learner!” I said.

  “Right. Okay, you’re going to man that big unit over there during filming. It’s going to keep some low-key lighting on Ms. Campion. You know, soft edges and shadows. It’ll help highlight the vintage feel.”

  Ms. Campion was Linda. Linda Campion, our rising starlet.

  My stomach tightened and dropped when I realized something. “Mr. Mills, do you know who asked for me?”

  “Ms. Campion, apparently. That’s what Troy’s telling me, anyway. Look, there’s nothing to this. Just keep the light on her. Keep the light pointed low so that it bounces mostly off the ground and doesn’t really catch on anything.”

  “Places!” Troy Sanders said into his megaphone.

  I went over to the big light Brad indicated. It was already on, and the metal housing already warm to the touch. I grabbed the handles and pointed it at the set, feeling like a little kid who’d just finished her first swimming lesson and had then been tossed into the deep end without any water-wings.

  Troy himself stood by the camera dolly on its track, talking to a group of men dressed in black German uniforms. Over the general din, I couldn’t hear anything being said.