by Lucy Lambert
“I wasn’t always an actor, you know. And I especially wasn’t always a well-off actor,” he said.
“Sure,” I said. I knew it was true, though.
Long ago—and by that I meant a few years, when I was a big fan—I’d read an unauthorized biography on him. Still, there was reading something, knowing it in an academic way, and seeing the living proof in a plain cotton apron in front of you.
“Yeah,” he continued. “I know, hard to believe, right?” He said it jokingly. He used a soft spatula, lifting the edges of the pancakes up so they couldn’t stick. Then he looked at me.
Without looking away from me, he lifted the skillet up off the element and with a flick of his wrist flipped both pancakes over.
I clapped. “Well done.” He is good with those hands of his. You know that from experience now.
He was also good with his mouth. Good with other parts, too.
A blush started under the collar of my shirt, started up my neck.
Vance didn’t notice. He focused on the pancakes again. “It’s true, though. For plenty of roles, the studio and the director and the producers all want and need you to look a certain way. They’ll assign diet people and workout people and all that. Though I like to keep myself in good shape anyway.
“Does it really surprise you that much that I can cook a few things? I enjoy it. I enjoy making things. Movies, pancakes…”
Love, I thought. That blush crept hot into my cheeks.
The two cakes in his skillet finished, and he popped them onto a baking sheet and then into the oven. Then he poured two more dollops from the mixing bowl into the skillet and started again.
My stomach grumbled in anticipation. He looked over at the noise, saw my blush, smiled again.
“No need to be embarrassed. These cakes caused a riot at a neighborhood potluck once. Almost done though, no worries,” he said, misinterpreting the color in my cheeks.
“Right,” I said. I picked up the coffee mug, the ceramic warm against my fingers, and took a sip.
He turned back to the skillet and my greedy eyes devoured his mostly bare and muscular back.
I’m in so deep. Way too deep, I thought. Vance Tracker is about to serve me pancakes he made himself! After a night of… well, a night of passion is the best way to put it, I guess.
He finished those two pancakes and retrieved the two kept warm in the oven. He plated them, two on each plate, and then brought these over to the table.
“Syrup?” I said.
He looked at me in shocked horror. “No, never.”
He went back to the counter and retrieved some knives and forks. And finally from the cupboard a small bottle of golden honey.
We sat and ate together. They were good pancakes. Really good, actually. Light and fluffy, a little sweet, and the mystery spices left me smacking my lips.
“Cinnamon?” I said.
He shrugged, wolfing down his second cake.
“I didn’t think you’d be allowed to eat those right now.”
He looked at me while popping a single leftover crumb from his plate into his mouth. “After last night, I think I’ve burned through enough calories to have whatever I want.”
“And you always get what you want, isn’t that what you said?”
His smile turned devilish, “I got you, didn’t I? Living proof.”
“You’re different than I thought you’d be,” I said. I looked at him over the brim of the coffee mug while I took another sip. The caffeine worked its wakeful fingers into my mind slowly but steadily.
He nodded, as though he expected as much. “People get these ideas of who we are in their heads. We can get typecast in hearts and minds as much as we do in films. And I think it’s harder to break than in film, too.”
A question rose up in my thoughts. One that lurked in the back of my mind since this whole thing with Vance started.
My heart picked up a little. Is this the right time to ask?
I wasn’t certain. But I really wanted to know the answer. And it was just the two of us. No cameras, no director or co-star or anyone that he needed to act for.
Still, as Vance noted about me, I went for things. In this day and age, you had to put yourself out there to get ahead at all, to get anything you wanted.
And I wanted an answer.
So I wrapped my fingers around the warm smoothness of the coffee mug, swallowed some of my anxiety, and looked at him.
“Vance,” I said, “What really happened between you and Sandra? I feel like there’s so much more to it…”
His face hardened for just a moment, his eyes sharp. His smile dropped and didn’t come back. “Sometimes things are just what they seem. Not always, but sometimes.”
“Are you saying this is one of those times?” I said, pushing more, even though I thought that maybe I shouldn't.
He stood up and cleared the table, grabbing the plates and setting them all in the sink.
“I’m saying,” he said from his spot at the counter, “That even though all of that happened in public, that I don’t want to talk about it or about her. Not yet, anyway.”
“Okay,” I said, guilt clenching in the pit of my stomach. I hadn’t just touched a nerve there, I’d plucked one like a guitar string, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…”
He held up one hand, “It’s okay. I meant it when I said ‘not yet.’ I will talk about it all sometime with you, if that’s what you want.”
“All right…” I said. I decided to put it all out of mind for now, “So what about today? Any plans?”
“Yeah, we’re going back to work.”
“Already?”
He explained about the talk show rant then, how it was the perfect cover to get out.
I couldn’t hide my disappointment. When he saw, he came over and offered his hands. I took them and he stood me up from the table. I noticed a smudge of flour on his apron.
Then he kissed me, and I forgot about it.
“It’s okay, I’ll make sure there’s still plenty of alone time. There’ll still be cameras and whatnot, you have to understand. But my agent said he’d be talking with the studio about beefing up security. He also has some pull with these people and he said they won’t bother you at your apartment, either.”
“Okay,” I said, still not quite sure. An uneasy feeling tickled around in my stomach.
Something about this didn’t sit quite right inside of me. Something that tickled at the back of my thoughts, tried breaking through to the conscious level but didn’t.
It was because he was sitting there in front of me wearing an adorable apron that showed his body. Because he smiled at me and I was just a woman. What was a woman to do when a man as handsome as him smiled at me, except smile back?
And I still ached all over as a reminder of what we’d done the night previous.
So I ignored those alarm bells going off in my head.
The ones sounding, wanting me to ask, how does your agent have pull with these people? How can he make them stop? What’s going on?
Because the only question I really wanted to ask was when we could next be alone together.
I wondered then that if we left that lovely apartment the spell might break. The one that made me see him differently.
The one that made him want me.
The one where I wanted him and saw nothing wrong with what happened.
I wondered.
The spell didn’t break. Not right away, at least.
I thought maybe it was a spell I put myself under. Or at the very least allowed to happen.
But I didn’t think about it too hard, because what happened was too good.
We spent the next week on the set stealing kisses in empty rooms in the various warehouses. He’d finish shooting a scene and, still in costume and makeup, find me.
Find me and lead me into an empty boardroom, or back to his trailer. Once, the whole set cleared off for a union meeting, and he kissed me with my back pressed against a fake brownst
one wall meant to represent some secret location in Berlin.
My lips ached that week, every day when I went home to my apartment. I didn’t stay at the apartment long, though.
My roommates had found out everything when Mandi came bursting out from her room screaming about how there were these pictures of me and Vance Tracker all over her newsfeed, and that I just had to tell them all everything right now.
I told them a little. And it would be a lie for me to say I didn’t feel and sound a little boastful the whole time, as he was definitely the most famous and definitely the best looking guy any of us had dated.
The closest any of them ever came was when Sam went on a couple dates with an extra from Lost. One of the ones who was on the plane in the pilot episode and didn’t have a single line.
But they looked at me differently. Acted differently around me. Like they were both in awe of me, and a little jealous.
So I enjoyed the times I got out of the house, when Vance would come by in that red Corvette of his and take me somewhere downtown.
Sure, there were cameras, and I knew our pictures were up for everyone to see.
I dealt with that by not thinking about it.
Danny hadn’t even talked to me since the time I kicked him out of my apartment building. That all changed just over a week after my night at Vance’s hideaway apartment.
Vance still hadn’t really told me what it meant to be his assistant.
At that point pretty much the only thing I helped him with was keeping his lips flushed and plump with all those make-out sessions we had.
Still, I endeavored to at least look the part. I dressed nicer, happy to be out of the khakis and black tee shirts of the normal PAs.
That day I wore a printed, knee length skirt and a light blue blouse with the sleeves rolled up to my elbows. My collar was open against the day’s heat.
I thought it looked good. A little sexier than I was used to, but I thought Vance might like it. And I found myself wanting Vance to like me.
I remember because Danny called attention to it.
I stood in a back hallway of Studio 9. Vance had just left, on his way to the set. I leaned against the wall between framed pictures of a couple nameless 1930s black-and-whites, just enjoying the ghost of the feeling of his mouth against mine.
“You’re different now.”
I turned and saw Danny standing by the set of double doors that led into the warehouse proper, his arms loaded with a large cardboard box marked Storage with a permanent marker.
Embarrassment twinged in the pit of my stomach. Why? What do I have to be embarrassed about?
“I’m still me,” I said.
And then, in spite of what I told him at my apartment, I didn’t forget anything that I said that night. Or that he said.
This was the first time since that night that I think we said a single word to each other. I saw him around the studio, of course, and he must have seen me, too.
It made me feel bad, actually. I liked Danny, sort of, just not in that way. And when he made me do pretty much all the work when we were partnered, even if there was heavy lifting involved.
Still, his jokes used to help me get through the day.
“You don’t even look like you anymore,” Danny said.
I straightened up, finding some backbone, “No, I don’t look like you anymore. I can wear what I like, now.”
He set the box down on one of a row of chairs against the wall. Grit dusted his shirt where the box pressed against it.
“Yeah, sure, but what's the cost, Erin? Your face is plastered all over the place with his. They’re writing entertainment news articles about you, did you know? Did you? I saw one today on MSN’s website with an interview from your dad…”
“What?” I said, stepping away from the wall. My mouth threatened to dry out, and I swallowed against the feeling.
He shook his head. “You don’t know, do you? You have no idea. All you can think about is when you can make out with him next. I didn’t realize you were such a sellout, Erin.”
My hands twitched. I wanted to wrap my arms around myself, but resisted. Or maybe reach out and wring Danny’s neck. I kept them at my sides.
“What are you talking about? I’m not a sellout.”
I wanted so badly to get my phone, or get to a computer. Something with the internet on it so that I could find what he was talking about.
But I also wanted to settle this. But why? What’s with all the defensiveness? What’s there to be defensive about?
“He’s no good for you, Erin. You’re just all star-struck, blinded by that handsome face of his when he looks at you. I don’t know what it is. But you have to snap out of it.”
“Why? So that I can be with you? Are you sure this isn’t just jealousy, Danny? Because it sure seems like it to me. And I thought I made it clear that I don’t like you in that way.”
It all burst out of me. I looked around when I closed my mouth, worried that we were drawing a crowd. We were alone, thankfully.
He shifted his feet and broke eye contact. “Maybe there’s some, okay? I do know that something’s weird with all this. Something weird with Vance Tracker. This isn’t right.”
That really got to me. That sting of embarrassment in the pit of my stomach melted in the face of what replaced it.
“What’s not right? What’s weird? That someone like him could like someone like me? Why is that wrong? Why is that weird?”
“I don’t know,” he said, still not looking me in the eye, “It just is. And when it all falls apart because of it, don’t come crying to me about it. I have to get back to work. You remember work, right?”
“Of course I do!” I said, feeling that sting again. What am I even supposed to be assisting Vance with?
I thought this was too much anger. Too strong a reaction.
Why? Do I think that maybe Danny might be right somehow? That perhaps I’m thinking the same things, even if I try not to acknowledge them?
Danny picked the storage box up again and trudged down the hall past me, not looking at me. He left me alone in the hall.
Alone with myself. And alone with my own doubts.
I didn’t stay lonely for long. And while I wished I could also say I also didn’t doubt for long, I did.
Because it was one thing for those doubts to exist in the back of my mind, quietly tucked away, and totally another for someone else to voice them. It gave them more power.
One of the big Panavision cameras Troy Sanders like to shoot with fell off its dolly and broke apart in spectacular fashion, and no replacement could be found right away. So they called shooting for the day.
Vance told me the story from the driver’s seat of one of the studio’s extended tour golf carts. He and I were the only occupants.
The canopy roof did a decent job shielding us from the sun, and the low hum of the electric motor was a quiet background noise.
“Did someone get fired?” I asked. I found myself missing the excitement of being on set again.
Those cameras were expensive, so expensive they were usually rented rather than owned, hence the little scrawl near the end of the credits saying things like “Cameras Provided by Panavision.”
Vance guided us down a narrow street close to the main offices of the studio, which were stucco-sided buildings three storeys tall that took up maybe an eighth of the entire lot.
He glanced over at me. He wore a pair of reflective sunglasses, so I could only tell when he actually turned his head a little to perform said glance.
“You look good today.”
I smiled at the compliment, but my insides were a mass of conflicting feelings.
I couldn’t shake my doubts, not entirely.
You’re being too cynical, I thought. Sometimes these things happened. I mean, look at Natalie Portman and that dance instructor she met on the set of Black Swan and how they got together.
This situation wasn’t too outlandish.
But it doesn�
��t feel right, I thought. I couldn’t be sure if the voice I heard was my own, Danny’s, Mitch’s, or all three of them together.
He pulled the cart off at the mouth of an alley.
“Why’d we stop?”
“Just for this,” he replied. His arm snaked around my waist and pulled me closer to him. The tips of his fingers tickled me when they pressed into my hip, and I couldn’t help smiling.
Then he kissed me, his lips hot and urgent against mine.
I melted against that heat. Who wouldn’t? And for those few moments all my doubts burned away.
Then he pulled away. I could feel my pulse in my lips. There was a hitch in my throat. My whole body hummed.
“Why’d you stop?” I said.
“Because we’re not there yet,” he replied, smiling his crooked smile beneath the reflective lenses of his sunglasses.
He took us over to an area of the studio reserved for the tourists. Old sets, buildings with memorabilia, that sort of thing. Except there were no tourists.
“Where is everyone?” I said.
Vance took a right and transported us into the Old West. At least, how 1930s Hollywood conceived of the Old West.
The golf cart looked out of place while it trundled down the well-beaten dirt of main street Tombstone. The building facades were all wooden, with wooden decks pressing up against the road.
There was a saloon, its batwing doors swinging and creaking gently in the light breeze. A barber’s shop, undertaker, sheriff’s office, apothecary…
And no one there. Not one actor dressed up in Wyatt Earp’s vest, hat, and pistol belt. Not one child running along the wooden decks while exasperated parents chased them.
“This isn’t usually a ghost town,” I said.
“I had them clear the place out,” Vance said. He pulled up alongside the façade of the saloon. If I wanted, I could step out onto the deck directly from the golf cart.
“Why?” I asked. I’d never seen the place like this.
As a PA, one of my rotating duties was to come and help keep the place in order. Some of the male PAs got to dress up as actors in a pinch. Ruffians in ponchos and serapes seated at the bar sipping sarsaparillas and that sort of thing.