He agreed. But the magic was so real, so close, that he had to put a little fizz in the mix. “Jess,” he started, under the low hum of the ‘church voices’ the crew used on set. “If you sense a time when Josh needs a little encouragement, I think it might be helpful to give him a little push.”
Jessie gazed into Thomas’ eyes and clearly read his meaning. She responded by removing her gaze to just off set, where she could see Josh standing quietly alone as a grip hurried by with a standard black flag ordered by the gaffer to help cut an extraneous shadow.
From five feet away came the respected voice of the very efficient first AD. “We’re picking this up at the bed, everybody, as soon as this flag is up. First positions, please.” Jessie looked back at Thomas and nodded in acquiescence. She had hoped to squeeze in a quick word of encouragement to Josh which might help to relax him, or even give him a light touch to let him know they were in this together. But they’d run out of time. This would be one of the last close-ups, essentially a reversal on him, his expressions, his caresses, and so they would – she would – have to make it count. She took a deep breath and found her place on the bed as Josh made his way over on shaky legs.
Josh wiped his sweaty palms on his pants and swallowed as he positioned himself near Jessie. The AD called Finals, and the hair, make-up and wardrobe gals rushed in to straighten tendrils of hair, to powder away shine, and to firm up the position of Jessie’s camisole on her shoulders. Wardrobe adjusted Josh’s suspenders, which were hanging tantalizingly loose by this time in the scene. He wouldn’t climb on to the bed until after he finally and mercifully heard the word Action from Thomas. No point in getting in there too soon, or Josh would be in an awkward embrace right off the bat, and he didn’t need that on top of the pressure he was already feeling.
After Roll Sound there was a delay as the gaffer asked for another minute to fine-tune a shadow. The lighting was key in this shot, and it was worth it to wait until he and the DP were happy. The wait was interminable, like watching a snake slither slowly uphill on the hottest day of summer. Finally, Action was called, and Josh fought all of the distractions to remain as Billy as he could be, whilst battling an increasing case of nerves. He positioned himself above Jessie and followed through with his first actions as much as he could recall, but he felt stiff and robotic. To the discriminating eye, it showed, and Thomas could feel Jonathon’s eyes on him, trusting that he’d said what he needed to Josh and Jessie during the short break. The director didn’t take his eyes off the monitor, where Josh’s face was lighting up the screen in a gorgeously lit close-up. He could sense the actor’s discomfort, that he was holding back, and then something happened off camera that changed the energy of the scene.
Jessie whispered something to Josh, as Kate to Billy? And then she entered frame for just a moment as she softly kissed his earlobes, his cheeks, his eyes, his lips. Then – a quiet, subtle pause and there was a movement under the covers that Thomas couldn’t see, and then something changed in Josh’s expression – he stiffened for a second and then an agonized, desperate look came into his eyes as he turned his face just the slightest bit away from camera. Then it was all there, the pleasure and the pain of it all, and Thomas almost felt like he was an observer to something that should have remained personal and beautiful and excruciatingly private…almost.
Blushing like a schoolboy, as he hadn’t in years, Thomas ducked his head away from the screen, and grinned. There. They had it, the shot they needed.
He was so secretly pleased with Jessie that he almost forgot to holler Cut.
***
As Josh pulled himself off the bed away from anyone who may be observing too closely, he felt a rush of shame and embarrassment. He certainly couldn’t look at Jessie, and so, when wardrobe kindheartedly offered him his light jacket for the short ride in the van back to base camp, he took it without a word of thanks and, his eyes to the ground, asked the girl to tell the first AD that he was going to walk back. Anything to cool things off, he told himself.
As he walked, leaving Jessie alone to ponder what she’d done, what she felt she had to do to get the shot and end the long night, he knew she made a choice based on necessity. And he didn’t care whether it was her decision or Thomas’, but in the end it was she who had done it, and Josh felt his blood pressure start to rise the more he thought about it. It had been excruciating to begin with, all the surreal, magical wonder of being with her, touching her soft cheek for the first time, kissing those lovely, tender, curious pink lips, then whispering to her and then – urging down the shoulder strap of her camisole and – brushing his lips over her breast, and moving downwards. He ached to be alone with her to see what intense passion might have ignited. He had felt, from the time of that one dance they’d shared to a song that seemed like it had been written about him (although he couldn’t imagine that it had been), that the universe had indeed supercharged some current designed just for them.
This night had been agonizing and, despite the fact that they’d seemingly broken down a few barriers during their brief lunch the day before, Josh didn’t feel like it had played the way he’d hoped. The torment would go on for a while as he revisited the evening - the beauty of the initial shooting; the onset of the fear as the shots wore on; the careful look and thoughtful, rather earnest persuasion in Thomas’ eyes; the gentle doe-eyed sweetness he told himself he saw in Jessie’s eyes; the way her body responded so sensuously to his; the feeling of her hand on his…oh, the agony of that moment. The unbelievable embarrassment, torment and heartbreak of it all.
Uncharacteristically, Josh slammed the door of his trailer when he entered, so loud that the TAD, Pier, looked up from his late night latte. Pier punched a button on his walkie and asked wardrobe to go to 2 (channel 2) so the gal could tell him privately what had transpired on set. In the trailer, Josh climbed into a hot shower and would have cried had he not been the 27 year-old lead actor in what was sure to be a hit HBO television show. Instead, he miserably leaned his head against the shower wall and let the water cascade over his hair, wondering how he could bear to face Jessie again.
On set, Jessie met Thomas’ eyes as wardrobe slipped a thick terry housecoat over her shoulders. He smiled silently at her as Jonathon came up to him and put an arm around his shoulders, praising him for a fantastic night’s work. As they went off to watch the rushes somewhere, Jessie walked alone to the waiting van and climbed inside. As she sat there waiting for craft to load up a few items from the on-set table, she let her mind wander back over the shooting, and that crucial moment when she wrapped her hand around Josh and squeezed, then caressed with a light pressure that told him exactly where Kate needed Billy to be in this scene at that time. She knew she was taking a chance, but it felt right, and she knew before Thomas hinted at it that it was the right choice in terms of playing her character.
From experience, and from listening to others chat about their own love scenes and how horribly awkward they could be, Jessie knew there were different mindsets about how they should be played, what preparation could be made for them, and how they might come out. After her first few many years ago, she had mostly stopped worrying about them. But with Josh it was different. She had long admitted that she cared about him, on whatever level she could at this point in time, and it had really hurt to see the shocked, pained expression in his eyes after Thomas yelled Cut. Jessie knew of one female actor who recently had a fit after discovering she could not get her co-star to physically react to her in any noticeable fashion, because most times it was an expected, natural response. But Jessie had pushed Josh further than she was certain he was willing to go, for the sake of a scene.
As she listened half-heartedly to the banter of the driver and the craft service crew on their way back up the hill in the eerie moonlight, she pulled the terry robe tighter around her shoulders and leaned her head against the window. She closed her eyes and wondered whether this would change things between her and Josh, as their relationship had finally seem
ed to be opening up, just a little. Then a fleeting thought of Sandy entered her mind, and she tried to shut off any thoughts of Josh on a personal level. He was her co-actor, after all, and he had a job to do, and he had gotten stage fright, so she’d had to give him a little help. That was all. It was the professional thing to do.
As Jessie got out of the van and wandered towards her trailer, she looked over at Josh’s and wondered what was happening within the caress of those subdued yellow lights. And she thought, well, I’ve got a wedding to plan, anyway, as if it disinherited her from any connection to Josh.
In her mind, Sandy was waggling a finger and telling her to be careful, that people who played with fire generally got burned. She considered the fire trucks she had seen from her building on that day so long ago, and hoped this fire, too – the one she felt for Josh, the one she’d taken advantage of that night - was a false alarm as well.
***
Chapter Seven
Since that shoot happened on a Friday, Jessie had two agonizing days to spend wondering what Josh was really thinking so, instead of waiting like a sensible professional actor, she filled in all his thoughts herself. By Monday, she figured he likely had a pretty good hate-on for her.
Begrudgingly, she spent Saturday shopping for the wedding with Dee and Lydia, Charlie’s mother. Saturday night, after interminable hours with designers pitching wedding dresses to her - an international star with mucho influence in the fashion game despite the fact that she preferred hoodies, jeans and boots - they went off to dinner at La Brasserie, a Franco-German restaurant in the west end, where they met up with Charles and Jack. Charlie arrived late. He had supposedly been playing cards in the upstairs glassed-in office of his club. Jessie’s weren’t the only raised eyebrows when he came up with that excuse as the others were digging into their steak onglet and frites in the warmth of the dimly lit dark wood interior.
Sunday was a day of rest; time to study lines for the upcoming week. Jessie was relieved to discover that the planned scenes were much less intense than those of the prior week. She motored up to UBC in the ’66 Mustang and popped into her favorite cafe - Rebel on a Mountain Coffee - where one of Vancouver’s best baristas, tall skinny Chris with dark-framed Buddy Holly specs, made her a Flat White to die for. She sipped it there where nobody would bother her. The owners and staff were accustomed to Jessie visiting their hip establishment. She ordered a homemade apple cinnamon muffin just out of the oven to accompany the perfect coffee.
Sitting in the sunny cafe, Jessie went over her lines, aching to call Josh and coerce him into joining her. She figured he would be learning his dialogue as well, and she knew from past experience that the Drifters friends often spent Sunday afternoons there too. The staff of the cozy bright cafe, which most folks called ROAM instead of the lengthier Rebel on a Mountain, got a kick out of Jessie Wheeler’s presence again, and wondered if she was learning lines for that new period show, Drifters, or something more exotic. Little did they know that she couldn’t focus on the scripted dialogue at all, and instead her head was spinning with wedding plans and dresses and designers and dinners and seating plans and guest lists. Over and above them all, the only face she could see was Josh’s, shocked and confused and betrayed.
She gave up the ghost and put her head in her hands, forgetting where she was for a moment. Then Chris glanced at his counterpart, Zev, the cute Australian with dark curly hair, and at his nod made her another Flat White, this time on the house.
***
The next few weeks on set were tense, although not all of the cast and crew really understood why. All they knew was something was off with Josh, and it seemed to be in relation to Jessie. Jonathon was slightly concerned, but not overly – he was over the moon with the footage coming off the HD camera. Its images were beautiful, regardless of any tension between the cast, with 35 mm shallow depth of field and dazzling high-resolution shots. He had a super crew on board this season, and it showed. The art department did an extraordinary job pulling the set dec and props together, in particular. Their nineteenth century version of ‘Gassy Town’, from which the Gastown neighborhood in Vancouver evolved, was an intricately detailed extravaganza and, in combination with the artistic lighting, supported the actors perfectly. Thus Jon was so happy and upbeat in those first few months of shooting – plus so incredibly busy writing and re-writing and managing the umpteen thousand minutiae that are part and parcel of a huge production– that any hard feelings that seemed to exist between Josh and Jessie slipped off his back like water off a duck.
Jessie’s life was flowing along like the St. John River when the ice melts in April, hurried and fast and overfull, when she arrived on set early one morning two months into the shoot. It was almost Christmas by then, and there was a light frost on the ground. It matched her temperament that day. Charlie was unreachable all weekend. He was off filming in Europe, in Belgium at the time – an Oliver Stone World War II epic. He and Jessie often had trouble connecting, as their schedules and the world’s various time zones played havoc with their lives as a couple, but this time they set specific protocols and aligned their schedules. Jessie was trying to be more dedicated to her impending nuptials and subsequent life with Charlie. After the fiasco with Josh, and his cool demeanor over these past few weeks, she tried to push him to the back of her mind and write him off as just a crush during a low time in her relationship with a feisty playboy.
On this particular day the production team brought a stuntwoman on set to double for Jessie during a scene when Kate had to move from her galloping horse onto the back of Billy’s horse, which would be running alongside. In the episode, Kate was on a runaway and Billy was her rescuer. She rolled her eyes when she read the script – not because it was a little cliché (but would make great drama on TV), which she readily acknowledged, but because her life felt like that – like she was on the back of a runaway horse and couldn’t stop.
Jessie was more than a little upset as she climbed out of her SUV. As much as she cherished the Mustang, the larger vehicle was warmer and she resorted to it during the winter months. Charlie’s whereabouts were a mystery, Josh wasn’t talking to her (could barely bring himself to look at her, in fact), it was freezing, she hadn’t slept well, and the producers didn’t trust her to do the stunt. She had been an avid rider since meeting Charlie - Jack and Lydia owned a big equestrian ranch in Southlands. She always rode Western, and felt she could do this stunt with her hands tied behind her back. Hell, the producers were letting Josh do the stunt – mind you, he wasn’t the one climbing from one mount to another while galloping full tilt, and he had been riding from the time he was a small child, but still…Jessie was a solid actor who believed in doing as much of her own work as possible, and she was just cranky these days anyway.
“It’s just about that time of the month,” she caught herself muttering under her breath as she trudged through the gate over to her own trailer before going to hairy make-up to start the process before blocking. She was usually on such an even keel that it disturbed her to attribute her bad mood to anything so banal as the onset of her period, but things seemed to be really flying out of control these days, and that downward spiral was sucking her in, so she did what she often heard the hair and make-up girls did – made her monthlies the target of her irritability. You learned a lot in hairy make-up.
From the south side window of the hair and make-up trailer Sonia, base camp’s fiery make-up crew, a gal who wore different colored stripes in her hair each week, was watching Jessie progress up the trail with her head hanging. She frowned. Even though it was only 7 a.m., a time when most folks were bad-tempered regardless of what was going on in their lives, she rarely saw Jessie unhappy. Quiet, yes. Disconnected, yes. But depressed – no. An upset actor was generally a portent for a difficult day.
Sonia turned to her friend Hilda, base camp’s attractive, elegant plus-sized red-maned hair gal. She grabbed a magazine out of Hilda’s hands and threw it upside down, behind her, on the c
ounter.
“Get rid of that,” she hissed. “She’ll be here in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
Sonia set about getting things ready for Jessie – various powders and creams. She didn’t do a lot of make-up on this period show, but television always required at least a little boost. Hilda settled into her chair to wait for Jessie, her brushes and sprays already in place. The girls were accustomed to early mornings, yet Hilda yawned deeply, and glanced at the frost outside. It really was pretty, with the early morning sun rising and reflecting its pale yellow light off the crisp blades of grass, turning them to lovely, colorful rainbow water droplets.
Jessie’s eyes cottoned on to a prism’d droplet ahead of her. She slowed down and stared, glumly.
“Hi Dad,” she said miserably.
Then she turned her head the other way, and moved on. She was super tired this morning. She couldn’t even face her dad, not today. As she set about putting a water bottle and backpack away in her trailer, she let her mind wander a little, and wondered if he was disappointed in her. Sure, he’d be proud of her music, but could he see she was still unhappy? The whole world was excited about her wedding to Charlie Deacon, why wasn’t she? What was wrong with her? She could see her dad shaking his head at her. She had everything – money, fame, success – what right did she have to be so dejected? Little did he know she would give it all up for a cuddle from him again, to play guitar and bellow traditional melodies at a Prince Edward Island campfire with him just once more.
Ducking into the tiny bathroom for a quick pee, Jessie avoided looking at herself in the mirror; and then she stepped down the metal stair and headed over to hairy make-up.
A Song For Josh, Drifters Book One Page 11