Silent Song

by Ren Benton

  “She descends from a long line of child stars. Being unnaturally adorable is in her genes.”

  “Is she your next lead?”

  She recoiled from the suggestion, wheeling back to her desk. “Hell no. Her mother would be a beast on set. The only thing worse than a stage parent who acts like she owns the place is a stage parent who actually owns a third of the place.”

  He paused midswipe, jolted to a halt by one of the photos. He swallowed to hydrate a throat suddenly gone dry. “Can you send me some of these?”

  “You can send them yourself.”

  Even better. Then he didn’t have to explain his selection. While he emailed himself the photos, he remembered he’d returned to the office on a mission other than returning their phone. “When you’re free for half an hour, I want to run some ideas by you.”

  “I’m free now.”

  Ethan begged to differ. “You’ve got an interview with Variety in twelve minutes.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since they’re doing a cover story on Liv that coincides nicely with our movie release and want some insider information.”

  Her shoulders lifted in an apologetic shrug. “I guess I’m not free.”

  “You know where to find me when you have the time.” If he did something in error that took days to fix, no one could claim he hadn’t tried to get off on the right foot. “Did you get your paperwork?”

  “Big Jim came through.”

  Ethan laid a silencing hand over the speaker on his phone. “And we learned things about Maisie’s taste in men that I’d rather forget.”

  Lex was no longer surprised by the phenomenon. “Believe it or not, that furry-backed son of a bitch gets beautiful, intelligent, successful women who aren’t using him to further their careers on a regular basis.”

  Gin curled forward as if preparing to heave up her breakfast. “And now we’ve learned things about Jim’s body hair I’d rather forget.”

  “Lots of people are into bears,” Ethan said. “It’s a sign of virility.”

  Lex returned Gin’s phone. “Meanwhile, my chest looks like I’ll hit puberty any day now.”

  Ethan threw a sour glare toward him. “Some of us have to wax to get that look, you bastard.”

  “You’re in a long-term relationship,” Gin said as if weary of repeating herself. “Let yourself go natural.”

  “Chris spends forty hours a week rubbing naked athletes. I am too short and soft to be natural.”

  Lex had plenty of his own hangups, but that particular brand of insecurity made no sense. “Unless you were tall and buff when you met him, he likes you short and soft.”

  Ethan rolled his eyes toward Gin. “Did you write this script for him?”

  She slid Lex a look of Do you see what I have to deal with? before resuming her tiresome battle. “Ethan, you are the only person who has ever entertained the notion that your boyfriend is faking boners because he’s secretly disgusted by your lack of a jock’s physique.”

  Lex enlisted for her cause. “Assuming the amount of time he spends rubbing naked athletes is a job rather than a hobby, he’s surrounded by musclebound men all the time and has plenty of opportunity to pursue the gay ones. If that’s what he wanted, that’s who he’d be with.”

  Ethan’s expression cycled rapidly between doubt and hope. “Do you really think so?”

  Gin flexed her fingers in the direction of his throat. “I swear to god, if what we’ve told you a thousand times makes an impression on you when delivered once by a straight white man...”

  “Isn’t the important thing my happiness, not that hegemonic masculinity made it possible?”

  The best part of being thrown under the bus of straight-white-man privilege was the luxury of joking about his immunity. “What doesn’t it make possible?”

  Ethan rolled his chair over so they could high-five in male solidarity.

  Gin’s frosty scowl wedged them apart. “It’s coming back to me why getting you two together is a bad idea.”

  Lex stood and tucked his chair under the desk with exaggerated care. “I’m going to take my powerful social influence down to the studio and lock the door—”

  Her voice was dry and splintery as his ill-fated pot roast. “It doesn’t lock.”

  “—and barricade the door to my soundproofed workspace with a couch,” he shifted, “so I can’t testify about what she’s going to do to you if you’re not smart enough to pretend to remain a neurotic mess until the next time Gin and Maisie tell you what a great catch you are.”

  Ethan tapped his forehead and whispered, “Good idea. She’ll suspect nothing.”

  “Well, women. What do they know?”

  A pen flew across the room like a dagger.

  He caught it against his heart and wagged it at his assailant. “You wrote the script. As long as Ethan is happy, does it really matter who gets credit for saying the words?”

  That serene smile appeared only when she plotted a gruesome fate. “I don’t have any more pens handy. By necessity, the next thing I throw will be heavier.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Ethan reassured him. “She throws like a girl.”

  She launched herself across the desk with the single-minded ferocity of a velociraptor and attacked Ethan’s ticklish spots. Lex backed out of the room, closed the door to muffle the shrieks and pleas for mercy, and laughed out a thanks to privilege for allowing him to escape the massacre.

  Back in the studio, he copied the pictures from the email to a photo album. Maisie did make a beautiful baby, but he was interested only in the pictures of Reina with Gin.

  She’d always been clear that she didn’t want kids. He’d assumed her emphatic insistence meant she didn’t like kids, and he’d never seen her with one to challenge the theory.

  She might be biased because this one belonged to her oldest friend, but when she held Reina, touched the tip of her nose to that translucent baby one, or succumbed to infection by that toothy grin with a laugh that echoed in his memory, she had the same soft, dreamy glow she had when she was in love, which was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  It had been a long time since he’d seen it, and the sight made him ache.

  Aching was the perfect frame of mind for songwriting.

  He picked up Juliet — who had a melancholy timber suited to the movie’s Southern Gothic vibe — cradled her in his lap, and made some minor adjustments to the old acoustic’s tuning keys. He opened a mic to record anything that spontaneously came to him and cued up River Bound on the computer. The story unfurled from the first frame, the viewer riding shotgun with a woman summoned back to her roots by a death in the family, unaware that more death awaited and her presence changed nothing but the identities of victim and killer.

  The purpose of music was to communicate and connect with the listener. In this case, Lex’s purpose was facilitating communication and connection between Gin and her audience. Though she did it well on her own, she’d asked him for a signal boost. He’d need a delicate hand to support her without inserting one misplaced note that distorted her message.

  She’d been right last night — he hated collaborating, the restrictions that came with others wanting a say, and the stampede that muddied a creative spring meant to be clear and pure. He could admit he was selfish. Arrogant, even. He had a wall of platinum albums and a trophy case full of industry awards to validate his egotism.

  He could make an exception for Gin because she was his equal in her own realm. She understood the yearning for perfection, the agony of falling short, the torment when shortcomings were hailed as the work of genius while crafty breakthroughs that threatened to explode an artist’s heart with excitement went unnoticed. She didn’t ask him here to shackle him to mediocrity. The only restriction in this collaboration was the trust she placed in him to give her art volume.

  River Bound was her story to tell. Gin was the instrument. He was merely the amplifier, making sure her chords traveled far and penetrated d
eep, clear and pure as if straight from the source.

  The Variety interview and the two that followed made for stuttering progress on the day’s edits. Gin realized they’d missed lunch only when Ethan stuck a Milky Way in his mouth with no attempt at concealment. She ordered a break and went down to the studio to enforce it upon Lex.

  He hadn’t erected a barricade. Despite his insistence on working in solitude, the door stood wide open as if inviting visitors. The man inside bent his dark head over a notebook, scribbling with a pencil in his hand while his teeth gripped the pen she’d thrown at him earlier. One arm wrapped around his guitar, holding it close like a protective father with a sleeping child.

  His reaction to Reina had been... enlightening. She enjoyed the role of Aunt Gin, but her adoration of Maisie’s daughter hadn’t altered her lifelong aversion to parenthood. For a while, she got away with telling people who quizzed her about her ticking biological clock that she was unable to have children. Then they started recommending adoption services and questioning her character when she remained devoid of maternal urges.

  Lex once told her he didn’t want kids, either. But what else could he say — I lose my mind over babies, so you’re just a barren pit stop en route to finding the mother of my children? She would have pointed him back to the highway before falling in love with him and spared them both a lot of heartache.

  The only indication he noticed her hovering in the doorway was the jab of one long finger toward the unoccupied chair.

  She sat. Fatigue pounced on the unscheduled midday inactivity and pinned her head against the back of the chair. If she stayed quiet, he might ignore her long enough for a nap. She peeled off a layer of flannel, the better to bask in the toasty air of a properly heated room while she awaited his attention.

  A woman stripping evidently warranted immediate attention. Dark eyes slanted toward her. He opened his mouth to say something and jerked in surprise when the forgotten pen fell. He caught it with one hand when it bounced off Juliet and hooked it on the neck of his shirt for safekeeping. “What time is it?”

  “Time to take a break for a really late lunch or a slightly early dinner.”

  “Yeah, in a minute.” He grimaced as he straightened, either stiffness from prolonged sitting or a lingering ache from the morning run. He cut off her internal debate about the wisdom of asking which. “As long as you’re here, though, give me some direction.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Is Lawson the only man in this movie?”

  She’d been prepared to explain her vision for the hundredth time, but Lex had already cut it open and examined its guts. “In the cast. When he was on set, the crew was all women, too.”

  “It shows. His presence is like an infection. He needs...” He stared through the TV and rubbed his fingers near his ear. “Subliminal discord.”

  Her pulse thumped as if she’d physically performed the creative happy dance taking place in her mind. This was why she’d wanted him involved. She sensed emptiness that needed to be filled, but Lex heard what belonged in the void.

  Loath to distract him, she whispered, “Yes.”

  Nearly every question he asked got the same response, confirming answers he’d already figured out for himself, only a few requiring elaboration from her.

  When he ran out of uncanny insights — at least for the moment — he leaned back in his chair, a thoughtful scowl in place. “I was right about the light amount of music, but you need a lot of sound. Don’t worry. I won’t interfere with your dialogue or breathing.”

  Her lungs took that as a cue to stop working. “Breathing?”

  “It hit me when the husband caught the sisters together and they both held it. After that, the synchronization gave me chills.”

  Throughout the movie, allies breathed in tandem, even while at odds with one another. Foes, even at their most charming, cut across the grain. Gin liked the subtle bonding and divisive effects, but she hadn’t expected — or wanted — anyone else to notice. Maybe Lex’s understanding sprang not from keen artistic appreciation but from direction as heavy-handed as omniscient narration. “Is it obtrusive?”

  “Only someone who’s had voice training would have a chance of spotting it. The tiny demographic of exceptionally studious choir members will think it’s brilliant.”

  She slumped in the chair. Not an emergency, then. She’d take a brutally critical look at that one element and make Ethan sit through another viewing to get a third opinion. If only a few spots snagged like fishhooks in the brain, a light edit might solve the problem, a few hours' work, nothing that would delay the release.

  “Why are you hyperventilating? I said it was brilliant.”

  “I’m not hyperventilating.” She wasn’t ventilating at all, in fact, and he got a little fuzzy around the edges before she rectified that. “And you weren’t a choirboy.”

  “A group would detract from my dulcet tones,” he reasoned with well-earned immodesty. “Was it an effective accident or did you direct your actors to emote with respiration?”

  “It was in the script.” Had it been only a year ago that writing one of those had been so easy? “Achieving peak micromanagement caused much grumbling on set.”

  “By your ‘headstrong headliner’?”

  Her lips pursed at the tired description of Olivia. “Liv’s difficulty to work with is greatly exaggerated — probably by her, to generate more drama. She never pushed back against direction, she coached the other actors, and on the rare occasions they couldn’t follow her lead, she adapted to make it work. She’s dreamy.”

  “So you’ll be working with her again.”

  Not at her going rate of ten million per picture. “I’d put her in everything if I could afford her.”

  “Find the money. You’re a hell of a team.”

  “To assemble my dream team, I’d have to find the money for you, too.”

  He dismissed his inclusion with a huff. “You haven’t heard anything yet.”

  “I’ve heard you talking about this movie like you’ve been dating for a year instead of hooking up last night. If anything happens to me, number one on my list of orders is to attach whatever music you think is best and get it into theaters ASAP.”

  He idly thumbed one of Juliet’s strings. “Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

  She’d thought so ten years ago, and then Jeremy Fogle happened. Without a Greene at GemGam’s helm, contracts were voided. Funding was revoked. People lost their jobs. All because her “plan” presumed nothing would happen.

  That wasn’t a plan. It was wishful thinking, and whatever genie kept her supplied with good fortune up until that point had retired.

  But nobody liked a lecture about inevitable doom and the necessity of to-do lists that doubled as last requests.

  She leaned forward and snapped the pen off Lex’s shirt before it followed in the footsteps of countless forebears and became an ink bomb in the washing machine. “Time for a break before Ethan starts to think we’re plotting for the patriarchy again.”

  A long day following a restless night meant Gin was struggling to hold up her head when Lex came into the office with a thumb drive pinched between two fingers.

  She rubbed her screen-strained eyes. “Please tell me that’s a collection of grindcore faves that guarantee wakefulness for another hour.”

  “It’s a hard copy of what I’ve done so far to see if I’m on the right track. I know it autosaves to whatever storage you’re using, but I’m superstitious about backups.”

  According to legend, he’d named the band Gone & Forgotten in honor of his tendency to misplace things and his habit of moving on without mourning his losses. He recovered from missing cables, keys, and the occasional locksmith with no more than fleeting inconvenience, so the rare occasions he became earnest about permanence were adorably out of character.

  She held out her hand and accepted his offering. “I’ll take good care of it.”

  He wiped his hand on his shirt as if gla
d to be rid of the responsibility. “I’m short on grindcore, but I’d be happy to kick your chair at random intervals to add an invigorating element of annoyance to your tedium.”

  “That would be really helpful, actually.”

  His brows lifted, but he pulled Ethan’s chair within kicking distance of hers without a word.

  She looked expectantly at his foot.

  “It’s not invigorating if you’re expecting it.”

  “Silly me.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “Filtering outdoor scenes so five-minute sequences less obviously show five hours of sun movement.”

  “There’s a lot of outdoors in this movie.”

  The river was symbolic, ever-changing but eternal, an unreliable guardian of secrets, including the occasional dead body. The setting was as much a character as the silence. “Yeah, that’s never happening again.”

  “The sun is that much of a hassle?”

  “The sun is the least of it. I can position the actors and add lighting so the shadows aren’t obviously misplaced. I can artificially adjust the light levels. I can’t control planes and barking dogs. Or weather. Or mosquitoes.” Oh, the glamor of protecting cast and crew from West Nile and Zika. The amount of insect repellent used should have drawn an environmental fine. “Everything I can’t control slurps up time and money through a straw during production and makes more work during post.”

  “Nobody thinks about bugs when they’re watching the pretty people onscreen sweat attractively.”

  “True movie magic is the audience never suspecting those pretty people are sticky and smell like poison.”

  “Am I ruining your concentration?”

  She dragged a layer mask into place with the mouse. “No. This stuff is pretty rote. That’s why I was falling aslee-eep!”