METHOD

by Kate Stewart

  “Mila, I’m not going to play dumb to your celebrity. I’ve been watching the two of you for years, and I think you’re both lovely. But at no point in time when I watched did I think you were perfect because no marriage is. You are safe here, I promise.”

  Unable to speak around the lump in my throat, I nod, eyes cast down.

  “Hey, you,” she says pointedly. I look up to where she stands. “I’ve been there. I’ve been exactly where you are, and hopefully that tells you something.”

  “It does,” I say with a nod. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll just be inside if you need anything.”

  “There’s probably no one who understands Method acting better academically than I do, or actually uses it more in his work. But it’s funny—nobody really sees that. It’s perception versus reality, I suppose.”

  —Jack Nicholson

  Lucas

  THREE AND A HALF MONTHS AGO

  Clasping my watch, I look over to where Mila sleeps naked on her stomach. Her subtle curves and sun-kissed skin have my cock swelling, and, I’m hard in seconds just from studying her parted lips. I finish dressing and kneel by the bed, pushing her silky dark hair away from her forehead. There was a time when I was unsure if I was enough for her, and even when I put the ring on her finger, I still wasn’t convinced. I married her anyway because I worshipped her for the woman she is, and because she’d convinced me thoroughly to believe in the love that reflected in her eyes. She was the easiest addiction I’d ever allowed myself to have, and now that I’ve let myself become accustomed to the fix, I couldn’t imagine living a second without her. Last night I was unfair to her in a way she didn’t deserve. She’d come through for both of us by helping Amanda pack Blake’s house, and I’d left her alone to deal with the ache it caused. She came home needing me, and I gave her nothing but my back while I strummed my guitar.

  I’m such a fucking prick.

  Guilt gnaws at me as she slowly opens her eyes and frowns when she sees I’m dressed. “Where are you going?”

  “To the shooting range. I’m meeting with a weapons specialist. Come with me.”

  “Really?” Her enthusiasm breaks my heart. I’ve done a shit job of meeting her needs, but I still can’t bring myself to get it together. I’m no longer comfortable in my skin. I don’t know how to relay that to her without worrying her further. I’ve never been at odds with my own mind before, and I’m out of my element. There’s more guilt and denial swimming between my ears than I could ever live comfortably with. I need answers.

  “Give me ten minutes?”

  I nod, and she bounds off the bed. I smack her bare ass and take satisfaction in the slight jiggle. I’m seconds from taking her, but I have plans for today. “Hurry up. I need my partner.”

  “I’m all over it, baby,” she says, swaying her hips seductively.

  “Keep that up, and I’ll be all over it, baby.”

  “Wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen,” she spouts sarcastically.

  “Later.” It’s a promise and her eyes light up in understanding.

  She grins at me over her shoulder and disappears into the bathroom. I glance around our bedroom. Mila did a beautiful job decorating our beach house. It’s too much house for two but feels like a real home because of her mix of soft plush furniture and her warm color choices. She’d insisted on doing it herself which was great because I was too cheap to hire a decorator. She’d taken her time pulling pieces from the various places we visited while I filmed getting it just right for us. Everywhere I look there’s a reminder of us, of where we’ve been and how far we’ve come. She loved the beach house just as much because collectively it was both our first home and investment in us. I’d gone with my gut my whole life, and it had never once led me wrong. The minute I set foot in this house with my bride, I knew.

  Shoving my hands in my pockets, I stare out the window at the view I’d never tire from. When I got to LA, I’d never seen the ocean, to me it was the ultimate sign of freedom. The stopping point of running because it was the farthest. I loved the symbolism of living so far from the world I came from.

  “No man, no,” Blake says, pacing our stained carpet. “You’re sputtering through the lines like they don’t mean shit to you.

  Frustrated, I run a hand down my face. We’ve been at it for hours. We’re set to start filming in a week, and I have yet to get a handle on my role. He takes a long pull on his beer, eyeing me before he speaks.

  “Have you ever heard of Method?”

  “Don’t think so.” I sink into the couch feeling out of my element. Reading my expression, he cups the back of his neck and nods before flipping through the open script on our table and pointing to a few of my lines.

  “Okay, bro, Maddie did a pretty good job teaching you some of the fundamentals, but you need to start thinking outside of the box. You aren’t playing one of her tough guy roles. You’re playing a soft-spoken introvert who turns into the tough guy, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You have the asshole part nailed.” He gives me a sly grin, and I give him the finger.

  “You’ve got to dig a little deeper and show the change happening during this scene. This confrontation is bringing it out of him. So here,” he points out, “you’re about to get your ass kicked, and you’re laughing maniacally as he pushes you up against the wall. He’s shaking the fucking monster front and center. Get up,” he says, nodding toward the wall. “Let’s say this here,” he scrutinizes the carpet, “shit-stain is the marker.”

  I follow him over and eye the stain, “my bad, I think it’s Yooh—”

  Before I can get it out, he slams me against the wall, hard.

  I wrack my brain and can’t remember what the fuck maniacal means. I’m instantly furious. Blake reads my confusion.

  “You go from fear to laughing like you’re a little bit crazy, and the hits don’t hurt. Like you asked for it, like you wanted it to happen.”

  I nod. “Got it.”

  “Now, think back to a time where you just didn’t give a shit what happened. Dig and think of something that hit you hard, something painful and use it.” As he speaks, he continually slams me against the wall, before rattling off the lines. “Fucking pussy.”

  I shove at his hands. “Give me a second, man.”

  He shoves me again. “Camera’s rolling, and you’re wasting film.”

  My back jars when he pushes me again and anger spikes as he taunts me.

  “Go back, trailer trash,” he says, shoving me harder. Eyes blazing, he smirks and slams me into the wall again. “Momma was embarrassing, wasn’t she? Did she have a mullet, Joe Dirt?”

  In a blink, I’m back in front of middle school swearing to my mother that I didn’t take her cigarette money while she repeatedly swats me on the back of my head. Kids in every grade line the sidewalk and stare either gawking or laughing. It’s the first time I admit to myself that I hate her and detect the shift in the withdrawal of my heart.

  Once she’s berated me, she screeches off in our rust-colored minivan leaving me to walk the four miles back to the trailer. Everyone is staring, jaws slack. And with every step I take toward home I get more and more pissed off. Blake shoves me again, and I let that kid take over as I spout off my lines.

  “Scene,” Blake says, breaking me out of my stupor. “Not bad, even with the improv.” There’s a glint of respect in his eyes. “Where did you go?”

  “Somewhere I didn’t want to be,” I mutter before I realize my lip is bleeding.

  “Draw, identify, and live it. Get it?”

  I did, and I was fascinated. “What’s that called again?”

  “Drawing from experience, that’s part of the Lee Strasberg Method. But there are others, and there’s this whole debate about what it is and isn’t.”

  I follow him to the kitchen, and he cracks our last two beers handing one to me.

  “Strasberg, who’s that?”

  Blake takes a sip of his beer the bottle still
pressed to his mouth while he shakes his head. “Stop worrying about your training. There are plenty of untrained actors out there, and from what I can tell, you’re a natural. Morton Weary doesn’t just work with anyone.”

  Morton Weary is the type of director that makes stars out of unknowns and has cast Blake and I both in Misfits, our first movie.

  “He sees something in you, and I’ve seen what you can do.”

  “Just tell me,” I prod. During our scene I felt some sort of universal click inside me. Maybe it’s because somehow, I can use the filth I grew up in to fuel me, but I want to know.

  “Look we’re broke now, and neither of us can afford a coach, so go to the library, get on the web and look up Method acting.” Grabbing a pen from our counter, he pulls a bill from our unpaid stack, flips the envelope, scribbling on it while he speaks. “You’ve got the godfather Stanislavski, Lee Strasberg’s Method, Meisner, Chekhov, and then there’s those that go to the extreme; like Brando, DeNiro, Bale, the list is endless.”

  “What do they do?”

  He hands me the envelope. “They go way beyond classroom technique and spend months prepping, making sacrifices some think idiotic. That’s why there’s a debate. They live, breathe, eat, and shit their characters while they prep and during filming.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep,” he drains his beer. “They rarely ever break character. DeNiro is a beast. For Taxi Driver, he worked shifts as a cabbie.”

  “To play a sociopath?”

  “I’m guessing he did it so he looked comfortable behind the wheel, and grasped the mannerisms involved while driving a fare so they became first nature. You know, it’s a senses thing. It’s about relaxation, but not in the way you think of it. It’s allowing your body and mind to relax enough to become a sort of vessel. How can it look natural on film if you’ve never done it? And how can you relate to a bloodthirsty psycho if you’ve never been one?”

  “I get it. Maddie had mentioned something about that, about the senses. She used to do an object exercise with me so I could memorize sensations of holding things, and then do the scene without it in hand.”

  “Right. Method has a lot of exercises you can use to figure out who you are, get into the mind-set, help concentration, build your character, and bring truth to them by using some truths of your own and a little imagination. It’s a process, but it works for a lot of A-listers.”

  “A lot of them do this?”

  “Look it up. There are a ton of articles. A good percentage of Oscar winners use it.”

  “How many?”

  “More than half. But I’m telling you right now it takes dedication.”

  “That, I’ve got,” I say, handing over my beer and sliding my wallet into my jeans.

  He raises a brow as I grab my keys. “Where are you going?”

  I swipe my script off the floor. “Library.”

  Pausing, I turn back to him with my hand on the door. “Have you ever used it?”

  He starts working on my beer and takes a long pull. “Never had a reason to, every part I’ve played so far is a loose cannon with mommy issues.” He flashes me a sly grin. “I’ve got that down pat.”

  “What are you thinking about, handsome?” Mila asks, walking through our bedroom with nothing but a towel on her head. She grins at me with a bit of the devil in her eyes. My attraction to her hasn’t diminished in the years I’ve known her. If anything, it’s grown, it’s as if we became wired when we got together.

  “I’m thinking if you keep prancing around here naked that I’m going to do my worst.”

  “Like that’s a threat.” She rolls her eyes before disappearing into her closet, and I can hear her thumbing through a rack. “Aren’t you sick of me, yet?”

  “Never. That will never happen,” I say with confidence. “I’ve got way too much love for you, beauty.”

  She pokes her head out of the closet. “God, can you imagine dating again?”

  “I was just thinking about that.”

  “About dating again?” she asks testily.

  “No, about how glad I am I don’t have to, because I have you.”

  “Good, you were seconds away from losing a testicle.”

  “Just a testicle?”

  “When you came to your senses and back to me, you would need your make up tool,” she eyes my crotch without apology, “a testicle won’t hurt us.”

  “Ah.”

  She continues her search through her racks. “Bleh. I don’t think I would do this again. I don’t think I would ever get married a second time. I mean I love you, I love us. But the work. Geesh.”

  “You aren’t exactly campaigning for a good anniversary present this year, sweetheart.”

  She pokes her head out at my tone and laughs at my frown. “I’m just talking about the routine. It’s exhausting. Getting past the representative down to the heart of the person, and then dealing with the real person. No, thank you.”

  “Wow,” I say. “You’re batting fucking zero right now. I’m glad I’m not lacking in confidence today, baby.”

  “Like you need more. For you, it would be easy. You snap your fingers, and an array of vaginas apply for the job.”

  That comment has me shaking my head with a laugh.

  “You laugh, but you know damn well that’s the case. But me, I’d have to retrain someone else.”

  I raise a brow. “Retrain?”

  She hops out of the closet pulling on her jeans with a wrinkled nose. “Oh, please. You just started replacing the toilet paper.”

  “That’s training, huh?”

  “Part of it. But we still have a way to go.”

  She doesn’t realize I’m in front of her as she pulls a T-shirt over her face. Blinded by the material, I sweep her up in my arms and hear her yelp as I toss her on the bed.

  “You ass,” she giggles, a sound I haven’t heard in a while. She slides her arms through the light material of her shirt regaining her balance on the bed and looks up at me through her lashes. Taking a second, I admire the pale freckles that dot her nose and the beautiful smile underneath. I live for that smile.

  “No makeup today, we’re in a hurry.” And I like her better without it.

  “I wasn’t planning on it, boss.”

  She kneels on the bed and looks at me pointedly. “You know, you were a circus animal, and look at you now,” she says, puffing some breath on her nails and polishing them just above her breast. “Living evidence of a job well-done. You could almost pass for a gentleman.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, my beloved.”

  “Never said that.” She steps off the bed and waves her hand dismissively. “Now put some of that training to use and make our bed, slob.”

  I’m already pulling the six pillows she insisted we needed that no one ever sees off the floors.

  “Don’t forget the pillows,” she bellows from the bathroom.

  “Yes, dear.”

  She pokes her head out. “We could always hire someone.”

  We have a lady come once a month to deep clean. I refuse to have anyone in my house in case I decide to get my wife naked on a whim. I do enough acting outside of the house. I don’t want either of us holding back for any reason for fear the staff will hear. And we can do our own damned dishes. Mila agrees with my logic a hundred percent and is just poking the bear because she loves pissing me off. It’s a pastime of hers to do it just enough to get me agitated while luring me into ravaging her. And I let her. Every. Single. Time.

  “Lines out, you cheap bastard,” she says, critiquing the way I set the pillows up before dodging the one I toss it at her.

  We run lines the whole way to the shooting range.

  “That’s hard work, I’m not afraid of hard work,” I snap. “Bring him to me.”

  Mila reads as one of Rayo’s soldiers. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Make it simple.”

  She pauses, turning the page. “Wow. This next scene is brutal.”

 
“Yeah,” I agree.

  She flips another page. “Just in the script notes I can tell Wes is obsessed. It’s overwritten.”

  “That’s what I love about it,” I say as we pull up to the lot.

  “I’m digging this,” she says with a sigh. Normally by now, she would have read the script twice. Guilty eyes meet mine. “I’ll start and finish tonight. I promise. I’ve been holding a grudge,” she admits. “But that’s over.” She’s finally showing her support, and it’s all I can ask for at this point. After parking the SUV, I reach over the console and grip her face, pulling her to me and kissing her soundly on the mouth. “Thank you.”

  “I’m behind you, Lucas. Always. I promise.”

  “I’m sorry about last night.”

  “You should be. You broke our wine date to play rock star.”

  “I am.”

  She opens her mouth to speak, and I pinch her lips. Her eyes narrow.

  “I know I’m not dealing with this the way you think I should. And I’m glad you’re behind me in this. I’m grateful. And I love you more than any husband has ever loved a wife. I mean that. But today I just want you and me, nothing else.”

  She pulls her lips away from my grasp. “I’m worried.” Empathy begins to well in her eyes, and I shake my head.

  “Just you and me today, Mila, I mean it.”

  With an exaggerated sigh, she opens her door. “Stubborn ass man.” Her rambling fades as she rounds the hood. And I can’t help but to laugh when I hear the grumbling mix of French and English catching words like ‘blood pressure’ and ‘wrinkles.’ She’s playfully helping me bat away the seriousness of the situation because it’s what I need. She opens my door growling at me, “Fine, come on, let’s go shoot some shit.”

  There’s my Dame.

  Lucas

  “Okay, beauty, now squeeze the trigger and be ready for the kickback.”

  She fires the gun, and Jake and I both laugh when we hear her scream.