by Ames, Alex
“Your guests are here, Mr. Hancock,” Laurie announced and ushered the Flints inside.
“Rick, my man, you’ve been busy!” marveled Josh as he was introduced to the kids.
“Don’t criticize his hobby,” Hal said.
Josh shook every Flint kid’s hand and made a little small talk; the small dressing room felt like a busy beehive. Britta had a beet-red face the entire time, well obscured by her hair, and Dana hid behind her father’s legs.
Another knock at the door brought in Louise. Whereas talking to Josh had been merely exciting, the introduction to Louise brought the older kids, including Hal, over the top. Even Britta shed her wall of hair and tried to get a word in with her.
Rick watched his gang with amusement. Like kids before the Christmas tree. Josh and Louise were both unknown people to them but at the same time familiar faces, from TV shows and the occasional kids’ movie. Josh acted like a big brother with Charles and Agnes, moved Britta out of her reserve by flirting a little with her, and even got a giggle out of Dana-in-hiding, now bravely beside her oldest sister. Louise, on the other hand, kept a certain distance. It was like she was on autopilot, saying the right things at the right time. Rick caught her several times watching Dana, quietly observing. Maternal feelings of a childless superstar? That’s unfair. What do I know about her, really?
After a few minutes, another production assistant came in and declared, “On set, please!”
Rick noticed that with that command both Josh and Louise turned some internal switch, and they became two professionals again. A last smile, much less brilliant, hugs around, and off they went, following the production assistant to the soundstage.
The next hour or so they watched the set rehearsal, the first test takes, and then the real takes. Dana’s batteries were used up, and she became restless, and Rick feared that she would start making noises soon. It was a fascinating spectacle, but Dana came first. After the wrap of the first scene, he tapped Laurie on the shoulder.
“Is there a place where I can sit or lie down with Dana? She’s getting cranky.”
“Sure,” Laurie said and showed him and Dana the lounge area, where a cold cuts and fruit buffet was feeding the hungry team. As the shooting was in full swing, only two other people occupied the space—actors from the soundstage next door it seemed, as they wore strange-looking military costumes. Maybe a science fiction movie? Rick mused, and he picked some melon pieces from the buffet for Dana. He then settled down in one of the fantastically comfy recliner chairs, watched Dana eat, and listened to the surroundings. Then Dana came over for a little hug time.
How comfortable, indeed. After a hard week and morning, hugging my little baby . . .
Rick fell asleep.
When Laurie woke him up half an hour later, Dana was gone.
Louise
They had finished the scene for the second take, and Roger was still not happy. Josh, Walter Brenner, and Louise were fully concentrated; it kept getting better and better.
“But we are not there yet,” Roger exclaimed. “The last bit of spice is missing—we need to take it a little bit further. We’ll do two more takes to get where we want to. Otherwise, no lunch for all three of you.”
Laurie came hurrying to his side and whispered to his ear.
“What? A kid?” Roger groaned and turned to the crew. “We have a kid missing on the premises! What imbecile has allowed a kid onto the set?” Laurie shrunk visibly, but of course she had been only the bearer of bad news.
Always the comedians, Walter and Louise stepped back and left Josh standing in front of Roger. He timidly raised his hand. “That imbecile is me, Rog.”
“And who let the kid loose? This is a dangerous place! Electricity, heavy equipment, trampling masses, hot lights, prop guns, don’t let me get started about what can happen to a lone kid here. Who lost the kid?”
“That’s me!” Rick said, coming forward with Hal. Agnes, Britta, and Charles stayed behind the camera. “I’d appreciate some help finding Dana. She is three years old, has shoulder-long . . .”
Roger threw some German efficiency into action. “We need no description, there is only one three-year-old on the whole studio campus. Where last seen?”
“I fell asleep with her in my arms in the lounge. I woke up, and she was gone,” Rick explained. Louise watched him, poor father. And poor baby. Little Dana had been the one watching everything from the secure place behind her father’s or her sister’s legs.
“Laurie, get security in here. Have them check stages 21, 22, and 28,” Roger directed. He turned to the crew, activated the public address system. “Listen up, a little kid is missing. Three years old. Split up and systematically search the soundstage and the admin rooms. Shooting is suspended, all teams back here in fifteen for report! Laurie, get us a floor plan of each level. Zack, zack, zack, eins, zwei, drei . . .” he quoted his idol, Billy Wilder, and clapped his hands.
“Thanks,” Rick said. Louise felt bad for him. First Dana missing and now stopping a multimillion-dollar film production.
Roger fumed at Josh. “I own you for this! Louise, Josh, use the fifteen minutes to improve the scene still ahead of us!”
The crew started searching the stage, looking behind every box, into every room and cupboard. Some security gorillas appeared and started searching the stages close by, also interrupting the shooting for two other productions.
Rick, the kids, and Hal helped as best as they could, shouting Dana’s name to come out, no fear. But Dana was nowhere to be found.
Louise and the other actors had gone back to their dressing rooms. Josh and Walter wanted to do some improvisation in their part of the scene, while Louise was craving to be alone for a few minutes. The schedule today had been tiring, and she wasn’t feeling her best anyway. A welcome break, if not for the wrong reason. She had Emile make her an herbal tea, went to her dressing room, and put on some light music. Paul Simon started crooning about whales and blue light.
What wrong with you, Lou-baby? Two weeks ago you would have taken your script and run through it, or organized the next day with Emile. Tired, tired, tired.
She lay down on the comfy couch that Emile had personalized for her with some cushions and decorations from home. She reached for an old, ragged Steiff bear that she had gotten at one of her first red-carpet events from a little girl in the crowd. It had light yellow fur, spotty in the typical cuddle places, like on the belly and the back. But her hands grabbed air; the bear was gone. Great, someone had stolen her bear. She hugged one of the cushions instead, closed her eyes, and tried to relax.
Relaxation wouldn’t come—too many people moving outside the door, fought off by Emile.
I am not alone. The realization swept over her. She couldn’t say what gave it away, but she felt sure. Or I am turning certified psycho. Then she remembered what the studio was in the middle of and got up carefully. She looked under the couch—only a number of shoeboxes. There was no wardrobe, the dressing table had no drawer, the costumes of the day hung on a rolling coat hanger. Of course she was alone.
Then, again, maybe not.
When in doubt, fake it.
“Dana, dear. I can see you,” she whispered. “You think I can’t see you, but I can.” She started moving around in her dressing room and played a game with herself. “I think I’m getting hot. Little Dana is somewhere close.” She went to the dressing table, watching the rest of the room through the mirror. “Is little Dana behind the wastebasket?” She grabbed the basket and playfully looked inside. “No, she is not. Is she . . . in the drawer?” Louise opened the middle drawer of the table. “Of course not, she is not that small. But I am getting hot, I know it.”
There was a rustling in the room, almost inaudible; Louise couldn’t identify from where.
She went on. “Here is my bag—maybe she’s in there?”
A small voice came from behind her, “Cold!”
Louise turned and played along, still unable to locate the source. “Sil
ly me, much too small. But she must be here somewhere . . .” The rustling became more distinct; it came impossibly from the couch. She stepped forward. Could it be the backrest cushion? She pulled the cushion forward, two child legs showed, and she removed the rest of the backrest to stare into the wide black eyes of Dana.
“Found you!” Louise said and touched Dana’s nose with a stretched finger.
She sat beside Dana, who made no attempt to get up from the uncomfortable hiding place. “What’s going on? Why did you run away?”
“I got a melon. There was a scary monster. The monster stood between Dad and me. And Dad was sleeping,” Dana explained.
“And then you came here and hid?”
“Monster didn’t find me here.”
“Well, I found you.”
“But you are no monster.”
“That is true.” Isn’t that so sweet.
Dana thought for a second. “And I made it easy.”
“Yes, thank you for that. I think this was a brilliant hiding place. I needed all the help I could get.” Louise tussled Dana’s hair. “What kind of monster chased you off?”
“A big hairy one.”
“A gorilla?”
“A Wookiee.”
“Your knowledge about alien species is admirable. Are you sure?”
“I know Wookiees.” Dana sat up and made a splendid impersonation of a Chewbacca growl.
Louise had to laugh. “That’s a Wookiee, all right.”
The door to the dressing room opened, and Emile popped his head in. “Everything okay here? I heard a strange noise.”
“It was this junior Wookiee here,” Louise said and tussled Dana’s hair.
Emile’s face lit up. “Oh, fantastic! I’ll call off the search!”
“And find her father, will ya?”
A minute later the whole gang poured into the dressing room, which suddenly became very crowded. The Flints gave Dana a group squeeze, and Dana had to explain the Wookiee incident again. Louise made some signs to Emile, who got the meaning. Everyone laughed at Dana’s explanation and impersonation. Suddenly a Wookiee growl echoed from the door. There stood a seven-foot-tall full-grown Wookiee. Dana’s eyes grew wide and then suspicious. She looked at the grown-ups—no one appeared to fear the furry monster. Then the Wookiee took off his head, revealing a black man with short, sweaty hair and a beard. He came forward and kneeled in front of Dana.
“Sorry to have scared you. I wanted to grab a drink in the lounge, saw your stare and then you were gone in a flash,” the actor explained. “I am Dan.” He offered Dana a furry hand.
Dana looked at him quizzically and then took the hand. “You are Dan, I am Dana. But Charlie calls me Dieter.” Laughs again from everyone.
“Good to meet you. Both are very nice names.”
“You are not scary.”
“Well, you can ask my kids about that. No, I am an actor like Louise and Josh here. I play a Wookiee in a Star Wars computer game production. Tonight I’ll be home again, eating pizza and watching TV.”
“Now I know what a Wookiee eats!” Dana stated wisely and brought down the house again.
seven
Ship Positions
Rick
Rick’s Sunday night date with Debbie Flack, the mother of Dana’s day-care friend Cheyenne could not be filed under success. Debbie was all right to look at but talked excessively about her two kids and issues and problems, and had an inherent negativity that somehow shadowed every minute. Hal, who pointedly kept score on an old whiteboard behind his desk, made one mark in the thumbs-down column on Monday. “Zero thumbs up, five thumbs down. Rick, my longtime friend, I worry about you.”
“Hal, you kill me. Thank you for your consideration, but feel free to organize the next date if you think your interpretation of my taste in women is surpassing my own.”
“Done deal, buddy!” Hal immediately started browsing his little blue book.
“Hey!”
“Hey what?” Hal said over the book.
“It feels wrong that I date girls that had been with you.”
“What’s your problem? You only get . . .”
“No! Get creative.”
Hal waved his book. “But not all of these were . . .”
“Hal!”
“Got it. Fresh ideas, I’ll get creative. All for my lonely, desperate widowed friend.”
Monday the Flint kids were the stars of the neighborhood, fueled by their stories of visiting the film set and cemented by some Twitter and blog reports of a mysterious half-hour shutdown of the Sell! Sell! Sell! production. Josh Hancock’s Facebook page showed a photo of a Wookiee bumping fists with a Dana.
Flint and Heller Fine Wooden Boats became busy on Tuesday when Josh’s boat arrived.
“Here they come,” Styler came running onto the yard, waving his arms like a madman, followed by a police car with flashing lights, then the trailer, and at the end another police car. Hal instructed the trucker on how to position the trailer. The plan was to move the boat onto fixtures that kept the giant stabilized in the middle of the yard and allowed construction access from all sides.
The event of a sixty-foot boat arriving spread throughout the yacht harbor community of Oxnard like a wildfire, and when the rented mobile crane got into action to lift the boat from the trailer onto the holding fixtures, a large crowd cheered the crane operator on. A majestic and spectacular sight. Flint and Heller was a recognized company in Oxnard; everyone involved in boating was proud that the best wooden shipbuilders on the West Coast had set up shop here. And even the laymen among the boating folk could see the beauty of the yacht that was otherwise in a pitiful state. M&M adjusted fixtures every five yards, and Styler gave small signs to the crane operator to lower the boat by another inch.
Rick and Hal stood on the sides. They had climbed on top of a stack of wooden beams for a better overview and gave commands now and then.
“Mr. Boatstruck will need to have deep pockets to get this one going,” Rick muttered after the circus was over and the elegant but derelict boat dominated the yard. The hull consisted of lot of holes and obvious rotten beams, the keel had deep breaks and cuts every few feet, and the deck looked as if a giant had tried to punch holes into it with a finger. There was no cabin structure, and the mast was broken off like a toothpick after use. Most mechanical parts and deck fittings were missing, probably stolen by metal thieves. The keel weight was gone; for a boat of this size that would have been around fifteen metric tons of lead—another good deal for a metal sale. But then there were the lines. Oh, those lines! Where many boats of this size were wide-hipped to maximize the space below deck for living quarters, a necessity to spend many days at sea or to have nice vacations, this boat made no compromises and stayed lean and mean from stern to bow. Rick ran his hand across the lines, and he understood what the unknown original designer had in mind. Most boats made compromises between convenience, comfort, speed, and stability. But this one had only one clear intention: speed. Had anyone told Rick to design a boat, green field, white paper, no holds barred, Rick would never have even attempted such a design so radical, so brutal in its consequences, and so straightforwardly aimed at a single goal. This was no boat for a sailor. This was no boat for civilization. This was a boat made for raw elements.
“How old you think she is?” Rick asked Hal.
Hal tapped the hull with the pointed end of a screwdriver a few times to test its consistency. More than once the driver ended up embedded in spongy soft matter that used to be wood. “Based on the state of rot, many decades. Maybe early sixties. It takes forty years in a salty environment to create the amount of rot that we see here on the side walls.”
“That’s what I think, too,” Rick said.
“Do you think she has some sort of history?” Hal asked. “Such a gutsy design must have been the result of a very specific vision. Not too many builders in the fifties or sixties who would have dared.”
Rick took out his smart phone and snappe
d some photos. “Let’s test the waters with our friends out East. Maybe someone knows or remembers something.”
“You sound hesitant, my friend,” Hal said.
Rick pointed with both of his hands. “Look at this beast. If we repair it according to its original intent, chances are high that our client will kill himself on the first trip out.”
Hal laughed. “Now that would be true advertising for us! ‘Flint and Heller—Finely Crafted Deadly Boats’”
Then the real work began. Every existing piece of the boat’s wood had to be catalogued and evaluated. The state of rot, the state of fit. Every measure had to be taken, which was not a trivial task for a three-dimensional structure with curved lines everywhere. In fact, this was classical reengineering, using the real-life object to draw up the construction and the plans. Tedious work for the gang for the days to come.
Thursday afternoon Hal cornered Rick with a blind date with a former client of theirs, or better, the ex-wife of a former client.
“A very attractive ex-wife of a former client, I might add,” Hal said. “She turned forty recently and has a great laugh. It will be a fun night, I promise.”
“I might not be over Bella completely,” Rick said, defending his reluctance. “And the string of the failed dates like with Debbie did not bolster up my confidence.”
“To spice up the deal: Cheryl has a great body.”
“I don’t know, Hal.” Rick was not really motivated.
“Rick-baby, you will never be over Bella! You guys and the kids were meant to be forever. But life goes on, and you know that she wouldn’t have wanted you to be alone for the rest of your life. And to drive the knife home and twist it, last week you actually made a dead-Bella joke with none other than Louise Waters. If you can do that, you can also date another woman. Anyway, I knew you would try to chicken out, so I pinched your iPhone over lunch and already responded to the text message she sent you. Santa Monica Pier bridge, Saturday, six o’clock sharp.”