Pretty as a Picture

by Elizabeth Little

  Gavin peers over my shoulder. “Everyone says she looks like Liza, but I don’t see it.”

  I turn the picture to the side, considering. “I don’t know. I’d say she looks more like Annemieke Janssen.”

  Gavin hums. “Maybe a little Charlize Theron?”

  I hand the photo back to Billy. “She was lovely,” I say, honestly.

  He tucks it into his wallet with care. “I didn’t kill her.”

  I lean back against the wall, my fingers curling around a lip of rock. For some reason I’m inclined to take him at his word, but do I believe him because he’s credible? Do I believe him because he’s convincing? Or do I believe him because we happen to have something in common?

  “Have you thought about bringing this to Tony?” I ask.

  Gavin shakes his head. “Tony says it would taint the process. I begged—for weeks—but I got nowhere. Eventually I tried to sneak Billy into my trailer, thinking I could ambush Tony with a meeting—I just really believed that if he saw Billy’s face, he’d rethink things, you know?”

  I glance at Billy. He’s looking off to the side, two fingers tapping his temple.

  “But then,” Gavin continues, “while I was on set, an AD found him, assumed he was a trespasser, and punched half his jaw in. That’s when Anjali called in the Delta Force guys—to make sure Billy can’t get anywhere near set again.”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re ex-SEALs,” I murmur.

  “Meanwhile, the police aren’t exactly forthcoming, so the only people on our side right now are the girls—and now you, I suppose. But unless something massive changes, we’re at something of an impasse.”

  I draw my lip between my teeth, thinking. “You could quit.”

  “Which would accomplish—what, exactly?”

  “The studio won’t make the movie without you. So if you quit—all this goes away.”

  Gavin’s shaking his head. “No, the people on the island will still think he did it.”

  “Yes, but at least things wouldn’t get worse.”

  “And Tony would make it work without me, he’d find a way. He’d have effects build a Gavin Davies skin suit and make Anjali do the part.”

  I turn to Billy. “I haven’t heard you say what you want to do.”

  Billy sets his cheek against his shoulder and gazes at the water, at the small rowboat rising and falling with the tide.

  His answer is so familiar to me I find myself marveling at its sound on someone else’s lips.

  “I just want them to leave me alone.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Gavin and I return to the hotel separately. He elects to make his usual grand entrance through the front door. While everyone’s busy looking at him, I take the opportunity to slip in through the sun deck, ducking behind a column to hide from a PA. I feel my face split into a grin, and I nearly trip over my feet at the implication: that I’m beginning to enjoy the cloak-and-dagger of it all.

  The pleasure is short-lived, replaced seconds later by a sick twist in the pit of my stomach.

  I’m doing it again. Convincing myself that I’m important—that I matter. That I might have a key role to play in what’s to come. That I’m Sarah Connor. Luke Skywalker. Kung-Fu Panda. That I may appear to be an inconsequential klutz now, but just you wait: There’s a training montage in my future.

  How easy it is to think I might be the hero of this story.

  When in truth I probably don’t even have a speaking part.

  I dash back to my room to clean up, then I hurry down to today’s location. I actually think I’m about to make it there on time, when—

  “Out of my way!”

  A hand shoots out in front of me; I flatten myself against the wall to avoid it, my script tumbling to the floor as Daisuke storms past, a light meter in his hand, a trail of grips and electricians in his wake. He proceeds to fling the doors to the squash court open with all the relish of an archvillain unveiling a doomsday device.

  I gaze after him, rubbing at my nose.

  He seems much nicer than most DPs.

  I lean down to retrieve my script. When I lift it, a square of yellow paper flutters to the ground—a rogue Post-it.

  I grab the note and flip it over. A string of numbers, scrawled in Paul’s now-familiar handwriting.

  Unlike the other notes Kim gave me, there’s no neatly printed notation at the bottom indicating the scene it references. So this must be a note Paul left for himself.

  I squeeze my way through to the squash court, heading for the empty chairs in the far back corner, opposite Video Village (which today only has two perilously mounted monitors). I sit down, studying the note in my hands.

  A package wrapped in aluminum foil falls into my lap.

  I look up to find Suzy and Grace settling into the seats behind me.

  “Just the way you like it,” Grace whispers. “Disgusting and overprocessed.”

  I peel back a corner of foil and peek inside. A sandwich. I barely manage to say thank you before I’m tearing into it. This is the first food I’ve had all day.

  The girls lean forward, settling their arms on the backs of the chairs on either side of me.

  “I thought you aren’t supposed to be around the actors,” I say around a mouthful of peanut butter.

  “We aren’t,” Suzy agrees.

  “What’s that?” Grace asks, pointing to the Post-it.

  “No idea. You wouldn’t happen to know what it means, do you?”

  “I can look it up. Hold on.” Suzy disappears into her hoodie—consulting her phone, no doubt. After a moment, her head pops back out. “It’s an international phone number,” she says.

  I squint at the paper. “I don’t recognize the country code.”

  “Google says the Netherlands.”

  I take a bite of my sandwich. Chew it. Swallow.

  “Huh.”

  “Huh?” Grace asks.

  “It’s probably nothing,” I say. “I mean, there are, what, twenty million people living in the Netherlands?”

  Suzy ducks back under her hoodie. “Seventeen-point-three,” she says, her voice muffled.

  That’s seventeen million two hundred thousand nine hundred ninety-nine people who aren’t the soon-to-be ex-wife of Anton Rees. Plus, Paul’s been in this business a long time. He probably knows tons of people from the Netherlands. Like Jan de Bont. Or Eddie Van Halen.

  I’m probably jumping to conclusions.

  What would Paul have wanted with Annemieke, anyway? She’s not in the—

  “We heard you met with Billy,” Grace says.

  “How’d you—nevermind, obviously you know everything. Yes, I did. You didn’t tell me he and Caitlyn were friends.”

  “Well—that’s his story.”

  I twist around in my seat. “You don’t believe it?”

  Suzy shrugs. “Isn’t that what they always say?”

  “Do people really lie about having friends?”

  “They certainly lie to themselves about it.”

  I look at the two of them. They’re pressed together from shoulder to knee, their affection so strong it practically shimmers around them, like a deflector shield or that pink goo from Ghostbusters II. It’s so easy for them. It occurs to me, not for the first time, that my childhood might have left me with a few gaps in my social understanding.

  “You’ve only known each other for, what, four weeks?” I ask.

  Suzy gives it some thought. “A little more than that. Since Memorial Day.”

  “But you seem like you’ve known each other for longer.”

  They glance at each other.

  “It’s just one of those things,” Suzy says.

  “‘Things’?”

  She waves a hand vaguely. “Yeah.”

  “So there was, what, a moment? When you kne
w? That you were destined to be together?”

  “I mean, you know what it’s like—having a best friend,” Grace says. “Right?”

  I hesitate. “Of course.”

  They exchange another endlessly expressive look.

  Suzy leans forward, wrapping her hands around the chair in front of her. “So a few days after we got here, we were climbing around back behind the hotel, exploring some of the beaches and rocks and . . . stuff.”

  “You were looking for clues, weren’t you?”

  She scrunches up her nose. “Do you want to hear this story or not?”

  I sigh and gesture at her to go on.

  “Anyway, the sun was setting, and we knew Grace’s dad would be pissed if we were out any later, so we decided to give up and go back inside. But by then the light was, like—you know in the early evening when it goes all soft and golden, like an Instagram filter?”

  “Magic hour?”

  “Yeah, that. And Grace had all this awesome music on her phone I’d never heard of, so we just kind of sat down on a rock together, and I wore one earbud and she wore the other, and we looked out at the ocean and listened to this song and everything was so chill, time just sort of, I don’t know. Stopped or something.”

  Grace gives me a look. “The song she’s talking about is actually super long, so that probably added to the effect.”

  Suzy elbows her in the ribs. “I was being poetic, you dork. What I’m trying to say is that with Grace, I can just kind of—be.”

  Then she elbows Grace again for good measure.

  I sit back, thinking hard. Amy and I have had moments I cherish, moments of connection, like when we’ve been stuck on something for hours and then she makes a suggestion that sparks something in me that sparks something in her and suddenly the ideas are coming fast and fierce, one after the other, a rapid-fire hand-stack building to a team cheer, and when we reach the top we’re breathless, laughing, together.

  But have we ever had that outside an editing room? If we have, I can’t remember—and if I can’t remember, it seems unlikely that we have.

  That sort of thing would stay with you, right?

  If I’d been alongside Grace and Suzy that day, I would’ve spent the afternoon grumbling about the smell of the ocean and the sand in my shoes. And I would’ve passed on the music because earbuds never fit quite right, and even if they had I still would’ve declined because I’m just generally opposed to sharing objects that are placed inside bodily orifices—not that we would have even gotten to that point to begin with, because Grace would have said something anodyne like, “Wow, what a nice sunset,” and I wouldn’t have been able to keep myself from informing them that, actually, the sun hasn’t set, it’s still about six degrees above the horizon, which reduces the lighting ratio and scatters the blue light in such a way that we’re left with the diffuse, golden light so characteristic of that particular time of day, and, hey, you know what we should do instead of this? Rewatch Days of Heaven.

  And that, as they say, would have been the ballgame.

  No one wants to share earbuds with that girl.

  “Sounds a lot like love at first sight,” I say.

  “I guess,” Suzy says. “But, like, the friend kind.”

  “Maybe that’s how it was for Billy and Caitlyn, too.”

  I turn back around, feeling unsettled—though I couldn’t tell you why.

  * * *

  —

  We’re shooting today in the largest of the hotel’s three squash courts, which is currently home to the sets for Billy’s childhood bedroom and the Lewes PD interrogation room. Right now, the camera is trained on the latter, which consists of a metal table, two chairs, and plywood flats painted an industrial blue. Gavin’s sitting at the table, wearing jeans and a dark T-shirt. They’ve done something to his foundation to make him look paler than usual. He delivers his lines directly to camera, over and over again, until I’ve heard them so many times the words begin to lose their meaning.

  “I would never.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I loved her.”

  At the end of each take, Tony doesn’t make any changes or offer any feedback. He doesn’t even come out from behind the camera.

  He just says, “Again, from the top.”

  “Again, from the top.”

  “Again, from the top.”

  Maybe these words lose their meaning, too, because on take 32, Gavin places his palms on the table, gazes at his fingertips, and goes off script.

  “Being her friend was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he says. “It wasn’t some kind of consolation prize.”

  Tony’s head shoots up. “Cut! Gavin—what the fuck?”

  Gavin’s body doesn’t move, but he lifts his eyes to meet Tony’s. “I thought I’d give you a couple of options.”

  Tony’s hand opens and closes at his side. “Scripty, if you would, please provide Gavin with the correct line.”

  Kim hurries over, script in hand. “‘Don’t you know what it’s like to want something you know you can never have?’” she reads, mechanically.

  Tony nods sharply. “Yes, thank you. Okay, everyone, let’s reset, please.”

  Gavin rolls out his neck and adjusts the angle of his chair. A makeup artist steps in to blot his forehead.

  Five minutes later, it happens again.

  “You know what Caitlyn always tells me?” Gavin says, his eyes closed, his body moving, just a little, from side to side. “She says—she says, ‘Billy? If you’re gonna lose the game no matter what, don’t bother playing by their rules.’”

  “Is he quoting War Games?” Suzy whispers.

  “Gavin,” Tony murmurs. “That’s two strikes.”

  “What?” Gavin says, eyes wide. “I’m just saying what feels right in the moment.”

  Tony lowers his voice further. “If I wanted to work at an improv theater, I would buy one. Now, if you please—we’re still rolling.”

  Gavin nods. “Okay, okay. Just a second.” He takes a sip of water and cracks his knuckles. Then he looks directly at me—and winks.

  I blink and Gavin’s gone, replaced by his character, a frightened, confused, and increasingly despondent young man. His nostrils flare and his chin comes up; his hands wrap around each other.

  “It’s the same world as yours,” he says, gazing at the far corner of the table. “I just notice it differently.”

  A walkie-talkie crashes into the flat behind Gavin’s head.

  For several endless silent seconds, everyone in the room stares at the square-shaped divot it left behind. Then, as one, we trace its trajectory back to Tony’s still-extended hand.

  It’s Gavin who breaks the silence. He stands up, lifts his shirt, and starts untaping his mic. “I’m not going to work under these conditions.”

  Anjali rushes over and wraps a hand around his wrist. “Gavin, stop.”

  He shakes her off. “I don’t want your bullshit, Anjali. I know you see it. I know you know. And whatever magic you’ve pulled off in the past, it’s not happening here. This is a fucking shitshow.”

  Anjali grimaces. “And yet, according to the terms of your contract, this shitshow must go on.”

  Tony comes up between them. He curls his hands around Anjali’s shoulders and draws her away from Gavin.

  “Forgive her,” he says. “Someone once told her she’s funny and she’s never gotten over it.”

  “You told me that,” Anjali says.

  “And I’ve regretted it ever since.” Tony turns to Gavin, his expression mild. “What do you think we’re doing here, exactly? Do you think this is fantasy? Do you think this is make-believe? Do you think facts don’t matter?”

  Gavin laughs. “Since when do you care about facts?”

  Tony run
s a finger along the edge of the table then knocks it with his knuckle. “Did you know that this is the same model that was used in the police station here in 1994? Same design, same material, same finish. I made the art department scour the country until they found one just right. This one came from a yard sale outside Buffalo, almost five hundred miles away. Now, why do you think I did that, Gavin—because I’m sloppy? Because I’m careless? Because I don’t care about the facts?” He leans forward. “Or did I do it because no one cares about this movie more than I do? Did I do it because no one knows more about this case than I do? Did I do it because no one else is capable of coming up with a vision even half as vital as mine—much less executing it?”

  Gavin considers this for a long moment.

  Then he shakes his head. “I think you did it because you’re a controlling dick.”

  Tony drops his hands to his sides, all pretense of civility abandoned. “Fuck you, Gavin.”

  “Sorry, boss, some things even I won’t do for money.”

  Never one to pass up an exit line, Gavin pushes past the camera and strides out the door.

  NINETEEN

  It’s the sound guy who recovers first.

  “So I guess that means we don’t need to get room tone?”

  Tony mutters something inarticulate and stalks over to Video Village.

  Anjali turns and takes in the room, her eyes narrowed. “If any of this shows up on YouTube, I will hire Bob Mueller himself to find out who did it.”

  Grace leans forward. “Is that it, then? Is the movie canceled?”

  I shake my head. “No, people on movies threaten to quit all the time.”

  “Like that?”

  I look over at the cracked shell of the walkie-talkie. “Well—usually it’s the actors who throw things. In my experience, anyway.”

  Suzy slumps against her seat. “I do not want to go back to New Jersey.”

  “I’m sure it won’t come to that.”

  They make identical sounds of disbelief.