Pretty as a Picture

by Elizabeth Little

  “Why don’t you cast an actor to play me?” I suggest. “It’s not like anyone knows what I look like.”

  I mean this to be helpful, really I do, but the words come out sullen and curdled, and I’m about to apologize—when I abruptly realize I don’t owe this person anything. My lips curl into a shape they’re not accustomed to and then, the strangest sensation: pins and needles, beneath my fingernails.

  Kyle, oblivious, comes over to crouch down in front of me.

  “Marissa, this could be something really special,” he says, as if that holds any weight in our industry. LA is a town of a thousand billboards for a thousand movies, and somehow, each and every one of them is captivating, astonishing, revelatory, extraordinary. Enough exposure to language like that and it changes you. Even the simplest of exchanges becomes an exercise in descriptive pyrotechnics. No one in Hollywood is ever just okay. They’re amazing. They’re spectacular. They’re great. None of it means anything.

  Strange—but I miss it terribly.

  “I just want to go home,” I say.

  He claps his hands together. “Great. We’ll do it in LA.”

  Gavin groans. “Read the room, Kyle. She hates your guts. She’s not doing it.”

  Someone sucks in a sharp breath. Suzy, I think. Or maybe me.

  Kyle turns to me, a wounded look on his face. “Marissa? Is that true?”

  My mouth opens and closes a few times. “Does it matter?”

  He straightens and shoves his sleeves up above his elbows. “Why don’t I give your agent a call?”

  “This isn’t a negotiation,” I say.

  He smiles. “Everything’s a negotiation.”

  “In that case,” Gavin says, “what do I have to pay you to get the fuck out of here?”

  Kyle’s expression hardens. “When you’re through acting like children, we’ll be in touch.”

  They turn to leave.

  I throw back the covers. “Anjali—wait.”

  She spins around, blinking in confusion. “What—me?”

  Her complexion is dull. Her lips are pale. I’d swear her eyebrows have thinned out.

  She looks like shit.

  “You don’t really want to do this, do you?” I ask.

  A frown tugs at the corners of her mouth. “Do what?”

  “Work for this clown,” Gavin supplies.

  She glances at Kyle. He’s already on his phone, oblivious to everything else around him. “I mean—I have to have a job.”

  I climb out of bed and stand up. “Anjali, you can do better.”

  A muscle twitches under her eye. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re Amy Evans’s fucking college roommate.”

  “Well—actually, it was grad school.”

  “You think I could get a job in this town looking like that?” She waves in the vague direction of my face. “Fuck, no. I don’t get to be weird.”

  My mouth falls open. “I’m not—”

  “Don’t you realize how lucky you are? We don’t all have a future Oscar winner to fall back on. So—feel free to take your big stand or whatever. I’m going to make sure I can keep paying my rent.”

  She stalks out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  * * *

  —

  On the sixth night, while Gavin’s glowering at a married couple looking for a vacation home in Barbados, Grace clears her throat.

  “Marissa?”

  I let my head loll to the left. “Hmm?”

  “You have an email. From Amy.”

  My hand hitches; I catch the cat’s spine with the edge of a fingernail. She startles awake, tumbling onto the bed. She shoots me a betrayed look from under her paw.

  “Marissa?” Grace asks. “Did you hear me?”

  “What does it say?”

  She hesitates. “It looks kind of personal.”

  I pull the cat back up onto my chest and stroke the bridge of her little nose.

  “I’ll read it later.”

  * * *

  —

  On the tenth day Suzy and Grace say they’re thinking about making a podcast. It won’t be like all those other true crime podcasts, they rush to assure me.

  I tell them, with great affection, that I’d rather eat my own face.

  * * *

  —

  On the thirteenth day, they let us leave. The girls head out first, around lunchtime, cramming an impressive amount of luggage into the back of a twelve-person van that looks just barely big enough to hold the burly, tattooed line cooks who are milling off to the side, chatting and sucking down last-second smokes. Most of the hotel’s employees were excused days ago, but they stuck around to keep an eye on the girls.

  Suzy slams her shoulder against the rear door until it latches shut. Then she turns to me, wiping sweat from her brow.

  “I would like to give you a hug,” she says, “but I also want to respect your bodily integrity.”

  “Because it’s totally okay if you don’t like hugs,” Grace says, coming over.

  Suzy nods. “Never forget you’re the boss of your own body.”

  I should let them. I really should. I should gather them close and reflect on the strength of their skinny arms and the ease of their affection, the astonishing breadth of their compassion, and I should resolve, from this point forward, to set aside my fear and discomfort and displeasure, and embrace, literally and figuratively, mankind’s limitless capacity for love. I can almost hear it now: the satisfying plunk of a character arc slotting into place.

  I actually go so far as to take a small step toward them.

  But maybe this arc isn’t an arc. Maybe it’s a loop, emphatically closed. Maybe I shouldn’t have to change: a radical thought.

  Too radical for me, I think. Because I don’t want them to feel unappreciated or worry they’re unlovable or think I’m wrong—or think they’re wrong.

  So I open my arms and beckon them near. When their fingers press against my shoulder blades, I can’t help but wish I were a grasshopper or a spider or a snake so I could leave my skin behind, but I push through. I want to give them this.

  At long last, they pull away.

  Suzy pulls out her phone and taps at the screen. “Are you on Facebook?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “Twitter?”

  “God, no.”

  “Kik?”

  “You’re making that up.”

  Suzy and Grace exchange a look.

  “Whatever,” Suzy says, “we’ll find you. We’re serious about that podcast.”

  “And I’m serious about my face.”

  They’re still dimpling at me through the back window when the van takes them away.

  I bet I don’t even last two weeks before I give in.

  * * *

  —

  Gavin, predictably, gets picked up by helicopter. He doesn’t bother saying good-bye. He knows it would ruin the effect.

  * * *

  —

  And then it’s just me and Isaiah.

  We hitch a ride to the dock with Little Bob, who drops us off with minimal fanfare.

  “Just doing my job,” he mumbles when I try to thank him, as if the production hadn’t shut down in spectacular, public fashion. Although I suppose if anyone on the crew was somehow still drawing a salary, it would be the teamsters.

  I secure my backpack and shoulder the soft-sided traveling case I ordered online. Isaiah is heading for the south end of the dock, toward the sleek cruiser Anjali chartered to transport the remaining crew. It takes me a moment to realize the suitcase rolling behind him is my own.

  I run over and tug the rollaboard from his grasp. “I’m not going with you.”

  “Yeah, I know, you hate water. We’ve been over this.”

  “No—I mean I�
��ve arranged for an alternate mode of transportation.”

  He looks over my shoulder—at the other boat that’s docked here. “You sure?”

  I nod. “Positive.”

  “So this is it?”

  “Yeah. Probably.” I look down at my toes and wiggle them a little against the tips of my shoes. “You should probably know that I’m not really good at this.”

  “This?”

  “Being in touch, I mean. Maintaining friendships. I, um—I don’t really like email and I don’t really like the phone. And I don’t really like texting. Because whenever I try to reach out to someone I just mess it up, like I’ll talk too much about P. T. Anderson or answer too many rhetorical questions or text too many times in a row even though I have a Post-it on my computer that literally says, ‘Don’t text too many times in a row.’ But you should know: That doesn’t mean I won’t be thinking of you.”

  I draw a breath and look up at him.

  “Not in a creepy way,” I add. “I mean I’ll be wishing you well. Like—in life.”

  “Would it make a difference if I said I’d also accept a telegram?”

  I shake my head. “How would I send a telegram? I don’t even know where you live.”

  The corner of his mouth kicks up. “Maybe one day that’ll change.”

  I let myself look at the crinkles next to his eyes one last time. “Good-bye, Isaiah.”

  I take my suitcase and head toward the other end of the dock.

  “Hey, Marissa.”

  I turn. “Yeah?”

  “How many Army Rangers does it take to change a lightbulb?”

  My lips part. “How many?”

  “Five. One to change the lightbulb and four to talk about it on the Tonight Show.”

  I tilt my head to the side and study his expression.

  “It’s funny because they love publicity,” I say eventually.

  “That’s right.”

  “And you hate the Rangers.”

  “Yup.”

  “Because you’re a SEAL.”

  He closes the distance between us and taps me, one last time, on the nose, like we’ve been playing charades all this time and we’ve just figured out the answer together. My smile’s so big I think my face is breaking.

  “See?” he says. “We’ll get there in the end.”

  SUZY KOH: I’m so sorry, but we read your email.

  AMY EVANS: Oh my God, you mean the email? The furious, five-page list of all the reasons she’s my favorite goddamned person in this whole, cursed world?

  SUZY KOH: That’s right.

  GRACE PORTILLO: It was awesome.

  AMY EVANS: Would you believe it took her ten days to respond to that?

  SUZY KOH: I definitely would. She looked terrified when it came in.

  AMY EVANS: She’s such a goober. If she would just tell me what she’s worried about, we’d be able to figure it out. But instead she just spins out these wild stories in her head. Did you know she thought I wanted to marry Josh? I mean—what? I liked the guy, but we were never that serious. I just got mad at her for keeping things from me and for automatically assuming I’d pick a dude over her. What the hell.

  GRACE PORTILLO: So you’ve made up?

  AMY EVANS: I love Marissa—I’ll always love Marissa. And I tell her all the time. Sometimes I just have to squeeze her shoulders until she remembers it’s true.

  SUZY KOH: I heard you’re making a new movie together.

  AMY EVANS: Yeah, we start shooting in April, I can’t wait. It’s going to be fucking unbelievable—and we have the most amazing new producer.

  THIRTY-TWO

  It’s different this time, stepping onto Billy Lyle’s boat. I have a cat with me, for one thing.

  “Best bring her up to the bridge,” Billy says, eyeing the traveling case.

  “You think?”

  “Well—cats don’t like water, right?”

  We both look down. The cat’s pushing her face against the netting at the front of the bag, purring loudly.

  “I don’t think she’s very good at being a cat,” I say. But I hold the carrier out to him all the same.

  Billy slings the bag over his shoulder and heads for the ladder. He looks back when he realizes I’m not following. His gaze drops to my hands: They’re plucking at the ties on the nearest life preserver.

  “It’s the highest point on the boat,” he says after a moment. “The last to go under, if we sink.”

  “Not if we’re hit side-on by a rogue wave.”

  “In that case it won’t matter where you are.”

  My brows pinch together. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  He shrugs. “Just stating a fact. Whether or not it makes you feel better is up to you.”

  He heads up to the bridge; I stay where I am. After a moment, the boat pulls away from the dock, and I let myself gaze at Kickout, at the Shack, at a place I know I will never think of with anything like affection or pleasure or nostalgia no matter how lovely and dreamlike it appears now, gilded by the late-afternoon light. In just a few minutes the island will be small enough that I’ll be able to squish out the sight of it with my finger and thumb.

  Good riddance.

  I make my way to the front of the boat, and soon Billy comes back down to join me. He braces his forearms on the railing, canting his upper body forward, out over the water—still, after everything that’s happened, drawn back to the island.

  His hair, I think, is the kind of blond you’re supposed to grow out of.

  Something unfurls inside me, something slow and warm and gentle, and I decide to do something about it.

  “The sun’s setting,” I say.

  Billy gives me an unimpressed look. “It tends to do that.”

  “You know what they call this—in movies, I mean? They call this ‘magic hour.’”

  He takes a beat, then makes an encouraging noise in the back of his throat. I go on.

  “It’s not really an hour, though. It’s an optically advantageous period during which the sun is approximately ten degrees above the horizon.”

  I watch Billy very carefully out of the corner of my eye.

  “It depends on the season, then,” he says.

  I let out a breath. “Yes.”

  “And the weather.”

  I nod. “Yes.”

  “And the latitude and the topography.”

  “Yes. Everything has to be exactly right. Perfect.”

  “So—that’s why it’s magic.”

  I scuff my left foot against the deck.

  “No,” I say. “It’s magic because it cuts down on the electric bill.”

  There’s nothing natural about the sound he makes in response: It’s the noise you’d make if you taught yourself to laugh by breaking up someone else’s delight into bits and pieces and trying to put it back together again. You can hear the cracks.

  I pull my ponytail over my shoulder and pick at the ends. “Billy—do you think it’s better to be alone?”

  He nods, and the motion carries down through his neck and spine, so in the end, his entire body rocks in acknowledgment.

  My face must show my disappointment, because he gives me a look of patent disbelief. “What were you expecting? I live on a boat.”

  “Not because you want to.”

  “Marissa, I have family in Rhode Island. An aunt and uncle. They are—unaccountably fond of me. After I got out of the hospital, they offered to set me up in a little place outside Providence. They even found a job for me.”

  “Why didn’t you go? Wouldn’t that have been easier than staying here?”

  The corner of his mouth twists. Up or down, who knows, and with him I’m not so sure it matters. “Wherever you go,” he says, “there you are.”

  He fall
s quiet, then, and I suppose I don’t have much hope of figuring out what he’s thinking, because while there are at least ten kinds of silences that could apply in this particular situation, not a single one would apply to this particular person.

  Instead, I curl my fingers around the railing and wait.

  The water’s calm today, the boat steady, sure, whisper-soft, and when my eyes land on a wedge of unbroken horizon, it’s not so hard to believe that we’re not moving at all. It’s the kind of stillness you’d expect to be broken by a dog barking in the distance.

  Billy shifts, finally, a roll of his shoulders as easy and inevitable as the roll of the ocean.

  “I suppose,” he says, “it’s not so terrible if you find the right person.”

  I blink. “You really think so?”

  “I do.”

  I pry my fingers off the railing.

  “Okay. Good.” I shake the feeling back into my hands. “Good.”

  I angle my body to the left; toward him, just a little.

  Then, when I realize it doesn’t bother me, just a little more.

  If I look forward, I know, I’ll be able to see the ferry terminal in Lewes. There’ll be a car waiting for me there, and a driver. Not Isaiah. Just a regular guy.

  My flight doesn’t leave until late tonight, but I’ll go straight to the airport—Baltimore this time—and even though I’m flying coach, I’ll pay to use the premium lounge, because business travelers want nothing to do with anyone. I’ll sneak the cat cold cuts from the buffet and watch The Right Stuff on my computer while I wait. Then I’ll sit in a window seat on the flight to Vegas and an aisle seat on the flight to Burbank, and I’ll take a Lyft to the pet-friendly apartment I leased over the phone this morning. Tomorrow Nell will send me a list of open assignments, and I’ll pick whichever one starts first, even if it’s Transformers. I’ll see if I can’t work up the guts to text Isaiah.

  Eventually, I’ll call Amy.

  But right now—

  I check my watch.

  —right now I have seventeen minutes left. Seventeen minutes in this light, in this air, in this unexpected company. Seventeen minutes moving though the world with someone by my side. Someone who understands me. Not talking, not touching, not looking into each other’s eyes, not needing to apologize, not needing to explain why.