How to End a Love Story(87)
“You got it, boss,” he says, reminding himself who he works for.
He turns on the video feed to the soundstages at the end of the day, because they’re still filming and some surviving idiotic thread of hope in him insists, because maybe, maybe she’ll walk in front of the camera during a rolling reset and he’ll get to see her.
She doesn’t, of course, but he finds the familiar sound of production soothing anyway.
“You can forget about this, right?” a pouting, blond mean girl says to her mousier costar. She leans forward and grows hazy, then her face breaks into a nervous smile as she looks into camera. “Sorry. Totally blew past my mark.”
The bell rings and the screen goes to black as the camera cuts, only to return again, the same setup, take two. The crew’s moving fast now; everyone wants to go home.
“You can forget about this,” the actress repeats. “Right?”
Grant has never liked this line. He thinks Suraya has a tendency to write the subtext of a scene into dialogue, a leftover habit from a decade of working on the most networky of network procedural dramas. She hits a note, then she hits it again, and then one more time for good measure, though he’ll grant that sometimes it works for dramatic effect, in end-of-episode closing monologue montages paired with good needle drops.
“I’m sorry, is it my line? I thought she had more. . . .” The other actress glances over her shoulder at the camera and he knows Suraya’s probably thinking about ways to rewrite the finale so they can murder her.
“No, I do, I was just taking a lil dramatic pause,” the blond actress says with a self-deprecating eye roll. “We can take it back from the top.”
“Whenever you’re ready,” a voice says from off camera, and he knows it’s the director, but he still listens closer anyway, in case he can hear anyone else.
You can forget about this, right?
Helen’s mother doesn’t come to set on the second day, but her dad does.
He’s quietly supportive and smiles and nods at the crew members who welcome him back for another round at the circus. He’s on a first-name basis with their craft-services department and he brings Helen a cup of tea when they’re going into hour thirteen of their longest shoot day yet.
“Thanks, Dad,” she murmurs, and means it.
He nods and sits back down in a black folding chair, his knees cracking as he does.
They haven’t spoken about dinner last night, but Dad tells her between setups for the last shot of the day that Mom will be there tomorrow.
“That’s good,” Helen says, and manages a smile.
There have been at least two more emails from production today that contain the name Grant Shepard—she knows he’ll be at the table read tomorrow at lunch and in the tone meeting afterward, and she’s dreading it almost as much as she’s looking forward to it.
She thinks maybe she can bear it, if she can catch glimpses of him for now, before she has to give him up forever. They won’t even be in the same room; production is shooting on location tomorrow so everyone will just be Zooming in from trailers and offices across town. She wonders if he’ll be in his office or working from home. She wonders if he’ll keep his camera on.
Part of her can’t believe her life is this dramatic—more dramatic, it feels, than even the scenes of the soapy teen drama they’re filming. Or maybe that’s just how it feels right now and she’ll be able to look back on this time with some kind of detached fondness someday. That even this keen sense of missing him will be something she grows to appreciate, because it throws every moment of this time in her life into sharper relief and maybe she’ll even be grateful because it found its way into the art somehow.
It would be such a fucking waste if the art was bad too, after all this hurt and drama.
So she focuses on the work. She nudges Suraya when she thinks a phrase could be tweaked to help the actors, she sends references of random micro-influencers to the costume designer, she creates a whole Pinterest board for a single location that’s being used only once for the production designer.
“Don’t work too hard,” Jeff, the gaffer, calls out to her after they wrap, and she knows now it’s his daily send-off to everyone. “We need you here tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow,” she says, and gives him a little salute as she packs up.
“Good day,” Dad says as they walk out the giant barn doors of the soundstage. It’s always jarring, leaving the fake afternoon light and walking into pitch darkness. “You got a lot done.”
Helen laughs at the way he says it, as if she’s the only one responsible for it.
“Yeah, well,” she says. “I work with some great professionals.”
“Everyone is working very hard,” Dad agrees. “Your mom will be glad to hear about it.”
Helen lets out a soft “ha” at that. She has no idea what kinds of private conversations Mom and Dad have within their marriage. She’s never seen them kiss or flirt or drop so much as an I love you. She imagines they must hold some kind of love for each other she doesn’t understand, for them to still be together after all this time and all this pain. But she doesn’t want that kind of love for herself, and then she stops thinking about it because she can’t bear to contemplate what kind of love she would want.