Posted by rache on October 17, 2006 at 19:38:28:
The Tenderness Apart
by Rachael Ross
"Working in this business is a lot like having kids." Peter smiled at my questioning look. We were sitting at a little cafe just off the sidewalk on Rodeo Drive.
"What do you mean?" I was drinking my third glass of wine like I needed every drop of it.
"When my wife, my first wife, had our first kid the nurse wanted me to come into the delivery room. You know, be part of the experience, the event." He chuckled at the word. "And I was like, no way, you know? I mean that's the miracle of birth. One person goes in, two people come out. I didn't want to know the secret, see the reality of it. I wanted the miracle."
"The illusion." I smiled and Peter nodded.
"The illusion, yeah. I mean, being there would have ruined everything."
And that summed up my life completely. I was 27 years old and ruined for life. I'd graduated summa cum laude from Yale and gone on to UCLA Film School, over the objections of everyone in my family. I wanted to make movies. I wanted to make magic. I went to work for Paramount and that lasted barely six months, just long enough to get into the guild and meet some people. I moved to Miramax largely at the urging of Jack Hovine, who did pre-poduction over there.
He was a shoe salesman, or so he liked to brag, since half the projects he started never finished and most of them walked out the door, down the street, and into Universal, or Paramount, or Fox. But Jack made money and 6 or 7 unfinished films could pay post on 2 or 3 indies. One of his big stories was how he'd paid for Pulp Fiction by selling Waterworld to Costner.
"Jack called me." Peter had let me sit there for a moment, but it was time to get to it. The sun was going down and the big deals happened at dusk, between drinks and dinner.
"So?" I shrugged. I'd left Miramax and gone to Dreamworks, mostly because I knew it would piss off Jack. Dreamworks just wanted me to piss off Harvey, I think. I did a year and moved on, doing rush jobs for anybody who had more money than time, which was just about everyone in this town.
"So, he's looking for a script supervisor." He smiled and shook his head. "He wants Jenny Devin."
"Jen's in New York. Wrapping Brookline."
"I know that. She looked at the story, hated it, wants it, but she won't do it without you."
I didn't say anything. Jen was on the sunny side of forty and one of my favorite 3 people in the world. She'd been my mentor, if you'll excuse the word, and we'd had a thing.
"Financing is good for 60 days from last Wednesday." Peter leaned back. "We get something in the can and GoldCoast will pick it up after that."
"But you got no script." I smirked a little.
"Nope. The guy that wrote it lives in fucking lala land. Wants artistic control." Peter almost shuddered at the thought.
"So give him a commentary track on the DVD." I laughed. "Run and gun." I drank more wine.
"Run and gun." Peter agreed. "Jen'll be back in 2 or 3 weeks, end of the month we roundtable, shoot in six. Okay?"
"My script." I looked at Peter closely. "I'm not adopting shit."
Peter held up his glass and smiled. "I'll tell the guy he's fuckin' an orphan."
=-=--=-=
"Hey, what time is it there?" I asked, smiling as I heard Jen take a deep breath.
"Bar?"
"Yeah." I was sitting on my futon, out on the deck of my house. The air was moist and salty, coming straight off the ocean a hundred feet down. Something about living in a house with stilts on the California coastline excited me.
"It's late." She said. "No…it's early. It's late there, what are you doing?"
"Working. Peter call you?" I drank some cranberry juicy straight out of the plastic bottle, making my mouth pucker.
"Yeah…" She said something else but I didn't catch it. "…got six of them anyway."
"Uh-huh." I laughed, having no idea what she was talking about.
"What have you got for me?"
"I wanna move the picture." I said, leaning back and spreading my legs. I was wearing Jen's old pajamas, they were mens' pajamas, thin blue cotton and comfortable.
"Where?"
"Small town, Kansas, Iowa, someplace with cows." I shrugged. "The city thing ain't working, we move it outside so the whole world is there. The New York thing, it's claustrophobic."
"It's a claustrophobic story, the guys surrounded. You put him outside and…" There was a long pause while I let Jen sort it out. "Okay, so small town and fuck, we gotta find somebody good for this."
"It's Benedict." I told her.
"How do you know?"
"I went to get my hair done today." I laughed.
"I'll call Jack, Benedict isn't gonna work for this. It's gotta go tight."
"That's what I said."
"Yeah, okay…" Jen took a deep breath. "…sooo outside, we do some Ford big country and then tighter and tighter, blah blah blah how you been?"
She just threw it out, Jen style, surprising me, even though it shouldn't have.
"Huh?" I sighed. "Oh, you know."
"I love you."
"What happened to what's her name? The Hungarian with…"
"She gone…"
"…the big teeth?"
"…left me for some beer commercial." Jen laughed. "You still doing the…"
"She's gone, yeah…"
"…Laker girl, what was her name?"
"…moved to Texas. Uh, Jaimie, she's a Cowgirl now. She sent me a jersey." I sighed.
"Well, good for us then." Jen sighed too. "I love you."
"You said that."
"Maybe I want to hear you say it."
"You know I do." I said switching the phone to my other ear.
"Say it then."
"No, uh-uh." I bit my lip. "You left me, remember?"
"Please say it?"
"Nope."
=-=-=-=-=-=
"Okay, sell it." Jack was swiveling around in his leather chair like a 300 pound kid.
"I can't do the city, we need fresh air on this." I was sitting next to Jeremy Benedict, the director who wasn't particularly happy to find out he wasn't going to be shooting his script. "We go outside. Kansas maybe, Iowa."
"Fresh air? Kansas?" Benedict rubbed the back of his left hand as if he had poison ivy. "It's about the city. What script are you reading?"
"Nooo…" I said slowly, "it's about a guy who cheats on his wife."
"People fuck around in the country?" Jack asked, still spinning.
We didn't know who he was asking so we didn't answer, I just looked at Benedict and he was looking at his shoes.
"I bet they do." Jack sang.
"You can't be serious." Benedict offered us a look of disbelief, first Jack and then me. He argued for awhile, but Jack knew he had me, and if he had me he had Jen, and that was worth a lot more than Benedict. It was our movie now.
"What are you really selling?" Jack asked me after Benedict left, huffing and puffing like a little steam engine.
"You'll see." I picked up Jack's paperweight. It was Disneyland in a snow globe. I turned it in my hands slowly.
"It isn't about a guy fuckin' around, is it?"
"Where'd you get this?" I asked, ignoring his question.
"Birthday present. My sister's kid got it for me."
"I've never been to Disneyland."
"Me neither." He gave me a wry smile. "They say it ain't what it used to be."
"Hmmm." That made me smile and I put the globe down.
"You okay?"
"Yeah." I looked at him. "I'm just tired."
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Sleeping?" It was 4am my time and I hadn't slept in three days.
"Yes." Jen's voice sounded like ashes.
"Listen…Are you listening?"
"Ummm yeah." I heard Jen cough.
"A woman writes letters to her dead husband. Love letters…Are you listening?"
"Uh-huh."
"She writes these letters and mails them, no postage, no address, just his name on the envelopes. The post office guy saves them, two or three. Nobody knows this woman, so he saves them, going to bring them back, but before he can do it, he finds one of the envelopes is half open, the flap coming unglued, so he reads it. And then he reads all of them."
"Why?"
"Because his wife died, car accident and he was driving. He's guilty, he has a girl, a little daughter; he feels guilty for killing mommy. He loved her too, as much as this woman loved her husband. Loves him still. He reads the letters and it's like she's forgiving him, with every word the woman writes, it's as if his dead wife speaks to him."
"Okay." Jen was waking up a little.
"He writes her back." I'm smiling.
"Yeah."
"They never meet, Jen. She stays in her house, a big empty farmhouse. He lives in a little white house with a picket fence two blocks from his post office."
"They're in love." Jen cleared her throat.
"Yeah, they don't fall in love. They're already in love." I nodded, watching the ocean black beneath me.
"Yeah."
"That's the movie."
"End it for me."
"Depends on the daughter, if there's one or not." I smacked my lips together.
"Kids sell." Jen switched the phone to her other ear, her voice becoming distant for a second. "They sell romance and happy endings."
"I know."
"So?" She was lighting a cigarette. She already knew there wasn't gonna be a happy ending.
"No kid." I agreed.
"No kid."
"Her last letter, before she dies, she tells the guy that she knows. She thanks him for giving her back her husband."
"Back up…"
"Kids or cancer…"
"What's she…oh."
"See?" My voice shrugged. "Cancer sells too."
There was a long pause. "You could come to New York." She said, saying what I'd wanted to say since she'd left me.
"I'm lonely." I told her. "I need you…"
"Yeah."
"…like this, Jen." I coughed. "Stay there."
"And work like this?"
"I can't do it if I see you."
"She won't let him see her, will she?"
"No." I whispered.
"I know." Jen sighed. "What are you calling it?"
"The Tenderness Apart."
"Is that what we have?" Jen asked softly.
"Yeah." I closed my eyes.
"And this is how you want to write it?" She knew.
"Want?" I forced a laugh and took a breath, letting it out slowly. "There's no such word anymore, Jen."
"How long?" She was the only one who knew.
"Six months." I swallowed thickly. "A year at the most. The doctors…It's aggressive."
"I…" Jen's voice faltered. "…We should work then."
"I love you." I said
end