Everything Leads to You

“Not that small,” I say.

“You take after your mother,” Lenny says. “In the best ways.”

“That’s how we found you,” I tell him. We’re all in the lobby now, and Lenny gives the “one minute” gesture to a group of eager young men. He turns back to me.

“From The Restlessness,” I say.

He cocks his head.

“I saw your name and we made a wild guess.”

“Caroline was the best part of that movie,” he says. “Don’t you think?”

We say, “Yes,” and he says, “Thank you,” and then he beams at Ava, regret still clouding his face, before turning away from us and ushering the men in. He shuts his door and then we are back in the silver elevator, plummeting down to the street.





Chapter Twenty



I have to make up for lost time. I talk to Toby in the morning, tell him all about Yes & Yes. He’s excited, but I can tell he’s also skeptical. I don’t tell him about the famous actors who’ll be in it. I don’t tell him that I’m using his apartment. But I do tell him about my design ideas, and about them he is not skeptical. He congratulates me. He wishes me luck. He shows me some photos of locations he’s found in London and they look opulent and larger than life, just as they should. Then we say good-bye, I shut my computer, and I start packing up all of his stuff.

Charlotte works on the DVDs and books; I take artwork off the walls, framed photographs and souvenirs from his travels and mementos from movies off his shelves. Charlotte takes pictures so we’ll know how to replace everything when we’re finished shooting. I move the sofa and roll up the shag rug, ready to replace it with the ones Rebecca found at the Rose Bowl. The orange chair stays, but I’ll be covering it with a Southwestern-style blanket to tone down the color.

Charlotte and I wrap up Toby’s dishes, which are too modern for Juniper. Instead, we’ll use Rebecca and Theo’s plates and bowls and mugs, handmade, from San Francisco. They’re way too expensive for Juniper, but this is the movies, after all, and the simple feeling of them is perfect.

“Hey,” Charlotte says. “Did Ava call you?”

She’s looking at her phone and I realize I don’t know where mine is, which only happens when I lose myself in this kind of project. I find it under a pile of pillows on the couch.

“Yeah,” I say. “Twice.”

“Me, too,” she says.

“Did she leave a message?”

“No.”

“Not for me, either.”

“We can call her later,” Charlotte says, and I set my phone back down and keep working.

A few minutes later there’s a knock at the door and Morgan walks in.

“You made it!” I say, and I can feel Charlotte’s disapproval over my enthusiasm, but I can’t help it. Morgan’s here to rig the hanging plants contraption; she’s here to affix wallpaper to removable panels. In other words: She’s here to make my dreams come true.

But only some of them.

“Did you doubt me?” She laughs.

“No,” I say.

“Though she had every reason to,” Charlotte says.

“Hey, Charlotte,” Morgan says, ignoring her comment.

Grudgingly, Charlotte says hey back.

I show Morgan my plans for the apartment and she’s the perfect person to help me because she’s done this sort of thing so many times. She knows, for example, how low the plants should hang in order for them to be in a lot of the shots.

“Once I worked on a set where I did all of this detail work on the wall near the ceiling,” she tells me. “First I put up this molding and then I painted it gold and blue. Really intricate. And then, when the movie came out, it wasn’t even in it. The camera never panned that high. One thing you need to do when a shot is being set up is stand with Charlie and look at the monitor. Be sure to tell him when you want something in the shot, when you think it’s important.”

“I’m allowed to do that?”

“Oh yeah,” Morgan says. “They’ll expect you to do it. And be prepared for him to ask you for changes, too. Like if he’s trying to get a certain shot but he needs it to be simpler, or something’s in the way.”

“I’m so glad you’re telling me this.”

“There’s more,” she says. “But first let’s talk about this hanging thing.”

I show her the pots I’ve collected, explain that I’m going to be borrowing some others from my parents’ house and from Theo and Rebecca’s jungle-like yard. Many of them will sit on the low wooden table in place of Toby’s TV, but I want a cluster of them to hang by a window to the right, not blocking the light, but catching it. I show her some red twine I found.

“I want this to be wrapped around the pots as if it’s hanging from a hook in the ceiling.”

“That’ll contrast well with the green.”

“And I want them to be at various heights, and a lot of them—a dozen at least. There’s that scene where she’s watering her plants and crying, remember? I want the plants to go on forever.”

“But no holes in the ceiling,” she says.