Twenty-Three
I COULDN’T EVEN muster the energy to pretend to jog back to the house. I just walked, all slouchy—protesting every disappointment in my life with bad posture.
Jack met me on the gravel road in his newly switched-out Range Rover.
“Saw the news,” he said. “Let’s go to the river.”
“Okay,” I said with a limp shrug, and climbed up to the passenger seat.
We didn’t talk on the drive down. I just watched the scenery with that slowed-down awareness that comes when you’ll never see something again. The barbed-wire fences. The rutted gravel lane. The grass fluttering in the fields. The tall pecan trees brushing the sky. The buzzards circling lazily overhead.
It was like no place I’d ever been—or would be again.
I was never emotional to end a job. That was part of not getting attached. You were just working. When you left, you’d be working somewhere else.
I didn’t know what to do with the sadness that was soaking into my heart. It felt so full, I could wring it out like a sponge. What did people do with sadness like this? How did they dry it out?
When we got to the end of the road—to the same place where Jack had given me that piggyback ride back at the start—Jack cut the engine, but neither of us got out.
I explained everything to him, and what it all meant, and why we had to do all the things we now had to do.
He tried to argue with me. “I don’t want Bobby to replace you.”
“He’s not replacing me. He’s not going to, like, sleep on your floor in a white nightgown.”
“Thank God.”
“It’ll be a whole different deal because there’s no more pretending. He’ll just stand around, secret-service style.”
“That might be worse.”
“It will be,” I said.
“I get why we have to tell my parents, and I get why we need to step everything up. But I think you should stay.”
“I should stay?”
“Stay with me and be protected.”
“By my own company?”
“You’re in danger now.”
“That’s not how it works. I’m only in danger because I’m near you. Once I leave, the threat level’s totally different.”
Jack thought about it, then argued some more, then finally gave in. Our whole meticulous setup felled by a homicidal part-time corgi breeder.
“So this is our last day together,” Jack said, when he’d run out of ways to argue.
“Yep. I’m leaving after dinner.”
“After dinner? That feels fast.”
“The faster, the better.”
“And then—I won’t see you after that?”
“Nope.”
Then Jack asked me the strangest question. “Does this mean,” he asked, “you’re not coming to Thanksgiving?”
Thanksgiving? What a weird thought. “Of course I’m not coming to Thanksgiving,” I said. And then, because he didn’t seem to understand, I said, “I’m not coming to anything at all—ever again.”
Jack turned to read my eyes.
“When jobs end, they just end,” I said. “You don’t, like, become friends on Facebook or anything. Robby will finish out the job—and then you’ll go back to your albino moose, and I’ll go to Korea and eat black bean noodles, and it’ll be like we never met.”
“But we did meet, though,” Jack said.
“That doesn’t really matter. This is how this works.”
Jack looked very serious. “So what you’re telling me is this is the last day we’ll ever see each other?”
I mean, yes. That was what I was telling him. “Pretty much,” I said.
“Okay, then,” Jack said, nodding. “Then let’s make it a good one.”
JACK INSISTED THAT he carry me to the beach, for old times’ sake, even though I would’ve been fine in my sneakers—and I just let him.
We walked along the shore for a while, picking up pieces of petrified wood as well as rocks and pebbles and driftwood. The wind was as constant as the river current, and I couldn’t help but feel soothed by its fluttering.
After a while, we came to a washed-up tree trunk, and Jack decided to sit on it.
I sat next to him.
Usually, when you see people for the last time, you don’t know it’s the last time. I wasn’t sure if this was better or worse. But I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to talk about something ordinary. Something we’d be talking about if it were just any old day.
“Can I ask you something about being an actor?” I asked then.
“Sure. Shoot.”
“How do you make yourself cry?”
Jack tilted his head at me like that was a pretty good question. “Okay. The best way is to get so into your character that you feel what he’s feeling—and then if he’s feeling the things that make people cry … suddenly you’re crying, too.”
“How often does that happen?” I asked.
“Five percent of the time. But I’m working on it.”
“That’s not much.”
Jack nodded, watching the river. “Yeah. Especially on a movie set. Because there are so many distractions—so many cranes and booms and crew members and extras everywhere. And it’s too cold or too hot or they put a weird gel in your hair that’s kind of itchy. When it’s like that, you have to work a lot harder.”
“Like how?”
“You have to actively think about something real from your own life—something true—that makes you feel sad. You have to go there mentally and feel those feelings until the tears come.”
“That sounds hard.”
“It is. But the alternative is messing up the shot, so you’re motivated.”
“What if you just can’t cry?”
Jack looked at me like he was assessing if I could handle the answer. “If you just can’t cry, there’s a stick.”
“A stick?”
“Yeah. The makeup folks rub it under your eyes, and it makes your eyes water. Like onions.”
“That sounds like cheating.”
“It’s totally cheating. And everybody knows you’re cheating because they just watched it happen. And they’re judging you. And that makes it all even harder.”
“Vicious cycle,” I said, like Been there.
“Exactly. But I have another trick.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t blink.”
I blinked.
“That’s the trick,” Jack said. “Just don’t blink.”
“You mean just hold your eyelids open in a stare?”
“Be subtle about it—but, yeah. If your eyes start to dry out, they’ll water. Then, presto. Tears.”
“How do you do that without looking weird?”
“How do you do anything without looking weird?”
“Wait,” I said. “Tell me you did not do that for The Destroyers.”
Jack clamped his mouth shut.
I leaned closer. “Tell me that when The Destroyer is weeping for an entire lost universe and it’s one of the most moving moments in the history of cinema that he did not just have … dry eyeballs.”
“No comment.”
“Oh my God! You’re a monster!”
“You asked,” Jack said.
I stared at him.
Then he squinted at me. “You know I’m not really The Destroyer, right?”
“Of course.” Mostly.
“That was a movie.”
“I know that.”
“I was paid to act in it. It wasn’t real.”
But I was still processing. “Should I be mad at you right now?”
But Jack was moving on. “No,” he said, rotating toward me on the log. “You should be admiring me.” He swung his leg over the tree trunk, so he was astride it, swatting at my knee for me to do the same, until we were facing each other, knees touching. “Okay,” he said, leaning in. “First one to cry wins.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m teaching you how to cry.”
“I don’t need help with that.”
“How to fake cry. It comes in surprisingly handy. Just think of it as a staring contest.”
“I don’t want to have a staring contest.”
“Too late.”
I gave him a short sigh of capitulation.
“Come on, come on,” Jack said, waving me closer.
Fine. I leaned forward a little.
Jack leaned forward, too.
And then we were staring at each other, noses a few inches apart—not blinking. The air between us felt strangely silky.
And when it got too intense, I said, “I’ve heard there’s a scientific thing that if you look into someone’s eyes for too long, you’ll fall in love.”
Jack looked away.
Noted.
Then he looked back. “Don’t mess me up. Starting over.”
After a little longer, I said, “My eyes are starting to sting.”
“That’s good. Lean into that. In sixty seconds, you’ll be a professional actress.”
“It’s not … comfortable.”
“Excellence never is.”
I should appreciate this moment, I thought. I was here, in person, with Jack Stapleton—the Jack Stapleton—in the midmorning light, drinking in the contours of his in-real-life face. The crinkles at his eyes. The stubble of his not-yet-shaven jaw. By tomorrow, I’d only ever see him again on screens. Remember this, I told myself. Pay attention.
“No cheating,” Jack said then.
“How would I even cheat?”
“If you don’t know, I’m not telling you.”
“You’re trying to win this, aren’t you?”
“Of course.”
“I thought you were just teaching me.”
“Have to keep it interesting.”
It was already interesting, but okay.
“And don’t make me laugh,” Jack said, all stern.
“You never laugh,” I said.
“I’m serious,” he said. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop doing that with your face.”
“I’m not doing anything with my face.”
“It’s making me laugh.”
“That’s your problem, not mine.”
But next, Jack broke. His whole face just shifted into a full-territory smile. Then he dropped his head and his shoulders shook.
“You’re terrible at this,” I said.
“It’s not me, it’s you.” He still hadn’t lifted his head.
“So it’s not that the first person to cry wins—it’s the first person to dissolve into giggles loses.”
“Men don’t dissolve into giggles.”
“You do.”
Jack lifted his head, eyes still bright, still smiling. “I guess it’s easier if you dislike your scene partner.”
That got my attention. “Do you dislike your scene partners?”
“Sometimes.”
“Not in the rom-coms, though. Not Katie Palmer.”
Jack made a face. “Katie Palmer is the worst.”
I gasped in protest. “That can’t be true.”
But Jack nodded, like Sorry. “She’s rude, she’s narcissistic, she’s sucks up to the bigshots. She’s the kind of person who humiliates waiters.”
I put my hands over my face. “Do not speak ill of Katie Palmer! She’s a national treasure.”
“Well, she’s a mean-ass person. And she’s a terrible actress.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. “Stop! You’re ruining her!”
“She was already ruined.”
“But that movie! You guys were so in love.”
“Guess what? We were acting.”
“But that kiss. That epic kiss!”
“You wanna know why that kiss was so good? Because the sooner we got the take, the sooner the shooting day was over.”
“But! But…” This was how today was going to go? Jack was going to ruin my favorite kiss of all time?
Then he added, “And she has terrible breath, too.”
Dammit! “That can’t be true.”
“It’s true. She’s famous for it. Her breath smells like elephants.”
“Like elephants?”
“Like when you go to the zoo and stand near the elephants. That smell. But warm. And moist.”
I just squeezed my eyes closed and shook my head.
Jack went on, “That’s why people call her ‘Peanuts.’”
Now I opened my eyes and blinked at him.
“I have great breath, by the way,” Jack said then.
I blinked again.
“Like cinnamon rolls,” he said, giving me an actual wink.
What was happening here? “But … what about the thing you said about crying—when it’s really working, you’re feeling the feelings as the character?”
“That’s a good question,” Jack said, all professorial, pointing at me. “When you’re working with someone really good, that can happen. I could totally do that with Meryl Streep.”
“Wait—have you kissed Meryl Streep?”
“Not yet. Give me time.”
I punched him in the shoulder, like Rooting for ya, buddy.
“All to say,” Jack concluded, “yes. You can kiss each other as the characters.”
“Thank you,” I said, like he’d just put the world back in its proper order.
Then he added, “But not when you’re kissing Katie Palmer.”
“Dammit!”
He kept going. “It’s all choreographed. You’re thinking about your blocking, and the angles, and hitting your mark, and not having a double chin, and making sure your lips don’t get folded up in a weird way. It’s very technical. You talk about everything beforehand. You know, ‘Will there be tongue?’ That kind of stuff.”
“Will there be tongue?”
“Almost never.”
Was that disappointing? I couldn’t decide.
“You have to block it out in advance,” Jack went on. “That’s true for all on-screen kissing, really. It’s the opposite of real kissing. Screen kissing is all about how you look. Real kissing, of course”—he glanced away for a second—“is about how you feel.”
“Huh,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jack said.
“So you hated kissing Katie Palmer…” I said.
“Affirmative. I hated kissing Peanuts Palmer.”
“My favorite kiss of all time,” I said, trying to absorb the news, “was a hate kiss.”
Jack shook his head. “Your favorite kiss of all time was a let’s-get-this-done-and-get-out-of-here kiss.”
I sighed. I looked at the river, just over there flowing along like nothing had happened. Then I said, “I miss the time when I didn’t know that.”
“So do I.”
“You just ruined my favorite kiss.”
Jack gave me a little shrug, like Them’s the breaks. Then he said, “Maybe someday I’ll make it up to you.”