Page 25 of The Dirty Version
She knew he was right, the evidence as recent as Doolittle’s comment—“Shrew” could swap for “slut” too easily.
The studio discounted Tash already. Braverman hardly needed further fuel.
But Tash resented being termed a “lapse in judgment.” She remembered his hand in that darkened theater, his hands in the linen closet, the feel of his tattoo.
“It’s fine.” Tash smoothed her sundress, smoothing the awkwardness, smoothing her internal tempest until she could parse it out at home. “Let’s just forget it.” As if that were possible. “Let’s just rewind and start over.”
Incredibly, unbelievably, Caleb took it as a cue.
He actually got to work—which, of course, Tash had just suggested. Although she hadn’t really meant it. Surely the fire of their chemistry was not that easy to put out.
But he’d sat back down, already scrawling on his collection of whiteboards. “Don’t rewind too far, though—I thought we could use last night’s teaser, and look at our new sequences through the lens of burlesque.”
Tash sank into a chair. She waited for the cracking of the joke. The undercurrent of Caleb’s meaning swirled around her ankles.
He uncapped a marker. “It would be great to take Noab’s seed of emotion and express it in dialogue and movement that allows her to retain her sense of power.”
Tash felt powerless. Caleb had to have amnesia. He had to willfully be messing with her, if he couldn’t discern the parallel between his present words and the previous evening.
He prattled at his keyboard. “As always, this is just a spitball—but I think it’s worth a try. To start, why don’t you recap where we are at the beginning of Episode Five?”
Tash tried not to say it like a jilted lover: “Do you not remember what happened?” She couldn’t understand his need for a rehash, or why he’d want to put her through these paces. He’d whispered, This audience is at your mercy.
Tash wanted to scream.
“I remember.” Caleb answered with sincerity. “But I’m asking because I would never squander the opportunity to hear directly from a creator.” He glanced up. “I’m asking because we’re a good team, Tash. I can’t do this alone.”
His earnestness made her crazy.
“From the top.” As if he’d never pressed her to the precipice, or a wall of pink towels. “Tell me what happens right before Noab and Hewett engage in the unbelievably fulfilling and well-choreographed copulation we have yet to craft.”
Tash wanted to crawl under the table and cry.
She yoga-breathed with her eyes closed, just to get this over with: “In the lead-up to this episode, Hewett has become Noab’s ultimate risk.
She’s breaking all kinds of ancient laws for him—she’s even set him up with refuge in the lagoon.
She’s skimping on her duties, like perimeter patrol, and sneaking off to see him.
She’s stopped protecting her island. She’s shown him too many secrets. ”
Caleb interjected. “All of which, we’ve established, is very sexy.”
Tash flashed with irritation, struggling to respond only for her characters, to free her answer of personal overtones.
“It was sexy before , when Hewett was unconscious and she was only flirting with an idea. But now she’s in too deep—now he’s awake and gathering intel.
The allure is laced with self-destruction.
Noab is compromised by her desire, and it puts the entire island at risk. ”
Caleb tapped at his computer. “I like it—heightened stakes. Good stuff.”
Tash imagined pelting him with sugar cubes from the credenza in frustration.
“The real terror is that the more time Noab spends with Hewett, the less she believes the Lore. It’s devastating for her to suspect her beliefs have been lies.
All she can do is cling to the certainty he’s a monster, as a last defense. ”
Tash kept her eyes closed. Caleb had to hear the subtext—Tash had just delivered a verbal striptease. All for an audience of one bespectacled gentleman, whose keyboard kept on tapping.
“But even then, his goodness disarms her—she’s drawn to him on a level she doesn’t understand.” Tash flung the words at him. “That’s where Episode Five opens. With Noab dropping her guard, because she’s desperate for him. Which is when the python attacks.”
No, the python wasn’t a penis—the python was Astrid, barging into a linen closet, destroying a mood.
“Noab enters the clearing and the snake strikes. Hewett jumps in to save her with his bare hands, like a total barbarian, surprising even himself.” Not that Tash wished Caleb had murdered Astrid; that seemed too far.
“Hewett’s slaying of the python is transformative—something new and different has taken hold between them.
They’re covered in the blood of a brutal communal slaughter.
It’s mythologic. The air is thick with adrenaline. ”
The intensity of it blinked Tash’s eyes open, to Caleb mildly typing, clueless, aloof as a courtroom stenographer.
“Great. Let’s sketch some basics.” Wholly absorbed by his screen. “Give me the who, what, when, where, why, and how of it.”
“Are you serious?” Forget burlesque; Tash had just metaphorically given this guy a private dance. He needed to be throwing dollar bills at her, not listing investigative basics.
“Of course I’m serious.” From the other end of the table, Caleb glanced up. “Don’t knock the exercise, Tash. These are good entry points. Who initiates their physical contact?”
Tash dissolved into pink terry toweling, a velvet stage curtain, a Bermuda-grass-carpeted clearing, a razor-edged lagoon. She willed herself to get through his questions. “Noab. The hunger’s been building for too long.”
“When does it happen?”
“After dark. After Hewett’s saved her, and they’ve washed off the python’s blood in the lagoon.” She had to add it, weary: “That part is meant to be biblical. It’s baptismal. Everything before that moment is washed away.”
“Where does it happen?”
It made Tash lose control of her facial muscles, sure he was being purposely obtuse.
“ In the lagoon. I showed you.” She took umbrage on behalf of the moonlight wave-lap and the night-blooming jasmine, the cruelly barbed moat and the entire luminous dream.
She reached for her mental trench coat, retying it with a mad knot.
“And how would you characterize their coupling? One word.”
“Frenzied.” House lights up. Tash glanced around and saw the scraps of story she’d strewn across the stage.
“Nothing else matters—not reason, not her Sisters, not the place that he’s from.
They have no loyalties to anyone but themselves.
There’s no world outside the hot slap of their bodies.
She offers herself to him like a sacrifice.
” Tash glared and Caleb didn’t notice. “You forgot to ask me why.”
“I’m getting there.” He made her wait for it, before lifting his gaze. “Why, Tash?”
She gathered up her precious bits and pieces. “Because she knows there’s something inherently right about the two of them together. It’s fumbling and authentic. It fuels them. It’s special, even while she wishes that it wasn’t. It’s out of bounds, but she doesn’t care.”
Tash clutched this to her chest, fists shaking, determined not to throw herself off the cliff until she got home.