Page 26 of The Spirit of Love

Chapter Fifteen

I scouted this location earlier in the spring with Jonah, our director of photography.

And every step of the way, I anticipated directing today’s travel shoot.

Now, I’m climbing out of the dust-lacquered production van, knowing I’m on the call sheet but wondering what I’m really here to do.

The lead writer of a Zombie Hospital episode is always on set for the shoot so that any changes to the script can be done in a consistent voice.

This isn’t an industry standard—I know lots of directors on other shows who don’t like writers hovering after the baton is passed to them.

But it’s Zombie Hospital tradition to collaborate, and it’s something I’ve always appreciated.

Until now. It’s going to be a lot of time on set without a trailer to hide in.

I’m worried I’ll feel like I’m sitting in the back row of a wedding ceremony, watching my first love marry someone else.

And that someone else is Jude. He confessed to me on Friday that he’s out of his depth with some aspects of the show.

That on the script, he’d defer to me. Which should have been enough of a peace offering for me to let out my breath on this travel shoot.

The trouble is, I keep thinking about what he’d said, about how personal experience has taught him not to believe in anything.

What happened to him, and why do I care so much? Why do I feel threatened that Jude might not believe in the things I know to be true? Aren’t I just here to do my job?

I take in the scene being set in the desert: Parked cinematically between two thick and ancient Joshua trees is the Chrysler New Yorker Aurora’s character is supposed to drive like a bat out of hell on her way to deliver a lifesaving treatment to Buster’s character after a zombie attack.

If all goes well, which it never does, we should wrap by six and come back tomorrow morning for a few spots of pickup before we return to LA. It’s twenty hours of work for a minute and a half of usable footage, but hey, that’s Hollywood.

I see the production assistants gathered around the car, taking orders from Jonah.

I see the trailer where Aurora is likely inside with hair and makeup.

I see the tent shading the camera monitors and the director’s chair parked behind them.

My heart starts to pinch, but I look away, toward Ivy, approaching the van, holding what I call her “clipboard of catastrophes.”

If I was directing today’s shoot, that clipboard would strike fear in my heart.

It holds records of everything that’s going wrong—the car won’t start, the stunt woman’s drunk, the local sheriff has canceled our permission to shoot.

Today, the blame for anything Ivy can’t fix will fall on Jude’s shoulders.

“What’s the disaster du jour?” I ask, peering past the rim of her clipboard.

“Not much,” Ivy says. “Just a zombie who got his beard trimmed too short for continuity.”

“You adding cotton balls to fill it out?”

“You know it.” She nods at my roller bag, which I’m unloading from the van’s trunk. “You’re crashing at 29 Palms tonight, right? I’m about to make a run to the inn to drop our bags. Dinner with everyone at the restaurant at eight, okay?”

“With everyone?” I cast a glance toward the director’s tent.

“Yep. Rich’s coming in. He wants us all to be there.”

Another dinner with Rich and Jude. I should have brought my own clipboard to note my own catastrophes. I hand Ivy my bag and troop past several squat sage-green Joshua trees, eager to drown my futility in tea at craft services.

I’ve got my Earl Gray just the way I like it and am about to take my first sweet milky sip when my phone rings. Edie.

“Did you make it to JT?” Her words come out in a rush. “No flat tires? You’re watching out for scorpions? How was dinner Friday?”

“Wow, how much coffee have you had today?”

“You know the desert makes me nervous,” she says. “Ever since my hero-dose mushroom trip. Please, no drugs while you’re there. They hit different in the desert.”

“In fact, I am far too sober,” I tell her. “No scorpions in sight. I’ve only been on set for sixty seconds, but somehow nothing’s gone wrong yet. And dinner was…surprising.”

“What does that mean? You didn’t end up crying in the president’s bathroom again?”

“That wouldn’t be surprising.” I drop my voice to a whisper. “I was seated next to JDS.”

“Uh-oh. And?”

“And it turns out he might not be as horrible as we thought he was,” I say.

“ We ?” I hear her snicker through the phone. “I don’t mind being proven wrong. Unless it involves my mother-in-law. So does this mean you’re calling off the warpath?”

“TBD.”

I break off because Jude is walking past me.

He looks over and waves. For some reason, his face lights up, and I remember what it was like to talk to him at dinner, how there were moments when it felt like we were the only two people in that candlelit dining room.

When our conversation became so engrossing, it was like the rest of the party disappeared.

“He doesn’t know he stole your job, Fenny,” my sister says.

I close my eyes and nod. “But I do.”

And a small part of me needs to see the ripple effect of this injustice before I abandon my warpath.

“Just putting it out there that I like this warpath less than a hero dose with a scorpion chaser,” Edie says.

“Yeah, but you’re not here. Give the kids a kiss for me!”

I hang up to find Jude walking toward me.

He looks different in the desert. A little bit unbuttoned, untucked, in his blazer and T-shirt, eyes shaded by a baseball cap.

It’s ninety-five degrees out here, too hot to wear anything more formal than cutoffs and a tank top, so I didn’t even bother with my hair.

His eyes run over my legs, which makes me wish I’d put a little more effort into getting ready this morning.

“Did you put on sunscreen?” he asks.

“Yes, Mom.”

“Sorry, you just look like you burn easily. And the sun out here is…” He notices me side-eying him. “Okay, Mom is shutting up. I’m glad you’re here. Can I show you something? Get your thoughts?”

Jude walks me toward the Chrysler, explaining how he intends to shoot the master shot of Aurora speeding up to the edge of the cliff.

He describes the medium shot of her face through the windshield and then shows me the marker for her close-up where she’ll get out and say her lines.

It’s not how I would have shot it, but I can see it working.

There’s more than one way to skin a zombie.

“Can we talk about Aurora’s dialogue?” he asks. “She’s got the line about having the amygdala on ice.” He pauses and gazes up into shockingly blue sky. “I wonder if there’s something missing.”

“There was more,” I say. “Once. We cut it. Rich wanted fewer words, more nipples.”

Jude rolls his eyes. “The scene is complicated by the fact that Aurora’s not delivering the amygdala directly to Buster—”

“Right.” I nod. “She’s handing it over to Miguel, who might be the love of her life—”

“Or at least the next season.”

“That’s what I was going to say.” I laugh.

“I’m wondering,” Jude says, “that is, if you even remember…how did you originally write Aurora’s lines?”

I close my eyes and call it up. I never forget my first drafts. “It was ‘I’m wearing an amygdala on my head, and my heart on my sleeve.’?”

“That’s the line,” Jude says, amazed. “Aurora!” he calls as the actor steps out of her trailer, looking glamorously dust-battered and disheveled. “Come get your new line.” Now Jude turns back to me. “Will you hang out in the tent with me?”

“I…yes.”

For the next ninety minutes, I watch as Aurora drives the Chrysler to the cliff’s edge eighteen times before Jonah and the sound guys are satisfied they’ve got all the angles they need for the take. Then it’s time to reset the cameras so Aurora can actually get out of the car and say her lines.

I sit in the second director’s chair that Jude had Ivy bring under the tent.

He calls “Action!” and both of us watch.

Aurora’s committed, serving the right balance of camp and emotion.

It’s an excellent first take. Now she’ll likely have to do it again at least a dozen more times so Jude will have choices in the editing room.

“Cut!” Jude calls. He bounds out of his chair, out of the tent, and up to Aurora. They’re out of earshot, and I wonder what I would say to Aurora if it were me? Before I can decide, Jude comes back.

He sits beside me, puts on his headset, and says quietly, “Moment of truth.”

Aurora takes a second pass. And it’s brilliant. An actual tear slides down her cheek as she hands Miguel the frozen piece of brain. Then falls in for an unscripted kiss.

I glance at Jude and find him studying me.

“What do you think?” he asks, a rare glint of vulnerability in his eyes.

“Wow,” I hear crew members murmur. Then I realize I’m among them. A “Wow” came out of my mouth, too. And I think it made Jude blush. Or is that just the furnace-like desert sun?

When Jude calls cut, we all applaud Aurora. This is usually a stoic set, but not today. Sometimes, even seven years in, we are collectively moved by our show.

“That’s it. We got it.” Jude says. “Nailed it, Aurora. And you.” He turns to me. “Thank you, Fenny.”

“That’s it?” I say. “You’ve only done two takes. What if—”

“That was the take,” Jude says with certainty. “I’ll build the rest of the scene around it.”

His confidence feels exciting—and a little reckless. I’d have shot ten more takes and still gone with this one in the end, but is it really as easy as Jude’s making it sound? To know when you’ve got it and to stop there?

After lunch, the grips are finishing setting up the second set for today.

The post-lunch lull is real, so sometimes actors overcompensate with caffeine.

It looks as if Jude made this mistake himself.

He’s pacing nervously, and I think I hear him bickering with some members of the crew.

As I get closer to the scene, I can feel it.

His energy is so different from his cool, calm confidence this morning.

In the scene they’re prepping for, Buster is supposed to be living his best zombie life, tearing up the desert for his first taste of flesh. He has not yet chosen to come back as a human boy.

“Buster, I need you to take four steps toward me,” Jude says.

“If we do that,” a grip calls out, “I can’t get the mountains in the shot.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jude says dismissively. “I can cheat that in editing.”

The grip looks incredulous. “Then why did we all travel two hours to the burning desert so you could CGI the background?”

“Fine,” Jude says. “But if Buster’s standing there, I want to install the net.”

The crew groans. The net is like the one you see at a circus, under a trapeze artist, stationed at the edge of anything an actor might fall off.

“Buster’s got to feel free to devolve into darkness here,” Jude explains. “He can’t do that if he’s about to fall off a cliff.”

“The net will take us sixty minutes to build out,” Jonah says, “at which point the sun will be completely different, so we’ll have to redo all the lighting.” He clocks Jude’s expression. “Not that we can’t do it—”

“I don’t care if it takes us all night,” Jonah says sharply. “I’d rather avoid a dead kid. Who is nervous enough as it is.” He points at Buster, and everyone turns to look.

“I’m going to fall off the cliff?” Buster whines.

“No one’s falling off a cliff,” I interject, telling Buster, “We’ve practiced this, remember? You and me, back in LA, a couple weeks ago?”

The kid nods, but he doesn’t look convinced.

What is Jude’s problem? Buster wasn’t nervous until Jude put the idea in his head.

Tempted as I am to kick back and enjoy the upcoming meltdown, I take in the full scene. Sound guys muttering and shaking their heads. Jonah still arguing with Jude. Buster clearly about to blast off on a rocket of nerves any moment.

My phone buzzes, and I assume it’s going to be Masha and Olivia, sending pics from the plane Olivia should be jumping out of any minute, wearing a bachelorette veil. Instead, it’s a message from Summer, Amy Reisenbach’s chef.

It’s a picture she must have taken at the dinner Friday night.

It’s Jude and me. We’re seated at the table, sardines-close.

We’re turned toward each other, talking animatedly.

My hands are expressive, and my eyes are sparkling.

Jude’s grinning, too. He looks more relaxed and comfortable than I can remember ever seeing him.

In the picture, we look like old friends.

I look up at him now, looking far less comfortable. I don’t know what got into him, but if Jude fucks up today, do I get my job back sooner? Or does it simply diminish the show I care about?

And suddenly, I know what to do.

“Buster,” I say. “What do you think about letting Jude in on our secret?”

“Do we have to?” Buster says with a note of relieved surrender, the way my nephews sound when they’re exhausted and are finally made to go to bed.

Buster, Jude, and I gather under the tent.

“What’s this about, Fenny?” Jude sounds impatient.

I hold up a finger, take out my phone, and open the Calm app. But of course, I don’t have service out here. I wrap one hand around my adder stone, and I decide I do have other worlds at my fingertips. Jude doesn’t have to believe they’re real to let them work their magic.

“Everybody close your eyes,” I say.

And they do. I guide Buster and Jude through a five-minute meditation, set on a nature-filled island of my imagination, cribbed partly from my trip to Two Harbors with Sam.

I give them the hummingbird, the baby eagles in their nest. I populate the world with a herd of stunning deer.

I give them snorkeling across untouched coral reefs.

I give them all the stars in the late-summer sky.

I peak my eyes open toward the end and find Jude looking at me.

His expression is cryptic, but then, before I can wonder about it, he smiles.

He mouths, Thank you .

The grimace on Buster’s face has smoothed. It’s time to wrap the meditation, to release everyone back to the scene at the cliff’s edge.

“I don’t need the net, Jude,” Buster says as we walk back to the shoot. “I’ve blocked the scene with Fenny a bunch of times before.”

“You have?” Jude asks, shooting me a quizzical look.

“I’m grounded. I’m ready to go,” Buster says.

“Great,” he says, eyes still on me. “Me, too.”