Unscripted Read online

  “Yes.” Emma reached for his hand and stepped down from the stool. “Did you really rob a bank?”

  “Once we’re done here, I’ll tell you everything you can handle.”

  Emma shot him a look. “Hey. I can handle anything you can dish out.”

  13

  THE LIGHTING was too dim for the observers to notice the faint tremors that ran through Emma’s slender form. Danny knew this because the instant she appeared, his three visitors from LA just gaped. Danny led Emma over to a bar stool positioned in the room’s center. The western drapes were half drawn, and the afternoon light formed brilliant pillars that could not quite touch her. Danny squeezed her hand a final time, then backed away. Only then did he realize the cameraman was frozen to the spot. He said softly, “Rick. You’re on.”

  The cameraman jerked awake and stepped to the sound recorder. “Let me hear your voice.”

  At a signal from Danny, Emma said, “Test, one, two.”

  “And your instrument?”

  Emma blew a few notes into the mike, keeping it simple, as Danny had suggested. Not giving anything away.

  Rick said, “Everything is good here.”

  Danny said, “Let’s shoot this first take.”

  Rick lifted his shoulder cam. “Ready.”

  Danny had allowed Emma to decide on the music. He wanted to shoot three songs and positioned her soliloquy after the first two. He had no idea whether she would be at her best toward the beginning and then fade, or if she could only gradually recover from her nerves.

  His concerns proved meaningless. Emma nailed it. First go.

  Her initial song was a bluesy ballad by Fourplay, a quartet combining Bob James and Chuck Loeb, considered by many to be, respectively, the finest fusion pianist and hollow-body guitarist alive today. Danny selected it both because Emma loved the song and because it already contained two masterful soloists. Emma played backup through the first two stanzas. On the second refrain, she let loose. Just took off and left the pros standing in her dust.

  As the song faded, Danny glanced over. Greg and Annie had risen from their chairs and now stood behind the monitor, watching Emma directly and studying her presence on-screen. Annie’s eyes were completely round, while Greg studied the young woman with an intense gaze and creased brow, as though uncertain whether to believe what he saw.

  Megan stood between Robin and the central window, holding one of the reflectors. She caught Danny’s eye and smiled. The light softened her features and deepened her gaze.

  He tried to remember the last time someone had looked at him that way. And came up blank.

  At a gesture from Danny, Emma moved straight into her second song.

  At the end of their practice the previous evening, Danny had asked if Emma ever danced to her music.

  “All the time,” Robin replied. At Danny’s request, she had remained present for the entire four-hour session.

  “Almost never,” Emma corrected.

  “Never when you think I’m watching,” Robin said.

  Danny said, “If you feel like it, on the second song, get up and do whatever comes to you. But only if, you know . . .”

  “If I’m sure my legs won’t collapse and I won’t fall on my sax.”

  “Only if you feel captured by the moment,” Danny said.

  Emma went quiet for so long Danny assumed she was looking for a reason to turn him down. He was about to tell her it was fine, not to worry about it, when she said, “Lindsey Stirling dances while she plays.”

  “Really?”

  Emma gave him a look perfected by women over the past thousand years or so, equal measure gentle scorn and disbelief. “You didn’t know that?”

  “News to me.”

  “Well, she does.”

  “What’s your favorite song by her?” Danny asked. Emma’s response meant it was well after midnight before Robin insisted they quit, because she had to get up the next morning and go do her real job.

  Now as the second song began, Emma slipped from her stool. Danny waved to catch Rick’s attention, then swept his finger in a circle.

  Lindsey Stirling’s music blended rock with the soft strains of a masterful violinist. The beat was strong, the background a mix of electronic and punching brass. She had never, as far as Danny knew, used a sax as accompaniment. As he listened to Emma sweep the song up to a totally new level, he decided it was because the instrument had too much potential to dominate.

  Emma did not so much dance as sway in a circle. She curved her body to fit into the line of notes.

  Rick stepped in front of him. Danny didn’t even notice the cameraman’s motions until his own view was blocked. When the song was over, Danny stepped in close even before Emma had placed her sax in the stand. “Ready?”

  She started to glance at the audience, but Danny was prepared for that. He shifted to totally fill her field of vision. She refocused, licked her lips, nodded.

  “Rick.” Danny’s voice was scarcely a whisper. “Shoot over my shoulder.”

  “Got it.”

  Danny stepped back, taking a ninety-degree angle from the monitor where Greg and Annie stood. He took a deep breath and gave Emma the first line.

  There had to be a soliloquy, a chance for the two of them to see if Emma could shine while holding to character. Danny had let her choose the film and had instantly regretted it, sort of. Emma had gone for a film that Danny had disliked from the opening credits—3 Days to Kill. It starred Kevin Costner as Ethan, a professional operative for the CIA. Facing a terminal disease, he decides to give up his dangerous lifestyle in order to rebuild his relationships with his wife and daughter. But in exchange for a lifesaving drug, Ethan agrees to complete one final mission. The problem is, his wife is absent, which means he must apprehend one of the world’s most ruthless criminals while watching his teenage daughter, Zooey, played by Hailee Steinfeld.

  There was nothing whatsoever that Danny liked about the film or the premise. Except for the fact that Emma had seen it so often she could play almost all the roles verbatim. Which, of course, was the only thing that mattered.

  They played a scene where Ethan is trying to get his sullen, sarcastic daughter to do what he says so he can basically save her life. Instead, he is confronted by the blazing fury that has shaped Zooey’s life without her father. The argument was something Danny had completely missed when he’d seen the film. But it formed the real reason why Emma loved it and why she wanted to play that role. So that she could act her way through an argument she had waited two long years to tell her own departed father.

  Her fury was a little over the top, Danny thought. She flubbed one line, or rather, she inserted words that Steinfeld had never spoken on-screen. But the result was still powerful enough for Greg to murmur a very soft, “Wow, wow, wow.”

  This was what Danny had been hoping for. This was the moment he had sensed when he had first heard her play, then watched her storm from this very same room. The innate fire, the beauty, and the magnetism she did not yet realize were hers to claim. All there for her to call on. Which she just had. Danny didn’t need to look at the monitor to know she had nailed it.

  She sailed through her third song, captured and confident now, dancing with eyes shut as she snared them yet again.

  When the song ended and Emma went still, Greg applauded with the others, then declared, “Cut and print.”

  14

  DANNY TOOK HIS TIME shepherding Emma and her mother from the hotel. He found a weary pleasure in reassuring Emma that she had done well, that no, they didn’t need to redo one of the songs, that everything was great. He helped them load the sound system and stand and instruments in Robin’s old SUV, accepted hugs from both women, and stood there as they drove away. As he climbed the stairs and reentered the hotel, the sleepless night and the day’s long hours felt like weights attached to his body.

  He accepted Greg’s and Annie’s compliments, then asked, “Did you hear back from the Chambers execs about the film’s bud
get?”

  Greg grimaced. “They want to cut it to a million two.”

  Danny liked how Megan slipped in beside him, the silent observer. He said, “That makes sense.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “They think whatever you deliver will be a loser. This way, the exec who’s responsible for getting them into this mess can still claim a profit. They’ve costed it out based on a single airing and the ads they’ve already sold. Then they’ll circular-file the project and hope everybody forgets it. Nobody loses. Except us.”

  Annie turned and frowned at the hotel’s front doors. “This is so wrong.”

  Danny nodded. The adrenaline rush that had carried him through the hours of practice and preparation and direction was gone. All he felt now was the same leaden defeat he had carried through the past seven weeks. As though this was the only future he would ever know, no matter how hard he struggled.

  Megan broke into his thoughts. “What would be your ideal budget?”

  “Four million,” Danny said. He didn’t need to think that one through. “Three and a half as a floor.”

  “This could be really, really good,” Annie said. “I know it in my heart. In my bones.”

  “Chambers would hold all North American rights, but we might sell it overseas with a limited theatrical release,” Danny said. “Raise our profile.”

  “Can you shoot anything for a million two?”

  Greg and Annie exchanged weary looks. Greg said, “Probably. We’d have to reduce the number of settings to a half dozen. Less.”

  “Increase the dialogue, reduce the action,” Annie said. “Restrict crowd scenes to unpaid volunteers.”

  “Shoot in twenty days straight, no breaks, twelve-hour days,” Danny said. “As few exteriors as possible.”

  “Work with actors who will sign on for scale,” Greg said.

  “Our first priority in choice of actors would be those known for getting it right first take, not who would be best in the role,” Danny added. “We won’t have the time or money for multiple shots.”

  Greg told Megan, “It’s possible, sure. We’ve done it before. Projects like that were how Danny and I got our start. But Annie’s right. We could do something special here. Emma has the potential to lift this up. We write a story around her coming-of-age.”

  Danny tried to put some energy into his words. “We could still do a story like that on the restricted budget.”

  “We could try,” Greg agreed, resigned now.

  Megan asked, “Would it be possible for us to meet with the Chambers executive?”

  “They’ve already asked for it,” Greg replied. “Once the budget is set, they want input on story.”

  “That will only slow us down more,” Annie wailed. “Having to get their approval and insert their changes will be like tying anchors to our feet.”

  Megan said, “Can you set that meeting up for tomorrow?”

  “Probably,” Greg said. “They’re under the same pressure as us.”

  Danny asked, “What’s the point?”

  “I have an idea,” Megan said. “I’ll lay it out if you like. But I’d rather have you go in cold.”

  Perhaps it was the spark in Megan’s eyes. Or the way she refused to be held down by the burdens he shared with Greg and Annie. Whatever the reason, her words helped lift Danny at least partly from the gloom. “You want us to have deniability.”

  “Right. If they hate it, if it doesn’t work, you can blame me for getting it wrong. I take a hike, you start over.”

  “Excuse me,” Greg said. “But who are you, exactly? I mean—”

  “We know what you mean.” Danny loved the light in Megan’s gaze. Like sunlight through a blue-grey veil. “Megan is on the way to becoming our new best friend.”

  15

  DANNY HAD SELECTED the hotel cabin closest to the lake for himself, even though it was in far worse shape than the main building. The kitchenette had a Hotpoint stove with a baked-enamel finish and screws that had rusted to ocher dust. But Danny had no interest in banging around that huge, empty building by himself. From where he stood on the cabin’s stubby porch, he could not see another solitary light. The hills were hulking shadows cut from a starlit night. The lake was utterly still, almost spooky in its calm, like it was listening intently, waiting for Danny to make another mistake.

  Working with Emma had brought up a lot of memories. The similarity in their pasts was unmistakable. He could see the lakefront bench where she had sat. He recalled the walls of photographs in the hallway and living room and kitchen and dining area and along the stairs leading to their bedrooms. Two lonely people making the best of an impossible situation. Reminding themselves of a man who had once defined love and strength and goodness, at least for them.

  Danny remembered the day he met his foster dad, the only man in his life who had actually deserved the title of father. Jack Strong had lived up to his name, an iron-hard African American who had served his country through two desert wars and a lot of skirmishes he refused to honor with names. That afternoon he had appeared with the woman from foster care, stood there before Danny and JR, and said he’d heard they were trouble with a capital T. He was there to offer them a second chance. But only if they were ready to prove the system wrong.

  He took them to his bungalow under the shadow of Iron Mountain. Over their first meal together, Jack explained how his third wound had ended his military career. A forced retirement had been manageable so long as his wife kept him company. But she had been gone for two years now, and he had grown disgusted with the quiet life. So Jack had gone looking for his next challenge.

  Danny and JR had certainly been that. The two of them were considered unadoptable, with their juvie records and the string of offenses that made their files almost half an inch thick. What was more, they refused to be separated. Every time it happened, they ran away, found each other, and fought until the system finally classed them as brothers just to shut them up. They were too tough and edgy to be taken in by anyone but this battered tomcat of a Marine.

  Jack called them his tunnel rats and loved them with a fierce authority that finally introduced them to the concept of self-discipline. He had lived by a code molded by the military and the Bible. But he’d never attempted to jam either down their throats. He invited them to grow beyond all their reasons to stay tight and angry and defeated and small. The last time Danny had wept had been at old Jack’s funeral.

  He felt like weeping now.

  Danny and JR had basically started working on their future profession while still living with Jack. Their objective had been the same since those early days. Build their opportunity to enter the big game. Make films the whole world saw.

  Movies and television dramas had been their first loves. Reality shows had been tainted for them both by slatternly foster moms clouding the rooms with cigarette smoke and the stench of alcohol and drugs seeping through their pores. That, and how the kids in juvie had screamed at the television through all those shows. It was during one such reality show that Danny had finally woken up. He had watched other kids howl like teenage wolves at people acting out all the pain and rage that trapped them. There on the screen was his fate. He was terrified by the prospect of his ruined life on display so other jailed wolves could scream along with him. He didn’t know what shape the exit might take, or even if one existed. But standing there at the perimeter of those teens, Danny vowed to find a way out or die trying.

  Still today, ten seconds of a reality show was enough to make him feel slightly nauseous.

  Danny leaned against the porch pillar and ached for his missing friend. He remembered the joy he had known sitting next to JR in the Cineplex, waiting for the big screen to light up and swallow them both. There was nothing on earth to compare to the joy he felt when the credits started, the sound built, and a different world appeared there before them. For the next two hours, their wretched pasts belonged to two other kids.

  Neither he nor JR had ever felt any need to tal
k a film to death. Those minutes after leaving the dark space were pretty much the only time Johnny Rocket didn’t have his flame on. He’d remained content and silent right there with Danny. Calm. Detached.

  Danny couldn’t remember who had first voiced the dream. He thought he had, but he couldn’t be sure. By age fifteen, though, whenever they left the cinema, they said the word together. Someday. Then they bumped fists. Renewing their pact. The only one that mattered.

  Danny was drawn back to the empty night by a lone wolf’s howl. He breathed deep. In and out. Telling himself with each breath that he, at least, had held on to the dream.

  Finally he entered the cabin and locked the door. He undressed and lay down. But he did not sleep.

  16

  MEGAN WOKE WHILE it was still dark and went for a run. She relished jogging the flatlands between Buellton and Solvang. Far off in the distance, the traffic rumbled and the world grudgingly began awakening to a new set of challenges. Megan often thought the sound was like a conversation, holding to a cadence all its very own. There was safety here on this empty road, something she would have never taken for granted closer to LA. The air was chilly, and she thought she tasted coming rain.

  Most of her run, Megan thought of Danny. All the images that flashed through her mind carried one indelible impression. The man was so strong, so intent, it was easy to miss the fact that he was also very fragile. As the faint grey splash of light grew in the east, Megan decided Danny Byrd carried burdens he did not know how to set down.

  As she returned to her front yard and began her post-run stretching exercises, Megan allowed herself to accept that she genuinely liked him. Not just as a client either. As a man. It was probably a terrible idea. But she had no idea how to stop her feelings other than walk away. Which she was definitely not going to do.

  Megan returned upstairs and showered and prepared for the day ahead. Her room and the adjoining bath were half as big as the entire downstairs. Windows faced both the front and rear—mountains and her mother’s flowers and the empty road and the strengthening day. As Megan dressed in the spare outfit she kept in the otherwise empty closet, she listened to the faint sounds of her parents entering their own morning routines. She heard her father laugh, a rare sound these days, according to her mother. When he laughed a second time, Megan knew it was because she was there, their family united once again.