Pretty as a Picture Read online

  This doesn’t feel like fantasy. But it doesn’t feel quite like reality, either.

  “Already burning the midnight oil, huh?”

  I turn. Isaiah’s standing in the doorway, looking very powerful and matter-of-fact, like he’s just about to announce the thesis statement of his TED Talk.

  My shoulders curl in on themselves. “If you’re going to be serious and stern, can it wait?”

  He eases into the room. “The problem,” he says, in a low, confidential tone, “is that they pay me to be serious and stern. See, you can’t have a sense of humor and the ability to kill a man with your bare hands.”

  I feel myself relax just a little. He’s bantering. This is banter.

  “It’s like they’ve never heard of The Rock,” I venture.

  “Right? It’s 2019. A man can have layers.”

  After a moment, his face settles, his smile fading, but it doesn’t quite revert all the way back to that bland professional mien. I can’t help but feel mildly triumphant.

  I look down at the work table, tracing the wood grain with my fingers. “Tell me—does everyone on the crew get their own personal armed escort?”

  “That’s just until you perform the blood loyalty oath.”

  A laugh sneaks out of me. “You sound like Amy.”

  He flops down onto the sofa. “Who’s Amy?”

  “A very good friend with a very bad habit of distracting me with jokes when she’s sick of answering my questions.”

  “You do ask a lot of them.”

  I smile weakly. “My gift and my curse.”

  He picks up the afghan, turns it over in his hands. “I’m sure everything will make more sense after a good night’s sleep.”

  “Now you sound like my mother.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Careful. I might think you like me.”

  “Don’t get too excited, those are basically the only two people I know.”

  He straightens abruptly and laughs, openly and easily, like it would never even occur to him that I wasn’t funny on purpose, and I’m forced to admit that meeting this man might be one of the better things that’s happened to me in a while.

  * * *

  —

  I manage to make it back to my room without tripping or fumbling or otherwise embarrassing myself, and it’s with no small measure of relief that I close the door behind me. I lean my forehead against it and count to a hundred. I find it helps me if I do this. I can’t just switch myself on and off like a light. I have to give myself time to cool down.

  Then I do a cursory survey of the room that’s going to be my home for the next six weeks or so. High ceilings, crown molding, celadon walls. A four-poster bed, an antique brass lamp. On one wall, a historical map; on another, a vintage illustration of a horseshoe crab. Three plump needlepoint pillows are spaced along the length of the cream loveseat. It would be easy to imagine that this is exactly how the room looked back in 1948.

  If it wasn’t for the faint smell of fresh paint, that is. I press a fingertip lightly to the nearest wall, testing it. It’s dry, but if I had to guess, it was painted within the last two months.

  Once the initial spell is broken, the rest of the illusion falls apart. I realize the map’s a reproduction—and now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I saw that illustration at IKEA the last time I was there. That lamp definitely takes an LED bulb.

  I wonder if they renovated for the movie or if I was just assigned to a refurbished wing. Tony doesn’t skimp on his budgets, but even he might not be able to cover a historical restoration of an entire hotel.

  Whoever paid for it, I’m grateful. They got the good hypoallergenic pillows.

  I retrieve my suitcase from the closet, and I examine it carefully. I don’t like to use bellhops if I can help it, but I still haven’t figured out how to say that without offending them. It’s not that I don’t trust them. I just get anxious when someone else has my stuff. Even Amy doesn’t know the full details of the way I like to keep my things. I’m very particular.

  Which is why I can tell right away someone has been through my suitcase. Whoever it was did a pretty good job—they were careful to try to put everything back where they found it—but I notice right away that one pair of pants was rerolled with the wrong side out.

  Is this another outlandish security precaution? Did I agree to that, too, when I signed my contract? Or is this island just some lawless netherworld where privacy rights and common courtesy no longer apply?

  It occurs to me that I may just be describing Delaware.

  I drag myself over to the chair and examine my new production phone. It’s only a little smaller than my hand, a stubby rectangle with a display not much larger than a postage stamp. I flip it open—flip it closed. Flip it open. Flip it closed.

  That’s satisfying, at least.

  I check the clock. It’s only nine in LA. No wonder I’m not tired.

  Oh shit. I forgot to call Amy.

  She picks up immediately.

  “Marissa?”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “Delaware area code—it was you or Joe Biden. You okay? I’ve called like five times.”

  For some reason, I hesitate. “Well—it kind of turns out we’re not allowed to have our smartphones.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I know, you’d think it’s a Marvel movie.” An unpleasant thought occurs to me. “You don’t think they’d bug the production phones, do you?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Are they allowed to do that? Is that legal? I’ve never had a company phone before.”

  “Look—”

  I curl my ponytail around my finger. “Could you google whether Delaware’s a two-party consent state? Probably not, right? Because it’s Delaware.”

  “Marissa! Enough with the phones. Listen: We’ve been asking around—”

  I wince.

  We?

  On cue, I hear a familiar voice in the background.

  “Hold on,” Amy says. “Josh wants to talk to you.”

  Hell’s bells. I pull the phone an inch away from my ear.

  “Marissa.”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose. How a person can manage to cram so much disapproval into three simple syllables, I’ll never know.

  “I didn’t realize you were there,” I say. “I’ll keep it short, I promise. I’m not trying to interrupt.”

  “No, no, that’s not it—I mean. No. Look. I asked around, and it doesn’t sound good. My gaffer’s buddies with a couple guys on your crew, and he told me your shoot’s got some real bad mojo.”

  It’s my absolute certainty that he thinks he’s doing me a favor right now—that he thinks he’s such a good guy—that makes me do it.

  “I think you mean juju,” I say.

  He pauses. “No, I mean mojo.”

  “A mojo’s a magic charm for protection or love or luck or power that you keep on your person. You can have it or you can lose it, but it can’t be bad—otherwise, why would you keep carrying it around? You’re thinking of juju.”

  “Does it really matter?”

  “Or maybe you mean karma?”

  “For fuck’s sake, would you just—ow! Dammit, Amy! Yeah—yeah. I know, but—”

  A flat silence settles over the line. He’s hit mute. I wish I could blame Josh for not liking me, but his reasons are solid. I truly can’t help myself.

  That doesn’t make him any less of a jerk, though.

  “Marissa? You still there?” It’s Amy.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “He’s just trying to help.”

  “I’m sure he is.”

  “Just—listen to him, okay? For once. It sounds like something’s off about that set. Shit keeps going wrong, people keep quitting.”

  Given eve
rything I’ve seen so far, that’s a more than fair description, but I’m not about to admit that Josh is right.

  “You could say that about half the films in production right now.”

  Amy sighs. “Yeah, but apparently on this one, the authorities have had to get involved? There was a setup that went wrong or something, I don’t know.”

  A pause that has me digging my thumbnail into the chair cushion.

  “And Josh’s friend doesn’t think it was an accident,” she goes on. “He claims Production’s covering something up.”

  This is such a wild assertion that when I try to figure out how to respond, my brain sort of misfires, pulling up way too many memories all at once—old ones, new ones, clear ones, crummy ones—and I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to be paying attention to. The captain’s face. Isaiah’s gun. My mother’s garden. Anjali’s keys. The door to the editing room. The entrance to the caves. Wade’s laugh. Liza’s lips. Whoopi Goldberg.

  Whoopi Goldberg?

  Marissa. Focus.

  I rub a hand over my face and let my feet move as much as they want to, and eventually, the signal fights its way through the noise.

  A petty, tangential signal. But a signal nevertheless.

  “Why is Josh suddenly so interested in my career?” I ask.

  “He’s worried, that’s all.”

  “No, he isn’t.” Amy’s the one who worries about me. Josh—Josh does whatever the opposite of worrying is. “He doesn’t think I can handle myself.”

  “That’s not true—Tony’s just difficult, you know that.”

  “Amy, if I never worked with difficult directors, I’d never work.”

  I want to take it back immediately. “Difficult” isn’t how Amy sees herself. She sees herself as the kind of director who creates safe, supportive spaces for her cast and crew. Who listens to every complaint. Who cares about every answer. Who pays out of her own pocket for hot sandwiches on rough days. Who squeezes her actresses’ hands in sympathy, nodding with them, swaying with them, saying, “I hear you. I hear you.”

  But while all these things are true, it is also true that she’s incredibly difficult, exacting and demanding and everything else you’d expect from an overachiever who truly believes she can bring the people around her up to her level. I tried to tell her once that as far as reputations go, “difficult” is way better than “weird,” but even though I gave her an entire anthology on the subject for Christmas, this, apparently, isn’t one of the things she can hear.

  Great. Now I’m mad—so here’s me saying more terrible things.

  “And anyway, what does Josh know about having a hard time?”

  “He’s just trying—”

  “To help. I know. But, like—you know I’ve worked on more movies than he has, right? Won more awards. Put up with more BS in a single day than he has in a decade. So—I don’t need his help. I don’t want his help. And I’m not going to quit my job—and breach my contract—just because some gaffer Josh worked with one time on some web series is spreading rumors.”

  She doesn’t answer. But, over the line, I can just make it out. The very slightest noise: a flutter.

  I wince. Shit.

  “Marissa?” she says after a moment.

  “Yes?”

  “Why don’t you like him?”

  “It’s not that—”

  “Because if there’s something I should know—”

  “There isn’t,” I say, firmly.

  TWELVE

  By the time I get off the phone with Amy, it’s been fourteen hours since I last ate. As soon as I realize this I’m up and on my feet. My hand is already reaching for the doorknob—I think I saw a vending machine in the lobby—when I remember Tony’s instructions.

  I’m not supposed to leave my room.

  I hesitate.

  But he can’t want me to starve, can he? And it’s too late to call anyone for help—not that I even can call anyone, because no one’s given me a call sheet. Plus, it’s late. Everyone else is probably in bed. No one will see me. I’ll be fast. I’ll just pop right down and back. Easy-peasy.

  Maybe I’ll take the stairs, though. Just in case.

  I reach the ground floor and poke my head out into the lobby. As I’d suspected, it’s empty, completely quiet. So quiet, I can only hear the ocean.

  I pad past reception and head for the vending machines, walking on my toes and keeping to the carpet. Once I’m certain I’m alone, I let myself indulge in the happy little daydream that’s coming on: that I’m the only person in the hotel—the only person on the island. Yes, that’s better. Then I wouldn’t even have to worry about someone coming to the door. Even the most distant prospect of intrusion—a neighbor, a solicitor, a package that’s coming in five to seven days—can spoil the pleasures of solitude.

  My smile fades when I find the vending machine. It’s one of those healthy vending machines with KIND bars and kale chips and soy nuts and organic cotton socks. A waste of perfectly good pocket change.

  I turn my back on the machine and consider my options, my hands on my hips.

  I guess there’s nothing for it. I’m going to have to find the kitchen.

  I head for the darkened dining room, slipping between tables already set for tomorrow’s breakfast. On the back wall, between a booth and the beverage station, I find a narrow hall that leads me past the restrooms to a pair of silver doors with porthole windows.

  I peer inside. The overheads are off, but there’s a faint blue light coming from somewhere, and it’s just bright enough that I can make out the line of the countertops and a faucet and what I think is a range hood. The scent of bleach is strong enough to have me scratching at my nose.

  I push through the doors and wait for my eyes to adjust.

  Immediately to my left is a hand-washing station, and beyond that is some kind of storage, and then there’s the—

  The light goes out.

  I pause only briefly. I spend my life moving from one poorly lit room to another: It’s not the dark I’m afraid of.

  But then, from the far corner of the room, comes an unmistakably human sound.

  My mouth goes dry. I may not be scared of the dark—but people scare the shit out of me.

  “Hello?”

  As soon as I say it, I want to smack myself in the forehead. Like, sure, go ahead, Marissa, give away your position, announce your cluelessness, pull back that shower curtain so the killer can get a better look.

  And what am I expecting to hear, anyway?

  So happy you could make it!

  I’ve been expecting you!

  Is it me you’re looking for?

  When the lights come on, I scream.

  “Dude, chill.”

  Behind me, one hand still on the light switch, is a young East Asian girl. Fourteen or fifteen, maybe a bit younger? Her black hair is tangled and tucked behind her ears, and her bangs could use a trim. She’s dressed in cutoffs and a sleeveless gray hoodie; two black hair bands wrap around her left wrist.

  I’ve seen her before, I realize: earlier, in the lobby, with Gavin.

  “I’m Suzy,” she says.

  “And I’m Grace.”

  I twist around. It’s the other girl from the lobby. She’s perched on a countertop in the corner, partially obscured by the commercial refrigerator. She’s smaller than Suzy, with light brown skin and a big dimple in her left cheek, and she’s dyed her hair the color of a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto. Her clear acrylic glasses are too big for her head; they’re barely clinging to the tip of her nose.

  I don’t know what the right thing is to say in this situation, but it’s certainly not what I land on:

  “I’m not supposed to be here.”

  Suzy shrugs. “That’s okay. Neither are we.”

  “What brings you to Kickemout Island?” Grac
e asks.

  I blink. “I thought it was Kickout Island?”

  Suzy hops up onto the counter next to Grace. “Not since Tony shitcanned the first AD,” she says.

  “You mean the 2nd AD,” Grace says.

  “No, Ryan was the first AD.”

  “Phil is the 1st AD.”

  “Oh, right, I see what you’re saying.” Suzy turns back to me. “Sorry. Not since Tony shitcanned the first 2nd AD.”

  I look back and forth between them. They don’t look alike, but the way they’re talking—

  “Are you two sisters or something?”

  Suzy shakes her head. “We’ve just been stuck on this island for weeks with no one else to talk to.”

  “A hundred percent possible we’re going crazy,” Grace says.

  Suzy elbows her friend. “We talked about this.”

  Grace doesn’t miss a beat. “A hundred percent possible we’ve become profoundly socially maladjusted.”

  My mouth, I realize, is hanging open. I ask a question just to give it something to do.

  “Are you two from here?”

  “No,” Suzy says. “We’re from New York.”

  Grace rolls her eyes. “She’s from New Jersey.”

  “And”—God, why can’t I stop blinking?—“I’m sorry, but who are you again?”

  “My dad’s the executive chef,” Grace says.

  “My mom’s the pastry chef,” Suzy says.

  “We think it would be better if it were the other way around. But, you know”—Grace gives her fingers a wiggle—“the patriarchy.”

  And just like that, my spirits lift.

  “That means you know where the food is.”

  “Oh!” Grace says. “You missed dinner.”

  “That sucks,” Suzy says.

  “It was lamb merguez—”

  “With a warm carrot salad—”

  “And an orange-basil granita—”

  “There might be some leftovers?”

  I scratch the back of my neck and look away. “That sounds lovely, but I was sort of hoping I could just make myself a peanut butter sandwich.”