The Animators(118)

I flip through. New York scenes: the elevated train, rushing past our window. Our studio, strewn with clothes, ashtrays, the Cintiq glowing in the corner. The sketches are good. Not great. First draft, maybe second. There’s no clear narrative, the presentation’s fuzzy—those were always things I took care of. Things she would have had to learn how to do herself, for her first solo project.

The initial storyboards are of her and me, working. 2007. It must have been Nashville Combat, the very beginning of development. We are bent over back-to-back workstations: curved, scowling bookends. A TV in the background bears a faint etching of Dick Cheney. In the next panel, Mel tells me a joke. I laugh and the world blares red: trombones fart, flowers wilt.

She has written: Her laugh. It was great. It was awful. It was a sound like Satan rubbing his thighs together. She was deeply embarrassing to see movies with.

In the next panel, we are designing a character named Mrs. Beav, who ping-pongs up and down the street, winging her crotch into random objects screeching, “BEAV! BEAV!”

“I think it should be BEEV,” I am saying, a decided crease to my brow. “I prefer the double EE to the superfluous A.”

She was brilliant, Mel wrote.

Next scene. We are getting dressed to go out somewhere. There are close-ups of me leaning over a sink, applying mascara in a mirror. I step out in a very hip, very snug pair of high-waisters. Panel one: Mel smirks. “Look at you, making the strut in your mom jeans.”

“Shut up. I like these pants.”

“You’re like eighty percent pelvis right now. I can’t even look at you.”

“That’s the jealousy talking. Jealousy over my super-cool pants.”

“You pull them that high above your navel, it’s a sign you’ve given up on life.”

Last panel: I dump the pencil holder on top of her head, letting the shavings rain down.

She was beautiful, Mel wrote.

My entire body runs cold. There’s a quality to these sketches I can recognize: the product that comes from the need to draw something out of your head. Every time she looked at me, she was studying me. The way my face moved, the way I looked when I spoke, when I thought. This is exorcism sketching: making a story so you can kill it and bury it. She was making this in order to put something to rest for herself.

My mind flashes on Mel, slumped over the drafting board, glasses pushed to the top of her head, brown-flecked coffee mug—her favorite, the one I got her that read KENTUCKY STATE TOBACCO SPITTING CHAMPION, no doubt filled with Jack and Coke—beside her. Mel worked her ass off as a matter of course. We both did. We both had our reasons. But I never thought to ask her for hers. A flare of guilt hits me so hard it is nauseating. It was callous of me, taking her investment for granted.

“I’ve never seen these before,” I say.

I feel Caroline shift next to me. “You haven’t?”

I can’t lift my head. I rifle through the pages again. It is definitely a project, something to which she devoted time and thought. She was working behind my back, and Caroline wants me to know it.

“How did you two meet?” I ask.

“We met at Animacon one year.”

“You mean she hit on you at Animacon.”

Something in Caroline’s face cracks, goes soft. She grins, showing her teeth. Rolls her eyes a little. “I guess. I gave her my card. She contacted me for development advice like a year later, maybe.”

Page five. Dark hair, big tits. Round, anxious pupils at the eyes. It’s me, a little ruffled, not all Nashville Combat ethereal—those were my salad days, the closest I’ll ever come to sexpot—but still, better than I have ever seen myself look, ever. Jesus, Mel, why do you always have to make such a big deal out of my boobs?

“I assumed you knew about this,” Caroline says. “I hated the idea of you working on something and potentially having missing materials.” Her glass is empty. I notice her hand tremor slightly as she makes a flicking motion with her finger. The bartender comes, takes it away. Sets down another. “It’s funny,” she continues, “I’ve worked with writers and cartoonists for years, but my ideas about their process are still pretty abstract. You know?”

I put the file down and force myself to look at her. “She wasn’t going to me with this. You know that, right?”

She straightens on the stool, shoulders back. “I didn’t,” she says slowly. “I had no idea.”

I rub my eyes. Flip the file open again. “It’s not obvious? Jesus.”

She doesn’t answer.

I wonder when Mel did it. Where. Not in the studio. I would have noticed. When had she planned to tell me? Was she going to employ the coward’s gradual method, phrase it as taking a break—a prelude to dumping me for good?

I would have been completely blindsided, too.

“Who else knew about these?” I ask Caroline.

She stares down into her drink. I see her swallow. “No one. As far as I know.”

“Right. As far as you know.”

Caroline turns to me fully now, hands lifted. “Sharon,” she says quietly. “Let’s start over. I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time. I’m not trying to hurt you or ambush you with these. Okay? And if they have hurt you, then I’m sorry. That was not my intention.”

“Am I supposed to thank you?”