Everything Leads to You(34)

“These must be from where you’re from,” I say to Theo, and he nods. “South Africa?”

“Yes. Cape Town.”

“You must have spent a lot of time outdoors. And you still do, obviously.”

He cocks his head. “How is it obvious? I mean, you’re right, but . . .”

“Most people don’t decorate their outdoor spaces this way,” I say. “They have outdoor furniture and a few decorative things, sure, but they don’t, for example, have pillows that look like they were sewn by hand on the chairs, or framed photographs of their family members hanging on the exterior walls of their houses.”

Theo and Rebecca have both of these things. They also have a collection of enamel pots and mugs that contain carefully tended succulents.

I pick up one of the mugs to show them.

“Some of these would be great for Juniper’s place,” I say, and Rebecca pauses on her way to the table, a cutting board heaped with fruit and cheese in her hands, and says, “So you read it?”

“I read it.”

“And?” Theo asks.

“I loved it,” I say. “It’s beautiful. And I would be honored to be the production designer. And I don’t care how little it pays.”

This morning, I thought about playing it cool but then I changed my mind; it isn’t my strength.

They beam at me and we take our seats at the table.

“I have a lot of ideas,” I say, taking out my laptop, opening the screen and showing them the images I’ve collected. I reference all the places in the script that lead me to the decisions I’ve made about the characters, and Theo and Rebecca are asking questions, and saying Yes, blues and greens! And Theo’s saying Coral? Like orang-y pink? That’s brilliant! And Rebecca’s saying to him Didn’t I tell you? And to me, Your aesthetic is exactly what we want. These ideas are perfect. And somewhere along the way, this thing happens between us.

It becomes our film instead of only theirs.

We go over the budget and it’s almost nonexistent. There’s enough money to pay a small amount for the locations, but barely anything left over.

“We can save money for decor if we can use locations for free,” I say. “I have somewhere in mind for Juniper’s apartment.”

“Yeah?”

“My brother’s place. He’s out of town now so it wouldn’t be a problem. It has great light and it’s small and a lot of what’s in there already would work for Juniper. It would give us a good foundation, at least.”

“Excellent,” Theo says, and I tell him I will send pictures later today, and they say that pictures would be great at some point, but that they trust my vision so there is no rush.

“Where are we with casting?” I ask them in between bites of sliced peaches.

“We got Benjamin James,” Theo says.

“For George?”

He nods.

“I can’t believe you guys didn’t tell me about that yesterday!”

Rebecca smiles. “We thought we could use it today if you were a tough negotiator.”

“Right,” I say. “Well, it would have worked. Who else?”

“Lindsey Miller,” Rebecca says. “She’s playing the woman who has the seizure.”

“Lindsey Miller? That’s huge.”

Theo says, “Yes, we’ve been tremendously fortunate.”

“She’s a friend of ours,” Rebecca explains. “Her agent is a real hard-ass but she was able to talk him into letting her do it as long as we can shoot all her scenes in two days.”

“Are those dates set?”

They nod, so I get out my phone and start calendaring. The days are late in the production schedule, which means that our grocery store scenes will be the last ones we film, which is probably for the best considering that the store might be the most difficult location to secure. We brainstorm some markets to approach.

“So who is playing Juniper?” I ask.

Theo sighs and Rebecca rubs her forehead.

“Don’t worry,” she tells me. “We’re going to find someone.”

But it’s clear that she’s worried, and with only four weeks until production begins, I can understand why.

“We had Sarah Williams,” Theo says. “She’s the reason we pushed the entire shooting schedule up. But after the Oscar nod she was in such high demand. She had to back out.”