Everything Leads to You(43)

But the question hovers over the room: Can she act?

“Should we run through it?” I ask her.

“We can record it a few times, right?”

“Sure,” Charlotte says.

“Then let’s just start. I practiced a lot today and I just want to dive in. If that’s okay.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” I tell her. “I’ll read George’s lines from over here. And when you look up, look toward me instead of directly into the camera.”

She takes a deep breath. She sets the screenplay in her lap. “I’m ready.”

Charlotte presses a button and the red light of the camera begins to flash. She nods at Ava.

“My name is Ava Garden Wilder and I am reading for the part of Juniper.”

She shifts in Toby’s orange chair and sits a little straighter. She glances at the screenplay. Closes her eyes. Opens them again.

She begins.


JUNIPER

Listen. I don’t think it’s stupid. I think that sometimes people want something so much that they manifest it. Or at least they try to.


GEORGE

That’s kind of you.


JUNIPER

No. It’s not kind of me. It’s just what I think.


(Pause)

Okay. I’m going to tell you about this thing that happened to me once. I’ve never told anybody.


GEORGE

All right.


JUNIPER

This was, like, two years ago. I was taking Botany 101 and we were studying Ranunculaceae and I was obsessed with them. Like, they were all I ever wanted to look at. And I was walking home, up Divisidero to my shitty little rented room, and I passed a flower stand, and there was a bouquet of them. Really gorgeous ones. They weren’t cheap and I was almost broke. It was a choice between dinner and flowers and I chose flowers because it was a dark time in my life and my room was hideous and my heart was broken and I needed something beautiful. The florist was an immigrant, probably in her thirties, and her English wasn’t great. I told her I wanted the flowers and she nodded and said something to me that I didn’t understand. And then she said, “I love you, okay?”


GEORGE

Really?


JUNIPER

Yes. And she repeated it. “I love you, okay?” she said. And this thing happened. I suddenly got the sense that everything was going to be okay, that I was going to be okay. It might have felt to me like the world was crumbling. I may have been totally alone and broke and doomed in all my relationships, but this could happen. This florist could see something in me that would make her profess this. I didn’t have to understand where it was coming from; I could just accept it. So I said, “Thank you.” And I smiled at her. And she looked confused for half a second but the confusion passed and she took the flowers and wrapped them up and I gave her the money. She said good-bye, and I thought, How amazing. To tell me she loved me and then just go on with her job.


GEORGE

That’s a great story. Nothing embarrassing about it.


JUNIPER

I’m not finished. I started walking home. It was raining by then and I kept thinking about the florist. I wondered what country she was from, how long her journey to California had been, who she left behind and who she took with her. For once, the rain wasn’t cold and the panhandlers weren’t begging. I stopped and looked at myself in the reflection of a café. I remember thinking that I looked like the kind of person I would want to know if I just happened to meet myself. That might not sound like a big deal to you, but . . .


GEORGE

No. I understand how that could be a big deal.


JUNIPER

Suddenly, everything was so pretty. The rain, the shiny sidewalks, the downtown skyline. And especially my ranunculus. I lifted them up to see them.

(Pause)

They were wrapped in this terrible tissue paper with tacky pink cursive that said “I love you” all over it.


GEORGE

(Softly)

Oh.


JUNIPER

Yeah. She hadn’t been asking my permission to love me. She had just assumed that the ranunculus were a gift for someone I loved. And who, presumably, loved me, too.


GEORGE

So what did you do?


JUNIPER

(Pause)

I threw them away.

~

We are all silent. Charlotte turns off the camera. Ava sets the screenplay, still open to the scene, next to her on the chair. I look toward the patio, in the direction of the ocean, and try to identify the feeling that has taken me over.