I'm Glad About You(39)

That was a year ago. This was today. Alison felt a tingling along her jawline; she was nervous. Because of the bitter estrangement that had been tricked up between Tara and Rob, the writers had condemned them to long months of soul-searching looks, near kisses, and contemptuous verbal take-downs. But now Tara was going to tear down the barriers between them, force Rob to admit that he had never stopped loving her, and f*ck him on that pool table in the back room. The crew, to give them credit, behaved beautifully on days like this. Whenever someone said, “This scene is sensitive” to a bunch of union guys, they understood that meant more than no drooling. The less-classy writers would gather at the monitors and watch every take like spectators at a porno film, but the muscular, tattooed guys who were out there on the set with the actors, pushing the cameras in and out while they faux fornicated, behaved like utter gentlemen.

The lighting was complicated. The cameras had to do a bit of fancy footwork, which amounted to not much more than scooting forward and back and then zooming in, but it took time to sync it up with the lights. Alison was seated at the corner of the bar for all of this, and finally, Bradley was there too, ignoring her with a maddening deliberation. Some actors, she had heard, were tender and careful with their scene partners when a big sex scene was on deck. Bradley took the opposite approach. He floated from table to table, refusing to acknowledge her presence even as he got closer and closer to where she was, as if being pulled to her by the inevitable tidal forces of his desire. That’s what the stupid director had explained at the read-through—“He’s pulled to you by the tidal forces of his desire.” Honestly, Alison thought, while listening politely. These jobs pay so much money, why do mostly stupid people get them?

This guy was an A-one example of the breed. Before he had even finished blocking the whole scene he had decided he was worried because Tara was sitting there by herself for so long and she was such a presence in the scene, and such an important character to the show, that she wasn’t active enough. So, what she would be doing, he felt, was flirting with the bartender.

“You want me to flirt with the bartender?” Alison tried to ask the question respectfully. “Oh. I’m—but—is that in the script?”

“Not like, heavy flirting,” the director said, also respectfully. “Just smile, check him out. He’s cute. Like that.”

“But I’m, aren’t I sort of obsessed with Rob right now? By the end of the scene I’m going to, you know, do him on the pool table.”

“You’re not thinking about that right now. Of course that’s not what’s on your mind.”

“Actually it hasn’t been much off my mind for the last three months, I’m constantly whining about how much I miss him to anybody who will listen.” “Whine” wasn’t a good word. She was already miked, so if any of the writers had their ears on, they would hear it and get mad. “Not whining, I don’t mean whining, but seriously, I’ve been talking about it a lot,” she amended.

“Right, but he doesn’t need to know that. You don’t want him to know that. You want him to be jealous.”

“But he’s not paying attention to me.”

“He’s drifting toward you relentlessly.”

“No, I know, I just meant that he’s at least pretending to not pay attention. He’s seriously talking to everyone else in the room, and he’s not looking at me, so . . .”

“That’s why you have to grab his attention.”

“By flirting with a bartender?”

“Right.”

“Okay. I get it. I’m just a little, because the bartender doesn’t have any lines, does he? And I’m pretty sure my only line to him is ‘I’ll have another,’ which, I’m not, it’s kind of hard to flirt on that. Unless you really want me to lean into it, like, ‘I’ll have another,’ which it’s hard to do without looking really slutty. But if that’s what you want . . .”

She hated talking like this. But it was somehow the rule of television, you had to discuss even the most inane questions as if they were utterly serious.

“I’m not asking for much. Just a little flirt.” An edge of real annoyance had entered the director’s tone. Another fight not worth having; she would need to have this guy on her side when they got around to rewriting dialogue and having sex on the pool table. Time to cede ground.

“Okay. Sure. I see.” She smiled at him with what she hoped looked like a sweet impulse to cooperate. “I think I know exactly what you mean, Jace.”

“Really?”

“I . . . will have another,” she informed him, with a saucy tip of the head. She let her fingers drift up his arm playfully, and grinned at him, flirting. He blinked with surprise at the sudden shift. “Let me play with it.” She turned to head back to the bar, a good little girl ready to flirt with whoever she was told to.

“Didn’t we decide to put your hair up, in some kind of knot?”

Alison froze. The director was staring at her hair with a rapt certitude which made her want to hit him.

At which point an arm crept around her waist, and someone buried his head in her neck. “God you smell good,” Bradley whispered. She felt her knees buckle, but his grip was firm. “Her hair looks amazing,” he informed the director. “I’d do her right now, in front of everybody, if I wouldn’t get arrested for it.”