Nora Goes Off Script(2)
I’ve misjudged, and they’re late, so I’m back on the front porch watching their arrival. I grip the railing as the eighteen-wheelers barrel down my dirt driveway, dislodging the lowest magnolia blossoms and darkening the sky with startled birds. For a second, my whole property looks like a Hitchcock movie.
I never saw this coming. I’m as surprised as anybody that The Tea House is being made into a real movie. The last movie I wrote was called Kisses for Christmas, an eighty-minute TV movie with well-timed breaks in the action to make room for the forty minutes of commercials. The one before that was Hometown Hearts, which is pretty much the same story, but it takes place in the fall. My superpower is methodically placing a man and woman in the same shiny town, populated by unusually happy people with maddeningly small problems. They bristle at first and then fall in love. It’s all smiles until one of them leaves, but then comes back immediately after the commercial break. Every. Single. Time.
The Tea House is a departure from the formula and is definitely the best thing I’ve ever written. The first thing my agent, Jackie, said when she’d finished reading it was, “Are you okay?” I laughed because, sure, it did seem like I’d gone dark. The story runs deeper, with heavy doses of anguish and introspection, and for sure the guy doesn’t come back at the end. In the months after Ben left, I sold two fun, light scripts to The Romance Channel, but then this darker thing sort of spilled out of me. I’d tried to keep my personal life to myself after Ben left, but I guess some stories just want to be told.
“I mean this is great,” she started. “But this is like a big film, not for The Romance Channel. If it’s okay with you, I’m going to pitch this to major studios.”
“That’s going to be a major waste of your time,” I said, pulling crabgrass in my front yard. “No one wants to watch two hours of angst and abandonment. I swear I tried to perk it up at the end, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t stomach him walking back through the door.”
“Nora. It hasn’t even been a year.”
“I know. So I need to get back to what I do best. Do whatever you want with this thing; I think maybe I just needed to get it off my chest. Everything okay with your mom?”
“She’s fine. Give me a couple of weeks on this. This script is a game changer.”
As the first truck stops in front of my house, nine of its eighteen wheels on my grass, I realize that the game has indeed changed. I hold on to the porch railing for support as two more trucks start unloading cameras, lighting, furniture, people.
A pink-haired young woman with a clipboard and a smile approaches me. “Hey, you must be Nora. Don’t freak out. Cuz I’d be totally freaking out. I’m Weezie, Leo’s assistant.”
“Hi. Not freaking out. I can replant the grass.” I reach out to shake her free hand.
Another woman, closer to my age in a black jumpsuit, approaches. “I’m Meredith Cohen, executive producer.”
“Nora Hamilton, homeowner,” I manage, still hanging on to the porch railing. “And writer,” I add, because I’m awkward.
“Listen,” Meredith says. “We’re a lot. Hell, just Leo’s a lot these days. We’re going to make a lot of noise and a big mess, and then we’ll clean it all up and be out of your hair in two days. Three, tops.”
“That’s fine; it’s what I expected. I’ve never seen a movie shoot before, kind of exciting.” A red pickup truck pulls completely onto the grass, towing a silver Airstream trailer. “What’s that?”
Weezie turns and laughs. “Oh, here he is. Of course, that’s Leo. We’re all staying at the Breezeport Hilton; he doesn’t stay at Hiltons.” She rolls her eyes and smiles again, like it’s mildly annoying but also adorable that this guy is wrecking my lawn.
“Leo Vance is going to sleep in that thing? In my front yard?”
“It can’t be avoided. He’s quirky. But he’s got a bathroom in there and we have a honeywagon coming for everyone else. So don’t worry about your house.”
The Airstream door opens and out steps a forty-year-old, shoeless superstar. His jeans hang too low and his gray T-shirt is torn in two places. His hair needs a trim, and he’s way too handsome to play Ben. But then again, Naomi Sanchez is playing me. He squints up at the sky as he gets his bearings, as if he’s emerging from the dark after twenty-four hours. It’s eleven A.M. and we’re only a ninety-minute drive from New York City.
Leo Vance is the highest-paid leading man in Hollywood. I know this because I’ve been googling him for three days. He has homes in Manhattan, Bel Air, and Cap d’Antibes. He owns a share of an NBA franchise. No kids, never married. A Libra. He’s originally from New Jersey and has a brother.
I’ve seen every one of Leo’s movies, which isn’t really a credit to him. I’ve seen a lot of movies. He’s a good actor, and he’s most famous for his smoldering stare. I have to say, it’s a little over the top. In his first film, Sycamore Nights, he gave his co-star Aileen Bennett a series of white-hot smolders that got him named Sexiest Man Alive that year. I guess it became his signature move, so he kept it up film after film, even when it was entirely unnecessary. Like in Battle for the Home Front, he’s telling his newly pregnant wife that he has to go away to war, and he’s smoldering. Or in Class Action, he’s giving a commencement speech at a military academy and smoldering all over everyone’s parents and grandparents. And don’t get me started on African Rose. A refugee center with a wild malaria outbreak is no place to smolder. Leo Vance seems prone to the inappropriate oozing of sex appeal.