Field Notes on Love(42)

He laughs. “Someone was told this morning that he’s a good kisser.”

“Someone had better be careful about getting a big head.”

“Someone will try his best,” Hugo says, propping his feet up on the ledge and looking out the enormous windows at the houses whipping past. “This’ll be brilliant when we’re in the mountains, won’t it?”

Mae nods and takes her camera out of the bag on her lap, ready to capture the changes in scenery as they head west, first through Iowa and Nebraska, and then on to Denver, which they’ll reach tomorrow morning.

“I think I’ve already spotted some good potential interviews,” Hugo says. “As your assistant director, I feel like I should get first crack at choosing one this time.”

She laughs. “That’s a pretty big promotion for someone who couldn’t stop talking through the shots yesterday. What are your salary requirements?”

To her surprise, he leans in to give her a quick kiss, then sits back, looking pleased with himself. “I think we’re all squared away now. Unless you’d like to discuss some sort of raise.”

She grabs the front of his shirt, pulling him back toward her, and this time she kisses him in earnest. When they sit back again, she’s grinning like crazy, and so is he.

“I’d say you’re off to a good start,” she says. “What else you got?”

Hugo nods at an older black couple sitting a few seats away. They have a tablet propped on a tray beneath the window; it shows a digital map with a blue dot that’s following their route. They’ve also got binoculars, a compass, and two packs of Starburst. “You should ask them. Clearly, this isn’t their first rodeo.”

    The way he says rodeo is so charming that Mae feels desperate to kiss him again. It’s enough to make her want to write a list of funny American words—dude and zonked and cotton candy—and have him recite them all afternoon. But instead she begins to adjust the settings on her camera. “Good call.”

“So what do you do with these, anyway?”

She glances up at him. “What do you mean?”

“Your films. Do you post them somewhere? Have screenings? Send them around to your friends? If my name’s going to be in lights, I need to know where I can find it.”

“I have a website,” she says, still tinkering with the dials. “I put my favorites up there.”

“What about the rest?”

She shrugs. “I learn from them and move on.”

“So you could spend weeks—”

“Months.”

“—on a film and then never show it to anybody?”

“Sure. If I’m not happy with it.”

“How often does that happen?”

“Often,” she says with an air of resignation. “I have a folder on my computer called Rejects that’s alarmingly full. Sometimes you get to the end and the magic just isn’t there.”

“Is that what happened with USC?”

“That was different.” Mae looks over at the couple with their maps and gadgets; the man holds out a stick of Starburst, and the woman takes one off the top. “You know when you think you’re about to eat a pink Starburst, but you realize too late it’s an orange one?”

Hugo smiles. “I like the orange ones.”

“Well, you’re just weird, then,” she says, giving him a playful kick. “But I don’t. And I really thought I was sending USC a pink one.”

    “You have no idea what went wrong?”

There’s a part of her that wants to tell Hugo what Garrett said. But every time she thinks about it, she feels such irritation at the critique—Impersonal! Seriously?—that she can barely concentrate. She tried to watch the film one more time the night before she left, already composing the text she’d send to Garrett—which involved a certain number of actuallys—but in the end, she didn’t work up the nerve. Now there was a word attached to the failure, something too specific to ignore, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to see it through his eyes. Even so, the rebuttals continue to scroll through her head, stubborn and persistent.

“No idea,” she says to Hugo, who doesn’t look convinced but also doesn’t press the issue.

They’re well out of the city now, the houses getting farther apart as the train moves across the state. The windows have a slightly yellow tint, turning everything sepia toned, making it feel like they’ve fallen into one of Nana’s old movies.

Mae looks around the car. There are people playing a board game at one of the tables, a kid teaching his grandfather how to take a selfie, two men drinking beers and talking about this year’s wheat crop, a young couple reading their books. All of them on their way somewhere, barreling across the country in this long metal tube.

“I really would love to see it,” Hugo says, and she turns back to him, a little dazed.

“What?”

“Your film.”

“Oh,” she says with a frown. “I don’t think so.”

    “Would you at least tell me what it’s about?”

“Hugo…”

He doesn’t look the least bit put off. “Will I have a guess, then? Is it about a dancing platypus?”