Straying From the Path Read online

  Cass had tried to correct her for the first dozen or so.

  Vim stared off into space for a moment as he watched the replay on his link. “They’re not making out,” he said with a disappointed whine.

  “Well, close enough.”

  Vim looked over at Cass’s desk and grinned. “Good job, Cass.”

  She winced.

  The RealCity main offices were four rooms tucked in the back of an ancient building in Burbank. The front room was posh, with blue carpeting, a huge receptionist desk and Nathan Pauli’s awards on display in bullet-proof cases. The other three rooms looked like the set of a second-rate 1970s police drama: vinyl flooring, desks crammed together, substandard lighting, filing cabinets, all drenched in hope. Things usually stayed busy, or at least with the humming computers and files of paper scattered around, storyboards and headshots pinned to the wall, it seemed busy.

  Nathan arrived and went straight from reception, through the main offices, to his own private office in the back, where he locked up his cameras.

  “Hey Nathan, Cass was making out—”

  Nathan walked right past her without stopping.

  Cass managed to intercept him when he paused to unlock his door.

  “Hi Nathan.”

  “Hi Cass.” He was boyish, unassuming, with disheveled brown hair and an untucked t-shirt. No one would ever pick him out of a crowded room for being the hyped-up big-shot director. He’d paid his dues, spending the first ten years of his career in bluebox engineering before he got the idea of reviving on-location filming.

  “I wondered if I could talk to you for a minute.”

  “Sure.”

  “Privately?” She gestured at Stacy, who was watching them.

  “Right. Come on in.”

  The room was part office, with the requisite desk and computer, and part laboratory, with dissected cameras scattered over a workbench and tripods propped against the wall like insectoid skeletons. Nathan closed the door.

  “I talked with Nick May at the party.”

  “I saw. You looked like you were having a good time.” Her knees went all weak and silly again.

  “Yeah. He, uh—he wants to act in on-location film.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Said he wanted to do something respectable.”

  His brow wrinkled. “He called it respectable?”

  “Yeah. It almost seemed like he was bored with bluebox.” She pointed her finger in emphasis. “He’s seen Casablanca.”

  “It’s funny. Film has turned into what live theater was to film a hundred years ago—the poor aristocratic cousin. Everyone respects it, but no one gives money to it. Did he put you up to this?”

  “No. That is, I don’t think so. He didn’t ask me to talk to you if that’s what you mean. It’s just—you might talk to him. Having him on board might give the company the boost it needs.”

  “If he can act in front of a camera.”

  That was the kicker, wasn’t it?

  A knock came at the door. Wearing a sinister grin, Stacy peeked her head in. “Cass? Hi. There’s someone here to see you. Out in reception.”

  Cass shrugged at Nathan and followed Stacy out.

  There, scuffing his feet on the carpet in the middle of the reception area, stood Nick May, dressed in photogenic casual wear and holding a bouquet of pink star lilies.

  His expression lit when he saw her. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” she said, digging her nails into her palms.

  “Um, here. These are for you.” He offered the flowers. Roses would have been presumptuous, carnations would have been cheap. These were just perfect. “I wanted to tell you I had a really nice time Saturday.”

  Speaking of theater, she felt like she was in a play, with Frank the receptionist watching from his desk, Nathan standing in the doorway, Stacy struggling to see over Nathan’s shoulder, and a couple more people crowding behind Stacy.

  Slowly, she moved to take the flowers. Her eyes were stinging, and she hoped her smile wasn’t as big and stupid as it felt. “Wow. Been awhile since anyone gave me flowers. Thanks.”

  She looked at him, and the link she hadn’t been wearing at the party scrolled a library of information at her optic nerve.

  —opening date of his next film, Lunar Wake (in a week), the latest starlet he’s been attached to (Sylvia Fremont), clerk at Gino’s reveals his shirt size (36), and a dozen other facts with the option to see more, (yes or no). More raw data than she’d learned in four hours of luscious conversation. But the data didn’t say anything about him being allergic to sushi, as she’d discovered at the party.

  She might have stood there beaming all day, hugging the flowers, but Nick looked over to where Nathan stood in the doorway.

  Cass made introductions. “Um, Nick. This is Nathan Pauli. Nathan, Nick May.”

  They shook hands. Enthusiastically, Nick said, “I’m a big fan of yours.”

  Which was awfully surreal.

  “Good to meet you. Hey Frank, can you go get a couple cups of coffee?” Nathan gestured to the back office. Crestfallen, Frank made a show of how hard it was to leave his desk. “Thanks. Stacy, don’t you have some e-mail to check or something?”

  Nathan managed to herd them all back and close the door. “So, Mr. May. You ever think of trying your hand at acting on-location?”

  Nick smiled and breathed a little sigh. “I was hoping I could talk to you about that. After I talked to Cass and all.”

  “Let’s go back to my office. Nobody’ll listen through the door there.” He opened the door, almost knocking Stacy over.

  Cass stayed behind as they headed for Nathan’s office. Nick looked back and mouthed, “Thank you.”

  Maybe she did have pull around here. And the flowers said he wasn’t just using her for her influence. Right? Cass touched her cheek to the petals.

  The only thing she could find to put the flowers in was a plastic super-size cup from a fast food place, so worn out she couldn’t read the logo. She set the bouquet on her desk and tried to make it look nice.

  They were in Nathan’s office talking for two hours. Stacy found every excuse she could to wander back there—fetching a file, consulting a storyboard. She pestered Cass, but Cass ignored her.

  Finally, the door opened. Nick’s steps were almost bouncing as he left the office.

  He scanned the room, found Cass, and went straight to her, crouching by her desk.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  “Well,” he said with a shrug, but his smile belied him. “He’s going to talk to my agent. We’ll see. So—are you doing anything tonight?”

  Monday night. Could she go on a date on a Monday night? Had she ever been on a date on a Monday night?

  Was Nick May asking her out on a date?

  “Nope,” she said and bit her lip.

  “Can I take you to dinner?”

  “Sure.”

  “Seven?”

  “Okay.”

  “Can I pick you up at your place?”

  “Okay.” She was blushing horribly. “I’ll upload directions for you.”

  “Great. See you then.”

  And off he went, leaving Cass to not get much work done.

  “The secret to miniature golf,” Nick explained to her on their third date, a Saturday afternoon at Americana World, “is the distractions. All the windmills and moving parts and bright colors and stuff don’t have anything to do with the play. They’re just distractions to mess up your shot.”

  “Have you learned the secret to ignoring the distractions?”

  Distractions, right. Three teenage girls at the next hole over kept pointing at them. Cass could hear their whispers. “I think that’s really him!”

  Nick fished his ball out of the alligator pond again. “No,” he said with a sigh. “Who’s winning now?”

  “Me, still.” She was one under par for the course.

  “That means you’re buying the ice cream, right?” He shifted his club to his other
hand and put his arm around her waist, pulling her close.

  “You bet.”

  He kissed her, long and leisurely, and Cass leaned into him. They let the teenage girls play through.

  The first time they slept together, Cass couldn’t get Patton Walsh out of her mind.

  Her favorite movie of Nick’s was Dark Waters, the Europa mining action/drama. He played Patton Walsh, an idealistic young mining foreman caught between vicious corporate interests and exploited miners. Something was killing the miners one by one, and it was up to him to discover what: terrible working conditions, or a mysterious alien lifeform? The film managed to transcend the action genre to deal with real-world issues of exploration, the friction as the frontier of the solar system was absorbed into the mainstream economy, the still unresolved question of whether or not life existed on Jupiter’s moon—and at the center of it all was Nick May, boyish and tough at the same time, sensitive and unrelenting. He struck a deep and abiding chord with the 18-35 female demographic.

  The film had one intimate scene between Patton Walsh and the company doctor, played by Estelle Reasoner, who hadn’t made a decent movie since. They were trapped in a mining rover, the battery cells were burned out, the temperature was dropping. She’d kept her guard up for the whole story, he’d never trusted her stonewalling, but sparks flew every time they were in the same room, and finally—it was just one kiss. A chaste kiss even, mouths closed, both of them bundled to the gills in survival gear. But it was one scene where the wonders of interactive bluebox entertainment rose to their full potential.

  With just a couple clicks of a button, an adjustment to her link, Cass was there in that rover, in Patton Walsh’s arms, and he was unfastening her parka, groping with determination. The interactive link tapped into her senses, and responded to her thoughts. If she wanted to be passive, she could be, thrilling to the sound of ripping fabric. Or she could fight him—and will him to fight back, if that was what she wanted. And she could always shut it off exactly when she wanted to. And turn it back on, whenever she wanted to.

  They’d gone to her place because it wasn’t being watched by the tabloid reporters yet. They sat on her hand-me-down sofa in her little one bedroom apartment, and neither of them seemed to know what to do next. Not like being with interactive Patton Walsh at all. But he looked like Patton Walsh, and that made it strange.

  Her skin tingled just thinking about him.

  She ended up making the first move, which surprised her—she never made the first move. She touched his face and kissed him. Then, everything seemed to work just fine. If a bit unexpectedly a time or two, since her imagination had never told Patton Walsh to do that. And once or twice she had to whisper, “touch there,” and guide his hand.

  She woke up the next morning cuddled against him, happy.

  Nathan called Cass into his office one morning. He gave her the room’s only chair and perched at the edge of his desk.

  “What do you think of Nick?” he said.

  She blushed. That was hardly fair. “He’s nice. Why?”

  “Can I show you something?”

  He swiveled around his computer monitor and touched an on-screen key. The film editing software booted up and a sequence began rolling. The slate read “Nick May Screen Test. Take Twelve.” Nick turned up the volume on the speakers.

  The scene was the convenience store down the street, the one they all went to for coffee and chips when they were avoiding work. Nathan had set up his camera looking straight across the counter, so the frame caught the clerk on the left, and Nick on the right. The clerk was laughing, pointing at the camera, pointing at Nick, amused by the whole situation. Nathan’s voice, sounding echoey and distant, said, “Just relax. Be normal.”

  Nick, veteran actor, was also staring at the camera. In bluebox, the actors couldn’t see the camera because the box was basically one large camera, with a dozen fiber optic lenses taking in all angles. Nathan’s camera locked down the scene—all mobility and dynamic movement had to come from the actors. Nick was fidgeting.

  Bluebox actors were trained to be cyphers, blanks on which digital engineers could paint any setting, costume, or prop necessary. It was still more economical and less time consuming to have actors provide the faces and the nuances of emotional expression—for all their efforts, the animators still could not get human faces and movement exactly right. But everything else? Why fly to Tunisia when you can program it? Who in Podunk, Wisconsin would know the difference?

  “Action!” Nathan said.

  Nick shrugged, uncomfortable in his own jacket. “Um. Yeah. Lotto ticket, please,” he enunciated unnaturally. The clerk handed over the lottery card. Nick dropped it, looked at the camera and smiled an apology.

  A sinking feeling weighed down Cass’s stomach. What happened to his suave? The easy-going elegance that had made him the biggest film hero in the last five years? It couldn’t have all been digitally enhanced. “That was take twelve?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Um, he’s a little uncomfortable, isn’t he?”

  “He can’t act.”

  “But—” A half-dozen bluebox blockbusters couldn’t be wrong, could they?

  Nathan clicked off the film. “You ever see Singin’ in the Rain? Some of the greatest silent film actors couldn’t make the transition to sound. This may be the same thing. It’s not that Nick isn’t great at bluebox. He maybe just isn’t cut out for film.”

  Nathan’s vision for RealCity’s first film was simple—simple story, simple setting, minimal sets and characters. That was part of the point, with bluebox it was so easy to create complex, baroque worlds, pour on the detail without bounds of location or expense. All Nathan’s shoots would happen in L.A.—the real L.A., not the stock footage digital creations that had become the norm over the last generation. The story was one main character’s journey across the city as he followed clues to find a woman he’d fallen in love with at first sight. The weight that one actor would carry was enormous. He had to show that a man interacting with his genuine environment was as interesting as a bluebox extravaganza.

  The simple task of buying something at a convenience store, something he’d probably done a hundred times himself, Nick made look like an exercise in torture.

  “I can’t use him,” Nathan said.

  Of course he couldn’t, but Cass’s heart broke for Nick anyway.

  “Can you—” Nathan said, tapping his finger on the desk and looking away. “Can you tell him?”

  She stood. “No. You’re the director—that’s your job.”

  “I thought he might take it better coming from you. I know how much he wanted to do this—”

  “That’s why I can’t tell him. I don’t want him getting pissed off at me.”

  “But he wouldn’t—”

  “No. No way. I have no connection to him professionally.”

  “Can you at least be here when I break the news to him? Just in the room.”

  “Then he’ll know that I knew and he’ll be mad that I didn’t tell him.”

  Nathan pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Okay. You’re right. That isn’t fair. I’m sorry.”

  Nathan let her off the hook, but her stomach churned the rest of the morning. Nick arrived, and the churning got worse. Nathan called him to his office just as he was saying good morning to her, saving her from trying to act like nothing was wrong.

  They’d been seeing each other for six weeks. If he had just been after her for the job, he wouldn’t have stuck around. And if she’d just been seeing him because he was famous, she wouldn’t have stuck around. Right?

  When Nathan was finished with Nick, she’d take the afternoon off. She’d get sandwiches and take him to the park.

  “Cass? Could you come here please?” Nathan called from his office.

  He closed the door behind her and put his hands in his pockets. Nick was leaning against a cabinet, arms crossed, shoulders hunched sullenly.

  “What’s up?” she said
warily.

  “Here’s the situation: I’ve been considering whether or not to keep Nick on the film.” Graciously, he saved her from being in on a conspiracy. No explaining to Nick how much she did or didn’t know. Still out of the loop, like a good accountant. She tried to look shocked.

  Nick shook his head. “You can’t can me. The press is already talking about this. ‘Nick May Does Real Film,’ on the Variety feed. If it gets out that I was kicked off the film—it’ll look bad. Like I couldn’t hack it, you know?”

  “We’re trying to work out a compromise,” Nathan said. “You might be able to help.”

  They played tag with their gazes: Cass looked at Nick, Nick looked at Nathan, then at Cass, Nathan looked at Cass.

  “What can I do?”

  Nathan pursed his lips. “Help Nick learn how to act.”

  Nick looked wounded, hunched in on himself like a bear. But his eyes were hopeful, pleading with her.

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “Because you’re smart. Because you genuinely like film. Because then Variety won’t report that Nick May has hired an acting coach, who’d probably be some wizened professor from UCLA who doesn’t know the first thing about film anyway.”

  She didn’t know anything about acting, much less teaching acting. But Nathan was right; she loved film. She’d spent hours of her childhood watching old video disks when she should have been out playing with the other children or cultivating a sports habit. Movies were windows into other times and places. She liked peering through them. She liked modern bluebox as well as the old stuff, which had a visceral solidity.

  Cass Nellis, acting coach? It sounded a lot sexier than Cass Nellis, accountant.

  Nick looked so hopeful, she couldn’t say no.

  It couldn’t hurt to try. Famous last words.

  She borrowed a couple of cameras—vintage handheld jobs—from Nathan and followed Nick around with them for a day. She didn’t actually film anything—just held the camera like she was. He worked out in the morning, spent a couple hours over lunch reading scripts on his handheld, did an interview, dealt with calls from his agent. Most of it was dead boring. But she kept the camera on him and yelled whenever he looked at it.