Everything Leads to You (25 page)

Ava touches the top of her right ear.

“Right here,” she says.

And with these few words she’s already proven herself. She’s understated, wistful, everything she’s meant to be. Theo and Rebecca exchanged pleased looks, and I turn to my script, my stomach not hurting at all, and read along as the scene continues.

GEORGE

Her skirt was blue, like this.

(points to a magazine)

JUNIPER

Lighter, I think.

GEORGE

Maybe, but not much.

Silence.

GEORGE

You know, in ancient times, when someone

had a seizure people thought it meant they were inhabited by demons.

JUNIPER

That’s ridiculous. How do you know that?

George shrugs.

JUNIPER

What do you mean ‘in ancient times’?

GEORGE

Ancient. You know, people in Babylonia or something.

JUNIPER

Babylonia? Did you read this somewhere?

GEORGE

I don’t remember. It’s just something I know.

JUNIPER

How do we know she even had a seizure?

GEORGE

What else could it have been?

JUNIPER

It could have been just some weird reaction to something, or an anxiety attack, or something. We don’t know.

GEORGE

Okay! Whatever. It was what it was.

Someone comes into the market. They look up; it’s not her.

GEORGE

I was not implying that she was inhabited by demons. Obviously.

JUNIPER

You weren’t implying anything. I know.

~

I have a canvas bag full of home-decorating magazines and catalogues, four tacos from my favorite truck, and a large
aguas frescas
to share. Thankfully, a man is leaving Ava’s apartment as I arrive, and he holds the door open for me. I press the call button to the elevator with my elbow, then
P
, then 3-2-3. The doors shut and send me on my way to Ava’s.

I am arriving unannounced.

I want to surprise her.

We haven’t spoken since the read-through and I didn’t even get a chance to tell her how amazing she was because Morgan caught me right after it was finished to talk about the next steps for the sets. And now two days have passed, bringing me closer to the looming deadline for Juniper’s apartment.

But I can’t stop thinking about Ava.

So, here I am, setting down the bright pink juice to knock on her door, armed with everything I need to help her brainstorm decorating ideas.

She opens the door in plaid pajama bottoms and a thin T-shirt and I try not to look at the gorgeous way it clings to her.

“Surprise! I come bearing lunch and decorating ideas,” I say.

“And I am still in my pajamas at noon,” she says.

But she smiles and lets me in anyway.

She glances down at herself, blushes, says, “Let me just, um . . . I’ll be right back.”

“Sure,” I say, and she pats off down the hall.

So I find myself alone, for the moment, in Ava’s place. Though it’s only been a couple days since she moved in and it’s still mostly empty, she has filled one corner, under a skylight, with the things that she owns. And I realize that I have never seen how Ava lives. I never went inside the shelter. She didn’t let me into her old room. She didn’t have any of her own things in the Marmont, and the only other time I came to the penthouse it was bare.

I cross the room to the kitchen and set the tacos and juice on the counter. I see that she has bought herself a few things:

Two heavy red skillets, one large and one small.

Three cookbooks: on baking bread, on making jam, on French desserts.

A deep copper pot that looks almost too beautiful to cook with.

A small yellow bowl full of peaches.

I notice the faint sound of music and voices. It’s coming from the other side of the living space, so I cross to the corner under the skylight, where Ava has laid out a colorful blanket. Sitting on the blanket is an old TV/VCR, playing
The Restlessness
with the volume down low. Next to that is the paperwork for her lease. I hadn’t seen her signature before. It’s simple, assured: a strong
A, G,
and
W
with flowing lines after each. The screenplay to
Yes & Yes
rests there, too, opened to the audition scene. Next to the line, “I threw them away,” Ava has written, “Remember: long pause.”

And then there is the photograph of Caroline out on the sunny street in her ripped jeans and flannel, neatly placed next to Clyde’s letter. I take it out of its envelope. Reading it again, now, the phrases feel different.

some kind of beginning . . .

the possibility of a change of heart . . .

I don’t know how a father is supposed to say heartfelt things, or express regret, or give a compliment . . .

It’s possible that you feel alone in the world . . .

It’s like they suddenly mean more, and I can’t even finish reading because I’m afraid I might cry.

A perfectly sharpened pencil and a pink highlighter sit next to a to-do list.
Practice lines. Buy plates, cups, silverware. Decide about boxes. Find a good coffee shop. Finish letter to Jonah. Humane society?

Footsteps come from behind me. I turn around to find Ava dressed for the day, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, her mouth pinker than usual, as though she put on lipstick and then changed her mind.

She says, “I always wish there was one last shot of Caroline’s face. Like, the camera would just linger on her looking out the window, waiting to see if Max comes back.”

Instead, the screen goes dark and the music for the credits begins.

“I haven’t gotten plates yet. I couldn’t find any that felt right. And since I’m starting from scratch, I want everything I buy for myself to mean something. Maybe we can find something in one of those.”

She gestures to my bag full of magazines as she heads to the kitchen.

Even though I chose them all carefully and brought only my favorites, I now realize that I don’t want to use anything in these magazines. Not
Anthology
with its full-page spreads of the warm and bright houses of the creative and fortunate, not
Apartamento
with its international flair and naturalistic feeling.

I don’t want to open any of them. I don’t want to look away from what Ava has already placed in her home.

My eyes tear up again and I don’t know why. I’m not even thinking about Clyde’s letter. I don’t even understand what’s happened.

Until Ava comes back with the bag of tacos and the
aguas frescas
and two gray-and-white-striped cloth napkins. She sits on the edge of her blanket, in front of the few things that she owns.

“We can pretend that it’s totally normal to eat without plates or forks, right? Picnic under the skylight,” she says.

And I understand what this is.

It’s the opposite of the collapse of the fantasy.

It’s what happens when the illusion pales in comparison to the truth. I’m seeing her for the first time. Not Ava Garden Wilder, the rags-to-riches granddaughter of Clyde Jones. Not a tragic, romantic heroine.

Just Ava.

And I am utterly in love.

~

“I always wait to see her name,” she says, looking at the screen.

I lower myself next to her, grateful that she’s looking at something other than me.

I can’t eat. I can feel how close she is to me. There is a square of sunlight on her knee. A diamond of sunlight on her face.

I force myself to look at the names as they scroll by.

It always amazes me to think about how many people work on a film, especially big studio productions, so I try to distract myself with the credits. I don’t even understand what all of the jobs are. The names roll on and on, and Caroline’s name flashes by but I don’t look away yet. The
Yes & Yes
credits will be so short, and my name will be there early, all by itself in the center of the screen, and I’m thinking about that as I watch the names of all these strangers and wonder what they’re doing now, if they made it to the positions they wanted, or if not what became of them, and then I see a name that leaps out at me but it’s gone in a moment and Ava says, “Okay, I’m sorry, you probably don’t have much time,” and I say, “No problem,” and try to shrug off the feeling that I may have seen something important.

“These tacos are delicious,” she says.

She takes a last bite and I have to look away. Even that is so beautiful it hurts.

“We should sit outside,” she says. “Look through what you brought. Did you see the view when you came up? It’s totally different in the daylight.”

“That sounds great,” I manage to say.

She stands up first and we get as far as the doorway before I blurt out, “I saw something in the credits that I didn’t notice before.”

She turns around to face me.

“A second assistant director credit for a guy named Leonard.”

Her eyes widen.

“It’s probably nothing,” I say.

But she’s already heading back to the corner. She kneels on the blanket and rewinds and then we watch the credits again.

“When is it?” she asks.

“Later on.”

“But you said director?”

“The second AD gets people coffee. It’s not exactly high profile.”

Caroline’s name passes.

“Soon,” I say. “Here!”

Ava presses pause. The name vibrates at the top of the screen: Leonard Pine.

I pull out my phone and search his name.

“Something’s here,” I say, opening the first link that appears, and I don’t tell her that it doesn’t say Leonard—it says Lenny—because I can’t stand the thought of disappointing her if he isn’t the right person. “He’s a producer now.”

“Is there a number for him?”

“Yeah, for his office,” I say. “I don’t know if—”

“What is it?” Ava asks.

I tell her and she dials.

“We don’t know it’s him,” I say. “It’s such a long shot.”

“May I speak to Leonard?” she says into the phone. She waits for a moment. “Ava Garden Wilder. Yes, okay.”

She looks at me and shakes her head. “She’s never going to connect me. We’ll have to go there.”

“Let’s just see what happens. Maybe I can find someone who knows him.”

“Yes,” she says into the phone. “Yes, Ava Garden Wilder. Is this Leonard? Lenny?”

The knuckles of one hand are white from grasping the phone, and then she reaches out to me and squeezes my shoulder with the other as she says, “Yes, her name was Caroline. Yes, I can come now.”

And I know that this is a major breakthrough. I know that all I should be thinking about is Lenny and what he’s about to tell us. But, instead, what I think about is how her hand squeezing my shoulder feels like a kiss.

She lets go.

Touch me again
, I want to tell her. But I don’t.

Chapter Nineteen

“We found Lenny,” I tell Charlotte when she answers.

Ava is pulling her beat-up car out of her fancy garage and I’m sitting next to her in the passenger’s seat even though I’m due back at work in twenty minutes.

“Are you kidding?” she asks.

“No. And I know we’re supposed to be putting up the artwork but I’m sort of headed downtown right now.”

“We can do it tonight,” she says. “It’s fine. This is amazing. How did you do it?”

“I’ll tell you everything as soon as we’re done.”

“You’d better,” she says. “I can’t believe I’m missing this.”

“I know,” I say.

“It’s fine. I’ll do as much on my own as I can. I’ll tell Rebecca you got some great idea and ran off to make magic happen.”

“I love you,” I say.

“Yeah, I know,” she says. “Call me as soon as it’s over.”

And soon we are parked in a twenty-dollar-an-hour parking garage, riding a silver elevator to the thirty-seventh floor of a sleek office building, stepping out into a lobby with a pristine white carpet.

“
How often do you think they have to replace this?
” I whisper, but Ava isn’t looking down. She heads straight to the guy at the desk and tells him that Lenny’s expecting us. Then a door opens and a tall man with thinning brown hair and a white linen shirt appears. He looks at both of us but soon his gaze shifts to Ava only. A faint smile flickers and vanishes across his angular face, and then he ushers us in. We follow him down a hallway and into a corner office with a view of Los Angeles I’ve never seen before, so different from Ava’s view from only three stories up. From up here, it would be easy to forget that life exists below you.

Lenny sits in his office chair and I leave the seat across from him for Ava while I take the sofa behind her, a little out of the way but still close enough to hear everything he says.

“This is my friend Emi,” Ava says. “She drove me.” Which isn’t true, but I nod and say hi, because I understand that kind of lie the way I understood from the moment she said she’d go straight over that I would be with her. Some things are just impossible to do alone.