My phone rings, and I lean against the railing and take the call. It’s my agent. Catrina Gonzales is the best in the business. She’s small. Physically short, which makes the guys on the other side of the table underestimate her.
“I’m on vacation.” I use an exasperated voice. “You know that.”
“There’s a movie.” Catrina isn’t the type to get overexcited. Something has her excited now. “They want you. The director of that plane crash movie. This is huge, Mateo.”
“I told you. I’m not taking any movies right now.”
“Right, right, right. I get it.” I can see her in her office in LA, pacing in front of a set of picture windows. “You’re on personal leave. Guess what? Celebrities of your status don’t get personal time. A-listers do not take extended vacations. And they’re offering big money.”
“Gonzales—”
“I’m sending you the script.” I can tell she has me on speakerphone now. “They want to move fast, and this is the kind of project you’ve always wanted.”
“It’s not a good time to discuss—”
“It’s artsy, Mateo. It’s not another action flick. This is how you move beyond typecasting. This is how you get to the next level.”
“Fine. I’ll give it a look.” I’m trying to spend an afternoon watching my best friend fuck up the simple act of fishing. Arguing with Catrina doesn’t get me closer to that goal. “Email it to me, and I’ll let you know what I think.”
“You know, Mateo, you’ve been talking about getting into producing.”
The boat rocks over a swell. A cloud passes over the sun. Where is she going with this? “So?”
“So, I didn’t know you had a personal relationship with Emily Rochester.” Catrina’s voice is brimming with possibility and the thrill of having inside knowledge.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Imagine. It would be the blockbuster of the year. Her memoir. Big screen. Mateo Garza, starring and producing. And you know her. Like I said, personal relationship.” She emphasizes the p sound at the end of relationship. “You could bring her on tour. You could interview with her.”
A vision of me and Emily sitting on a screen-appropriate couch between fake plants pops into my head. Where is Gonzales getting this idea? “What the hell are you talking about?”
“See? This is the kind of energy you could bring to a major project with Emily. You have the face for it, and you’d be so believable on screen.”
I turn away from the cabin like I’m turning away from the crowd at a party. “This isn’t an act. What are you talking about?”
She pauses. “You don’t know you’re on the news right now? CNN has it. It’s the top story on BuzzFeed. I think you might trend on Twitter on the East Coast.”
Shit. I didn’t help Emily get out of the courthouse for the headline. I find it completely un-newsworthy that I made some paparazzi back the hell up in my own hometown, for a woman I’ve known since we were in high school. The world sees it differently. And it’s a very different world from the one we grew up in. Social media is like tossing a cigarette into a dried-out forest. You’re going to end up with a fire that stretches for thousands of acres.
“You have to shut this down.” The sea breeze cools my face. I wish it would cool my racing thoughts, too. “Right now.”
My agent laughs. “I can’t shut it down.”
“You don’t understand. That wasn’t a publicity stunt. There has to be someone you know who could stop it.”
“Mateo, you can’t shut it down.” She almost sounds sympathetic. “You can only amp it up. Way up. Ride this one all the way to the end. You and Emily could both end up with a nice payday.”
“I’m not concerned with the payday,” I insist. I know she’s used to working with actors who are busy shuffling jobs like cards in a deck, trying to come up with the most cash in their bank accounts. “I don’t want it to happen like this.”
“It’s already happening. Take advantage. This is how you get to the next level, Mateo. You can stop taking those action meathead roles and do something serious for once. And with a producer credit, doors are going to open for you all over Hollywood.”
It’s like she can’t hear a word I’m saying. Acting means being able to shut up when the director yells cut and talk when the cameras are rolling. I spend half my time on camera in other places, promoting films or sitting for interviews or pretending to spill my deepest secrets. But now, when it counts, my agent can’t hear a goddamn thing.
“So, here’s what I think we should do.” She starts ticking off a checklist of ways to keep the story alive. The longer it has a beating heart, the longer we have to make a deal. First thing on her list is to appear in public with Emily Rochester. A walk down the main drag in Eben Cape will be enough, if there are photographers. My agent will ensure there are photographers. My entire soul sighs at the thought of staging a PR walk in Eben Cape. This is supposed to be one of the few places on earth that people don’t treat me like I’ve crash-landed from another planet populated only by actors and hot people. They don’t have such a sense of urgency about it, like they do in other cities. Better take my picture fast, before I get beamed back to LA. Not in Eben Cape.
Beau comes up from the cabin, two beers in hand. He takes one look at my face and narrows his eyes. He cocks his head. I know he can tell something’s wrong. He’ll ask me about it the moment I get off the phone. Sooner, if he gets impatient.
I can’t listen to another word out of my agent’s mouth.
“I have a meeting.” I interrupt her mid-stream and shoulder my way into the priority spot in the conversation. “We’ll come back to this later. In the meantime, I don’t want any press interviews. I’m not talking to anybody about this. I don’t care what they pay.”
“Mateo,” she scolds. This is a familiar scolding. “That’s not how you’re going to make the—”
Make the connections you need to be at the top of the industry. That’s what she was going to say. Catrina has said it before, and I’m sure she’ll say it again.
“Everything okay?” Beau asks. It should be okay. We’re out on the boat. It’s beautiful out on the water. He has beers. It was going to be the perfect day before all this bullshit with the press started.
“We have to get back. Something’s wrong.”
CHAPTER SIX
Emily Rochester
My hands are blue. I’ve been baking all morning.
Yesterday we picked blueberries, filling up entire buckets, the same tin buckets that I used when I was a child. They’re overflowing with ripe, juicy blueberries. We started with blueberry pancakes, then I made a blueberry crumble.
Now half of the kitchen is covered in flour. We’re making muffins.
Paige got distracted. I love leaving the door open. She goes outside to paint her rocks and comes back in to help me mix. Her mouth has turned blue from the blueberries. She loves them fresh, the way a child of Maine should.
Strange, how memories work. Human brains are fallible. I remember picking blueberries with Joe, both of us laughing, happy. Were we really happy? Was he always this way or did he change at some crucial moment? We almost never remember things as they actually happened. Our perceptions are always influenced by the past—things that, by definition, we can only remember. We can never go fully back to the way things were.