“This is a waste of time,” I tell Monk.
From Evan’s balcony, we watch a roomful of partygoers in costume.
“Hey, you might be the big-shot director,” Monk says.
“Might be? Brothah, I am.”
“But Graham knows how to keep up morale. The cast and crew have been working hard. Throwing this party was a great idea.”
Graham asked Evan and me about planning an 80s-themed party for Halloween, which Evan agreed to host here at his huge house stuffed into the side of a mountain overlooking LA. The view alone is impressive, much less the minimalist décor and sapphire-colored swimming pool. I think everyone from the cast and crew is here, most costumed with some nod to the era.
“If it’s such a good idea,” I say, “then why didn’t you dress up?”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I don’t need parties to boost my morale. These spirits stay high.”
“You been by yourself brooding out on this balcony all night. If this is cheerful, I’d hate to see you down.”
I sip my Macallan and drink in the night air, refreshing after being inside with that crowd. Monk’s right. I’m in a mood. I don’t want to acknowledge to myself what’s causing it because that would mean acknowledging other things best left alone. Things that would distract me and just all-around not be a good look. Still, despite my best intentions, my gaze wanders back inside to Evan’s living room and finds Neevah. Every time I’ve seen her tonight she’s been dancing, but now she’s laughing with Trey, her hands animating whatever story she’s telling. One of the grips is trying to push up on her hairstylist, Takira. From the look she’s giving him, seems like he might be tapping that sooner rather than later.
“Everybody thinks they’re already fucking,” Monk says.
“I don’t know.” I set my drink on the balcony ledge and roll a cigar between my fingers. “Takira seems to be holding out a little while longer.”
“Not Takira. Neevah and Trey.”
My grip tightens around the cigar. I’m still and hot, like a wick trapped in the wax of a burning candle.
“What did you say?” I slow the words so Monk can have no trouble understanding them.
He looks away from me and to the crowd, his expression intent. I follow the direction of his stare.
Verity. Of course.
I snap my fingers in his face to regain his attention.
“Man, don’t be snapping at me.” Monk turns to me with a scowl. “I ain’t no damn dog.”
“How else do I get your attention,” I ask, tipping my head toward Verity, “when she’s around?”
“I ain’t thinking about that girl. She can do whatever she damn well pleases.”
The Monk doth protest too much.
“And I’m sure she will, but you mentioned something about Neevah and Trey.”
“Oh, yeah.” He looks back to the spot where Verity stood a moment ago, but she’s not there anymore. “They’re probably sleeping together.”
I don’t mean to harm the cigar, but it snaps in my hand.
“You alright there, Holt?” Monk’s alert stare shifts from my face to the crushed stogy.
“I’m cool.” I toss it over the balcony into the yawning canyon below.
“Oh, good. ’Cause for a minute there, I thought you might feel some type of way about Trey fucking our sweet ingénue.”
“Stop saying that.” I grit my teeth and try to regulate my uneven breathing. “I stay out of my cast’s business.”
“Right. Right.” He taunts me over the rim of his drink. “Well, here comes some cast business now.”
Takira and Neevah head toward the balcony, fanning their faces.
“Whew,” Takira says breathlessly. “Lawd. I need some air. All them bodies. It’s hot in there.”
“Who y’all supposed to be?” Monk asks, gesturing to their color-coordinated outfits.
“Sidney and Sharane from House Party,” Takira rolls her eyes. “We realized too late that movie was made in 1990.”
“It released in 1990,” Neevah corrects. “So it was probably made in 1989. So we’d be alright on a technicality.”
Takira points to her bright yellow body suit and hair. “You don’t spend an hour putting in crinkle curls for a technicality.”
Monk laughs along with them, but it’s not funny to me. Nothing’s funny. Specifically not the thought of Neevah sleeping with Trey. I’ve made it a point not to be alone with her again since the day in her trailer. I give notes to most of the cast directly, but usually, I send Neevah’s through Kenneth. Nothing good can come of this connection between us, so I’ve steered clear of her.
Apparently, that was unnecessary thanks to Nick at Nite. I take another swig of my drink and turn away from the trio cutting up. I lean my elbows on the balcony ledge and contemplate the glimmer of lights scattered throughout the hills.
“You didn’t want to dress up?”
I turn my head to find Neevah beside me, her back to the city, elbows propped on the ledge. Now that I know she’s supposed to be Tisha Campbell’s character from House Party, her vest and bright yellow pants make more sense. She’s left her hair out and wild, floating around her shoulders with the slight breeze blown in by the night.
Instead of answering, I pull another cigar from my pocket. Cameo’s “Candy” booms from inside followed by a collective whoop from the crowd. I glance at Monk and Takira, who immediately start the steps of the electric slide. My back is to the crowd Neevah’s facing, and humor lights her expression.
“Oh, my God! You should see this. They even got old Mr. Anderson out there dancing.”
Maybe the thought of the seventy-year-old cameraman doing the electric slide would typically make me smile, but I’m too preoccupied with visions of Trey bending Neevah over a couch in her trailer.
Monk and Takira leave the balcony to join the dancers. Neevah stays.
“You like to dance?” she asks.
“Did you need something?” I carve the words out of stone and show her my irritation with a scowl.
Surprise and dismay mingle on her pretty face. “I-I was just trying to make conversation.”
“Go try with someone else. I’m not in the mood for it.”
“Wow.” Hurt fills her eyes and she presses her lips together, shaking her head. “Sorry I bothered you.”
When she turns to leave, which is exactly what I told her to do, like the conflicted motherfucker I am, I reach out, cuffing her wrist to stop her.
She drags a glare from the loose clasp of my hand up to my face. “Did I misunderstand? I could have sworn you wanted to be alone.”
“I’m an asshole.”
“That’s a well-established fact, but no excuse for being rude when I was just trying . . . well, you told me to go try with someone else. So let me go.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s better than I’m an asshole.” The tight lines of her face soften almost undetectably. “Look, I know how you get kind of lost in what you’re thinking and want to be left alone. If you’re—”
“It’s not. I mean, you’re right. I do get like that a lot, especially when I’m making a movie. I’m usually turning the next day over in my head, thinking about the scenes and everything that goes into the shots, but I don’t mind some company.”
I glance over my shoulder at the packed room, the dancers, the drinking games some of the crew resurrected from their frat-party days. “Not them.”
We share a brief laugh, our amusement cresting and falling, leaving us staring at each other with the same intensity I felt on the sidewalk, in Alabama, on the roof, in her trailer. Hell, every time I’m alone with this woman for more than two minutes, this happens. I don’t look away like I usually do—don’t suppress the rising wave. I let it, just this once, wash over us.
“What I meant to say,” I continue, “is I don’t mind your company.”
She swallows, the muscles of her graceful neck shifting with the motion. And it happens. The thing I swore to myself I would not let happen.
I get hard.
I’ve avoided looking at her ass all night. Breasts have been off-limits since day one. Even this woman’s hands, slim and elegant and decorated with ink, have the potential to turn me on, so I never look long. And, damn it to hell, it’s her swallowing that pours cement all over my cock? Maybe it’s the thought of my dick in her mouth. Or her swallowing me down after she—
“I can’t do smoke,” she says, gesturing to the unlit cigar in my hand. “It aggravates my . . . I just can’t do smoke, and I want to let you enjoy your cigar, so I’ll go.”
She tugs to free her wrist again, but I still don’t release her. Instead, I toss this cigar over the balcony like I did the last one.
“Stay.”
It’s one word, but it tells her a thousand things I haven’t said before.
And we both know it.
Her nod is a little jerky and the pulse at the base of her throat flutters, trapped beneath the delicate skin. Do I make her nervous?
Well, you are still gripping her wrist like some psycho who might tamper with her drink.
I release her and she steps closer again, leaning her elbows on the ledge beside mine and slanting me a look.
“The therapist you guys brought in has been great. We’ve talked a few times. I wasn’t prepared for how some of this would affect me. Thank you.”
“That’s what a director is for. Just doing my job.”
Our eyes catch and hold. It’s true. I didn’t bring in the therapist just for Neevah, and several have used the service. Taking care of the cast is my job, but I’m not sure how much longer I can pretend that the way I think about her, am attuned to her, want to be around her, is about the job. I need to cling to that excuse for as long as I can. At least until this movie wraps. For both our sakes.
Directors have famously taken advantage of their position of power for sex. It’s a problem and a bad cliché. I’ve turned down many offers. Every offer. I don’t play that shit. It disrespects the artists and cheapens my craft. That’s why dating Camille was such an anomaly. That epic failure only served to confirm that I am oil and my actresses are water, and we should not be shaken together. I won’t make that mistake again.
“Well, thanks.” Her voice is hushed. “Even if you were just doing your job, it was exactly what I needed.”
I nod, but don’t respond further. I asked her to stay, but cannot think of anything safe to discuss. Nothing’s safe because every time we talk, I find more to like about her. Before I can embarrass myself by bringing up early 20th century film innovations, the music from inside the party changes. Quiets.
“Let’s take a few songs and pay tribute to one of the eighties’ greatest crooners,” the DJ says. “The legendary Luther Vandross.”
The opening piano flourishes of “A House is Not A Home” drift out to the balcony, with Luther’s distinctive baritone close on the heels of the poignant notes.
“Oh, this was my jam,” Neevah says, closing her eyes and lifting her face toward the sky. Moonlight caresses the high curves of her cheekbones, kisses the ripeness of her lips. Long lashes rest like feathers on her cheeks. She’s a druid. An innocent. A hedonist. A cluster of contradictions that somehow all make sense in this woman.
“You weren’t even born when Luther made this song,” I remind her.
“So?” She laughs and turns back toward the canyon, a small smile teasing the lush line of her mouth.
My grin slips, but doesn’t fall completely. “It was one of my mother’s favorites. She played it all the time.”
“My mom’s, too. My favorite Luther is ‘If This World Were Mine.’ Technically a duet, but . . .”
“I love that one, too.” I chuckle, leaning a little closer, catching the scent hidden behind her neck and ears. “My mom used to say big Luther, skinny Luther. Jheri curl. Press and curl. I don’t care. I’ll take that man any way I can get him.”
“I know that’s right. And then he’d bust that note. You know the one.”
We look at each other and in unison, replicate Luther’s famous swelling run.
“Whoooooooooo,” we sing together, finishing with her giggling and me smiling wider than I have in weeks.
I no longer feel the need to find something to talk about because the things find us. She’s that kind of person. I’d like to think she’s this way—genuine and sweet and funny—because she’s with me, but I’ve watched her for weeks with the cast and crew. She’s like this with them all. The magic of Neevah is that she’s the same with everyone, but still manages to make it feel special for you.
She’s that way with Trey. I want to ask if she’s kissed him. If she’s fucked him. If he’s been to her house. I know exactly where Neevah and Takira are staying. As a producer, I have access to all that information, but she’s the only one whose housing I’ve checked or cared about.
“Speaking of your mother,” she says, biting her bottom lip, “I wanted to tell you how much The Magic Hour meant to me. It’s my favorite work of yours.”
“A documentary I made on a non-existent budget when I was twenty-one years old about my mom? Out of everything I’ve done over the years, that’s your favorite?”
“It is. I have a wall of inspirational sticky notes in my bedroom. Something she says in that documentary is up there.”
“Oh yeah? What?”
“We are artists,” she quotes softly, her eyes set on mine. “When there is no joy to be found, we have the power in our hands, the will of our souls, to make it.”
I hear Mama saying it, looking into my camera and smiling from her wheelchair, the Nikon at repose in her lap. I see a hundred evenings on ancient piers, Mama brandishing the camera like a sword, defying the disease determined to diminish her. Her smile.
Bright and brave and backlit by the sun. As much as my technique has improved, as large as my budgets have grown, capturing Mama’s story with a cheap video camera and no goal but to hear her shout—that remains the best thing I’ve ever done. Probably will ever do, because it was for her. Not Mama’s dying wish, but her living one.
“You know,” I say after a few seconds, “I think it’s my favorite, too.”
“What must that be like?” she whispers, her gold-flecked brown eyes dark and deep and curious. “To be your favorite?”
This balcony is not big enough for all the unsaid words collecting between us. The desire, unspoken, hangs heavy all around. The air turns viscous, and her breaths shorten, shallow, quicken.
“Neevah!”
Someone calling her name breaks the tension long enough for me to draw a calming breath and remind myself this isn’t a good idea.
“Neevah,” Trey repeats, stepping out onto the balcony with us. “I was looking for you. Hey, Canon. I didn’t know you were out here, too.” He glances between us, speculation entering his eyes. “Am I . . . interrupting?”
Damn. That’s the last thing I need—Disney dude starting rumors.
“Not at all.” I grab my glass from the ledge and nod to them both. “I was just about to go. Early call in the morning.”
Neevah’s stare burns a hole in my back as I leave them alone on the balcony, but I don’t acknowledge her or the moment Trey just shattered.
I don’t look back because I can’t.
Not yet.
