Living the Role

Ronan came off set a little after 6 AM, and by 7 he had a table to himself outside his trailer and was working through the last of a sandwich.

The sun was up over the canyon, which was the wrong way round and had been all week. Nights at the Golden Oak Ranch ran 6 PM through to 6 AM, so the light coming up meant the day was over. He’d have the blinds down inside of half an hour and sleep until the 4 PM call.

A few days had gone by since he and Jane shot the sex scene. A week since the production first drove out here, and none of it had given anybody trouble.

They were near the end of it now, and if tonight went the way Henry wanted, Episode 3 would be finished before morning.

The production wanted it finished. Renting the ranch wasn’t cheap, and from what he had picked up standing near the right conversations, the whole stretch out here was costing them somewhere between $50,000 and $80,000. He had no idea how close that was to the real figure. He knew enough to know it wasn’t a number NBS wanted sitting on the books any longer than it had to.

They’d be back. A lot of the later episodes needed the same exteriors, and there was no getting those anywhere else. But coming out a second time later in the season was cheaper than letting this block run long, so everything anybody had was going into closing out Episode 3 and getting off the property.

"This place isn’t so bad," he said, mostly to the sandwich. "I like it better than the soundstage. Better than the backlot, too."

He shook his head at himself.

Then he saw Jane coming up the row of trailers, and he raised a hand.

He’d spent the first day or two after the sex scene, braced for it to affect things between them. He’d been sure it would, and there was Veronica on top of that, standing out on his step while he jerked off inside the trailer, hearing whatever she’d heard through the door.

He’d been wrong. Jane had come closer since, if anything, and he still couldn’t get himself to believe it.

She had a coffee in one hand and a sandwich in the other, both off the craft table, and she set them down before she sat.

"Good morning."

He nodded at her. "Morning, Jane."

"So." She worked the lid off the coffee. "Are you excited about finishing the episode today?"

"Course I am." He smiled. "Finish an episode, money goes in the bank."

She laughed at him. "I knew that’s exactly what you’d say. Blunt as anything, you are."

"Am I?"

"You are." She had a drink and set the cup back down. "Somebody told me you live on your own out here. No family anywhere near you, none of that. So where’s it going, all of it?"

He looked at her sideways. "Why are you asking?"

"No reason." She shrugged. "Curious, that’s all."

He gave it a second before he answered.

"Honestly? I don’t know yet. The first check went on a car, and clearing what I owed my landlord, and the bills stacked up behind that, and past that I’m lost. It’s the first time I’ve had any real money in front of me and nobody ever sat me down and told me what you’re supposed to do with it."

She turned the cup a little where it stood. "Have you put any of it anywhere it earns interest? Or looked at putting some into companies?"

"Some of it’s in a savings account, yeah. Not all of it, just a piece." His hand went to the back of his neck. "Companies, though, I wouldn’t know where to start. I’d be picking blind, and I’d rather not lose it that way." He laughed, short and embarrassed by himself. "And it’s not what it sounds like either. My fee’s $40,000 an episode, but after the tax and CAA’s cut the check comes to $24,000, and $24,000 doesn’t go anywhere in this city."

He watched her while he was saying it, waiting for the moment she’d tune out. He was talking too much and he knew it.

She didn’t tune out. She was looking straight at him and taking in every word of it.

"Then let me put you in front of some people," she said. "A business manager, and an accountant who works with actors and knows what he’s doing with them. Mine are good. If you want them."

"I want them. Yeah." It came out faster than he meant it to. "Please."

"Good. You’d get eaten alive out here on your own." she told him. "We’re actors. Neither of us knows the first thing about how Wall Street works, or what a good investment is even supposed to look like, and that’s what makes people like us worth robbing."

She got the wrapper off her sandwich and folded it flat under the plate.

"I’d know. I got taken by a man with a company that didn’t exist."

Ronan’s sandwich stopped halfway up. "Seriously?"

"Mm." She ate first and answered after. "It was in the tabloids about a week. So it isn’t a secret, but nobody printed the details right and nobody’s ever had the number, which has never once stopped them guessing at it."

A crew truck went by on the road below them and she waited it out.

"It was around $1 million. Gone, all of it, because I liked the idea he was selling and I sat in a room and signed every piece of paper he slid across at me."

She pulled the crust off one corner and left it on the plate.

"My lawyers are still going at him. That part’s never been in the press. They’ve got $300,000 back out of them so far and I’d like to believe there’s more coming."

He hadn’t expected any of that to come across the table at him. She hadn’t dropped her voice for it either, and there’d been people walking past behind her the whole time she was saying it.

"A million dollars?" He was still back there. "You’re properly loaded, aren’t you."

"Obviously." She laughed at him and didn’t bother being modest about the rest of it. "I’m on $400,000 an episode for this thing."

He put his sandwich down.

"$400,000?!"

He’d guessed at her number before, the way everybody on a crew guesses, and he’d never come close to that.

"I know." She was enjoying herself now. "You’re down there on your $24,000 and I’m on many times that. Cry about it."

He was jealous. He wasn’t going to cry about it.

"Heh." He picked the sandwich back up. "Give it a few years. I’ll be past you."

"You wish."

The production started up again while the two of them were still sitting there.

What was left of Episode 3 was set in daylight and needed the light for it, which was the whole reason nobody had gone down to sleep. They had it inside two hours. Then Henry called it, and Episode 3 was finished.

After that the ranch came apart fast. Trucks were being loaded before the last setup was fully struck, and everything that had come onto the property over the week started going back off it.

Ronan cleared out his trailer and made his goodbyes on the way across, a few of the cast, a few of the crew, and he had a bag in one hand and the car door in the other when he saw Jane coming over the dirt.

"Before you go." She had the card out already. "Here."

He had to put the bag down to take it. Plain white, a number, nothing else on it.

"...Okay?"

"Don’t look at me like that." That amused her. "It’s a phone number. It’s for if you want to call me."

He kept his eyes on her a while longer.

"Well?" Her hand stayed where it was. "Aren’t you giving me yours?"

It caught him flat. "I don’t have one. I’ve never had a card in my life."

She rolled her eyes and got her phone out instead. "Then say the number, Ronan."

"Oh." He said it.

She thumbed it in, saved it, put the phone away. "Good. I’ll be in touch when I need you."

He nodded. He stayed where he was until she’d gone off across the lot, and then he got in the car.

’The more I’m around her, the less any of this adds up. She keeps coming closer. And it isn’t the scenes, she’s not asking about the work anymore, she’s asking about me and handing me her number in a parking lot. That’s not her. Ask anybody in the business, that is not her.’

He dropped the card in the cup holder and sat looking at it.

’So what does she want? Is it the acting? Does she just want to know how I’m doing it, and this is her going the long way round to asking me?’

He couldn’t say for sure.

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