Lemonade and lingerie

The last grip truck pulled out of the lot at seven forty, and I heard the gate clank shut behind it. That left me and the soundstage and about four hundred pounds of coiled cable that somebody was going to have to deal with before the morning crew showed up.

That somebody turned out to be me. Kristy Alvarez, thirty-three years old, lifeguard for hire, currently kneeling on fake sand coiling a garden hose that had been run across the set about nine times that day for the mister fan. The set was a beach that had never seen an ocean. Painted backdrop, four tons of imported sand, a prop lifeguard chair that cost more than my car. I had spent the whole day sitting in that chair in a red one-piece while a camera crawled around me on a dolly.

"Kristy. You still here?"

Cassidy's voice came from somewhere back by the craft services table. Cassidy Doyle, thirty-eight, director, the person who had hired me for four shoots now including this one. She had a way of appearing behind you that made you jump no matter how many times it happened.

"Yeah, I'm on the hose," I called back. "Somebody's gotta strike this stuff."

"Don't strike the eleven yet. The light on the eleven is stuck again. I want to tag it for rental house before I forget it exists."

I looked over at the lighting rig. The eleven was a big soft box on a crank stand, and the crank had been fighting us all afternoon. We had wrestled it twice already during the shoot and both times it had taken the two of us hauling on the handle while the gaffer gave directions nobody could hear.

"One more time," she said, walking toward me. "I promise. Then you can go home and I will owe you a drink."

"You already owe me a drink from the dog food commercial."

"That was a different fiscal quarter. It doesn't count."

I dropped the hose coil by the prop cooler and walked over. The stage was quiet in a way soundstages never are during a shoot. No generator hum, no PA yelling for quiet, just the air handlers and the two of us. The work lights were still on but the big tungsten units had cooled down to that dull orange look they get, like dead coals.

I took the crank handle and she put her hands above mine on the same grip. "On three," she said. "One, two," and we both hauled and the gears made that awful grinding noise and then something clunked and the head dropped six inches all at once.

"There it goes," she said.

"It only does that when it's about to fall on somebody."

"It's never fallen on anybody."

"It's come close twice. Both times it was me under it."

She laughed and we got the head locked off at a safe height. Then she checked the safety chain and I checked the safety chain after her, because I had learned not to trust either of us at the end of a fourteen-hour day. The sand-colored backdrop hung behind us the whole width of the stage, and there was a long scuff on it from where the dolly had clipped it that morning, and I remember thinking somebody was going to get charged for that scuff and it was not going to be me.

"Okay," she said, stepping back. "That's it. I owe you two drinks now."

"Plus interest."

"Plus interest."

I should have picked up my bag and left. It was past eight, I had been in a swimsuit under stage lights since eight in the morning, and there was leftover pad thai in my fridge with my name on it. Instead I stood there with my hands on my hips and she stood there with her hands in her pockets and neither of us moved toward the door.

"You always stay this late?" she asked.

"Only when the director doesn't pay overtime."

"I pay overtime."

"You pay it late."

"That's a cash flow issue, not a character flaw."

She smiled when she said it and I smiled back and we stood there a second longer. Then she walked over and leaned her shoulder against the backdrop, right next to the scuff, and looked out across the fake beach the way people look out real windows in offices.

"Can I ask you something kind of personal?" she said.

"Probably."

"Do you ever think about what happens after the shoot? Like after we all wrap and go home. What you go back to."

I picked up a water bottle off the prop table and rolled it between my palms. "What do you mean, like my apartment?"

"Like your life. You've done four shoots for me. I know your sun tolerance and your rate and nothing else about you."

"Nothing else is mostly accurate," I said. "I work. I swim at the YMCA on Tuesdays. I have a plant that I've kept alive for two years, which is the longest relationship of my recent life."

"That's kind of sad."

"It's very sad. His name is Gerald."

She laughed, but then she didn't stop looking at me, and the laugh kind of dried up in the air between us. "That's not what I'm asking, though. You know that's not what I'm asking."

I put the water bottle down. There was a version of this where I deflected and made a joke about the plant and we both went home. I had done that version for three years, more or less, ever since Mel and I ended, which is a whole other story I don't tell at work. Three years since anybody had touched me on purpose. I had gotten good at not noticing, the way you get good at not noticing a toothache, until somebody presses on it.

"Honestly?" I said. "There hasn't been an after in a while. There's work and there's home and there's not much between. I've been kind of hollowed out for years, if you want the true answer. Like somebody scooped me and forgot to fill me back up."

The air handlers hummed. Somewhere in the rafters a strap ticked against a truss as the metal cooled.

"You want to know something dumb?" Cassidy said. She was still leaning against the backdrop with her arms crossed. "I can feel it from across the set. Your hunger. I don't know how else to put it. We'll be mid-take and I'll be watching the monitor and then I'll look up at you standing in the lifeguard chair and it's like the room changes temperature. It's been that way since the second shoot. I never said anything because you were working and I was working and that's a line you don't cross on set."

I didn't know what to do with my face so I looked at the sand. "Since the second shoot. That was the hotel pool thing."

"The hotel pool thing. You wore a white whistle lanyard and I could not tell you one single frame of that shoot."

"Cassidy."

"I'm not asking for anything. I want to state that plainly before anything else. I'm not asking. I'm telling you what I've noticed, because you stood there and told me you've been hollowed out for years, and it seemed rude to let that sit on the table without putting anything next to it."

I looked at her. She's not what you'd call flashy. Short dark hair she cuts herself, bad at it, jeans with chalk dust on them from marking sets, a face that reads ten years younger on camera and ten years older off it. I had spent four shoots noticing her hands on the slate and telling myself it was nothing, the same way I'd told myself Gerald the plant was enough.

"Okay," I said. "Noted. You're not asking."

"But if I were going to ask," she said, and stopped herself, and actually pushed off the backdrop and took a step back like she was giving the words room to be taken back. "If I were going to ask, it would be whether you want to get that drink you keep saying I owe you. Tonight. Not as a director thing. Not as a job thing. As a couple of adults who are done working."

My heart was doing something I'm not going to describe because it's embarrassing. Three years. You'd think three years would make a person careful, and it had, it had made me very careful, careful right up to the point where a woman with chalk on her jeans said not as a job thing and something in my chest unlocked.

"There's a bar on Fourth," I said. "The one with the terrible mural."

"I know the one. The mural is a crime."

"It's a hate crime against dolphins."

"Meet you there in forty minutes," she said. "Unless you want to say no, in which case say it now and we go back to being professional and I will never bring it up, I swear on the rental house."

I thought about pad thai. I thought about Gerald, who would be fine, he's a pothos, they're indestructible.

"Fourth Street. Forty minutes," I said. "And you're paying, plus the dog food commercial one."

"Plus that one. Deal."

The bar with the dolphin mural was exactly as bad as I remembered. The dolphins were purple. One of them appeared to be wearing sunglasses. We got the corner table by the window because Cassidy insisted on being able to see the mural while she ate.

"I want it on record that this is the worst art in the county," she said, dropping onto the stool.

"You said that last time."

"It keeps being true. That's how art works."

We got two drinks each down over about an hour and a half, then a basket of fries and two big glasses of water each. She paid, plus the dog food one, like she said she would. We talked about nothing for most of it. Her landlord was raising her studio rent again. My YMCA had replaced the good lane ropes with ones that sank. At some point she put her hand flat on the table and I put mine next to it, not touching, just close, and we both looked at the gap between them like it was a prop we hadn't decided how to use.

"Okay," she said finally. "Here's my situation. I drove here, but I've had two drinks and I'm not driving you anywhere and I'm not driving myself anywhere until these wear off. Which means I've got about an hour of sitting here with water and fries being a responsible adult, and I already said everything I came to say."

"Walk," I said. "It's a nice night. My car's here anyway. I'll get it in the morning."

"That's very practical of you."

"I'm a very practical person. I keep a plant alive. That's the whole personality."

We walked. And because neither of us wanted to go home, and because the soundstage was only six blocks away, we somehow ended up walking back onto the lot at eleven at night, through the side door she still had the code for, out onto a fake beach lit only by the red exit signs.

"This is ridiculous," I said. "We're standing on four tons of imported sand at night like a couple of weirdos."

"The sand is the best part. Feel it. It's better than real beach sand. Real beach sand has