The Director's Cut

I've been working commercial shoots for eleven years now, and mostly it's the same rhythm every time. Long days of waiting, short bursts of chaos, a wrap party where everyone drinks too much and says things they don't mean. Simon Costa, forty-four years old, event coordinator, professional waiter. That's how I think of myself sometimes, waiting for the next take, waiting for the next job, waiting for my life to maybe start being interesting again.

The last wrap party was three weeks ago, up at a studio lot in Burbank. I stood near the snack table with a beer I wasn't drinking and watched Brittney Sutter laugh with the director. She did that thing she does, where she tilts her head back and just commits to the laugh, no holding anything back, and the director ate it up. Two other people drifted over and joined in and she made room for them with casual ease. She had that ease. She always has that ease.

I've known Brittney for about two years. We've been neighbors on the same crew circuit, her in costumes, me running logistics, and we've become the kind of casual friends who eat lunch together when the schedule lines up. She's forty-two, funny, good at her job, and she carries herself as someone who has already decided she's fine no matter what happens. I envied that at the party. I stood there with my beer and felt a pang of it, real envy, the kind I don't like to admit to. I'd been on four dates since spring and every one of them had gone nowhere, politely, efficiently, like the women could tell before the appetizers arrived that I was running on low battery. Watching Brittney laugh, I thought, there's somebody who still has voltage.

Then I finished the beer and went home and fell asleep on my couch watching a rerun. So that was the state of me.

***

The current job is a luxury watch commercial, shooting at a rented mid-century modern house up in the hills. Glass walls, low roofline, that whole look. The house photographs beautifully and the wifi barely works, which tells you something about luxury. We started Monday, and today is Thursday, and Thursday was the day the schedule fell apart.

The client wanted extra setups. The light went soft early because of haze. A crane shot got scrubbed and then un-scrubbed and then scrubbed again. By eight at night most of the crew had cleared out or were packed into vans heading down the hill, and the production office told me to stay and lock up after the last pickup shots tomorrow morning. So there I was, holding keys to a four-million-dollar house, alone except for Brittney, who was still in the back bedroom steaming wrinkles out of a wardrobe change nobody would ever notice.

She came out around nine carrying two foil trays she'd rescued from the catering table.

"Tell me you haven't eaten," she said, setting them on the coffee table in the big empty living room.

"I haven't eaten," I said. It was true. I'd had half a protein bar at four.

"Then sit down, because I'm not sharing this with an empty room." She kicked off her shoes and curled up on one end of the sofa like she owned the place. There was chicken, some kind of rice, and a tragic amount of roasted vegetables that the crew had ignored all day. We ate straight out of the trays with plastic forks and it was honestly better than most dinners I've paid real money for.

For a while we just talked about the shoot, the haze, the crane, the client rep who kept saying "elevate it" without being able to say what "it" was. Then the conversation slid, the way it does when two tired people are eating bad catering on a good sofa, into the other stuff.

"How's the dating thing going?" she asked. "You were telling me about that woman, the one with the sailboat."

"Ruth. That ended in June. She went back with her ex." I shrugged. "Before that there was a woman named Carol, and before Carol there was a woman whose name I genuinely had to think hard to remember, which tells you how it went. Four dates this year. Four duds. Nobody's fault, they just all felt like filling out forms."

Brittney laughed, not her party laugh, a quieter one. "Forms. Yeah, I know the feeling. I dated a sound guy for a while, few years back, and since then it's been app roulette. You swipe, you meet, you think, well, that's an evening I'll never get back." She speared a zucchini. "I'm forty-two and I feel like I'm just going through the motions. Work, sleep, occasional bad date, repeat. I used to want things. Now I want a good night's sleep."

"That's depressing," I said.

"I know it's depressing. That's why I said it out loud, so somebody could tell me it's depressing." She pointed her fork at me. "Your turn. What do you want, Simon?"

I thought about it honestly, which was a mistake, because honest answers are dangerous after a ten-hour day. What came out was, "I want to feel like something is happening. I feel like I've been on pause since I turned forty. Everything's fine. Fine is the problem."

She went quiet for a second and looked out the big glass wall at the city lights below us, all that orange smear way down the hill. "Okay, since we're being honest. I keep thinking there's stuff I never tried. Things I always said I'd get around to. And I keep not getting around to them, and one day I'm going to be seventy and it's all going to be forms."

"So make a list," I said. "You're a designer, you love lists."

"Not a list. A dare." She sat up a little. "Okay, new game. I dare you to do one thing you've never done. Anything. Before this shoot wraps. And you dare me back. Deal?"

It felt harmless. It was late, I was tired, my judgment was operating at catering-fork level. "Fine. Dare."

She thought about it, tapping the fork against her teeth. "Eat one of those vegetables."

"That's not a dare, that's a punishment."

"Eat the vegetable and tell me one thing you've never done. That's the real dare. Confess something."

I ate the vegetable, which was soggy, and thought about what to confess. There were a lot of options. I picked one I'd never said out loud to anyone.

"I've never had anal sex," I said. "Given it, I mean. Forty-four years and it's never come up. Not once. Every partner, every relationship, nobody asked, I never asked. It's this whole room in the house I've just never walked into."

I expected a laugh. Instead Brittney set her fork down slowly.

"Huh," she said. "Me neither. Done to me a little, halfheartedly, and it was awful both times, but never done properly, never done on purpose, with actual care." She said it again, quieter. "Huh."

"Is that your confession too?"

"Apparently." She pulled her feet up under her. "Well, now we're both stuck. I dared you, you confessed, now you have to dare me."

And here's where I should probably explain that I'm not a bold man. I plan things. I coordinate things. Boldness has never been my department. But the whole day had been long and strange, the lights below the house looked like another planet, and Brittney was looking at me with that ease of hers, waiting, like whatever I said next would be fine no matter what it was. I felt a little of that voltage myself for the first time in years.

"Okay," I said. "My dare is that we do it together. The thing we've both never done. You and me. One time, before wrap."

The words hung there and I braced for her to laugh me out of the room.

She didn't laugh. She picked up her fork, put it down again, and said, "You're serious?"

"Dead serious. If you're not into it, forget I said it, we finish the vegetables and never mention it again. But if you are..." I trailed off, because I hadn't actually planned past the offer. Boldness only goes so far.

Brittney looked out at the lights again. Then she looked back at me and her face showed something new, not the party ease, something hungrier and a little nervous, which honestly made me feel better about my own nerves.

"Rules," she said. "If we do this, we do it right. No pressure, tons of lube, and either of us can call it off anytime, no hard feelings. Agreed?"

"Agreed," I said.

She held out her hand to shake on it, and her grip was warmer than I expected.

We shook on it and then both of us sat there like two people who had just signed something without reading it. The trays sat between us getting cold. Somewhere down the hall the refrigerator hummed, and outside the glass the city did its orange thing, patient as always.

"So," she said.

"So," I said.

"We should probably have more rules than three."

"You think?"

"Yes. Rule four, no shame afterward. Whatever happens, whatever we say, whatever noises come out of anybody, nobody gets to be embarrassed about it later. We were curious, we tried a thing, end of story."

"Nobody brings it up at the next wrap party."

"Especially not at the next wrap party." She counted on her fingers. "Rule five, no expectations. If it turns out to be terrible, we say it was terrible and we still like each other. If it turns out great, also fine. Either way it's data."

"Data," I said. "That's very romantic."

"I'm a costume designer, Simon. Romance is a lot of stitching nobody sees."

I laughed at that, a real laugh, the kind I hadn't done in a while, and she grinned at me over the tray. And then, because she was Brittney and she was apparently the practical one in this arrangement, she reached over and dragged her kit bag across the floor. It was this huge canvas thing she hauled to every set, full of pins and fabric and small crimes against fabric. She dug around in a side pocket and came out with a