The Prop That Almost Wasn't

I got to the studio at nine in the morning, still in the jeans I'd worn to work for the last ten years. Somebody had put a call sheet in my inbox at the winery that said FAREWELL SHOOT, 9 AM, STUDIO B, and I figured showing up in work jeans was my one small revenge.

The place was downtown Portland, a rented studio with a greenroom in back. Boxes of props everywhere. A folding table with six half-empty coffee cups on it. It smelled like lumber from the craft-services table they were still building.

"You're Harper," the director said. It wasn't a question. "Great. We're doing you at the barrel, then a two-shot with the assistant model. Big smile on the two-shot. This is a celebration, right? Ten years."

"Sure," I said. "A celebration."

They'd fired me at ten the night before. HR sent the email. Then this morning a courier brought the schedule like it was a gift. The paycheck came attached to a commercial I didn't want to be in, shot in a fake cellar with fake barrels, because the real ones I'd actually made wine in were apparently not photogenic.

The assistant model showed up at ten. Michael. Twenty-four, they told me, like it mattered. Tall, brown hair, jawline that belonged on a billboard. He shook my hand and said, "So you're the legend. They told me you make the reserve program."

"Made," I said. "Past tense."

"Oh. Sorry."

"It's fine. You're here to hand me a prop corkscrew and smile."

"That I can do," he said, and he smiled, and I hated him a little for how easy it was.

We ran the two-shot eleven times. Every take the director yelled, "More joy, Harper, more joy," and every take I gave him about sixty percent of joy and he took it. By the lighting hold I was done. I walked off set and ducked into the greenroom to sit down, and on the way in I kicked a cardboard box by the couch.

It rattled. Not like boxes rattle. Like a box full of heavy, oddly shaped things.

I looked around. Nobody there. I opened the flaps.

Inside, packed in crumpled paper, were maybe a dozen wine-bottle-shaped objects that were absolutely not wine bottles. Silicone, in colors no winery ever used. Bright pink. Neon green. One in a deep purple that had a clear seam where it, well, separated into two parts. I picked one up. The base buzzed when I found the button, and I laughed out loud, alone, in a greenroom, holding a vibrator shaped like a magnum.

"Somebody in props has a sense of humor," I said to nobody.

"That's a weird thing to be doing back here."

Michael stood in the doorway. Touch-up brush in one hand, nobody had asked him for anything.

"Lighting hold," I said. "I'm allowed to hide for six minutes."

"I told them I needed a touch-up." He came in and shut the door partway. "You're not hiding, though. You're shopping."

"Props box." I held the thing up. "They packed gag props. For the farewell ad. Somebody thought I should mime drinking from one of these."

He came over and looked in the box, and then he took it out of my hand and turned it over as if checking a label.

"That's a serious one," he said. "That's not a gag, that's a statement."

"You know a lot about statements?"

"I'm twenty-four and I do commercial work. I know a lot about everything and nothing about anything." He put it back, then picked up the purple one. "This one's curved. Somebody in props had a very specific morning."

"They did."

"Does it bother you? The joke of it. Firing you and handing you one of these."

"No," I said. "The firing bothers me. The thing is kind of funny. Honestly the whole day would be better if it was just this instead of the shoot."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I've had worse Tuesdays, but not by much."

He was quiet a second, turning the purple one over in his hands. Then he said, "Can I be honest about something dumb?"

"Go ahead."

"I've never actually used one of these. With somebody. I've seen them on set, in boxes, in bad scripts. Never in real life."

"That's not dumb. That's just true."

"It's dumb because I'm telling you in a greenroom while holding one." He set it down. "Anyway. You looked like you needed somebody to say something dumb."

I don't know what happened in my head right then, except that I'd been told to have more joy eleven times and this was the first minute all day I'd felt anything at all. Maybe it was that. Maybe it was ten years at a place that mailed me off like a prop.

"Here's a dare," I said. "Since you've never used one. Practice."

"Practice."

"On someone. On me. If you want." I said it before I could think better of it, and then, because I'd already said it, I said the rest. "I'm thirty-six, I just got fired, and I'm not going to get another Tuesday like this one. So. If you want. That's a real offer, not a bit."

He looked at me, and I watched him decide, and it didn't take long.

"Okay," he said. "Yeah. I want."

"You're sure?"

"Are you?"

"I asked first."

"I'm sure." He picked the purple one back up. "How do you want to do this?"

"Lock the door first. I'm not giving the director more joy."

He locked it. I sat down on the ugly greenroom couch and got my jeans and underwear off, which felt