seoul short story - a spielberg sort of love

SHORT STORY

A SPIELBERG SORT OF LOVE

by ana neu

INTRODUCTION

I am of the belief that even the talented Stephen Spielberg couldn’t remotely write or direct a film in which Joelene Portman was at its centre. For even though I did not know it at the time, it was only me that could.

Unlike my odd thirty-seven (futile and unsuccessful) written plays and movie scripts – there was one that made it. It was one that wasn’t set behind the backdrop of a world of rebirthed dinosaurs or a story following an alien wanting to go home. Though Jurassic Park and E.T are simply remarkable - any film graduate knew that – it was the simplest of my stories which got the attention of a small Broadway-wanna-be theatre in the bowels of the messy streets of Melbourne. I, being a dramatic person - as you will evidently see this whole story play out - swore this story to be the last of my original pieces; if it grew little to no traction I would throw in the figurative towel in and exchange my playwright dreams for becoming a humble ghostwriter. Having made those declarations to my meek bathroom mirror in my small ten-foot city apartment, I knew, perhaps in the deepest parts of myself I would never make such an unhappy trade. For, it is in my nature of stubbornly, wishfully (and perhaps dangerously according to some people like my cousin in Cairns who himself is backpacking through the outback) persevere. For in the end, even if this script fell dead to the eyes of the Australian public I would simply write again, into the ground (into my dear moth-infested pockets of my university savings). For I believe - at the end of my complaining and cobbling and forehead bumps to the table - there are some things that fortunately or unfortunately are meant to be. And nothing like time or mothers or broken sinks can do much to stop it. Which – when you think about it - really is quite an inconvenient thing. For I did not choose to become a writer.

Although, at a particular moment I will soon tell, I had a far more troublesome task - of choosing her. But in hindsight, you should know that there was never really any competition.

𝆙

“You have plenty of girls to choose from, Ben! I still don’t understand the problem.” My manager, Rod, was lecturing me again through my flip phone. I was sat at a terrace which I routine on Thursday mornings to watch the traffic and skull my espresso. I never have liked the taste of coffee - to me it was like dirt freshly scrapped off a poor man’s shoe. So, I consumed it in its most compact means.

I downed the small cup and smacked my lips, withdrawing a grimace. I leaned back in the plastic chair.

Rod chuffed. “Ben? Are you even on the bloomin’ line?”

“Yeah - yeah I’m still here.”

“Well why won’t you answer your damn manager?”

I took out a cig from my pocket and light it, plugging it in my mouth. “Maybe because it’s the same answer and I wouldn’t want to waste my breath.” Maybe he should be paying me. I’m sure this could borderline some harassment law. He’s been calling me every two hours. I took in a breath of tobacco. I wasn’t supposed to me smoking – with Australia’s new no-smoking-in-public-spaces bull. But surely the number of times I frequented this humble café – they wouldn’t forfeit a man like me such a simple pleasure. I was getting a headache, and I needed something to fizzle out the static.

“Wendy has been playing the role for all your shows - it makes the most sense to cast her. Again, she is willing.”

I clucked my tongue. Wendy did play the main role well. But these were big time producers, and I needed someone else to sell it. Really sell it. Or else I’ll be at square one and I know I won’t have another shot like this again. It was only another thing a playwright had to meddle with - actors. Bringing your words to life – real faces to breathe your character’s dialogue and story was the most difficult at the best of times. Sometimes it almost felt like adopting a child in place of your own. For most writers, it was usually a fun, pleasant thing. But for me and my play - this one story - the main role was the face of it all. And I was not afraid to say that Wendy did not cut it. If I was this stubborn now, I don’t know how I’ll be when I’m eighty. Rod told me once that in another world I was Captain Hook always hopelessly chasing after another Peter Pan. I had agreed, quite modestly, before making a comment about – if that was the case – he’d have to be Mr. Smee.

But in my defence, it wasn’t like I was picking a formal date. Finding the best actress was as unnegotiable to me as margarine was with my Vegemite. I am aware of Rod’s annoyance (and concern). It’s just that things like art and acting are the very things you cannot rush, cannot fake. Settling for someone like Wendy was like drinking from a stream when you ought to wait for it to rain - and lap up the source from the sky itself. Eh. That’s a metaphor I’m still trying out. For some reason it still won’t land.

“I told you I’ll find her,” I reassured Rod, instinctively moving my ear from the phone. As predicted, my reassurance does little.

He goes on to scream at me. “These producers don’t mess around Ben, I’m telling you! Tomorrow is our deadline - you agreed to that from the start after I allowed you to do this stupid casting stunt…bloody hell. I’m growing grey hairs mate, I'm not kidding…”

I let him waffle – just a little away from my hearing. And just as Rod’s voice drifted into background noise, my eyes drifted over the city and down High Street. A busy intersection where I usually made a habit of watching the poor souls that have nine-to-five-day jobs. I knew all my life I’d be the exception to the little capitalistic rat-race. I’d rather work pay-check to miserable pay-check than work in a cube where there was barely any room to push back my elbows for the good two thirds of my life.

There at the traffic lights a little brown poodle lifted its hind leg and began to pee on a man’s black briefcase. It’s the cheap sort of leather than I imagined didn’t do too well with rain (or any other liquid). He barely noticed and I let out a small snort. My eyes moved to the opposite side of the square and see the walking light switch to green. I brought up my hand to take a drag and I blow out a tight breath.

For that is when I saw her. Just there – across the zebra crossing.

It was her. The face of my play.

Jolene. Of course it was her.

“Ben? Ben, are you hearing me? Do I have to hire a translator to get this message in your bloomin’ head?” But Rod’s voice was like a hopeless echo. All my attention was drawn to her.

She was just as I last saw her at university all those years ago. Long brown hair her mother never let her cut - down-trained eyes and a tendency of wearing the colour blue.

My gods, she was like the sky.

“Ben - are you ignoring me now? Is that what we’ve come to - childish games such as this? Why did I ever sign you –”

I couldn’t even move a muscle as she passed me - just an arm’s length away. Down pass the terrace and toward the other end of High Street.

And like a snap-moment - my eyes blinked, and she was gone.

I jostled the phone at my ear. “Yeah, Rod something came up - I need to go -”

I didn’t wait for Rod to respond as I clipped my flip phone shut and fumbled out a pink 5 to cast on the table. I needed to follow her. But as I turned down the street, an onslaught of people spilled into the sidewalk - the poodle and the man with the urine-spoiled briefcase block my path.

Damn -

I tried to maneuverer myself around them, but an old woman stepped down from a corner Ezy Mart and I nearly wheeled right into her cane. When I managed to pass by her, I was met with another intersection which she – Jolene – happened to get the tail of. Her hurried steps clicked over the bitumen just as the walking light turned red and traffic followed. Her baby-blue blouse rippled in the flustered street. She disappeared into a cloud of rushed morning people, and I soon couldn’t see her through the gust. The centre of this city was no joke – forget New York. I couldn’t tell you all the times I got lost as a kid and washed up on the outskirts of Willow Park. I punched the walking button at the lights, ignorant of vain. That I lost her. These bloody lights. It’s the reason she ran across at the last moment. If you missed a light, you’ve essentially missed the good half of your first shift. I cursed under what breath I have left.

I turned to the man with the leather briefcase who was examining at me quite judgmentally. I looked down and raised my brows, quipping my lip. “I wouldn’t look so poppy sir if I knew a poodle had peed on my briefcase.” I eyed the lady holding the leash of the beast. She stared at me, gathering her hot-pink lips - probably about to mutter that her little mutt would never do such a thing - but I turned before she could utter a word, returning to my coffee terrace. I sat. I suck in another billow of smoke.

I can’t believe she slipped through my fingers. Again.

One of the baristas comes by my table and picks up my empty cup. She pauses. “Um. No smoking I’m afraid,” the girl said. “Don’t you know about the new laws?”

I take another breath of tobacco.

𝆙

Jolene Portman, I typed unashamedly into Google.com. It was a name I thought I had forgotten - or at least tried to - so many years ago. Since second year of film-school. Since she moved away and never returned my calls. For a long time, I swore it truly felt like I was cosplaying a new age Ryan Gosling. It all ended so messily. I never knew where she moved to. But Sydney, I remember her mentioning in an off-hand comment and never again. Beyond that - she could be off with the fairies in the Blue Mountains, and I wouldn’t know where her doorstep lay. Her mother did have some resemblance to a troll.

But hadn’t she told me to call?

It was truly like a game of broken telephone. Childish, perhaps. But I had believed we’d at least still be friends. Just as I believed we’d make it to Broadway. That she’d be a breathtaking method-actor and I’d be the messy yet sophisticated scripter (I quite like the word sophisticated, to me it sounds so Gatsby). But from what I saw – going on her blue blouse and pencil skirt - I doubt she was on her way to a casting audition. She used to hate skirts. I think I remembered her saying with a toss of her chin that ‘skirts only served one purpose’. I remembered looking at her a little aghast (for she very rarely made such…comments). But she had smacked my shoulder. “I was going to say uncomfortability.” But I didn’t believe that was really what she was thinking. Neither did I tell her that ‘uncomfortability’ is not a word.

And yet, it just so happened that she was the one I needed to play in my damned script. Her face - the sharp kindness of her eyes. It was pointless to compare her to another. To an actress like Wendy. When she…Jo was the one it had to be. It just made sense.

How did I not realize it before?

I pressed enter at the keyboard and crack my neck, waiting for the circle of doom.

Jolene. What was she doing in Melbourne? The land of granola coffee and struggling artists. I thought she was to be rid of this place.

Of me.

The screen loads and I see her linked.in profile pop up. Jolene Portman, it wrote. Newly recruited in the internship program at Women’s Weekly…

My brows shot up. A journalist intern? At Women’s Weekly. One word whispered up in my head like a devilish Jiminy Cricket.

Superficial.

Shoot me, I know.

But I couldn’t contain my surprise. This wasn’t my Jo. I scroll down the page, mulling the two things in my head. Jo on one hand and a Celebrity-Gossip Magazine on the other.

I remembered her father being one of the coordinating directors - now retired. I wouldn’t forget those piles of Women’s Weekly stacked like bricks on Joelene’s kitchen bench. 10 fast ways to lose that belly fat! What Justin Timberlake said about Britany Spears will BLOW your mind! Gossip that women, apparently, ate up like eggnog on a hot Christmas day. But I doubt eggnog was approved in a CSIRO diet. Whatever CSIRO was anyway.

Jo and I would read out some of the headlines when we got bored in cartoonish voices, trying to get the other to laugh first. You laugh; you lose. But that was only when we got really bored.

My eyes lingered on her profile picture. Her hair was swept in an arc to one side and held back by a black headband. She looked quite proper. So different. She always had an air about her – a quiet humbleness. And yet, her eyes - the set of her cupid lips and the secret judgemental tongue hidden behind them - was all so familiar. She was the quick-mouthed, ambitious girl of my acting class. She, who played even the most sidest of roles and still managed to outshine the main. For she played them so well I’d see from backstage, how the audience’s necks would linger in her direction.

Jo had her own critique on my work too, which she always made quite bluntly. She gave quite amazing, clear-cut advice when I talked about my scripts even if her favourite movies were 99 Cigarettes and Sixteen Candles? (they wouldn’t be on my hundred list). I always joked she had a thing with numbers. Her favourite was four. How excited she would get if her Macca’s order had the number in it - it was like she won the lottery. And when I finally sneaked into her room one day I saw on the wall – all those receipts stuck to her wall like trophies. When I admitted to her that I didn’t have a favourite number she demanded on the spot that I decided on one. I wanted four (because it reminded me of her). But she shook her head.

Of course, she had taken four.

But surely the girl obsessed with numbers, and the colour blue was not gone. She was just hidden under the pages of a Women’s magazine. Because I swore I remember her making me pinkie promise that I’d go around the whole of Melbourne and rip out a page if she was ever found in such a magazine. And now she was going to write such stories? I leaned back in the uncomfortable spinney chair, my eyes remaining on her profile.

To she looked like a bluebell in the middle of a sunflower field. And I don’t like sunflowers. Much too sunny. And they followed wherever the sun goes like a person following a crowd - so there you go; another botched metaphor for you.

She just didn’t belong. She just wasn’t a sunflower.

I scrolled down to see the address of the building she was interning at. It was down Swan Street which wasn’t too far from my humble apartment. I committed the building number to memory.

There soon began to be a sour smell, and I looked next to me to see a sweaty, big sized man sit at the adjoining computer. He wore a Space Invader’s shirt (a couple sizes too small) and had a beard that looked longer than a standard school ruler. He wiggled his brows at the screen. “She’s hot,” he said. His voice sounded like a buzzing of bees.

I closed the google window.

𝆙

On a bright Friday morning I found myself standing at the foot of The Women’s Weekly corporate building down Swan Street, building number 322. It was a crisp dawn, as it always seemed to be in autumn-brown Melbourne, and I waited at the entryway of the building. I see who must be the receptionist pass me by. She asked if I needed help and I told her I was waiting for someone. She gave me a curious glance, from head to toe. I became quite insecure at the choice of my dress-shirt then.

Instead of waiting inside, I stuck myself to the road, my eyes looked back and forth. But I stopped when I could see the receptionist staring at me through the big windows. Perhaps it seemed quite stalkerish - waiting at someone’s workplace as if I were some sort of sketchy hitman or creepy flasher. But didn’t people do this when they wanted to sue someone? Yes, I recalled that under Australian law, to deliver a claim you must do so in person and sometimes that means finding out where they live or work and physically waiting for them as I do now. I know this because one time I accidently stepped into a law class in my first year and I sat down before I realized it was not Introduction to Screenwriting. And it was a huge lecture theatre too – with those big steel doors only accessible by the front. Those poor law students, I remember thinking, as I saw the professor pull out the textbook. It was bigger than my head. And I have a pretty big head. Eventually I left with the excuse that I needed to go to the bathroom. I didn’t answer when the professor asked why I needed to take my bag.

Anyway, all of this had me unfocused. I needed to find Jo – that was my priority – and I didn’t care if I looked stalkerish doing it. But as I picked a spot to settle my pacing legs, I realized I had little idea of what I was to say to her. I had promised Rod with a text this morning (in reply to his 9 missed calls) that I had ‘found her’ and I was going to ‘fulfil my end of the bargain’. I was going to find my lead actress. But what I was going to say to convince her?

I had my shoulder leaning on the side of the sandstone building when I see a flicker of blue at the ends of my vision. I looked up and surely, I see her.

“Jo –” I called out.

She barely saw me as she half-pushed at the revolving door. But when she heard my voice, she had stopped and turned. And in a moment, her pretty eyes flickered toward my face. Something passed her features.

Damns, I thought, didn’t she have the perfect face?

“Ben,” she said as she stepped back, letting another person come through the door from behind her.

I walked the few steps between us. “Hi, it’s been a while.”

Pathetic opening.

She shook her head, “What - what are you doing here?”

“I wanted to speak with you.”

She nodded once and looked behind her. It seemed like the employees of Women’s Weekly really got to work right on time and all at once. Some who passed through to the building looked at us. She pulled me to the side.

“I have to go to work now, I don’t think –”

“It’ll be quick, trust me. I make fast work of convincing.”

“Convincing?”

“One of my plays has been getting traction. Bluebell Blues?” I had half hoped she saw something in the newspaper or on the web. But her face betrayed no knowledge. And her response said all that it needed to.

“That’s…great,” she said, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. Her eyes wandered back toward the door.

I cleared my throat. “I’ll be showing the play to some producers who are interested in making it a movie. It will be a small production, but I can’t help but feel like this could be it. My ‘foot in the door’.”

She readjusted her bag, “Well - I’m happy for you Ben. Truly that’s great. But how does this have to do with me?” Her brows creased. It was an expression I nicknamed the Dolly. And it pained me to see it again.

Gods help me.

She really was the one.

“Ben?”

“I want you to act in it, Jo,” I said.

Her eyes bloomed in an innocent surprise. Then they furrowed in confusion. And soon my heart began to sink as she shakes her head. “No - No…I am done with acting. I dropped out of acting school four years ago.”

Four indeed.

“I know it sounds crazy. But you're the only one I know will win them over.”

She almost laughed, “Out of the blue you come to me - after so many years - and you want me to…?” She looked away.

“I know it’s been a while,” I attempted to catch her gaze, “But let me show you the script - I’ll -”

“That’s my boss,” she interrupted, her gaze focused behind me.  Then her eyes returned to mine, “I’m sorry Ben, I wish you luck with it, but I - I can’t.”

She pushed past me. And I watched her step out.

“Jo. You really want to be a journalist? Is that what you want?”

She stopped for a moment, and I wished I took the words back. For she turned her cheek, “Looks like you aren’t quite the convincer. Goodbye Ben.”

And like another terrible dream - I watched her go again. She walked up on the steps and passed through the revolving door. The blue that always disappeared from my sight like water to vapour, disappeared again,

But I wouldn’t let my heart sink completely. For I knew Jo. There was always another way to get to her.

I just hoped she didn’t change too much.

𝆙

The only things on me were my cell and a pile of sticky notes which I had found shoved in my inner cloak pocket. Not even a pen. And I refused to move from this street without my actress. That is how I began my work.

I began to stick my extra Extra Sticky Sticky Notes (these were like Post Its on steroids - I had gotten a batch of five hundred ‘Extra Sticky Sticky Notes’ due to my chronic usage of the commodity when I saw them in an advertisement in China Town) - onto the pavement of Swan Street. They were yellow, because of course they needed to be yellow.

I knew passerbyers wouldn’t make it easy to make out my message so I settled for a message that was simple and yet effective - something I knew would get the attention of Jo. But I thought that surely a loony putting down hundreds of Extra Sticky Sticky Notes on the road was in of itself attention-gathering.

After what felt like an hour, I had a message canny to a word we’d exchange on a near daily basis.

SOS, it wrote.

I decided to add a question mark at the end of the last S for dramatic effect. It was quite an appropriate response given my situation. As if I indeed was stranded on the gum-squashed pavements of a busy Melbourne street where my only hope for rescue was in a high corporate building of women and sandstone. But between Jo and I, it was a secret message.

For it too meant ‘Sprite on Smith’.

Often in our uni breaks in the summer semester (and sometimes winter because we eventually became hopeless, chronic addicts to the soft-drink) we would walk over to Smith Street and grab a dollar frozen Sprite from a small stand which was run by a small Mexican guy named Tito. It was our own call to help when Samantha Cauldron - a high and mighty rich girl who paid professors to get the lead roles - would get on Jo’s nerves or when Mr. Callan would threaten to fail me if I asked another ‘useless’ question.

I only hoped Jo bothered to look outside.

But soon enough, in one of the tall glass windows I began to see smudges of faces gather against the mirrored glass. I stood at the top of the message, placed my hands against my brow and squinted up. Some of them seemed to be looking back and calling out - to Jo I hoped. And eventually, I saw a familiar blue come to the window. Jo. I couldn’t help but smile. I’ve done my fair share of embarrassing her over the long years to get her attention or just for the simple life pleasure of embarrassing her (it was like giving a baby a lemon-slice – you just had to).

And I was already looking forward to her red little elf ears and the Dolly crease to fall between her brows.

“C’mon Jo,” I whispered to myself, “You’ve already broken my heart, just give me a little more of your busy big-girl time, that’s all I ask.”

I heard my flip phone buzz in my pocket like a firecracker. Rod just wouldn’t let me be. I plugged my hand in to silence it.

SOS indeed.

𝆙

“What an odd way to ask someone on a date,” Audrey, one of the writers at Women’s Weekly, whispered beside me. I looked at her and back down to the object of my embarrassment. Something I thought I left at the Melbourne airport years ago. He was looking up at me - uncaring how the passing bus upset the O in his message as the wind flicked up his sticky notes. He dared to smile.

“Perhaps he’s lost,” one colleague offered.

“He’s kind of cute, with that tie askew,” another said.

“He’s kind of littering,” I muttered back.

“Do you know that man?” Audrey must have read my face. I hoped I looked as peeved as I felt. He made a bad habit of embarrassing me. After all these years I shouldn’t be surprised. But doing all of that just to – what? Recruit me into one of his plays? I already told him I didn’t act anymore.

I had only moved back to Melbourne last week from Sydney. And if was being honest, I didn’t expect to see him here - still and forever a playwright. In fact, I made sure we never crossed paths; I fought myself to not look at the theatre lineup. I didn’t dare to look up or even think of Ben. I certainly did not hope to come across him.

At least so suddenly.

“Well Jolene, do you know that man?” I am surprised to hear Hilda – my boss – close behind me. She clucked her tongue. “He seemed to almost jump on the spot when you appeared at the window.”

I turned to Hilda, affront with her musky scent and piercing, blue eyes. I feigned a smile, “Uh - Unfortunately, I do.” I told her the truth.

“Perhaps you should meet the poor boy,” she said, “He’s clogging traffic, and it doesn’t seem like he’ll stop.” She spoke fact. I saw traffic starting to build up – people stopping to stare at the spectacle. Spectacle indeed.

I sigh, “I’m sorry m’mam.”

Her red-stained mouth frowned as she peered again out the window. “If you shouldn’t shoo him away, perhaps I should just call security –”

I shook my head. “No - no that won’t be necessary. He’s a - a street photographer,” I said. Street photographer? What was I thinking?

“Oh?” Audrey and Hilda both said in unison.

I nodded, slowly, stringing the white lie like floss, “He – uh – he might have some new pictures for the upcoming catalogue. You know how Chris Hemsworth has just visited the city? I’ll go and see if he has any new shots…do excuse me.”

I turned and grabbed my purse from my desk and retreated out of the room before Hilda really called security (she truly stood on business). But I heard Audrey call at my receding steps, “Get all the goss you can dear! I told you she had connections through her father…”

I took the elevator and glared at my flustered face in the mirror. “Ben, I swear….” I muttered to myself as I bit the sides of my gums. I looked up to impatiently watch the numbers of the elevator go down one by one.

And finally, I was in the foyer. I stormed outside the building and stopped at the sidewalk waiting to cross the busy street. He was there on the opposite side, watching me. I almost wanted to stamp my foot. Boneless Ben, his little nickname curled around my tongue. My mother too called him that and while it became a joke to us eventually - right now I felt the truth of the matter. A man without so much as a spine couldn’t do something like this. A slug perhaps could.

The lights changed and I ran across to him.

“Hello again,” he said.

I ignored him and instead, dropped to my knees and began picking up all the sticky notes less they fly away. He kneeled down too, to help me. “Came to your senses?”

“If you call embarrassment a sense then yes,” I said before I scrunched all the post its in my hand and dropped them in a bin next to the street side. I looked up to see my colleges still at the window. “Come on,” I called with a tired bitterness, “They’re watching.”

He followed me as I took a shortcut to the corner of the building, a spot I knew they couldn’t see us. Then, I unfurled my tongue.

“Do you mean to get me fired? Ben - I only just started.”

“And you just so happened to get an internship here?”

I tsk. “This isn’t a joke, Ben. I was about to turn away when he caught my wrist.

“Hey – Jo. Look, I’m sorry. It was the only way to see you again. The receptionist didn’t – she doesn’t seem to like me much. Well, I know she doesn’t. I swear I saw her hands hovering over the 000…”

I stared down to his wrist. It held the broken watch I got him once at a market. It didn’t work when I got it, but it reminded me of the watch Captain Koons wore in Pulp Fiction and I simply needed to get it for him. Till this day…he still wore it. My eyes travelled to his fingers - the touch of him – and I felt the gentle creature of memory creep back over me. I looked up at him and he looked down at me.

He released his grip. Composed himself. “How – how long till you need to get back?”

My shoulders fell against the sandstone wall. I turned to him and caught sight of a stray sticky note that somehow got stuck to his elbow. And yet his eyes were full of a silent pleading – an asking. Just being in front of him – watching him watch me - made me feel like I was nineteen again.

It was this I feared - that the longer I stayed, the longer I wouldn’t like to leave. Maybe that was why I dismissed him so quickly before.

He scratched his stubble. “Maybe the better question is how long until you won’t get fired?”

I sighed. “You don’t happen to have seen Chris Hemsworth, have you?”

𝆙

I was not one to go back on my promises. Whoever said SOS was the one to fulfil the Sprite mission on Smith Street. Afterall, I didn’t make the rules (Jo did). And that was how we came to Tito across the block.

“I didn’t know he’d still be running this stand,” Jo said quietly. “Some things never change.”

I stared at her - how beautiful she looked. Yes, I thought, Some things do never change.

“Hello, hello, hello! What a pleasant surprise huh! My routine customers are back from the dead.” Tito opened his arms wide. The Sprite slushy machine was at his ready.

“Hello old friend,” I replied, “How’s business?”

He laughed a hearty laugh. “Well summers’ always greener,” he grabbed a red cup. “The usual to you birds?”

I nodded and pulled out a $2 coin from my pocket and flicked it to him through the air. He caught it and dipped it safely in his bum bag. He extended one Sprite over the small counter. Jo rolled up her blue sleeves over her knuckles to take it and I too, took mine.

Jo sipped at the straw. She smiled. “Like nostalgia in a cup.”

Tito put his elbows on the stand and sighed, “Isn’t nostalgia a funny thing,” he said. “I heard on the radio it derives from some Greek word. They say it means ‘pain’ and ‘return home’ or something like that.”

Jo’s eyes swung to mine and then away quickly.

I cleared my throat. “Well, I don’t know Greek but that sounds about right,” I said, “It was good to see the stand still going strong. But – places to be.”

“Now come again soon,” he called to us before he attended to a little boy in a Spider-Man costume.

In a soft silence, we followed the ghosts of our steps, heading out of old habit toward our usual park bench at the mouth of the Smith River. It sat just before an arched bridge which busied itself with steady traffic.

Finally, I broke the silence. “Thank you for…hearing me out again.”

She nodded quietly and then gave me a look. It was her way of telling me that she made no promises but one that included finishing her Sprite and me hurrying to find a bin. Yes, I do remember how she was part environmentalist, part passive aggressive (yes it was as if she was a hybrid beast or something or rather but perhaps, I shouldn’t think of an old friend and ex like that. Well, ex is a way to put it. Perhaps I ought to tell you. We never actually formally agreed to a real relationship anything like that. But then again, I’ve written enough about one-sided love. Watch my play - don’t make me regurgitate my heart out onto a silver platter for you). Anyway, you’ll learn quickly all about Jo. For sometimes I actually believed each of us were living between the connecting jigsaw of random cuts and characters and storylines from countless movies. One of them being this particular Jolene Portman and her commonality with Jo March from Little Women. Well, at least I hoped she still had March within her.

“I’ll listen to you as long as it takes for me to finish this beverage,” she announced finally.

I raked a hand through my hair. “No pressure…” I noticed a sticky note on my elbow, and I ripped it off. I force it into my pocket. Only an hour ago she had walked away from me with barely a second glance. Well, she didn’t forget to imply that I was a terrible convincer. And perhaps I was – when it came her. I opened my mouth and shut it again.

“Bluebell blues?” she said.

“Yes. Right, my play” I said, “I just…you know how finnicky I can get around my work. I think perhaps my own perfectionism will best me. Well, it’s not perfectionism truly it’s like –”

“Like finding the right piece?”

I expelled a breath. Of course, she knew what I meant. With her own acting - her assignments and plays - she worked so hard at it all. She knew what difference a small crease in a forehead or tremble of a hand meant for a scene. She adored finding that piece. Honing her art like a sculptor until she unveiled that final performance. Where did all that passion go?

She looked down at her Sprite, picking the ice with her straw. “I don’t act anymore Ben,” she said, quietly.

I nodded and we lapsed into a long silence. Reels of things to say spun through my mind like a never-ending film tape. I know you don’t act anymore. But you should. Why did you ever leave? Not just acting…but Melbourne.

Me?

I blew out a breath. I needed to say the right thing.

A soft wind whispered past us as we near the side of a fountain near the entry to the park. It was quiet here, all but the soft thrum of the bridge.

I finally break the silence. “‘It’s like this. It’s like there’s a bird in all of us. And that bird is stuck inside our rib cage. We spend all our lives trying to get it out. But at the end we eventually learn that we just needed to break our wings. To escape. To fly.’”

Her gaze flickered to me, her large brown eyes open and unblinking.

“It’s from my play,” I told her. “A line the leading character – Luce – says. Just before she decides to run away from home.”

I saw her replaying my words in her mind as she bites mindlessly at her straw. She hesitated. “The bird,” she whispered, “The bird is the heart.”

I smiled.

“It isn’t no West Side Story,” I admitted, “But I really think this story has a soul. I can’t…” I searched for words, “I won’t believe you don’t feel anything for the arts anymore. You must.”

She sat down at the fountain - which rested across from our old park bench. It hurt how she looked up at me.

“It sounds exciting. And I really wish I could help but…” Jo too seemed at a loss for words. She clasped her small hands onto the plastic cup. “I’ll always have some place in my heart for the arts but…as I said, I don’t act anymore. I have this internship now and I’m – I’m happy.”

I watched her watch me. Though I felt my heart lapse - for her sake - I attempted and keep my voice light. “Nothing I say would’ve convinced you,” I realized.

She gave me a sad smile, and a stray hair came down to rest on her cheek. I wanted to tuck it back, but I retrained myself.

“I better get back,” she said, “My boss will get suspicious.”

Jo got up and slurped the rest of her drink. She awkwardly handed it to me. I see her mouth set in a line and then open. “Thanks for - for the Sprite.”

I nodded, taking her empty cup.

She began walking back through the entry of the park. And I watched her go. And yet I didn’t turn around. I stayed there - as if…

She suddenly swivelled around and opened her mouth. She then shuts it.

I raised my brows.

“Why me?” she said. “Why do you need me to play her?”

“Why? Would my answer convince you?”

She bit her lip and crossed her arms, shaking her head. “No. Not necessarily. I just…oh forget it.”

Jolene stomped away but it isn’t long before she turned around again. She let out some sort of groan. “I don’t pretend to understand you. Just tell me Ben. Is there…a reason? Or are you candid?”

I took a sip at my drink and then said, “Do I have to shout it across the park?” I raised my voice. For she truly was a well way away now.

She rolled her eyes. And took a few strides.

“Well?” she asked.

I walked the rest of the way, so we met at the middle. I slightly bent down to her ear-level. “Look Jo, I barely said a few lines of my script and you understood it better than all of Melbourne’s best critics.”

She glared up to me, the Dolly making an appearance and I can’t help but marvel at her face.

“Is that all?” she said.

I shrugged. “Just let me give you the script Jo.”

“Why else does it have to be me?”

I made a sound in my throat, “You won’t believe me. You never have.”

“Try me.”

“Read the script and maybe you’ll see for yourself.”

A ringing came from my pocket, and she stared at my jacket. Someone was buzzing my phone. Rod.

“Are you going to take that?”

I didn’t make a move. “Depends on what you say.”

“What? Just take it, it could be important.”

“All that matters is your answer right now – will you act for me?”

The ringing continued.

She bawked at me.

Slowly I took the phone from my pocket and flicked it open. Rod’s weary voice came through the line. “Ben, have you got her?”

Jo stared at the phone and back to me.

I raised my brows at her. She kept her mouth shut.

“More or less.”

𝆙

I would say I am a fair enough person. Though my mum would tell me how much time should be awarded to my work on one hand and my social life on the other. Men - in particular - she’d warn me against. “Don’t give them the time of day, especially the wood-headed ones,” she’d tell me. Gosh, she’d kill me if she knew I spent the time which Hilda took from my precious lunch break with Ben of all boys in Melbourne city.

For she did not like Ben at all.

I had hurried back into work with apologies stuffed in my purse. No, my ‘street photographer’ did not catch sight of Hemsworth. Hilda had looked at me a little sourly at the fruitless confession. “Then what took you so long to figure that out?” She asked. I had lied that he took me to his studio to sift through his recent shots. And that, pathetically, he barely had any scoop relevant to the magazine. But what was worse than Hilda’s upturned nose was how I spent the whole day distracted by his stupid face. How close he leant into me when I asked him why it was me, he wanted to lead his play!

I barely said a few lines of my script and you understood it better than all of Melbourne’s best critics.

Pfft. He was just trying to butter me up. I knew it had to be his manager on the phone even though I didn’t know what he was going on about. But it was clear he was not entirely convinced by Ben’s words.

More or less, Ben had answered. What did that even mean?

See Ben – you are a bad convincer.

And yet –

“It’s five, hun, what are you still doing here?”

My head shot up to see Audrey as she skirted around the corner. She reached for the cloak rack and shrugged on her winter scarf. My eyes shifted to the big analogue clock. It read 5:14PM.

“I was just finishing up,” I told her as I slid my notes messily into my briefcase.

“Although I have only known you a week, I can tell something’s shaken you up. I’ve seen it all, Jolene. Was it that street photographer boy?”

Immediately I was shaking my head. No. No of course not.

But perhaps I was stalling going home. I had given him my address to drop the script at my door. Half of me twitched to get my hands on it. The other half of me shrunk away like a wild-possum from a streetlight. I looked outside. It was getting dark already.

“Thanks Audrey,” I said as I stood up. I gathered my briefcase and purse, just as she retrieved my coat, “Maybe I just hoped to impress Hilda. And I didn’t seem to.”

She nodded; a note of sympathy sounded in her throat. Audrey was truly the only kind person in this building - Ben wasn’t the only one the receptionist seemed to dislike for no particular reason.

“No matter that,” Audrey said as she helped on my coat, “You have plenty of time to show your potential. There’s a reason we picked you for the job, remember that, Jolene.”

Once we parted ways at the station and bided each other goodnight I was alone with my thoughts. A bird in a cage filled my mind. He was a good writer; I remembered that much from our uni days. How he’d get me to act out lines for his many plays - help him create characters based on dialogue alone…

There’s a reason we picked you…Audrey’s words echoed in my mind as I walked out from the subway. There had to be another reason why Ben picked me. Wanted me.

Surely it was for the role – and nothing else. 

When I got back to my apartment, I saw the script lying there in front of my doorstep. BLUEBELL BLUES it wrote in capital letters. PROPERTY OF BEN WALLOW. I saw a sicky note on it with his phone number and some scribble that said, ‘call me when you finish reading it!’.

I picked it up and shoved my way through the door. After a shower and some instant ramen (I have yet to go grocery shopping since moving my huge suitcase into the kitchen - it was a very small apartment) I sat down in a Le Miserables oversized tee and my hair in a towel as I opened the first page with a heavy sigh.

EXPOSITION, it wrote, TRAIN STATION.

𝆙

I am awoken by a buzzing at the desk. I slowly lifted my sleepy eyes. My desk light was still on - I must have fallen asleep at my desk again. I snatched onto the vibrating cell and flicked it open to my ear. “Rod, I really just might lodge your name to the police services -”

“Ben?”

Jo’s voice filled the other line. I sat up so quickly I almost flung myself from the chair. “Jo?”

“Hi, I know it's late, but you - uh on the sticky note - told me to ring you once I finished the script?”

I squinted at the clock face opposite my desk. It was 2:04am. I rubbed my eyes. “Yes, thanks. Tell me -” I rummaged over my desk to find a fresh note and pressed it open, “Tell me what you thought.”

“Well, I…” she began, her voice a little crackly over the line, “I suppose it's good.”

“It’s good?”

I imagined her nodding, reluctantly probably. “Yes Ben. I think it has potential.”

I let out a breath. “Potential? Tell that to the three producers that want to see the show!” Perhaps I was being too cocky. Silence filled the other line. “Sorry - sorry. Continue.”

She sighed before she began again. “The main character Luce seems a little inconsistent. Her psychology is hard to keep track of in some parts.”

“But?”

“But it…works. Her development through the story is quite realistic. I understand how it’ll be hard to pull off her character. Even for an experienced actor. Oh. And I like how the love interest - Noah - foils her outbursts. Helps her understand what it is she needs to do. Yet the miscommunication trope seems quite pushed.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah ouch.” I heard the flipping of pages. “On page 75 -” (I too had reached for a copy of the script now) “I think it would be more powerful for Luce to physically push Noah out of the house. Having him leave seems like he took the opportunity to -”

“Leave her first,” I finished for her.

“That’s right. When it's clear she is on a regressing arc. Just as she pushes her dreams away - she needs to be actively pushing everything away.”

I scribbled down a note.

“And page 108,” she said, “Why would he just let her father beat him up? It seems awfully violent. Let him run away. That seems more true to his character at this point in the script.”

“He feels the need to be beaten,” I told her as I stifled a yawn, “That is his defence. It’s what makes Luce realize -”

“You need to be broken,” she concluded for me. I knew she’d find the answer. “Okay, never mind that.” She paused. Then said, “You didn’t tell me this was a love story. You never wrote love stories.”

“It’s technically a drama, Jo,” I said. “You should know the romance genre usually ends happily.”

“I think it ended quite well.”

“She nearly kills herself.”

She was silent. “But she didn’t.”

I breathed out a laugh, “Optimist Jo. That’s a new development.”

“Well anyway,” she said, “Those are the most of my thoughts.”

“And about your involvement? What of that?”

She sighed again; I heard a creak. She must have gotten up from where she was sitting. “I am rusty, Ben.”

“I know you connect somehow to Luce. You needn’t memorize the lines. I love your method acting…I…” I tried to find the words, but my brain was tired and worked over-time. “While I was writing I left space for the actress to find Luce’s words. They aren’t perfect and they aren’t supposed to be.”

I waited for an answer on the other side.

“Will you come into the studio tomorrow?” I asked.

“And what if I don’t?”

I shrugged, playing with the pencil in my hands. I realized I had been spelling out Jo over and over on the paper in front of me and I scribbled the words out. “Well, no biggie. I know it is a lot to ask an old retiree like you to get back on the horse.”

She tsked her lips. “Will that agent of yours kill you? That was him on the phone.”

“That actually may be a real possibility. But remember I took karate one elective at uni?”

She let out a snort, “It was a women’s defence course. Till this day I don’t even know how they let you in.”

“Well, it felt like karate anyway. But an answer anytime would be really wonderful,” I sung, leaning the phone into my ear. I waited on her word. Her damned pretty voice which could make or break this production. And what it felt like me as well. I suddenly wished I hadn’t used so many of my precious sticky notes. But her answer came, surely enough.

“Okay. I’ll try. But -” she cut in before I am awarded the opportunity to exclaim a very Ben-like celebration - “I can step out anytime I want. No contracts or promises or strings attached.”

I smiled. “Sure. Anything for you March”.

She hesitated. “Well, at least you didn’t call me a little woman.”

“I admit it was tempting, but I’m more mature than my university days I hope.”

“The sticky note thing really begs to differ. Well, I expect you to pick me up from my place then. Mays well treat me like a real actress if you so blatantly assume me to be so.”

“I don’t have a limo I’m afraid, but will a cab do?”

“Oh, and I am expecting payment for my efforts.”

I pressed at my brow. “I just said I need to send you a cab.”

“We’ll finalize the details tomorrow. Goodnight.”

I heard the clip of a phone, and I was left honest to stars, startled. Perhaps Jo was truly back. What quipped words! It was as if she hurried along her words afraid she’d change her mind. I didn’t blame her. I was truly, a leap to take.

But as I reclined back in my chair and put my hands behind my head, I expelled a long sigh. Because the truth was, I’d pay to have her on that stage. And perhaps just about do anything to see her again.

𝆙

I am called down from my apartment and when I hurried down the steps, I saw Ben leaning coyly against the intercom. I opened the door.

“Morning,” I said.

He looked up to me and I see his face change. “Jo. It’s good to see you again,” he told me.

I gestured down to my blue dress. “Is this…um alright? I wasn’t sure if I needed to be dressed in a specific costume or attire.”

He stared down at my clothes - shoulder to toe.

“Well?” I said, getting impatient. He really was looking – “Ben –?”

He nodded, looking away. “Perfect, it’s good. It’s good.”

We began down the steps. “After you.” He brought a hand across his torso and led me into the back of the cab. A slight breeze whipped up my white cardigan. It was early morning. And I wished I had slept more.

“To Goldberg Street, thanks,” Ben said to the driver as he leant on the front seat. He had gotten in the back with me, and I gave him a look.

“What?” He said, shrugging as he reclined back in the seat. “Gotta take care of the actress.” He dared to wink at me. And his ruffled hair and the way he had his hand over the back of his head-rest reminded me of another time. A time of university after-parties and half-drunken lips. I saw his eyes change and I looked away less I blushed.

This wasn’t the first time we were at the back of a taxi.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

I forced myself to look at him. He didn’t even know the power held over me. I truly was pathetic. It’s been barely a day since I’ve seen him again and yet – it was like we never spent those four years apart. He was the exact same. We were – it almost felt like. But no – I had changed. I had to have.

“No,” I said, resolute as I tried to catch something unkept about his appearance. Like his botched stubble or the way one of his eyebrows was uneven at its end. But it all was so infuriatingly charming.

He was Ben, after all.

Somehow, I pulled an amused laugh from his pretty throat. I rolled my eyes at it. That damn laugh. Maybe it was a mistake to agree to this. Maybe it was a mistake to even have flipped that first page of the script. But just like everything with him he was like some mirage - some maze - where the longer you lingered, the more you felt the need to stay.

We pulled out into traffic.

Soon enough, Ben and I began to make conversation about the script - which I pulled out from my handbag. He used a pen at his ear to make some adjustments to my copy, ones that he apparently made last night after my call. I had looked on in awe as he crossed out major dialogue pieces and added asterisks. “It seems like you’re changing an awful lot,” I told him.

He looked at me quizzically. And then one of his famous smiles, that always reminded me of Jim Carry from The Mask, spidered up his cheek as he said, “‘Oh but aren’t all stories ever-changing, darling?’” He was impersonating one of our old (and slightly traumatizing) film lecturers. Miss Elca. He even got her Czech accent spot on. But as he passed my script back to me, he had shrugged, “Writers can only do so much. Sometimes we need to trust the actors.”

“Just as you apparently trust me?”

He nodded. “Evidently.” He then proceeded to explain how the next day - Sunday – was the day in which we would be showcasing three scenes of the play for the producers.

I stared at him.

He opened his mouth.

“You’re kidding,” I interrupted him, turning my full body toward the bastard until the seatbelt locked.

He almost winced, “Well, I thought you got the vibe I am a bit on a time crunch.”

My shoulders fell onto the car seat. Of course this was something only Ben could pull. Waiting until the literal last day until his big show. Just as he did his assignments and my birthday presents and -

“It’s only three scenes, March. You’ll fit right in. Just like the missing puzzle piece -”

“Puzzle piece!” I slammed the script in the seat between us. “And who are these producers anyway? How could they make a judgment on whether to not to adapt your play into a film in three scenes?”

 “Other critics from their agencies have already seen the play and recommended the script. You see, these are big time men and women, and they apparently don’t like to waste their time on a three-hour play.”

I saw him rub at his temple. Oh. It was then I realized how the whole prospect must be eating at him like a toothache. To condense an art piece into such a uniform, packaged thing - it was like trying to sell a book by the title alone.

“That is why I needed a good actress for the lead to make an impression. That is why I needed you.”

I caught his gaze, and it was like his dreams swam within them. His goal of getting his scripts from stage plays to movie theatres lay in lieu of us. I could tell how afraid he was. But through the slight strain in his jaw as he looked onto me and then away, out the window – I saw how this story was a whole lot more to him than I had thought. And yet how could I have thought any differently? Ben who was so engrossed and committed to each script at a time - like a dog to a new bone. Four years he’s been at it. And now this. This opportunity.

And apparently it was only me who could help him.

He sighed. “I’ll pay you what you’re due. But I understand if this is quite an inconvenience for you and your new life but…”

I breathed in.

He shook his head. “But if you really hate it, I won’t force you to. I know things didn’t end…” I watched as he tries to find the word. I try and find it too - but nothing feels right. It didn’t really end…did it? He just never called. Never came to say goodbye…

Perhaps we just fell apart. Like a road that ended in earth. Suddenly there, then eventually not. A road that we just so happened to stumble upon again by chance…

He cleared his throat. “Just here, thanks,” he called the cab driver to stop. Ben paid the fare and opened the door for me after he gets out. I followed him down the street and down a staircase until we meet a large red door. And in a few moments, I find myself through it and face to face with the stage and a whole crew.

“Hello everyone!” Ben clapped as he turns to me. “Here is our evasive actress I am excited for you all to meet. This is our new lead, Jolene Portman.”

𝆙

After some introductions – mostly with Jo and the other lead actor, James (playing Adam, the love interest) who trailed some lines – we began. James was a great actor with a gentle approach to the script. He was a relatively new acquaintance and starred in a few of my last plays. He was blonde and freckled and had a charming boyishness to his features that made him a perfect fit for the love interest. Unlike Rod, he trusted me with my creative choice to find the right lead and had a patience that I believed came from no one but God himself.

In other words, the man was a saint. And one hell of an actor.

Today was essentially a dress rehearsal and I knew poor Jolene eventually figured as much; I could tell from the warning darts she’d cast whenever I caught her eyes. But as I watched Jo teeter onto the stage like a foal learning how to walk - script in hand - I was afraid I asked too much of her. It was a small enough production - only the stage light crew and two other actors with more minor parts (Luce’s father and the train conductor) but they were all still strangers. Perhaps from the time that’s all since past, for all I knew, I was included in that category.

But eventually - like it was the most natural thing in the world - she fell into the role of Luce. And although Jo had a near-photographic memory which I imagine would help her memorize lines, she leaned more into method acting. And James - being one of those few experienced ones - responded well enough. I watched on in awe as Jo began to come out of her shell - find the character’s voice with her mumbling and turning from the stage, only for her to come back even harder and surer. I watched the Dolly in its full glory, and I looked over to Rod who had his brows raised. He still wasn’t happy with me. At least, not yet. But they always say you can never quite please your manager and neither can they 100% please you. I don’t know exactly who said it, but perhaps it was that little pessimistic Jiminy Cricket in my head.

After several hours we were onto the next scene, and we workshopped some new ideas for how Jo will physically push the love interest out of the ‘house’. It was an important scene - a decaying sort of one that required some exhausting takes. I saw Jo returning to her script and casting it aside again till it skipped across the floor. I felt her getting frustrated.

“Let’s take that once again,” I called, moving up from my chair. “James maybe as you’re saying the second line, attempt to hug her - tighter. Let her push you away that way.”

Jo looked at me and nodded, staring back up to her partner. They resumed their beginning stance - where they were sat on the couch and Luce was attempting to make tea with shaky fingers.

“Action,” I said. And they launched into the scene.

“Here Luce - let me help you with that,” Adam whispered.

Luce was ‘pouring’ tea, but her shaking unsettled the saucer. Adam assailed forth, trying to fix it but she shooed him away. “Let me pour your tea myself,” Jo bit into the long silence, “I can do as much.”

“You’ll burn yourself, let me -” James tried but Luce wouldn’t let him touch the pot and they ended up messing up the table - the kettle turned on its side.

Jo brought her hands through her hair and pulled at the roots. James attempted to put an arm around her, but she gets up suddenly. Walking out behind the couch.

“Luce -”

“I never asked you to do that for me.” She mumbled, “I never asked, and you did it anyway. My father’ll kill you. He will.”

“You don’t have to be afraid of him,” James told her, coming beside her. “He beats you –” He stared at her wrists and at his gaze, she moved to hide them at her stomach – “Luce, you can’t cover your bruises like this - you can’t keep lying to yourself -”

“You don’t understand…” Luce cried.

Adam began to hug her and Luce attempted to push him off. “No -” she tried.

“Let me in Luce -”

“You don’t understand…”

“Let me -”

She broke out in a dry sob and pushed him roughly off. “Go!” She yelled. “I never asked you for this. Go on, go. I don’t need you.” She fitted like a little girl - her performance so raw and beautiful and moving -

And so suddenly broke down and fell down to her knees. I stared on at her. The shift in her body. Something was off. This was not a part of the act. She was shaking her head. “I – I can’t do this Ben,” she said, her voice cracked like porcelain. “It’s…I just can’t.”

She ran off the stage -

And I was left blinking. She was so worked up in the scene - so brilliant and blazing - I knew how much she used to put her heart and soul into her performances. I just didn’t know - didn’t wonder - what could have been going on in her own head.

Her shaking hands, her glassy eyes.

I should have saw her frustration. I shouldn’t have pushed her –  

“Uh - take ten,” I called out, climbing up the stage and running after.

I leave the crew staring on after me.

𝆙

I stared at myself in the mirror of the bathroom. My eyes were teething to cry but I tried with all my stupid might to keep the tears from spilling. I shook like a mad man. It was all too much being there again. On that stage with those big lights. Being caught up in the current of the character and the story - the story that written so carefully and beautifully by Ben.

Ben.  

I sighed a shuddering breath. I hated him - I hated him - why did I hate him so much?

I couldn’t complete the scene. I couldn’t get there. And yet wasn’t I just so valiantly advising him to tweak the scene as if I was playing some rich, big-time producer? I had myself in deep and now I was so overwhelmed I could feel my heart beating like a drum against the base my throat. 

I couldn’t do this. I wasn’t supposed to play this part. I wasn’t supposed to be here. My mother would –

“Jo?” I heard a rap at the door.

It was Ben’s voice. I bit the inside of my mouth, turning my cheek to focus on a small poster in the corner of the room. It was a movie poster displaying an artistic mixture of Spielberg’s films. It distracted me just for a moment before his voice came again.

“Jo - I’m sorry if I pushed you.”

I began to shake my head, standing up. I returned to the basin. I found trouble turning the nozzle so I could have water to wash my pathetic red face. But in an instant, the water sprouted out and the whole handle came off in a bang. A squealing sound began to echo, forcing a surprised gasp from me.

“Oh Jo! You aren’t - supposed to…” Ben’s voice got lost in the crying of unhappy pipes. I looked up through the spray and just next to the mirror I saw a small red sign that said ONLY USE COLD WATER TAP.

It was one of those moments when you think your whole existence has led up to this failure of a day. As if I’ve stupidly failed being a capable human being.

Ben knocked again, shouting through the wood of the door. “Jo? Come out now, I’ll get someone to fix it quickly.”

I sniffled and ran a worried hand through my hair. Ben shouted again and I stare at the door and back at the mess I had made. Okay. Maybe that would be for the best.

But as I opened the door, I am affronted with all the faces of the crew as they stood behind Ben. They all peered into the small bathroom, and I blushed all over again.

Ben tried to block their view, putting up his hand on the door frame. He dipped his chin over his shoulder, “Rod will you cut off the pipe?” He turned back to me. “How about we go to the office? It’s quieter there -”

Another pipe seemed to blow, and I winced. But Ben took my wrist, leading me away from the bathroom. “C’mon.”

He led me down a small hallway and stopped momentarily only to scream back for Rod again, “Rod!”

Finally, we heard him shuffle through the archway and Ben gently tugged at my hand. Soon the door of his office was shut behind us and the whining of the bathroom is all but a whisper. I clasped my hands in front of me, staring back at the door which he rests on for a moment.

“I’m sorry about the sink.” I said quickly, “I…I don’t -”

“It isn’t your fault,” he whispered, “And it really isn’t important.” He came before me, “Are you alright?”

I stared at him and then dropped my gaze. Was I alright? No. No I was not, and I am realizing since being back on that stage that…perhaps haven’t been for a long time. Or was that just the character talking? Change. Change is what Luce needed, not me. I’ve already changed. I’m on a new career path – a better one.

But don’t some things just stay the same? Like dreams? Like the rush of a scene - the limelight – my love for the arts – my love for –   

“Jo?” Ben was looking at me.  

“I hate you.” It came out of my mouth before I could stop it.

He didn’t know what to say to that.

I scrambled for the words in my mouth, “Sorry - no - I…”. I turned around to sit down at the desk and place my face in my hands. “I just don’t know what I am doing.”

“With the scene?”

“With…” I lifted my head up and stared at his little studio. His big movie posters. Film cards. Those childish-stars you’d stick on ceilings that he always loved. “I don’t know.” My eyes fell on him again. Ben why did you have to come back into my life? I take a breath in to say something, but he spoke.

“Well, you’re gonna have to tell me why you hate me. I thought at least, you tolerated me. But hate?”

I began shaking my head, “No it isn’t like that.”

“What is it like?”

I breathed out. “It’s like…” I looked up at the ceiling. Back at him. “It’s like every time I see your face I see all my dreams. My acting. My career in the arts. And you just remind me that…. I’ve lost it. It’s too late –”

“It’s never too late,” Ben surged forward toward me, searching my eyes, “You - you can’t say things like that. Not now - not when I saw you like that on the stage again. Jo, you’re amazing.”

“I can’t act anymore…I can’t do the scene –”

“Yes, you can. And if you need, we’ll practice,” Ben said, “We’ll practice until we get it right.”

“By tomorrow?”

“No better than the time we got now.”

I was tempted to throw my hands up, “Oh Ben! Why not pick another? Why me -? You told me if I read the script I’d know but I still don’t - it’s torture!” My fists fell into my lap.

“Luce, let me help you with that.”

I shook my head. “What?”

Luce?

He came forward and lifted his hands in the air - pretending…acting out the scene. He looked up at me, waiting. Waiting for me to say the next line. I sniffled, telling him no with my eyes. But his own were are asking. He repeated the line.

“Let me pour your tea myself,” I finally whispered, quietly. “Won’t you?”

He concealed a smile. “You’ll burn yourself Luce, let me -”

I imagined the table clattering. Disaster at their hands. What such a love can destruct -

I forced myself off the table and stormed across the room. I seized a ragged breath and closed my eyes, feeling for the character. I half turned, “I never asked you to do that for me,” I said, sadness licked at my words. “Why would I? And yet like you’re some sort of – sort of boyfriend you did.” I stared at Ben. “My father will…he’ll kill us.”

He walked slowly toward me, and I turn away. “You don’t have to be afraid of her,” he said. The sudden switch of pronouns stumped me. “She controls you - all this time - you can’t keep lying to yourself Jo.”

He came around to stand before me.

“You don’t understand,” the words came out of me. I didn’t understand. She controls you. You can’t keep lying to yourself.

Ben wrote…about me. Luce…is…Luce based on me?

I flickered my gaze up to his just as he wavered closer. I was supposed to be pushing him away - but instead I grabbed onto him. I was supposed to be shoving him off, but I let him come – and he comes, closing his arms around me and suddenly he’s so close - so close I could smell the comfort of the warming scent of his skin - see the auburn burn of his eyes – the face I used to...

Used to…

But I cannot think with his breath on mine. So, with my chest against him, my nose against his, I kissed him.

𝆙

She kissed me and I felt like I was back amongst the backstage curtains in between classes – and gods, she tasted like cherries and the painful echoes of summer. She was so beautiful, and she was in my arms. She was so beautiful it hurts.

Of course, it was her - the one the story centred around. The one who always left me wanting more - always left me wondering. My muse that for so long disappeared. Like smoke rings from a cigarette. And I wrote her into a story. And like fate, she came to me to replay the words I composed. Some hidden part of me must have known. And when I saw her for the first time in years – I knew.  

Like Sprites on Smith or the number four or the way things are meant to be – she was here. Again, with me. And it was as if all those burning questions - all those drunken dances and arguments - were pent up in this kiss. This single kiss that I could write numbers about. And like wildfire - I kissed her back.

I take her small chin and upturn it against my mouth. Her hands fall to my shoulders, and I love the scent – the feel – the taste of her. It was like tasting a memory, a daydream.

A beautiful, blue rush.

And I held her as fragile as bird bones.

This was the true haunting love. The face I always sought without realizing it. And I just didn’t know - through the way she pulled my neck and bit my lip - how much she felt.

When I see your face, I see my dreams.

She was poetry. Her words - her mouth was pure poetry. Here was Jo March. She was right here.

And yet she just didn’t realize it. Why didn’t she realize it? When her parents moved her away. Forced her to drop out because her dream wasn’t made to make money. That acting - like writing and artistry and anything good and beautiful - was a waste of breath, a waste of time.

Just as I thought I was to her.

Just as I thought -

She broke off suddenly, and her red mouth was panting with breath. “Why didn’t you call?” she said.

The question was so abrupt and direct I can barely reply. I stared at her dazed for a moment. She hit my chest.

“Call?”

“I waited on that phone line Ben. I waited for you to call.”

“What?” Now I was woken up. “I did call. I called you for months –” I stared at her. “You just never…replied.”

I saw her face drop. She turned around – took a few steps. “No…I never - I never…”

I felt my chest fall. Rise. Fall.

“Mama,” she whispered. “How…how could she?”

I reach out. “Jo –”

Jo turned so suddenly I nearly run into her. “Why didn’t you come to see me at the airport? Didn’t you care to even see me off?”

“I couldn’t. Your mother didn’t let me. Thought I’d somehow change your mind. Make you do something radical. She called security Jo. But I didn’t think she’d block my number – gods Jo. I thought you wanted nothing to do with me after that fight we had.”

I saw her shaking her head. “So…so this all…” she gestured between us.

We were too young - too newly dating to make any commitments. We were like a blooming bud uprooted by her sudden moving away. In the last weeks we began to argue about what ‘us’ would look like. She said long distance would be too hard. I said I didn’t care. But like always – perhaps I was destined to be the bad convincer.

And I too I convinced myself I couldn’t keep her.

I rung my head. I didn’t even know why they moved away. I only knew how Jo’s mother despised acting as much as she despised me. She thought she’d give Jo one year in the arts and see her daughter come to her senses. If senses meant falling in love with what you knew you wanted to do with your life. And after all of that…she not only kept Jo’s acting at bay. But…me.

I thought her mother would at least let us talk. She was in Sydney – how much could words from air or phone do much to my Jo? But perhaps I was being ignorant. Being a writer - I knew how much the smallest of words could change lives. Stories, people, places – they were all hidden behind the simplest of words. Only if we were bold enough to speak to them when we can.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said now. “We’re here.” I walked over to Jo and hug her. I crushed her to my chest like the pressing of a pretty flower into a book. And she leant into my touch, and even that smallest gesture made my heart leap.

A moment passed and we soaked it up - all those years apart.

“Four years…” she whispered.

“Four years,” I replied.

She looked up at me. And I saw her messy mascara and crinkled Dolly. It took me everything in me not to kiss her again.

“I want to act in your play,” she said to me. She almost laughs, reaching up to place her hands around my neck, “Call me corny but – I think I’ve just broken my wings.”

𝆙

Two of the three producers hated the show. Their little feedback was that the script it was too simplistic and dramatic. One of them described the bird metaphor as a sort of Benjamin Button reincarnate, and specifically not the good kind - which till this day, I am still trying to understand. But one producer – she was enthralled. Just as much by the script as she was by my Jo March. She picked up the rights and signed Jo as the lead actress because her performance was simply ‘too good not to see again.’ And today I am on set directing it, with my fiancé. How fitting for Jo to agree to marry a writer. Little Women indeed.

I see her now - getting out of the makeup truck. She smiles at me across the set and blows me a Hollywood kiss. I pretend to catch it in the air and eat it.

It’s been two years to the date since she walked into that small Melbourne city theatre. Two years since we kissed for the first time in four long years. And two years since she ‘broke her wings’.

Her mother is still in Sydney. And we have our new apartment in London. Yes, Australia couldn't quite hold us back. And every Sunday Jo and I go to a show - even if we’ve watched it a double dozen times – and we sip at our frozen Sprites (because thank goodness the UK has Sprite) and kiss in the backseats as if we were still nineteen. She might not like me divulging that note. It was hard enough to get her to write her entries into this project of mine that I don’t quite think I’ll ever share. She’s a good writer, you should know, whoever you are, reading this now (which, to Jo’s understanding should be no one).

I was re-reading the beginning of the first page, and I thought my view on Spielberg was quite pessimistic. For now, I am of the opinion that he could write a story with Jo at its centre. For if any writer was to meet her – even for one fleeting moment – I think it would be impossible not to.

 THE END