Change of Scene: A 100 Page Novella (3 page)

She should be ecstatic. She should be experiencing the tingling scalp and racing pulse, the serotonin buzz that always let her know she was on the money. Instead, there was something else, something she couldn’t describe, tickling just at the fuzzy edge of her subconscious. She shook it off and kept walking.

When she was only a few yards away, Greer decided it might be politic to announce her arrival, given the haphazardly scrawled
NO TRESPASSING DAMMIT
sign that was tacked to the toolshed.

“Hello!” she called loudly.
“Hello.”

Nothing. The dog returned. It was reddish brown with a fluffy coat, a mix that could best be described as a little Lassie, a little Big Red, a whole lot of Tramp from
Lady and the Tramp
. She leaned down and intended to scratch its ears. Greer had done a lot of trespassing in her career, and she’d learned early on that you could usually make friends with somebody if you made friends with their dog first.

“Hiya, poochie,” Greer said. The dog’s head jerked forward. Its ears pricked and the thick ruff of fur stood up on the back of its neck.
Grrrr.
A low, threatening growl. Bared teeth.

She took a measured step backward. “Niiiice poochie,” she said in a low, nonconfrontational tone. She glanced up the road in the direction of the Explorer and wondered how much ground she could cover before Poochie turned into something out of a Stephen King novel.

“Who’s that?”

At the sound of the man’s voice, the dog froze, then suddenly slunk away. Later on, she would wish she had, too.

But instead Greer pasted a bright and peppy smile on her face. A middle-aged man dressed in a grease-spattered T-shirt and saggy khaki slacks climbed down the porch steps and paused in the crumbling concrete driveway. He was barefoot, and his face bore a grayish stubble of beard, but the wild shock of hair on his head was dark, and he didn’t look much older than forty. But then, the kid in the convenience store hadn’t been more than eighteen himself. He probably thought anybody over thirty was older than dirt.

“Hi there,” Greer called out, slowly advancing on the house, smiling broadly as she walked. “Mr. Miller?”

“Who’re you?” He hitched up his beltless pants and peered at her through wire-rimmed glasses. “Are you from the county? I’ve told those people…”

“No, sir,” Greer said. She extended her hand. “I’m not from the county. My name is Greer Hennessey. I’m a film location scout, and I’m wondering if I might talk to you about the possibility of our people doing some filming on your beautiful property here.”

“What people? Film? Do you mean movies? You want to make a movie here? Right here on this ranch? Why the hell would you want to do that?”

Finally, Greer got a familiar tingling sensation at the back of her neck. Old Man Miller was hooked. She knew it. The rest was all technicalities. She had her green pasture, her cattle, her barn, her green trees. The last, most difficult location for
Moondancing
was right here, and by the end of this day, she would have all the signed releases she needed. And Monday, filming would start. She, Greer Hennessey, had done it again.

*

His name was Garland Miller. And he wasn’t nearly the pushover Greer had hoped for. As they sat at a splintery wooden table on the porch of the house, she struggled to regain the upper hand in negotiations.

“Who’d you say is making this movie?” he asked, leaning back in the kitchen chair he’d pulled up to the table.

“Er, well, it’s a production company called Moondancing Limited, which you probably haven’t ever heard of, but the director is Hank Reitz. He was nominated for an Oscar a few years ago for a film called
Racing Home
. With John Lithgow and Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro? You probably heard of it.”

“Nope,” Garland said flatly. “If Stallone ain’t in it, I don’t see it. How much money would this Hank Reitz pay to make a movie here?”

“It wouldn’t be the whole movie,” Greer said quickly. “In fact, most of the filming is going to take place on the lot, in L.A, with some additional scenes shot in this area. We’d only need access to your property for five days. Starting Monday.”

“Which pays what?” He crossed his arms over his chest, and she could see the yellow stains on the T-shirt’s armpits. Classy.

“Well…” Greer looked around. “Generally, for a location shoot like this, in a remote area, the production company would authorize me to pay eight hundred dollars a day.”

A lie. You always started out low-balling.

“No way,” Garland said, sitting up abruptly.

“Way,” she assured him. “It’s pretty standard.”

He gestured around at the landscape. “For all this? The barn, the cattle, the avocado grove? The pasture? Eight hundred dollars ain’t shit.”

Greer felt her smile fade slightly.

“Hmm. Well, I’d have to check with my people and get back to you. This is an indie film, so the producer is working on a pretty tight budget. I’m not really sure if he can go any higher.”

She gave him a knowing look. “It’s the accountants. The bean counters, right? They scream bloody murder at every line item.…”

“Twenty-five hundred. A day,” Garland said, narrowing his eyes. “Not a dime less. Or you can go find yourself another pasture and some more cattle. By Monday.”

Greer swallowed. She had $4,000 a day in the budget for this shoot, but that didn’t give her much wiggle room. Still, she’d been up and down every inch of this area, and nothing else even came close. If something else came up, she’d just have to get Reitz to go to the producer to loosen the purse strings.

“Okay,” she said finally. “It’ll be a stretch, but I think we can swing that.” She stood up. “I’ll just walk back out to my truck and get you the paperwork.…”

She was halfway down the porch steps. “Oh yeah,” Garland said, clearing his throat.

“And a hotel. Gonna need me a hotel. While your movie folks are here.”

Greer rolled her eyes but did not turn around. “Of course.”

“With a pool,” he added. “And Wi-Fi.”

“Naturally. I’ll get the company’s travel manager to book you a room at the Hilton, where the crew will be staying.”

“A suite,” Garland said. “My lady-friend will probably be joining me. She’s got a couple of kids.”

“Sure thing,” Greer said. His lady-friend? Ew.

“And, uh, listen.”

She stopped and turned to face him. “Yes?”

“What’s the time frame on my money with this?”

“Generally, we try to have your check by the time filming is complete.”

He shook his head vigorously. “That ain’t gonna work. I mean, how do I know you people won’t come in here and trash my place and blow town? No, uh, I’m thinking I’m gonna need my money
before
anybody else comes on my property.”

Greer took a deep breath and exhaled.

“That’s going to be kind of difficult, Garland. This is Friday, we start shooting Monday. Our production offices are in L.A.…”

He gave her a long, appraising stare, and she felt herself blushing.

“You look like a girl who knows how to get things done,” he said. And then he winked.

Greer felt her skin crawl. A girl? He was calling her a girl? The next thing she knew, he’d be inviting her inside for a quickie. She needed to close this deal and get back home so she could shower off some of the slime from his wink.

“Sunday,” she said firmly. “I’ll leave your check at the hotel desk.”

He grinned, bearing a set of feral-looking teeth. “That’d be real good.”

As she hiked back toward her car, she kept a watchful eye out for the dog. The shadowy feeling settled over her again, and she shivered despite the heat.

CHAPTER 3

Greer worked the phone furiously on the drive back to the hotel in Paso Robles.

“Hank?”

“You did it, babe,” the director exulted. “I friggin’ love the look of this place. Helena’s crazy about it, too. It’s like you channeled my exact image of what Eleanora’s farm would look like. Amazeballs!”

Eleanora was
Moondancing
’s protagonist, a young widow struggling to eke out a living on a hard-scrabble farm in an unnamed New England locale. It would have been wildly expensive to move the entire cast and crew someplace like Vermont, which was why Greer had been scrounging for zip code–friendly Vermont look-alikes for the past few days.

“I’m glad you like it so much, because I basically had to sell the farm to get the farm,” Greer told him. “Twenty-five hundred. A day.”

“Jesus!” Hank squawked. “For that dump?”

She’d expected the director to balk.

“Fine. I’ll find someplace else, someplace cheaper. Only it’s not gonna be green. It’s gonna be gray. Or maybe brown. Because today is Friday, and your shoot starts Monday. Also? Eleanora’s cattle, the ones she converses with after her young son dies of a fever? You might have to make them goats. Because up here, you don’t get a ranch with trees and cattle for a dime less than twenty-five hundred a day.”

“It’s cows or nothing. You get the cows signed, I’ll deal with the budget.”

“Good. We’re also giving the owner a suite at the Hilton during the shoot. And boarding his dog.”

“You’re killing me,” Reitz said. “But tell me about those trees. Helena’s nuts for them. She wants to know what kind they are. She called the screenwriter, and he’s going to try to work something into the script.”

“That might be a problem, Hank. They’re avocados. I don’t think they grow avocados in Vermont.”

“Helena can deal with that. Make ’em cherries or something. Apples maybe. They grow apples in Vermont, right?”

“I don’t know, Hank. I’m not a botanist. Just a location scout.”

“Whatever. You got everything else lined up, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Even the old-school house? With the bell tower?”

“Yes,” she said crisply. “I sent you pictures yesterday, remember? Although the bell tower isn’t actually on the school. It’s on a church in the next town over. So I figure we do interiors at the real school, and exteriors at the church.”

“That’s fine,” Reitz said. “But wasn’t that church in your pictures white?”

“It was. But it’ll be red by the time we start shooting.”

“Sounds expensive,” Reitz said. “Okay, kiddo, I gotta go. Meetings and more meetings. So what you’re telling me is we’re all set up there. Right?”

“All set,” Greer said, which was only a relative lie. She still had a couple of more locations to nail down, some releases to get signed. Things like that.

“Oh. Just a little thing,” she added. “I’m gonna need to get a check cut for the Miller place. The fullamount. By Sunday. Or he doesn’t allow anybody on his property come Monday. And I can’t take a chance on FedEx. I’m gonna need one of your production assistants to drive up here with the check, so I can hand deliver it to Garland on Sunday.”

“You’re killing me,” Hank said.

*

She unlocked the door of her hotel room, dropped her keys, laptop, phone, and backpack on the bed, and started shedding clothes on the way to the bathroom.

It was nearly eight o’clock. She’d spent most of the past twelve hours either driving and dialing or pounding the streets of Paso Robles and vicinity, tying up the last loose ends of all her locations before the weekend started.

As she stood in the shower, she mentally ticked off the day’s to-do list. This was only the second movie she’d done with Hank Reitz, but the first she’d done with him since he’d gotten nominated for an Oscar. Hank liked working with a team on his movies; the same cinematographer, art director, cameraman, grips, everybody. If things went well on
Moondancing,
she’d have the closest thing to a regular gig that she wanted. She needed things to go smoothly.

Dressed in a camisole and a pair of drawstring pajama bottoms, Greer sprawled out on the bed and reached for the phone to order dinner from room service.

As she was calling in her order, she glanced at her phone. She’d been in the shower less than thirty minutes, but had six missed calls and three text messages. The texts were from CeeJay, her best friend, Hank, and Hank’s PA, letting her know she’d picked up Garland Miller’s check and should arrive in Paso by noon Saturday. She could deal with all of this later. After dinner. All the phone calls were from the same number. Big surprise.

Her phone rang again.

“Hi, Mom,” Greer said. “What’s up?”

“Just wondering where in the world you are since I haven’t heard from you in ages.”

“I’m lining up locations for Hank Reitz’s new project. In Paso Robles, remember?”

“Oh,
right,
” Lise said slowly. “How’s that coming? Is casting complete? Anything for me?”

Trust her mother to get right down to business. As far as Lise was concerned, there really was no business like show business. And she had every intention of clawing her way back into it.

Lise Grant never let anybody fail to realize that she’d once been
somebody
back in the day. “I was Meredith, the sexy stepmom on
Neighborhood Menace
,” she’d announce to the bag boy at Ralph’s, or the pest control guy who might ask, in a totally casual way, why Lise’s face looked familiar. “We were nominated twice for Emmys for Best Comedy.”

What Lise didn’t share was that she was the second actress to play Meredith on
Neighborhood Menace
or that the Emmy nominations came for the two years prior to her hiring after the first Meredith signed a movie deal. She also never shared that her role lasted exactly one season, or seven shows, before
Menace
was canceled—back in 1983.

“Haven’t I met Hank Reitz?” Lise asked.

“Um, maybe. I’m not sure.” There was a discreet tap on her door, and her stomach growled loudly. “Listen, Mom. That’s room service. I gotta go. My shoot here starts Monday, so I won’t be back in town for at least a couple of weeks.”

“G’bye, darling,” Lise said. “Oh, and if you get a chance, I can e-mail you my new head shots, just in case something comes up.…”

CHAPTER 4

The circus rolled into town on Monday. That was how Greer always thought of it, the first day of any shoot. The tractor trailers of rigging and equipment, the RVs that would provide dressing rooms and office space for the production staff, and of course, all the trucks and vans and other vehicles driven by the crew.