The Continuity Girl (24 page)

“Your mother is an extraordinary performer,” Richard said. He was sitting in his chair again, waiting for one of the lights
to be readjusted.

“She keeps sipping her wine at different times on her line. It’s going to ruin the scene.”

Richard laughed. “Oh, you script girls. How can you stand yourselves? What’s that irritating little rhyme you have?”

“Which one?”

“Oh, come on, surely you know it.”

Meredith averted her eyes and shrugged.

“You do know it.”

“Maybe.”

“Oh, come on, how does it go? Go on, say it. For me?”

Meredith sighed. “When I ask you to match your action/?Why do you refuse it?/?What’s the good of a close-up/?If the cutter
cannot use it?”

Richard threw his head back and howled. A couple of nearby crew guys joined in. Her throat tingled.

“Brilliant!”

“Well, it’s
true,
you know,” Meredith began. Her voice teetered, and for a second she felt like she might cry.

“Of course! Of
course
it’s absolutely true,” Richard said between hiccups of laughter. “Yes, you’re absolutely correct, my
dear.” When he had stopped laughing, he looked at her carefully and smiled. “Tell me, are you and your mother actually related?”

“I hope not—”

The sound of shattering glass interrupted them. At first Meredith was relieved simply to have escaped Richard’s patronizing
scrutiny—until she looked at the set.

All the actors had scattered except for Irma and Kathleen Swain, who appeared to be frozen in a strange embrace at the far
corner of the dining room table. Glancing at the monitor, Meredith noticed Swain’s hands clutching her mother’s hair and her
mother’s hands tugging at Swain’s high lace collar. They remained in this awkward stance for endless seconds before Swain
gave an impressive teenager-in-a-slasher-movie shriek and twisted Irma onto the table. Irma retaliated with a low kick that
sent Swain and her skirts stumbling back into the waiting arms of the gaffer, who restrained her from going in for more.

“Get your fucking hands off me, you cunting
fuck
!” Swain smacked the backs of her hands at the gaffer’s face and shoulders,
but he was strong enough to hold her in place.

Irma smoothed her costume and looked around for Richard. When he appeared, she smiled as though she had conjured him from
a hat.

“What seems to be the problem, ladies?”

“Richard, I can explain—” Irma began.

“Crazy old bitch,” Swain cried, unleashing a torrent of hysterical slander against Irma that ran unabated for several seconds,
until her personal assistant appeared. “She thinks she knows me, but she doesn’t. I want her
out now.
”

As soon as she saw Andrea, Swain went limp. The gaffer released his grip on her arm but stayed close. Andrea reached into
her bag and pulled out a bottle of Evian water and a white silk hankie. She unfolded the cloth to reveal a round blue pill,
which she handed to Swain before fastidiously folding up the hankie and placing it back in her bag. Watching her assistant’s
face intently, Swain opened her mouth and dropped the pill on her tongue. She took a sip of water and swallowed.

“Shall we take a break?” Richard asked no one in particular.

Meredith looked at her schedule and saw that it was nearly time for lunch anyway. She checked her stopwatch and made a note
of the exact time, down to the quarter of the second. As she did this she noticed her hand shaking slightly. In the monitor
she watched Richard put an arm around Swain and usher her out of the room. Irma turned and began to come toward the camera,
walking out of the frame and into her daughter’s field of vision.

“The woman is completely barking, you know,” she said after a while. “I read about it in
HEAT.
Apparently she has a history
of violence. She once assaulted a photographer. Or her bodyguard did. I forget. Anyway, I’m sorry if you’re angry at me, darling.
I suppose you think I’ve ruined everything like I always do, but I really didn’t aim for things to turn out this way. Honestly.
It’s just that things like this always happen to me. Or
around
me, at any rate.” Her hand fluttered to her throat, where her
spider usually hung.

Meredith slid her pencil into her pencil case and closed her script binder, smoothing the Velcro protector flap shut with
the heel of her hand.

Irma continued. “I can’t imagine what set her off. I was only trying to make polite conversation. These Hollywood types behave
like mad royalty from six centuries ago. You should have seen her, darling. She just lunged at me. And for no
reason.
No reason
at all.” Irma patted her head where Swain had grabbed her hair. “Tell me, darling, am I missing a spot? It’s still numb from
where she yanked it, and I’m afraid she’s pulled a chunk out. At my age it won’t grow back, you know. I’ll have to resort
to wearing wigs. Oh...” She pulled a wadded square of toilet paper from the lace cuff of her dress and began to dab at her
eyes.

Meredith’s gaze fell upon Richard’s headphones. She felt as if she were turning a dial in her brain, switching her mother’s
garble from English to Swahili. She popped the headphones over her ears. Irma continued to lip sync her teary monologue of
woe, oblivious to Meredith’s dead ears.

Inside the headphones there was silence, and then she heard a crackle followed by a sniffle and Swain’s tearful wobble, now
devoid of English accent. Swain sounded almost out of range. Probably back in her trailer, raising hell. But as Meredith listened,
she was surprised to hear that the actress sounded not angry but plaintive.

“How could she have known?”

Pause. Static.

“Well,
she
brought it up. She
knew.
Somehow. It was like she knew him. Knew about the whole thing. The role. The abortion.
Everything.”

Heaving noise followed by the sound of something being brushed aside.

“I don’t know. The question is, why is she even here? I shouldn’t have to deal with this shit, especially not today, like
this, when I’m in the middle—” The air went dead.

She must have taken the microphone off.

Meredith realized her eyes had been closed, and when she opened them Irma was standing there, her mouth, astonishingly, still
opening and shutting. Meredith kept the headphones on until Irma stopped speaking.

After Irma moved off, Meredith stayed behind, going over the day’s shot descriptions. A few minutes later her phone rang.
It was Mish.

“Her Impossibleness is having a meltdown.”

“Tell me about it.”

“She ripped apart her entire trailer before I could stop her, and now I’m fucking stuck here trying to get organic fucking
blueberry juice stains off an original Victorian undergarment.”

“Oh God.”

“Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. How’s your mum? I helped her pick out her costume. Adorable.”

“That’s...one way of putting it.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I feel like my head is about to pop off.”

“Come see me. I’m in her trailer. She’s gone off for some appointment with one of her team of travelling specialists. Probably
getting a new chin or something. She won’t be back for hours.”

“Are you sure?”

“Totally. I’m mixing martinis.”

“Mish!”

“Golly gee, Meredith, don’t be such a prude. It’s the Old World. Everybody here drinks at lunch.”

“I’ll come but I can’t drink.”

“Great. I’m making yours extra dirty.”

The door of Kathleen Swain’s trailer was open. The reassuring sound of Mish’s Top 40 radio emanated from inside. Anywhere
in the world one could hear the same rotation of musical lollipops interspersed with traffic reports and jokes about the weather.
Meredith stepped in and paused. The trailer was in even worse condition than the first day she’d seen it. Piles of clothes
everywhere. Stray bottles of hair goop, moisturizer and random cosmetics products on the floor. The flip-up folding table,
half torn from its hinges, hanging on the wall like a loose tooth about to give.

An enormous cloud of lace and crinolines gushed through the bathroom door, and in the center of it was Mish.

“There you are. I was just soaking all this shit in soda water.” She held up a purple-splotched garment. “It’s completely
useless. Hope Herr Direktor doesn’t want to show her knickers in the sex scene or I’m screwed. Oh!” She dropped the clothes
in a heap, remembering something. “Liquid lunch. Almost forgot.”

“Mish—” Meredith began to object, but it was too late. Mish had already opened the traveling velvet-lined bar kit and poured
several ounces of vodka into a stainless steel shaker, and was popping heart-shaped ice cubes out of a tray from the mini-freezer.

“Don’t you love my bar set? I got it in one of those junk stores on Portobello. It’s so James Bond. All I need now is poison
lipstick.”

Her phone rang and she flipped it open with one hand, shaking the cocktails with the other.

“Yeah? Oh. Uh-huh.” She lowered the shaker. “Mmm. No problem. Sure. I’ll be right there. No, I obviously won’t forget.” She
closed the phone. “That was Andrea-the-Lackey. Turns out Her Highness is now too stressed for her appointment and has decided
to spend the afternoon getting body makeup done for the love scene instead. I have to go and glue a patch over her pussy.”

Meredith laughed. “Have fun.”

“Man.”
Mish began gathering her things together. “And I was just about to get you in trouble too. Hang out here and have a
drink if you want.” She gave Meredith a smooch on the ear and ran out without shutting the door behind her.

Meredith was about to follow when she thought—why bother? The star’s trailer was by far the most comfortable place on set,
not to mention the safest hiding place from her mother. She reached into her bag and pulled out her book—a ragged copy of
The Portrait of a Lady
she’d borrowed from the bookshelf at Coleville Terrace—and flopped down on a pile of costumes.

She was only a few paragraphs in when she heard a tentative knock at the door. A Bryan Adams song played on the radio. She
briefly considered pretending not to be there.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hi,” said a man’s voice from behind the threshold. “I was looking for— Ow!” He’d stepped in and banged his head, and was
now wincing and rubbing his skull. She didn’t see his face. Meredith looked down and pretended to be absorbed by her book.

“Low ceilings in these things...Meredith?”

She glanced up. “Oh my God. Dr....?”

“Veil. What on earth? I mean. How incredible. Really. What a...what a pleasant surprise.”

She dropped her book on her lap without marking the page. An eerie composure overtook her.

“Seriously. What are you doing here?”

“I’m working. This is what I do.”

“You’re an actor?” he asked.

“God, no. I’m a script supervisor. I do continuity. In films. What about you? Have you become an on-set medic?”

Joe laughed—a low huff—and fell silent.

Meredith leaned back, arching her back, and stretched her arms in the air. Thoughts passed through her mind like sticks whooshing
down a river. Why was he here? What could it possibly mean? Did it have anything to do with her? Did any of these questions
really matter? She was filled with a strange elation. He looked at the cocktail set and raised an eyebrow.

“You’re having drinks at his hour?” he said.

“You want one?” Meredith was certain he’d decline.

“Why not?” He set down his bag. “I’m jet-lagged anyway.”

One sip of lunch-hour vodka had infused the moment with an illicit thrill. The trailer seemed to cup them in an aluminum cradle,
and after a few minutes of chat their coincidental meeting seemed the most natural thing in the world.

“Seriously. Why are you here?”

Joe hesitated, remembering the assistant’s not-so-veiled threats. He prided himself on his discretion, but the vodka and jet
lag were disarming.

“Can I tell you something in confidence?”

Meredith threw up her arms and lowered an invisible dome over their heads. “Cone of Silence,” she said.

“I’m here to examine Kathleen Swain.”

“Shut
up.
” Meredith found herself leaning over and gently slapping his shoulder. “That is too weird.”

“Tell me about it.”

“She flew you over from Toronto just for an appointment?”

Joe nodded.

“You must be a big deal. Are you ready for another martini? There’s some left in the shaker.”

He hesitated. Looked at his watch. Shrugged. “Why not?”

“So how did she hear about you anyway?”

“I wrote a book. I was on
Oprah.
”

Meredith asked Joe about his book. He answered her questions politely but didn’t seem overly keen to talk about himself, so
she returned to the subject of Swain.

“And now she wants you to knock her up.”

“In a roundabout way, yes. I’m here to run some tests. How do you know that?”

“She told me. That she wants a baby, I mean. Seems like the underlying theme of the making of this movie.”

“What’s the movie about anyway?”

Meredith shrugged. “It’s a murder mystery.”

“Who did it?”

“Either the lord of the manor or the parlourmaid. Depends what the test audience decides. We’re shooting two different endings.
Is your drink cold enough?”

Joe nodded. “Do you have a trailer?”

“I wish!” Meredith laughed a little too loudly. She opened the mini-fridge door and stuck a hand inside, searching for ice.
“Didn’t you notice the big gold star on the door?”

“I did.”

“Trailers are for important people,” she said.

“Are you calling yourself unimportant?”

Meredith stuck out her lower lip and nodded. “Pretty much.”

“You seem more confident than that.” Joe smiled.

“Not really,” she said. “The next thing you’re going to say is that I seem ‘pulled together,’” she said, referring to their
exchange in Toronto.

He laughed. “I know, you’re actually a mess, right?”

“Exactly. Like an egg. Smooth on the outside, runny and goopy on the inside.”