Dessi swipes at a few tears, shoving the letter and the newspaper clipping into her beach bag.
DESSI
It’s alright. I’m alright. Dessi Blue always gon’ be alright.
CAL
You want to rest for a bit? I can tell the boys we’ll do the same songs. No need to rehearse and give you some time to—
DESSI
No. I don’t need no time.
Dessi digs through the pile of music in the basket until she finds the song she’s looking for.
DESSI (SHOVES THE SONG AT HIM)
We doing this one.
CLOSE ON SHEET MUSIC:Song is “Walk Away”
INTERIOR – HOTEL DU CAP DINING ROOM – NIGHT
Dessi wears an evening gown and stands in a spotlight on the small stage in a roomful of patrons eating and listening. The band plays behind her—piano, saxophone, drums, and Cal on trumpet. With tears in her eyes, she sings “Walk Away.”
FORTY-NINE
Neevah
“Ineed you to go grab that C up top, Neevah.”
I swear. If Monk tells me to go “grab” one more damn note. We’ve been rehearsing for hours, and he more than lives up to his reputation as a perfectionist.
“Okay,” I say, shifting beside him on the piano bench in the hotel ballroom. Galaxy Studios bought a set of rooms for the cast and crew’s accommodations, and has also blocked off portions of the hotel for rehearsals and shooting.
“Walk Away,” the tune Monk wrote for the French Riviera scene, will be on repeat in my head long after we’re done. The opening strains float from the piano as we start the song again. It’s lush and heartbreaking and haunting. A song about a love betrayed, a lover abandoned. I close my eyes, blocking out the empty ballroom and Monk on the piano and every other distraction. I fall into the heartbreak of the lyrics—crack my heart open to let Dessi’s pain over losing Tilda flood in.
When I first started this movie, Dessi was some distant figure trapped in the pages of the past. She was history, but now I feel her present with me every day. I thought she was here to serve me, a means to the end of my big break. Now, I realize I’m here to serveher—to make sure a voice this rich and true, swallowed by the years and by injustice, is finally heard.
The closing notes hang in the air before evaporating into silence. I almost can’t bear to open my eyes, I’m so lost in the feeling this song perfectly conveys. I wipe the tears from my cheeks and force myself to look around, surprised to see several cast and crew members now gathered around the piano, some of them with wet cheeks and shiny eyes, too.Some of them snap their appreciation, some clap approvingly, and others offer smiles. I let my gaze lovingly drift over their faces. In only a few months, you can become pretty tight, and we have.
After the initial shock of Camille’s interview, no one has said anything snide to me or made me feel weird about my relationship with Canon. We’ve only been on location two days, and I’ve barely seen him, so there hasn’t been much opportunity for awkwardness, but I can already tell most of them are fine with it. A few of them even teased me, asking how I tamed the beast.
Of course, I haven’t.
“Now that’s a song,” Trey says, leaning his elbows on the top of the piano. “You wrote that specifically for the movie, Monk?”
“I did.” Monk’s fingers skate across the keys in a brighter-sounding flourish. “I used the script to write some of the original songs. I won’t score the film until after I see the final cut.”
“It’s a fantastic script,” Livvie says.
“Thank you.” That comes from the ballroom entrance where Verity stands, watching us all, but her eyes invariably returning to Monk. His eyes always invariably return to her.
“You know,” Monk says, “there was a song that was perfect for that scene when Dessi realizes Tilda was unfaithful. That she cheated and couldn’t be trusted.”
He looks directly at Verity, his fingers coaxing a few haunting notes from the instrument.
“It’s called ‘Don’t Explain,’” he continues, eyes still locked with Verity’s. “Billie Holiday wrote it when she discovered her husband’s infidelity. When she found out he wasn’t who she thought he was. Or maybe he was exactly who she thought he was, and she had lied to herself. Either way, he was a cheat.”
