A structure that takes the hit first.
Palmie hands me a call sheet and a wind advisory like it’s the same memo.
The clocktower keeps checking the time on us. Ducks patrol the square with their beady-eyed little waddle. A gust skates under my jacket and tickles me in the kidneys. Nothing compared to Welly. I tug Grandpa’s denim brim low and pretend I don’t feel that tickle at the edge of my scar, the phantom touch of that morning on the dunes.
“Street bustle, cross on action, no eye-lines to lens,” the assistant director calls, rolled-up schedule baton in hand. “Squint at the camera, and you’ll join the ducks.”
Laughter. I adjust my 70s shirt cuffs. Logan bumps my shoulder as we line up with the other extras.
“Looking good,” he says. “They asked you to keep the hat.”
“It’s a legit relic,” I whisper. “It lived these years.”
“You need to tell me more about this Grandpa I never knew you had.” He straightens my collar with a nimble tug.
I angle a guilty look at him. We never spoke about our pasts when we were together; we were the kind of fling that thrives on dim lights and bad takeout.
He catches my look and, proving my point, he frowns. “Yes to telling me about Gramps?”
I’m suddenly torn between wanting to keep ‘Gramps’ all to myself, myself and Trent, and also wanting to shout to the world about how insane the whole thing is, and how much I feel at... home.
I swallow.
The assistant director’s whistle pierces. “Rolling. And... action!”
I bustle. The storefronts lean into their seventies: cream and brown and more brown. A Morris Minor splutters into frame. Us extras, background pedestrians, go.
We reset. Again. Again. My body finds the groove: a little less bounce, a little more careless swagger. There’s no chance to think let alone feel, and it’s a relief.
“Cut. Good. Reset.” The assistant snags Logan. “Lower the bunting. Lower it.”
Logan casts me a look and I jog over and help him jiggle the tape. There. A cleaner loop, the knot hidden behind a lamppost.
At break, Logan slips a sneaky biscuit into my palm.
“Not quite the theatre,” he says.
“It’s busy work,” I say. Breakwater stuff. Keeps the heart from flooding.
We go again. Bunting right. Wind cooperative. Clocktower checking us without complaint.
When the lights go out, everyone exhales. We scatter into our little pockets of waiting. I drift towards the lip of the square where a shop sells postcards.
I buy one, two, three, four. Overpay, and tuck the paper bag into my inner jacket pocket.
Logan catches up to me. “Where are you staying? I’ll give you a ride.”
In his car, he side-eyes me and my hat. “So who’s this Grandpa?”
“A cheat at cards who has a love-hate relationship with his pet chicken.”
“Sounds like a sitcom.”
Too right. “Laugh track every time he whacks someone with his cane.”
“Invite me when the pilot shoots.”
I feel the outline of the postcards at my chest. The sky shifts to that late afternoon silver that makes everything reflective.
