Or not.
Gingerly, he removed the lid of box twelve, revealing toothlike rows of cassette spines, all marked by date and time. It wasn’t hard to find the final installment.
Todd loaded the tape into the editing bay—hisediting bay—one last time. A still of Ana Tar appeared onscreen. She stood on a gray windswept beach—Malibu, if Todd was not mistaken.
He plugged in his headphones and hit play.
The elements rustled the camera’s microphone as Ana sprinted down the shoreline. The shot just kept going. And going. Todd hit fast-forward until a handful of bodies entered the frame.
They lay face down in the sand—Naval guards.
And Rho. Inert near the water.
Ana ran into the shot and attempted to drag Rho from the sea. There was real panic on AJ Graves’s face as she tried to and failed to move Noah Drew—he was so much bigger. Even with the sound distortion, Todd could hear her struggling.
At last, she flipped him over, but it was too late. His face was inanimate, pale. Her features began to tremble as she listened for his breath. Now she was crying, pushing on his chest. She covered his lips in hers, attempting to revive him—nothing.
Then her head reared back, and she howled in agony, her torment drowning out the wind and water. Todd felt so disturbed by the noise, he almost removed his headphones. He knew this sound from his grandpa’s funeral, the only time his father had ever truly lost it.
It was primal, bone-chilling grief.
As her wailing subsided, Ana turned back toward the ocean. Todd’s heart was racing.
Then Rho sat up. When Ana saw him, she sobbed.
The camera approached them as they held each other, tears in both their eyes. He was whispering to her, soothing her, but she could not be consoled. She just kept crying and crying as she looked into his face.His eyes were full as his thumb traced her jawbone. Then he pulled her close.
Her neck curved as he kissed her, and a single kiss should not have been this erotic, but it was. The actors melted for each other, as if that kiss were both destroying them and giving them life.
When they broke apart, she took a shallow breath, but her crying had stopped. He smiled at her, as if to tell her it would all be all right.
The rest of the scene played out in stops and starts as the camera positioned and repositioned itself. The soldiers revived and surrounded Ana and Rho, who fought back, presumably using their powers, which would be added in postproduction. The tape ended with a close-up of Noah Drew looking right into the lens.
Small smirkis how Todd would have logged it. Then,fade to black.
Todd sighed. He rewound the tape and replaced it in its box. As he reached for the bubble wrap, he felt a chill. The studio was frigid, but that wasn’t it.
He couldn’t shake the echo of AJ Graves’s cries on the wind.
Part III
Blue Coats
There are no mistakes. The mistake is thinking we know more than the Cosmic Consciousness. We cannot see all the pieces at play. We cannot even see the board.
—Laughter & Death,byEzell Farr
New York, New York
December 12, 2011
AJ was in her third seasonwriting forSNLwhen the green notecard with Noah Drew’s name appeared on the bulletin board. He was set to host the last episode before Christmas, capping off the media for his first Oscar bid, a period epic calledThe Contract.
She had known this day would come since the ink had dried on her own contract. It felt inescapable, like the earth coming full circle in its orbit.
The night before his arrival, she dealt with her dread by watchingCenter Stageand getting plastered. She arrived at work the next morning plagued by a pounding headache and the song “I Wanna Be with You,” by Mandy Moore.
As AJ dropped her backpack in the office she shared with Dave on the seventeenth floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, she felt a traitorous tremor of excitement. She hadn’t laid eyes on Noah since their brief publicity tour. Well, not in person anyway.
