“You have just said something really nice, so, sure, throw in something to piss me off. The universe will be balanced again.”
He grins at me. “You have the crinkle.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
He laughs as Mae comes bustling over wearing a pained expression, and I brace myself for bad news.
“It’s not good, I’m afraid,” she says, confirming my suspicions. “The producer says they areverybehind and they can’t possibly spare Max, at least not for a few hours. You are welcome to stay here and watch the action—I’ll be sure to find you one of those cool chairs—or if you’d rather go find somewhere quiet to do some work, I can phone you when things are looking hopeful.”
“Are you kidding? Leave and miss Max Sjöberg doing his thing? I’ll stay put, thank you very much,” I declare, craning my neck to try to spot him among the huddle of actors down the street listening to instructions from the director.
“I actually have a bit of editing I could get done,” Ryan says, seeming amused at my enthusiasm. “Harper, will you give me a call before the interview?”
“Sure.”
He gives me a suspicious look.
“Oh, come on,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I wouldn’tnotcall you. I’m not that petty.”
“Thanks,” he says, laughing. “See you in a bit.”
Mae and I watch him walk away, and then she turns to me, her eyes wide with excitement.
“Umhello,why didn’t you give me the heads-up that your colleague was anAdonis?!I would have paid a little more attention to my outfit if I’d known,” she says.
“Ryan? Oh. Yeah, he’s… uh…”
“Hot. You know if he’s single?”
I blink at her, taken off guard. “I… yeah, I think he is.”
“Amazing. I don’t know how you get any work done with him wandering around your office.”
“Says the woman who works alongside Hollywood actors all day long.”
“I don’t date actors, Harper,” she says proudly, lifting up her chin. “I couldn’t handle their delicate egos.”
I snort. “If you can’t handle delicate egos, then you might want to avoid writers, too.”
“Fair point,” she says with a smile. “But I’ll take my chances. Let me go find you a chair, and put in a good word with Ryan for me, would you? Do it stealthily, though.”
I find myself nodding as she hurries off, and I’m left trying to work out how I feel about her crush on Ryan and wondering why I may befuriousabout it. An assistant comes over with a chair and I sit down, reminding myself that I have no right to be annoyed because, firstly, Ryan is single and Mae is single; secondly, Ryan probably doesn’t see me in that way considering we fight over absolutely everything; and, thirdly, I have a boyfriend. Even if not for much longer.
But Istilldon’t want Ryan and Mae to get together.
I can’t think about that. I get out my notepad, jotting down details about the set and the general atmosphere around me, useful observations that I can include in the feature. I get really excited when I see the intimidatingly-tall-in-real-life MaxSjöberg appear in his character’s iconic look, at least in the British version: a three-piece suit and a dark trench coat. (The woolly jumpers made sense for a detective examining dead bodies in the vast, icy landscape of Sweden, but for a British cop peering down at a victim on a cobbled street in rainy Manchester, it would probably look a bit odd.)
Anyway, when I see him walk down the cobbled street chatting to the director, I feel incredibly privileged to watch the scene play out. This feeling gets old quite quickly when the same scene has to be reshot several times over. By the tenth take, I begin to wonder how anyone in television has this kind of patience and how the guy holding up the boom mic doesn’t have a dead arm.
When the producer announces that we are breaking for lunch, I look to Mae hopefully, but she shakes her head and I deflate. She informs me that Max needs to eat and he doesn’t want to be disturbed in the precious moments he has off. We move to a different street for another scene, and I send Ryan the new location. When he arrives, he looks as excited as I’d been when offered one of those “cool” chairs.
His excitement inevitably wanes after watching Max declare—for the twelfth time—his theory on why the man who was stabbed in the cobbled street was there to begin with.
By late afternoon, Mae profusely apologizes and says it isn’t looking likely to happen today.
“However,” she says brightly, “there is always tomorrow! I can definitely squeeze in some time then, I promise.”
“Tomorrow? You mean stay in Manchester tonight?”
