“Huh?” Was he talking about the script or something else? “Well, can you at least log me into the server again before you go so I can work?” I could see my login had expired while making coffee.
Cursing under his breath, he did just that. “Elliot, is something wrong?”
Elliot paused, looked at me through the rumpled hair fallinginto his eyes. He then plunged his hand into his bag and pulled out what looked like a key ring. “I got you this,” he said, pushing it into my hands.
It was indeed a key ring, bearing theGhostbusterslogo. I was completely taken aback. “That’s really sweet of you.”
“I just saw it on the way in at some tacky souvenir shop,” he muttered. “Not a big deal.”
“No, it’s great, thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said darkly, then headed out of the door.
Bewildered, I followed him out. “When will you be back?” I called across to him. He was walking so fast he was already at the lift, which opened to let Michelle and Riley out.
“When I’m back!” he barked so loudly that Michelle almost dropped the box of donuts she was carrying.
“Elliot, wait!” But the doors slid shut and he was gone.
Michelle and Riley hurried over to me, concern in their eyes.
“Girl, you okay?” Michelle asked, pressing a glazed mochi donut into my hands.
“Um. I think so.” I bit into the donut, glad of the sugar.
“Hmm.” Michelle’s eyes narrowed. “I’d love to stick around to hear you expand on that, but I got a conference call in – ooop – minus three minutes. Time to invent some technical issues!” And she ran off.
Riley watched me cram fried dough into my mouth. “What’s with Elliot?” she asked once I’d swallowed.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “He gave me this key ring then sprinted away. He was really off with me.”
Riley glanced at the key ring then gave me a knowing look. “Interesting.”
“What does that mean?” I was getting pretty fed up with cryptic people.
“Fart logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end of it,” Riley intoned.
“Am I meant to know what that means?”
“It’s my impression of Spock giving relationship advice,” Riley said. “Do you want to have lunch together?”
A little later, after some fruitless attempts at editing and a quick slice of pizza with Riley, Elliot still wasn’t back from his lunch break. The dialogue in the last scene still bothered me – it was too flowery; it needed to be hard hitting, gut wrenching and true. But I needed Elliot for this. After trying his phone with no luck, I went to reception to ask Juno if she knew where he might be.
“You should try Locke and Gray, a block down,” she said. “He sometimes goes there during his lunch break.”
I hurried outside and went down Tenth one block, where on the corner I noticed a large green awning, with retro lettering proclaimingLocke & Gray, with no detail about what business lurked behind it. I jogged to the smoked-glass doors and yanked them open.
I found myself in a cavernous space, the unmistakable tang of sweat lacing the air. Around the edges of the room were weights, gym equipment and punching bags, with two small boxing rings taking up the center of the room. Motivational dance music pulsed from speakers above my head, energizing a small but determined crowd of gymgoers.
A slender man who couldn’t have been more than twenty stepped forward, clad in sweats the same color as the awning outside. “Help you?”
“I’m looking for Elliot Fox?” I tried to sound authoritative, but I was overwhelmed by the noise and the smell.
“Ring two.” He pointed to the boxing ring furthest away from me.
I thanked him and dodged my way past two determinedwomen making short work of a punchbag, then narrowly avoided being whipped by a rapid skipping rope being wielded expertly by a stacked guy, his face red with exertion. Boxing ring two was surprisingly high and although I could see two sets of legs dancing about on it, I couldn’t work out which pair belonged to Elliot. I rounded the ring to try and get a better view.
Elliot was shirtless, dressed in sweatpants and headgear as he sparred furiously with a man dressed in the Locke & Gray uniform. His attack on his partner was relentless as he skipped around the ring, ducking and diving his opponent’s shots, which came faster than my eyes could track. The punches he threw sometimes sent the other man stumbling, such was his strength. The noise of the gym faded away; I couldn’t tear my eyes from the graceful, raw strength of Elliot’s body. Was this the man who wrote elaborate dialogue and spoke about art with such confidence? The same man who’d made a movie so beautiful it had reduced me to an emotional wreck was also a devastating fighting machine with a body that looked like it was hewn from marble. Elliot Fox was a man made of both poetry and power. His beautiful face was laser focused on taking down his opponent and it was brutally sexy, to the point I thought I would burst into flame right there on the gym floor.
