Ana Takes Manhattan, page 25
“Oh—” She notices Richard and tenses up.
That’s the thing about Nina. She’s so friendly and fun, but when she has to talk to a guy, she doesn’t speak. The last time we went to a bar together, this nice guy approached her and she let him do all the talking and her real, fun self never came out, so the guy got bored and wandered off.
If she were on Fearless Love, I’d help her tackle her stage fright somehow. Maybe force her to take a stand-up comedy class. And then deliver her routine to a roomful of single men. She would totally bomb at first, but I know that by the end of the routine she’d be amazing. Cut to a roomful of guys laughing. Cut to Nina feeling more confident onstage. Cut to one particular fella laughing louder than the rest. Cut to Nina noticing him. He smiles. She smiles. That would be a happy ending, damn it!
“I thought you were done with this episode?” Nina says to me.
“So did we, but apparently someone at the network didn’t think so,” Richard says curtly.
“It wasn’t the network. It was Usher,” I say, looking at Richard and then at Nina. “He wanted more…Usher.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Poor Richard. He had wanted to take Usher out of the show completely, and now we have to put more Usher in.
“We’ll just get in there,” I say, trying to sound peppy and motivational, “and sprinkle a few more shots of him and be done.”
“Interesting how you kept that small detail out of your email,” Richard says playfully.
On her way out, Nina pops down by my side. “I cannot wait to be back in here with you next week.”
“Yeah, me too,” I say, looking at the back of Richard’s head.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispers. “Sitting in an edit room with Bianca all day sucks the life out of a person. Every time I go to the bathroom, she gives me this look”—Nina distorts her face like an annoyed teenager—“like she’s disappointed I have a bladder.” I smile and watch Nina shut the door behind her.
“So if I told you what we had to do today, you wouldn’t have come?”
Richard turns his head toward me and thinks for a second. “And miss out on ruining the show with you? Never!” He gives me an exaggerated withering look.
Now all I have to do is spend the rest of the day in my seat. My bare midsection will only get barer as the hours go by and my jeans stretch out. I just won’t drink any water. Can you die of dehydration in a day?
“Wanna grab lunch?” Richard asks as he stands.
It would be nice. But if he missed my yellow panties earlier, he’ll definitely see them now. Actually, I think I’m okay with Richard seeing my panties. But my pitch went so bad that it zapped my confidence. I can’t risk it. I’ve humiliated myself enough today.
“No. I’m good. Thanks. I’ll just order in.” Maybe I can also order a belt?
Once Richard is gone, I open my bag and pull out a small bundle of Zip drives. I sort through them and pop one into my computer. A freeze-frame of Maria appears on my computer screen. She’s sitting on a plane, looking out the window. I cannot believe I spent the entire weekend taping what I had hoped would be the pilot for my show idea. I had believed in it so much I paid for a last-minute flight to Houston, a rental car, and a hotel room and actually believed I would be reimbursed once Edith had heard my brilliant idea.
After another bottle of wine with Maria, she felt it was time she faced her fears. And that’s when I got the idea for the show. She said I could tape it all, and I didn’t want to wait until I got a green light for the show and a budget approved. Plus, everyone involved was going to be home this weekend. I felt I needed to act fast before Maria changed her mind. I was going with the flow. I was trusting my instinct. I was…an idiot.
I hadn’t mentioned any of this in the meeting because I was waiting for Edith to first say she loved the idea and then I was going to tell her the big news. Surprise! She could have the pilot edited in a few weeks.
I had imagined how the whole thing would play out:
Edith: I LOVE IT! Amazing idea!
Me: Well, guess what? I shot it already.
Edith: What?
Me: Yep, and you can have it in a few weeks.
Edith: Oh my! ANA, YOU ARE A STAR!
I had this whole daydream that Edith would be so thankful I’d found a way to salvage the Maria/Jorge Central Park proposal fiasco.
All she had to do was approve the budget for an editor for a couple of weeks. I was sure that coming up with an incredible idea and making it for very little money was just the kind of thing that got people promoted to head of development.
Instead, she hated my pitch, and she would probably fire me if she found out I had broken company rules to get this done, particularly borrowing a camera and audio equipment without asking.
Note to self: from now on, do the opposite of what my instincts say.
I put on my headphones so no one will hear and press play. My camera coverage is a little shaky, but for the most part it looks good.
“Why am I not surprised?” Richard is standing right behind me, looking over my shoulder at the screen. Crap. I didn’t hear him walk back in. “I knew it.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Just a hunch. I liked your pitch. I thought it was really good.”
“Thanks.” I drop my head on the desk.
“You shot that by yourself?”
I nod with my forehead still resting on the desk. “I can’t believe I wasted all that money.”
“Well, just because one door closes doesn’t mean you can’t pitch it somewhere else,” he says, trying to cheer me up. I hunch my shoulders and sigh.
“Wow, who’s that?”
“Huh?” I look up at the screen and see it’s still playing. “Oh yeah. That’s what Maria was afraid of.”
“Well, even I would watch that show!”
I look at him and smile. I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed until right this second he is not wearing a scarf today. Which is bizarre since it’s finally starting to get cool out. I can see his neck for the first time and notice his Adam’s apple.
There’s a knock on the door that startles us both.
Richard reaches across and shuts my laptop for me. The quick-on-his-toes, protective gesture takes me completely by surprise. On the way back, his bare arm brushes against mine, sending a snap of heat through me.
As he catches up with an old friend from the documentary floor, I sit there confused. I can’t stop retracing the trajectory of Richard’s arm grazing mine, trying to decide if it was intentional. Or if it’s just one of those grazes gone wild.
“Well, that coulda been worse.” Richard gets up to leave at the end of the day.
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
“That’s okay. What can you do?”
“I know, right? I guess it is what it is.” We’re talking about our job as if adding a few shots of Usher is the equivalent to coming home from a war only to be sent out on another tour.
“Yep. Sometimes you just gotta get through it.” He picks up his bag and walks over to my desk. “Well, I’ll be seeing you.” He’s standing next to me now with his arms extended out in front of him. Does he want a hug? Ugh. My jeans are so stretched out I’m afraid they’ll fall straight to the ground if I stand up. I start to move slowly and pull my jeans up as I stand, then tuck my elbows down to hold them in place. Which means I only have my forearms and hands free. This is how a T-rex hugs.
“Thanks for everything,” he says.
“You too. Thanks. Yep.” Our hug is close enough for me to feel his scruffy, barely there beard and smell something earthy. I just can’t tell if it’s his cologne or if that’s just his scent.
My chin’s landed on his shoulder and my face has relaxed. It’s really goodbye. This time he’s gone for good. There simply isn’t any Usher left to add. All of a sudden, I hold him for real, no longer caring how low my jeans go or how much of my underwear is visible. I think Richard can sense the difference because there’s slightly more pressure. Is he squeezing me? Can one feel squeezing that isn’t there? Okay, I can’t be imagining the breathing. We’re both definitely breathing. You know, the way you breathe deeply when you’re holding someone just before things get more intimate.
I need to grow up. For once. People hug goodbye all the time. I have to stop reading into things. I mean, he has a girlfriend. All these thoughts conjured up in the span of a hug are completely unproductive.
This is the perfect time to begin that whole do the opposite of what my instincts are telling me thing. Because right now my instincts are telling me I want this hug to last longer and advance into something else. And so does he.
My instincts are batting zero right now, so I decide right then and there that, from now on, I will focus solely on my job. Next week I will work with Nina and be happy and together we’ll make the final season of Marry Me the best season yet. And I will start to look for a new job. And always have a spare belt at the office.
Chapter 34
I walk down the long hall to my edit room feeling organized and unstoppable. I sent my resume to three production companies before I even left my apartment. But then I hear something that makes me freeze.
It’s still early, and the office is relatively empty. Just a few interns making coffee in the kitchen. I sprint the rest of the way down the hall and into my edit room.
Up on the screen is my show. The show. The one I filmed all by myself. The one Edith hasn’t approved. Fearless Love is somehow edited and scored and playing on the screen. I sit down. Well, more like my butt falls into the chair.
“Hey! This is so awesome.” Nina realizes I’ve come in. “What’s the matter?”
“What—how is that?”
“Did you not know he was doing this?” Nina looks confused.
“Who?”
“Oh. Even more awesome.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The note. I’m sorry. I thought you had left it for me, so I read it. I can’t believe you didn’t know.”
I see an index card on my desk. It has small, neat handwriting. I scan down to the bottom.
Richard
“It’s amazing! Here, I’ll start it from the beginning.” Nina gets up, shuts the door, and hits play.
The large screen fades from black to Central Park. We hear a sweet song kick in as the camera swoops down on a crane from above the trees and past the angel on the fountain and onto Jorge and Maria, who are holding hands as they approach. Jorge gets down on one knee. The music crescendos as he reaches into his pocket, pulls out the ring box, and opens it…screeeeech. Just as he’s about to speak, the music record scratches to a halt.
“That should have been the best moment of my life. But it wasn’t. It was the worst.” Maria’s voice plays over the images as a heartbreaking song begins. “I needed to get away from there, but I also knew that with every step, I was separating myself from the love of my life.”
I had given Maria a small camera and a list of questions and left her alone. I wanted her interview to feel intimate, like a personal diary. But I hadn’t had time to hear any of this yet.
“But why would I do that? How could I walk away from my own happiness? The reason isn’t easy for me to talk about.”
How did this happen? How had all of this come together over a weekend? It looks and feels like a real show. We see Maria at home in her kitchen, looking through a photo album. The sad song continues as she flips through pictures of her family.
“My name is Maria Garcia, and I grew up in Houston, Texas. My parents emigrated from Mexico just before I was born. When I was nine, my cousin Zamora came to live with us, and my parents eventually adopted her. I was so excited to have a sister, and though she was a year older, we were in the same grade. I thought we’d be best friends, but…life isn’t that simple.”
She turns the page, and we see a photograph of a nine-year-old, chubby-cheeked Maria standing next to a lanky girl who is a foot taller.
A fast-paced track kicks in as Zamora and Maria get older. We see photographs of them at birthdays, Christmas mornings, proms, high school graduation. Always Maria looking intimidated and small next to Zamora, who only gets taller and more beautiful. I can’t believe it. Richard has edited a montage!
The girls’ photos speed up until they begin to focus on Zamora. The pictures snap, snap, snap as we reach her modeling career on catwalks and magazine covers. Richard hates montages, but it’s like he’d read my mind.
The photos end dramatically on one of Zamora on the cover of a magazine in a swimsuit. But this isn’t just another girl in a swimsuit. This is a creature from another planet, coming out of the water like a goddess.
When I had first seen that image, back at Maria’s apartment, I could almost understand what she was feeling. I was used to walking into a room with Gia. Used to every man noticing her. But there are the Gias of the world and then there are the Zamoras. Tan skin, dark-brown hair, bright-green eyes.
On the magazine cover, the water is dripping down her skin but looks like it doesn’t want to let go. Behind her, a surfer dude holds her pink bikini top in the air, but she doesn’t seem to care. She’s covering her bare breasts with her hands and walking toward the photographer with a heavenly look on her face. The grin, the eyes. That’s the most beautiful thing about this woman. Her confidence.
“This is Zamora.” Maria’s narration kicks back in as we see her packing a small suitcase. “Introducing even my girlfriends to her was difficult. Everyone wanted to be her friend. Hang out in her room. And any guy I ever liked fell for her and talked to me only when they wanted me to hand her a love note. Don’t get me wrong. I love Zamora and have only ever been supportive of her career and happiness. I just—”
We cut to Maria’s interview. She’s sitting in the kitchen and starting to cry. “It’s funny because I remember when Jorge and I were walking through the park that day, I had just been thinking ‘What is he still doing here? Why is he with me?’”
Nina turns around. “This is so good,” she says all teary-eyed.
“When Jorge proposed, I couldn’t believe it. It was the last thing I expected. I thought if it felt too good to be true, it wasn’t meant to be. I felt the only reason he was proposing was because he hadn’t met someone better.”
Back at her apartment, Maria told me how she had been too scared to introduce Zamora to Jorge. She was afraid he would fall in love with Zamora and break up with her because that’s what had happened with every other guy she had ever been with.
I remembered thinking she needed help. Are we all this insane? I imagined myself with the Four and thought yes, maybe a lot of us are. And that’s when I had the idea for the show.
And now it was playing right in front of me, and it was even better than I had imagined.
I had Maria tell Jorge that I quit my job on Marry Me to work on a passion project about Mexican American family life. I felt a little guilty lying to him this time, but it was for his own good. Maria had called ahead and told her family the same thing. We had also decided not to tell Jorge about her fears about him meeting Zamora. I told Maria that part of her walking toward her fears was facing this without his support, and she had agreed.
“But I’ve decided it’s time to face this.” Maria steps out of her apartment and into a cab waiting outside. Jorge is holding the door for her. He’s happy to see her, but their greeting is awkward. “I’m not sure if it’s too late to save our relationship. But I have to try. I’m tired of being afraid.”
Cut to them on the plane. Maria is looking out the window. “We’ve been dating for a year, and Jorge has met my parents, but I’ve kept him from meeting Zamora. We had tickets to go home one weekend, and I lied and said I was sick when I heard she was going to be there.”
Maria looks distraught and ashamed. Richard always cuts back to her interview at just the right moments. It starts to dawn on me that he watched all this footage over the weekend. That he must have worked straight through the night. That he had to sort through all my bad shaky cam moments. Because right now it all looks so polished and smooth. But at the same time so raw and real.
Maria and Jorge arrive in Houston and get into a cab. Richard has done an incredible job of making the viewer feel tense. Even I’m watching the show as if I hadn’t been there. Maria’s brow is creased, and Jorge is calmly looking out the window. Right now you’re hoping he doesn’t even so much as look at Zamora for too long. You’re hoping Maria’s been a fool all this time and she had nothing to worry about.
The taxi pulls up to the house, and Maria looks anxious as they step out. I had asked Maria and Jorge to give me a few minutes alone with her family before they walked in. This way, everyone could get comfortable with me and the camera.
Her parents were preparing a big lunch for Maria and Jorge in their backyard. Her mom showed me the dozens of plants in brightly colored ceramic pots she had hanging from the branches of a sequoia tree. I was glad for the tree because the harsh Texas sun was directly above us, and the shade provided better lighting. Richard selected the prettiest shots of the hanging flowers and the backyard to set the scene of a warm family gathering.
Maria’s grandfather and uncle were there too, setting the table, talking. Zamora was sitting at one end, texting on her phone. Her hair was up in a messy bun and she didn’t appear to have any makeup on, but her skin was glowing. She was wearing a white T-shirt and satiny black shorts.
I remember I went back inside to capture how Maria was doing just before the big moment.
“Are you all right?” Jorge asked as he held Maria’s hand.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” Maria answered convincingly.
“What I felt was this overwhelming sense of relief.” We hear Maria’s thoughts from her diary cam. “I suddenly understood it didn’t matter who was behind that door. I had to be okay now. I had to accept that Jorge loved me now. And that I was enough.”
The doors open, and Maria and Jorge step outside. Richard has edited the rest of the scene as a montage (I can’t believe it, another montage!) to an empowering version of Usher’s “U Got It Bad” with female vocals I’ve never heard before. It’s slower and more intense than the original, and as soon as the lyrics begin, I feel giddy and emotional. My eyes are glued to the screen, but my mind is going in so many directions, trying to understand why Richard would do all this. Something is dawning on me. There’s a chance I was right. When Richard and I hugged goodbye the other day, I wasn’t imagining things.
