Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 151085 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151085 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
I sit and pick up my menu.
“So, what looks good?” I ask.
Besides you because dayummmmmm.
Neevah, this is why we can’t have nice things. If you’re gonna stay, you have to stop this inner drool dialogue.
“Do you realize you move your lips when you talk to yourself?” he asks.
I lower the menu, my eyes wide. “Can you hear me?”
“Can I hear what you’re thinking? No, even I’m not that good. I’m not Dr. Dolittle.”
“I know . . . Can you make out what I’m saying when my lips move?”
“No, you just say it literally to yourself. I first noticed it on set. You’d drop a line or get a step wrong, and then walk off with your lips moving. Talking to yourself.”
I groan and lift the menu high enough to cover my face. With one finger, he slowly pushes it down until I’m forced to face him again.
“Don’t be self-conscious,” he says, a half-smile playing around his lips. “It works for you. Whatever you got wrong, you always got right after you talked to yourself.”
“You’re like the eye in the sky back there in video village with all your screens and control center. Do you always direct from there? Or do you ever come out?”
“It depends. With a movie like this, especially ones with huge dance numbers, I need to see what we’re getting from every angle. I like the various camera shots, and I like to see how it’s coming out since that’s the way the audience will see it. I’ll be out there when we shoot outdoors. I’m too particular about light not to be.”
“A photographer’s son, huh?”
“Definitely. I never took a photography class, but my entire childhood was a clinic. All the best things I know about light and detail and composition, my mom taught me. The woman was obsessed with her camera.” He glances up with an ironic grin. “I mean, she named her son after one.”
I smile, too, recalling Remy Holt from his first and most personal documentary, railing at the sun, making art and daring her body to stop her.
“She was very wise and very pretty,” I tell him.
“She never lost either of those things.” Canon’s smile dies on his lips. “It was hard for her, losing so much control of her body. They’ve made a lot of strides with MS now. I wish she’d lived long enough to take advantage of them.”
“And your father? I mean, I assume you don’t spend every holiday eating in LA’s most romantic restaurant. You have any other family?”
“My mom and dad married because she was pregnant with me, but quickly realized that was a mistake. Instead of spending half her life with a man she didn’t love, she asked for a divorce. Actually, she demanded it. He moved to South Africa to pursue some business opportunities. Remarried and started a whole new family there. Three kids I barely know.” He shrugs. “He’s okay. We’re not super close, but I see him. We talk. Mama used to say she dodged a bullet, not because he was a bad man, but because he wasn’t a great one.”
“She was a spitfire, wasn’t she?”
“She was. I’ve never met anyone who lived as freely as she did.” He toys with the silverware wrapped in his napkin. “She had lovers and never tried to hide it from me. When we needed money, she didn’t pretend everything was okay. Even when times were hard, she didn’t take photography jobs she didn’t like or believe in at least a little. She said don’t use your gift for shit you hate to survive. Work in a grocery store, pump gas, pick up trash to get by before you corrupt your art.”
“So she would not have approved of you directing ‘Grind Up On Me, Girl?’” I tease.
“Probably not.” His laugh comes quickly and goes as fast. “Artistic integrity was everything to her.”
“Wow. So that’s what it took to make a man like you.” The words just slip out, and I immediately want to retract them. I sound like such a fangirl. I’m not starstruck. I admire him. Respect him.
Okay. Lust after him a little.
He doesn’t smile or try to play off my words in the silence that elongates between us, but holds my stare with an intensity that makes my toes tingle. And as much as I wish I could take the words back, the ones that tell him too much, I don’t look away either. If I’m glass, let him see. I’ll figure out another day how to hide.
“Do we know what we want?” the server asks.
I’m so startled by her intrusion, I bump my water, but catch it before it spills.
Canon goes for the turkey dinner, and remembering Jill’s suggestion about the fish, I order the salmon crepes.
He orders something dry and white to drink. I stick to water.