Finding Colin Firth: A Novel (19 page)

Bea whirled around and there was Tyler Echols. “I’m not here to stalk Colin Firth! Someone I know is an extra, and—”

“Ah, so you’re stalking an ex who dumped you. I get it. You have one second to get behind that barricade and stay there or I’ll personally call the police and have you arrested for trespassing. I take stalkers seriously when it comes to my actors—and my extras. Two days ago, some lunatic woman threw a cup of orange juice at Christopher Cade just so something she drank touched him. Another fan rushed him and grabbed his balls. So leave now.”

Okay, fine, she got it. He had a job to do. But he was so dismissive. She glanced at his badge: “Tyler Echols, PA.” PA—production assistant? “Look, I have no idea who Christopher Cade is. I have zero interest in the movie stars. I—”

He pulled out his phone. “This is me dialing the local police.”

The guy was impossible! “I’m here because my birth mother is an extra on this film and I’m just hoping to watch and decide if I want to introduce myself and—”

God, what the hell was wrong with her? Did she just blurt all that out? She let out a deep breath and stared at her feet.

Tyler made a sound that sounded like a snort, but tucked his phone back in his pocket. “You’re lucky, then. My rules will save you the trouble.”

“The trouble of what?”

He glanced at his clipboard and checked something off. “My sister is adopted—she’s sixteen and was obsessed with finding her birth mother, thought it would solve all her problems with grades and the jerk boys she goes for. I spent months trying to track down her birth mother for her. I finally got her name and location—which cost me thousands of dollars, by the way—and if I could do it all over again, I’d save the three thousand.”

“Sorry, Tyler, but you seem incredibly easy to disappoint. And you don’t know my situation.”

He ignored that. “Yeah, well, the lady wasn’t interested in meeting my sister. In the end, all she wanted was money. Maddy—my sister—is still screwed up over the whole thing. So, really, I’m doing you a favor.” He pointed to the barricades. “Either stay on the other side or I’ll call that guy.” He pointed to the big man in the chair.

“Yeah, he’s really paying attention,” she said, as the man popped a bunch of home fries into his mouth. But at least she’d been downgraded from the local police. “And anyway, my situation is very different.”

“I’m just saying you should proceed with caution. Reality and fantasy are two very different things.”

Bea’s stomach twisted.

A man, in his late twenties, with messy dark brown hair and gorgeous blue eyes, came up behind Tyler. “Problem here?” he asked Bea. His badge read
PATRICK OOL, SAD
. “This brute bothering you?”

“He’s just incredibly bossy,” Bea said. “I know one of the extras and wanted to watch her work, that’s all. I’m not here to bother the stars, I swear.”

“What’s your name?” Patrick asked.

“Bea Crane.”

Patrick smiled at her. “Well, Bea Crane, you can watch all you want.” He put a badge around her neck with “Guest” written in black letters. “I’m the second assistant director on this film, and if this guy bothers you, you tell me.” His cell rang. “Be right there. Don’t touch anything,” he barked into the phone, then pocketed it and sighed. “Fire after fire,” he said to Bea. “Hope we run into each other again,” he added, holding her gaze.

Bea watched him rush away, then shot Tyler something of a triumphant smile.

Tyler rolled his eyes. “He’s a notorious womanizer, by the way.”

“That you being realistic again?” she asked.

“Screw up your life in every aspect. Not like I care.”

He stalked off, and Bea shook her head, wondering what the heck his problem was. But she wasn’t about to give Tyler Echols, PA, too much thought; she was free to be here with her guest pass and walked right past the guard with a wave, which he returned. From this side of the tent, she could see inside. At least fifty people were sitting or standing by the food table.

Then she saw her.

Veronica was sitting on a folding chair, a muffin on a little round plastic plate on her lap, talking to the woman next to her, her expression animated. She seemed lit up, glowing from within.

She was right there. Bea’s birth mother.

She could walk right in. Introduce herself.

Except maybe she’d come off as a little bit nuts for “stalking” Veronica on the film set. Working as an extra was obviously something special to Veronica, given how happy she looked, and Bea would just throw a huge monkey wrench into it.
Oh hi, I know you’re working on the movie here in town, but here I am suddenly—the daughter you gave up for adoption!

Crap. Bea would just call her tonight. She’d call, giving them both space—for Bea to put the phone down and calm her beating heart, and for Veronica to digest that her birth daughter had made contact. If Bea got the machine, she’d leave a message.

Bea was about to leave when Patrick Ool walked up to her.

“Sorry about Tyler giving you a hard time,” Patrick said. “I appreciate how seriously he takes his job, but sometimes, he takes it a bit too seriously. Anyway, I’m just going to say this outright, Bea. I met you ten minutes ago, and I can’t stop thinking of your face.”

Bea blushed. The guy wasn’t traditionally good looking, but there was something about him, something . . . sexy, and he was staring at Bea as though she were drop-dead beautiful. She had to admit, it did nice things for her ego.

“Has that ever happened to you?” he said. “Where you meet someone and you just wish you could go off on a walk with them or sit across a table with a cup of coffee and just talk?”

She smiled. “It’s happening now.”

He smiled back at her. He had one dimple, she realized. And those gorgeous blue eyes. “Can I take you to dinner tomorrow night? It’ll have to be early, since we’re wrapping for dinner at five, and I’ll need to be back to check the dailies at seven. But a good start, I think.”

“Agreed,” Bea said.

“Tomorrow at five, then. Where should I pick you up?”

Just like that, Bea had a date with a good-looking second assistant director named Patrick.

Veronica loved being on the set, loved sitting in this big tent marked
EXTRAS HOLDING PEN
. Even if yesterday and most of today, she and her fellow extras had done a lot of sitting around and waiting . . . for not much of anything. She’d spent most of her time chatting with the people sitting near her—whispering over mutual admiration of Colin Firth—thinking up new pie recipes, and wondering how her students had fared with making their own shoofly pies. Since Monday night, two days now, she’d thought about calling each student to ask if they’d made the shoofly pie at home with the recipe she’d handed out. But that had felt intrusive to Veronica with this particular bunch, with the uncomfortable Nick DeMarco, who, his daughter thought, might want to say “sorry” to her mother. And ten-year-old Leigh, who’d lost her mom so young, with so much hope in her sweet face. Veronica couldn’t imagine calling the formerly snooty Penelope, of the cryptic trouble, though she wouldn’t be surprised if she got a call from Penelope. And Veronica didn’t know Isabel, who felt like a client first and a student second, or her sister, June, well enough to get personal, so she’d just decided to wait until next Monday night for the answers to her questions.

She still couldn’t believe the universe had cut her this lucky
break of being chosen to be an extra. Late Monday night, long after her students had gone home and she’d cleaned up the kitchen, her cell phone had rung with the Call. An excitement, a feeling she hadn’t experienced since she was a young teenager, had burst inside her; she felt it in her toes, along her spine, the nape of her neck, a firecracker going off inside her and catching her by surprise. She’d wanted to be an extra on the Colin Firth movie, yes. But she hadn’t realized how much she wanted it. Perhaps she hadn’t let herself want something that bad in a long time. It was a bit of an escape. A chance to lay eyes on Colin Firth—and to have a crush on an actor felt luxuriant to Veronica, a self-indulgence she’d allow herself.

Just like that, she was an extra, something that had been a twinkle in her friend Shelley’s eye at the diner just days ago. Her boss was thrilled for Veronica and told her to come back to work whenever the fairy-tale experience was over. It did feel a bit like a fairy tale, watching all these productive-looking people rushing around past the tent with their clipboards and iPhones, hauling equipment and calling for meetings. The extras had been instructed to come in regular clothes they’d wear on a routine morning, so Veronica had opted for her uniform, which got a “fabulous!” from the wardrobe manager, who’d checked over every single extra and sent many to the small tent next door to change. In the big white tent with her yesterday and today were around forty people, several of whom were reading books with titles such as
Break into Acting!
and
How to Make It in Hollywood.
She and another extra had made a list of every Colin Firth film they could think of, and when Veronica looked up Colin Firth’s profile on IMDb, she’d been surprised to discover he’d been in over fifty films, with a few in production.
Veronica planned to watch a movie a night. A Colin Firth marathon sounded heavenly after a long day of dreaming about seeing him in the flesh. If he was here in town, he wasn’t on the set. She’d kept an eagle eye out and so did several other women sitting near her, who made sure to keep their Colinmania on the down low in case Patrick Ool was walking around with his intolerance for star stalkers.

Yesterday, she and around thirty others had arrived at eight o’clock in the morning for some lighting work, and then filming was expected to begin today, but an actress had hurt her knee early this afternoon, and filming had been pushed back again and then again.

Now it was nearing four o’clock, and finally, Patrick Ool came into the tent and informed them shooting was a go. Yes! The extras sitting around Veronica sat up with excitement. Patrick explained the scene again: the female star, a beautiful actress whose name Veronica kept forgetting, was standing in the nearby pasture of wildflowers with her selfish mother, who was trying to talk her out of her misgivings about her upcoming wedding to her supposedly perfect man, who was not Colin Firth. The mother was played by an actress Veronica had seen many times before. Patrick had gone over the rules—no talking to the stars. No talking, period. And no photographs.

Veronica and the forty or so extras walked out to the barricade labeled “Extras Wait Here.” Patrick Ool placed about ten of them around the scene, some on the path between the pond and the pasture, some in the pasture, sitting down to a picnic, two walking dogs. Veronica was to walk by when the mother said her first line and look nowhere in particular, checking her watch once. The woman behind her was to carry a brown
paper grocery bag. A man was to wave at someone in the distance. Most others were to just walk by at a normal pace.

Patrick called “Get ready, people,” and again, that burst of excitement lit up in Veronica. She was so close to the two actresses, standing just inside the pasture, that she could see the worry lines on the mother’s forehead and see how exquisitely beautiful the younger actress truly was.

The director called action, and Veronica waited until the mother said her first line before walking by, looking nowhere in particular as instructed. But just as Veronica had passed, the mother pointed her finger in the woman’s face with such disdain, such anger in her expression, and it shook loose a memory that made Veronica’s hands tremble. She walked as naturally as she could, checked her watch, as she’d been told, then ambled off to the side, out of camera range, and realized she was actually shaking. Good God. What was wrong with her? One finger point and she was a mess?

She rarely let herself think about her parents, her mother’s cruelty. But as she stood on the other side of the barricade, suddenly feeling so alone amid so many people milling about and watching the scene being shot, she felt lost in the memory, of her own mother sticking her finger in sixteen-year-old Veronica’s face, in much the same jabbing way, after Veronica had blurted out that she was pregnant.

She wouldn’t let herself remember that conversation. Not here, not now, especially. Being here on the set, being a part of this magic felt a little bit like Christmas. But the truth was that twenty-two years after that finger jabbing, those cruel words, the pain of that memory was as vivid as ever.

She closed her eyes tight against it, but so many different
words, sentences she’d never forget, from her mother, from Timothy, jumbled in her mind. Focus on the scene, she told herself. A movie is being filmed in front of your eyes. You could see Colin Firth tomorrow for all you know! But she couldn’t stop seeing her mother’s face, the anger, the shame. This was the new normal now, now that she was back home. Hadn’t she come to face her past? But how would remembering how cruelly her parents had treated her help her? How could those thoughts do anything but sting, remind her that except for her friends, she had no family?