Thanks for checking out the next #SaturdayScenes installment for my in-work Ghost Writer, book 6 of the Our Cyber World series. You may access the story summary and other sample excerpts through the table of contents.
I’m looking forward to hearing what you think!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After showing Vivian how to use his electronic gear, he finds some of his software hacked into her laptop. The next morning the two of them head over to meet Cynthia at her home…
I wake up two hours before the alarm is set to go off. An old familiar feeling prevents me from going back to sleep. Performance anxiety. I’m not ready to talk with Cynthia Spencer, not in the way a seasoned memoir writer would, with enough handles and facts to steer conversation toward data gathering that might lead to something worth writing. But it’s more than that. Not only do I not know the script, but I have no script. If my meeting with Cynthia Spencer can compare to a screen test, I will flunk in the first ten seconds.
Though I know it amounts to nothing more than stabbing in the dark, I open up my laptop and access the Internet. Over the next hour, I scour for all things Spencer. By the time I’m done, a two page Word document captures my notes. I spend another ten minutes reordering items to set up a checklist I’ll tick off as I talk with Cynthia Spencer.
All that done, the anxiety remains. So I do what I used to do when a backwards-forwards memorized script and all the character research in the world wouldn’t subdue the knots in my stomach. At around five in the morning I go for a run along the streets surrounding my hotel. I run out for twenty minutes, then back for another twenty. By 6:30 AM I’m showered, hair-dried, made up and dressed. I meet Andre at the hotel club lounge for breakfast.
He’s coordinated an early start with Cynthia Spencer to use “golden hour lighting” for the outdoor shots he’s planning to capture. My appointment with her isn’t until 10 AM, but last night, over dinner, he suggested I could join him if I could do without the extra sleep. He also told me going with him would enable us to carpool and perhaps avoid some of the worst morning traffic. To cap his appeal, he argued this way I can get a feel for Cynthia as a person in her environs. I can observe her as she and Andre move about the vineyard and the onsite wine production facilities to photograph a sampling of her business life.
This sounded fine to me the prior night, but I told him he’d get his final answer if I showed up early for breakfast. Andre welcomes my appearance with the enthusiasm that a “yes” from a cute chick usually yields.
“You clean up nice,” he says.
“Need to impress today,” I reply.
We chit-chat in brief as we consume breakfast, then hurry to our rooms to gather what we need for the day ahead. By the time I come back down, I see him out in the parking lot stashing his camera bag in the trunk of his car.
Traffic through the outskirts of Silicon Valley doesn’t bog us down too much. Andre comments that since we’re driving against traffic, we’ve lucked out. I don’t point out that there went the carpooling benefit he extolled the prior night.
Andre and I arrive in Pleasanton shortly before 8 AM. He’s in a hurry, muttering something about diffused, early morning light. I don’t pay much attention to his photography incantations. Upon our arrival, Andre suggests to Cynthia I should come along and jot some notes about the vineyard and her running of it.
Cynthia turns to me and says, “Of course. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
I realize I’d planned to take all my notes on my laptop and brought no paper for note-taking. I briefly consider whether to use my phone for that, or ask for a notepad, but I disdain both in favor of using my laptop wherever possible.
As we walk around, especially inside the wine cellars, I get good at spotting barrels I can use as laptop stands. The first barrel I use stands at the start of long rows of vineyards washed in early morning light, which as Andre explains, is coming through and bouncing off thin white clouds, making for the sort of light he loves to use. I take few notes at this point, watching as Cynthia poses to mock-handle grapes which she says still need a few more weeks on vine before picking.
Cynthia has dressed appropriately for this occasion. Her fitting, yet sufficiently lose khaki pants and plaid canvas shirt, along with boots, preserve enough of her femininity while projecting the at-work-on-the-land image Andre’s photos intend to message. In between shots she steals more than one look in my direction—always smiling, her eyes always telling me she can’t wait till she and I can talk.
“And that’s why I’m going into politics,” Cynthia Spencer tells me, waving at the portion of the vineyard we can see from her office.
She swivels in her chair and turns to the window behind her desk. Until now I’ve found it challenging not to get lost in the scene out there rather than keeping my eyes on her. At last, I give myself the freedom to enjoy the way late morning sunlight bathes the vines, row after row of which undulate to a vanishing point over the top of nearby hillsides.
“The long view,” she’s saying as I look over her shoulder. “That’s why I’m plunging in. The wish to nurture and build, rebuild even, our country for the long haul, with a long term view rather than the myopic two to six year approach our country’s problems usually get.”
Vineyards take decades, even centuries to prune to perfection, she told me a few minutes ago. Wines take time to age. I more than suspect she’ll insist some version of this analogy should appear in her memoir. I’ll work it in, but I pity the campaign sloganeer who will struggle to work that into a TV commercial without sounding snobbish, or dissing the average American beer drinker, or alienating the teetotaler conservative crowd.
“OK, I’ve told you about myself.” Cynthia faces me again. “I’d like to know a little about you.”
I nod. We’re entering the job interview part. All my notes from this morning? That checklist? I haven’t hit item one yet. No, our first get together aims to break the ice, allow us to get to know each other, get a sense of how we’ll work together. I see that now, with some self-reproach at having envisioned a pure data gathering exercise.
So far I’ve managed to delude myself into thinking I’ve had the upper hand—that she’s been laboring to persuade me to write her story. To impress me enough with her persona. Truth is I have no choice. Truth is she’s been kind enough to let me run the conversation. Truth also is that she knows everything she needs to know about me because my publisher provided her with a full dossier of my brief, budding writing career, and what came before isn’t exactly a secret.
Still, I point at the dossier, sitting on her teak desk inside a powder blue folder bearing my publisher’s insignia. “Is there anything in particular you would like me to expand on?”
“Oh, these things never tell you everything.” She smiles and slides the folder aside. “By that I mean the personal stuff. Like, why writing? Novels, I mean. I’d expect someone with your background to go for screenwriting. A more natural fit, wouldn’t you think?”
I pause, giving myself time to push down the pain again.
Up to now, the topic of my past movie career has not surfaced. Most people bring it up in the first ten seconds. She hasn’t as much as acknowledged it. I’ve found this refreshing and disconcerting at once. I ascribe her posture toward my past to her level of confidence. Her own standing in the world doesn’t require self-validation through association with important, famous persons. She’s her own VIP, and that’s enough for her. At least that’s the way I read her.
Well, there I go. I’ve latched on to an important character trait I can use in the memoir, haven’t I? She doesn’t seek self-validation from others.
But self-confidence or not, here we sit, talking about my prior, defunct life. Here it comes now, even if brought up through a tangent.
I consider my answer.
Yes, it would have made more sense for me to dive headlong into screenwriting. Having read my fair share of screenplays in my prior life, understanding how they work and what they should accomplish, I might have scored better success than with the more literary novel writing approach. But I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to be reminded how I had dropped from top-tier A-list to struggling screenwriter. More than anything, however, I wanted distance from the Hollywood life. I didn’t care to return to the same circles I’d once frequented. I needed a clean and complete break from it all. Well, as complete as one can make such a thing.
“I guess I wanted to pursue a more introspective form of story-telling,” I say. “Screen-writing and movies are very external, visual.”
“Superficial, even,” she offers.
“They can be, sometimes, and they can go deep. But literary fiction allows you to go even deeper. You can show a character all the way from his or her core all the way out to the actions that inner self drives.”
“Is that what you hope to do with me?” Cynthia asks. “To show me all the way from my core?”
“That’s up to you.”
She smiles. It’s a knowing smile. One that comes alongside a demeanor full of cleverness. The kind that tells itself, yeah, she chose right when she asked for me, and doesn’t that show off her splendid genius.
“So you write fiction, and now you ghost-write a memoir,” she says.
“It pays the bills.” I catch myself. I shouldn’t sound too cynical, so I correct with, “And I get to meet some interesting, inspiring people along the way.” I pause to smile. “Who knows? I may learn a thing or two for my next novel?”
She pauses with a smile of her own. “You’ve published one novel.”
I give in to cynicism. “That no one read.”
“I thought it was thought-provoking.”
“Oh?” My surprise is genuine. For a second I almost ask her if she posted a reader review, or if she’s read Erin’s.
“I realized after the halfway point I shouldn’t be looking for action or plot per se,” she adds. “Not that there wasn’t action or plot. It was all in there.”
I nod.
She goes on with, “It was the characters, especially your heroine that pulled me along to keep reading. I really liked her, wanted to know more about her. That’s quite a talent you have, to make me care so much about a character that I must keep reading.”
I think about a couple of wise cracks, each boiling down to some comment or other about Cynthia’s life and how we should hope it contains enough plot points that I won’t have to rely solely on her personality to keep the reader on the hook. Good for me I leave them all on the cutting room floor.
“Thank you,” I say.
“You get women,” Cynthia notes. “For obvious reasons.”
We have a chuckle at that.
“Your novel,” she re-starts. “It was quite racy in places.”
I sit up a little straighter. “Only where I thought the story naturally needed it.”
“To develop your character’s arc. Isn’t that how they put it?”
“Yes,” I reply with a smile.
“Will you be disappointed if my memoir isn’t nearly as saucy?” she asks.
“Nearly?” I ask with a wink.
“Well, perhaps I should get busy,” she replies, boomeranging my wink.
“We’ll see what turns up,” I add, enjoying the levity of the moment, telling myself she and I are connecting and getting along well.
“Hopefully nothing incompatible with the highest office in the land.”
“I promise to leave out all material your opponents feed me.”
She nods and smiles. “Speaking of which—”
“Like my dossier says, no party affiliation.”
“Some would say the unknown and undefined is more dangerous than—”
“I’m not a conservative, social or otherwise, if that’s where you’re headed.”
She allows another pause. “I’ve often wondered why it is that artists and other creatives, in general, tend to lean left. But I need someone creative, and I’ve been told you’re safe and discreet.”
Safe and discreet, I think to myself, two words I’ve never heard or read about myself, not even in the dossier sitting on her desk. I shouldn’t have a problem keeping my mouth shut, but the way she said it causes me to wonder if she learned that about me through casual conversation with my publisher, or through other channels. I want to believe the former, but I can’t shake the latter.
I shift in my seat and say, “I’m sure my publisher’s lawyers and yours will do their own bit of writing to come up with a non-disclosure agreement that satisfies all parties.”
“Some people would say that NDAs are only as good as the payday that goes with them.” Her lips curl into a semi-malevolent smirk.
“And what would you say?”
“I’d say that an NDA or any other legal contract is only as strong as the integrity and character of the person who signs it.”
I do my best to shrug off her comment. “I’m an expert on a few things. My character isn’t one of them.”
Her smile returns, and I welcome it with some relief. “It’s good to know one’s limitations.”
“I have plenty of those.”
“Do you have another novel in the works?” she asks.
“Always.”
“Well, we’ll get through this so you can get back to that.”
“We’ll take all the time we need to tell your memoir the way you want to tell it.”
“In my voice.”
She’s repeating a line from the dossier, probably penned by dear Mark himself.
“In your voice. Always and without exception in your voice.”
“I think I know the answer to this question, but I’ll ask it anyway.” She leans in, resting her weight on her elbows. “Do you prefer writing memoirs over fiction?”
“I like the freedom fiction gives me to explore life as it truly is.”
Her face becomes stuck between a frown and a smile. “Are you saying that my memoir may be more fiction than real life?”
I try my best to mirror the malevolent smirk she shot me a minute ago. “That all depends on you.”
“I suppose it does.” She leans back in her chair. “All the same, I’ll make sure we make it interesting for you. Wouldn’t want you to keel over your keyboard due to irrepressible boredom.”
“I’m sure we won’t have to try very hard to avoid that issue,” I say.
“Oh? How so?”
I shrug, again feeling like a poor Andre Esperanza imitation. “From what little I can tell thus far, you seem like a very interesting person.”
She points at my laptop. “I don’t see you taking many notes.”
I look down at an empty screen and blush.
I’m about to stammer something or other about how we’ll get into specifics in the afternoon, and that’s when I’ll produce copious notes, but she preempts me, with, “We’re still in the preliminary, get-to-know-me stage, though.”
She gets up. “Speaking of which, how about some lunch?”
I go check my watch, but see only an undressed wrist. My gaze darts to my computer screen. It’s almost noon.
“Come on,” she says. “To the kitchen we go. We’ll get Andre to join us.” She stops at the door and turns to face me. “Unless you mind.”
“Mind?”
“Andre,” Cynthia says. “Unless you want me all to yourself so you can ask all those probing questions you’ve saved up for me. The ones about my saucy life.”
“Hmm.” I feel the heat on my face. I’m blushing again. Another note to self: this woman gets under your skin. “No. Andre can join us. If you’re OK with that. It’s your privacy at stake.”
She smiles. “Well, if the questions get really too close to the embarrassing, we can always send him packing, can’t we?”
“Sure. It’s up to you.”
“Right. Of course.” She turns, and I follow her down a long corridor, our shoes squeaking on the polished hardwood floor. “Entirely up to me,” she adds. “And in my voice.”
Comments are disabled for this post