Neevah
“Willyou run lines with me real quick?” I ask Takira.
She’s putting finishing touches on my eyeshadow. Turned out the chick they hired to do makeup wasn’t that great, so Takira offered to handle that, too. She cut her teeth in New York, and has done hair and makeup for TV shows, theater, movies, and commercials. Every possible medium runs through the city, and she has experience in them all.
“Sure.” She catches my eyes in the mirror. “Do like this.”
She pops her lips. I mimic, evening out the shock of matte red lipstick.
“This old-school look is made for you, Neev,” Takira says, smoothing a strand of hair into my updo.
I still double take when I see myself in the mirror before I go out to set. Standing in my tricked-out trailer, surrounded by every modern accoutrement, including a gigantic flat-screen television built into the wall, I’m an anachronism. My Victory roll hairstyle. Linh’s vintage costumes designed with such flare and attention to detail. When I slip on the dresses that swish against my legs, the sheer stockings, or a velvet bucket hat, I’m transported into Dessi’s world: a city struggling to drag itself from the Great Depression. Black people, striving to live and love and laugh and sing in a world that sometimes made all those things harder to do. But they carved out a vibrant, spectacular community in Harlem. A time of excellence and style and art. Of fur-trimmed coats and pomade-slicked hair and satin gloves. A place populated with dancers and dreamers and thinkers and agitators and writers and folks just living. Making do and making history in the trench of everyday life.
Each time I step out of this trailer, I’m at the corner of then and now. The production team transformed this back lot into a world long lost. Lafayette Theatre. The Savoy Ballroom. 139th Street. Lennox Avenue. The Radium Club. With Monk as their conductor, the ghosts of Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, and Louis Armstrong play their songs, dousing the air with notes of aching nostalgia.
“You said you need to run some lines?” Takira asks, snapping shut a tray of eye shadows and lovingly stowing her prized collection of brushes.
“Oh, yeah. I’m worried about this scene.”
“You’re not a complete novice. You’ve done some commercials and stuff.”
I give her my are you shitting me face.
“Commercials and stuff is not a feature film. The learning curve is steep,” I say, grabbing one of two rolled up scripts from a nearby table for myself and hand her the other. I keep two copies with me all the time because I constantly recruit someone to run lines with me. “And working with one of the best directors in the industry doesn’t help my nerves.”
“We never actually see him on set.” Takira laughs. “How can someone who isn’t there make you nervous?”
Canon watches from video village, a tent filled with screens so he can see every camera angle and shot we’re capturing in real time. The assistant director, Kenneth, out on set, is in constant communication with him. Canon is still extremely hands-on, and more than once I’ve seen him on a crane camera up in the air, checking shots before we start rolling.
He is the kind of man you meet once in a lifetime. Yes, he’s sharp and takes no shit, but I want that. To do my best, I need that. We all know he’s the magnetic nucleus holding this together. He carries this story and the pulse of it beats inside of him. He’s protective of Dessi’s journey, its chief guardian, but he’s also concerned about his actors. For his art, he’s obsessive and distracted and focused and impatient and longsuffering. He’s a million things and he’s single-minded.
It’s getting harder not to want him. Every day I stomp on this unfortunate longing, this ill-advised craving, this dead-end desire. And I cannot make it stop.
The knock at my trailer door dispels my thoughts.
“They’re ready for you, Ms. Saint,” a voice says from the other side.
I didn’t get to review my lines one more time. The question is am I ready?