The studio consulted a meteorologist who assured them that the wet season extended into April. Victor Ames remembered this as he stared at the nineteenth consecutive cloudless morning over the Mojave Desert, the sky overhead a merciless, beautiful blue that belonged on a postcard none of them wanted to receive.
The picture was called The Drowning Road. Nobody missed the irony.
Victor had built his career filming in New York apartments, preferring the cramped, oppressive nature of their architecture to pair with men in undershirts who had epiphanies in their kitchens at 2 a.m. He understood that world. He'd come out west chasing one scene: his fugitive protagonist crossing an open plain in a biblical downpour, distant mountains adding flavor to the visual. The studio promised a wet April. April had other plans.
Now six people sat waiting in teak chairs on their hotel terrace, overlooking a flat ridge above the desert floor, angled southwest like broken weather vanes. They waited, yet again, for rain that was apparently embarrassed to show up.
Dottie Marsh, the script supervisor, had told Victor after day three not to worry. "Today's the day… I can feel it in my bones," she'd said, feeling the indicative throb in her knees. The throbbing went away on day eight. Now she just sat with her clipboard on her knee and a pencil poised above a page she hadn't touched in days, staring at the horizon with nothing better to do.
What she was actually writing, on the pages she shielded from everyone else, was a roman-à-clef about a film crew stranded in a desert. She'd already killed off the director twice. She kept bringing him back because she needed more tension.
"The Mojave light was extraordinary and completely wrong for The Drowning Road, but absolutely right for the other films that nobody had hired him to make."
People in the Sun
Ray Beaumont, the cinematographer, had stopped pretending to work on day five. The Mojave light was extraordinary and completely wrong for The Drowning Road, but absolutely right for the other films that nobody had hired him to make. He passed the time sketching the landscape. Morning light near the ridge. The way shadows moved across scrub brush at four in the afternoon. He showed it to no one except Lena Cross, who had caught him sketching her on day twelve.
Lena was the lead actress. She'd been promised their excursion to the desert would only last three weeks maximum. Rome was waiting. Her Italian director called every other day, leaving messages with the hotel's front desk. She stopped responding. A novel had replaced her next script as her companion, having already committed her next project to memory. The bookmark had not advanced far in her novel since Ray had sketched her in his room, and what had started as harmless flirtation had turned into something else.
· · ·
"I'm in all of these," she said one evening, paging through Ray's sketchbook by lantern light, alone on the terrace.
"You keep evading my light," he purred, his dimple prominent.
"Then maybe I should move," she responded, planting her hands at her side to stand up.
Ray took her hand and pulled her to him. She did not put up a fight.
"I guess I will consume your light then," she said, touching her nose to his.
"And I will be your shadow," he responded, kissing her.
· · ·
Curtis Faber, the assistant director, dealt with the waiting the only way he knew how: he refused to acknowledge it. He adjusted equipment that ran fine. Re-scouted locations they'd mapped three times. And completed daily equipment checks. Having exhausted his list of duties, he waited with the others. The newscaster had predicted rain that afternoon. Not a cloud littered the sky.
Harlan Stack, the fugitive protagonist, had been a bit of a disappointment acting-wise. But he was the draw, the face that sells movie tickets. The studio loved the promo shots of him and Lena. Victor was not looking forward to their reaction to his speaking lines. Harlan was not very talkative before, but the desert did something to him. He hadn't said a word since week one. Nothing at all. But he kept showing up every morning and taking his chair like a man attending church, with the mountains as his pastor. He unnerved the others by his lack of engagement, just sitting there waiting for lunch to be delivered.
Day Nineteen · Mojave Desert · Not a Cloud in the Sky
A cloud appeared on the western ridge at three. Then another. The crew stood at the plateau's edge and watched the sky assemble itself into something gray and serious. Victor called positions. His hands shook. Ray loaded the film with precision and took a deep breath. He wanted this to be flawless, as he feared they would lose the light for a second retake. Lena took her mark, her novel face-down in the dirt, forgotten. Harlan had disappeared after lunch, but Dottie was hunting him down.
The clouds crossed over them.
They dissolved. Not a drop.
They stood in the returning sun. Nobody moved. Lena laughed. Ray smiled at his boots. Dottie joined them red-faced with a flustered Harlan, who remained in a t-shirt and boxers, his outfit folded across his arm.
Victor stood at the edge of the plateau for a long time, looking out at the gorgeous desert floor.
Maybe we shoot with what we have. A fugitive protagonist crossing an open plain in blaring sunlight is equally poignant.
"Screw the rain," Victor said.
"Screw the rain!" The others responded as they cheered.
They took their places. Finished shooting as the clouds rolled back in. They ate dinner as the rain poured down. Evening had descended, so a reshoot was not possible.
· · ·
The next morning, Ray tore a page from his sketchbook and left it on Lena's chair. She found it after her shower — a sketch of her laughing at the plateau, the row of empty chairs on the terrace behind her, his sketchbook lying on the table.
She packed it with her things and finally left for Rome.
Dottie finished her book six months later. She changed their names. She kept where she found Harlan that last afternoon.