Page 11 of Good Enough

Finally, they arrived at Kubrick’s office, a trailer on a side street between sound stages and visible to the inner parking lot. She handed him a bottle of water from her refrigerator. Cracking her own open and downing half of it, she slid into the round booth-like table littered with papers, pens, highlighters, notepads, photos, blueprints, and renderings. She began unpacking her backpack of death. It was clear that she used the table as her desk. She motioned for Waters to have a seat across from her.

“So, what do you think?” she asked.

“I think you need a bigger workspace,” he commented as he sat.

Blushing, she stood as best she could between the bench seat and the table edge and started to pick up piles of items, attempting to put them into some semblance of a neat stack. “Sorry.”

He reached over and placed his hands on top of the pile she was trying to pick up and held them down. Their eyes met.

Her skin is burning me.

He drew back his hands. “No need to be sorry. Everyone works differently. I’m just used to clear space, in and out boxes, and folders,” he replied. She sat down, brushing her hair back, trying to tame it into her signature ponytail. She was embarrassed, and that hadn’t been his intent.

She smiled, looking up at him through her eyelashes. “Yeah, I’m a bit obsessive about having everything on paper. And it looks like a bomb went off, I know, but I can lay my hands on anything at any moment.”

“Nothing wrong with it. You should see our conference room table when planning a job. Tablets are popular, but I still love paper planning.” He sat. “As for OPT, I always have contingencies for contingencies.”

“OPT?” she asked.

“Obsessive Planning Tendencies. I do nothing without extensive plotting and planning.”

She bit her lip as if she were wondering if she should say something more, then clearly decided against it by sitting up straight and looking at him directly. “What I meant,” she said, getting back to her original question, “was what do you think about what you saw on the walkabout?

“I saw a lot of things, so you’ll need to be a little more specific.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.” A soft sigh came through her lips, and she began rolling a pencil back and forth on the table, focusing all her attention on it. “Between that and the mess of a script I handed you, it seemed like the perfect setup for an opening salvo. I figured I would meet that head-on.”

He studied her suddenly downtrodden expression. He was puzzled. “You’re expecting me to take shots at you?”

This woman is an emotional whirlwind. Keeping up with her is definitely going to require me to pay extra attention.

“Well, yes, to be honest.” Her eyes turned to the window that was to her left. As she peered through the slats of the half-closed blinds, he heard a wistfulness in her voice that he’d not heard from her before. Like she was resigned. “It’s been a theme for today. I’m never very high on my producer’s list, never good enough for his expectations. I’m unclear as to why he hired me if he hates me so much. But today, he was being extra dickish. It’s getting tiresome fighting him for each and every budget line item. Next thing I know, I’ll be forced to count every single paperclip I use.” She snorted. “It took everything in me today not to beat him to death with a stapler. Ironic since the man is such a tool himself.”

He tilted his head a little as he studied her.

Curious. Another juxtaposition. Confident in her abilities but vulnerable when under the microscope.

“No love lost between the two of you.”

A sardonic bark of laughter came forward from her.

“That bad, huh?”

She shrugged, then blew air out of her lips and up toward her forehead while turning her gaze back to the pencil in her fingertips. “You’re a former Navy SEAL. If I paid you extra, could you tie him up to a chair with some zip ties, put a black hood over his head, and leave him in a deserted shack until May sometime?”

He quirked an eyebrow at her.

“I guess that means helping me with doing away with him and hiding the body is definitely off the table.”

Both eyebrows raised this time.

“Well, fuck. There goes doing this the easy way.”

This woman was ridiculous in an amazing way. “I realize you’re not serious with those questions, but are you always so open with what you want?”

“Pretty much. I find that playing games takes too long and too much effort. Most women seem to excel at that kind of thing. I’ve never been able to master that particular XX chromosome characteristic.”

Thank fuck for that.

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