Page 43 of Good Enough

“Fuckers,” Waters mumbled under his breath. “They’ll be the death of me.”

To his left, Kubrick sighed and snuggled further into him in her sleep. He kissed the top of her head again and then shut his eyes. It was going to be a very long three months.

14

FEBRUARY 23RD

Waters

The house the eight of them were living in was a security nightmare.

It had the capability of modern conveniences, but they were not entirely dependable since the nearest town, Coxen Hole, which was also the capital city of the island, was ten miles away. There was the town, and then suddenly there wasn’t, so things went from primitive to archaic quickly. This meant there was electricity, but other than the kitchen, it was relegated to fireplaces downstairs, one table lamp per room, and a single naked bulb ceiling light in the bathrooms. There was a possibility for hot water, but usually only in the downstairs sinks and tubs. And the internet was available, but service could be spotty.

On the second floor, the actress had a room to herself, and the five men were bunked as a double and a triple while sharing a single full bathroom between the six of them. There were no curtains on any of the windows and only floor rugs on any of the floors.

Downstairs was only slightly better conditions-wise.

On the first floor was a large farmer’s style kitchen, with a huge picture window above the sink and a mud room between it and the so-called backyard. While there were electrical outlets, most of the appliances they attached to were ancient. Waters noticed that the stove was gas and there was no coffee maker, so cooking would be simple, and they’d be making coffee and hot chocolate the old-fashioned way.

The front of the house was split between two main rooms: an old-fashioned parlor room and a library.

He had taken the old-fashioned parlor, which had somewhat recently been turned into a bedroom for someone who had been unable to climb the stairs of the house. A bathroom existed between the parlor and the kitchen, but it was so tiny he barely fit in it along with the toilet, sink, and clawfoot tub.

Across the hall from the parlor was what Kubrick dubbed the War Room, which was basically an old-fashioned library. Double doors opened into a large space with bookcases on three walls that went to the ceiling, two tall windows looking out into the so-called front yard from the fourth wall, a fireplace, a massive handmade antique desk with a high-backed leather chair behind it, a long leather sofa with a matching loveseat and armchair, a long rectangular coffee table, plus her workstation, which was basically a stand-up drafting table.

Weirdly enough, the room did have an older flat-screen television that could get a few local channels, including baseball for Kubrick. Secretly, it also gave Waters a source for Midas to hack into for security cameras. Thank goodness the man was a genius at seeing and hearing in places where most people could barely get cell service. During their first day of training, TB, Nemo, and Demon were going to be rushing to install short-term cameras and microphones for surveillance.

The one saving grace was that Kubrick’s bedroom suite was only accessible through the War Room.

After the first four hours in the house alone, he’d tried to reason with her about locking up rooms and safeguarding personal items, as well as personal safety. She’d shot him down.

Then he tried playing the “prevention of curious locals from poking around” card and emphasized the potential invasions of their privacy, let alone their personal safety, especially when they would be out of the building for long periods of time with no security staff to watch over the building. She’d thrown back her head and laughed in his face.

When it was clear she wasn’t going to see things his way, Waters had to give Kubrick an unconditional rule seven, which was that, at the very least, the War Room was to remain locked at all times. She’d gotten all ruffled and stomped off, muttering “Christ on a crutch” and something about military men with an obsession for bad guys around every corner, but she hadn’t actually argued with him about it, so it was a huge victory in his mind.

As far as the film project itself, despite himself, he was encouraged by the actors’ commitment and impressed that they weren’t the prima donnas he had feared they would be. It gave him pause, too, because he hadn’t expected to like them as much as he did. There was very little ego amongst them when they were together, and they balanced the work with the fun. Not the stereotypical idea of Hollywood stars at all.

But then again, is that a surprise? Would Kubrick willfully work with people who were difficult? Not likely.

Benjamin, nicknamed Lazarus, was playing the part of a former SEAL gone rogue, making him the villain in the film. He appeared to have some Native American ancestry in him that made all the women on the crew lose their ever-loving minds.

Maddox, nicknamed Dawg, was the perfect male lead: tall, blond, ripped, and as Sookie described him, “sex on a stick.” Without question, his real-life persona and his nickname fit together all too well. Waters had a feeling it would be a very bad idea to introduce him to Nemo, Tribe’s resident bad boy. He could only imagine them keeping scorecards on the scandalous things they’d done and where they’d done them.

Luca, nicknamed Jumper, came from a small rural town in Wisconsin and had been a three-sport athlete who could have signed to play quarterback at several major universities but chose instead to follow his heart to Hollywood. When Jumper arrived, he was dressed all Ken-doll chic with perfect blond hair and blue eyes. The next morning, he’d shown up with a self-shaved head, missing the blue-colored contacts, and ready to run.

Caleb, nicknamed Brick, lived up to the name. Of African ancestry, he was built like a rugby player—short, compact, and all muscle. His mouth was constantly going to the point that Kubrick kept telling him he had diarrhea of the mouth—it just kept running. Waters had a very difficult time keeping a straight face on that one and had to pretend he’d swallowed wrong to cough and suppress the laughter.

Cameron, nicknamed Enigma, was a dark horse. Tall, dark, and handsome, he was muscled and tattooed to the point of being the movie cliché SEAL. All the stereotypical vices had been a part of his life: the uppers to keep him focused, the benzos to get him to come down, blackout drinking, hangers-on supplying every narcotic known to man, a new woman on his arm every time he was photographed, and arrests for the destruction of property and assaulting a paparazzi. But this Enigma that Waters saw seemed to have things under control and was allegedly going on five years sober.

The last piece of the puzzle was Sookie, nicknamed Vixen. Tiny to the point of ridiculousness, long brown hair, and exotic green eyes, she was a walking dynamo and reminded him of a World War II pin-up girl. She was a blindingly beautiful girl, sugar sweet, and sincerely kind. However, she was a terrible flirt with all of the guys, including him, which was something he was finding uncomfortable for the first time in his life.

Overall, he was pleased with the group’s efforts. It was easy to see that they would be good for the parts Kubrick had cast them in as they were already playing with personality traits when they trained—another insistence Kubrick made of them in order to try and get the foundation work for their characters to be natural, so they didn’t have to also work on that when it came time to film. Things that she liked, they finessed into their process. Things that didn’t work, they tossed and didn’t return to. She was efficient at layering the job, like the character development on top of the training. At meals, she had them develop and share backstories for the characters, or she would have them improvise scenes the characters might find themselves in during everyday life. One of the things he had noticed about the script was that she often reworked scenes around action—eating meals, cleaning guns, packing parachutes—so that everything felt like it moved. Like people always multitasking in real life, nothing was static.

After the evening meals, they met in the War Room and continued the work, doing read-throughs, discussing scenes, and running lines. But they also used the time to get to know how each other worked or hang out. They genuinely liked each other, and it took almost no time to develop. Just last night, they had found a closet filled with board games, and a near-violent game of Team Battleship erupted with the stakes of laundry, garbage, and dish duty for a week on the line. Dawg and Brick lost spectacularly, which caused Jumper to go outside and roll around in the mud just so the laundry became more interesting.

And heaven forbid they caught anything baseball-related on the local TV, even a rerun from thirty years ago. The actors would heckle Kubrick and whatever team she rooted for as if they were fans of the opposing team, drink warm beer, make popcorn in the fireplace, and then throw said popcorn at Kubrick. All this while she tried to watch the game, answer emails, storyboard scenes, do rewrites, and discuss ideas with him. But she got distracted often. Mostly by food.

Cute. As. Fuck.

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