Page 29 of Nantucket Gala

From the look in Bernard’s eyes, Henry could tell his grandfather was proud of coming up with this connection. The look seemed to suggest: You thought your grandmother would be your only help in this process? Think again!

At sixty-three years old, Barry Summers had seen forty years of the film industry and championed more than two hundred films. His hair was a shock of white, and he had no facial hair, a rarity these days. His face gleamed. At the little wine bar where they’d agreed to meet, Henry shook his hand and thanked him for his time, feeling jittery. But Barry was terribly pleased to meet “a new generation of Copperfields.”

“I knew your grandfather back in the seventies, eighties, and nineties,” he explained. “I begged him to write scripts and join the film world because it was absolutely on fire back then. That’s where the money was! It still is. But he refused.”

Henry laughed. “I think he’s always been a romantic. And writing books is the most romantic thing I can think of.” He searched his mind for more to say, wanting to seem more sophisticated and smarter than he was, but found nothing. How did Bernard and Greta do it? How did they schmooze?

Barry shook his head and took a sip of wine. Henry half expected him to say something about Bernard’s prison sentence, about his “lost years,” but instead, he dove right in.

“Okay, kid. I read your script.”

Henry’s heart pounded. In his lap, his hands were in fists.

Barry inched across the table so that his nose was just a few inches from Henry’s. “Son, you have something here. You really do.”

It was the first time Henry had heard something like that from a producer. He exhaled all the air from his lungs and dared a smile.

“It’s fascinating,” Barry said. “I love the character of the director. He’s so paranoid. And I love the way his wife holds her abilities over his head like that! It’s perfect cinema. And you know, the script really feeds what people want to see right now. It feeds the algorithm if you will. It’s got everything. It’s got feminism. It’s got true crime. It’s got an evil husband. And it’s sort of based on a true story, which always boosts it into the public eye. I imagine a lot more people will be talking about Francis and Sophia soon enough. I imagine a documentary about them and Natalie Masterson’s mysterious death will be released around the time of our film! We can hire someone to do that. Sometimes even Netflix jumps on board.”

Henry nodded, thinking about the scenes he’d sculpted and his decisions about fake-Francis and fake-Sophia. What did Barry think of his “alterations” of the truth? He thought he was going to faint.

In his script, the Sophia character wrote the screenplays that Francis then filmed, just as in real life. But then, Henry’s script took a creative leap, based only on assumptions Henry had made from clues about Francis’s real life. A story based on a story based on a story. Fake-Francis started having an affair with fake-Natalie. When Natalie fell head-over-heels for him, she told him she was going to go public with their affair. She wanted no one but him, and she wanted him to herself. Although fake-Francis was fully in love with fake-Natalie, he knew he couldn’t give up on his marriage to fake-Sophia. After all, Sophia was the one who wrote his scripts. Sophia was the genius behind his films.

In Henry’s film, fake-Natalie came to Francis in the middle of the Nantucket Gala and told him that she was going to tell Sophia about their affair. After a terrible argument, Francis killed Natalie with a steak knife and thrust her body into the Nantucket Sound.

“But I love that you demand more of your story than what really happened,” Barry continued. “In your movie, people will love to see the director character thrown in prison. They’ll say ‘justice should be served to Francis Bianchi, too!’ I can already imagine the T-shirts we’ll sell.”

Henry laughed nervously and rubbed the sweat from his hands onto his thighs.

Strangely, an image flashed in his head of his grandfather in prison. He wasn’t guilty. Maybe Francis wasn’t guilty, either? He didn’t know. He swallowed more wine.

“But it’s wonderful that the fake-Sophia character becomes the true filmmaker in your version,” Barry went on.

“It wasn’t too heavy-handed?” Henry asked.

“Not at all. People want women to win,” Barry went on.

“I want women to win,” Henry countered. “And it’s the reality Sophia should have had.”

Barry tilted his head. Was Henry going to tell him the truth?

Maybe it’ll help sell the script, he thought.

He dove in.

“Sophia was the one who wroteA CataclysmandA Sacred Fig,” he explained. “She told me herself.”

Barry raised his bushy white eyebrows all the way to his hairline. “This is quite a story.”

“It’s the truth,” Henry said.

Barry rubbed his palms together. He looked celebratory. “Well, kid. This is really something.” And then he added, “I have a brilliant idea.”

Henry’s thoughts were moving too quickly. “What is it?”

“We need to get Sophia involved!”

Henry stopped breathing. He crossed his arms.

---