a rack; she was the nosiest waitress on the planet.
He ignored her, and skimmed his thumb across the screen in order to take the call. “This is Zach Alger.”
“Mickey Flick here.” A crisp, easy familiarity mellowed the voice. The guy sounded as if he and Zach talked every week.
Zach held his breath. Mickey Flick headed up an outfit in Century City noted for its wildly successful celebrity reality shows. Zach was no fan of the genre, having little interest in watching has-been actors in some ludicrous setup. He was, however, a fan of the success of the shows. He’d been in contact with Mickey Flick Productions, knowing it was a crazy roll of the dice. There had been several emails back and forth with various assistants, but still, he hadn’t expected anything to come of it. Now here was the guy, calling him out of the blue.
“Hey,” he said, trying not to fumble. “Thanks for calling me back.”
“Not a problem. We were glad to hear from you. We’ve been going over the samples you sent in.”
Zach felt himself teetering on the brink. He knew, he just knew his life was about to change. “Wow. Well,” he said, “I’m flattered you had a look. I hope you liked what you saw.”
“Hell, yeah, we liked them. You’ve definitely got the technical expertise and the eye we’re looking for, so I wanted to see if you’re available for a new production that’s about to start filming.”
Available? Available? Was he available for Mickey-freaking-Flick?
“Could be,” he said, hoping to sound measured. Interested, but not too eager. “Tell me more.”
“For the time being, I can’t say much. You’ll get more details from Clyde Bombier, my production exec. It’ll be a reality show, all under wraps until we’re ready to go wide with it. What I can tell you is that it’s a sixteen-week gig, it involves a major talent and a name director. You’d work directly with him.”
“Okay,” Zach said. “You have my attention.”
He tried not to hyperventilate as he listened to the terms being offered. The money alone made his head spin, but the real excitement kicked in when Flick said he was sending a formal letter of offer and a contract via email.
Zach thanked him and hung up, looking around the bakery at the coffee drinkers, the tourists and locals, the little kids smearing their hands on the glass cases, the old guys with their crossword puzzles. These people had no idea that the world had just shifted for him. Finally the dream was coming into reach. He’d been trying to get a break forever, sending out his portfolio of digital clips, emailing them into what seemed like a black hole of digital ether. He’d been networking through people in the business who were at least six degrees away from West Coast and New York producers. Each award he won, each scrap of recognition, hoisted him another rung up the ladder, but until now, nothing had materialized.
The opportunity was still so new, he had only the sketchiest idea of what was in store for him next. He knew for certain Mickey Flick had a reputation for doing things in a big way. The guy had mentioned that this opportunity was a major production. Major. It was the biggest thing that had ever happened to Zach, for sure.
The current project was so top secret he would only learn the details when everything was in place. All he knew was he’d been offered a fortune to work on the production. He wondered why they’d picked him, given all the talent in the business. He wouldn’t quibble. The money was nice, it was more than he’d dreamed of making, but that wasn’t the part that excited him. What really excited him was the crazy array of possibilities that now lay before him.
Speculating on what the secret plan for the show might be, he dreamed of Malibu, maybe filming a surf competition. Or perhaps there would be a crew of castaways on Fiji, mountaineers in Colorado. Or a rock group in Amsterdam. Yeah, that’d be awesome. Mickey Flick was known to work closely with some of the biggest names in the music business. His last hit had involved a world-class heavy metal star’s collaboration with a classical pianist, culminating in a triumphant performance in Carnegie Hall.
Zach couldn’t wait to see what was in store for him. And at the end of it all, he’d finally have the seed money to start living his dream.
The people in the café carried on, oblivious. Just for a second, Zach felt a twinge of frustration. He wanted to call somebody, tell somebody, share this amazing news. And the person he most wanted to share it with was the last one who wanted to hear.
Part Three
MUST-DO LIST (REVISED, AGAIN)
What we remember from childhood we remember forever—permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.
—CYNTHIA OZICK, AMERICAN WRITER, B. 1928
Chapter Five
Sonnet awakened as the train from the city lurched into the station at Avalon. Just for a moment, she felt fuzzy and disoriented, her sleepy mind flipping through all her many homecomings. As a new, homesick college student, she’d arrived with a sense of relief, eager to be enfolded in the comfort of her mother’s arms. During her various internships overseas, she’d visited less often, but always with appreciation. Yet as time went on, the town where she’d been born and raised seemed smaller and smaller to her, with less and less to tie her to the pretty lakeside hamlet. While her world was expanding, Avalon remained the same.
She felt strange about this homecoming, for a lot of reasons. It made her seem like she was going backward into a world where she no longer fit or belonged.
Grabbing her bags from the luggage rack, she stepped down to the platform and looked around. Same little burg, with its picturesque square, the old brick buildings huddled shoulder-to-shoulder, their striped and scalloped awnings shadowing the shops and businesses she’d walked past every day as she was growing up.
She noticed a bit of commotion on another car as a group of people got off, lugging hard cases of equipment and rolls of cable on hand trucks. There were a couple of guys and women, dressed mostly in black, looking around as if they’d stepped off a spacecraft onto an alien planet. One of the guys wore a black baseball cap with the logo MFP, and the equipment boxes were marked Mickey Flick Productions.
Sonnet thought they might be a camera crew. Back when her mother served as the town mayor, she’d set up a volunteer film commission to attract business. A place like Avalon didn’t see much action, but every once in a while a crew came through to create footage of the quaint town, or of fall foliage or sometimes aerial views of the area. It was a place that seemed frozen in time, achingly pretty, useful for establishing a historic or generic small town setting. A few years back, there had been a public television documentary on the annual Christmas pageant that had created quite a stir.
The PBS camera crew hadn’t looked like this bunch, however. These people had that edgy East or West Coast look. They consulted smartphones and lit up cigarettes before moving en masse to a large panel van parked in the commuter lot.
Seeing