H&A for C

Alexa is sitting alone on a guest chair. Her hands, with painted gray fingernails, clasp an ink blue bag nesting on her lap. She comes across as patient, polite and her posture as dignified and modest, a hint of her years in a European boarding school.

An executive in a black pants suit sees her in the diagonal from the far end of a football field sized bank of office cubicles. The suit immediately cuts through a row to the window aisle and then speed walks down a long column toward her. The suit’s long hair is blown back by the dynamic movement of the long determined strides she makes toward Alexa. Lightning flashes in the sky behind her and rain torrents silently against the floor to ceiling glass.

Suit stops at a cubicle a few feet away and bends over the worker bee occupant.

She quietly asks him, “Why is she sitting there?”

Office worker responds in kind, softly whispering, “She is here for a screening.”

Suit is angrier and less patient, “That is why I asked, why is she sitting there? She is not here just for a screening, this is Alexa Ames, the executive producer of the ‘Westfield pic’, she is here to approve a scene’s final cut.”

Suit steps backward from the worker and toward Alexa mouthing to him, “Come to my office please just after this,” and then she turns around and blossoms into a welcoming for Alexa with a big smile and low open hands to walk her in for a hug.

Suit is effusive to a point, “Hi, I’m terribly sorry to have you wait. The screening room is set-up and waiting your arrival.” It is a corporate trait to apologize but never explain yourself out of a slight.

She continues, “Can I get you anything, like something hot or cold to drink?”

Alexa being British is polite but also brings a bite.

Alexa responds, “Oh, please don’t worry and also thank you, a glass of sparkling water with ice and a slice of lemon would be nice.”

Alexa then waves a small box of Kleenex and continues, “If I don’t use these, then we will probably need to recut,” now holding her fingers out mimicking cutting scissors and smiling at her own joke.

Suit does not accept the joke and feels disarmed.

“Forever and Back: Scene 5. Directors Cut,” against a white background lights up the screening room.

Even in the comfort of the cinema chairs, Alexa maintains her dignified deportment.

As suit steps backward out of the room closing the doors in front of her and leaving Alexa to her privacy, the movie starts.

Hamish has a feeling as if he is sinking into the city as he stands in the middle of an elevator on its way down to the reception. As it stops on a stream of floors and fills with young corporates that surround him, he feels like he knows them all too well. Like all his friends who graduated with him from N.Y.U. some weeks ago, they are young and having fun working high paying jobs in the greatest and most hedonistic city in the world.

The happy group around him headed out to lunch makes him feel like he left something behind in his decision to try and be an actor. That feeling is enhanced by his perfect track record of rejection. Hamish’s self confidence fights against a deflated low of emptiness for not receiving any reaction to his audition from its jury of decision makers.

Moments before as Hamish left an office on a high floor, he bent to the authority of the room to give them one last, ‘thank you’ and also to take the handle to close the door in front of himself. Three casting agents sat behind a desk under the white burn of the office lighting. They were oblivious to his last gesture as they huddled over their shared notes. An assistant stepped out from behind the door to aid and speed up Hamish’s exit. She smiled and gave him a thumbs up which came across as disingenuous, but she did watch him leave as if she wanted to remember him.

The elevator door opens and the group bends around Hamish as they race out to their lunch. From behind him, a woman brushes past and turns to look at him which she does for at least two steps before she turns to her companion. All too obviously her friend then twists her head enough to get a sight of him and then snaps back when she sees him watching them.

Being noticed is little comfort to Hamish today. He steps out into a large modern lobby with a sky high ceiling dropping strings of crystal lights.

Three dimensional signage for ‘American Communication, Media and Entertainment, Inc.’ runs along a wall of glass panels like a Robert Indiana statue knock off.

Hamish looks out to the grass, fountains, flags on high poles and probably everyone else in New York City lunching in the square in front of the tower. He is lost in consideration for his next move and contemplating the loneliness of the rest of his wide open day.

A few moments later, Hamish breaks out of his day dreaming and walks out to the square and then strolls aimlessly into the city and up toward the park.

Hamish eventually rests on some stairs leading up to a brownstone townhouse. Full-bodied, rounded and rich evergreen boxwoods path the way up. This brownstone has a black facade that has fixed, double glazed windows that appear to be permanently sealed in place. He imagines the casting agents still watching him through a security camera above the ink navy front door.

Hamish watches people go by while sipping irregularly from a cup of iced espresso with oat milk that he picked up from an NBA player’s side hustle artisanal coffee cart.

He notices a woman walking up the street and aiming toward him. Although he watched her approach, Hamish is caught off guard and surprised when she stops incredibly close to him, planting a foot on an upper step just an inch away from his lap.

Amanda bends over her knee, looking directly into his eyes. She pauses, as if appraising him. Hamish feels a tinge of adrenaline and confusion from the personal interaction, a respite from his otherwise isolated afternoon.

Amanda has winter blonde hair and is strikingly pretty, a confusion of ski and surf styles in a short Dior skirt paired with worker boots. She exudes a mix of uptown weary and downtown wise, and her smile reflects both attitude and acumen.

Her voice is soft and more timid than he imagined her, “Excuse me sir.”

Hamish falls back on his arms supporting himself behind his back to create some polite distance to her and he replies, “Um, sure, how can I help?”

Now Amanda is more direct, expeditious, determined, no-nonsense, that New York style, “Can I get past you, these are my steps,” as her head looks up to point out that small fact.

Hamish jumps up embarrassingly and out of her way on to the sidewalk as Amanda misses steps with leaps up to the door.

As Hamish walks away, he twists his head to watch her stride up the stairs and then hears Amanda sing, “He’s so handsome,” knowing that she intended for him to catch it.

The door opens for Amanda and then falls to a close behind her. Amanda never looked back at Hamish since she lifted her head to point up the stairs. Hamish smiles, impressed by her game play.

His walk is more purposeful now, Amanda’s fleeting fly-by feels ephemeral and thinking of her, like a muse, formulates and nourishes his maturing sense of being.

Over the next weeks, Hamish intentionally passes that black townhouse countless times and he never sees Amanda again. On each occasion the trees became incrementally heavier with leaves that turned greener and the shade more essential as summer in the city crept up on them.

Hamish and two other couples stumble out of a car as the sun rises on the public access alley between houses on a beach in Southhampton, New York. The women, wearing baby blue ‘bridesmaid dresses’ kick their heels off randomly and run screaming onto the beach.

The three men, wearing tuxedos, jog up to a rise of dune lit up by the crescent of sun on the horizon. Hamish just watches as his friends pull off their shoes and then run off after their girlfriends.

Feeling he drank too much, slept too little and the only one without a girlfriend, he lets them run ahead up the beach. Recently, spending time with his friends gives him the reoccurring feeling that he left too much on the table when he decided to be an actor. He also feels the burden of his parents hopes and the weight of social convention pulling him back from his change of path. He is worried, like an nascent adult, that nothing he does will be meaningful.

Hamish sits on the steps of a boardwalk path that stretches out from a house over the protected sand dunes and wild grasses to the beach. He is tranced by the waves hypnotic carve up the break.

Amanda in a wetsuit with wet hairs steps out of the halo of rising sun behind her and aims directly for Hamish.

Amanda is playfully astonished standing hands to hip looking down to Hamish, she exclaims, “Huh! Again, here you are, in my way, sitting on my steps.”

Hamish is paralyzed and speechless.

Amanda looks up and down at him dressed immaculately in a tuxedo at sunrise on her beach, knowing he still cannot find words, she is sarcastic, teasing and ironic but also astute, “You look a mess. You better come with me. Come on then, lets go.”

She lifts her head up leading the way to the house and this time Hamish stands and follows her.

Amanda turns to look at Hamish and says, “By the way, I’m Amanda Arden,” and without waiting for a reply she continues up the boardwalk.

Hamish replies, “I’m Hamish. Hamish Westfield.”

Amanda turns her head again this time ever so slightly and says, “Of course you are.”

Hamish is once again confused by his encounter with Amanda and he wonders if this trait of her being so familiar epitomizes her or it’s something specific to him.

Following her up to the house, he finally finds the equilibrium to speak, “This is all a little ‘Bondesque’. This serendipitous meeting, I’m in a tuxedo, you’re in a wetsuit. This sun rising over the beach house.”

Amanda turns to Hamish and says, “Oh, I’m sorry to spoil the image for you, Handsome, but you’re just coming in to meet my mother. She is going to make you a ‘smoofy’.”

‘We Have All the Time in the World’ song by Louis Armstrong loops in Hamish’s head.

Alexa recalls the countless times Hamish Westfield would anecdote that he fell in love with Amanda the moment she turned to introduce herself on the walk-up from the beach. Her sweet smile and confident big eyes widened by salty ocean clustered long eyelashes, pulled him up to the house and trapped him, literally.

Amanda walks into a shower next to the pool and pulls out of her wetsuit transforming from super-hero to super woman in a string bikini and goosebumps caused by her now exposed skin. Hamish is polite and waits on the side looking away and up to the glass front of the beach house. He glances briefly over to Amanda and catches her throwing her hair back. He imagines it feels like an ice bath.

Amanda wraps herself around a terry cloth robe that was folded on the chaise longue next to her. She pats her face and wipes her eyes one more time with the robe’s lapel then she takes a few steps to Hamish and takes his hand. She walks him into a space between the privacy curtains blowing out from the patio doors and into the house.

Amanda leads Hamish to the kitchen counter and says, “Take a seat and I’ll be right back,” and then she skips up some stairs.

Hamish’s quietly stands up and sneaks toward a large console or library against a long wall. His curiosity is killing him.

He is absorbed by the photos on the wall. He surmises that the man and woman pictured aging through the photos are Amanda’s parents. Similarly the toddler to teenager is Amanda. Amanda’s mother is featured in a series of pictures with the revered and the rejected. He recognizes most of them and guesses others. She is in a desert surrounded by famine and in a rice paddy tending to a crop. Hamish recognizes Nancy Reagan, Stephen Spielberg and he is certain another is Golda Meir. He imagines that her sitting at a lunch table with lavender and herb vines hanging behind them is with Jacques Chirac in the South of France.

Hamish takes quiet, agile steps back to the kitchen counter as he hears Amanda walking down the stairs holding her mother’s hand.

Amanda, still across the room, calls out to Hamish, “Hamish this is my mom, Eva.”

Hamish stands to a modest, “Hello, good morning.”

Eva greets him, “Good Morning,” and then she stops to look at him, up and down, that style.

She smiles as if to convey he passed some esoteric test and continues, “Welcome to our home, come, sit, do you want some coffee?”

Eva does not let him answer before she continues, “I am making smoothies for us,” as she walks Hamish into that.

Eva collects some ingredients from the freezer and then fridge while asking, “Hamish? I like the name, interesting,” passing the conversation train over to him to explain it.

Hamish gets the cue but he hesitates as he just saw Eva expose a faded Holocaust tattoo on her wrist. For a brief second he finds himself unable to find an exit from the sadness he feels in seeing it.

Hamish instinctually catches up to his lost moment, “My mom is Scottish and she wanted ‘James’ and my father is Jewish and he wanted ‘Jacob’ they split the difference which is apparently, Hamish,” and then he lifts his open hands to shoulder height as if to imply, “Beats me!”

Eva smiles and is more curious now, “What else should we know about you?”

Amanda responds before Hamish is able to speak, “He just graduated from NYU,” she turns to her mother and says “Pre-med,” and then she continues looking back at Hamish, “He’s from Mountain View, California and he wrote an essay comparing Arthur Miller to Tennessee Williams that was published in the Washington Square News.”

Hamish’s look at Amanda portrays nothing else but, “What the fuck?”

Hamish understands that she just repeated the three of four lines of his bio on the Playbill from his small part in the N.Y.U. production of Steven Sondheim’s, “The Assassins.”

Hamish asks, “You saw me in The Assassins?”

Amanda replies, “Hardly,” alluding to his small part and then laughs, “Yes I did. I was also at N.Y.U. but I graduated a few years back.”

Hamish follows on, “Oh, and what are you doing now?”

Amanda nudges her head toward her mother, “She got me a job at the Met. Amanda provides a confident elevator pitch description of her role that is also just a tad self-mocking, “I persuade rich people to share their private collections with us.”

Eva, however, appears abundantly proud.

Eva seems interested in one small fact, “You’re going to be a doctor?”

Hamish responds feeling that he might disappoint them, “Umm, unfortunately not. I’m not going back to that.” He then explains, “I decided I want to be an actor. My father is an OBGYN and I don’t want to follow that. My mother produces summer-stock, so on balance I might be making at least one of them happy.”

Eva gushes, “You’re way too handsome to be a doctor. You’re going to be an actor. You remind me of Marlon Brando, who I became friends with when I was 18 years old in 1956 in New York.”

Amanda is shocked, “Mom!” Smiling and shaking her head in disbelief she teases, “How friendly were you?”

Eva responds, “Oh keep your naughty little thoughts straight here. Plus he was ‘trouble’ from the start. Your father would kick his ass.”

Amanda walks over to Hamish and her hand reaches to his tuxedo’s black tie. Hamish notices that Amanda now has a touch of makeup on her lips and he smells her perfume. He looks down at her bikini body under the fold of her robe. Amanda pulls his tie and it releases to a fall on his chest.

Looking to Eva, Amanda continues to tease her mother, “We only dress like that at dinner here.”

Eva is dismissive, “Oh come on Amanda.” She hands Hamish a red juice in a long glass and says to him, “Here, try this.”

Hamish takes a much needed sip and he feels the fruit’s sweet acid, flavor around his mouth and then the cold relief of ice, drink down his throat.

Amanda and Eva continue there friendly interrogation. Amanda asks, “So, what’s next? Where will we see you?”

Hamish responds, “I’m working on that. I don’t know yet. Maybe something. I was called back for something. I went for lunch with a producer and an American-CME studio executive. To tell you the truth, I am not sure if they were telling me that they might go with someone known, someone bankable, or with me. It was left open but I sensed they were telling me that it probably will not be this one.”

Eva advises, “They took the time, which means they obviously see something in you. I think they were giving you the opportunity to mess it up for yourself, as a test.”

Hamish considers that simple precise thought for a moment and then he breaks out, “You’re right. I told them that sometimes you have to just say “what the fuck” and go with your gut. I followed that up and told them they are astute gentleman and I’ll learn something from whatever decision they make.”

Amanda kicks in, “I don’t know Hamish, but I think you drove them right into your lane.”

Eva asks, “American-CME, what is the project?”

Hamish responds shyly, “I’m really not allowed to say.”

Amanda smiles and teases again, “He is going to be the next Hamish Bond.”

Hamish laughs, “Ha! Funny! Maybe not on my first pic.”

Amanda’s quick wit makes Eva smile.

Hamish takes out his phone, looks at the time and says, “I’m not going to over-stay my welcome. I really don’t want to impose on your day. Thank you so much. I thought to call my friends for a ride. I would love to see you both later, another time, I hope, can we?”

Eva is emphatic, “It’s Saturday and we observe rest. Please put down your phone. It’s no imposition, it’s our duty. Stay here with us. Unless you have other places you need to be?”

Amanda looks at her mother, surprised, and then she smiles.

Hamish feels that Eva has earned the right to so blatantly get her own way. He is also genuinely respectful to her traditions and he really does not want to take his eyes off Amanda.

Hamish smiles and points to his tuxedo as if to ask, “What about this?”

Amanda says to Hamish, “Come with me. There’s a beach robe, some t-shirts and swimsuits in the cabana outside by the pool.”

Hamish follows Amanda outside and he is quick to ask her, “That day when you saw me on your steps, you recognized me? Why didn’t you stop and chat?”

Amanda responds, “I remember taking a moment to look at you. I saw something. I decided that if we were to become friends then the Universe had to work much harder than that.”

Hamish asks, “Has the Universe worked hard enough for you yet?”

Amanda responds, “Absolutely yes,” and then she gives Hamish a big unsuspected bear-hug that catches him off guard. Hamish hesitates not knowing whether he should hug her back before Amanda releases him saying, “Oof, I really wanted to push you into the pool.”

She turns away and appears to engage in a conversation with herself. She questions, “You couldn’t do it, could you?” before answering, “He was simply too nice to hug.”

Over the next hours, Eva watches Amanda and Hamish from inside the house. She wonders what they are talking about and how they do not stop, but she also knows. She knows the intensity and exhilaration of young love and how it was with her husband. She watches them lie in the shade and walk out to the dunes. She sees Amanda running and jumping onto a wide inflatable bed in the pool, and then Hamish follow by diving in, rising up to fold his crossed arms over the edge, and float with her.

Eva prepares sandwiches and sets them out on a beach blanket-decorated tray. As she lifts the tray to take them out, she sees something that completely surprises her. Amanda is standing over Hamish, who has now fallen asleep in the shade. She bends over and kisses his forehead, and then she makes her way into the house.

Amanda walks past Eva saying, “Those look nice Mommy, lets save them for later and then we can all eat together.”

Hamish sits up quickly and seems disoriented, squinting his eyes from the sun’s reflection off the stone around the pool.

He looks at Amanda, who is sitting next to him. She had been reading a book, but she put it down when he started to stir and stretch out. Hamish raises his hand and says to her, “Hey!”

Amanda responds, “Let’s eat.”

Hamish holds his hand up and curls his fingers, indicating, “Yes, bring it.”

Seeing Eva coming over with the tray of sandwiches, Hamish quickly asks Amanda, “Where is your dad?”

Amanda responds quietly, “He is in Idaho. Getting back tomorrow.”

Hamish asks Eva, “How did you meet your husband?”

Amanda smiles, curious to see how her mother reacts to that question.

Eva pretends to be baffled saying, “I have no idea how it eventually all came together. Come let’s have a walk on the beach and I’ll tell you. You can write the book and make that movie one day,” as she winks to Amanda.

The Atlantic’s wash of sand under their feet feels like a cold shock.

As they walk up the beach, Eva tells Hamish, “My husband and I had seen each other a few times around the upper east side, where I lived with my aunt, but we never really met. I was in the park one day and he came up and introduced himself. We really liked each other and we started to date.”

Hamish is just about to say something and Eva interjects, “Not that simple. He was busy building his business and I was not easy. I was always ‘political’ looking for a war to fight, a cause. Talk about Daddy Issues.”

Eva takes a few steps without saying anything and Amanda grabs Hamish’s hand and squeezes it to try signal, “Give her a moment.”

Eva then continues, “We saw each other for a while and then we did not. There was a stretch of years when he would arrive to bail me out after being arrested at some protest. We would spend a few weeks together again and then not. A few times later, I was arrested in D.C. So I called him and he took the train to Washington and bailed me out. That night, he took me to a hotel and had a dress delivered. We went for dinner with a Senator from New York. He said to me, you cannot fight the establishment. One choice was to become the establishment and change it from within, or he said I could join him in making them all accountable. He said at the very least, if I was going to break the law so often, I should learn it. That time I went home with him and we never left each other again. I went to school and then to the UN. I took the first three and he took the fourth estate.”

Amanda lets Eva walk ahead back up to the house. The sun setting on the other side of the island, lights up their faces as they walk up from the beach. She turns to Hamish and says, “Will you come back tomorrow? I am sure my mother will love to see you again and then she is going back to meet my father in the city, so it will just be us?”

Hamish answers with a simple, “Yes.”

Amanda lifts her arms and pulls Hamish to a short kiss on the side of his mouth. She then whispers to him coyly, “I have an admission to make. My mother has never observed any day of rest, even on a Saturday. I just went along with her trick because you seemed happy enough to fall for it.”

Amanda then stands back and looks at him and she is more forward now, “Although maybe you made all of this happen yourself?”

Hamish responds, “It feels like I did.”

Alexa raises her hand to signal for them to stop the movie, and she quickly stands up and walks out in a rush. The movie continues playing behind her for the few seconds it takes her to reach the door.

Amanda stands in a room that is a white haze of sun radiating through the shear white privacy curtains. She lifts a vase full of flowers and throws it across the room screaming, “Fuck that!” Hamish does not flinch as it passes him and explodes against the wall behind him. He does not look back.

As Alexa reaches the door, the screen behind her goes dark. Amanda sees the suit hanging out at an empty cubicle nearby. Amanda hands her the unopened box of Kleenex and says, “Not what I was hoping for, but it will do. Let’s get it out.”

Amanda walks into the elevator and sends a text to Hamish, saying, “It was more than I could have ever hoped for.” She watches the screen as it shows Hamish typing a response. When his reply appears, she finally experiences a sense of relief and succumbs to the pull of her emotions, bursting into tears and sobbing.