“I’m Neevah Saint.”
I stiffen, but don’t look up from my script. Don’t need to. I know exactly where she is in the room. To my right. Three chairs down, seated beside Trey. She’s wearing a white sundress that leaves her shoulders bare and smooth, along with a colorful headwrap from which her wild tresses sprout and overflow. There are lingering traces of a Southern accent in her voice, like honey sprinkled into something savory. At this point, it’s been nearly a year since I first saw her onstage and a few months since she flew out for Trey’s screen test. We’ve spoken a couple of times about the script, research, making sure she feels prepared, but any non-essential communication has gone through Evan and Graham, as it typically would.
I don’t need distractions or entanglements. She could be considered both. Of course, I’ll have to interact with her as the director, but I’ve decided to limit any contact beyond that to only the absolutely necessary.
“I’m really grateful for this opportunity,” Neevah says. “And honestly still pinching myself that I’m even here. The more I learn about Dessi, the more I realize what a privilege it is to introduce people to her story, to her life.”
I look up to see her spread a warm smile around the room.
“And I do hope to make lots of friends.”
That evokes a small murmur of laughter before the next cast members introduce themselves.
“I like her,” Jill says, pitching her voice low.
“Why?”
“She’s one of those people who pulls you in. Ya know? She’s sincere. And I have an instinct about folks.” She taps her nose. “I can smell a phony a mile away, and she’s the real deal. Good job finding her.”
“Monk found her.”
“Um, you fought pretty hard for her.”
I snap a glance up to study her face. “How do you know that?”
“Evan told me.”
“Figures.” I roll my eyes. “She’s the right choice.”
“I believe it and I saw her screen test. I see why you’re so into her.”
“I am not into . . .” I cut my words off when I realize how closely Jill is watching my face. Dammit. I gave her too much. Jill’s as observant as an owl.
“I am not,” I finish more evenly, “into her.”
Graham shoots us the kind of look reserved for kids talking in church. She puts a silencing finger to her lips.
“I just know talent when I see it,” I say in a barely audible whisper.
“Sometimes you just know,” Jill agrees, smiling like a sly cat. I don’t even want to speculate what that means or what idea has gotten lodged in her head.
Once the introductions are complete, I stand. Jill is right. I’m basically vibrating with the need to get started. I school my expression to implacable, but inside, my desire to tell this story echoes like a voice that hasn’t been used in a long time and is ready to sing.
“Alright,” I say. “If that’s everyone, get out your scripts. Let’s read this thing through.”
21
Neevah
“Will you run lines with me real quick?” I ask Takira.
She’s putting finishing touches on my eyeshadow. Turned out the chick they hired to do makeup wasn’t that great, so Takira offered to handle that, too. She cut her teeth in New York, and has done hair and makeup for TV shows, theater, movies, and commercials. Every possible medium runs through the city, and she has experience in them all.
“Sure.” She catches my eyes in the mirror. “Do like this.”
She pops her lips. I mimic, evening out the shock of matte red lipstick.
“This old-school look is made for you, Neev,” Takira says, smoothing a strand of hair into my updo.
I still double take when I see myself in the mirror before I go out to set. Standing in my tricked-out trailer, surrounded by every modern accoutrement, including a gigantic flat-screen television built into the wall, I’m an anachronism. My Victory roll hairstyle. Linh’s vintage costumes designed with such flare and attention to detail. When I slip on the dresses that swish against my legs, the sheer stockings, or a velvet bucket hat, I’m transported into Dessi’s world: a city struggling to drag itself from the Great Depression. Black people, striving to live and love and laugh and sing in a world that sometimes made all those things harder to do. But they carved out a vibrant, spectacular community in Harlem. A time of excellence and style and art. Of fur-trimmed coats and pomade-slicked hair and satin gloves. A place populated with dancers and dreamers and thinkers and agitators and writers and folks just living. Making do and making history in the trench of everyday life.
Each time I step out of this trailer, I’m at the corner of then and now. The production team transformed this back lot into a world long lost. Lafayette Theatre. The Savoy Ballroom. 139th Street. Lennox Avenue. The Radium Club. With Monk as their conductor, the ghosts of Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, and Louis Armstrong play their songs, dousing the air with notes of aching nostalgia.
“You said you need to run some lines?” Takira asks, snapping shut a tray of eye shadows and lovingly stowing her prized collection of brushes.
“Oh, yeah. I’m worried about this scene.”
“You’re not a complete novice. You’ve done some commercials and stuff.”
I give her my are you shitting me face.
“Commercials and stuff is not a feature film. The learning curve is steep,” I say, grabbing one of two rolled up scripts from a nearby table for myself and hand her the other. I keep two copies with me all the time because I constantly recruit someone to run lines with me. “And working with one of the best directors in the industry doesn’t help my nerves.”
“We never actually see him on set.” Takira laughs. “How can someone who isn’t there make you nervous?”
Canon watches from video village, a tent filled with screens so he can see every camera angle and shot we’re capturing in real time. The assistant director, Kenneth, out on set, is in constant communication with him. Canon is still extremely hands-on, and more than once I’ve seen him on a crane camera up in the air, checking shots before we start rolling.
He is the kind of man you meet once in a lifetime. Yes, he’s sharp and takes no shit, but I want that. To do my best, I need that. We all know he’s the magnetic nucleus holding this together. He carries this story and the pulse of it beats inside of him. He’s protective of Dessi’s journey, its chief guardian, but he’s also concerned about his actors. For his art, he’s obsessive and distracted and focused and impatient and longsuffering. He’s a million things and he’s single-minded.
It’s getting harder not to want him. Every day I stomp on this unfortunate longing, this ill-advised craving, this dead-end desire. And I cannot make it stop.
The knock at my trailer door dispels my thoughts.
“They’re ready for you, Ms. Saint,” a voice says from the other side.
I didn’t get to review my lines one more time. The question is am I ready?
22
Dessi Blue