It's a Classic

A hundred years is a long time to commit to a thing for anyone, unless they expect to live more than ten times that long. When they choose to spend the rest of their life with the one they love, though, it doesn’t seem as daunting.

Kat pulled her rusted 1980 Dodge into a visitor space at the studio. After turning off the key, the engine idled on for another second, finally dying with a clunk. The hinges squealed as she opened the door, and closing it rattled the entire body

“How is that old thing still on the road?” the security guard asked.

“You’re as bad as my girlfriend,” Kat said. “It’s a classic!”

As she entered the studio, she patted the box in her pocket to ensure it was still there. She was spending her vacation hours watching her girlfriend work. Seeing what it takes to make a movie was fascinating and more than a little overwhelming. The chance to see her girlfriend play a character with Kat’s job made it doubly so.

The star, Bret Kennesaw, was quietly taking instruction from the director. Bret stood just over seven feet tall; a tower of muscle in warm, ochre yellow tones. His highly polished, bleach-white, three-inch tusks ended in unnaturally sharp points. She was sure he’d had them capped. An orc herself, Kat’s skin was a shade darker, and her tusks were a bit shorter, a natural ivory color, and the ends were pointed, but not like his.

The director stood on his chair, bringing him eye-level to the humans and elves that made up most of the crew. As the most successful halfling director outside of Bollywood, close on the success of his last blockbuster, this movie was already making entertainment news. The costar, Guinevere Blackrock, Kat’s girlfriend, was a big part of that buzz.

“Coffee?”

Kat turned to see a human woman with rich, mahogany skin and bright brown eyes under a neat bundle of bleach-blonde dreadlocks. She held up a coffee cup in offering. Her badge, hanging from a lanyard, gave her name as Susan Pierson, with the studio logo beneath.

“Thanks, I think I will.” Kat accepted the offered cup and made sure her visitor’s badge was visible.

“So good to finally meet you, Dr. Quartz.”

“Nice to meet you, too. Kat is fine, but I’m a counselor, not a doctor. Still working on my PhD.”

Susan motioned Kat towards the craft services tables. “Gwen talks about you all the time. I’ve seen you with her on TV. She says you had a falling out with your family?”

“I, uh, really don’t like thinking about that.” Kat took a sip of the bitter coffee. “I guess I’m not doing a very good job of counseling myself, now that I think about it.”

“Was it about coming out?”

“My father wasn’t happy I was dating a girl. Even less that I was dating an elf. He said some horrible, racist things about elves… on live TV, and in front of Gwen.”

“Wow, harsh. Did it just come out the blue?”

“Things like that don’t just show up out of nowhere. I never noticed before that. Maybe I was just too wrapped up in my own things to notice, or maybe I didn’t want to notice.”

“Have you spoken since then? Your mother?”

“My mother calls every couple months. She loves Gwen and her parents. I still haven’t spoken to my father since then. Going on three years now.”

“Oh, looks like they’re ready to start shooting again.”

The two stood quietly watching as Bret argued on the phone with someone reading the response lines off-set. Gwen took her cue and joined him in front of the cameras. She was just over five feet tall, a wisp of pale pink with violet eyes, pure white hair, and long, pointed ears.

As the scene turned confrontational, Gwen stood close to Bret, looking defiantly up at him and punctuating her lines with a finger to his chest. A thousand concerns bubbled up in Kat’s mind. Rather than risk interrupting the filming, she pulled her notebook out of her rear pocket. It was a small, black, leather-bound notebook she always kept with her. She began scribbling her notes in the first clean page, after the notes from her last staff meeting.

Susan gave her a questioning look, pointing at the notebook. Kat showed her what she was writing, and Susan’s brows creased. Turning her attention back to the filming she caught Gwen’s next line.

“Quit wasting my time! You hang around with gangbangers and then wonder why the cops follow you. If you can’t pull your shit together by the end of the week, I’ll have your parole officer send you back to prison!”

“Cut!” The director climbed down from his perch. “Excellent work, everybody. Lunch, and back here in two hours.”

Kat took a step to catch up with Gwen when she felt a tug on her sleeve. “Wait, if you could,” Susan said.

“What is it?”

“Your notes. If you have time to go over them during lunch, I’d love it.”

“I’m sorry, I need to meet up with my girlfriend.”

Gwen approached, beaming. “Hey, Grumpy! I see you met Susan. She’s the lead script writer.”

“Guinevere, I believe you said your girlfriend was a social worker, correct?”

“That’s right.” She stood on tiptoes and allowed Kat to pick her up for a kiss. “I’m so proud of her. Hey, did you drive all the way out here in your hooptie?”

“Hush, you. It’s a classic.” Kat gave Gwen a playful squeeze.

“It seems your woman has some concerns about your part,” Susan said.

Concern crossed Gwen’s face. “Is my acting bad?”

“No, no.” Kat set her down and smoothed her hair. “It’s the script. A social worker who confronts a client like that would be out of work in no time. And threatening to turn a client over to their PO is great way to get them to never talk to you again.”

“If you don’t mind, could we go over the script somewhere quiet? Just to help me iron out some of the details.”

“I don’t know if I’m the right person for that.”

Gwen’s eyes begged; her eyebrows raised. “You are. Why don’t we go over it while we eat lunch in my trailer? Please?”

Kat sighed. “That look, Squeaky? Okay, okay. Your mother would be so disappointed in me, letting you talk me into things again.”

Gwen giggled. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

They ate lunch, discussing the problems with how Gwen’s social worker character was portrayed. Kat kept patting her pocket, making sure the box was still there. Susan was too wrapped up in lining through and rewriting sections of the script to notice, while Gwen was content to lean against Kat and snuggle.

After returning to the set, Gwen headed to makeup and Susan spoke with the director, walking him through the changes. A balding man in a grey suit joined them, bright green clipboard in hand. The discussion turned heated until the director literally put his foot down. The report of his stomp was loud enough to make everyone in the immediate area flinch.

After a short discussion with Bret and Gwen, they re-shot the scene with the changes Kat had recommended. Rather than being confrontational, Gwen stood tall, unintimidated, but non-threatening. She stayed calm, even while her acting showed that it was an effort to do so.

The rewritten lines came up. “I want to help. I want to be your friend, but you need to be your friend first. Your parole officer isn’t your friend. He’s looking for any excuse to send you back to prison to lighten his case load. Those gang members you’ve been hanging around with aren’t your friends either; they’ll just drag you down with them. You need to be your friend, so I can too. Can you do that? Can you be your own friend?”

“Cut!” The director turned around and gave a thumbs-up to Susan, who had moved back beside Kat. “Thirty minutes, set-up for scene 41 part 8.”

“Hey, if I send you the rest of the script, at least the parts with the social worker, could you look it over and provide notes and suggestions?” Susan asked.

“I, uh… okay.”

A bright green clipboard entered her field of view. “Ms. Quartz, could I get your signature here?” The man who had argued with the director was holding out a form for her.

“What is this?”

“It’s a contract. Standard boiler-plate.”

“But I’m not—”

“Your consultation has already been used. If you don’t sign, they’ll have to throw out the changes and do another rewrite.”

Kat skimmed the contract, until she got to a line in Gwen’s handwriting with four sets of initials next to it. “Credit line as ‘Script Consultant: Katherine Quartz, MSW’.”

“I’ll be in the credits, huh?”

“Ms. Blackrock, Ms. Pierson, and Mr. Kennesaw all insisted.” He held his mouth as though he just eaten something exceedingly bitter.

Kat signed, and he tore off the original, handing it to her, and keeping the copy underneath. He then pulled a check off the clipboard and handed it to her.

“What’s this?”

“Your consulting fee.”

“Twenty thousand dollars for an hour and a half?”

“Plus whatever the writers need to run by you over the next sixty days of shooting. We expect a response time of twenty-four hours or less, and you’re free to be on-set whenever you like, unless we’re shooting a nude scene or something that could be dangerous.”

“Thank you, uh…”

“Peter Franz, production. Everyone calls me Pete.”

“Thank you, Pete, and I’m Kat.”

“Certainly. Good day, Ms. Quartz.”

Kat looked at the check, and back up to see that Gwen was standing before her. “That was interesting,” Kat said, “and profitable. But that’s not why I was here for your lunch. I wanted to discuss something with you.”

“Uh-oh, sounds serious.”

“A hundred years is a long time. That said, I’m not going to ask you to ignore your own traditions. In a hundred years I’ll be middle-aged, though. I’ll have to watch my diet and exercise regularly to keep from getting fat, I’ll have wrinkles, start to go grey. I’m just worried that when I start getting old, and you’re still young and beautiful you won’t…”

“Grumpy, listen. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Or you could. I might come down with a deadly disease. We don’t know how much time we have. But if you knew that I was going die in the next two years, would you walk away? If it was you, I wouldn’t. I’d rather spend whatever time we have together. I’ll always be two hundred years older than you. You’ll never be old, just a classic!”

Kat reached into her pocket and knelt. Still nearly eye-level with Gwen, she lowered herself as much as possible. Opening the box, she offered Gwen the ring inside.

“Guinevere Blackrock, I have the blessing of your parents, and hereby commit to a minimum of a century. If you’ll have me, I can think of nothing as beautiful as spending my life with you. Will you marry me?”

“Yes.” Gwen’s eyes brimmed with tears. “It’s about time!”

They kissed as the assembled cast and crew cheered them.

“You know my parents are going to want an extravagant wedding… which they’ll pay for,” Gwen said.

“I know. I argued that point with your father for over two hours before conceding. But I’m paying for the honeymoon.” Kat waved the check. “Wherever you want to go.”

“What do I get to pay for?”

“Um, you’re already paying for pretty much everything else. I didn’t get into social work for the money, you know.”

Gwen giggled. “I know, but will you finally let me replace that janky old car of yours?”

“It’s a classic!” Kat smirked, and Gwen laughed. “It really is crap, isn’t it?”