Chapter Text
Heloise had signed on to the production because it was an exercise in truth-telling, and the producer, director, and writer were all women. As she looked around the set, figures framed in the early morning mist, she wondered if she would ever work on a location as beautiful as Vietnam.
She certainly wondered if she would ever work on one as humid, green, and exhausting. Kate, the director, had one Oscar under her belt, and Heloise had a growing feeling that this film would garner another. Bad form, she silently thought, to look so far ahead, but Heloise was not one to follow convention.
Her scene complete, Heloise drifted back to the temporary housing units set for the film. Heloise had never been to Vietnam before, and she didn’t spend too much time there, in their air-conditioned comfort. Instead, she wandered the nearby villages and towns, enjoying her clumsy attempts at buying fruit in the local market and bargaining to rent one of the countless motorbikes. Every time she rolled away, she heard her agent Andrea in her ears “if you get hurt and production has to stop, I will personally kick you in the shin.”
Heloise smiled, and just opened up the throttle a little more. It was certainly one way to unstick her sweat-soaked shirt from her back. They only had a few more weeks, and then she would make the trek back to Paris.
Following the road to the beach, Heloise heard a roar, no, a zoom, or a zephyr if she could imagine what sound that would be like, over her shoulder.
Channeling her agent, she pulled over safely and looked skyward. There, making a slow arc and heading to the nearby airstrip, was a vintage plane in all it’s wood and aluminum glory.
She recognized it as one of the planes in use for the film, one the technical experts referred to as a mosquito, or so she remembered.
She watched it disappear over the treetops, clearly landing on the lone runway. The pilot would be a new face in the film camp, likely of great interest to everyone as they had been there for three months now.
Once at the beach Heloise unpacked her reed mat, her bag of fruit, and her small cooler of frozen water bottles. She had to make some concessions as the “soft” Parisian, as she jokingly called herself.
She stripped off her shirt, and sprinted into the water in her swim top and board shorts. It was in the waves the stress of this production washed away, along with the burrs and rough edges from her last relationship, and it’s own clumsy history.
Heloise loved acting. She loved being an actor, and an accomplished one to boot. She did not love the adoration, the fawning, the assumptions, that people make about “celebrities.” The woman she last dated, Vanessa, had been fun enough, but too controlling.
She was a music producer, and very much used to artists listening to her. Successful in her own right, Vanessa treated Heloise as if Heloise was one of her signings, and in need of a career makeover. Needless to say after a few dates Heloise called it off. And Vanessa took it badly. Quite badly. Heloise had been polite, but Vanessa was indignant. She exploded when Heloise broke things off, and then told her she was leaving for Vietnam for several months.
Heloise was able to more or less avoid Vanessa and her petty jibes until her flight out. Floating in the waves, face turned to the sun, Heloise rinsed off the texts, calls, e-mails, and nasty notes Vanessa had taped to her apartment door. She still wondered how Vanessa got past the concierge of her building.
A strong wave rolled her to her side, and she let the wave wash her in to the shallows. Standing up, the waves kept pushing her, giving her little shoves to the shore.
She was about to turn, and dive back in, when she noticed a tall figure on the beach shedding what looked like an ill-fitting mechanic’s coverall. The figure was about 200 meters away, with short hair. Tall skinny dude, Heloise thought. There was a duffel next to them, on the sand, and the figure plopped down on the sand to kick off clunky boots and strip off the pale olive coveralls.
They then sprang to their feet, revealing themselves as a women in a dark sports bra and boy shorts. She stretched, long arms skyward, then doubled over to sprint in to the surf, looking neither right or left but directly at the water as if seeing an old friend.