Page 2 of Friends with Benefits

Evie inherited her fascination with sound from Grandma Pep, the beloved host and executive producer ofSome Pep in Your Step, a local radio show that featured anyone with an interesting “happy-making” story. Peppy Bloom was on the air for over thirty-five years. Some of Evie’s most formative childhood memories are summer days in the studio with her grandmother, where she asked the audio engineers endless questions and absorbed so many lessons on how to tell a story not just with words but with sounds.

It was one of Grandma Pep’s stories that directly led to her becoming a storyteller with sounds herself. One blistering summer day, she went with her grandmother to interview a team of Foley artists who worked on the Paramount lot. Evie was nine and watched with wide-eyed wonder as these people explained to Grandma Pep that their jobs were to create the sound effects that make a movie—and they used the most unexpected objects. She learned that a celery stick can mimic the sound of a broken bone, that gloves with paper clips on the fingertips are adequate dog paws, that a hand in a jar of mayonnaise is a kiss.

They create the sounds that breathe life into a film, Grandma Pep explained as her audio engineer recorded a Foley demo for the segment. Evie’s mind near exploded watching them use a bathtub to create the sounds of a boat cutting through water. She remembers that day so vividly—the smell of mayonnaise, thesnapof celery, the awe of it all. Afterward, her ears started paying extra close attention at the movies, trying to guess the truth behind the sounds she heard.

Eighteen years later, Evie is seated among the stars at a premiere for a film thatshebreathed life into.

Well.

In the mezzanine above the stars.

Imogen’s elbow nudges her. “It’s still pretty early. You should be out there mingling!”

“I hate mingling.”

“Evie.”

Imogen has always made it look so easy—mingling, networking, any word that can be defined as speaking to strangers. Evie loves everything about the work that is being a Foley artist, but she really hates thepeople-ingof it all, the reality that opportunities depend on it. An incredible portfolio is useless if no one will take the time to listen to it. Objectively, Imogen is right. She should be mingling.

Of course, she doesn’t tell her sister this.

Or admit that she doesn’t know why small talk is so easy for Imogen yet so impossible for her.

Instead, she sticks out her tongue.

Imogen mirrors the expression, then continues, “Portia is chill. They’re also blowing up in a major way, and I set up the intro and… you totally flopped.”

“We were in the bathroom, Gen.”

“So?”

“It didn’t exactly seem like the time to pitch myself.”

“Maybe not, but you didn’t have to downplay your contribution toGingereither.”

Evie didn’t downplay anything. It was true, what she said to Portia, that the opportunity was a happenstance of right place, right time. Annaliese Fallon, who stars as Ginger, was meant to dub herself—to come into the Foley studio and record her dances in sync with video. Just like any other soundeffect, adding the taps in postproduction guarantees a crisper, cleaner sound and allows more control to the mixers in charge of layering all the sounds together. But then a scheduling conflict sent Annaliese to her next role, on Broadway, earlier than anticipated, so she never had the chance to record the dances that she’d flawlessly executed on-screen.

And the studio was fucked.

Ross Snyder, Evie’s boss, scrambled in frantic search of a solution. Put tap shoes on his hands and winged it. The taps were in sync but wrong. A shuffle that should have been a scuffle, a flap that should have been a ball change. To the untrained ear of the general public, Ross’s hand taps would suffice. But this was a love letter to Ginger Rogers. A movie for dancers.

And Evie’s first dream, before Grandma Pep had spectacularly shattered the illusion of sound, was dance.

I’m a dancer, she told Ross, her voice small and palatable.I can do it.

Ross cocked an eyebrow, skeptical.

Ross is an asshole.

Give me the tapes and a day.

Ross sighed, conceding that he had nothing to lose.

Evie didn’t tell Ross that shewasa dancer, past tense, or that she’d have to tear her closet apart to find the worn BLOCHs that she hadn’t put on since high school. She didn’t tell Ross that she wasn’t sure if her weakened ankle could handle the choreography. Nope. When Ross Snyder looked up at Evie with tap shoes for hands, Evie saw an opportunity—to prove her worth, to get a Foley credit in a major theatrical release, to dance again.

She took it.

Of course she did.

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