Page 41 of The Moon & His Tides
“Ragazzo,” he said in that big voice, shaking Adam by the shoulders. “It’s good to see your miserable face.”
“Yours too,” Adam assured him with that genuine grin I’d also seen in the car park. “I’ve brought you another face to look at today, though this one is much handsomer than either of our old mugs.”
On my cue, I walked forward to take my place beside Adam. Only years of acting allowed me to look at Andrea without my mouth hanging open in wonder.
“Signor Felice,” I greeted in Italian. “I’m Sebastian Lombardi. It’s a pleasure to meet you after admiring you for so long.”
Andrea could have been an actor himself if he hadn’t had the vision and talent of a natural-born director. He was handsome in the way of Italians from the south, short and muscular with wiry dark hair and eyes like gleaming cocoa beans beneath thick brows and lashes. His hawkish nose suited his large features and made him look somehow intellectual. He was only in his late thirties, but the creases beside his mouth and eyes gave him character.
Or maybe it was that I knew him to be one of the brightest minds in cinema.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, knowing there is a sharp mind behind such a beautiful face,” he responded in Italian beforeshooting a roguish grin at Adam and switching to English. “You certainly know how to find them, Meyers.”
Adam shrugged blithely. “One of my many talents.”
“Savannah would argue it’s her talent, I think, that found me,” I quipped, just to deflate what I was coming to understand was false bravado, a very finely honed mask Adam wore even when he was offstage and out of sight from the cameras.
Andrea laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. “Si, too right. You are lucky she isn’t here to dress you down in front of an audience, Adamo.”
Adam’s only response was a rakishly raised eyebrow that made me visualize that exact scene in a much too intimate way.
The director just clucked his tongue and turned his attention back to me, pushing me down into his own chair so he could stand before me with his hands held wide, face glowing with excitement.
“We only have ten minutes for the toilet break but let me tell you how I envision this. Opening, the streets of New York in the early twenties, wide lens, filled with bustling bodies all in drab colours like the drabness of the dirty streets. It zooms in slowly, so slowly you cannot really mark the transition, onto a single man moving against the majority of the crowd, shoving into shoulders, ducking packages, but remaining strong and proud in posture. He is wearing a hat, one of those newsboy caps, so you can’t see his face. When the gunshot rings out, everyone screams and scrambles, shocked and scared, but the man only looks up directly into the camera, completely unafraid. Cue the title in bold block letters.” He mapped out the transitions with his hands in big gestures. “Blood Oath!”
Behind him, Adam clapped and was joined by the two actors on set who had wandered closer along with a handful of film crew.
“Sounds intriguing,” the female actress who I recognized uneasily as the up-and-coming starlet Willa Trombley drawled. “Any roles for me in there, Andrea?”
He waved his hand dismissively her way, his eyes still fixed on mine. “Well, what do you think?”
“It sounds perfect,” I admitted. “You’ve put a lot of thought into this already.”
“Assolutamente si. Adam and I have spoken about this almost every day for the past ten days.” He nodded the entire time he spoke, hands still moving, and I realized he was so fantastic at capturing movement on film because he was hardly ever still himself. Unbidden, I remembered the young woman by the pool last night, Linnea Kai, and her quicksilver changes of position.
“Andrea and I even banded about casting ideas for certain roles and who might work well as the cinematography director.”
“Music too is so important in an epic film like this,” Andrea added seamlessly, like they’d had this exact conversation before. “Hans just retired, such a shame. But we can get Marguerite Fischer. She worked onThornandBluegrass Blues. Both scores are…” He closed his eyes and hummed a few pretty notes.
“We think it could attract some serious attention with the right leads,” Adam continued, his passion brightening his dark green eyes to shining emeralds. “Antonio Carozza would be an interesting idea for Roberto, and even though Ric Ashton is only of Italian heritage through a grandfather, he’s an incredible actor who would do the job justice.”
“Well,” Andrea demanded, “what do you think of it all? As you can see, you have successfully lit a fire in our bellies.”
“I’m honoured,” I told him after a moment, and I was.
But I was also… annoyed?
If I was allowed to be annoyed that a world-famous actor and director were so interested in my script. It was just that thiswasmyproverbial baby. Something I’d quite literally poured my blood, sweat, and tears into for the past three years. The sleepless nights, the agony and distress that trying to tell a story properly could wreck on the human body. I’d endured it all happily because I’d been possessed by this story and the character of Roberto D’Amato, the immigrant Italian who arrives in New York and is instantly press-ganged into joining one of the local Mafia families.
It was a story that was too close to my heart in many ways. Roberto’s struggles mimicked my own as a boy with a gambling drunkard for a father, three beautiful sisters, and a struggling mother at home in need of my help and protection. There had been no one to protect me from the local Camorra’s attentions, just like there was no one to help Roberto in New York.
Both our tales of survival were achieved by the skin of our very own teeth.
And maybe because of that, I wasn’t willing to let even an inch of this story go to someone else’s power and control.
Even Andrea Felice and Adam Meyers.
What did they know of Roberto and his struggles?
