I peered through the window. Inside, I could see that Archie was on his feet now, demonstrating a few moves for Ted, probably for the scene we’d intended to shoot today. But to the uninitiated, I realized, Archie’s pose as he held his elaborate sword poised directly above Officer Novak’s head, while the patrolman watched him with riveted interest—well, it probably looked pretty menacing.
Quinn barreled into the restaurant shouting, “NYPD! Put down your weapon! Police!”
But Lopez, who was more accustomed to the kind of company I kept, looked at me for an explanation.
“Costume,” I said. “Fake sword.”
He peered into the restaurant and said judiciously, “It looks pretty convincing from this distance.”
“It’s pretty convincing up close, too,” I said. “Quality workmanship. But it’s made of rubber. You know, safety on the film set, and all that.”
He looked at me. “Hey, does this mean you’ve got work?”
I nodded. “I’ve been cast in an indie film that’s set in Chinatown.”
“That’s great.” He smiled at me. “Congratulations!”
“Thanks.” I looked through the window again. “See the skinny guy in the rumpled clothes who’s standing up to talk to Detective Quinn? That’s Ted Yee, the writer-director-producer.”
“Looks like Andy’s calming down now,” Lopez commented as we watched the scene unfold. “And who’s that guy?”
“Officer Novak.”
“You mean he’s a real cop? Not an actor?”
“Uh-huh. Local patrolman.”
Novak had risen to introduce himself to Quinn. Then Archie offered his sword to the detective, who took it and waved it around a bit, more relaxed now that he understood how harmless it was. After a moment, he smiled at Archie, and they started chatting.
“Crisis averted.” Lopez turned back to me and looked at my costume, which was revealed by the open flaps of my winter coat. “Are you playing a hooker?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” I said, looking down at my outfit. Then I started zipping and buttoning my coat so I could talk to him without freezing to death. “But, no, I’m playing an uptown girl who never feels the cold.”
“Well, I’m really glad you found something,” he said. “A job, I mean. An acting job.”
“And that’s where you come in. You see, Ted forgot—” I stopped speaking when his phone rang.
“Shit.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Esther. If I don’t take this call, I’ll never hear the end of it.” I gathered from his long-suffering expression that the ringtone had warned him who his caller was. Lopez pulled his phone out of his pocket and answered the call without bothering to check the LCD screen. He said tersely, “This isn’t a good time, Mom.”
Ah.
A second later, he winced and held the phone a little way away from his ear. I could hear his mother’s voice from here. She was obviously mad about something—which didn’t surprise me at all, now that I’d met her. She was a beautiful woman with a temper that would have frightened the Mongol hordes into retreating.
He let her rant for a while, listening patiently until she wound down a little. Then, without bringing the phone closer to his ear, he said, “Yeah, well, since you kept calling just to tell me you’re still not speaking to me, I didn’t really see the point in answering.”
Her reaction caused him to move the phone a little further away from his head. While Lopez waited for his mother to wind down again, another harsh gust of wind whipped down Doyers, ruffling his black hair and creeping under my tiny skirt.
“You’re right,” he said at last into the phone. “I’m a bad son. You know what would be a good punishment? Don’t call me for a while. Now I’ve got to go, Mom. I’m in the middle of something here.”
His expression was dark as he put the phone back in his pocket. “Sorry. There comes a point where her voicemails get so long, it’s quicker just to take the call.”
I was surprised by his obvious tension. For all that his mother was a volatile woman, I knew she was close to her youngest son (Lopez had two older brothers). He and she argued a lot, and they could be sharp with each other; but they talked regularly, and the flare-ups between them were usually brief—often lasting only a few minutes. This sounded more serious. Like they’d had a big fight and still weren’t over it.
I also noticed that Lopez still looked stressed and tired, as he had on New Year’s Eve. His skin was flushed from the cold wind right now and his dark hair was shining healthily in today’s shifting light, but there were hollows under his blue eyes and signs of sustained tension in his face. He usually looked better than this. Even so, though, he looked so good to me after too long an absence. I wanted to drown in him.
I stared at him, trying to remember why I had asked him to come here today . . . and, at the moment, only able to remember what it was like to kiss him. When his gaze dropped to my mouth, I had a feeling he was thinking of the same thing . . . And my mind was flooded with memories of the way his lush, full lips had felt against my mouth, my neck, my—
Andy Quinn stuck his head out of the restaurant door to ask, “Are we going to be here a while?”
We both jumped.
“Huh?” said Lopez, blinking.
“I could eat.” Quinn looked at me. “Whatever you want him to do, is it going to take long enough for me to have lunch?”
“Oh! Um . . .” I blinked, too, starting to remember why I’d asked Lopez to come here. “I guess so.”
“Great,” said Quinn. “Archie says the dumplings here are first-rate.”
“Who’s Archie?” Lopez asked.
But Quinn had already gone back inside.
So I said, “He’s the guy with the sword.”
“That guy? He doesn’t really look like an Archie.”
“Well, certainly not in his warrior-poet costume,” I agreed.
Our gazes held as we fell silent, and I felt myself flushing. So I quickly rushed into a muddled explanation about Ted, our lack of location permits, Officer Novak, and my fervent desire to keep working.
“That’s all?” Lopez looked through the window, to where Officer Novak was now playing with Archie’s sword. “Sure, I’ll talk to the rookie for you, Esther. It doesn’t exactly look like it’ll be a tough conversation.”
“I guess the situation seemed more dire before Novak was full of dumplings and chitchat,” I admitted.
Lopez smiled, then said, “This guy Ted sounds like a flake, though.”
“He is,” I said morosely.
“Like maybe you’ll have this problem again.”
“I have a feeling we will.”
“I might be able to help with that, too.”
“How?” I asked in surprise.
“The guy who was my first partner on the force is with the NYPD Movie/TV Unit these days. I could ask him to expedite Ted’s location application for Doyers Street. A little grease ought to get your filming schedule back on track sooner rather than later.”
“Really? Oh, that would be great.”
Lopez added tentatively, “But you won’t be able to continue filming here today. I’m afraid I’ve got to go along with Officer Novak on that, Esther. So if you were hoping I could arrange it for you . . .”
“No, no, I understand,” I assured him. It hadn’t even occurred to me that Lopez could help expedite Ted’s application, and I certainly hadn’t entertained any hope that we could resume filming on Doyers today. “I just didn’t want our director-producer to get arrested. Or for the city to impose heavy fines on Ted for filming here without a permit this morning. Or for this problem to go any further than a stern talking-to, really. We’re on a tight budget here, and Ted’s lost his backer and is trying to get another one before the money runs out. So it wouldn’t take much for this production to go belly-up. And I really want to keep working.”