Chapter 13: The Unspoken Distance
The heat in the trailer was a living thing, thick and drowsy with the scent of reheated coffee and lemony polish. Matt’s script lay where he’d tossed it, pages fanning out like a dead bird. Dasha’s precise, looping notes in the margins—Inflection here? Motivation unclear—glared up at him, a testament to a diligence he couldn’t currently reciprocate.
She’d been gone for twenty-three minutes. A pharmacy run, she’d said, her voice clipped as a receipt. He knew what she was buying. The knowledge sat between them, a third person in the room whose name they wouldn’t say.
The door burst open without a knock.
“Tell me you’re not still brooding over the existential dread of page forty-seven. We fixed that. The monster gets the girl, the city is saved, the franchise is secured. Happiness in a tidy three-act structure.”
Elliot flowed into the room, a tsunami of floral linen and over-caffeinated concern. He dropped into the chair Dasha had vacated, examining her notes with a curator’s disapproving eye. “Her handwriting is disturbingly serene. It’s like a nun diagrams battle plans.”
“What do you want, Elliot?” Matt didn’t look up from his phone, a blank screen he’d been staring at for the last ten minutes.
“I want the gossip. I want the tea. I want to know why the atmosphere in here is thicker than the conditioner in your hair and twice as tangled.” Elliot leaned forward, his voice dropping to a stage whisper. “It’s the new girl, isn’t it? Did she finally discover you’re human? A tragic flaw, perhaps? A fondness for boy-band ballads? Do you clip coupons?”
Matt finally lifted his head. “She’s efficient.”
“She’s a sphinx. A very attractive, impeccably dressed sphinx who has somehow, in the span of a week, made you quieter than a closed set. I’m fascinated. And mildly terrified.” He picked up Dasha’s pen, twirling it. “You two came back from Dubai smelling like expensive mist and unresolved sexual tension.”
The trailer door opened again, softer this time. Dasha stepped in, a discreet paper bag from a high-end pharmacy in one hand, her blazer hooked over her forearm. The desert heat had softened the usual sharp edges of her appearance, a single strand of honey-blonde hair clinging to her temple. She paused, taking in Elliot’s presence with a blink.
“Elliot.”
“Dasha! The mystery returns. Bearing gifts, I see.” His eyes laser-focused on the bag. “Vitamin C? Something exotic? Tell me it’s a revolutionary Korean skincare sheet mask. I’ll split it with you.”
“Digestive aids,” she said, her voice flat as poured concrete. She didn’t look at Matt as she moved past Elliot to her desk, sliding the bag into a drawer with a smooth, final click. “The foule at the hotel buffet was adventurous. I have a lower risk tolerance.”
Matt watched the drawer close. His coffee, the one she’d brought him earlier, was cold and untouched.
Elliot barked a laugh. “Risk tolerance! I’m stealing that. I’m going to use it at every pitch meeting from now on.” He swung his attention back to Matt. “See? Poetry. You, on the other hand, look like you’re contemplating the risk tolerance of jumping out that window.”
“We’re on the ground floor, Elliot.”
“A setback, not a disqualification.”
Dasha logged into her laptop, the soft tap of keys a rhythmic counterpoint to Elliot’s performance. “Your three o’clock with the dialect coach has been moved to four. He’s stuck in traffic following a minor incident involving a camel and a juice bar, which, frankly, sounds more interesting than the meeting will be.”
A ghost of a smile touched Matt’s lips. It was the first natural expression he’d felt all day. “Noted.”
Elliot watched the exchange, his glittering eyes darting between them. The professional mask was flawless, but he’d known Matt for twenty years. He could read the silence in the room like subtitles. Something had happened. Something that made Matt’s watchful stillness and Dasha’s hyper-competence scream in unison.
“Right,” Elliot said, slapping his thighs and standing. “Well. I’ve absorbed the gloom. I’m off to spread it elsewhere. Dasha, a pleasure as always. You’ll call me if he develops a personality again, or, God forbid, a visible emotion?”
“I’ll send a memo,” she said, not looking up from her screen.
With a last, lingering look at the drawer that held the pharmacy bag, Elliot left, shutting the door with an exaggerated quietness that was somehow louder than a slam.
The trailer hummed. The air conditioner kicked on, a rattling sigh.
Matt swiveled his chair to face her. “Digestive aids?”
“It’s a versatile cover story.” She continued typing.
“When?”
“When what?”
“When are you going to take it?”
The typing stopped. She stared at the screen, her reflection a pale ghost overlaid on text. “It requires a specific time of day. For accuracy.”
“So there’s a schedule.”
“There’s always a schedule.”
He stood, the movement abrupt. He walked to the small window, looking out at the sun-bleached lot, the facades of fake buildings holding up the relentless blue sky. “This is absurd. We’re talking around it like it’s a hostile press briefing.”
“What would you prefer?” Her voice was cool, but he heard the strain at the edges, the fine wire of tension pulled tight. “A bold-font announcement? A group huddle? You made it clear on the plane you wanted it handled. It is being handled. This,” she gestured between them, “the staring, the silence, the… the weight of you right now, is not helping.”
He turned. She was still facing her computer, her spine rod-straight.
“You think I’m not feeling the weight?” he asked quietly.
That made her turn. Her eyes were fierce, a startling flash of green. “I think you’re feeling something, and it’s manifesting as a kind of oppressive observation. I am not a problem to be solved, Matt. I’m a person. In a situation. One I am managing.”
“Alone.”
“By design. By job description. By the fact that you’re the principal and I’m the…” She trailed off, shaking her head.
“The what?”
“The assistant,” she said, the word tasting bitter. She stood, gathering a folder. “I have to run these contracts to legal. They need your signature by five.”
She moved to pass him, a breeze of quiet perfume and unresolved everything. He didn’t mean to block her path. He just… did.
They stood close. He could see the faint dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose, usually hidden under makeup. He could see the rapid flutter of her pulse in her throat. The drawer with the test was three feet away.
“Dasha,” he said, her name an exhale.
“Don’t,” she whispered, her professional armor cracking into a plea. “Just… don’t. Not until we know. Not until I know. I can’t do this part with an audience.”
He nodded, once, and stepped aside. She slipped out the door, the folder clutched to her chest like a shield.
He was left alone with the hum of the air conditioner, the script, her empty chair, and the silent, screaming presence of a possibility locked in a drawer. The wait had officially begun, and it had carved out a space between them wider than any desert.