Early on a sunny Saturday morning in June, Stephen Ornofsky sits in a big wooden chair on the deck of the beautiful one-story redwood house where he lives in Melody, a small town on the north coast of California. He is thirty-four, two inches shy of six-feet-tall, with short brown hair and wire-frame glasses. His dogs, Hortensio, a big black mutt, and Moose, a brown floppy-eared Chihuahua, are sitting on either side of him waiting to go for their morning walk.
Stephen lives in the beautiful old house with Maya Johansen, a former dancer and choreographer who is seventy-seven and paralyzed from the waist down. Stephen is Maya’s primary caregiver and best friend. Celia Flores, fifty-four, another of Maya’s caregivers, comes to live with Maya and Stephen every Thursday evening and leaves on Sunday morning, which means on those days Stephen is free to do as he pleases, though he always gives Maya plenty of care on those days, too, unless he goes out of town, which he rarely does.
A musician and poet and gardener and guitar teacher, Stephen was just yesterday asked to be in a movie, and he told the moviemakers he would give them his answer today.
The sliding glass door opens and Celia steps out on the deck. She is still in her blue flannel nightgown, the morning chilly. Her long black hair is down and she has yet to put on her makeup. Stephen wishes she would always go without makeup, but he knows she feels compelled to try to hide her wrinkles, so he never reveals his wish.
“Buenos dias,” she says quietly. “Como estas?”
“Bien,” he says, smiling as she comes near. “Y tu?”
“I’m okay,” she says, looking out over the town cloaked in fog. “Did you decide to be in the movie?”
“Still thinking about it,” he says, getting up. “Shall I do the morning lifting?”
“Would you?” says Celia, smiling radiantly. “My back is okay today, but if I don’t lift her this morning that would be better.”
“I’m happy to,” says Stephen, who loves making Celia smile.
*
When Maya is dressed and in her wheelchair at the kitchen table, Stephen makes coffee and Celia makes scrambled eggs and toast.
“To be in a movie or not to be in a movie,” says Maya, waxing Shakespearean. “That is the question. Can’t you decide after they write the script? What if it’s horrible?”
“They want me to help discover what the movie is about through improvising with the cast,” says Stephen, thinking of the alarmingly charming and disarming Carmen Fernandez, exactly Stephen’s age, and Joseph Ross, seventy-five, Stephen’s old friend, who are making the movie, working title Funny Love Story.
“Like Mike Leigh,” says Maya, who once danced in a Mike Leigh movie. “Only Mike is a genius. I worry Carmen and Joseph are not.”
Stephen serves Maya her coffee to which she adds sugar and cream.
“I’m torn,” says Stephen, sitting down with his coffee to which he adds nothing. “On the one hand, I like them and making a movie might be an interesting creative challenge. On the other hand, I have so many other things I like to do, why be in a movie, too?”
“I was in a movie,” says Celia, serving the eggs and toast. “When I was seventeen. Before I got married and had kids and got fat.” She laughs. “In LA.”
“You are not fat,” says Stephen, ever amazed by Celia. “You’re gorgeous.”
“I agree,” says Maya, tasting the eggs. “Rubenesque. Or is it Rubensesque? His name was Rubens after all. Oh my these eggs are cooked perfectly.”
Stephen and Celia exchange smiles—Maya having recently groused about Celia overcooking the eggs.
“What was the movie you were in?” asks Stephen, finding Celia surpassingly lovely at fifty-four and unimaginable at seventeen.
“Gangster King,” says Celia, smiling self-consciously. “My cousin Veronica was dating a movie agent and he told her to find two more pretty Latinas to be the gangster king’s women. So Veronica asked me and her niece Paula and we went with her to the movie set for three days and they put us in sexy clothes, you know, and told us where to sit and lie down and walk around, but we never said anything. We were just there in the gangster king’s mansion and they paid us three hundred dollars a day.” She laughs. “We were rich!”
“Did you ever see the finished movie?” asks Maya, amazed by Celia’s story.
“Oh yes,” says Celia, nodding. “Many times. It was a big movie in LA and Texas and Mexico and South America, you know, for Latinos.” She sips her coffee. “We have a DVD. Very violent. I don’t get killed, but many people in the movie get killed and they shoot Veronica at the end when they kill the gangster king.”
*
After breakfast, Stephen takes the dogs for a walk to the post office where in his box he finds a letter from a friend, four checks from guitar students, and the latest issue of Normal Magic, a literary quarterly to which Stephen has submitted many poems over the years, though none have been accepted for publication. However, a few years ago one of his poems did garner a personal note from the Poetry editor saying she loved his poem but didn’t feel it was quite right for Normal Magic.
Stephen wrote the editor a thank-you note for responding personally to his poem and asked if she would elaborate on what was not quite right about his poem since she loved it, and he enclosed a self-addressed stamped postcard for her reply.
She wrote “Not quite enough magical realism,” and doodled a smiling face next to the word realism.
Her reply inspired Stephen to write a song about rejection, a song that always gets big laughs when he performs it at his Thursday night gig at McCarthy’s, the largest pub in Melody. The title of the song and the last line of the chorus are Not Enough Magical Realism.
*
From the post office, Stephen continues through town with the dogs to the beach at the mouth of Melody River where he throws a rubberized tennis ball into the surf for Hortensio to retrieve while Moose runs up and down the shore yapping at Hortensio until the big dog gets back on dry land, drops the ball, and Moose can bring the soggy orb to Stephen.
*
On their way home from the beach, Stephen and the dogs stop by Murray’s Seafood, and Stephen and Murray Steinberg, a gregarious guy in his sixties, sit at a picnic table behind the fish shop and talk. Stephen holds Moose on his lap while Hortensio lies on the ground beside them exhausted from his exploits in the surf.
“Maya and Celia loved their fish & chips last night,” says Stephen, having brought home three orders of fish & chips after meeting at Murray’s Seafood with the moviemakers. Murray and Murray’s Seafood are to be in the movie, too, and Carmen and Joseph have taken to using Murray’s shop as their in-town meeting place.
“I’m glad,” says Murray, who admires Maya and was devastated when she became paralyzed and was no longer able to dance.
“Maya even went so far as to use the word genius,” says Stephen, avoiding eye contact with Murray. “A word she reserves for the likes of Van Gogh and Mendelssohn and Mike Leigh.”
“You don’t want to be in the movie, do you?” says Murray, who has known Stephen for twenty years.
“I don’t think so,” says Stephen, stating his decision out loud for the first time.
“I’m not sure I want to be in the movie either,” says Murray, who was gung ho at first about Joseph making a movie set in the fish shop. “I thought they were gonna make a short, you know, a ten-minute vignette, and now they want to make a feature film and they’re auditioning professional actors and they want to improvise scenes to guide them in writing their script, and they’re so serious about everything. And though I really like Carmen, and I like Joe, the whole thing feels very weird now. You know what I mean?”
“I think,” says Stephen, choosing his words carefully, “Joseph and Carmen are having a love affair by making this movie in lieu of actually having a love affair, and I think that’s a beautiful thing, if you’ll excuse my use of the expression a beautiful thing. However, I am not drawn to participate in their beautiful thing.”
“I hear you,” says Murray, nodding in agreement.
“Yet,” says Stephen, raising both index fingers skyward, “I, too, really like Carmen, as in I have a crush on her transcendent of any crush I’ve ever had, and believe me I’ve had some big ones, and I’ll always be grateful to Joseph for helping me out when I was a teenager, but I still don’t want to be in their movie, and hearing your take on things confirms my feelings.”
‘Fortunately for me,” says Murray, resignedly, “Joseph is adamant I only be Murray of Murray’s Seafood in the movie and not involved in the days of improvising prior to them writing the script.”
“Why not?” says Stephen, aghast. “You’re one of Melody Theatre Company’s finest actors. You were astounding in A Thousand Clowns.”
“Thank you,” says Murray, gazing thoughtfully at Stephen. “But for some reason just the idea of me being on equal creative footing with Joe and Carmen makes Joe furious. As in livid.”
“Yet another reason to avoid the proceedings,” says Stephen, rising to go. “Thank you, Murray. For everything.”
“The feeling is mutual,” says Murray, slapping Stephen on the back. “Say hi to Maya and Celia for me.”
*
Home again, Stephen calls Carmen, thanks her profusely for inviting him to be in their movie, and graciously declines.
And Carmen says, “May I come see you? Now?”
“To try to convince me with your beauty and charm and ineffable je ne sais quoi to be in your movie?” says Stephen, who under no circumstances wants to prolong his escape from the movie business. “No you may not come see me.”
“Not about the movie,” she says quietly. “About something else.”
“Okay,” he says, looking out the kitchen window at the wooden bench in his vegetable garden and thinking that will be the perfect place to discuss something else with Carmen.
*
A striking brunette with a Spanish father and a French mother, Carmen arrives twenty minutes later and Stephen introduces her to Maya and Celia and Hortensio and Moose before taking her out to his big vegetable garden where they sit on the wooden bench with a foot of space between them. They are both wearing shorts and T-shirts, Carmen’s long hair in a ponytail.
Carmen takes off her dark glasses and says, “So… would you like to see about being in a relationship with me?”
Heart pounding, Stephen says, “Yes.”
“Oh,” says Carmen, blushing in surprise. “You would?”
“But I still won’t be in your movie,” says Stephen, shaking his head.
“No,” she says, shaking her head, too.
They fall silent. Birds twitter. A neighbor’s dog barks. The ocean roars faintly in the distance.
“So,” says Carmen, taking a deep breath, “do you think it’s too soon to kiss?”
“Maybe a little,” says Stephen, also taking a deep breath. “I feel like I might be getting into a sticky situation with you and Joseph, and I really don’t want to do that.”
“I understand why you feel that way,” she says, nodding, “but Joe and I have decided not to make a movie together and not see each other for a while. Things were getting confusing, for him more than me, so…”
“I understand in a non-specific way,” says Stephen, feeling both relieved and sad. “You think he’ll be okay?”
“Yes,” says Carmen, inching closer. “What about hugging? Do you think it’s too soon to hug?”
“No,” says Stephen, who hasn’t had a girlfriend in seven years.
“Just so you know,” she says, hugging him, “I haven’t been in a relationship in seven years.”
“No wonder you were in such a big hurry to kiss,” says Stephen, kissing her.
In the house, watching Stephen and Carmen kiss, Maya says to Celia, “So it begins.”
“She’s so lucky,” says Celia, her tears washing away her makeup.
