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Then Jack asked me the strangest question. “Does this mean,” he asked, “you’re not coming to Thanksgiving?”
Thanksgiving? What a weird thought. “Of course I’m not coming to Thanksgiving,” I said. And then, because he didn’t seem to understand, I said, “I’m not coming to anything at all—ever again.”
Jack turned to read my eyes.
“When jobs end, they just end,” I said. “You don’t, like, become friends on Facebook or anything. Robby will finish out the job—and then you’ll go back to your albino moose, and I’ll go to Korea and eat black bean noodles, and it’ll be like we never met.”
“But we did meet, though,” Jack said.
“That doesn’t really matter. This is how this works.”
Jack looked very serious. “So what you’re telling me is this is the last day we’ll ever see each other?”
I mean, yes. That was what I was telling him. “Pretty much,” I said.
“Okay, then,” Jack said, nodding. “Then let’s make it a good one.”
JACK INSISTED THAThe carry me to the beach, for old times’ sake, even though I would’ve been fine in my sneakers—and I just let him.
We walked along the shore for a while, picking up pieces of petrified wood as well as rocks and pebbles and driftwood. The wind was as constant as the river current, and I couldn’t help but feel soothed by its fluttering.
After a while, we came to a washed-up tree trunk, and Jack decided to sit on it.
I sat next to him.
Usually, when you see people for the last time, you don’t know it’s the last time. I wasn’t sure if this was better or worse. But I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to talk about something ordinary. Something we’d be talking about if it were just any old day.
“Can I ask you something about being an actor?” I asked then.
“Sure. Shoot.”
“How do you make yourself cry?”
Jack tilted his head at me like that was a pretty good question. “Okay. The best way is to get so into your character that you feel what he’s feeling—and then if he’s feeling the things that make people cry… suddenly you’re crying, too.”
“How often does that happen?” I asked.
“Five percent of the time. But I’m working on it.”
“That’s not much.”
Jack nodded, watching the river. “Yeah. Especially on a movie set. Because there are so many distractions—so many cranes and booms and crew members and extras everywhere. And it’s too cold or too hot or they put a weird gel in your hair that’s kind of itchy. When it’s like that, you have to work a lot harder.”
“Like how?”
“You have to actively think about something real from your own life—something true—that makes you feel sad. You have to go there mentally and feel those feelings until the tears come.”
“That sounds hard.”
“It is. But the alternative is messing up the shot, so you’re motivated.”
“What if you just can’t cry?”
Jack looked at me like he was assessing if I could handle the answer. “If you just can’t cry, there’s a stick.”
“A stick?”
“Yeah. The makeup folks rub it under your eyes, and it makes your eyes water. Like onions.”
