Jet Black

It shocked her when her phone rang.

It really shouldn’t have, she thought sourly, shifting her weight off the couch and towards the side table a few feet away. It didn’t matter to the movie industry that it was nearing three in the morning, nor did it concern them that she could possibly be asleep. But she wasn’t, and she wrapped her slender fingers around the body of the phone, accepting the call she knew so well.

“Hey, Dex.”

“Did you leave the green tagged clothes in the back closet again?”

She sighed, withdrawing back on the couch into a loosely curled form.

“No, I hung them up with the other greens. Did Diana go in after me?”

There was a pause, disturbed only by her flickering television and muffled shouting from his end of the phone. Her foot tapped to an imaginary tune in her head, waiting patiently while he, no doubt, checked the charts for earlier time slots. Paper shuffling brought his voice back.

“I’ll have to give her a call,” he said, letting out a frustrated sigh. “We’ve only gone over this about, I don’t know, a million times.”

“I know,” she told him, putting as much empathy into her statement as she could. “But cut her a break, Dex, she’s new.”

“Why we brought on people this late into the series is beyond me,” Dex grumbled in response, more shuffling papers falling through the phone in bursts of static. “But listen, sorry about that.”

“It’s no big deal.”

“When are you coming on tomorrow?”

She pursed her lips, glancing at the clock.

“Probably no later than noon,” she said, “I need to fit Kristen into a pair of jeans that wouldn’t even slide over my arm.” He chuckled, calling out to a passerby she couldn’t hear before he responded.

“That’s movies, baby.”

They said their goodbyes and she ended the call, exhaling as she fell back against the cushions of the sofa. It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to late night calls, but she didn’t particularly enjoy them anymore. She could remember a time when these calls were her life, when she lived to fix holes in a shirt at eleven-thirty at night. She lived to sew a blouse at four in the afternoon, or to get called onto set at twenty after five on a Sunday morning.

But he could only take so much.

She childishly blamed his departure on her phone. It was so easy to place the blame on an inanimate object. She didn’t ask to be called in, didn’t ask to succumb to the demanding nature of her job. But the Twilight saga was a blockbuster, whether she liked it or not.

And if she wanted the job, she had to like it.

She tossed her phone onto the coffee table, exerting as little force as she could. She could easily remember his loathing towards the subject matter with which she worked, his escalating fury with her apparent indulgence in it. They had never fought until that one night, and though she wished to repress it from her subconscious, the images flooded her memory.

She hung up the phone, her fingers rubbing at her temples. She glanced at the clock, closing her eyes and groaning as the luminous digits continued to flash mockingly at her. The bathroom door opened with a soft creak, and he shuffled in, hair still dripping from the shower and a towel wrapped lowly around his waist. He looked at her from the doorway, smirking as she pushed herself up from the bed.

“Ah, ah,” he said, grabbing her wrist and tugging her back to the bed. She fell backwards on top of the comforter, and he moved over her, the towel dangling dangerously slack.

“Gerard—“

“And where do you think you’re going?” he growled playfully, his teeth bared in a sideways grin. But she placed her hands against his chest, pushing him from above her and rolling to the side.

“I have to go to work,” she told him, and he chuckled, capturing her again against the bed.

“No you don’t,” he told her, leaning down to press his lips to the hollow at her throat.

“Gerard, stop.”

He did so, but he didn’t move from off of her. His eyes darted across her face, as if searching for any hint that she was joking with him. But she wasn’t, and she sighed impatiently, pushing him away again as she sat up. He simply watched her as she stalked to the closet, and he exhaled, putting his head in his hands.

“Would it really be too much to ask for a night off?” he called, his eyes fixed on the carpet of the bedroom. She was pushing hangers aside, searching for something appropriate to wear.

“They need me to come in.”

“At ten at night?” She withdrew from the closet as he looked up, only to catch her irritated glare. He frowned. “You seriously don’t see anything wrong with that?”

“It’s my job, Gerard,” she snapped, pulling a pencil skirt from a wire hanger twisted around the rack. “It’s not playtime. It’s not optional.”

“It’s not your life, either,” he retorted, standing from the bed and adjusting the wrap around his waist. “When are you gonna stop focusing on this bullshit movie and zero in on what’s important?”

She could feel her jaw clenching, not wanting to go down this road with him.

“This job is important, Gerard,” she answered, the cold bite barely hidden from her tone. “Me gaining experience is important. This movie is crucial to my career.”

“’This movie’,” he quoted irritably, “is being wasted on the faggots who suck up fantasy shit like that.”

She stepped from the closet, her fingers twisting as he hovered over their vanity dresser, examining the miscellaneous object scattered across its surface. He looked completely indifferent to his words, and he illustrated this by picking up a comb, twirling it gently between his fingers as he looked up.

“What?”

“Why do you do that?” she demanded, and he raised an eyebrow.

“Do what?”

“Feel the need to ridicule my job.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Because it’s a joke,” he said, his eyes falling again to the comb. The veins that crawled across the tops of his hands were visible, indicating his gradual grip on the plastic. “Why you’re so interested in this absurd mediocrity I will never understand.”

The words bit at her harshly, and she blinked, searching for a level response behind her growing anger.

“So I guess the band isn’t going to contribute to the soundtrack.”

It was half sarcasm, but he snorted regardless, dropping the comb with a clatter and folding his arms over his chest.

“As if I would ever fucking agree to that,” he scoffed, waving his hand. “We’re My Chemical Romance, not a fucking conventional pop band. If shit like Paramore can just throw up their arms in surrender to mainstream, then fucking let them. But I refuse to be taken down with it.”

She was getting fed up with his divinity complex, with the hypocrisy of his views on her job, when he himself was barely in one place for more than a week.

“You aren’t God,” she finally said, and it seemed to ignite the tension between them. There was no recall for her statement, but she remained defiant, her hands clasped into fists. He glanced at her sharply, his jaw clenching.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that while you pretend to be a non-conformist, Gerard, by being ignorant to a field that simply asked for your assistance, you’re targeting yourself out as the biggest asshole in entertainment.” His arms tightened across his chest, his nostrils flaring.

“I’m making a statement.”

“Oh!” She laughed, empty of humor and echoing with contempt. “Oh, well excuse me,” she sneered. “Had I realized who I was dealing with, I wouldn’t have dared.” She could sense his now radiating anger, and his teeth ground together, his arms releasing and gesturing wildly in the air.

“I’m not fucking doing this to be a dick, sweetheart,” he growled, swatting the air with what seemed only to him to have a purpose. “Music is my fucking life, and I don’t want to go down that road with this pop culture bullshit!”

“Then turn it down with dignity!” Her voice was rising, lighting up the room with a dangerous spark. “Just because you don’t approve of something does not mean you have to belittle its existence! You might find this surprising, but the world does not revolve around your opinions.”

He looked disgusted, his nose scrunched in complete disagreement, but she continued.

“I’ve worked my entire life to get a job like this, Gerard, just like you’ve worked for your music. And while I have done nothing but support you, you have done nothing but berate my occupation for entirely too long. So what if I work on a movie you don’t like? That doesn’t change me, that doesn’t define who I am!” She was beside herself, her words now tumbling from her mouth at an alarming velocity. “I’m sorry it takes up so much of my time, really, I am. But if you could see past your own interests for five minutes, you’d see that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me.”

He was shocked into silence; his tangled and recently bleached blonde hair was starting to dry, frizzing oddly in different directions. She exhaled sharply, grabbing her coat from the bedpost to her left. The silence was worse than the yelling, and she felt like she should apologize, but she was still too angry to think rationally. So she shrugged on her jacket, snatching her phone and her bag before stalking silently from the room.

She couldn’t exactly remember what had happened after that, other than she had called Frank as she was driving to work. He was a good friend, she thought, rubbing at her left arm slowly. He had talked her through her drive to the set, reassured her that Gerard would forgive her and that everything would fall back into place. He and Jamia had fought loads of times, he told her, and he had still married her and was happier than he had ever been in his life. And that was all the time she could afford to spend thinking about it, as other tasks had demanded her full attention as soon as she parked around the back of the actors’ trailers.

She curled her toes, biting her lip softly to one side, wondering if she could have done anything different. But her inquiries slowly faded to static, melting together with the blurred colors from the screen before her. It was slightly interesting to her that the television could still find programs to show at this time of night, yet she made no movement to turn it off. It’s constant power felt strangely comforting.

She wondered if it was the only thing left for her to rely on.