Five People, Four Rejections, They Voted to Erase Me, So I Erased Them novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Studio

She goes to take back her pay; Eugene calls a vote on it on camera; the editor, Ronan, quits mid-take and follows her out with an offer.

The Fair Table had a studio now.

It was a rented storefront downtown with the family name in gold on the window and a white leather couch in the front.

I had never been inside it.

Dad had said it was for the crew.

I walked in at five-thirty, still in my drugstore smock, and the girl at the front desk stood up without being asked.

She did not stop me.

She looked at the ceiling, where a small red light was already on.

The lights were up in the back room.

Dad sat at the long oak table with a mug in front of him.

Mom sat on his left.

Colm was behind a camera on a tripod, and Corrine's chair at the end of the table was empty.

A man in a gray sweater sat at the editing desk by the wall with his headphones around his neck.

He was tall and lean, with dark hair that needed cutting and a pen cap between his teeth.

He did not look at me.

"Nessa," Dad said. His voice was bright and pleasant. "We were just about to record a follow-up. Sit."

"I'm not sitting. I came for my pay."

"We discussed this."

"You told payroll it was family money. It's mine. I earned it."

Mom said, "Honey," and Dad lifted one hand.

"Let's do this properly," he said. "Colm, are we rolling?"

"Rolling."

"Motion," Dad said, to the lens. "Nessa Pfeiffer requests that her paycheck be returned to her personal control. Hands."

I stood there with my bag still on my shoulder.

Mom's hands stayed in her lap.

Colm leaned away from his camera and put his own hands behind his head.

"Against," Dad said, and pointed at each of them in turn. "Against. Against."

He raised his own hand and then looked at me and smiled.

"Nessa?"

I kept my hand down.

"Oh, she's not even going to vote for herself," Dad said. "Four rejections. That's the one for the book."

I looked at him.

I had not known there was a book.

The door behind me opened and Corrine came in, out of breath.

"Dad, no," she said. "Stop. She just got here."

Dad turned his head and said, in a completely different voice, "Cut the sound on the sister, Colm."

Colm laughed.

Corrine stood in the doorway with her hand pressed to her chest and did not come any farther in.

I could hear a chair roll back.

The man in the gray sweater had stood up.

He took the headphones off his neck and set them on the desk, very gently, next to the keyboard.

"I'm done," he said.

Dad did not look around.

"Ronan, we're mid-take."

"You're mid-take," Ronan Keogh said. "I'm done. I have been done since the dental crown."

"You signed a contract."

"Sue me. You'll need the footage for that, and it'll be in the courtroom."

He picked up a gray backpack from beside the desk and slung it over one shoulder.

Nobody said anything.

Colm's camera was still pointed at him.

Ronan walked to the tripod and turned the lens down toward the floor with two fingers.

Then he walked past me and held the door open, and I went through it because it was the only door that wasn't the one in front of my father.

The evening air on the sidewalk was cold.

I stood under the window with the gold letters and shook.

"That was the worst one," he said behind me. "And I've watched forty of them."

I turned around.

He was standing a careful distance away with his bag in both hands.

"I've seen you somewhere," I said.

"Not in person. You've seen my work."

"You're the editor."

"I was." He took the pen cap out of his mouth. "I re-cut the dental crown for the anniversary reel. I cut the bicycle. I cut the coat."

My stomach dropped.

"You're the one who zoomed in."

"Yes."

He did not look away when he said it.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I won't ask you to take that. I'm not here to be forgiven."

"Then why are you out here?"

"Because there are two hundred and twelve raw files on a drive in my bag," Ronan said. "Every single one of them from before I touched a thing."

He held my eyes.

"Come and see what you're actually in."

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