Chapter 9: Dailies

Mason's POV

I drove across Los Angeles in the rain with Willa's mouth still on mine, and I did not turn on the radio.

At two in the morning I let myself into the editing suite and turned on every monitor.

The notice from Draper Pictures was still open on my phone.

It said my director's cut was withdrawn, and that I was in breach of my contract if I disputed the credit in any public forum.

Friday's panel was a public forum.

I read the clause twice.

Then I put the phone face down and pulled up the dailies.

Low Tide had fifty-one shooting days.

I had been in the room for every one of them, and I had stopped looking at the footage between takes a long time ago.

My assistant editor keeps everything.

Every slate, every rehearsal, every minute the camera was left running while the crew changed a lens.

I started at day one and fast-forwarded through hours of people holding coffee.

On day twelve, I stopped.

Lance stood at the edge of the frame in a fisherman's sweater, running lines with the script supervisor while she re-pinned a boom.

"I can't touch this one," he said. "Wills wrote the kitchen scene. She'd know if I changed a comma."

The script supervisor laughed.

"Who's Wills?"

"My wife."

"Doesn't Camille Draper have the writing credit?"

"On paper," Lance said, and waved a hand at the question. "It's complicated."

He went on talking, easy and a little proud.

"She writes at night, after I'm asleep. I hear the pen scratching. I used to think it was a mouse."

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