Film | Kyle "Gaz" Garrick

1.1 Saturday

The air in Carlsbad is different. Tinged with a saltiness from the sea that Juno can taste on her lips, the breeze at the perfect speed, perfect temperature. She knocks on the rickety old trailer's door, wishing that she had taken a fleeting moment to film this. This beach—it's gorgeous. Tucked away into its own lonesome corner with a view to die for. Given the chance, Juno'd retire off to here too. She sighs. Bites her lip.

It shouldn't be her that's doing this,

She's staring out at the waves lapping at the shore, a half step off the trailer's poor excuse for a porch, listening to the way they crash against the rocks and land. She doesn't deserve to be here, in his place. The door swings open with a creak so loud, she swears it's about to fall off its hinges. Actually, the hinges themselves look more ready to fall off the frame than anything. Charming, she thinks. Gives the whole thing some real character—

"You lost?" —like it needs any more.

Before her, Ralph DiMaggio stands in all his leathery, sun bleached glory. But burgeoning against his loud button up. But he looks at her softly—kindly, cutting through the rough image she had about him entirely and she can see it in his eyes, in his slight smile with a missing canine. He looks happy. Sober. Completely unlike how Fish described him in the notes he left. Juno feels half bad for expecting to find him at the bottom of a bottle, a mess.

"No, you're exactly who I'm looking for." She finally takes that full step up to the trailer, extends her hand. He takes it. "My name is Juno Connors—you met my partner, Hayden Fisher, like around a year ago." Eyes empty, searching for something in the recesses of his mind, Juno can tell he doesn't remember Fish. It hurts a little. "For the Ronnie Allen doc..." Now she's searching too— reaching , hoping that he remembers. "He was, uh, a little obsessive about wanting to... to solve Ronnie's disappearance from, well, the public and then probably never called you back?" She's fumbling now. Feels like a fucking idiot.

And then it clicks.

"Yeah," he moves out of the way, gestures for her to come in, "Yeah, no, I remember him, Kid was a lot."

Juno laughs—well, breathes out a laugh more so than actually laughing. He's right, he was a lot. Too much, even. She gets it, really, she does. No one could ever entirely stomach him quite like her. Supposes she's just adept at tolerating the intolerable.

"Why didn't he ever call back?"

"Thing is, he was going to but he died back in March, so."

"I'm sorry."

She gives a shrug that feels all sorts of wrong. "Yeah,"

Reaching into her bag, she flashes him a tight-lipped smile. Her way of saying It's okay because she doesn't really know how else to without making it worse, the the awkwardness, or sounding like more of an idiot than she already does. Because she's faced it now: Juno's blowing this interview and it hasn't even started. This isn't her beat, isn't what she does. No, her job was to sit there and point the camera at someone while Fish did all the heavy lifting. All the talking, But Fish is gone now and there's still lifting to be done.

The lavalier mic is heavy in her hand, heavier than she knows it really is. She gestures vaguely with it. "I'm here now. For that interview—only if you want to, obviously."

"Gotta be a little more assertive than that, Junie. A lot more." He says suddenly like he's known her forever. Her brows furrow. "Be a bitch, it's the only way you'll get what you want from old pieces of shit like me." Ralph eases himself into a chair that groans under his weight, points his finger at her. "That's a fact."