Inglourious Romance

Arrival

Finding one’s way around Germany was a real pain when one didn’t speak the language. At least that had been Amaya Thomas’s experience on her first day in Potsdam. She had landed at Berlin-Brandenburg Airport, thoroughly jet-lagged from the seven-hour time difference, crabby because of the jet lag, hungry, had trouble finding her hotel, and figuring out how the hell to get to Potsdam from Berlin. Fortunately, the filming company had sent instructions on how to handle all that, not that it did her much good. She was ever so thankful that Germans learned English in their schools. Plus she had come equipped with a German-English dictionary.

Unfortunately, when she arrived at the beautiful hotel at which the Weinstein Company was putting her and the rest of the production crew up, she quickly discovered that her shampoo had exploded inside the Ziploc bag she had packed all her toiletries in. Plus, the bag itself had come unzipped, leaving a holy mess in her suitcase. Nothing said “Willkommen in Deutschland” like shampoo all over your underwear.

That was several months ago. Since then, she had at least figured out how to use the public transportation to get around Potsdam. If she had time, she really wanted to go to Berlin. Amaya considered herself the luckiest person on the planet. She had always wanted to leave the United States and explore Europe, and now she had gotten the chance to do just that. She was hired through the film company to work as part of the production crew for Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming film. Tarantino and Germany was one awesome combination, in her opinion. She just hoped that she would get a chance to visit the Brandenburg Gate and some other cool attractions on her very long bucket list. It was a shame there was no way she could take off long enough to see Neuschwanstein Castle or Hohenzollern Castle, though; they had made it pretty clear that the hours would be long and tedious. Her job essentially was to collaborate on storyboards for the film. Basically, she'd be drawing comic-style scenes of the script so that they would have visuals as to what the scenes would look like and positions of the actors for the camera shots. She also wasn't opposed to helping out with getting the set ready -- if she had the time.

But as it were, she was lucky if she got to eat dinner at a decent time. She and the rest of the production crew spent long hours building and painting sets, organizing props, and taking pictures of ideal locations. She spent a lot of time at the studio drawing board with her colleagues and on her computer to see how the potential scenes she had drawn would look for the filming. It was hard work, but it was fun. Quentin was a lot of fun to work for -- as long as you didn't let him hear your cell phone -- and Amaya had been a fan of his films for a long time.

Filming was set to begin tomorrow. Amaya was sitting on the floor going over some drawings when the actors arrived to meet with Quentin. Though she was sitting at a distance from Quentin’s area, she instantly recognized B.J. Novak; she was a big fan of The Office. She also recognized Brad Pitt and Diane Kruger, but she didn’t recognize the other blonde actress who came in. There were three other actors she hadn’t seen before, either; one was tall and blonde, another was dark headed but kind of cute, but the third actor really caught her attention. He was not very tall but he had a strong jawline and light brown hair that was only beginning to grey on his sideburns. She had never seen him before, but he was rather handsome in a distinguished sort of way. Quentin had a real knack for finding hidden talent, and Amaya wondered what sort of talent these three actors she had not seen before would have. If those three were starring in a Tarantino movie over some of the other Hollywood actors who could have signed on, then they must have talent no one had yet seen.

“Hey, uh, Amaya?” her new friend, Jeff, called.

She pulled her eyes away from the distinguished gentleman and the other actors with him. “Yeah?”

“Can you come help me?”

Amaya stood, flicking back her red hair as she walked toward her colleague. “Sure.”