Between Before and After by Jessica Stilling Book Tour, Guest Post, & Giveaway! {Ends 11/24/22}

The phone rings in the temporary apartment I’ve taken on the Rue le Goff off Saint
Michel, the same neighborhood, in the 6 th Arrondissement, where I lived as a child. It’s a
short-term rental. I’m still speaking with the agent of the building I really want to get into. I
want to say the city has changed since 1994 when I came here to live with my mother for
the summer. I was fourteen and my eyes might not have adjusted to the lights of this city. I
didn’t see it with the same oblique angles. In some ways I’m sure it has changed. Memory,
hindsight, whatever, skews the focus, the way the same set can change drastically when we
vary the lighting tech. The cafes, the cobblestones jutting up from the streets like medieval
spikes…. Even the people…fashions have changed, no more butterfly clips, no more slap
bracelets (I was a kid), no more Rachel haircuts and short plaid skirts, no more chic all-
black suits (okay maybe there are still some chic all black suits), but the place, the people,
haven’t changed.
There’s that boyish college student with long hair and a thin mustache (It seems
there’s always a college student around who thinks he’s Louis the XVIIII.) sitting at the
same café every morning reading from an actual book. The prevalence of actual books, and
therefore genuine bookstores of the not-a-glorified-cafe-and-toy-store variety, in this city is
simply amazing. There’s the photo shoot down the block where women who are too tall
with faces that aren’t exactly pretty, (but hey they’re stick thin!), prance around in clothes
for the wrong season. When I walk down these streets it's like I’m in a Truffaut or Godard
movie. Cue dissonant music. Cue superfluous sex scene that has nothing to do with the plot.
Cue black and white stills mixed with Technicolor. Cue Jean Pierre Leaud racing down the
street. It seemed Jean Pierre Leaud dominated the leading man circuit in French New Wave

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cinema for a fifteen-year period. We tried to get him for this film but even at seventy-five
he’s way too expensive.
The phone rings again and I don’t answer. There’s a knock on my door and I get up
from the couch to get it. A key turns in the lock and the door opens without my consent. I
know who it is before she walks in. There’s really only one person I know who cares this
little for my consent.
“You could answer your phone, you know? No one knows the number,” Mary Anne,
my assistant, barges in.
“The press was at my door last week,” I reply.
“You could have not told people where you were staying in that little PR puff piece. I
mean really, I cannot be responsible for your stupidity, Sebastian.” She shakes her head like
she’s annoyed, her short, very bright, very dyed red hair shimmers around her face and she
looks like a pixie.
“I’m being cautious. I’m allowed to be cautious.”
“The press wants to know about your mother and what happened in the ‘90s around
your little sister’s death. Have you talked to her yet?”
“I have not,” I reply. “I’m sure she’s fielding enough of her own questions.”
“I’m sure she is, that’s why it might be nice if you talked to her.”
“It might be nice.”
“She might be helpful with your new project.”
“Might be helpful,” I quip. “But we’ve made two of her books into films already and
she didn’t call for either. She did, however, cash our checks.”

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“As I recall Mommy Dearest offered you a deal on the rights and you insisted on
paying market value.”
“I’d make a terrible businessman.”
“Wouldn’t we all,” Mary Anne says.
“I don’t know if she’s even seen the films.”
“You refused to invite her to the premieres.”
“She could have crashed them. Regina Foster is not above crashing—” I stop myself.
“We’ve established a pattern by inertia.”
“Is it nice, being back?” Mary Anne asks. “You must miss your mother.”
“I call my agent, who calls her agent, who calls her PR person, who calls her. I
wonder if anything gets lost in this game of telephone.”
“We’re shooting scenes 18 through 20 this afternoon,” Mary Anne reminds me.
“Outside scenes, at the café.”
“Got it, boss. 18 through 20,” I repeat.
The phone rings again and Mary Anne answers. It’s a cream-colored corded
contraption that came with the apartment. It reminds me a lot of the one we had at our
place here in the ‘90s.
“Hello?” Mary Anne asks professionally. She’s held friendly conversations with the
likes of George Clooney and Cate Blanchet. She’s handled an angry press agent with the flair
of a Victorian hostess and stopped a homicidal rival producer from physically charging me
with a few simple words. Just now, she speaks for a while, quietly nodding, almost
whispering. Then she pulls the phone away and looks over at me with cautious eyes. I
wonder briefly who has died or what government official is making a stink about filming.

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“It’s your mother,” she says.
I freeze. If I were holding something I’d have dropped it. “Say I’m not here.”
“I’m not here,” she repeats into the phone before gently returning it to the receiver.