You Look Like That Girl: A Child Actor Stops Pretending and Finally Grows Up by Lisa Jakub Page B

other life, the one in which I went to school with kids whose careers involved lemonade and dog walking.
    I acclimatized to a life where home was a hotel that stood behind a Bernini fountain, where a merman with rippling abs rode a clamshell and blew a conch. The weekends meant taking the train to Venice and strolling the canals while eating loaves of olive bread from greasy brown paper bags. My off-set social interactions largely revolved around the crazy homeless man who lived in the piazza in front of the hotel. He wore a long, ragged black trench coat and would do pirouettes and spring his long, lanky body into the air. As he landed, he would bonk Vespa drivers on the head with a fairy wand while they sped through the traffic circle. All the while, my eccentric friend would sing the word “sara” repeatedly, long into the night. Perhaps it was the name of the long-lost-love that drove him to madness, or, maybe it was
sará
, the Italian word for “it willbe.” Maybe he was a Buddhist poet.
    When working internationally, key crewmembers are usually imported from L.A. or New York and the rest of the crew is hired locally. It’s of utmost importance that the drivers be locals when working in a foreign place. That way, you don’t have a bunch of freaked out Americans trying to figure out the rules of a Roman traffic circle. My driver was Roberto, a Roman man in his early forties with dark, intense eyes and a firm handshake that made everyone feel that everything was under control. His car was pristine and smelled of polishing wax, and the dangling tree air freshener always got tangled with the rosary that hung from the rear view mirror.
    One of our locations was high up in the mountains above Rome in a secluded monastery. The series might have been melodramatic, but the scenery was stunningly beautiful. The fog would roll in across the mountain and you could hear the clanking bells of the sheep long before they broke through the mist. Their herder, seemingly nonplussed by the presence of a production company, expertly guided the flock through our trucks, trailers, and light stands. It looked like a scene that belonged back in the 1800s, but there they all were, solidly in 1992, hooves tripping over Panasonic cables as the sheep bleated their way past.
    The drive up the mountain was treacherous. It required hairpin turns that were so narrow that only one car could fit at a time. We were usually traveling before dawn, so that I had time to get into hair, makeup, and wardrobe before the cameras started rolling at sunrise. Roberto would give two friendly beeps of the horn as we began each turn, a noise that sounded like a peppy, “Coming through!” but really meant, “If you can hear this, please pray because we are about to collide and shall all be plummeted over the side momentarily!” So, we curved and beeped and prayed for an hour each way. Roberto was obsessed with the Enya album
Watermark
and would play it constantly on the car stereo. To this day, the peaceful, soothing notes of “Sail Away” make me violently nauseated.
    Once, while navigating the streets of Rome, Roberto avoided sometraffic by hopping our little black Fiat onto the sidewalk and driving along next to the umbrellas of the outdoor cafés. A couple of people leapt out of the way like we were in an action film, except for the fact that no one was chasing us. Roberto seemed thoroughly nonchalant about the maneuver. It was both thrilling and terrifying. When we drove on the sidewalk past a group of police officers, I was convinced we were all going to jail for Roberto’s recklessness. But the
Polizia
just smiled and waved their cigarettes in the air.
    “Roberto? Why did they just wave at you?”
    “Because we a-passed by.”
    “No, I mean, why did you not get in trouble for driving on the sidewalk?”
    “Ah, Leeza,” he tisked at me. “You do not know? I am special.”
    “You are special?”
    “Yes. Special. Special police. Important police.