To Retreat or to Retreat; On Mountain Time

Act III gets underway with Styles and Cara bouncing back with renewed energy and focus after a setback on their web series project, Sixty-Six. The setback in question is described in Chapter 32: To Retreat or to Retreat, and involves the network they pitched it to who had originally greenlit the pilot with a contingency for subsequent episodes now ghosting them. Cara and Styles have been forging ahead with the pilot whilst waiting for the contract package with budget and production details to arrive, but when it doesn’t, Styles reaches out to find out that it’s been quietly shelved.

It's a big blow to the both of them who’ve been putting so much of their time and effort into it all these months. Cara of course feels like all hope is lost, but Styles quickly comes up with an idea to keep the project going: he’ll fund it himself with money he’s been earmarking for a TBD future creative project anyway.

It would be an expensive undertaking, but he already has some experience and contacts in the industry, and since he already has an existing LLC for his podcast, developing the series under that umbrella would give them the freedom and power to make whatever creative choices they want and Sixty-Six would automatically be insured for some amount of legal and financial liability under his podcast LLC. (I don’t actually go into that detail in the chapter, because, ugh, boring and also because I’m deliberately keeping it vague – Cara doesn’t have a clue about this stuff and frankly I don’t really know that much about it either).

Styles has basically saved the day, and Cara is thrilled that their work can continue. It’s basically the reason she’s there, since River had proposed that the album recording could happen anywhere, anytime. Now that she’s there, if the web series project were to be over, it would make her question her presence there and likely mean that she’d wrap up the album with River and have no reason to stay any longer, that she and Griffin would pack up and move back home, the L.A. part of their live officially over.

Now that Cara and Styles are helming the project themselves, he proposes a weekend creative retreat in the mountains for the core team to reset, brainstorm and forge ahead with whatever new ideas they come up with. Cara is absolutely enthralled by the idea of this. If she didn’t feel like she had made it before, she certainly feels it now – like a real writer/creator who has every right to participate in a working retreat with her creative collaborators. She envisions a community forming, not just the Sixty-Six team, but bringing in River and his associates as well. An artist’s collective to bring everyone together.

Of course, it’s an unrealistic dream and gives insight into Cara’s idea of what a “real artist” looks like. She couldn’t possibly be one, unless these weird criteria are met. But the creator’s retreat in the mountains is one piece of this completely subjective puzzle in her mind, and she’s all in.

She doesn’t question anything about it until the day the retreat is supposed to begin – Friday after work – and notices that no one else in the office appears to know anything about it. Styles and Magda, their producer, are locked away in the studio auditioning talent for the web series all day, so Cara doesn’t see him until the end of the day when he finally emerges and asks her if she’s ready to go – just her. The so-called creator’s retreat will be just the two of them (Styles’ definition of the core team).

She considers dropping out at this point, but is unwilling to give up the romantic notion of herself as an artist being defined by this creative retreat idea, and decides to forgive the alleged miscommunication and go ahead with it as planned.

Which brings us to Chapter 33: On Mountain Time. Yes, I realize they’re already on Mountain Time, as indicated by California’s time zone designation, but the connotation here is that even if they aren’t going far, they’re entering a place with a different mindset, one that will hopefully enable them to think different about their project and provide inspiration for how they move ahead with it.

Cara’s quite moved and humbled by the landscape, after spending months in the city away from nature. She’s seeing colors and hearing sounds that are stimulating her consciousness in meaningful ways, so the scenic trip to the cottage is already having the desired effect.

The romance of the rustic but beautifully appointed cottage isn’t lost on Cara, and that evening as they sit by the firepit overlooking the lake, she nearly forgets why she’s really there, until Styles unpacks his laptop and gets right to work on their project. It seems she was right to trust him, that this creative retreat is the real deal, and the two of them discuss their next steps, including an idea that Cara has about bringing River into the project to do the music, which would save them from expensive licensing fees and benefit from his “new sound” that he’s working on. It also ostensibly scratches Cara’s itch to unite all her arty new friends together into this artist collective idea.

That night as Cara tries to sleep, she’s kept up by the discomfort of her conversation with Griffin about the creative retreat weekend plan. Not the conversation itself, but the fact that it hasn’t turned out the way she expected, with it now being only herself and Styles instead of their entire team. She replays their conversation in her head to make sure she didn’t do anything wrong, and that if it gets out that it was just herself and Styles at the cottage, she will be telling the truth when she says she didn’t know at the time.

Of course, it doesn’t excuse her for going anyway, and that’s something she doesn’t even consider. Once she’s soothed herself that she “did everything she could” to not actively put herself in this position (LOL she so didn’t), she drifts into her tropical island survival fantasy with none other than the person sleeping in the upstairs bedroom.

The daydream picks up where it left off, with Styles accepting that no rescue plane is coming for them and resigning himself to his fate of living on the island with Cara and accepting her as his romantic partner. They finally have sex, in her imagination, at least – something she has been building up to in this scenario for months – and it’s everything she hoped it would be (and more, as the sudden appearance of equally horny spider monkeys on the island threatens to ruin the mood).

Since we've established that the island fantasy is mirroring what's happening in real life, I think it's pretty clear that Cara is testing and stretching her mental boundaries to be ready for what may or may not happen. With recent events that may or may not have happened between Griffin and Willow, I think both Cara and Styles are adjusting for what they may or may not allow to happen, and how far they will give themselves permission to go.