Always (12 page)

He dragged his eyes away from the screen and rubbed behind his ear again. “Well, the OSHA thing is killing us.”

“Apart from that.”

“There have been some delays. Annoying things. Little things.”

“Such as?”

“The lighting tech spending five hours getting the set lit right, and then coming back from break to find someone’s messed it all up. Hours of night footage lost on the way to the lab. When we reshoot during the day using day-for-night exposures, we find it’s all screwy, though the camera guy swears it was set up right. Not so little, that one.”

“Write it all down. E-mail it to me.” I gave him the address. I couldn’t spend every minute with my mother. It would give me something to do while I waited for Monday. And unlike Atlanta, this time I’d be helping people to help themselves. “I’d also be happy to take a look at your accounts, see if I can see a way out of this mess, but I’d understand if you felt uncomfortable with that.”

If he didn’t give it to me, I’d just take it, but there was no harm in playing nicely, especially when it saved time and effort.

“I’ll have to talk to Finkel about that,” he said. “Anything else? Did you read the promo material?”

“Not yet, no.”

“Oh,” he said.

“But my friend Dornan here is a big fan and would no doubt love to hear all about it. He was just telling me about
Killer Squirrels.
”

“Oh, jeepers. You saw that? What did you think?”

Dornan paused, then shrugged. “Well, it’s a fine film if you’re twenty and out of your head and it’s two in the morning and there’s nothing else on the telly.”

Rusen laughed. “Boy, it’s awful, all right. It was way before my time but even Anton admits it.
Feral,
now . . . Oh, this one’s sweet, real sweet. It’s about this girl—young woman, I guess—who wakes in an alley completely naked, and it’s night, and she’s in a strange city. There’s all this—”

“I’ll be on the set,” I said, and they both nodded.

“. . . with shots of steam, strategically placed to keep it PG-thirteen, but it’s not cheesy, not even a bit, it’s ambience, and then there’s this noise . . .”

I shut the door on their strategic wisps of steam. The second woman from the craft-services table was lugging a stack of crates out to the Film Food van. Inside, the food line was down to four people: the bony-faced Bri and his friend, one of the carpenters in overalls, and the assistant wardrobe woman. I watched while Kuiper served them what looked like Thai food, shook her head at something the last one said, and picked up her huge knife again, this time to divide a big, squashy-looking cake.
“Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres,”
she said, and no one got it. She seemed used to it. She wiped down the counter, those muscles around her wrists sliding over each other like the reins of a stagecoach, controlling everything precisely, checked the coffee urn, added coffee and water, and then turned to the pile of fruit waiting on her chopping board. She pretended she didn’t see me. I let her chop for a while. Her hair was twisted up into a knot, and as the knife thunked rhythmically on the board, a loose swatch hanging by the side of her neck shook. Sometimes it looked blond, sometimes light brown. Her earlobe was as pink as a baby’s tongue.

“Good evening,” I said. If I hadn’t been paying attention I would have missed the fractional hesitation between chopping. “Has Rusen eaten anything yet?”

“He’s carrying a lot of weight on this picture. He needs to eat.” She sounded defensive.

“What about the director?”

She snorted and kept chopping.

“I found out what CAA is.”

“You must be thrilled,” she said. Then she sighed. “Rusen told me who you are.” It was an apology, I think.

I filled one of the cups with a stream of pungent coffee. I felt her watching but took my time, adding just the right amount of cream. Didn’t stir. Sipped. Even more assertive than it smelled. “So,” I said, and when I looked up, she was chopping again. “Unusual to find a caterer who knows Caesar’s commentary.”

“You really know how to endear yourself to a girl.”

“I expressed it badly.”

“No, you didn’t. I could quote you more:
quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui
. . . But your eyebrows are already in your hair, proving my point. You couldn’t be more surprised if I were a trained hamster singing ‘Happy Days.’ ”

No, I wanted to say, let’s not do it this way. Let’s talk Latin. Do you know Petronius? Ovid? The
Aeneid
? But her look could have drilled granite. “Tell me about this production.”

“Not my place. I’m a caterer.” Chop, chop.

“But clearly Rusen talks to you. Why is that?”

She didn’t say anything. I swallowed more coffee, noticing for the first time in months the slight tightness on the right-hand side of my throat where a razor had opened the skin like silk. That had been a rusty blade. Kuiper’s knife would cut bone deep without effort. “All right. Let’s talk about catering. If I said I was planning a wedding at the Fairmont and wanted you to cater for three hundred guests, what kind of menu would you suggest?”

“You’re not planning a wedding.”

“I’m just—”

“Bullshitting me. I don’t know why.” The knife thunked energetically on her board. She’d take her fingers off if she wasn’t careful.

In this light, her hair was the color of sandstone. She was like sandstone: a spire of rock rising from an otherwise featureless desert. No toeholds. I thought about toes for a minute, wiggled mine in their boots. Sipped at my coffee. Now that it was cooler it was beginning to taste almost smoky, not at all like that stuff from Tully’s. “So,” I said, “Rusen talks to you.”

“It’s not a crime.”

“But as you’ve pointed out, you’re a caterer.”

She turned around. “And that, of course, makes me not worth talking to.” It was interesting, the basic dichotomy between her behavior and her face. She sounded and acted as though she were angry, or perhaps very sad, but the set of her facial muscles and the few, faint lines told a story of laughter and enthusiasm and occasional stubbornness. That was the woman I wanted to talk to.

“I’ve never been on a film set before in my life. I have no idea how it works. I own this warehouse. It’s in my best interest to see that the production is profitable and keeps paying rent.”

“So you’re just here to help.”

“Well, yes.” Isn’t that what I just said? “I’m trying to understand how things operate. It might help everyone. So, please, tell me how sets like this work.”

“There aren’t any other sets like this one. There are a lot of raw people. Finkel’s an old hand, but he’s not here, and Rusen’s carrying everything. And it’s his first film. He was a software architect.” An image of someone building a skyscraper from Dalí-like drooping girders popped into my head. “He’s smart, but this isn’t film school. This might be my first craft-services job, but at least I’ve been on movie sets before.”

“So he talks to you.” Does he like it when you talk Latin?

“He hired me. You could say we’re learning our jobs together.”

A job. “So he asks your advice on things? When there are problems. And there have been problems. You said so.” Just a job. Very good. “More than there should have been?”

“Like I say, there are a lot of beginners. Two of the camera operators. The sound guy. But there are a lot of old hands, too. Grips, carpenters, technical—”

“Joel,” I said, looking at her small hand with its big knife.

“Joel. Peg. Kathy in costume.”

“Which is why I’m wondering if there’s been some deliberate sabotage.” I was also starting to wonder how to describe her hair. Sandstone wasn’t quite right. Not blond, exactly. Not brown, either. All sorts of different snakes of color in this light, and shiny.

“Why are you giving me that weird look?”

“Weird as a beard,” I said, and gave her my best smile. Beards were weird, when you thought about it. Always a different color to head hair. Animals didn’t have different color hair on their heads and bodies, did they? Birds did, chickadees and woodpeckers. And badgers, too, come to think of it. Did they even have badgers in this country? Probably not. Hogs, though, they had hogs. “Gif me a hog!” I said in a bad German accent, and flung my arms wide. Now that I’d thought of it, it sounded like a lovely idea, luscious woman, luscious hair, but the woman stepped back and put a tray of stuffed mushrooms between us. Mushrooms. Not as good as truffles. Truffles. They used to use hogs to find them, get the hogs to snuff under the trees in the forest. “Snuffle my truffle,” I said, grinning. Truffles, food of princes. Princes ate hummingbirds, too—hummingbirds with long, long tongues. Hummingbirds baked in honey, eaten in a palace. “Tongue palace,” I explained, and the woman behind the mushrooms reddened. I reached for her, wanting to take her perfect pink earlobe in my mouth, but my stomach rippled.

“Oh,” I said.

She said something, with a question on her face, but someone had turned the sound off.

I put my hand on my stomach. “It’s like a heartbeat, but too low down.” She put her big shiny knife on the counter and started to come around to my side. This time my stomach pulsed. I frowned. “Where’s the bathroom? ” She pointed. “ ’Bye,” I said.

The bathroom was cavernous and the toilets very small and a long way down. I vomited on target. Very satisfactory. Mouth tasted bad, though. And why was the stall door so far away?

I lurched at the sinks but once I had my hand wrapped around the tap they steadied down. I rinsed my mouth. The water felt like chrome in my mouth: hard and brilliant. Very odd. Everything was odd. I couldn’t quite work out why.

I frowned, and the sink zoomed away and back again, like a fast-focus pull. And it was very shiny. Definitely not right. Maybe someone could explain what was going on. But that cook person, that Kuiper, I didn’t want to look silly in front of her, no, and I couldn’t remember where I’d put Dornan.

Fresh air. That might be useful. I knew where that was.

The night air was spicy and soft and quite delicious. I breathed it, in and out, in and out, and my stomach stopped rippling and I felt as light as meringue. By the time I reached the car I felt like a god.

Driving was marvelous. The wheel felt so good under my hands that I jigged it this way and that, and loved the way the tires bit into the road and the car seemed to be climbing a path to the stars, up and up and up, gliding over water that sparkled in the city light like fairy dust. The city was a wonderland. On one side, by the water, a herd of orange brontosaurus nosed at the stacks of little boxes saying Hanjin piled at their feet. I watched carefully but they seemed to be frozen in a line. Floating on the other side of the road in its own glow was the head of a vast green goddess. Lovely.

I jigged the car again, this time on a tight curve, and lights flared red around me. It was like being in a hunting print: mounts with red-coated riders, and the sound of horns. I tooted merrily. The road wound on, and then somehow I wasn’t on it, but had been deposited in an open place. I stopped and got out. Funny-looking benches. I wandered over to one—I checked every few steps to make sure my feet were still there—and found that on the bench someone had left a pile of coats and old newspaper.

“Oh,” I said, and the lump jerked and sat up, scattering coverings. “I know this place.” A square, a triangle. “You must be a pioneer.” The pioneer hopped off the bench and scuttled over to some of his friends.

“You dropped this,” I told the group of pioneers as I advanced, holding the paper. None of them reached for it. I put it carefully on the end of the bench. Their eyes were very round. “I’m Aud,” I said, “I love you all!”

I folded cross-legged to the grass, only it wasn’t grass but gritty concrete, and started to tell them about the beauties of the night.

Now I saw that there were others crossing the square, and they were young and smooth and golden, and the music came from a doorway with a woman standing in front of it.

“Dance with me,” I said to a young woman in a soft leather jacket, and held out my hand, but her eyes rounded, too, and she hunched up, like an anemone poked with a pencil. Strange and delicate thing. I laughed, spun on my heels. I danced for a while, with myself.

Soon there were many people watching, but none of them would dance with me. I would go find someone who would.

I wandered up and down the street, looking for my Saab, and felt enormously pleased when I remembered it was in Atlanta and I wasn’t. “An Audi,” I said to myself, and then there it was. Lovely.

Somewhere to my left, the night sparkled blue-white, blue-white, and people moved aside.

Key. I smiled and pulled the key from my pocket. I dropped it. The world swooped a little when I picked it up again. I dropped it again.

Two police officers appeared—where had they come from?—but I was more concerned with my key. Someone had made it very slippery. One of the police officers said something. I finally managed to grasp the key firmly. The other police officer said something, quite loudly, and approached, hand on his belt. I bowled him aside and pushed the little button on my key.

“Boop!” I said, like the car, delighted. It was magic: lights and everything. I pushed it again. Boop! Flash! Boop!

One of the officers was shouting now, and pointing something at me. “That’s dangerous,” I told her. “That’s a weapon.”

“Yes, ma’am. Please step away from the vehicle.”

“It’s my vehicle,” I said.

“Yes. Step away, ma’am. Now.”

“No, it’s
mine.
” You had to be very patient with stupid people.

“You are intoxicated, ma’am.”

“No, I’m not. I’m . . .” I almost said
I’m Norwegian
but I wasn’t really sure that was true anymore. Not like my mother, anyway. “I’m from Atlantis. ” That wasn’t quite right, either. I shrugged. Close enough. I put my hand on the car door.