This Location of Unknown Possibilities (27 page)

“I hope you don't mind my saying so, but there's something different about you today.” Luna stomped around glowering and short-fused, the pinched expression a clear warning.

“My hair's back. ‘Keep your perm off them plates,' that's from the boss. As if anyone perms their hair anymore.” Luna beckoned in a tourist family at the entrance. “And, to be honest, my other half, or my lesser half, as I've been calling him these days, came home stinking drunk last night. Again. I'm still on the warpath about that.”

Marta said, “Men,” hoping she sounded convincingly seasoned—
Oh yeah, I've been through the wringer too
. Anyone could see that Luna's confiding urged commiseration.

“Can't live without 'em, and can't shoot 'em, right? Tea?”

Marta nodded.

“Be back in two shakes.”

Marta, following Luna's heavy-footed approach, took note of the newly chilled demeanor and the fathomless black eyes. A compressed brow arch, also making a trial run this morning, suggested the potential for retribution in the manner of Lorena Bobbitt.

“Do you think you can keep your mood going awhile?” Marta asked as Luna cleared the table with practiced efficiency. “You know, that sounds wrong, so please let me explain. Do you have a minute to spare?”

Luna surveyed the diner and yelled toward the kitchen: “Henry, I'm on break for five. It's dead in here, okay, and my feet are killing me.” She said, “It's a done deal. The next order up will be yours.”

“Do you remember me saying that there'd been an accident on set?” As Luna sat facing her, Marta mapped out the production's dilemma and the technical requirements of the position.

Intrigued, Luna asked about the character.

As Marta outlined Lizzie's key traits Luna interrupted with concerns about lack of preparation. Marta backpedalled, realizing she'd overstepped; she couldn't say if the idea had merit or whether union regulations would allow for a local. It wasn't as if Luna could show up and audition. “I don't mean to set you up for disappointment,” she said.
“I'll check at the office and see if there's any possibility. It's not exactly my area of expertise, so it could be that you'd need an agent or some representation or, well, who can tell? It won't take but a minute to find out. If it's good news, I'll let you know.
And if not: sorry to get your hopes up. I probably should have asked my superiors before opening my mouth.”

“What the hell, eh?
Why not. Just give me a call. I'll write the number here. It'll give me something better to do than go home and pace around until His Highness gets done at his shift.”

7
.

L
ora appeared to be alone at Joan's when Marta pushed open the door. She'd set up dueling fans at the command post desk, and her hair fluttered. “Blanche has called half a dozen times already,” she said before Marta took two steps. “The woman's a force of nature.”

Eyes adjusting to the half-lit interior, Marta could see they were alone save for Jake, who paced in the back office on a call punctuated by frequent resolute hand gestures. “Good morning, that looks refreshing.”

“It's not A/C, but it's better than nothing,” Lora said. “Anyway, it seems there's actresses lined up around the block. Being a celebrity is the number one career choice of girls these days, thank you very much Paris Hilton and all those child stars that later show up on the news as stories about prescription drug overdoses. I informed Blanche you'd be ready for a massive conference call before eleven, that okay?”

“About that, Lora. Do you have a moment, because I have a proposal.” She thought to sound tentative but inspired. “It may be a viable alternative to conference calls and Blanche and digital auditions and jet fuel. Would you like to hear it?”

“You know me, I'm all ears for creative solutions.”

Marta studied Lora's eyes for a sign; the woman's incarnation as a stickler for protocol hardly counted as a secret. She emphasized the cost and time benefits as well as the relative puniness of the role. Striving to sound neither dismissive nor cynical, she also outlined
Battle'
s product status, and how as a commodity ordered, manufactured, and consumed with no huge premium placed on it attaining Palme d'Or quality—filling time slots its raison d'être—efficiency trumped casting perfection. “Luna would be perfect.”

“What?”

“The waitress at the O-K would be a great replacement for Dol'rez.” Marta expanded on the declaration. “And I think you mentioned that a Canadian being cast would be likely, right? She even belongs to a union, she's ready to go right now—and the sooner the better, you said.”

“That's nice of you, Marta.”

“Well, she seems a reasonable choice.” Lora mistook her motivations. Another day of telephone exchanges with unpleasant people might turn Marta ballistic.

“Okay, okay, that could work if she has the right paperwork with dotted i's and crossed t's. Where is she right now? What size is she? Do you think she'd be free to take a few days off? We'll set up a pow wow in a jiff when Jake's done. Chaz has to drive him to set, but I figure the whole deal won't take up an hour.”

“That sounds great, thank you.”

“In the meantime, you'd better grab a coffee.” Lora pointed at the kitchen. “Someone looks like they didn't get enough sleep and will get all testy and difficult to work with inside of ten minutes.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

TREK

1.

“H
ello, sleepyhead,” Jake called out. “Coffee's on, but it's getting kinda old.”

“My oh my, you're here bright and early.” Lora clicked on computers before beetling for the rear office. “No rest for the wicked?”

“Well, someone has to be.”
You're not the only one who can play martyr
, he thought.

“And did someone not sleep well?”

“I've got to take off for the Hebe farm in twenty. The maestro behind the lens wants to go over the shooting changes mano a mano.” Gnawing and sucking, Jake's teeth worked toward a splinter lodged beneath the thumbnail.

“Got it. Be sure to pick up a good mood on your return trip.”

“Ha ha.” Watching Lora bee-line to the front desk, Jake reached to scour a blooming rash on both ankles. Calamine lotion could be picked up en route; combing the countryside for jewelweed, the natural remedy he'd read about online, hardly seemed practical.

When Jake unlocked Joan's an hour before Lora appeared, he'd already jerked off twice, put on chastity belt tight Calvins, and express-posted operating principles—Another day another dollar; Nose to the grindstone; The sooner it's done, the sooner it's over—to the front of his thoughts. Redtube, Xtube, RetroXXXtube, Wanktube, sniffing around online, and poring over hard drive porn, keeper scenes (real chemistry to savour amidst a glut of robotic, dubbed moaning performances) he stashed away and viewed time and again: also disallowed. Evidently the situation called for new rules, put in place from now on. He'd even lay off those herbal enhancements for awhile, eyes steady on the prize.

All work and no play: clichés had their uses.

After last night's debacle and waking with an open mouth and hips pushed urgently into the soft mattress, Jake realized the location shoot, and its tanking after-hours especially, would be best viewed from hindsight. In the meantime, the shoot itself needed a fresh approach: as a task to focus on exclusively, an unpleasant laborious term of employment like community service while wearing an orange prisoner's jumpsuit, and a series of hoops and hurdles that, once completed, would be filed away and moved on from—no harm, no foul, and forgotten as a worthless but mercifully short-lived trial.

You have to choose your battles wisely, he conceded, and this bad luck blast furnace of a valley had it in for him like nobody's business. Key strategies: staying busy and being surrounding with upright non-enablers; quitting smoking years ago had taught him that trick.

2
.

M
inutes into the witching hour drive from the Husky, Jake had replayed scenes—punitive, detailed snippets of conversation, a deluxe, art-directed package complete with multi-angle visuals, scents, temperatures, and rustling winds—and decided that from the moment he'd left the office in search of the promised land in the peach orchard, the evening had not translated well into the kind of anecdote enjoyable for teller and spectator alike. He had complete faith he'd never share the low points, definitely not at the office and—probably—not even with Jeremy during one of their periodic 'fess ups over beers. The live and learn tale deserved a private burial and his solitary respect.

Whereas fashion foibles—the stubborn rat's tail way back when, the Statement Sideburns, the penchant for frat boy ball caps and surfer dude brands that went unchecked for too many seasons—could be joked about, and select revealing miscalculations, preferably with some kind of snappy laugh track moment, might be auctioned off here and there after a few drinks as part of the normal evolution of an intimate friendship, the cuts caused by this OK Valley debacle made him secretive, vaguely shame-faced.

Last night wouldn't convert into a good story, anyway. Jake could tell: besides possessing not much in the way of a build up or punchline, its revelations—such as they were—merited no public consumption. His sense: to mull it over. If he wanted to trot out a revised version later, at a safe distance, once the goading points had been dulled and the lessons gleaned, then he'd do so.

As for Lora—the watchful and curious circling of a seen-it-all mother who can tell that something's up—he'd avoid her attentiveness and the polite lack of interrogation as she set up for the day's impending in-pour of calls, requests, and emergencies.
Sullen
, Jake thought, yearning for his cavernous and restful condo, the city, and all the amenities a real metropolis contained. The phone, desk, and laptop would be an imposing wall for a few hours until busyness consumed Lora full time.

Even though no colossal embarrassment or shameful faux pas dogged him—nothing in that ballpark—Jake felt self-protective, in need of a quiet solitary place to lick wounds. From the outside, the episode looked like no big deal—a brief series of stumbles, a resounding non-event, and nothing he hadn't visited before. In the sobriety of the early morning Jake realized his reaction didn't add up. He faced no momentous road fork, no feet at a precipice; and he possessed complete awareness that he'd had a weird evening—that's all, whatever. Still.
The doubt—a gradual, though glacier-steady loss of faith in the prized ability to grab a place in the world and forge any trail of his own making—teased, a resilient vestige. And unwelcome: like a scarlet rash of back acne or an unappetizing set of misaligned teeth, that questioning recalled an earlier, keen-to-belong wannabe self that Jake imagined as so remote its former concreteness had dissipated into spectral nothingness.

He always pictured self-made cock-surety as solid and unmoving, not a fragile, porcelain-thin veneer. Alternate takes on that script, those he could live without.

3
.

A
ccelerating away from the Husky after the orchard no-show and head-butting with Chaz,
Jake had ballooned his cheeks and slowly released the air; with turtle-velocity traffic the natural enemy of peaking testiness, he smiled, shoulders relaxing, in gratitude to find the road to Kaleden nearly deserted and shrouded by darkness.

Loser gamblers he'd watched in a casino north of Palm Springs had risen to mind again as he passed by the strip of orchards near the Hebe lot. At mid-morning on the way to Los Angeles during hiatus last spring he'd stopped at Morongo, a roadside high-rise dropped in the middle of nowhere, for a walk through. The gross house-favouritism of gambling rubbed him the wrong way; the stroll was pure voyeurism.

As dealers at the poker and blackjack stations practiced card tricks, watchful for the influx of evening customers, the only activity clustered within one section—row after row of video slots where dumpy men and withered women fed tokens with hypnotic factory regularity. The mirthless expressions struck Jake—they may as well have been punching time clocks at the end of grueling shifts—as did the Pavlovian compulsion to keep the machine plugged with tokens and to smack the lit rectangular button that caused the screen to imitate the whirring reels of a yesteryear machine—cherries, lemons, apples.
A blink of an eye separated each round; the loss was registered in that time, then washed over with ridiculous hope that the next game would be the winner recouping all previous damage.
Fat chance
, he'd thought.

Those desert automatons had first sprang up soon after he'd flirted—automatically, habitually, without a syllable of invention—with the matronly cashier at the Husky, saying
“Nice night for a drive” and “Must be nice when your shift ends” with snaky insinuation, staring intently into her eyes. In that fraction of a minute he'd become part of the same species at the casino.
What a joke, the lines so dead, the ploy so transparent and so
expected
that she hadn't even burned the calories required to lift a smile.

Between making moves on a woman he'd sooner have polishing the kitchen floor than his knob, being a major jerk-off with Chaz, and getting a deserved wrist slap from the prim professor, Jake's frame of mind turned manic, unbalanced; off his game, he'd decided, would be putting it mildly.

Five minutes past the Oliver town limits sign, Jake couldn't shrug off the hard knot of frustration building from shoulder to shoulder and into his grip of the wheel.

“Sleep it off,” he mumbled, “there's nothing that can be done about it now.”

When the sleepy lakeside trailer park—reputed habitat of the drunken, Gravol-popping nympho Xtina—rolled into view, Jake grimaced. His right hand, already resting lap-level, inched upward, the obedient servant of an impulsive creature with willed deafness to half-measures, firm denials, and a hypnotist's benign suggestion—“Relax, you're getting very sleepy.”

“What's the plan, big boy,” Jake asked, judging himself, as an uncharitable outsider might when catching sight of an unhitched man driving alone in a SUV on a two-lane highway late at night and posing a question at a dumb tool of reproduction, a matter any fool knew as better answered by the larger grey organ situated behind the eyes.

Here's the gruesome flip side of adventuring
,
he'd thought,
and of taking pride in being a wolfish predator
. Ordinarily Jake's perspective felt secure: regarding personal habits and tendencies from one unswerving prospect: no big deal, right, a consequence of appetite, how organic is that? You naturally fed a physical need; and in fact the absence of appetite indicated a red flag, a sign of disorder and ailment in gestation.
Ask any doctor.

Everybody agreed. The only difference: technical definitions—to wake up and crave breakfast drew no remarks; that was no more than an integral but pedestrian check mark on the human condition's daily list, like nose blowing and taking a crap. As for the hungering for hole that gnawed at belly level? Only a fraction of the world would equate that pang with basic human qualities. Judgement declared: too base, an animal vestige that right-minded individuals kept under lock and key. And no one won a Nobel Prize for writing about it.

4
.

D
riving in blackness on a solitary highway, Jake fell into judgment. Here he sat, a figure of fun, the clumsy and witless comic dolt who'd walk into the door frame and then get up and do it again, on and on, a buffoon never clueing in to the obvious lesson. Or worse yet: an illustration from a textbook of pathologies. Or one of those standard figures in mental asylum movies: the crazed compulsive masturbator, flesh raw and aching, going at himself yet again, a kissing cousin to a nearby cellmate psychotic tearing at the imaginary insects crawling over her skin and soon restrained by orderlies and rendered vegetative with numbing doses of Haloperidol.

Checking the mirror for traffic, Jake turned onto a dirt road cutting a line into a wide tract of scrubland still untouched by agriculture.

Killing the engine and lights he elbowed the door open, figuring that a recess of leg stretching and bladder draining would furnish enough time for his disparate parts—a regular UN of competing interests and ulterior motives—to converse, debate, and reach happy consensus. Facing roadside brush, he stayed seated; cool air rushed in alongside soothing cricket chirps and faint star light. No other vehicle moved into sight.

Weighing options took seconds. The real impulse, revisiting the trailer park, he struck out; that door while tempting now presented itself as slammed, a permanent closure. Ditto Orchard Boy and Hotel Visitor, one a prick who'd played him and the other's offer already declined, a terminated connection.

Jake walked to the edge of a ditch and pissed on unnamable weeds. He stared ahead. Low brush stretched back to the silhouette of sharp mountains and uninterrupted night sky. Awesome.

Barring an impromptu stop at a tavern or night club—dicey on a weekday night, even the correct choice a low-return lottery—left only two choices. Resting beneath newly laundered blankets at the air-conditioned B & B had all the merits of a sound decision: smart, logical, adult. Then again, training impulse control had always seemed as interesting as taking courses in accounting. Choice
2A
: a campground he'd read about on
Spooge.org
. Though even a lifelong optimist would clue into the Pluto remoteness of success there, a slim chance looked better than none at all. Worse case scenario: lost minutes and Lora commenting on eye bags in the morning. Haggard was no big deal. He'd bark at everyone within range without good reason, a privilege of seniority.

Jake returned to the seat to grab the phone. Studying a saved map, he saw a partitioned tip of the tiny provincial park reserved for campers jutting into the lake; before it, a skinny peninsula stood officially undefined. Scrolling down the cruising site for relevant details, Jake heeded warnings about poison ivy, wandering families, late night parties near the water, and the necessity for total discretion: a promising location, though too many blemishes for a Shangri-La.

He tapped for another venue listing, gamble
2B
, a
24/7
gym—a long-shot mentioned by the site's dedicated pervs. Reading between the lines of the already sketchy details, Jake calculated the beach held greater promise. The gym: too much work, the pursuit of few and unreliable clues that might result in a conversation that could lead to a meeting for a beer likely to end in a frustratingly unproductive hand wave and “Hasta la vista, dude.”