This Location of Unknown Possibilities (30 page)

Chaz had thanked Marta for the take-out breakfast and slammed the plate into the microwave. “I hope you aren't too bagged today.”

“It's nothing that a full night's worth of sleep won't cure.” With the reply she'd strived for nonchalance, as though possessing a venerable history of sleeplessness due to bed guests.

“Cool. They've got me in beast of burden mode today, so I'm not going to be around much.” Nicos bellowed from the front. “Shit, looks like I'll have to wolf this down on the road. Catch you later, okay?”

“Alright.”

A check-in conversation taking place as microwave beams singed rotating french toast and Jake coordinated an impromptu audition had been by no means ideal, Marta acknowledged as she glowered at a rumbling RV towing a small car and a trailer loaded with an ATV—people would haul entire houses if they'd fit on the road. And even if a deeper exchange had been possible, her inner jury questioned the desirability or necessity: “Um, about last night . . .” would sound neurotic at best, the dullest of womanly clichés at worst. What to say, what policy to effect?

“Let's get the show on the road,” the intervening shout from Nicos, had been an instrumental by-product, akin to the career kick for Luna. “A self-correcting mechanism,” her smug day trader of a brother might label it to end a discussion. At equal intervals he'd fondly trot out “Everything happens for a reason” too. Marta could never fully grasp what he thought this mass-market article of faith really meant.

GREAT IRREGULARITY

1.

“O
kay, okay, we're closing up shop.” Lora unleashed a short round of claps and strutted exultantly through the office. Marta and Lora worked alone;
following the seventy-minute stint as a star-maker Marta had returned to wearisome clerical duties—since nothing else exciting rolled down the pike—as Lora hollered into telephones and typed reports in Jake's office. “After that, my dear colleagues, you are simply going to have to wait.
The call centre is now closed, please leave a message at the sound of the beep.”

Lora peered through the lettering on the front window. “We need a break from this place anyhow, trade in recirculated office air for that invigorating OK Valley oxygen.” On a bee-line for Marta, Lora's flattened hands pressed the sides of her face and pulled tight: “Dah-ling, I hear it turns back time.”

“What's going on,” Marta said, on hold and watching Lora's hummingbird movements. The dreaded conference call had been scrubbed, but Lora had insisted that Marta contact Blanche to give the woman a final update. With a chilly “I see,” Blanche transferred the call to the monosyllabic assistant, and she immediately sentenced Marta to on-hold exile. Metronoming a pencil in time to a medley of easy listening classics for five minutes, Marta needed a fresh distraction.

“The final scene is being shot, and we're going to watch it up close and personal. We don't have a lot of traditions in this biz, but that's one of them.” Lora's bellowing from the kitchen echoed. “Are you going to be okay with taking the wheel?”

“Yes, of course.”

Lora returned to Jake's office, and Marta loaded paper into the photocopier while waiting for the surly voice of Blanche's assistant. Thirty placating seconds into a love ballad from the '
70
s whose streak-haired singer verged on familiar, Marta hung up.
It's not as though I'm going to get fired
, she thought. Blanche represented nothing but a bridge she could afford to burn. She typed an IM to Lora: “The call is completed.”

“Okay, grab your keys and let's get out of here before the phones ring again.” Lora slammed down the lid of the laptop on Jake's desk. “There's no bugs out there, right?”

Idling the engine while Lora locked up the office, Marta watched pedestrians, welcoming the speed of the AC as bracing currents wafted across her feet.

“So much for that theory.” Lora swung open the passenger door.

“Pardon me?”

“My refreshing outdoors air theory.” She placed an index finger on her tongue and then held it in the air. “Not enough wind to rustle a goddamned leaf. You could fry eggs on the hood, though, I'll bet.” She fastened her hat with a thick string. “Ha! We're looking like Thelma and Louise of the ozone-hole generation.”

Marta laughed. “Do you want to use my lip balm? It's SPF thirty.” Barry Manilow, she recalled: the troubadour with whom she'd been trapped on hold, the thick schmaltz the ideal torment for any impatient customer.

2
.

M
arta had not driven the route, but retraced it easily enough from the to and fro runs between locations with Chaz. She pointed toward the crash site soon after passing by the unmoving radio transmission dish monoliths; on the approach she was struck by how much the habitat had grown since that late night visit, the pattern exponential and jumbled, like a desperate refugee camp. The occupation of turquoise portable toilet rows and pell-mell white trailers flattened wild field grasses; in between, rigid tent canopies provided shade for extras and served as makeshift cafeterias for crew meals.
This time next week
, Marta thought,
passersby will see nothing out of the ordinary except trampled grass
. Such stealth reflected movie magic of a different kind.

Attended cars loitered along the roadside. “Lookie loos and local reporters playing paparazzi,” Lora said. “Probably here to catch a glimpse of Michelle Pfeiffer, and good luck with that.”

The barbed wire gate lay rolled up by a wooden post. Marta slowed, awaiting directions.

“Everyone that's legit is over there in crew parking, thataway.” Lora's thumb jerks directed them to a lot with tape borders rustling in the breeze.

Leaning close to Marta, Lora spoke to the PA guarding the field of vehicles. “Hi, honey,” she said tucking her chin and peering over bee-eye sunglasses. “You gonna let us into this blazing mess?”

“ID.”

“Um, hello?” Lora pointed to the sticker on the windshield, Chaz's doing.

“Straight ahead, then make a right.”

“Christ, what a jerk. There's a rent-a-cop in the making,” Lora said as Marta drew into the makeshift lot. She waved to men smoking near the horse trailers. “Animal handlers and extras wrangling, it's a virtual rodeo here today. At least there's a bit of a gust now.”

Marta could ignore bladder alerts no longer. “Lora, before we take another step, is there, well, a dedicated trailer for washrooms?”

“No sweetie, it's all for one and one for all here unless you're royalty on the talent totem.” With a sly smile, she jerked her head at the turquoise row. “I'll wait over there under the extras tent.”

“Do you mind?” She handed Lora the tote bag.

Abuzz with flies, the cubicle's semiopaque, off-gassing plastic walls also oozed an aura of blistering heat while the liquid chemicals and body excretion stew below suggested toxic waste and recent mass graves. Marta pulled a sanitary seat cover from the dispenser and sat reluctantly. Once finished reading the maintenance schedule with its commonsense warning—“Excessive use will result in unsatisfactory conditions before the next regular servicing”—she focussed on the company's humble motto: “We're
#2
in Number Two.” She imagined a cutthroat rivalry with the frontrunner in the portable toilet sector—industrial espionage, kickbacks, headhunted sales staff: who could say?

“Pretty ripe, eh?” Lora sat under the shade of a tent. “I always go back at the office.” The plastic rental tables remained unoccupied except for a group of swarthy men throwing down pennies and cards.

“That's a good call; I'll remember for next time.”

“Shall we take a stroll down the hill, my dear?”

“Yes, let's.”

Another PA stood guard at the rim of the pit, the young man's hand gestures as standardized as sign language: halt, the camera is rolling, there's radio silence, all non-essential personnel need to hold their tongues and keep still, thanks for being patient.

When the walkie-talkie squawked two minutes later, he muttered into the receiver. “Alright, ladies. It's a go. Watch your step, we've had a few twisted ankles on that hill already.”

“No snakes?” Lora raised her sunglasses to peer down the slope.

“Not a one, ma'am.”

“Let's go. We'll find Jake and station ourselves by him.” Lora took the lead.

Congested and to all appearances volatile—well-behaved movie house patrons the instant someone shrieks “Fire!”—the scene below struck Marta as textbook Hollywood film set. Radiating from the bull's eye plot of gravel, now void of the actors who'd finished speaking their lines a minute earlier: a thriving settlement's worth of tasks and sweat-drenched personalities—handlers corralling excitable horses, extras in desert garb smoking by a butt receptacle, tradesmen inspecting generators, electrical cables, and the camera track, PAs receiving instructions and hustling from A to B, urgent conversationalists on walkie-talkies, capped men adjusting equipment under a miscellany of spindle-legged white canopies that Marta ordinarily associated with outdoor weddings, underling slackers in twos and threes chatting as they awaited instructions, and complete strangers standing docile with hands deep in front pockets. At the far periphery a young woman in a peasant skirt and print head kerchief held a green hose and misted the powdery ground.

“Craft service has a coffee slash snack bar set up over yonder,” Lora said. “Most of the talent is usually huddled there, or smoking out of sight if there's a big break between takes. I figure we have a couple of minutes before they're ready to go again. I'm going to grab a cup.”

Marta followed. She wanted to stand at a central but safely tucked away spot from which to watch the proceedings and considered Lora—winding through the crowd while tapping a message—an invaluable guide.

“Can't figure out where Jake and the boys could have disappeared to. No answers from them, either.” Lora reached into her satchel. “Cappuccino?”

“Do you think they have soy milk?”

“Oh, I'd say so. Craft Service is used to special needs diets, so they'll have all those kinds of products. Agave syrup too if you're vegan. Or watching your glycemic load.”

3
.

M
arta had re-read the pages of the crash site scene in anticipation of Luna's morning audition. Outwardly fearless, Lady Swinburne—Delacroix's heroic Liberty, but possessing heavily-draped Victorian propriety—led the ragtag entourage toward a destination of unclear significance. Though the script skipped details, Marta supposed that the farmhands and servants would look shifty-eyed and reluctant, instinct in the form of raised arm hairs having whispered “Pawn! Cannon fodder!” and summoned gory scenarios to show how better off they'd be fleeing in the opposite direction.

As Lora and Marta approached the crew cluster, the AD relayed word from the director. “Okay, okay, listen up, folks,” he said, pausing until the group fell silent. “We need more of a gap between Swinburne and the rest. It's like she's the warrior and then the other riders are a bit chicken shit and the villagers have been ready to crap their pants since they left, got it?”

Murmurs of assent sounded.

The AD clapped. “Alright. Everyone ready in place in two.”

4
.

“T
he powers that be now want a practice run for the rear guard,” Lora said. “It's easy to see how going over budget is par for the course.”

Horses cocked their ears as Dr. Potter, Lizzie, and a pair of nameless male villagers drew closer to the crashed spacecraft; a mute handful of scared villagers—raised scythes, machetes, and sticks in hand—filed in behind.
It might as well be outside of Frankenstein's laboratory
, Marta thought,
the only items missing are fiery torches
.

Watching Luna, Marta felt impressed by the apparent veteran confidence; she rode naturally, unfazed by the swirl of cameras, mikes, and crew. “Won't the wind interfere with sound quality?”

“Oh it will, but that's no big deal. They'll re-record chunks of it later, under studio conditions. Always do.”

5
.

O
n the ninth take, Tracy Scoggins achieved the desired balance of dignity, sensible trepidation, and steely martial ferocity.

A tantrum eruption—“Will you please . . . and by that I mean are you truly capable of letting me speak without stepping all over my lines? Is that too much to ask? Is it?”—following an unbidden burst of laughter, two wardrobe malfunctions, flubbed lines, a stumbling extra, horse dung clean up, and technical glitches turned the preceding takes into editing screen trash.

Watching with mounting boredom, Marta wanted to applaud when the scene finally hit its stride: with so many handicaps failure seemed fated, an ironclad guarantee. Besides heat, extras, crew, equipment, horses, and other actors, the star rode swaddled by a heavy linen caftan; further encumbrance by a red wool tunic and equestrian boots with brass spurs restricted her movements. And in keeping with historical portraits of Lady Hester Stanhope, a woman notorious for donning the attire of manor-born Levantine males (here interpreted as a fur-trimmed cloak and epauletted ceremonial finery that could have inspired Michael Jackson's latter years), Lady Swinburne wore an embroidered turban. Errant strands of the actress's signature chestnut hair slipped out behind her left ear. The costumer's inspiration also included a decorated steel scimitar, positioned to face the camera.

Seeing the wardrobe here in the Middle East's body double convinced Marta that madness underlaid Lady Stanhope's legendary eccentricity: besides unwieldy, the layered ensemble would have been oven hot after ten minutes of riding. Small wonder elaborate visions of grandeur assailed the woman: she'd been slow-roasting herself into a delirium.

And for these takes Marta exhaled slowly, relieved that not a word deviated from the pages. Double-checking the script, she heard no note of improv or free association with the characters' personalities—

EXT. CRASH SITE - DAY

LADY SWINBURNE

It is my sense, Dr. Potter, that the facts of the matter cannot be ascertained until we discover what tumbled from the heavens.

Otherwise, we shall continue only to blunder like a company of dunces.

Potter rides closer to Swinburne to catch all her words.

DR. POTTER