ON
THE SET
by John
Warner
Negotiations
were difficult.
He
said: I will need many millions of dollars. I will need the nearly
great Horst as my cinematographer. I will need manna and mead on the
craft services table and the actress with the downy cheeks must
star. I can accept no other.
We
said: Why should we give you these things?
He
said: I will deliver to you a movie that will embrace all aspects of
ultimate truth and beauty and people will give you heavy sums to
view it.
We
said: We’ve heard these promises before. Many times. Daily.
He
said: Watch this.
And
then Murray burst into flames.
We
said: We can respect this kind of power, but we are not convinced.
He
said: Watch this.
And
outside our panoramic conference room window we saw that where the
parking structure used to be, the sun set behind a perfect, craggy
bluff and soon the stars rose in a bright and hazy streak across the
night sky. This vision reminded some of us of childhood evenings
spent cradled in blades of grass gazing upon the heavens and
dreaming of one day meeting beauties of milk flesh and ample bosoms
who would make us forget our mothers. We trembled at these thoughts.
We
swept Murray into the ashcan and showed him to the focus group,
combing him across the table with a fine, wire brush for their
inspection. Distinct increases in pulse and respiration were
detected.
So
we gave him his money and his manna and the actress with the downy
cheeks charmed us all as she crossed and uncrossed her legs and
chain smoked through our rigorous testing process with flying
colors. Afterwards, she autographed our blood pressure cuffs.
For
weeks the cameras rolled.
The
focus group wrote hymns of praise over the dailies. The hymns were
re-mixed and set to a block-rocking beat accented with maracas,
claves, castanets and a triangle pitched in the key of C. The hymns
charted at number 18.
We
debated amongst ourselves as to how high our piles of money might
reach. Arms grew sore with stretching. Ladders had to be implemented
for illustrative purposes. We made graphs with protractors and
compasses projecting our good fortune into the rather distant future
and the company of our wives and families was enjoyed on a nightly
basis. We moved about the offices wearing sleepy grins and exchanged
knowing winks.
We
developed tastes for Argentine beef and delicate watercress salads
seasoned just so.
We
said to each other: Can you imagine an existence with more
contentment, more happiness, more love, with greater amounts of the
fabric of human kindness?
We
answered ourselves: Of course not. Pass the cookies.
And
so we passed around the tray of sugar cookies so delicate and finely
wrought they were nearly transparent. The cookies melted on our
tongues.
Life
was good.
Until
one day he came to see me.
He
said: I’m afraid it’s love, my feelings for her.
I
said: We all love her very much. She is very talented and her charm
shines directly through the lens onto the screen. We suspect that
she will also be popular on home video and possibly Dolby Surround
Sound as well.
He
said: I don’t think you’re hearing me. These feelings are making
me ill. I’m not sure I can work anymore. I feel compelled to tear
at my own guts.
I
said: The film is wonderful.
He and I
looked at each other for a long moment.
Fuck the film.
He said.
He glared at
me. My teeth fell from my mouth and into my palm.
He locked
himself in his trailer. Armed hyenas roamed the perimeter firing
occasional warning shots. Everyone was restless. Talk of money
ceased. We wore moccasins so as not to make noise in the hallways.
The water cooler stayed empty and gathered dust. Nights I struggled
in the hammer-grip of my wife’s thighs as she wrapped them around
me in tortured sleep. She broke a rib. Twice. Junior and Sally’s
noses bled, sometimes for hours. The focus group compared pay stubs
and there was general grumbling. We were forced to increase the
rations.
My
dentures rubbed against the gums.
Definitive
action was ultimately taken. Under the cover of rush hour, commandos
abducted the actress with the downy cheeks from her beachfront
villa. We dumped her out of a barely moving pick-up truck in front
of his trailer as the hyenas shot for our tires. He emerged from the
trailer, gathered the actress to his body and heaved a finely
braised rack of lamb out of the closing trailer door. The hyenas
fed.
The situation
worsened. The hyenas doubled their patrols. We endured downsizing
and layoffs. I stopped going to the offices. The children walked on
bare feet across dirt roads, bottle caps and purple lint as their
only playthings. Their faces pleaded at us. They named the lint
“Dolly” and used the bottle caps for eyes. Resentment and
recriminations assaulted many sensibilities. I spent days sitting on
the porch in a rocking chair, sucking on an unlit corncob pipe and
rasping at my dentures with a dull file.
The focus
group tore their hair out in grief and desperation. The hyenas stole
the hair and used it to bed their dens.
My son spoke
to me.
He said: The
myth of you is broken.
I said:
You’re only seven. It could be a phase.
He said: The
dentures, I can’t take the smell anymore.
I said: I
would improve my brushing technique for you.
He said: I
need security. You are ineffectual and lame. I don’t loathe you.
He stuck a
toothpick between his teeth and hopped a passing wagon train. He
waved his arm twice, long and slow before turning away and squinting
into the dusty horizon ahead.
Sally played
with “Dolly” near the tar pits. I raised a hand of warning but
said nothing.
I said to my
wife: Junior’s left.
She said:
Who’s Junior?
Still,
I sat on the porch. I developed a need to wear overalls. My teeth
rattled in my palm like dice.
One
night from the porch I saw a flash in the sky as bright and hot as
the sun.
The next day a
letter came, wrapped in blue ribbon and faintly humming. It
announced the birth of a child. We hugged each other desperately
then blushed and scraped the ground with our toes.
Hopes
glimmered.
At the
christening, we broke champagne bottles over the child’s
golden-curled head in celebration, and the mother, our downy-cheeked
actress, glowed such that we fell in love with her all over again.
The focus group won the limbo contest and the hyenas fled from our
thunderous mutual backslapping. We declared the child a wonder and
sent his vital statistics and a lock of his golden hair under armed
guard to payroll.
Filming
recommenced. The set became a garden, an assault of green. It
smelled over-ripe. Afternoons it rained and afterwards, rainbows. At
times, we heard a child’s laughter echo from the set.
Hopes
glowed, but the focus group glanced sidelong at the new dailies and
left without validating their parking.
Sally
came to us, my wife and I, clutching “Dolly” in a sticky fist.
She
said: I have nothing more. Of course, I’m not sure what I had in
the first place. I was young.
She
looked at us with dry eyes and shrugged.
We
said nothing. There was nothing to say.
And
she died.
Hopes
flagged.
And then he
summoned us, my wife and I.
He said:
Welcome.
I said: I am a
husk, if I was not a husk I would tear at my guts, but there are
none. I am a husk.
The child and
his downy-cheeked mother wore diaphanous gowns and danced across a
brook. He ate a pomegranate. The fruit squealed under the impact of
his teeth.
He said: I
have never been so happy.
I said: The
film is a failure.
Fuck the film.
He said.
We stared at
each other for a long moment. Red juice stained his chin.
I said: I
don’t want to be unseemly.
He sighed.
He said: Plant
what I have taken from you in my garden and then rest there.
I
buried my teeth, small and worn now, under a laurel tree. We huddled
against the tree beneath a hyena skin for warmth. It rained and
afterwards, a rainbow. My wife clung to me with her limp limbs. The
child brought us mutton stew in a smoky wine sauce and skipped on
dirt-blackened feet back to the trailer. We ate our fill. Later, the
mother played a lute as the child sang in a trembling alto.
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