Monstress (2 page)

I looked at Checkers. There were pretzel crumbs on the corner of his mouth, but when I tried to wipe them off he brushed my hand away. “Ssshh,” he said. His face glowed blue from the movie on the wall, as it once did back in the CocoLoco editing room, late at night after a long day's shoot. I would end up asleep on the floor, and when I woke the next morning he'd still be in his chair, struggling to make every scene as perfect as it could be.

Gaz turned off the projector. “And that's just the beginning.” He smiled. “So, are we in?”

Even before Gaz turned on the lights, Checkers was on his feet. “Let's do it,” he said. His breathing was heavy and fast, almost desperate, and his forehead was drippy with sweat. “I'm ready,” he said, “we're in.”

I
t was still early evening, and Gaz suggested we drive to the set. “MGM?” Checkers guessed. “Twentieth Century-Fox?”

“My mom's basement in Pasadena,” Gaz answered.

Freeway traffic was slow; I fell asleep in the backseat, and when I woke we were in front of Gaz's mother's house. It was an old, peeling Victorian with a shingled roof that had almost no shingles left, and the shutters dangled from the uppermost windows, like limbs attached to a body by one last vein. That house would have been Checkers' dream set. We'd had to make do with tin-roofed shacks and three-walled huts in shantytowns far beyond Manila, where we paid impoverished locals with cigarettes and sacks of rice to play our victims for a day. “If we'd had something like this to work with,” Checkers said, “life back home would still be good.”

The basement was like an underground studio set, sectioned off by plywood partitions and cardboard walls: each room was a different section of
The Valedictorian
—the bridge, the science lab, the weapons bay, the space sauna. We hadn't been on a set since
Squid Children
five years before, but Checkers made himself at home, examining each room from different angles, as though he were behind a camera, filming right then.

I wandered off alone. “Explore all you want, but don't touch anything,” Gaz said. But I didn't need to touch anything to know its cheapness: the helm was made of Styrofoam and cardboard, painted to look like steel; the main computer was a reconfigured pinball machine; the Intelli-Bot 4-26-35 was an upside-down fishbowl painted gold atop a small TV set, and its bottom half was a vacuum cleaner on wheels. But I was used to this lack of marvelousness, because Checkers worked this way too, attempting magic from junk: wet toilet tissue shaped like fangs was good enough for a wolf-man or vampire, and our ghosts were just bedsheets. For the Squid Children, Checkers found a box of fireman's rubber boots, glued homemade tentacles (segments of rubber hose affixed with suction cups) on them, then made his tiny nephews and nieces wear them on their heads. “On film,” Checkers used to say, “everything looks real.”

I found Checkers and Gaz in the space lab, the contract between them: Gaz would pay twenty-five hundred dollars up front, then pay five percent of the profits. “Jackpot-Eureka!” Checkers said after he signed, though neither of us knew how much that would be worth back home.

G
az and Checkers wanted to celebrate, so we went from bar to bar on Hollywood Boulevard, then strolled along the Walk of Fame. “A trio of visionaries should have the stars at their feet, right, Chex?” Gaz said. Checkers nodded, zigzagging down the street. For so long, Checkers had resented Hollywood, convinced it was American movies that drove us out of the business. Now, here he was, lolling about in enemy territory, drunk from beer, bourbon, and all the inspiration surrounding him—the Hollywood Wax Museum, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, even the life-size celebrity cutouts in storefront windows. I tried keeping up, making sure he didn't fall.

Hours later, Checkers and I made love on Gaz's couch. At first I told him we shouldn't, not there in a stranger's home. “He's so drunk he'll never wake up,” Checkers assured me. He nibbled my neck and nuzzled my breasts, let out a low guttural growl. “Gently,” I said, running my fingers through his pompadour, “softly.” He obeyed. I knew Checkers was drunk, but this was how I wanted us to finish the day: it was the longest of our lives, thirty-seven hours since we left Manila. So I gave myself up to this moment when we could finally slow down, and I imagined us as Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster in
From Here to Eternity.

T
he next morning I reached for Checkers and he wasn't there. I opened my eyes and found him on the floor, asleep on his stomach. For a moment I thought we were in Manila again, that this was just another of our ordinary days. But then I saw the yellow beanbags on the floor, brighter than anything in our apartment back home.

I got dressed and went into the kitchen. Gaz was already there, sunglasses on, wearing a tiger-print robe. “Now that,” he said, standing by the window, “is a Hollywood morning.” I looked out. Everything was hazy and bright at the same time.

Suddenly I realized Gaz was staring at me. “What?”

“It's weird to see you this way. In the human flesh, I mean.” He removed his sunglasses. “I remember you in Checkers' movies, all fancy with your tentacles and boils and lobster claws. Chex got lucky when he found you. You make a good monster. You're a mistress of monsters.” He chuckled. “You're a monstress.”

“I am not monstrous,” I said.

“Mon
stress,
” he said. “Not mon
strous
. See for yourself.” He looked behind and above me. I turned around, and then I saw it, tacked to the wall: a poster for
The Squid Children of Cebu
. “I swiped it from CocoLoco, hung it up this morning. Thought it might make you two feel at home.”

The edges had yellowed, but the picture was still clear: a dozen Squid Children on the edge of a lagoon, and behind them, lying on the shore, is the Squid Mother, her belly bloated with squid eggs yet to be spawned, tentacles flailing. That costume was sticky and rubbery, but by the end of the day it felt like my own skin. For hours I would roll along the dirty sand, moaning, “Grraarggh, grraargh,” and I remember thinking,
This is it, this is my life,
as Checkers filmed me from afar. I hadn't seen the poster since the president of CocoLoco showed it to us, as an example of our failure.

A
t noon, we returned to the set to meet the cast. It was trash collection day in Pasadena; garbage cans lined the street, and in front of Gaz's mother's house, the parts of a dismantled mannequin lay in a pile on the sidewalk. “We can use this,” Gaz said. “Help me out, Chex.”

I walked ahead of them, toward the back of the house. The basement door was open. “Hello?” I called out. I stepped inside, heard giggling coming from the bridge. When I turned the corner I found Captain Banner and Ace Trevor leaning against the helm, their arms around each other. They might have been kissing. “Sorry,” I said, my face warm from embarrassment.

They let go of each other, stood up straight. “We were just going over lines.” The man who played Captain Banner held out his hand. “Everett Noel Dubois. But friends call me E. Noel. This is Prescott St. John, a.k.a. Ace Trevor.” Prescott smiled, straightening his collar. They were the first professional actors I'd met in years, and I worried they would ask about my own acting history; a list of my roles and movies formed in my head, and they made me feel meager, shameful. I wanted to avoid the subject altogether, focus only on the good parts of my life. “I work for a dentist in Manila” was all I could think to say.

Gaz and Checkers walked in, carrying legs, arms, a torso. They set the mannequin parts on the ground, and Gaz made formal introductions. “Where's our Lorena?” he asked, looking at his watch. “If it's one thing I demand from my actors,” he said, “it's punctuality. Be back in a flash.” He went upstairs to call her at home. E. Noel and Prescott went outside to go over lines.

Checkers knelt to the floor and started rebuilding the mannequin. He said he was genuinely impressed by what he'd seen so far, but then he whispered his disappointments in Tagalog. “His camera work is unsteady,” he said. “And his composition is so-so. But I have some suggestions for him. Lucky for him I have the experience, right?” He looked up at me. “What? Why is your face like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like this.” He scrunched up his face into a girlish pout and rolled his eyes. “What's wrong with you?”

I knelt down beside him. “Maybe we should go home today. Just take the twenty-five hundred before he changes his mind.”

“Is your head broken? We have almost a week left. The American will need my guidance. This is a Gazman-Rosario Production, don't you know?”

I slammed the mannequin hand against the ground; the pinkie finger broke off. “ ‘Gazman-
Rosario
Production?' Gazman-
Idiot
Production! You've already done the work he needs. You finished it years ago!” I took a deep breath, made my voice gentle again. “You were finished years ago. Don't start this nonsense again. If you do . . .” I should have stopped there, but the poster in Gaz's kitchen hung in my head like a fateful welcome-home banner, and I couldn't go back. “If you do, I won't forgive you this time.”

Checkers set the mannequin's right arm on the ground. Then he got to his feet, took backwards steps toward the wall, the way my victims would in his movies, right before the kill. “Checkers.” I held my arms out to comfort him, but he wouldn't come to me. “Checkers?”

Suddenly there was cursing and shouting as Gaz came running down the stairs. “Crap!” he said. He kicked a computer console and it flew across the basement. “I lost my Lorena Valdez! She decided she'd rather do some bimbo role for a guy named Roman What's-His-Face than finish my movie.” He leaned against the wall, slid down to the floor, put his face on his knees. “Where am I going to find another actress who'll work for free? Crap!”

Then Checkers started pacing too. “Crap-crap!” he shouted. He went on about the money he would lose, and he wondered how someone who once was great could slip away into a life as dead-end as ours. “I'm sorry,” I said, reaching for him. But he just pushed my arm away, told me to leave him alone. So I went to Gaz instead, and patted his shoulder to calm him down. This was the end of things, I was sure of it; the loss of Lorena Valdez was a sign that this collaboration was never meant to be, and it was time for Checkers and me to return to our real life back home.

Gaz inhaled deeply through his nose and exhaled through his mouth several times, then took my hand from his shoulder and squeezed it tight. His head rose slowly and he stared into my eyes, almost lovingly. I thought he might try to kiss me, so I freed my hand from his and stepped back.

“What size space suit do you wear?” he whispered.

I
never wanted to be Lorena Valdez. But Gaz insisted that I was born to play her, and besides, this was the only way to guarantee the deal he'd made with Checkers. “Think of the money,” Gaz said, and though Checkers stayed silent, I finally agreed that it was the only thing to do.

It was 102 degrees the day we started filming. We were at the bottom of a canyon in Los Feliz, and all morning long, E. Noel, Prescott, and I ran back and forth, pretending to flee from Checkers' monsters, while Gaz followed us with a handheld camera. Checkers was alone at the top of the canyon by the
NO TRESPASSING
sign, looking out for cops.

At noon, we filmed a crucial scene that required me to run up the side of the canyon. “Now you're fleeing from the stinkiest, oogiest, bat-winged pygmy you've ever seen,” Gaz said, “and it wants you for breakfast.” He put his hands on my shoulders, leaned in close. “Think about that as you're running away. Understand?”

I had never taken direction from another man before. “I do,” I said.

Gaz set up the camera at the bottom of the canyon, then called action. I ran. I visualized myself from years before, chasing after me now, fangs bared and claws ready to shred, tentacles wrapping around me, squeezing me to my final breath. I could hear a hiss in my ear, and I shivered in the heat. I ran faster, staggering uphill on my hands and knees, telling myself,
Climb.
Get to safety
. But when I looked up I saw Checkers walking toward me, as though he was trying to sabotage the shot. “Go!” I whispered. “You're ruining the picture!” For a moment Checkers looked confused, like he suddenly realized he had no idea where he was, but finally backed away.

I reached the top. I got to my feet, looked straight down into the camera, and screamed my very first line of dialogue ever:
“They're hideous!”
Then Gaz yelled cut, clapped twice, and proclaimed Lorena Valdez a new heroine for our time.

T
he day before I was meant to leave America, we shot the love scene. “Hold her here,” Gaz directed. He placed E. Noel's hands on the small of my back, then put my arms around E. Noel's neck. He stepped back, checked the shot.

It wasn't cold in Gaz's mother's basement, but I was shaking. “You seem nervous,” E. Noel whispered. “First on-screen kiss?”

I had gouged, bitten, clawed, stabbed. Never kissed. “No.”

He smiled, like he didn't believe me. “Well, if you do get nervous, just pretend I'm Checkers.”

Gaz called action. We started the scene.

We spoke of our failed mission and our fallen comrades—Ace had been barbecued by the bat-winged pygmies, and the Intelli-Bot 04-26-35 had malfunctioned beyond repair and turned against us —and we spoke of time wasted harnessing comet-tail energy, studying asteroid samples, mining moons for precious metals.
“All that matters to me now,”
E. Noel said,
“is you
.
”