What's Important Is Feeling: Stories (12 page)

The scene came out okay. When I told Tipplehorn that I was now Felix’s assistant, Tipplehorn said, “No, you’re not.” People said, “What’s with the haircut?”

The thing about night shoots is they go until morning. Now it was six a.m. We were dumping raspberry Emergen-C into our coffees. Monica had retired to the motel. We were shooting just Francisco now, burying the body. Even with cameras and crew, the place felt desolate: a six-foot hole in soft earth, surrounded by marshland, mosquitoes hovering.

The scene was tough to shoot because the body couldn’t breathe while being buried. The body was Phil, another actor. He lay naked and tried to stretch his penis with his hand between takes.

“Got a fluffer around here?” Phil said.

“Dead men have hard-ons,” Felix said.

Solstice pretended not to hear. If you want an R rating you can’t show an erection. Besides, according to the film’s time line the body had been dead for hours. I wasn’t sure how long dead men stayed aroused.

“Years,” Felix said. “Being dead’s like being on permanent Viagra. There’s no distractions; all you can think about is pussy.”

“I didn’t know you could think while dead,” I said.

“Thinking’s overrated,” Felix said. “What’s important is feeling.”

Felix handed me a pen.

“What I want you to do is take the pen, shove it as hard as you can into my leg.”

He rolled up his shorts, exposed his hairy thigh.

“Just stab me with the pen. Maybe it’s filled with special ink. Maybe it will inspire me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Even better idea,” Felix said. “Don’t stab me.”

“I prefer this idea.”

“Stab Francisco instead. Next time he walks by, take that pen and jam it up his ass. Maybe then he’ll feel something. Maybe he’ll learn to act.”

“I doubt it,” I said.

“Me too,” Felix said.

We finished when the sun came up, rose over the rigs, glistened on the oil-slick sand. The oilers were already out, already sweating. They walked across the beach with their hard hats and paper-bag lunches in hand. Silence in the van back to the motel. Kathleen tried to sleep, cheek pressed against the window. Mike Michaels, the wardrobe guy, puked into a plastic bag on the rocky coastal road. I was alive and awake. All that coffee coursing through me, plus the vitamin C.

“I think we really nailed that burial scene,” I said. “Really captured the light and the feeling.”

“Shh,” Kathleen said.

“Things are looking up,” I said. “Now that Felix is here. As long as the cat works out I think it will be okay. I think things are really looking up.”

I heard a couple of grunts. Nathaniel told me to shut up. We passed the local bar. I imagined the inside, lit only by a prism of light from the one tiny window.

Back at the motel everything was bright: the awning, the cars in the parking lot, the glare from the turned-off television. Our A/C sputtered and died. I blew dust from the ancient window, willed in a breeze.

“Yo, Nat,” I said. “Let’s get out of this shithole, find a diner or something. I feel like eggs.”

“Sorry, brah,” he said. “Other plans.”

Nathaniel claimed he was going to Monica’s room to have sex with her. I followed him into the hall, watched while he knocked on her door. She opened, stood framed by the doorway, wrapped in a black bathrobe, hair wet, hanging, impossibly clean. She pulled him in.

Felix had to stay up and watch dailies. I imagine him pacing his room, blinds drawn, take after take rolling across the screen, room heavy with blunt smoke. Phone is ringing. It rings and rings. Eventually Felix unplugs the phone and throws it against the wall.

Gil Broome, the on-set animal wrangler, wore the biggest belt buckles I’ve ever seen. Different buckles every day. He had a bull buckle, a horse buckle, a cowboy-boot buckle, and one with a diamond-studded state of Texas.

Gil had been in Los Angeles for a short while, a city that didn’t suit him. Too many cars, not enough horses. Homesick for animals, he offered to walk a neighbor’s dog. Each morning he’d take the dog to the dog park among the actresses and their purse poodles. One day he met another walker, a man of about his own age. The man wore floral-print shirts but had a deep, kind voice and knew enough about the racetrack. They walked together each morning. Do you like music? the man asked Gil. Gil replied that he did enjoy music, mostly country like Merle Haggard and of course Johnny Cash. Have you ever heard of Neil Diamond? the man asked. I believe I recognize the name, Gil said, but for the life of me I can’t place it. Well, I’m Neil Diamond, the man said. He changed the subject. Do you like drinking, Gil? Yes, sir, I do, Gil said.

He told a story about his Navy SEAL days on the cleanup crew for the space shuttle
Challenger
. He described the debris, the unrecognizable metal, the smell that might have been the smell of space, the intact finger he claimed he’d found and kept for a souvenir.

Gil gave me his card, invited me to visit his ranch in West Texas. We could ride horses across his acres and drink whiskey under the stars. When the film was over I could show up at Gil’s ranch, backpack slung over my shoulder. I’d be his apprentice, learn the trade; my skin would darken; we’d cook baked beans over an open fire. A neighbor girl wore cutoff denim skirts, no shoes. Never met a Jew before. Neil Diamond would visit. We’d sit on the porch and sing “Sweet Caroline.”

Felix hated Gil from the moment he saw him.

“You,” Felix said, “you there with the mustache.”

“Yes, sir,” Gil said. “Gil Broome, hombre.”

“Gil Broome,” Felix said. “I want to talk to you, Gil Broome.”

Gil was standing, eating eggs off a paper plate. He was on set today because of chickens; Francisco kills a chicken in front of Monica. They didn’t really need Gil because the special-effects people were in charge of the fake chicken and its head. Gil was there to judge authenticity and to keep track of the real chickens that wandered through the background.

“No one cares about the dog,” Felix said. “I care about the dog, but the dog’s not what we’re talking about.”

Felix placed an arm on Gil’s shoulder.

“Fuck the chickens too,” he said. “This scene wasn’t in the script anyway.”

“No chickens,” Gil said. “Got it.”

“Yes chickens,” Felix said. “Just fuck them. You see what I’m saying?”

Gil looked perplexed. He took a bite of his eggs.

Felix pointed at the eggs. “All that chickens are good for.”

Gil smiled.

“What we’re talking about is the cat,” Felix said.

“What cat?”

“What cat? I like this guy. What cat? The cat that walks through the burning house in the final shot. The death cat. The beautiful agony black cat.”

“Beautiful agony?”

“Look. You fucked up the dog. Wrong dog, ran the wrong way. I’m over the dog. But it can’t happen again. The cat has to be beautiful. Small green eyes. Completely black. It’s got to move slowly up the stairs. It’s got to look around, smell death. Can you promise me that, Gil, can you promise me the cat will smell death? That when it says in the script, ‘Cat walks up the stairs,’ the cat will dance through that house like he’s Mikhail fucking Baryshnikov?”

Gil put his plate down on a bench, as if, like a cat, he sensed the threat of physical danger.

“Cat can’t read your script,” Gil said. “Cat can’t read.”

Felix’s face went scarily still. Only his eyes moved. He scanned from Gil’s nose to his own clenched fist. Knuckles bubbled and shifted beneath the stretched skin. Felix flexed his biceps; they were tried-and-true weapons for getting his way. I took a step back, but Gil didn’t budge, coughed out a laugh.

“You, Gil Broome, you can read my script. That’s the thing. That’s what we’re paying you for. To read the script and then whisper some Doctor Dolittle whatever the fuck into the cat’s ear so he’ll do what it says in the script.”

“Cat’s not an actor,” Gil said. “Cat doesn’t take notes.”

“So let me get this straight,” Felix said. “Your job title, right, you’re a wrangler, an animal wrangler? Am I correct that that is the title of your job, that on the call sheet it says ‘Gil Broome, Animal Wrangler’?”

“Yes, sir, that is correct.”

“Because as far as I can tell, Gil, Gil Broome, as far as I can tell, you’re just a fucking pet owner. You’re just a guy with a cat.”

“Cat can’t read,” Gil said.

Tipplehorn approached. He was good at his job; he knew when to break up a conversation. “Gil, you’re needed on set.”

I was supposed to hold an umbrella over Monica, shield her from the sun. Her assistant had been fired, sent back to L.A. with a half-decent story, waiting for a call from Francisco that never comes. Monica didn’t need me, but there was protocol. Her skin was gold from an adolescence spent sitting shotgun in drop-tops, joyriding the Outer Banks. Now she was someone and sat in my shade. A website had spotted her finger-picking from the salad bar at Whole Foods in West Hollywood. A true coronation.

“I’m sorry you have to do this,” Monica said. “I know it’s incredibly degrading.”

“That’s nice of you to say,” I said, but she was already back to ignoring my existence. Stared at the script pages, her highlighted lines. I could hear her mumbling. My arm ached. It had only been a minute.

“I could practice with you if you want?” I said.

Monica turned, assessed. I could see my reflection in her oversize shades: peeling nose and stubbly dome, the glop of excess sunscreen on my chin.

“Sure,” she said. “I guess. You do Francisco.”

I read, “Baby don’t, baby don’t cry, c’mon.”

She read, “Oh, fuck off.”

“Baby don’t . . . ,” I read, and leaned in as the stage directions said. Smelled lavender, honey blossom, a thin strain of uterine blood. My nose against her neck fuzz. My shallow breathing.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Monica said.

“Acting?”

“Jesus Christ,” she said, stood, sauntered off, left me holding the umbrella over nothing.

That night, the storm. One of those passing tropical numbers. Black clouds like Mexican chimney smoke rising up the Gulf, covering the coastline. They get one every summer. Felix didn’t want to shoot in the rain for the same reason that Solstice did—melodrama. Tipplehorn had a more convincing argument—money—and he won. Felix was angry and took it out on the wardrobe guy, who didn’t have shoes the right color for Little Brother. Little Brother was in sneakers, was supposed to be in dress shoes, church shoes. Felix tried to color the white sneakers with black marker. Because everything was wet, the marker wouldn’t adhere. Felix threw the sneakers in the mud. I had to retrieve the sneakers, give them back to the kid who now had to wear wet shoes.

According to Nathaniel, Tipplehorn had run out of cocaine. “I want him off my set,” he said, referring to Felix. He told me to get the DV cam from the camera truck. “Tell Felix, he told me, that you’re shooting a behind-the-scenes documentary. Take him under the craft-service tent and interview him for as long as he’ll let you.”

I didn’t like deceiving Felix but told myself they might actually use the footage when they saw how Felix opened up to me.

We marched to the craft-service tent, a culinary oasis where Darrell the craft-service chef presided over the cast’s unreasonable requests: Vermont maple syrup, organic soy milk, fair-trade Colombian coffee, and other things you couldn’t get in Corpus.

I struggled with my tripod, which was sinking in the mud. The truck drivers laughed at me from their own tent. They were Texan and in the Teamsters union. Got paid time and a half when it rained. Plus overtime. I couldn’t steady the camera on the sinking tripod, so I just said fuck it and went handheld.

Felix said, “Do you have an agent? You don’t have an agent, why would you have an agent? I have an agent, and I have a manager, and my agent has an assistant, and my manager has an assistant, and right at this moment they’re poring over scripts asking, Is this the next Felix? Is that the next Felix? Because Felix is done and we’ve got money to spend, all this fucking money, and we need an army of Felixes marching the streets of Los Angeles with their Final Draft printouts, their Terrence Malick–inspired voice-overs, their hunger.”

I’d managed to focus but was having trouble getting him in frame. He moved, paced, grabbed handfuls of candy corn and stuffed his face.

“And all these assistants have meetings,” he said, still chewing. “And they meet with the higher-ups, like my agent and manager, and they all wear shirts unbuttoned at the collar, like one fucking button too many, just so they can say I have hair on my chest, I do not have breasts, in this shell of a body there is something animal that still exists, that is ruthless, that will ruin other men and supply my office with a mini fridge and excellent air-conditioning. I’m not allowed in the meetings, but I know what goes on: they sit around, and he’s Geppetto. You remember Geppetto?”

The rain came now in sulfuric sheets. Others arrived around us, edged in on our shelter, chomped cheese balls, tortilla chips. Nathaniel had taken over umbrella duty. He escorted Monica to her trailer. Her nipples were visible through her soaked summer dress. Big nipples that took up most of her little breasts. Nathaniel had a hand on the small of her back, but she was a step ahead, almost running. When Nathaniel tried to follow her into the trailer, Monica gave a small shove and said something I couldn’t hear. She shut the door. Nathaniel stood shocked for a moment. The soundtrack in his head played maudlin classical. The camera caught a tear coming down his cheek. The audience empathized. Nathaniel looked out at the horizon before remembering real life and that he was soaking and still on the clock.

My camera kept rolling. Others talked, drowned him out. Tipplehorn, in rain goggles and white Gore-Tex shell, saying, “What I’d give right now for a soy chai latte.”

Felix didn’t notice. He said, “I’m this little fucking doll, and I’m surrounded by Geppettos, and each one has a different string and they’re pulling my strings, my limbs are flopping everywhere, and they’re saying who’s going to direct? What kind of box office? Maybe if we change the ending?”