Scar Flowers (8 page)

Friday, June 2, 6:00 a.m. Day 10 of shooting.

Simon lay staring at the pattern on the drapes.
It’s light; I’ve overslept.
He felt for his cell phone and sat up against a bank of pillows. No phone in sight, no laptop. The bathroom door stood ajar, and the shower ran full blast.

He was in a hotel room. His clothes lay heaped on the floor, and a pair of lace panties hung on the back of a chair.
A telephone trilled nearby and the water stopped, followed by the sliding of the shower door. A woman hummed as drops of water fell.

Last night
. . . Something about a rehearsal and a dream he had had of a woman who towered above him, a bright projection of light, until he touched her skirt and she faded and darkened into human shape. In the dream, her hair was long and red, twisted into a braid. No, not red; blond.

Karen.

He sat up, pulled his jeans on. Last night after work he had been in his trailer, watching the dailies with the sound turned down, Karen’s face flickering on the screen. Blurred, pale skin and out-of-focus, poppy-red lips. His Julia. How had Karen and Nadia come to know her so well? To play the role, Karen had to use her own failings and idiosyncrasies. To choreograph it, Nadia had to have the insight of an actress. Or a director. This could be it, the chemistry to create a great film.

Karen
, studying her lines last night for today’s scene, had called at eleven.

“I
’m worried,” she said. “I can’t do this. I’ve lost it.”

Onscreen in
his trailer, the image of her face moved its lips as its eyes looked into his. Karen needed his attention—her performance thrived on it, and she wrote down every note he gave her in rehearsal. When he arrived at her hotel room, she apolo-gized, said she was scatterbrained from having forgotten to eat dinner, so he ordered room service. She had the shrimp, touched her fingertips to her tongue and parted lips to get the last traces of butter. The waiter brought a bottle of champagne, “Compliments of StarBorn Studios for our hard-working star.”

Last night it had felt like what he wanted to do, to lean in close to run Blake’s lines with his star, into the scent of Karen’s hair. To reach for the elusive presence of his Julia as it flickered into solidity.
Julia looking out at him with eyes that gleamed with patient concentration and held tiny flames of fear. He had seen eyes like that somewhere else, just a few days ago. In real life. But whose?

At the time, he believed an idea could be made tangible. No
, it wasn’t just that. He had grown close to Karen the woman, not just the actress. He knew what he wanted.

The bathroom door opened, and Karen walked out naked,
toweling her hair, his cell phone in her hand.

“That was Gunnar. He’s sending a car in five minutes.” She handed Simon his phone. “Don’t look at me like that! I didn’t want it to ring and wake you is all.”
She kissed his forehead on her way to the closet.

He wiped the print of her lips from his skin.
It was only one night. It doesn’t have to change the dynamics of the set
. Somewhere, the ghost of his ex-wife was laughing—
I told you so
.

As Karen put on lip gloss in the back seat of the Teamster’s car, Simon dialed Gunnar and deflected the
where were you
ques-tions, though everyone on the set would know where he had spent the night as soon as he arrived with Karen.

Shooting. The possibility of magic.

Outside the rows of palm trees that marked the boundaries of StarBorn Films Studios drew into view, the beds of saguaro and clumps of pampas. Men in studio-logo polo shirts rattled by in golf carts.

6:30
a.m. The Teamster dropped him off at his trailer while Karen went to makeup. He grabbed his backpack and made his way to the set as the sun pried at his skull like an ice pick. The lawn outside the house-set swarmed with people carrying walkie-talkies, and a line of onlookers stood with their backs to him. What was scheduled first for today? He would check his notes inside.

Simon stood poised to cross the street to the set when a studio worker driving a golf cart full of hatboxes slammed on her brakes to avoid hitting a pedestrian. The man, engrossed in a phone conversation, wore an Armani jacket with jeans and espadrilles, a pair of black-and-gold sunglasses perched on his head.

“Hold on a sec,” the man said into his phone as hatboxes bumped and rolled past him in the dust. He turned to Simon. “Help her pick those up, will you?”

As if he were speaking to a servant, someone who should be glad to have a real job in the great U.S. of A.

“Sorry, I’m union.” Simon set one of the hatboxes that had landed at his feet back on the golf cart as he passed. Most of the boxes were empty, but this one contained several pairs of elbow-length, antique leather gloves with tiny pearl buttons.

“Listen, Pedro, you
’ll be on your way back across the border in an orange crate if you don’t bust a nut right now. That’s studio property.”

Simon laughed.

“You’ve got wrong. I’m Chief, not Pedro.”

The man snapped his cell phone shut and shoved it in his pocket. “What’s your name, wise-ass? And your boss’s name.”

Simon walked past the man without answering. Before his foot touched the opposite curb, an explosion thumped him in the chest. A man flew out of one of the windows, limbs jerking. The glass in the north face of Simon’s set burst out over the lawn, followed by billows of bitter black smoke. His house, Blake’s farmhouse. Shouts punched the air, and the people between him and the set scattered, revealing yellow caution tape around the house. Crew members wielding fire extinguishers rushed forward. Cell Phone Man turned and left, muttering.

Simon paused outside the
safety zone. Each window stared from under an eyebrow of soot and bubbled paint, the empty frames gaping like missing teeth in a scarred face. The house had become timber, the front door splintered on the walk. The man who had been blown through the air stood and unhooked his safety harness.

“Cut! Great work, everyone. Hey, Simon!” John waved. “How d’you like it? Just a little housecleaning!”

Crew members high-fived each other as they hauled debris to a waiting truck.

Simon picked up a shard from one of the
broken windows and put it in his mouth, where it melted back to sugar.
That’s right; Tuesday is explosion day.

12:18 p.m. 

At lunch
, Simon sat under the awning by the craft-service trailer, his legs aching from hours of standing on the soundstage. Karen leaned on her elbows across the table from him. Rows of steam table trays stood behind her on vinyl tablecloths: one surface was smooth metal and the other was faintly pocked, like something’s greasy skin. Checkered red and white.

Textures.

A voice from some long-ago NYU film-school lecture announced in his head:
A film is a combination of visual and emotional textures, and directing a film is the art of recognizing the right combination
. Karen’s face was powdered smooth, tinted and contoured. Swept by cool filaments of hair as she moved, striated shades of color. Her fingers showed tender creases at the knuckles. Unlike the rest of her, which was cool and rounded like a marble statue. Smooth as an agate and carefully perfumed. Karen must have felt his eyes on her. She smiled, and her stockinged foot stroked his ankle. She gazed at the table, whispered something to him. He could not hear all that she said, only the phrase “last night.” Beyond her was the horizon, the sky, and wide smears of cloud spread thin as watercolor on their leeward sides.

The voice continued:
Everything you do or say in front of the actors is part of directing the script.

He ripped a piece of bread in half to scatter the words, and a new phrase appeared in the back of his brain:
the actor–director relationship
.

He craved another confrontation like the one outside the set that morning with the suit and his cell phone. Some excuse to act without thinking.

Karen picked through a plate of fish and fleshy vegetable twigs that looked like pickled sea plants—the usual health-food meal her assistant cooked her. Simon watched a butterfly’s accidental course from rooftop to hedge, put his knife in his mouth for the surprise of pulling it out again, the serrated jolt of it against his teeth. Under his feet, the dust was trampled with footprints.

It all felt familiar, a mistake he had made before. He had gone so far in his attempt to reach some things and to flee others that he had lost direction. In trying to hold together the vortex of emotion
that the actors created, he had absorbed Blake’s paranoia and alienation, and Julia remained an enigma, a fantasy. As he had watched the dailies last night, it became plain that Karen and Victor were acting in two separate movies. The story was there, but the chemistry between the two leads was not.

What he should be thinking about was Karen. Someone he had crossed a line with
—not like with Angela, whom he had already been seeing when he cast her in
Critical Mass
. Afterward, in bed, Karen had said, “I hated you for making me do the pushups in front of everyone. But I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

She
also said, “Blake is you, isn’t he?”

At lunch today, her skin glowed.

“I’ve read about how to hypnotize someone. But if I’m playing Julia, I should experience it myself. I’ve never been much of a method actor before, but I want to try it.” Karen lifted her sunglasses and stared over his shoulder. “Over there. The fight choreographer. She knows how. I heard she put Ricky in a trance.”

Simon turned.
Nadia sat at an empty table, a large black handbag like a doctor’s satchel poised on the table beside her. Her first week on the set she had worn tailored skirts and high heels, but today she had on a track suit and running shoes. A slant of shadow from the edge of the awning cut across her forehead.

“I’m going to talk to her. Come with me
,” said Karen. “Please? I won’t go alone.”

She pulled at his sleeve, and then they were at the fight choreographer’s table. Karen chatted. Nadia wore dark sunglasses with round insectoid lenses. Her long hair was swept over her shoulder.
As she leaned back into the sunlight, shadows clung to the side of her face, at her temple and cheekbone. Her knife and fork lay at a five o’clock angle on her clean plate.

“You eat,” he said to Nadia.

She did not smile. In the silence, Karen craned her head up at the awning and gave a terse laugh, a shake of her head, so that her hair flared over her shoulders.

“You liked the food,” he added.

What a stupid thing to say.

“Nadia, have you met Simon?”

“Of course.” Nadia seemed not to notice when Karen’s smile turned fixed. She sat loose-limbed, level-shouldered, as if talking to a good friend.

The air was soft, bright.
Overhead, an airplane droned, and birds sang. The edge of the green vinyl awning overhead waved in the breeze. The women talked on without him: “Is it true you can’t make someone do something they don’t want to?” and “Anyone can get certified in a weekend.” He joined Karen on the picnic-table bench, his body a numb weight riding on his bones.

Nadia removed her sunglasses. Her long eyelids swept toward her temples in molded relief, rounded and deep at the inner corners and shallow, almost pointed, at the outsides. Karen leaned forward to listen, balanced her chin on her hand like children do. Humoring this red-haired stranger, perhaps thinking of what she would say to Simon later:
Wasn’t she funny? So formal, like a ’50s matron.
Nadia spoke, a stretching of time and sound, and after a moment Karen sat up, raised one arm straight out from her shoulder, and then the other, held them there.

Nadia asked a question. In response, Karen turned to Simon, lowered her arms, and began to unbutton her blouse, until Nadia said something to make her stop, asked her to raise her hands again. Parlor tricks. Nadia picked up her water glass, and the ice cubes sailed and circled lazily, a tiny conglomerate iceberg. Oval fingernails, pearly at the tips and half moons. Blush of color on her upper lip. Dew of moisture on the outside of the glass, the tablets of ice inside catching bits of reflected light as they tinkled and swirled. Condensation. Pearls of wetness, slippery ice, smooth glass. Hot sun. Textures. More talk, words blended in with the ice and light.

Karen had lowered her arms and sat facing away from him. When had she moved into that position? Nadia locked eyes with him, held up two fingers. Was she trying to hypnotize him? No; she said, “I can’t
make
you do anything. If you’re curious, you’ll take
yourself
under.”

Under?

Then Gunnar was shaking his shoulder and Karen’s.

“We’re ready,” said Gunnar. “Why aren’t you on the set?”

Simon blinked, and the present rushed back at him, the pressing weight of time and schedules. Had he nodded off? As Simon rose to his feet, Gunnar added, “A studio VP just called, wanting to know who you were. He was all pissed off until I told him you were directing
Babylon
; then he didn’t want your phone number anymore. Is there something going on?”