The Best American Short Stories 2012

  Monica was the film’s female lead. Older than us, but looked five years younger with non-hips and blonde fuzz on her pale arms. Monica’s character was meant to be seventeen. There was something deeply erotic in the way her smoke-seasoned voice slipped into teenybop squawk-talk when the cameras came on.

  “She’s sexy,” I said. “Definitely.”

  “But her personality, I mean. She’s great, right? That joke she told about her mom and the albino. Was that a joke? It might have been a true story. Man, what an interesting life.”

  I was distracted by nail polish; I daintily painted. I like its bleachy smell and the way it slowly hardened on my blistered skin and shined.

  “I just feel so alive when I’m around her. Like I want to stop time and spend seven years in medical school so I can save her life if she happens to get stung and goes into anaphylactic shock.” Monica had a bee-sting allergy.

  “Sure,” I said. “Save her life.”

  Nathaniel had gotten me the gig. He was savvier than me, pluckier, bigger in the biceps. Had a surfer thing going on. Not bleached blond in a mimbo way, just tan and easy. Same patchy beard all the hip ones had, hints of amber in the chin hairs. Two years below me in film school, but he’d caught up careerwise. His résumé was up on all the job boards. Had a website with built-in Flash and a slick montage. I was shitty at self-promoting. Sent my thesis screenplay around in manila envelopes awaiting return.

  “I should probably get an EpiPen and carry it on me. Just in case.”

  “I thought Felix would be here by now.”

  We knew Felix was coming, but we didn’t know when. He’d written the script and was associate producer. He’d been nominated for an Academy Award. Some people said Felix was a genius. We (the L.A. people) had read the new script. It was good, better than good. Better than the other crap we worked on: thirty-second spots for regional fast-food chains, student shorts, overfunded indie twee. Nathaniel had even done a blockbuster, some sci-fi thing in Death Valley, CGI spaceships crop-dusting the desert. It was a fact Nathaniel never let me forget. He said craft service served Kobe beef and goat-cheese sliders. The food may have been good, but the picture certainly wasn’t.

  Felix’s script was different: sexy, savage, utterly bleak. In short: Art. We imagined being thanked in the acceptance speech (“I’d just like to thank the wonderful crew, whose hard work really made this movie come to life”). We imagined our résumés, our next jobs, moving up in the industry, moving out of our tiny apartments, buying new cars, using those cars to convince women to have sex with us.

  We wanted a movie that might one day be called a “film,” that we could refer to at a dinner party ten years down the line, light a cigarette, and say, “We were naive kids. We thought we were taking the world by storm.”

  There were problems. The director and the star hated each other; everyone hated the first AD; the first AD was a cokehead and running out of coke; the star had fucked the costar, then her assistant; the production was out of money; the DP had also fucked the star’s assistant; the dailies looked amateur; the food was shit; the Texans thought the L.A. folks were homosexuals; the L.A. folks were mostly homosexuals and took umbrage.

  By the time Felix showed up, hope was lost. The director, Andrew Solstice, had lost interest. He spent most of his time trying on cowboy hats, posing in the hair/makeup mirrors, and blowing residue from his finger gun.

  It was the day we had the rain machine. Solstice wanted it for the scene in the car when Francisco tells Monica he killed her boyfriend. A bad idea—too soap opera for a subtle picture like this one. In my imagining of the film, the sun beats like a tanning-bed light, providing alien glow, almost x-ray vision to their emaciated torsos.

  I stood twenty yards away, doing lockup. In a city like Los Angeles this generally meant blocking off a major street corner, stopping pedestrians from barging into your shot. Here there were no pedestrians, only sand and weedy fields. It was just past dawn. In the distance was the Corpus Christi coast, pink sky interrupted by oil rigs. Fake rain fell heavy on the picture car, a rusted blue Mustang.

  I didn’t know what to make of Francisco, the talent. He’d been a child star of the Mexican stage, and later the hunky adulterer on a popular telenovela. His mother was an opera singer, and his father handcrafted violins. Rumor had it his maternal grandfather had made his nut in munitions.

  Francisco played seven instruments and was fluent in as many languages. He’d grown up in a fenced-off estate with verandas outside Mexico City, Ferraris, and armed guards—all the gaudy signifiers of cartel superwealth. Still, he played himself off as a man of the people, spoke Spanish with the Mexican grips and electricians, kicked the soccer ball between takes, smiled a humble, punchable smile at everyone he passed. His acting was iffy, but his face was an exemplar of symmetry and composition. My jealousy was undermined by my interest in star fucking. I had hoped to befriend him, swill tequila by the motel pool. I wanted to ask about the queeny Argentine director who’d kicked him off set for being three pounds overweight. But I was rarely close to the cast members. They ate at different hours. Some nights though, Francisco would sit with his eyes closed on the motel’s shared balcony and pluck a nylon-stringed guitar. The insomniacs among us would come out of our rooms, slowly at first, lingering in our doorways, then gradually getting closer until we’d formed an impromptu audience. Francisco would open his eyes, blush, and apologize for waking us. We’d all say nah and urge him on—as he knew we would—and he’d close his eyes again, allowing just the hint of a smile to cross his lips as he moved into another song.

  “What is this cock shit?” someone behind me said.

  I turned. Felix wore camo pants and a sleeveless tee. Hair long and greasy, facial features exaggerated: comically oversized mouth and nose. Like late-career Bogart: rheumy-eyed, beyond saving.

  “It’s raining,” I said.

  “It’s fucking Texas,” he said, stormed past me, headed for set, where he grabbed Solstice by his mullet tail, pulled him under the rain machine, threatened to remove his genitals if he didn’t first remove the rain machine.

  I was approached by first AD Mark Tipplehorn.

  “You idiot,” he said. “You were supposed to be locking up.”

  “He was like a bull,” I said.

  “You idiot,” he said again, and wiped his forearm across his face.

  Tipplehorn’s uniform was all white every day: sneakers, socks, shorts, shirt, visor. He was going for “asshole from L.A. stranded in small town.” He wore reflective aviators, scratched chigger bumps.

  “Towel me,” he said.

  I pulled his towel from my pocket and tossed it over.

  “I’ve got a new job for you anyway. I need an ounce of weed as fast as you can get it.”

  Tipplehorn had worked with Felix before. Felix thought he had say over what happened on set.

  “Weed’s the only way to calm him down,” Tipplehorn explained. “Also someone to give him a haircut; he likes to have his hair cut on location.”

  The haircut would be easier to get than the weed, but he wanted the weed first so he could be stoned during the haircut. For the weed I had to approach a Texan. The Texans hated us, but some hated us less than others. Luckily, a kind woman bummed a cigarette off me, called me “sweetheart,” and agreed to help with both my tasks. Her name was Kathleen, and she was the on-set hairdresser.

  Kathleen didn’t give a shit about the higher-ups like Tipplehorn. Just did her thing in the hair trailer, smoking bats and talking on speakerphone to her teenage daughter who was spending the summer at an arts camp outside Denton. When they said goodbye, Kathleen waved her hand as if her daughter could see her from the other end of the line. She said, “Girl,” and her daughter said, “Bye now,” and Kathleen looked in the mirror and saw me behind her, squint-eyed in the barber’s chair, finally sun-shaded, almost asleep.

  “Now about that marijuana,” she said.

  “You got any nail-polish remover?” I sai
d.

  We sat on the edge of Felix’s bed, facing the television, which was playing dailies. Francisco drove across the bridge into sunset.

  “You can imagine the lush strings,” Felix said, and threw the remote against the wall. Batteries fell to the floor, rolled to opposite corners of the room. I handed him the blunt.

  “Straight men smoke blunts,” he said. “Instead of sucking big black cocks.”

  “Oh?”

  “That’s why you’ll never see a fag smoke a blunt. Their cravings are satisfied. They smoke little joints and prance around thinking about all those beautiful pricks shooting cum like shooting stars across the galaxy of their faces.”

  “Poetic,” I said.

  “I want to show you something,” Felix said, fast-forwarding the tape.

  The scene where the dog runs into the road and Francisco doesn’t stop the car until Monica screams and grabs the wheel. We’d spent four hours on it because the dog kept running the wrong way.

  “This fucking dog—too pretty. Of course he wants to run it over. Who doesn’t want to crush that smug bitch? Dog’s not even running right. This is supposed to be suicide. We need an ugly dog, some kind of mutt, runt of the litter, nothing to live for. I want him lingering on the shoulder, contemplating, then dashing out. Francisco sees the trajectory of the dog’s life, refuses to alter its course. It’s an act of mercy. An act of love.”

  “I could love a dog,” I said.

  “The thing that worries me isn’t the dog,” Felix said. “It’s not the dog at all. What worries me is that if they fucked up the dog, how are they going to deal with the cat?”

  Felix took a deep pull, ashed on the carpet.

  “The cat is the whole picture; the way he moves through the house at the end. If they get the cat right, then maybe this thing can work.”

  He passed me the blunt.

  “Promise me something,” he said. “Promise me you won’t let them fuck up the cat.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  “I like this guy,” Felix said to the TV.

  We sat stoned in the hair trailer after an afternoon of me making and remaking iced coffee for Solstice—“more milk,” “less milk,” “soy milk”—and Felix yelling at Tipplehorn, and Tipplehorn rubbing his nose and saying, “Felix, baby, listen,” and Felix throwing his coffee on the ground and kicking the Styrofoam, and then Tipplehorn making me pick up the kicked Styrofoam. Finally the haircut. I sat next to him, watched Kathleen’s breasts bob as she moved the clippers, feet dancing in tiny increments, eighth steps in time with the half notes, Patsy Cline crooning sweet and solemn, something about three cigarettes in an ashtray.

  “The thing about the cat,” Felix said.

  Kathleen ran a hand through his hair, said, “Don’t worry your pretty head.”

  She shaved it all off. Felix was ready for battle. I was off to battle with him. In a moment of camaraderie, I’d shaved my head too. He appointed me his assistant, carrier of his marijuana, lieutenant in our army of three (Kathleen was also a lieutenant).

  Monica was in her trailer, not coming out. The chiggers had gotten to her, and it was too hot to work. Her assistant stood by the camera truck, sobbing into her own cleavage. Mascara, mixed with sweat, dripped black down her chest and neck. Francisco was there, stroked her hair, called her “sweet pea.”

  Solstice knocked on Monica’s door, said, “The camera never sees your ankles.”

  “That’s not the problem,” Nathaniel whispered. “She doesn’t want to work with Francisco anymore, ever since he fucked her assistant.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I fucked Monica last night.”

  He was grinning big, but must have been joking. If he’d slept with Monica, it meant the death of the hierarchy. Not that she gave unattainable vibes. Monica was fairly normal—for an actress, anyway. She had a B.A. in psych with a minor in French. Bumped Brooklyn indie pop from the speaker dock in her trailer. Liked football, the Food Network, and books by Bret Easton Ellis. Hailed from the Carolinas, still sent handwritten checks to her mom and sister. Seemed shy and overwhelmed by the attention. Chain-smoked Parliaments between takes, flipping glossy mags or checking her cell while Kathleen reset her hair. This was supposed to be Monica’s break. Next year she’d be up on billboards, airbrushed, overlooking highway traffic.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Felix said, removed his shirt, tied it around his head like a bandanna.

  “Be my guest,” Solstice said.

  Felix stepped up, knocked softly.

  “Baby girl,” he said. “It’s just me, Felix. Let’s just talk for a minute. I just want to chat.”

  The door opened. Felix entered. The rest of us stood waiting outside the trailer. Tipplehorn looked at me, mouthed the word coffee.

  When I came back, Felix and Monica were walking arm in arm. Monica laughed, smiled, leaned into Felix.

  Here’s how I imagine it: Felix sits on the bed. He begins to roll a blunt. “Mind if I smoke?” he says. Monica is crying. Wordless, Felix takes a bottle of clear nail polish from the top of her dresser and applies it to Monica’s ankles. “Men are scum,” he says. He slowly lifts her dress above her waist. He runs the nail brush over the bumps around her bikini line. He hands her the blunt. Monica stops crying. She looks at Felix. He tells her that her role in this film is important, the most important. He tells her to channel her hatred of Francisco into hatred of his character. He tells her this scene, the scene they are about to shoot, it came to him in a dream after his mother died. In his grief he imagined a girl—Monica’s character—sitting in a diner booth, sipping soda, making origami birds with the paper place mats.

  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 6 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 a swath of 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 AC sputtered and died. I blew dust from the ancient window, willed in a breeze.

  “Yo, Nat,” I said. “Let’s get out of this shit hole, 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 buckle 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.