~ * * * ~
Stan stuffed his two ring fingers in his mouth and whistled. One short, shrill blast was plenty to serve his purpose. “All right, pay attention everybody.”
“Like we have a choice,” Bryce muttered. He was still smarting from his lack of knowledge about Hitchcock and made a mental note to sample some of his films. He wondered if any contained song-and-dance routines.
The mysterious box remained on the ground at their feet as Stan bent over and petted it like it was a Labrador Retriever. He scanned the four faces staring down on him and looked each of his cast and crew members in their eyes. What he saw was doubt and concern, neither of which Stan found reassuring. He forced a shaky smile. It’s going to be okay, trust me. “Okay, here’s how the new and improved Letter 13 goes down. A couple frolicking in the forest stumbles upon a treasure chest, right? But there’s a curse on it. Evil forces are unleashed to get it back, right?”
At this point, Stan wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince himself or them, but Irv validated his approach by pointing out the similarity to a Steven Spielberg movie from the early 1980s about the search for a powerful and sacred religious artifact. “So kind of like the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark?
A grateful Stan scooped up the ball and took off with it, open field ahead, end zone awaiting. “Exactly. So the lovers face a life-or-death decision. Give up the treasure and live…or make a run with it and probably die.”
Nobody stirred as they let Stan’s revised plot sink in. A good sign, he thought, at least they didn’t disagree. Silence was consent, he assumed—until Bryce opened his mouth. “Am I still an alien?”
An innocent enough question, even a valid one, but coming from Bryce, Stan was wary and realized there could be land mines ahead that he would have to tiptoe through. “You’re still an alien,” Stan said. “A smitten alien.” Stan figured Bryce would embrace the “smitten” part. He figured wrong—again.
“I don’t think aliens can be smitten.” Bryce shook his head with such conviction, it was as though he’d just spent hours on the Internet researching that exact topic.
Stan had the feeling that any further pursuit of trying to convince Bryce that aliens could be “smitten” would lead him through a maze from which he might never escape, so he switched gears. “Ah, but Keisha doesn’t know you’re an alien.”
Bryce didn’t bite—in fact, he ignored Stan altogether—and was still hung up in “smitten” territory. “Aliens don’t have emotions.”
Stan couldn’t disprove Bryce’s statement, so rather than contest the assertion—a pointless undertaking with no possible definitive answer either way—he would force Bryce to defend his own proclamation. “Says who?”
Bryce pounced like a jackal on fresh roadkill. “It’s like an alien movie rule.”
He spoke so matter-of-factly that even to Stan’s skeptical ears his words had a ring of truth. Then again, how would Bryce, of all people, know anything about alien movie rules? It had to be a bluff. After all, this was the guy who rattled off all the names of the von Trapp family kids from The Sound of Music during the drive to the location that morning.
“Which is why we’re breaking the rule,” Stan divulged. “It’s unexpected.” He wanted to take Bryce down a side road so winding and twisting that he’d never find his way back to the main highway. “When Keisha discovers you’re an alien, she freaks. But for now, you’re hot for each other. You follow?”
While Bryce knotted his brows as if to assess whether the scenario Stan just outlined was acceptable to him or not, Keisha reached across and gave his bicep a playful squeeze. “Come on, Bryce, maybe you’ll get to show me how aliens get it on. Whadya say? Are you game?”
When the only response Bryce mustered up was a series of unintelligible hems and haws, Stan guessed he was neutralized and the time was ripe to move on. “We’ll shoot the scenes out of order. That’s the way the pros do it.” Stan liked to pepper his explanations with frequent references to Hollywood methods and popular movie titles to give his own film an aura of greater import. “First thing, we jump right into action with the chase sequence. Any questions?”
“Yeah, I have one.” Dana raised her hand and waved it like she was channeling her insufferable self from Mrs. Garver’s third-grade class.
“Anybody?” Stan glanced around and hoped—prayed—somebody besides his sister had a query for him.
The pitch of Dana’s voice dropped to a baritone level and she scowled. “I said, I have a question.”
Stan grimaced like a pesky Chihuahua had just dug into his ankle. He conceded, but wasn’t about to give in. In his mind, there was a difference: A concession was temporary and fleeting—just as he intended his response would be. “Yes?” he hissed between clenched teeth.
“How much longer do I have to do this?” she moaned.
This? To Stan, Dana might just as well have equated his film to scrubbing the toilet bowl, as though it was some boring, inconsequential inconvenience that was hindering her from an engagement of monumental importance, such as a vital trip to the mall with her coterie of fellow subversives. Her display of insolence could not and would not be tolerated. “Shut up, Dana. You’re booked for the whole weekend. I only have the cameras for two days. That’s forty-eight hours to get Letter 13 completed.”
Dana slumped and her body sagged. “But I’m tired.”
Stan was on the verge of an eruption of Mount Vesuvius proportions. “Tired? We’ve only been out here two hours!”
“And hungry.” To dramatize her plight, she clutched at her stomach and doubled over as if famished to the brink of starvation, in an attempt to arouse
her brother’s sympathy. It didn’t.
“We eat when I say we eat,” Stan declared. He had reached his saturation point with Dana and turned his back on her in such a definitive way that not even a shred of doubt existed that their discussion was terminated. “Okay, Bryce and Keisha, grab the box. We’ll find a location and start shooting. Saddle up everybody. We’ve got a picture to make! HEE HAW!”
As Stan charged off like Teddy Roosevelt leading his Rough Riders up San Juan Hill, an underwhelmed Bryce watched him and sighed. “Hee. Haw.”
Chapter 5