“Nah,” said Kenny. “I’m just a gearhead from Alabama. What do I know?”
“The brain trust,” said Jerome, shaking his head sagely as he forked a mound of cheesecake into his mouth.
Gradually we all got up and prepared to make our way back out to the vans. I went to the dessert table on the way to snag an oatmeal raisin cookie and a toothpick. Brad Slaughter was there, staring at a slab of chocolate cake. He was still wearing his “gun,” a feathery-light plastic replica Glock, in his shoulder holster, and he had his fake badge clipped to the waistband of his slacks. Brad wasn’t the type to stay in character. He was simply absentminded.
“I better not,” he said, patting his flat stomach. “I’m trying to watch my girlish figure.”
“The cake’s not that good, anyway,” I said.
“I would have remorse afterwards. It would be like…”
“Banging your kid sister?”
Brad’s eyes narrowed. “My little sister’s dead, you bastard.”
“I, uh…”
“I’m joking with you, man!” Brad smiled a perfect row of ultra-white capped teeth. At fifty, he was a handsome sonofabitch, better looking now than when he had been in the ensemble of one of those teenage-rebel movies Coppola had made in his boy-erotica period.
“Don’t do that to me, Brad.”
“Banging your kid sister.” He pointed his finger at me, pistol style. “That’s why you’re the writer.”
“I do make my living with words.”
“Let me ask you something. Why did you cut that line, ‘I’m partial to fish’?”
“Meaghan felt it made her out to be a prostitute. She doesn’t like that.”
“Yeah? Fuck what that whore doesn’t like.”
Brad winked at me. His face was caked in makeup. It would play great on camera, but in person he looked like the victim of a drunken undertaker. Still, he had an aura about him, like nothing bad would touch him, ever, in his life. Not until death came to call. Which made me think: someday, this guy is going to make a stunning corpse.
According to plan, we were to have finished our third scene of the day before lunch, but Meaghan’s actions had pushed us behind schedule. We still needed the close-ups on Brad, then the turnaround on Meaghan, which meant more mouth exercises, relighting, and three sizes on her to accommodate the peculiar standards of the TV screen. We’d need to get her “clean” (just Meaghan in the frame, medium and close) and “dirty” (looking at Meaghan over Brad’s shoulder, which would partially be in the shot). To further complicate issues, Lillie noticed some matching issues with Brad (he was drinking his glass of water at different times on various takes, the kind of mistake that he usually did not make), so we lost some time there as well.
I visited Skylar after he’d finished setting up the lights for the turnaround. He was seated on the largest size apple box, which for some reason this crew called “the Schiraldi.”
“Are you sure about those fills?” I said to Skylar. “I think you put them in the wrong spot.”
It was a joke between us. I would tell him where to “put” the lights, and he’d reply with something like, “Do I tell you how to over-write your scripts?” But today he didn’t even smile.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“Nothing,” said Skylar. “I guess my head’s somewhere else.”
“Where is it?”
“I was thinking about my father.”
“Your old man’s good people.” I had met him, and Skylar’s mother, when they had visited set earlier in the shoot. I could tell that Skylar had been loved and carried no childhood scars. It was evident in the type of man he had become.
“I know he is. I just wonder what he’d think of me now.”
“He’s proud of you.”
“If he knew, Victor.”
“If he knew what? ”
The second AD called me back to the Village. Lomax had a question.
“We’re gonna talk later on,” I said to Skylar, before I left.
When the last shot of the scene was done and the gate was checked, it was announced that Meaghan had wrapped for the day. She was halfheartedly clapped out by the crew, who were visibly relieved.
We moved on to the last location.
The final scene of day ten was a candlelit vigil on the steps outside a “deep urban” (read: ghetto) high school (EXT: HARRIET TUBMAN HIGH SCHOOL, THIRD DISTRICT—NIGHT) that the murdered teller had attended years earlier. She had been established as a standout high school athlete beloved by her classmates, so they and her former teachers had gathered to honor her and also protest the growing violence in the city. The network execs had asked for the scene in their script notes, to make our show more “socially relevant and responsible” (read: they were hoping for an Emmy nomination), and we had complied, though such a vigil for a student long since graduated wouldn’t have occurred and didn’t make much sense.
In the scene, the young, good-looking detectives working under Tanner (Tanner’s Team) infiltrated the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone who didn’t belong there, i.e., the killer. Two of the detectives were also staked out in a van, videotaping the event. The scene would employ many extras, one non-actor who actually had lines (a woman who gets up at the lectern and remembers her friend), effects, and a lot of coverage. To make things more complicated, Alan Lomax had asked for an overhead crane shot that would look down on the vigil from the roof of the school, then pan to the city at night (directors loved crane shots and usually asked for one every episode). Problem was, there was no stair access to the roof (it was a very old school), so the crane and camera equipment, as well as the necessary crew, had to be transported up to the roof via a Condor, a heavy-duty piece of equipment similar to a bucket truck, with an articulating, retractable 120-foot arm capped with a steel-mesh basket to accommodate people and gear. It was a complicated sequence and it was going to be a long night.
We needed to get the money shot first, as Lomax’s pan of the city would look best at dusk, and we were losing light. The camera and crane had been taken up to the roof in pieces, and now humans were being lifted as well. I went over to the Condor as it came back down and landed in a grassy area beside the school building. Our key grip, Kevin Burns, was operating the Condor from a standing position in the basket, using a joystick to elevate and steer. I opened the gate and got into the basket, stepped into a nylon harness, buckled the straps and tightened them, and clipped myself to one of the rails. The first AD, who had followed me into the basket, did the same. I didn’t like wearing the harness, but I had to follow the safety procedures.
“You girls ready?” said Kevin, a thickly built former stuntman from rural Mississippi whose bad knees had necessitated a career change. He kept old photos of himself in his wallet, shots of him doing dangerous “gags,” him on fire and stuff like that. He lived in the past in more ways than one. The black guys on the crew said Kevin made Strom Thurmond seem like Rosa Parks.
The arm emerged from its cylinder, and we began to rise up in lurching, herky-jerky movements. I looked down at the crew working, setting up lights, standing around the trucks—the security guys and the Teamsters, the extras, all of them getting very small. I saw Annette, who had just arrived at the location, wearing one of her hats, staring up at me, her hands on her hips.
I raised my head and kept my eyes straight ahead on the horizon, a sailor’s trick used to thwart seasickness. I had begun to sweat and was feeling a little bit nauseated. My knuckles were bloodless as my hands gripped the basket’s rail.
“You okay?” said Kevin, looking over at me with a small smile.
“I think so.”
“Don’t like heights, huh?”
“Not really.”
“Or carnival rides, either, I bet.”
“Nope.”
“You’re white as a Klansman.”
“You oughta know.”
“Don’t get anxious. It’s safe.”
“Okay.”
“It’s pretty safe.”
At eighty feet from the ground, we finally came to the roofline. Kevin had to change direction, take the arm over the ledge, and drop us onto the top surface. The basket shook inordinately as he made the maneuver. When he landed on the roof, I quickly removed my harness and jumped out of the basket.
“Thanks for the ride, Kevin.”
“Not a problem, sir. I’ll try to make it less bumpy next time.”
Kevin had ten years on me, but one of the peculiarities of the film business was that many crew members addressed producers as sir, irrespective of experience or age. I didn’t like it, any more than I liked the silly chair with my name on it. But it was tradition.
I wondered if Kevin thought I was foolish for coming up here. He knew that I could have stayed on the ground, used the radios and monitors to communicate with the director, and still would have been able to do my job. I didn’t have to ride the Condor.
I wanted to.
We got our shot as darkness fell. It was the last scripted scene of the episode, so the pan over the city would be a quasi-artistic ending before the fade to black and credits. Lomax tended to overshoot, but his eps had a distinct style. He, Eagle, and Van had made it work. The camera movement was elegant, and it landed on a sweet frame of the twinkling downtown skyline, a nice visual contrast to the ghetto neighborhood of the school. Tonight these guys were on their game.
The ride back down to earth was less unnerving. The fear of the unknown is always worse than the event itself, and I had already stared it down on the ascent.
Annette was waiting for me when I dropped out of the basket and hit the ground. She didn’t look pleased. She was holding her iPad and was deliberately showing me its screen, which held a menu of photographs.
“Do you have a minute?” she said. “I need to know what you want at the restaurant.”
“I’ll have the filet, medium rare.”
“I’m talking about the design of the restaurant interior in scene thirty-eight.”
“Let’s walk,” I said, and she followed me away from the crowd, to the street running beside the school.
She lowered the iPad to her side. “I’m so frustrated with you. Why did you go up in the Condor?”
“It’s my job to be with the director.”
“Bullshit, Vic. You could have done everything you needed to do from the Village.”
“Crew went up there.”
“They have to. I hate when you do dangerous stuff just to do it.”
“The Condor’s safe.”
“It’s a machine. Machines break.”
We stopped walking. Annette had her hand on one hip and she was tapping the toe of one boot on the ground, the way she did when she was annoyed with me.
“We’ll talk about this later, Thumper.”
“I’m not a rabbit.” Annette’s eyes relaxed. “Don’t call me Thumper.”
“Shake a tail feather, baby.”
“You’re mixing your animals up. I thought you were a good writer.”
“I never said I was a good one. Look, I gotta get back to set. We both have work to do.”
“You.”
I leaned in toward her ear so she could feel my breath on her. “Are we?”
“Are we what?”
“Gonna talk about this later?”
Annette allowed me a smile. “Yes.”
“I want to kiss you right now,” I said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I want to kiss you.”
“Think about it.”
“The kiss?”
“Where you want it,” I said.
She blushed and left me there.
We shot deep into the night. The candlelight vigil had many pieces, including van interiors, with dialogue. The surrounding streets and school exteriors needed to be lit and relit as we moved and turned around. On our thirteenth hour, food was brought in from catering, what was called “second meal,” usually of the steak-and-cheese/Chinese/pizza variety, something that the health-minded among us avoided but sometimes could not. The aura on the set grew peaceful and relatively quiet, a result of fatigue and pride in doing an honest full day’s work, mixed with the anticipation of the wrap. People hung around crafty, picking at snacks, or sat on apple boxes, or on their Zucas, and in between shots they talked about bands, bars, and restaurants, people they thought were hot, those who were not, and their plans for the night.
As we prepped a new setup, I broke away and walked toward my trailer, where I intended to freshen up and answer some email from my laptop. At the honey wagons, a nice name for a row of trucked-in latrines, I saw Skylar emerge from one of the heads and come down the three steps to the sidewalk.
“Hey, man,” I said.
“Hey.” Even in the darkness, I could see the trouble in his liquid brown eyes. He tried to walk past me, but I reached out and cupped his biceps.
“Hold up, Skylar.”
“I need to get back and supervise those knuckleheads.”
“They got it. Relax.”
He pulled his arm out of my grip but he didn’t move on. Our best boy, Lance, a skinny little snitch, walked by us and gave me a look.
When he was gone, Skylar looked down at the sidewalk.
“What’s going on with you?” I said. “You haven’t been right all day.”
“Trouble,” he said, and shook his head. He removed his ball cap and ran a hand through his longish hair.
“Anything you can talk about?”
“No. It’s better if I don’t involve anyone else.”
“I’m guessing this has something to do with your other enterprise.”
Skylar didn’t reply, an answer in itself.
“Do you need money?” I said.
He looked at me directly for the first time. “Money got me into this.”
“What are you into?”
“It doesn’t matter. But, listen…”
“What?”
“I’m worried about Laura. She’s just a little slip of nothin, man.”
“Now you sound Texan, boy.”
“Promise me you’ll look after her.”
“You look after her.”
“Promise me.”
“Okay, I promise. But Skylar, you can talk to me.”
“It’s too late,” he said. “It’s fucked.”
I watched him walk away.
A couple of hours later, we finished. The martini shot, our last one of the day, was called by our first AD, and at Lomax’s shout of “Cut!” and after the subsequent gate-check, we broke set.
“That’s a wrap, everybody,” shouted the AD.
I saw Skylar going around and thanking every single one of his crew, the way he did every night.
He didn’t get in the van for the hotel. Van said that Skylar told him he was going out with his boys for a couple of beers.
I never spoke to Skylar again.
In the middle of the night I lay with Annette in the bed, both of us nude, drinking wine. We had started on the carpet, moving slowly, me between her strong legs, burying it, looking down into her eyes, green and alive in the flickering candlelight. We’d finished our lovemaking atop my sheets, now kicked to the floor.
My knees were rug-burned and raw, but I was satiated and relaxed. Come still dripped down my inner thigh, and there was a puddle of it on the mattress. My unit was languid in repose. Annette was up on one elbow, facing me, her beautiful, perfect breasts set before me, solid Ds, every boy’s dream. She had a sip of red.
“You go,” she said. “I’ll guess the lines.”
We were playing a game we liked.
“Okay,” I said. “Tanner is about to leave the Homicide offices, angry and in a rush. He puts on his shoulder holster and shrugs himself into his jacket. One of his junior detectives says to him, Where are you going, Lieutenant? Tanner turns to the detective and says…”
“I’m gonna finish this.”
I lifted the bottle of Merlot off the nightstand. “You
?”
“Yeah,” said Annette. “Give me some of that Strong Rodney.”
I darkened her glass, then mine. We were halfway into our second bottle. It was three a.m., and we were a little tipsy.
“How about this?” I said. “Tanner’s chased a perp, a child rapist he’s been pursuing, to the roof of a building. Tanner’s got his gun on him and he’s ready to kill him in cold blood, but he can’t pull the trigger. What’s the dialogue, honey?”
“The rapist says, Go ahead. You’d be doing me a favor.”
“Then Tanner lowers his gun and says…”
“I can’t. I’m not like you.”
“What does the rapist say next?”
“We’re more alike than you think we are. We’re two sides of the same coin, Tanner.”
“That’s good. That variation there, with the coin. You’re pretty smart.”
“Just lucky.”
“I’m the lucky one,” I said, and reached out and touched her face.
She blinked slowly. “I worry about you.”
“ ’Cause I went up in the Condor?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t worry.”
I brushed away the hair that had fallen over her eyes and kissed her lips.
“What was the purpose of that crane shot on the roof, anyway?” she said. “And then the pan to the city at dusk. It’s a cop show, for crying out loud. Lomax was shooting for his reel, right?”
I nodded. “Guy thinks he’s David fucking Lean.”
Annette called me on my cell early in the morning, just as I came out of the shower. She told me that Skylar Branson was dead.
“What happened?”
She repeated what she knew, based on a conversation with Ellen Stern. Skylar had gone to Red’s, a drinker’s bar down by the river, after wrap with a couple of the guys on his crew. Red’s, like all of the bars in this city, was open till four a.m. At some point, Skylar told one of his guys he had to take a leak. There was only one toilet in the men’s room, and it was occupied, so Skylar went outside to urinate between a fence and a nearby Dumpster. His guys heard the pop of gunshots and went out to investigate. They found Skylar, shot to death, lying beside the Dumpster. One in the back of the head, three in his back. His wallet was on the ground, emptied of cash and credit cards. Police were calling his death a robbery/homicide.