by Ivy Oliver
“This isn't a big deal,” Sandy assures him. “Margot blows more money than this movie will cost on individual things. Didn't you see that tennis bracelet she had on the last time she was here? That fucker is worth a couple mil on its own. She puts on enough bangles in the morning to pay for ten movies.”
Nick shrugs. “As long as the checks clear. Since you're all here, I need you tomorrow morning. I'm going to give Jim another day or two before he lobsters up again. We're also going to break at mid-day.”
“What are we shooting?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Does it matter? It's the scene where you two meet the Arachnoid Queen.”
“The what?” Lucas says.
“Fuck if I know,” Nick mutters, wandering off.
That leaves the three of us sitting at the table.
“So,” Sandy says, eyeing me. “You made it back in one piece.”
I smirk. “I'm fine. I can handle myself.”
“It wasn't you handling yourself that worried me, kid.”
She stands and heads back to her trailer, reading while she walks. It's funny; I've never seen my mom crack a book, but Sandy never seems to be without one.
“Go back to your trailer and get some rest,” he suggests. “You're not going to run off again, are you?”
I look at him and lick my lips. “If I do, will you chase me?”
“Yeah, but it'll have to be hard and fast if you have something to do in the morning.”
“Is that supposed to discourage me?”
Lucas smirks.
“Or maybe I won't and just let you go.”
I frown, but it's a twitching frown that wants to go the other way. Lucas stands, and I reluctantly return to my trailer.
It's still a mess. I pick up a bit, grab a hot shower, and flop on the bed to catch a nap. Later on, I grab a bite, and then, surprised how tired I am, go back to sleep.
The next day, I wake fairly early. I'm actually ready to go for more filming ahead of schedule and already there when Nick arrives and the crew start setting up.
Sandy and I spend a few minutes going over our lines while the crew set up and the other actors get into costume. Lucas reads over my shoulder.
“Arachnoid Queen, huh?”
Sandy groans. Loudly.
“Did you read ahead?” she says.
I look up.
“We have a threesome with the arachnoid queen,” she sighs.
“Wait,” I say. “Don't spiders eat their mates?”
“I'm a bee. Stop expecting this to make sense and let's just get it over with.”
Lucas turns around and laughs into his hand when he sees our costar. Sandy makes a frustrated noise.
“Lana Lakes,” she mutters.
“Isn't that a brand of butter?”
“She named herself after a geological feature because I did. She's my nemesis.”
The two women regard each other coolly. Lana is a statuesque brunette in a furry bikini with fake, rubbery spider legs bouncing around on her back.
She checks her watch.
“I'm supposed to be back in LA for a shoot tomorrow. We better get this over with,” she snaps haughtily.
“I've done a few scenes with her,” Sandy says, more to Lucas than to me. “Total prima donna.”
“Do tell,” Lucas says.
“I'm going to assume that was sarcasm,” Sandy says.
Nick calls for us to get to our marks. Thankfully, everyone is professional this morning and there are no flubbed lines. Nick is happy after only a handful of takes. Nick calls out my body double to do the scenes with Lana and Sandy on a closed set, so I drift away with Lucas and hang around the catering tent until I'm needed again.
The afternoon has me delivering a big speech standing on a rock.
Nick, from his chair, yells, “Just pretend there's a throng of insect people soldiers in front of you. We'll add them in editing.”
I look down from the foam rubber rock at him.
“Why is everyone in this movie a bug but me?”
Maury, the screenwriter, looks up. “The different insect people represent different aspects of mankind's social nature as—”
“Maury,” Nick says, cutting him off. “Shut up. Okay, Matt. Go for it.”
I take a deep breath and recite my lines with hammy passion.
“People of Arthropods, I…”
“Cut,” Nick shouts as I break down laughing.
“Arthropoidus?” I snicker. “Seriously? What is with the bugs, dude?”
“Philistines,” Maury mutters.
“Just say the lines,” Nick shouts at me. “Keep rolling, we'll do a few takes and fix it in the cutting room.”
It takes me two hours to give an overblown, bloated five-minute speech exhorting the bug people of the bug planet to overthrow their cruel overlord, or something. About halfway through I make myself pronounce the words phonetically. The only way to get them out without doubling over laughing is to trick my brain into thinking I'm speaking Hungarian.
By the end, I'm exhausted. I climb down the foam rubber rock.
Or, I start to.
When I'm halfway down, it groans. Then it begins to yaw to one side, lets out a great animal squeal of twisting, protesting wooden beams, and starts to fall.
The way it turns just throws me into the air and sends me hurtling towards the sand jagged rocks. The world twists, and suddenly I'm lying on top of Lucas, who tackled me and rolled with it, scuffing and cutting up his bare arms in the process.
I sit up, straddling him and staring, then quickly roll to the side. The foam rubber rock, and its underlying wooden supports, is squealing again. It's coming right at us.
Lucas jumps to his feet and bodily hauls me out of the way before the entire thing crashes down where we were sitting moments before, coming apart in a shower of jagged two-by-fours, nails, screws, and seemingly random metal plates.
Nick is already on his feet, staring, and turns red with rage. Sandy runs over from her chair and grabs me, grabbing my face to check me over for injuries before I shake her off.
“Are you okay?” she demands, hugging me again.
“I'm fine,” Lucas mutters, pulling a splinter from his arm.
“Medic!” Nick bellows, “Over here now, damn it!”
The reality of what just happens hits me. I was fifteen feet in the air. I could have broken my neck or been impaled. The foam rock is wreckage now, like someone dumped a hardware store's dumpster all over the desert floor.
The set is anarchy for a few minutes. The medics start checking me first, until I push them off and direct them to Lucas.
He doesn't need stitches, but he's more cut up than I realize. My heart freezes as I watch them bandage him up and put a butterfly dressing on his forehead above his eye.
“Jesus,” Nick whispers, coming up to us. “I swear to God, I am going to kill the crew that put this thing up. We're done here. Lucas, I need you to fill out some forms for the insurance guys.”
“That isn't necessary,” he says. “It's just a few scratches.”
“Be macho later. I'm not covering up injuries in my set. Come on.”
I grab his arm. “I'll go with you.”
“Me too,” Sandy adds, quickly, giving me a sharp look.
As we're talking, I turn to her. “What's your problem?”
“Don't get too grabby with your new boyfriend,” she says. “I don't know how your mom will take it.”
“I don't give a shit how she takes it,” I proclaim. “It's not her ass out here sweating to death with fake rocks trying to kill her.”
“I need the money from this, Matt,” Sandy says sharply. “I'm sorry,” she adds, more softly. “God, I don't know what to say. You could have been really hurt.”
Lucas grunts.
“You too, hon,” Sandy says, patting his arm. He grimaces.
After we sit with a representative from the production's insurance company and fill out forms, Lucas shakes everyone off and I walk hi
m back to his trailer.
“You're not really badly hurt, are you?”
“I didn't think this gig would make me glad I keep up my tetanus boosters,” he says. “I'm fine. Trust me, I've had worse.”
“I know,” I say, touching his scar.
He grabs my wrist. “I think Sandy is right. We should be…discreet until this is over. For her sake, at least.”
“I hope she's okay,” I say. “I have this gut feeling that she's in some kind of trouble and she doesn't want to admit it.”
“This whole thing is starting to give me really strange vibes,” Lucas says. “Got the same feeling I always used to get before a barrage. A sense that something is about to happen. Like the world knows something we don't.”
“Barrage?”
“Artillery,” he says grimly.
“Oh,” I say.
We walk in silence for a time, closer to my trailer. Sandy is nowhere to be seen near hers.
“It's so crazy to me how much stuff you must have gone through, and you don't even talk about it,” I say.
“It's hard. Don't really want to.”
“Why not?”
“Feels like bragging, doesn't feel justified.”
I blink a few times.
“Humility is not a quality I'm used to seeing in my associates.”
He laughs. “I'm sure of that.”
“You make me feel…kind of…inadequate, a little,” I admit. “I'm kind of a shithead, all things considered. I've left a lot of disappointed people in my wake.”
Lucas stops. “What do you mean?”
“You're ten times the man I am. I almost feel like I don't deserve you. I don't know. Maybe I'm waxing philosophical because this movie seems to be trying to kill me.”
Lucas looks at me oddly, then seems to dismiss something. I open my mouth, but he speaks first.
“It isn't about that. Life isn't a contest. If you're always trying for something better to prove yourself to someone else, you're never going to find it. You got to see what you want in life, reach for it, and make your stand, wherever it is.”
I take a long, careful look around, and kiss him lightly on the lips.
“Might as well sleep through the hottest part of the day,” he muses.
“Yeah,” I say. “See you at dinner?”
He nods, and I lurch inside my trailer.
“Try not to let anything fall on you,” he says with a smirk as I close the door.
12
Lucas
Not ten seconds after Matt ducks into his trailer, the door flies open and he runs out, screaming at the top of his lungs.
“Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”
Before I can even ask, he blasts past me at sprinting speed, running like a madman. Sandy, hearing the commotion, ducks out of her trailer and immediately falls back, Matt turning to miss her at the last second.
“Get him,” I tell her.
She runs after him while I duck into the trailer, carefully, my hand on the butt of my sidearm.
It takes me a moment to spot the problem. I was looking for an intruder, a human sized and shaped threat. I jerk back when I hear a soft sound, like crinkling plastic wrap, from his bed. I flip on the light and stare.
Matt's bed is covered with scorpions. The little nasty buggers, too, not the bigger, (more) harmless ones they sell in pet stores to goth kids.
If he'd just flopped on the bed…
I back away slowly, checking my footing so I don't end up stepping on one of the bastards myself, and slowly close the door, trying to think.
Shit.
Sandy has found Matt, who is staring back at his trailer with a wide-eyed, lunatic mask of terror for a face. He doesn't even seem to see me when I walk up to him until I grab his shoulder and he finally acknowledges my presence.
His acknowledgement comes in the form of a high, too girlish screech.
“Calm down,” I tell him. “You're alright.”
“Dude, fucking scorpions!”
“I know.”
“Scorpions!” he screams, balling his fists. “That is it, I am so done with this shit.”
He shakes loose from us and storms off calling, “Nick! Nick!”
The director looks like someone killed his most beloved pet when he sees the three of us and a half-naked Matt approaching, the star of the movie shouting his name.
“What?” Nick says. “I'm busy.”
“Busy?” Matt hisses.
“Yes, I'm having the crew go over all the sets and props for safety checks—”
“My trailer is full of scorpions!”
Nick looks at him and blinks a few times.
“I beg your pardon?”
“My trailer. Is full. Of scorpions.”
He makes little clack motions with his fingers, simulating scorpion pincers.
“Uh,” Nick says, glancing at me.
“Oh for God's sake, I'm sober,” Matt snarls. “I'm serious!”
“I saw them,” I sigh. “Bed is covered in the little bastards. The nasty kind, too.”
Matt slowly looks at me and somehow turns paler. Sandy covers her mouth and makes a sound as if she's holding down her lunch.
“I'm sure there's a logical explanation for this. We are in the desert,” Nick says.
I take a glance around. “Where'd you get these trailers?”
Nick blinks. “I didn't. Margot handled that. Oh. Are you shitting me?”
“I shit you not,” I say solemnly.
“Wait a minute,” Sandy says, taking Matt's arm. “Where were they?”
“On the bed.”
“Just on the bed?”
“I didn't look,” Matt grumbles. “Did you want me to count them for you?”
“No, I was just thinking—”
“I only saw them on the bed,” I cut in. “Admittedly, I didn't look either, but there didn't seem to be any of them anywhere else in the trailer.”
Nick looks from one of us to the others a few times, chewing his lip.
“Okay, okay, let's everybody calm down and not come up with some kind of conspiracy theory to explain this. We're not suggesting that someone planted bugs in Matt's bed.”
“I didn't suggest that,” Matt says angrily. “You know what? I don't care. I almost broke my damn neck today because someone can't build a fake rock right and now my bed is full of angry murder bugs. I'm out. I'm taking one of the cars, I am going back to Las Vegas, and I am getting on a flight right now.
“You'd need a shirt for that,” Nick says dryly.
Matt rubs his arm and looks at me. “Will you, uh, go get me a shirt? I don't want to go back in there.”
Sandy makes a disgusted sound.
Matt rounds on her.
“Sandy, if you need money, I can get it for you. We don't need to do this. Let's be realistic here. You're not going to get a legitimate acting career out of this movie.”
She deflates slightly. Her shoulders sag and she looks at the ground, hugging herself.
“I know,” she says bitterly. “I kind of hoped, you know? I just want somebody to…nevermind. I should have been more realistic. It was time to quit when I saw the script is a ten-hour long train wreck full of bee sex with my best friend's kid.”
Nick groans.
“Actors,” he mutters.
I turn to him. “Come on, man. You've been saying yourself since the start that this is a waste of time. No one will even see the movie.”
Nick looks at me, and at Matt, who I know he's told the same thing.
“Yeah, but the checks are clearing. Look at me. I'm forty-eight, I'm balding, and my biggest directorial credit is a music video starring some Florida 'gangsta rapper' and his girlfriend.”
“I haven't seen that,” Matt says.
“Because it's on YouTube,” he sighs. “I haven't made it in the biz. I'm not going to. I was hoping to make my nut off this and pay off my house.”
“Yeah,” Sandy says, “me too. It's either that or go back to w
ork.”
She shudders.
I clear my throat.
“The problem here is that we're not talking to the person responsible for all of this. We need to talk to Margot.”
Matt gives me a sharp look. Nick shifts on his feet. Sandy frowns and looks away at nothing, her eyes locked on the middle distance somewhere.
“If none of you want to, I'll do it,” I say.
“I should do it,” Matt says. “I should have done it from the start. We're all here because I let us get dragged out in the desert.”
“I'll call her,” Nick says. “Can I at least convince you to stay the night, Matt? Maybe we can pick up again tomorrow?”
“Why?” he says. “The last thing, the absolute last thing, that I want to do tomorrow is have Jim come out here in that ridiculous rubber suit so he can have another heat stroke while I run around in leather underwear. This is over, Nick. It never really got started.”
“Please just stay,” Nick says. “If I lose you, your mom will blow up at me. She may not be helping my career, but she can sure as hell hurt what's left of it.”
Sandy nods. “We'll help you clean out your trailer.”
“I'm not sleeping in there.”
Sandy gives him a smirking, wise look.
“Well,” she says, “you could double up with your bodyguard. If you're worried about your safety, I mean.”
The two of us look at each other, and Matt goes pale. Sandy slowly smiles, halfway between the Grinch and the Cheshire Cat.
“Am I missing something?” Nick says.
“Go call Margot,” Matt sighs.
He turns, and I follow him. I hand him the keys to my trailer.
“Wait for me there. Sandy, would you help me out with something?”
After Matt is tucked away in my much smaller, more Spartan trailer, I lead Sandy to Matt's trailer.
“Stay with me,” I say.
She swallows, her throat bobbing. “I'm not especially fond of bugs myself, dude.”
“I'm going to grab him some clothes and look around. You don't have to come in. Just, call for help if I get the living shit stung out of me, alright?”
“Alright,” she says, rubbing her arms as though cold, despite the desert heat.
She ends up standing at the foot of the stair while I carefully shake out and inspect items of clothing and hand them to her one at a time. I step carefully, avoiding the critters crawling around on the floor. They've spread out from the bed.