Play Me

by Laura Ruby

  “Ow!”

  “Like I said, five-year-old.”

  I pull the foot and the bag of ice up to rest them on the picnic bench. Gina puffs on the cigarette, shooting smoke from her nose. My toe throbs under the ice. If I were shooting it, I’d shoot it as a cartoon, the throbbing toe the size of a ham, beating like a heart.

  “She break up with you?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, she did. Because you screwed Sonya Powell?”

  “I didn’t.”

  She exhales a cloud of smoke. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

  “She was flirting with Joe,” I mutter.

  “That’s a good reason to muck it all up.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” I say. “I got confused.”

  “Karma.”

  “What?”

  She twirls the cigarette in the air. “What goes around comes around. You treat girls like shit and now you know how it feels. Sucks, doesn’t it?”

  I’m too tired to argue. “I love her.”

  “Uh-huh,” she says, scoffing. “Don’t expect me to feel sorry for you.”

  “I don’t,” I say.

  “Sure you do. That’s why you’re here.”

  “I’m here because you told her. I’m here because you’re the Tin Man.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  She’s right. Gina would never do anything anonymously. If she thought your show was crap, she’d tell you to your face.

  She stubs out the cigarette on the picnic table and tosses it into the half-dead bushes. “Well, if you’re feeling better and I can trust you not to break down anyone else’s door, I’m going to go back inside.”

  I don’t want her to go. I don’t want to be alone.

  “Come for a ride with me.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, now.”

  She taps her watch. “It’s eleven.”

  “So? Since when do you go to bed at eleven?”

  She sighs. “A ride where?”

  “Anywhere. I’ve got my camera and some lights in the back of the SUV. We can shoot some stuff. I’ve got some new ideas.”

  “What about Riot Grrl 16?”

  I don’t say anything.

  She exhales sharply through her nose. “We didn’t get it, did we? We’re not top five.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  She crosses her arms. “What about Rory and Joe?”

  “What about them?”

  “You said you want to shoot some stuff. Don’t you want to bring them along?”

  “No. I’m the idea man. Riot Grrl was mine. I came up with the plots. I wrote all the dialogue. I was the one who wanted to cast you.”

  “You wanted to cast me because you wanted to have sex with me.”

  “Point is, I wanted to cast you.”

  She stares at me for a long time. She’s kept her hair the same, all black with bangs cut straight across her forehead. If I didn’t know her, I would have said she looked like a china doll. But I do know her. At least I know she doesn’t break so easy. It’s not fair of me, but it makes me feel better. To know I haven’t broken her.

  “I’ll probably regret this,” she says, “but okay. Let me get my stuff.”

  First, I stop at a gas station to fill up the tank, get some drinks and snacks, and buy Gina more cigarettes. Gina watches me load the two bags of stuff in the backseat of the SUV.

  “Are we driving to Idaho?”

  “I thought we should have something to eat just in case.”

  “Just in case what?”

  “I don’t know.” I reach into one of the bags and toss her a pack of cigarettes. “Here.”

  “I can smoke in the car?”

  “Yeah, you can smoke in the car.”

  With the back of her hand, she presses against my forehead, temple, and the side of my neck. I give her a look.

  “I’m making sure this isn’t a mask.”

  I knock her hand away. “Cut it out. I’m trying to be nice.”

  “Now you’re really scaring me.”

  I ignore her and put the SUV into gear. I maneuver out of the gas station lot, turning onto the road. Since it’s so late, we have the road almost to ourselves. The air is dry and cool. Perfect night for driving. I open the moon-roof and let the night air flood the car.

  Gina smokes quietly. Since I’m letting her smoke, I might as well let her fiddle with my iPod. She scrolls through the tunes until she finds one she likes, a retro tune. The Cure. “Why Can’t I Be You?” It’s fast and loud and the words hurt me a little, but I turn it up as I turn onto Route 46 east. I never wanted to be anyone else but myself, but right now I wouldn’t mind being Tippi Hedren. I have a feeling that Tippi Hedren’s pretty pleased with her lot in life.

  “Where are we going?” Gina says.

  “You’ll see.”

  Route 46 turns into Route 3, which then turns into the Garden State Parkway. Gina smokes a few more cigarettes and then puts her seat back so that she can doze awhile. I keep myself jacked on Coke and Red Bull and the music that burns in my ears. Exit 149. Exit 119. Exit 80. Gina wakes for a minute to say, “We’re going to the beach? But I didn’t bring a suit,” and then she’s out again.

  Three-plus hours after we left Gina’s house, I’ve driven the length of New Jersey. After that, I have to pull over and consult a map to find the best route, but it turns out there’s only one. I take 495 around Washington, DC, and get on 95 to drive through Maryland. After the bright lights of the city, the highway now seems deserted again. It reminds me of a two-minute film the Jumping Frenchmen made more than a year ago. We called it Highway Man. We went out late at night on the most deserted part of the Garden State Parkway and dropped Rory off on the side of the road wearing a zip-up suit and a mask. I drove down the highway with Joe, got off at the next exit, and got back on the highway again so that we could pass the place where we dropped Rory. We started filming about two miles away. Joe held the camera steady. There was no dialogue at all. Just the steady thrum of the engine, the passing streetlights, the empty highway rolling through the hills. Then, up ahead, you see the dim figure, someone standing under a streetlamp. You notice that he’s standing oddly, with his arms hanging down by his sides but not touching his body. And then, as the car approaches, you notice the zip-up suit and the fact that there isn’t a car or a house anywhere near the guy. By then you are so focused on this guy you couldn’t look anywhere else even if you wanted to. What is up with this guy? you want to know. Who is he? What’s he doing? Where’d he come from? Just as the car is passing the weird, zipper-suited man, the camera pans up to catch a glimpse of his face. That’s all you want. To see his face. As if it will explain everything. Every question in the world you ever had. The camera pans up. He has no face. Just black holes where his eyes should be. There is an audible gasp and the lens turns on the driver. The driver’s own face is white and his eyes are huge. Both driver and cameraman start screaming. They scream all the way down the road. They scream until they don’t have any breath left to scream. And then, just as the camera goes dark, a tiny voice: “Turn around. I want to go back. I need to see him again.”

  We put it up on YouTube and it was a huge hit. Everyone thought it was real, everyone thought there was a Highway Man. A local news team even did a story on it. Highway Man was what brought Gina to us in the first place. She wanted to know the truth about him. If he was real, she said, she wanted to see him for herself. She wanted us to show her. When we told her what we’d done, that it was a fake, she said, “Cool! Like War of the Worlds!”

  I never told Lucinda about Highway Man. And even if I had, I don’t think she’d understand why we did it. And if she didn’t understand why we did it, then why did I care that she didn’t want to go out with me anymore? Why did it feel like I’d swallowed one of Gina’s lit cigarettes and it sat in the center of me, burning?

  Gina doesn’t wake up until we’re in Virginia and the sun is turning the sky the color of bruises
.

  She sits up in her seat, surveying the landscape. Then she grabs the pack of cigarettes off the dash and lights one.

  “Kansas?” she says.

  “No. Virginia.”

  “Any particular reason we’re going to Virginia?”

  “We’re only traveling through Virginia.”

  “So, you want to add kidnapping to your list of offenses,” she says.

  I shrug. “You’re the genius who agreed to come with me.”

  “You were distraught,” she said.

  Her saying I’m distraught reminds me how distraught I am. Lucinda’s words keep ringing in my head: I’m sorry, Eddy. It’s already done. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  I’m tired of everyone being sorry and still screwing me over. “Top-ten favorite movies,” I say. “Ten down to number one.”

  Gina puts her feet up on the dash. “I hate top-whatever lists. I always forget something or change my mind.”

  “Top ten as of right now, at this very moment, driving through Virginia, on the road to nowhere.”

  “I can’t think of ten movies.”

  “Top five, then.”

  “I’m tired. And in Virginia.”

  “I’m distraught, remember?”

  “Oh, all right,” she says. She smokes carefully, rolling the cigarette between her fingers.

  “I meant today,” I say.

  “I’m thinking.” She taps the cigarette out the cracked window. “Number five. A Room with a View.”

  “I’ve never even heard of it.”

  “That’s ’cause you’re a heathen,” she says. “It’s a period comedy about a girl named Lucy Honeychurch who has to choose between two men.”

  “Lucy Honeychurch sounds like the name of a prostitute.”

  “See this? This is me ignoring you. Number four. Edward Scissorhands.”

  “Interesting choice.”

  “I think of it as a remake of the Frankenstein story but retold as a fairy tale. But I always go back and forth between that and Beetlejuice.”

  “Because it’s goth?”

  “Because it’s good. Number three. Pulp Fiction.”

  “Pulp Fiction only gets the number-three spot?”

  “Number two. Amélie.”

  “Ugh,” I say. “What’s with all the love stories? And a French love story? I thought you were a tough chick. A girl made me watch that. It was like being torn apart by the cutest kitten that ever lived.”

  She lights another cigarette. “And number one. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

  “Another love story,” I say.

  “But an amazing one.”

  “I guess,” I say.

  She laughs.

  “What?”

  “You totally didn’t get that movie, did you? When you really love someone, you really hate them, too. Or what you love turns into what you hate. Brilliant.”

  I think about kissing Lucinda, burying my nose in her skin, being inside her. “I don’t hate anybody.”

  “Whatever,” she says. I’m waiting for her to ask me what my top-ten list is, but she throws her cigarette out the window and then wiggles down in her seat. “Wake me up when we reach California, or wherever it is we’re going.”

  She wakes up in North Carolina. “What time is it?”

  “Time for lunch,” I say. We stop at a truck stop filled with huge flannel-shirt-wearing guys sopping up egg yolks with white bread. We sit in the smoking section so that Gina can kill herself faster. Three cups of coffee, two sandwiches, and one, “Thanks, y’all,” later, we’re back on the road.

  “Are you going to tell me where we’re headed?” Gina says.

  “Need-to-know basis,” I tell her.

  “Will I be back in time for college?” Gina’s headed to the University of Delaware, where she got a full scholarship. Close enough to be close, she says, far enough to start fresh. She says she’s going to quit smoking cold turkey, grow out her hair, and study psychology. Women are always leaving everyone and going off to reinvent themselves. There’s a movie in there somewhere, but I’m too dizzy to figure it out.

  “Yes, you’ll be back in time.”

  She pulls off her sweatshirt. “You know, I really don’t mind all this driving. I was kind of bored and looking for something to do. But I hope you realize that you’re not getting away from anything.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re going to feel the pain wherever you go. It will catch up with you.”

  “Thank you, Gina. That’s really profound. I should have that printed on T-shirts.”

  She grunts. “You should have it branded on your forehead.”

  We drive through North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The air outside thickens with humidity. Gina asks if I’d like her to drive so I can get some rest, but I don’t want her to drive. I really wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I wasn’t driving. It does feel a little like I’m trying to outrun something, but what’s so wrong with that?

  The last leg of the journey: nearly a thousand miles through Florida. There are palms everywhere. The smell of the ocean wafts through the windows and the late-afternoon sun bakes the tops of our heads. We stop for gas and then we’re in the car again. The roads are dry with a thin sprinkling of sand that glitters on the tar. Around eight, we pass the signs that say Miami. The sky is an impossible shade of blue, but the buildings lining the roads look old and dingy, the color of dirty socks. I expect Gina to comment, but she doesn’t. She’s been quiet for the last hour, waiting for what’s going to happen next. I can feel her anticipating it, like you do the key scene in a movie. Will he fire the gun? Will she figure out who did it? Will the ghost be put to rest? Will the birds fly away or stay to kill them all?

  It’s only after we cross a couple of long bridges that the buildings turn white and pink and yellow, like driving through a giant package of Smarties. I check the address again and then pull into a parking lot. We get out of the SUV. Gina stares up at the enormous wall of flamingo pink stucco, shaking her head. “We drove thousands of miles to get to the Shopping Network?”

  Sunset Boulevard

  “Not that building,” I say. “That one.” If Gina realizes where we are, she doesn’t say.

  We park in the lot and walk up to the security guard manning the gate. I tell him who I am and what I want. He’s not impressed.

  “I know they’re taping,” I say. “Tell her that her son is here to see her.”

  The security guard says, “You don’t look like her.”

  “Do you want to take some DNA?”

  “You don’t have an appointment,” he says. He has the jowls of a bulldog and they quiver when he shakes his head. “This is a closed set.”

  “I just want to talk to her.”

  “Come back tomorrow. And don’t bring the video camera next time. We don’t allow video cameras.” He’s staring at Gina as if he’s never seen a girl before. Then again, she took ten minutes to put on her makeup this morning, and she’s done an especially colorful job. Her lipstick matches her camo shorts. As in, green.

  “It took me twenty hours to drive from New Jersey. It’s an emergency.”

  The security guard grumbles something about uppity teenagers and picks up the phone. “I’ve got some kid here,” he says.

  “Kids,” I say. The guard glares and turns away so that I can’t hear the rest.

  Gina taps her fingernails on the gate until I reach out and grab her hand to stop her. She pinches me, then tries to bend back my pinky, but I don’t let go.

  The guard slams down the phone. “Someone will be here to talk to you in five minutes.”

  We wait. Gina fogs the window of the guardhouse with her breath and draws hearts with jagged cracks through them. Under the hearts she writes, Poor, sad Eddy.

  A skinny man in an orange shirt and slouchy brown pants heads to the gate, holding out his hand like a sword. “Bernardo, PA on Crime Scene: Miami.”
<
br />   “I’m Ed. This is Gina.”

  “Yeah, nice to meet you.” He turns to the guard. “Open it.”

  As we walk past, I salute the guard, who scowls at me. I raise the video camera and press Record, walking backward as I film. “Dirk had fifteen years on the force till the drink got ahold of him. This security gig is the only job he could get. His wife, Zelda, walked out. His kids only visit when they need money, and since he doesn’t have any, they don’t visit. He has a cat, but the cat doesn’t like him either and pees behind the only chair in the living room. He goes home at night, gets Taco Bell, strips to his shorts, and drinks beer in front of computer porn until he passes out.”

  “Dirk” gives me the finger.

  “That was mean,” Gina says.

  “But funny,” I say.

  Bernardo talks as he walks. “Shelby was surprised. She didn’t know you were coming.”

  “I bet,” I say.

  Bernardo eyes Gina. “Are you in a film?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “You look like, uh, what do you call those, a Harajuku Girl? You know, from Japan? Except taller. And American.”

  “What a lovely thing to say,” says Gina, fluttering her lashes.

  “So, how long have you two been going out?” Bernardo says.

  “We’re not,” Gina says, fiddling with the loop threaded through the top of her ear. “I’m his victim. He kidnapped me.”

  “She’s kidding,” I say.

  “No, I’m not.”

  Bernardo smiles blandly. He looks too exhausted to keep his flirt on. My parents told me a PA does all the scut work on the set. If the stars want coffee, the PA coffees. If the director wants a sandwich, the PA sandwiches. If someone’s cleaning has to be picked up, the PA picks. If there’s glory to be gotten, well, that’s when you can count the PA out.

  We pass different sets: cop central, the courthouse, millionaire’s mansion. The morgue must be tucked in some dark place somewhere. There are a few people milling around the craft service table and some lighting guys setting up a shot. There’s a “body” covered with a sheet in the middle of the street. A guy who might be someone Important is yelling at no one in particular and waving his arms around. It looks like Hollywood, but in Florida. This is probably the only show on TV filmed in Florida instead of in California or New York.