Jules adjusts her costume—black jeans, leather jacket the color of dried blood—and scratches the reddened skin beneath the fake gun. This is what she knows: Adrian’s in the middle of editing a short film. He needs to reshoot a particular scene, but the main actor has gone to Melbourne. Jules has forgotten the exact trail of acquaintances that led to Adrian finding her, a reasonable approximation of the leading lady.
‘Alright,’ Adrian says.
His directions are crisp: jump off this wall. Run towards the supermarket.
‘Okay,’ Jules says.
Her first jump from the wall is completely natural. She feels every second of the fall and the crash of pavement, scrambling to her feet and hurtling towards Coles until Adrian calls for her to stop. Jules turns around and Adrian walks up with a roll of gaffer tape. He tears off two strips and makes a cross on the pavement near her toe. ‘You have to run to this exact spot for each take,’ he says.
Which turns out to be quite difficult. Every time she makes that fall to the ground her feet seem to want to take her in a different direction. At the end of each take she immediately looks across at Adrian, stationed at his camera, frowning. Another take. At times like these Jules finds that her brain doesn’t shut off exactly but slips into something like one of those Windows 95 screensavers: in particular, the one where you’re flying through space and all these little white dots are rushing at you. If you access the screensaver settings, you can even specify how many stars you would like to appear per second. Jules is rocketing through that black sky and watching the white dots racing like thoughts, and so a part of her is taking her leap off the wall and bracing for impact while another part is thinking about her shift at work yesterday, that young family—mother, father, child—uncertainly navigating the Lounge Room section while Jules was dusting the eProp flatscreen. The family peered around the next corner of the IKEA maze and the mother said to her beloveds, ‘Oh, are we meant to go through here? Does it want us to go through here?’ Said with such heartbreaking sincerity that Jules had to notice the family for a bit longer—this one so earnest to get it right, to fullfil IKEA’s bidding—before rocketing on, the thought behind her, disappearing into the vast digital blackness.
Does it want.
Does it want.
Does it want.
She jumps off the wall and runs.
Before each take, Adrian holds a clapperboard in front of the camera, but he doesn’t snap it like Jules has seen in movies of movie sets. Just seeing the clapperboard in real life is a novelty in itself; it looks less like a professional instrument and more like a prop. Adrian, too, has a strange not-quiteness about him. Some low-res trial version of a film student. Jules doesn’t know much about this kind of thing, and her university days seem long ago now, but she does remember the film students, dotted around campus in clusters, setting up a shot for their grim final-assessment narratives—narratives which, due to budgetary and time constraints, inevitably centered on a ragtag group of young university students.
This Adrian—either because of the hurried nature of the shoot or his own preference—is today a lone wolf, camera operator and director in one.
‘Go again,’ Adrian says, so she does.
It was a Facebook call-out. Perhaps that’s why Jules’s memory can’t trace the degrees of separation between Adrian and herself. Somebody, probably Elena, invited Jules to an event page of Adrian going all shitshitguys, I gotta reshoot this scene and I only have one more week, I need somebody who looks like this chick.
The picture for the event page was of a girl in her early twenties holding a bottle of Corona at a party. The event had clearly done the rounds—twenty-nine attending, fifty-two maybe attending, helped along by an update from Adrian promising fifty dollars for the lucky candidate—and no match for the girl with the Corona had emerged.
A few spiky PMs later and here she is, fifty dollars richer, doing in her ankles with another jump. Groundhogging it back to the beginning.
After the sunlight shifts, Adrian puts away his clapperboard and says that they’re through. Jules ducks into the shopping center restroom to change clothes, and hands back her fake gun and sweaty costume to Adrian in a battered City Surf bag. ‘Thanks for coming out, Jules,’ he says, telescoping his tripod legs.
‘You’ll let me know when you’ve finished the film, right?’
‘Sure, sure. Ah...’ Patting himself down for a pen. ‘I don’t have your email address.’
She scribbles [email protected] on the back of the STFU card. They shake hands like professionals, and then Adrian goes, ‘So, uh...’ and she watches him dart his gaze, and then default to the topic he knows best. ‘Wanna grab a coffee?’
‘Actually I have to head off, but thanks.’ She slings her bag over her shoulder. ‘Good luck with the editing.’
She’s halfway back to her car when Elena calls. ‘Half a box of couscous in the cupboard,’ Elena says. ‘Been there for months. I would like some couscous. Yours?’
‘Nah, I don’t know who that belongs to.’
‘Well, mine now. How did the shoot go?’
‘My ankles are killing me. The guy was alright. That’s about it, really.’
‘What’d you have to do?’
‘Jump off a wall and then run somewhere. It was weird. He didn’t give me any context or anything. Just: jump off here, run over there.’
‘Aw, Valentine. Why didn’t you just ask for context?’
‘I kinda liked not having context. Wanted to jumpcut all that bullshit anyway, so I didn’t have to interact with the guy.’
‘I love how you’re talking about this as if you didn’t have any choice in taking part.’
‘And what’s with the clapperboard thing? He didn’t clap it once.’
‘The what?’
‘That thing, you know. “Action!” and then, snap—’
‘Oh right. It’s because he wasn’t recording sound. He must already have sound to put over your take.’
‘Oh okay.’ Jules imagines Adrian syncing her take with a vast repository of sound effects of shoes running across brick, of landing, each sound possessing some careful nuance that her untrained ear would not detect, each somehow outclassing the auditory actuality. Maybe he’ll have to construct the track from several smaller sound effects, some mix ’n’ match thing, like customisable furniture. For a scene barely ten seconds long. It all seems like too much trouble.
‘Jules?’
‘Sorry. Hey, El, I have to drive now. I’ll be back home soon. Enjoy your couscous.’
‘Alrighty. Later.’
‘Later.’
Jules is about to hang up when she notices the date on the Motorola’s smudged display, exactly two months before Elena’s birthday. Shit. She shuts her phone.
Jules and Elena have been engaged in gift-giving one-upmanship ever since high school. They bonded over their mutual propensity to give terrible presents to other people, but they are inexplicably talented at getting presents for each other. It was Elena who gave Jules the stack of STFU business cards for her birthday last year. Now it’s Jules’s turn, and two months is barely enough time to both conceive of and successfully execute a decent counter-present.
Jules pockets her phone and rounds the corner. There’s a girl leaning against Jules’s car, staring at the road, lifting a cigarette to her mouth that is mostly ash. Jules stops a meter away, watches the girl take a drag, and there’s something kind of off about her, spectral, and then Jules realizes it’s because she’s dressed in very much the same outfit that Jules was just wearing at the shoot—Converse high-tops, black jeans, leather jacket the color of dried blood. Jules is just about to say something when the girl turns her head. It takes some time for Jules to recognize the girl without her bottle of Corona.
‘Hey, weren’t you meant to be in Melb—’
The girl tosses her cigarette, grabs Jules by the collar and shoves her against the car.
‘Ow! What the fuck—’
; ‘Get in the car!’ the girl yells.
‘Ow!’
‘Get in! Get in! Get in!’
And in a jumble of keys and sharp fingernails Jules is falling into the driver’s seat and the Corona girl’s in the passenger’s side.
‘Drive! Go go go go go go go go go! Get back out to Fitzgerald!’
Jules gets as far as starting the ignition and slamming into reverse before she remembers that she’s not some meat-puppet actress anymore and brakes. Switches the car off.
‘Why?’ Jules asks.
The Corona girl glares. Jules wonders if, just by participating in Adrian’s film, she’s programmed now to keep on falling, completely contextless, for the rest of the day.
‘Look, Marilyn,’ the girl says. ‘I don’t have time for this. We need to catch up with Adrian and lift the memory card. So get moving. Don’t test me. I will hit you.’
‘Who the hell’s Marilyn?’
The girl pauses. Even when silent, she reverberates with malevolence. Jules’s hand creeps to the door handle, ready to bolt; the Corona girl is grappling for something in her jeans pocket and Jules thinks immediately of the fake gun, except maybe on this real-life girl it won’t be a fake gun, but what the Corona girl retrieves instead is an iPhone. She swipes the shattered touchscreen, shoving aside applications like a police officer navigating a crowd of gawping bystanders. She is loading, Jules realizes, the Facebook event page for the actress call-out. She scrolls down the messages left on the event wall, and in that blur Jules sees the name Marilyn O’Connor, the closest hopeful before Adrian selected Jules.
‘You’re not Marilyn O’Connor?’ Corona girl demands, squinting at the profile picture and Jules and back again.
‘No, I’m—’
‘Whatever, there’s no difference. Look. Look. Listen, just listen to me, alright? Get back out to Fitzgerald.’
‘Get the fuck out of my car!’
‘Bastard switched out on me,’ Corona girl mutters, rotating the iPhone in her hands. ‘Stringing me along the whole time. That little prick.’
‘Get out of my—’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, you don’t want to get dragged into this bottomless shitpile, trust me. We have to get the memory card. Listen to me. We have to get the memory card.’
Jules sighs. ‘Do you even know what’s on that memory card? It’s an amateur film. An amateur student film. Let’s be realistic, nobody’s going to watch it. Now, if you could just get out of my car—’
‘Yeah, an amateur film,’ the girl snaps. ‘An amateur film backed by some corporate dump so they can “discover” it and market the snot out of it! It’s all manufactured, don’t you see? It’s some fucked-up astroturfing shit!’
‘Why should I care?’
‘Why should you—’ The girl stops herself. ‘Okay. Okay. You don’t have to care. Fuck knows, nobody else cares. But I need you, okay, whatever-your-name-is, Marilyn, Betty, whatever. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand, but you don’t want to get caught up in this, trust me. I need you to get me that memory card.’
‘Wouldn’t following your instructions actually involve getting caught up in this?’
‘They don’t know about you. You can disappear after this.’ The girl wavers under Jules’s gaze. It’s not a weakening, Jules sees, but an internal debate on whether to change persuasion tactics. But the girl steadies her glare. Injects new venom: ‘I mean, what else have you got to do this afternoon, anyhow?’
What else has Jules got to do this afternoon, anyhow?
Be one of thirty-nine people who stop at the intersection of Fitzgerald and Walcott and read the sign ‘WE BUY HOUSES FOR CASH CALL 0429 929 801’ in its entirety.
Witness a Hyundai Getz narrowly overtake a bus while doing 80k/h.
Collect and dispose of the yellowing local newspaper editions rotting away in the 14 Camberwell Street letterbox.
Belatedly advise one dismayed Elena Rubik that the water-to-couscous ratio is strictly 1:1 cup, and that any minor deviation results in irreparable disaster.
Be one of three people to like a reposted GIF of a cat sending a fax.
As Jules starts the ignition, reverses, and slips onto Fitzgerald, she glances at Corona girl, but Corona girl will never—not once today—strap on a seatbelt.
They jostle over speed bumps. Jules retreats into her digital starry sky and rehearses how she’s going to tell this story to Elena later. The present moment is the future’s past. I’m not sure why I went with Corona girl. She just had this weird intensity about her, I guess. She was like a tornado. A strangely persuasive, compelling tornado. Just going on and on about the film, we have to get the film, why won’t you help me get the film. She probably had information on that Marilyn girl, some sort of leverage, but nothing to hold over me. So there was no reason, really. She was just so—
‘There he is!’ the girl screams, yanking the steering wheel. The car swerves.
‘Stop it!’ Jules yanks the car straight. There’s Adrian, struggling along the sidewalk, hefting his filming equipment and the City Surf bag.
‘Pull over!’ Corona girl commands, so Jules obliges, and it’s the worst parallel park of her life. Corona girl immediately pushes her out the door. ‘Get the memory card! Go go go!’ Jules tumbles out of her car like a one-woman SWAT team. She sweeps the area for Adrian and catches sight of the City Surf bag disappearing into a coffee shop.
Jules sighs. She stands on the sidewalk, staring at the coffee shop, gathering her nerves, ignoring Corona girl jabbing the car window with her finger. Geez. A man pushes the door to the coffee shop, looks over at her, and holds it open quizzically, so Jules drags up a polite smile and crosses over the threshold.
Adrian’s at the counter, surrounded by baggage, coaching the counter assistant through his order. Jules darts a glance at the blackboard but there are no clues for the uninitiated: just a stand of cream-colored, sparse menus on the counter, too far away to read.
Quote of the Day says the blackboard. All plots lead deathwards. —Don DeLillo.
Adrian’s wrapping up his order, and the polite door-holder, who is still considering the papyrus menu, gestures for Jules to join the queue.
Jules is still searching for coffee keywords—are latte and flat white the same thing?—when Adrian turns around, holding a number 12 on a metal stand. ‘Jules. Hey.’
‘Hey.’
‘Thought you had to go somewhere.’
‘It... got postponed.’
Jules can’t seem to move her feet or feel the inside of her mouth. With the number twelve lopsided in his hand, Adrian looks like a bored auction attendee.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘when you order, ask for the Dark Shrine blend. It’s way better than the shit we had this morning.’
Adrian twists past her to find a table. Still numb, Jules steps up to the counter. ‘Shall I put you on the same number?’ the waitress asks.
‘Yes,’ Jules sighs.
The café soundtrack is the sort of music that would play in an igloo housing a dentist’s. Jules scrunches her receipt into her wallet and walks to Adrian’s table. His equipment clogs the legroom, so she sits sideways. Catches sight, for a moment, of the City Surf bag, its slightly open lip. The dark red jacket folded inside. The handgrip of the fake gun.
Adrian thumbs the last flourishes on a text message while Jules casts desperately for a way into a conversation—but Adrian takes care of that for her. ‘So what do you do anyway, Jules?’ he asks, pocketing his Blackberry and retrieving a foil packet of blue Halls. He pops one. ‘Study?’
‘Work,’ Jules says. ‘IKEA drone.’
‘Checkout?’
‘Sales. Roam the maze, arrange displays, answer questions.’
She can smell his menthol breath from across the table. Who takes a cough drop before having a coffee?
‘Does it suck?’ he asks.
‘It’s not awful. Just cleaning with people watching. Like being a zookeeper, really. Vacuuming the ERSLEV while cu
stomers pet the TYLÖSAND.’
‘Hmm,’ Adrian says. Jules has never heard anyone actually pronounce the word Hmm as if it were a legitimate word. Jules’s gaze slides.
She says, ‘The only problem, I guess, is when customers get annoyed at having to follow the maze. They have trouble finding things again, or they ask me why the place is designed that way. Me, a drone.’
‘Customers always say that sort of shit. It’s like they know what the deal is. If they want a store to be like some other shop they like, then they should just shop at that shop.’
‘Right,’ Jules says before she can sort out what was going on in that sentence. ‘Right.’
Does it want.
Does it want.
‘Thing is, though,’ Jules says, ‘most customers are actually okay. Like, really obedient. Sometimes, you can actually get away with being visibly annoyed at them for not knowing the rules. Like if they use a step ladder that they’re not supposed to. Or if they don’t have their barcodes facing up at the checkout. I’ve seen other workers make customers feel really bad just by pausing a little bit too long before answering a question. Some customers are like that, you know. They really hate not getting it right.’
‘Flat white?’ A glossy waitress slips Jules a cup on a saucer. The coffee wobbles with a modest lid of froth. ‘And yours, sir.’ Now sliding Adrian’s unexpectedly small order across the table, served in what seems to Jules like the mean successor to her own cup and saucer, some future model, a nanocup. The waitress whisks away the number twelve.
‘Ampersand,’ Adrian says.
‘Pardon?’
‘I’m an Ampersand drone. It’s this hipster gift store that sells unisex clothes and miscellaneous quirky shit. Terrariums. Scratch ’n’ sniff letter-writing paper. Tiny little blackboards attached to tiny little pegs. Perfect, huh. You sell storage solutions, I sell the storage fodder.’ He gives his mysterious coffee a stir. ‘Two different kinds of vacuous.’
‘Right.’ Jules sips her flat white.
‘IKEA’s reached that kind of stage though, hasn’t it?’
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