Things to Make and Break

by May-Lan Tan

  FADE IN:

  A series of shots, each showing a different angle on a car that appears to be out of control. Most are night shots.

  ALEXA (V.O. CONT.)

  You’ve probably seen her: a balaclava, a pair of black gloves gripping the wheel. You may have glimpsed the whites of her eyes gleaming behind the darkened glass of a haunted Ferrari in Demon Highway, a scheming Bentley in the art house classic Legroom. But mostly all you’ve seen is reflected streetlight, squirming across the windshield.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  MIAMI, PRESENT DAY

  EXT. BIKER BAR. SUNSET.

  We’ve arrived in Miami a month behind schedule and four million over budget. Criminal People has been in production for almost a year, and we have twenty days to shoot all the remaining exteriors and some of the mansion interiors. Tonight we’re meant to be filming in the parking lot outside this bar. The shot takes place in L.A., before my character comes to Miami, but back in L.A. they couldn’t find a bar that looked L.A. enough. Theo Blatt, the director, wants to use the real biker crowd that hangs out here as background, but most of them are away at a convention, so the shoot’s been postponed. I duck into the trailer, where two girls help me out of the wedding dress. One of them hands me a mirror and some face wipes. I clean off the makeup, put on my clothes, and head back outside. It’s a warm spring evening and people are milling around, getting ready to head back to Miami Beach. Others drift into the bar.

  INT. BIKER BAR. NIGHT.

  Speed metal chugs from the speakers. I’m standing by the jukebox with Theo, who’s always nervous in bars because he’s a recovering alcoholic. He clenches his jaw and slams Virgin Marys the whole time. A tall, sexy woman strolls past, all messy dark-blond hair and tanned legs with a stripe of mirror sheen slicked down each shinbone. She moves with the casual stealth of the extremely fit, swathed in soft, black clothes. She’s probably crew. Theo turns to see what I’m gawking at.

  THEO

  (shouting over the music)

  That’s DC. She’s one of the drivers, and she’ll be taking over from Amy.

  Amy’s my stunt double for this picture. She couldn’t come on location because we fell behind and she had another job booked. Theo feeds a dollar into the jukebox and starts flicking through the playlists. The scotch burns my throat. I want a cigarette, but I don’t feel like having to talk to anyone.

  DC comes back this way, eating ice cubes from a glass. Her fingers shine like sunlit metal. She has close-set silver eyes and colorless chapped lips. Her eyebrows are darker than her hair, and a touch too heavy for her face. She says hi to Theo, bumping him with her hip, and they start going over some technical stuff. Her gestures are clean and deliberate. I try to think of something clever to say, but I’m thrown by her not wanting to look at me all the time, the way most people do.

  DC

  People have always told me I look like you.

  It’s true we share more than a passing resemblance. More than is necessary. I guess she’s eight, ten years younger. Women are rarely taller, but she has at least two inches on me, and her body is tighter, with smaller breasts set higher up and closer together. I can’t decide whether I want to fuck her or kill her. Maybe funhouse mirrors would be scarier if, instead of making you look bad, they made you look better. She rattles the ice in her glass and scans the room over my shoulder. I freeze, trying to think of my line.

  LATER

  I glimpse her through the crush of people on the dance floor.

  She’s the only one really dancing to a song that’s heavy on the drums and heroin. I move to where I can see her better.

  SLOW

  Her hair’s in her eyes and she moves in a way that’s private and beautiful, like teenage bedroom practice. I can’t tell if she’s lost in the music by herself or if it’s a performance. I suspect it’s both, and I begin to curl and blacken at the edges. She’s a natural. No breathing exercises, no two Klonopin, no half a cigarette to switch it on. She’s the real thing. The speakers are throbbing behind me. I feel the bass pumping out in puffs of air against my back.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  EXT. BEACH CONDO. THREE DAYS LATER.

  I walk out of the building and down the empty sidewalk, carrying a bouquet of roses and reading the card. The street’s been cordoned off and there are bright lights shining. I glance up as a car drives past with a surfboard tied to the rack. I keep reading and walking. Another car approaches, driving much faster. As it veers onto the sidewalk, I resist the urge to jump out of the way. It brakes a handspan short of me.

  THEO

  Cut. OK guys, let’s refresh the set and run it again.

  Makeup comes running over. She powders my nose and sprays it with fixative. The equipment rolls past as I walk back up the street, and I see the surfboard car and the hit car driving by in the opposite direction. When I go inside the building, someone hands me another bouquet. We filmed the shot inside the lobby, when the doorman hands me the flowers, several months ago on a soundstage, and the apartment upstairs is actually a house in Orange County. We run through the scene again, with the cameras behind me this time.

  Berry, the AD, wraps the shot. I find Makeup with her chair and toolbox beneath a store awning. I sit down and she starts to create a patch of road rash on my deltoid. A woman kneels on the road in front of me with a pile of loose roses, ripping off petals and stuffing them inside the tissue of a wrapped bouquet. I watch the stunt coordinator, Animal, cutting off the wing mirror on the driver’s side with a mechanical saw and reattaching it with putty. The crew is installing a windshield you can tell is made from candy glass by the way it’s a little wavy.

  The film we’re making is the cinematic equivalent of two-in-one shampoo and conditioner: half romcom, half action thriller. I play an FBI agent from L.A. who goes undercover in Miami to date a member of a Greco-Cuban Mafia syndicate. My character’s undercover as a bimbo and goes around practically bare-assed all the time, so DC can’t pad up for the stunt. She stands on the sidewalk, clutching the roses and managing to look expensive in the tube dress, four-inch heels, and bicep bangle. She’s wearing a glassy blond wig that’s meant to look like my hair, and her eyes have been made up to appear wider set. On the monitor by Theo’s head, I can see a tight angle on the car. Animal climbs in and backs it out of the frame. He keeps the motor running.

  BERRY

  Picture’s up. Quiet, please.

  (beat)

  Roll sound.

  PRODUCTION SOUND MIXER

  (turns on audio)

  Sound speed.

  BERRY

  Roll camera.

  CAMERA OPERATOR

  Speed!

  CLAPPER

  Marker.

  (slams clapperboard)

  THEO

  Action!

  Animal revs the engine and swerves the car onto the sidewalk. DC tosses the bouquet and dives onto the hood. When the car brakes, she bodyslams the windshield and it cracks. She does a back spring onto the roof of the car and falls down the side, knocking off the wing mirror and rolling toward the edge of the road. It seemed to happen too fast. Berry calls it, and DC stays down as they photograph and chalk her position.

  She gets up looking like she’s been rode hard and put away wet. Her lipstick’s smeared and there’s blood running down her arm. She walks over to the first-aid station. A runner picks up the flowers and the camera crew starts to set up a shot from inside the car as the windshield is being replaced. The medic cleans the wound and sprays it with something. DC giggles and squirms.

  POV (DRIVER)

  Animal starts the car and puts his hands on the wheel, but keeps his foot on the brake. DC runs toward it like a gymnast approaching a vault. She flings the bouquet and flips onto the hood. She rolls toward the camera and smashes into the screen, flying up and out of the shot. The camera refocuses on the red petals in the foreground, scattered across the glass.

  EXT. STREET. DAY.

  I walk over to her, my heels wobblin
g on the uneven road surface. She’s taken hers off, and is stretching her muscles.

  ALEXA

  That was amazing.

  DC

  It’s a pretty basic gag. So long as you hit the car before it hits you, you can control everything that happens after that.

  ALEXA

  I’ll be sure to give it a whirl sometime.

  DC

  (with a smile that says she doesn’t think so)

  Hey, you might just have it in you.

  She does deep lunges, huffing out bursts of air. I notice she’s one of those people who look less pretty with makeup, not that anyone looks good in film makeup. Her type of beauty is a kind of incandescence, and the heavy base seems to block it. I wonder if she would go out with me. We’re putting in fourteen-hour days here, but maybe I could take her number and call her when we’re back in L.A. There are pieces of gravel stuck to her knees, and the cut on her arm has started to bleed through the concealer. I like her throwing my punches and taking my falls, as if she’s protecting me.

  ALEXA

  Have you ever hurt yourself really badly?

  DC

  I broke six teeth. See?

  (she grins and runs her fingers across them)

  These are all caps. It happened on a really easy fall. I landed wrong, and my knee went in my mouth.

  ALEXA

  Ouch.

  BERRY

  DC, you’re wrapped.

  DC

  (breezily)

  Guess I’ll be seeing you.

  ALEXA

  Um, yah.

  DC picks up her shoes and walks away.

  BERRY

  Alexa to the set, please.

  I cross the street and lie down on the chalk marks.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  INT. GYM. DAWN.

  DC does chest presses on a weight machine, a pale sunrise visible in the window, streetlights still burning. She does fly lifts with dumbbells. She tapes her hands, and punches a bag. She doesn’t pummel it, but smacks the sides, as if it’s a person. She does a run-up and a crazy backflip onto a foam pad, landing flat on her back. She does it again and again, with a different twist each time. She does push-ups on the tips of her toes with her arms stretched above her head.

  INT. HOTEL ROOM. DAWN.

  I’m in the shower with sudsy hair, brushing my teeth and shaving a leg at the same time. I take some meds and cup my hand under the faucet for a gulp of water to wash them down. My fingers wipe steam off a mirror to reveal my face reflected. I zip my jeans with a lit cigarette between my fingers.

  EXT. NARROW ALLEY. MORNING.

  DC drives a Peugeot 307 onto a half-pipe so that it flips onto its side, barely fitting in the space between two walls. She drives along the wall as if the car is skidding, and emerges on the other side. The camera crew comes around to film a close-up of one of the wheels spinning.

  INT. KITCHEN. MORNING.

  Mateo and I are on the kitchen island surrounded by people and lights, pretending to fuck. It’s nine o’clock in the morning and my feet are hooked around his neck. After this, they’ll close the set to do my nude shots. I haven’t eaten a carb in seven weeks. Doing my own close-ups is kind of my thing, but I’m not sure how much longer before they’ll start trying to talk me into using a body double.

  EXT. SIX-LANE FREEWAY. AFTERNOON.

  DC slips an earpiece into her ear and uses duct tape to secure it. She puts in her bite guard and slips on a helmet, pulls down the shatterproof visor. She slides into a yellow Leblanc Caroline that’s been fitted with a roll cage. The hatch doors are pushed down, a word transmitted to her earpiece, and she steers the car onto the road. She weaves through stunt traffic, pursued by a silver Bugatti. On cue, she drives in a straight line and braces her body for impact. An eighteen-wheeler rear-ends the silver car, shotgunning it into the back of DC’s car. She drifts the yellow car across four lanes, the tires smoking, and twirls to a stop.

  INT. SCREENING ROOM. NIGHT.

  Two speedboats race side by side on the screen, bumping against each other. A car zigzags down a wide concrete staircase teeming with pedestrians. Each time the car lunges toward a new section of the crowd, the people scatter. I smile. I scan the room, looking for her. She appears onscreen, waterskiing. She dives from a rooftop into a swimming pool. She tumbles down a flight of stairs, and she does it again, ejecting a pink-puffed mule at the same point in the somersault, keeping her face hidden.

  INT. HOTEL LOBBY. NIGHT.

  I walk through the sliding doors, a studded night sky visible behind me. I linger by the concierge desk, touching the brochures. I step onto the elevator and hold the doors open for a while.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  INT. STAR ISLAND MANSION – LOUNGE. NIGHT.

  The house is almost entirely made of glass, but it’s brighter inside than out, so you can’t see the view. I’m standing next to an outsize fishbowl that glows like a blue lantern. Bassy dance music masks the hum of low-grade anxiety, and everyone’s talking at the same time, even people who are talking to each other. I can’t stand these industry fuckfests, but I’m hoping I’ll run into her. The stunt crew’s been filming at a second location all week.

  I look at the swirling confetti of tropical fish, seeing my reflection in the curve of the bowl. I applied my makeup in the speedboat and my forehead’s broken out from filming in the sun every day. I’m wearing shorts because nobody told me it was black tie. People are still appearing. They arrive in pairs, as if this is Noah’s Ark. It’s a predominantly civilian crowd, but this is Miami, where half the population are models, and the other half are extremely good-looking. I go outside to try and bum a smoke off someone.

  EXT. DECK. NIGHT.

  Pop music bubbles from the speaker stacks and people flock to the standing torches like bees to honeycomb. It’s a hot, sticky night so it isn’t warmth they crave, but light. Exposure. The swimming pool is smooth as glass. DC’s standing at the edge in a beaded green dress, frowning at the tiny candles balanced on the water. She has a bedhead, and her legs and feet are bare. I walk over to her.

  DC

  If it isn’t my acting double.

  We air kiss. In her bare feet, she’s the same height as me in my heels. She appears delicate in the refracted pool light. The normal yellow rubber band around her wrist looks like jewelry.

  ALEXA

  How are you enjoying Miami?

  DC

  Yeah. It’s great.

  ALEXA

  You miss L.A. at all? Or someone back in L.A.?

  DC

  I don’t miss anything, ever.

  ALEXA

  Seems like a useful skill to have.

  DC

  Could be. I could probably time travel.

  ALEXA

  Where would you go?

  DC

  (smiles)

  The future. That’s the place for me.

  I smile back. A waiter comes over and dips a tray of mimosas at us.

  DC

  Do you think I could get a Coke?

  ALEXA

  Scotch. Thanks.

  WAITER

  Ice?

  I shake my head. DC sits on the edge of the pool and dangles her feet in the water. I take off my shoes and do the same. The water’s warm on top and cool underneath. Its taut surface ripples around our ankles and near the filter valve.

  DC

  Um, so, have you always lived in L.A.?

  ALEXA

  Yeah. You?

  DC

  I grew up in the Valley.

  (beat)

  How did you get into acting?

  ALEXA

  I was working after school as a waitress when a casting director invited me to audition for a Yoplait commercial.

  DC

  Yoplait, huh?

  She looks at the sky and paddles her feet. The water splashes.

  ALEXA

  My parents wouldn’t let me go. They thought he was just some creepy guy. They’re the type of im
migrants who are scared of everything.

  DC

  Oh? Where are they from?

  ALEXA

  East Germany. The old East Germany. When it was a socialist state.

  DC

  Wasn’t it really hard to get out in those days?

  ALEXA

  They were kicked out. My father’s a journalist. He was openly critical of the regime, but they couldn’t deal with him in the usual ways because he was a correspondent for the American press. My parents’ citizenships were revoked and they were given a day to leave the country. They didn’t return for sixteen years. When the Wall came down, we didn’t have the money to travel there right away.

  The waiter appears with our drinks. DC takes the bottle of cola and leaves the glass on the tray. There’s ice in my drink. I wait for him to leave before I fish it out and throw it in the pool.

  ALEXA

  You know in our movie, when the Mafia guys want to kill someone, they say they’re going to erase their map? Whenever I hear that I think of my parents. I didn’t even know we were German. I guess they were paranoid because the Cold War was still on. I could tell we were different, and grown-ups always asked me questions I didn’t know how to answer. My father finally told me when I was ten. He said not to tell people they had lived in a Soviet state. I thought my parents were spies. Anyways. What’s your family like?

  DC

  We’re a stunt family. My great-grandfather was an ex-convict who got paid by a studio to jump off a house into a wagon full of hay, and managed to hustle it into a regular gig. He ended up buying a ranch and turning it into a stunt school, which my uncle and aunt run now. You know Animal’s my dad, right? You’ve probably worked with my cousins, too.