by May-Lan Tan
DC
That’s great.
ALEXA
(shyly)
Yeah, so. You back at work yet?
DC
I’m not going back.
ALEXA
(beat)
Are you serious?
DC
The surgery didn’t take. I can’t see out of this eye at all anymore.
(touches her cheek)
ALEXA
Fuck. I had no idea it was so bad.
DC
Me neither. At least, I figured on being lucky.
ALEXA
But why do you have to give up stunts? You can still see fine, right?
DC
I have no depth perception. Everything just looks flat. Doing stunts is about matching time against space. I can’t do that anymore. I was fully insured, so.
(sips water)
I’m thinking about getting out.
ALEXA
You mean, leaving L.A.?
DC
I don’t want to be here. I miss doing stunts, and all anyone ever talks about in this town is movies. And I mean, I’ve always fantasized about cutting ties and starting fresh, just as me. Where nobody knows me or my family or the body I used to drag around that had nothing to do with me. I just never imagined it would be possible because of work, you know, and my family’s industry connections.
Our food arrives. DC tucks her napkin into the neckline of her dress and starts dismantling her steak. I drizzle half the dressing over my salad.
ALEXA
Maybe we don’t have to call it off. Once you get settled, I’ll come over, and we’ll see where we are.
DC
Hmm, and then we fall in love and the media blows up my new life. Perfect.
We chew our food, the restaurant noise and color swirling around us. Every time our eyes meet, she looks like she’s about to say something but flattens her mouth into a line instead.
ALEXA
Are you done?
(gestures to waiter for bill)
DC
Hey, so do you need to take off, or? Want to come over?
ALEXA
I—that sounds nice.
DC
Did you drive?
ALEXA
I have the bike.
DC
Perfect. We’ll strap it to the ski rack.
INT. CAR. NIGHT.
REAR PROJECTION (STREETS OF L.A.)
The sky is the spooky bright color of blue screen. DC pilots the car with jaunty precision. The motion of the car feels unusually smooth, and at the same time I can feel each squeak and nudge, every nuance in the contact between rubber and road. I watch the blocks of light and shadow intercutting on her face.
ALEXA
I wish I hadn’t met you until after. On the other side. But then, I don’t know where we would’ve met. Maybe in a store or something.
DC
(smiles)
Yeah, maybe.
She signals before switching lanes.
INT. LIVING ROOM. NIGHT.
DC flicks on a light and disappears into the kitchen. The apartment smells like a clean t-shirt. It has a glossy wood floor and an unusually high ratio of lamps to furniture. I hear the suck of the fridge door, and beer tops popping. She comes out and hands me one.
INT. BEDROOM. NIGHT.
She shuts the door. We sit on the edge of the bed, sipping our beers. The sheets gleam in the light from the building opposite. She takes the bottle from my hand and sets it on the floor and pulls me down on the bed. We make out, taking off each other’s clothes.
ALEXA
I’m too sad to be a decent lay right now. I don’t want our last time to be depresso sex.
DC sighs and flops onto her back. I get under the sheet. We’re quiet for a while.
POV (CEILING)
ALEXA
Where will you go?
DC
Maybe Vermont. Or Maine.
ALEXA
Oh. What will you do there?
DC
I might go to college.
ALEXA
How will you explain why people can’t meet your family or any of your old friends?
DC
I need a new story, but I haven’t been able to think of anything boring enough. The goal is to make people fall asleep the minute I start talking about my life.
ALEXA
You could say you’re divorced, and all your friends sided with your ex.
DC
Mm, yah. That way I’ll get a grace period before people start trying to set me up. I don’t want to get involved with anyone until I’ve existed for a while. I should accumulate at least a year of history first. How about my parents? I don’t want to say they’re dead, it seems kind of—
ALEXA
They live in another country and they don’t like to fly. You always go out there to visit them.
DC
You’re really good at this.
ALEXA
But how are you going to meet women if you live in such a conservative place?
DC
I’m not.
ALEXA
I don’t get it.
DC
I’ll stick a flag in my lawn and go to church every Sunday, and marry a man. I’ll be part of the superstructure.
ALEXA
Wow, OK. And if you’re not happy, or you don’t like it, you’ll come back?
DC
I can’t think like that. Anyway, I don’t know what I’ll have left to come back for. It’s like you’re saying to people, I’m perfectly fine with never seeing you again. And I feel bad, I mean.
She gets under the sheet and lets me hold her. I stroke her back. It’s warm and silky.
ALEXA
Will you love him?
DC
Who? Oh. I want to be in it for the long haul, and I think things last longer if you just really like the person. I don’t know how useful love is, in the long run.
(yawns)
ALEXA
(softly)
I hope you make it, DC. I hope when you get there, it’s great, and you’re happy. I do.
DC EVAPORATES IN MATCH CUT TO:
POTSDAM, SIX MONTHS LATER
INT. HOTEL ROOM. NIGHT.
Snow falls outside my window. I’m watching rolling news with the sound down, mesmerized by the ticker-tape trawling across the bottom of the screen. I’m here for five months shooting on a sound stage at Studio Babelsberg for Tell Them, a left-field production based on the kidnapping of Patty Hearst and the choreography of Pina Bausch. The dance numbers are set not to music but to Patty’s stoned, sibilant drawl on the audiotapes, her lockjawed accent virtually dripping money.
We’re shooting against green screen, to be chroma keyed with a grainy, washed-out San Francisco. Another team is out there now, filming backgrounds with a Fisher-Price Pixelvision. I’ve seen footage, and it’s breathtaking. I’m glad I decided to work with Sommer. She’s really going for something. I play Mrs. Catherine Hearst in bouffant hairdo and twin pearls. I’m working for next to nothing, which in itself is kind of liberating, and I’m getting free German lessons and dance training. And I have my own reasons for being here.
My cell phone rings. I sit up and find it on the nightstand. There’s something weird with my service provider and us numbers aren’t showing up, even if they’re on my contact list. It’s just after dinnertime in California, so it’s probably my mother. If I answer this late, she’ll want to know why I’m not asleep. I let it go to voicemail.
My Aunt Elfi and Uncle Walter live an hour away, in Leipzig. We came to stay with them the summer I was fifteen, two years after the Wall came down. I had never heard my parents speak German before. My cool-eyed cousins Franka and Lena, with their drab, shiny faces, and modelesque bodies girded in acid-washed denim, intimidated the shit out of me. I spent the whole vacation hunched in front of the TV, demolishing mountains of strange, heavy food. I’ve avoided coming here ever since,
and have snubbed the Berlinale so many times my agent says I’m probably blacklisted.
Franka lives here in Potsdam and teaches at the film school, so we get together for drinks some nights. On weekends we drive to Leipzig to see Elfi and Walter, and sometimes Lena comes up from Berlin with her boyfriend and their three beautiful brats. Aunt Elfi is my dad’s sister and was best friends with my mom, which is how my parents got together, another story they never told me. I’ve been finding out all kinds of things. My grandfather died in Sachsenhausen after the war, when it was a Soviet-run Silence camp. And my father had been a Young Pioneer who pledged allegiance to Stalin and chased Colorado beetles.
My mother grew up in Leipzig, too, but she’s an only child and her mom and grandparents died before she ever made it back. Elfi said my mother’s stepdad left when the border was opened. He didn’t say where he was headed, and he probably didn’t know. My phone’s flashing. I decide to call my voicemail.
AUTOMATED VOICE-OVER
To listen to your messages, press 1. To manage your greetings—
I press 1.
You have one new message. First new message. Received today at four-twelve.
DC (V.O.)
Alexa. It’s me.
(pause)
I don’t know why I’m calling, I just. Hi.
ALEXA
(softly)
Hi.
DC
Last night I dreamed I was doing a gag—I jumped through a window, and the glass wasn’t candy glass and I felt it. I can even eat something in a dream and be able to taste it. I shouldn’t be doing this.
ALEXA
I won’t tell.
DC
I think about you sometimes.
ALEXA
Where are you?
AUTOMATED (V.O.)
End of messages. To listen to this message again, press 2. To save this message, press 3. To delete—
I press 2.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. GRAUMAN’S CHINESE THEATRE. FALL. NIGHT.
Camera bulbs are popping behind the hazy glare of the Cinelights. I smile with Vaselined teeth and stare into the glitter storm, turning my head and focusing beyond the pulses of light to keep from blinking. It’s drizzling. I realize I’m shivering. The flash guns make a clipping sound, like garden shears.
PHOTOGRAPHERS
Alexa!Alexa! Over here!
Alexa, right here, please!
To your left, please, to your left!
And straight ahead please!
One more over here!
Hey, beautiful!
Good girl!Looking this way!
One more time!
The theater’s pagoda-style centerpiece towers behind me, a bas-relief dragon twisted on its face, Ming dogs guarding its red columns. The film’s title is spelled across the courtyard in letters chiseled from blocks of ice, and I’m standing in front of the A, grinning and trying to relax my neck muscles, and worrying that the lamé dress looks too stripper. My cheek starts twitching. I can’t feel the shape of my smile, and I’m concerned it may have turned into a snarl. I try to think friendly thoughts as I put my hands on my waist and change my leg position. I tilt my head forward so the rain will catch in my hair instead of wrecking my makeup. At this angle, twinkly eyes can look a bit menacing, so I narrow them slightly and make my gaze softer as I continue to sweep it back and forth.
I switch up the eyebrows, so it’s more like, hey, isn’t this great? I do the helpless modesty laugh, pushing my shoulders forward and collapsing inward slightly. A seven-foot bouncer steps into my field of vision and makes a hand signal. I wave to the photographers and move toward the crush of fans spilling over the metal barricade.
People call my name. I touch their outstretched palms. This is my favorite part. I like the honesty of hands. I take people’s phones and snap photos of myself with them, leaning back so it looks like we’re standing beside each other, but not so much that I get a double chin. I autograph an arm, an antiquated issue of DIVA, and several copies of a stoner flick in which I played a total space cadet fifteen years ago. I speak to someone’s sister in Tennessee and pose for a few more pictures before blowing kisses and walking into the publicity swarm.
REPORTER
(holds up the mic and speaks in a commanding, musical tone)
I’m Palomino Tang and F-word is in Los Angeles tonight! We’re on Hollywood Boulevard at the world premiere of this season’s hottest ticket: Criminal People, starring Alexa Ritter and Mateo Marino. I’m here with the star of the film for an F-word exclusive. Hi, Alexa!
ALEXA
Hello!
REPORTER
Now the first thing F-word viewers will want to know is, who are you wearing?
ALEXA
1920s Dior.
REPORTER
And how about this scrumptious choker, what is it made of? It looks like soap bubbles, and rubies.
ALEXA
It’s a custom piece by an up-and-coming local designer called Justine O. She blows these glass bubbles by mouth and fills each one with her own tears or blood.
REPORTER
How fun! Now, your character in the film is keeping a deadly secret, and I’m hoping you’ll let F-word viewers in on your secrets. Do you have any secret, guilty pleasures?
ALEXA
Um—I eat whipped cream out of the can sometimes?
REPORTER
Fabulous. Excellent. Anything else our viewers will want to know about?
ALEXA
I’m starring in Thanksgiving with Levi Geffen and Bambi Sawyer. It opens the day after Thanksgiving.
REPORTER
Wonderful. Marvelous. Thanks so much for talking to us.
ALEXA
Oh. Thanks, F-word.
INT. THEATRE. NIGHT.
The house lights have gone down but one of the spots at the front is still on, projecting a moon onto the gold trees stitched on the red silk curtain covering the screen. People clap and whistle as Theo enters the spotlight, holding a huge wireless mic and a tiny, acid-pink Post-it. My mouth feels dry and I wish I had a piece of gum or something, but I didn’t bring a purse because I always end up losing it at these things. Mateo and his boyfriend are sitting to my left, and one of the executive producers, whose name always eludes me, is to my right. I’ll look out for it in the credits so I can speak to her afterwards.
THEO
Criminal People has been almost three years in the pipeline, and I want to extend my deepest thanks to everyone involved. Berry, Jonno, Miles, Mateo, Alexa, Animal, Greg, and—I’ve loved every minute working with you guys.
(shrugs)
Enjoy the film.
The spot goes out. Everyone claps again, and the curtains sashay apart. The logo intro runs, letters bashing into one another to make other letters appear, and the screen goes black and music starts to play. The studio name appears, then Theo’s name. We see a finger writing the film’s title on fogged glass. After a few seconds, the letters steam over. The opening credits are superimposed over a continuous shot of a car driving along the Malibu coastline, its windows flashing in the sun.
ALEXA (V.O.)
I think that’s her. I recognize the way she handles the car, like a body, with the right amount of recklessness and greed. Last summer, I tracked down all the movies she’s been in and watched them on a loop. I played and replayed those balletic car spins, her countless hard falls and near misses, freezing the picture and trying to catch a glimpse of her face. I looked for her everywhere, in all the movies, even the new ones. I guess I still believed she was out there in some celluloid galaxy, crashing cars and jumping through windows. But when I heard her voice on the machine, I understood. She’s somewhere else now.
I picture her living in a two-story duplex, sugar maples growing in a shared front yard heaped in gold light and red leaves. In her town, people leave their doors unlocked, and children walk to school. I never asked her what her major would be. She’ll be dating by now. I imagine a sl
ightly overweight divorcé with soft, fat fingers and pretty eyes, who teaches science at the high school. He has a young son and daughter who come to stay with him every other weekend, and he doesn’t want to have any more children. He washes his car every Sunday, and his favorite expression is What the hey.
This weekend the kids will be at his ex’s. DC and the science teacher will drive in his four-by-four to the nearest big town and spend the morning at Sears, picking out a tent. They’re planning to go camping in the Poconos. Later they’ll park outside the deli on Fourth and split a meatball sub. They’ll sit at the counter by the window, reading the marquee of the two-screen theater opposite. She’ll say, Oh, and he’ll say, I wouldn’t mind seeing that. Look, it’s on in less than half an hour. They’ll cross the street and buy tickets and popcorn and soda.
At first they’ll be the only ones sitting inside the theater, playing along to the movie quiz on the screen. She’ll turn to him and say, I should have brought a sweater, and he’ll say, I might have something in the trunk, it’s kind of like a poncho, and she’ll say, No, don’t worry. He’ll put his soda in the cup holder and rub her arms. She’ll hold his buttery hand in her lap, clutching it tighter during the car chases.
When the film ends, he’ll stand up the second the credits start rolling, and she’ll remain seated. He’ll glance at the other people leaving, and then he’ll push his seat back down and sit on the very end of it. He’ll watch her reading intently about who the dolly grip was, and things like that, and he’ll decide he likes this about her, the way she gives things her full attention and doesn’t like to rush. He’ll start to feel that the other people are being greedy and disrespectful. When the house lights come on, she’ll blink her eyes and smile at him in a dazed way. He’ll hold her hand all the way to the car, and they’ll talk about the movie on the drive home.