by J. J. Murray
Katharina smiled and nodded. “Yeah? You put a camera in that tree? Wow. What will they think of next. Very cool. Another good idea, Sly.” She blinked a few times. “I want to see this morning’s footage, Sly.”
Vincenzo stared into her headset. “You … want to see the footage.”
“Yes,” Katharina said with a tinge of attitude. “Yes. I would like to see the footage of what I did this morning. What you got from that tree camera and what you got from my headset. And I’d like to see it now.”
Fish’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “Why didn’t you wake me up earlier, Walt?”
“I didn’t think this would happen.” He looked at Vincenzo’s lips mouthing “Hurry!”
Fish hit a couple wrong keys and had to start over. “We can’t do that right away, Vincenzo! The camera on that tree gets sent here. The servers automatically save it, but that takes time. Only after that can I broadcast it to the monitor, but it’s completely raw. The headset works the same way, and I have to edit it to the right spot. We’ll see her from the second she puts it on, her walk to the clearing … She’ll know something is up. Shit.”
Walt was on the verge of hyperventilating. “Vincenzo said he uses the walkie-talkie for the weather report. What was he thinking?”
Fish stilled his fingers. “Okay. We can do this. All we have to do is …” He breathed heavily. “Um … No, we can’t. All the footage is here, but it will take some time to sort it all out, save it, cut it to what she wants to see, and then send it.”
“How long?” Walt asked.
“Damn, at least thirty minutes. I’m good, but I’m not a magician. If we can’t stall her for thirty minutes, she’ll just have to do the entire scene over in front of Vincenzo’s camera.”
“But we don’t have any way to tell him all that.”
Fish tapped the transmitter. “Give him a weather report.”
“What?”
“You’re the writer. Give the man his weather report.”
Walt pressed the squawk button, took a deep breath, and said, “This is a weather report from the Canadian National Weather Service for northeastern Ontario …”
Walt? “Ah, another weather report.” He held the walkie-talkie in the air.
“A storm front has stalled over northeastern Ontario. We will update again in thirty minutes. A storm front has stalled over northeastern Ontario. We will update again in thirty minutes …”
Katharina frowned. “What a creepy computer voice.”
“Yeah.” Stall Katharina Minola for thirty minutes? Is he insane? That won’t work! He switched to another channel on the walkie-talkie. “I will see if I can get another channel for weather.” He pressed the squawk button.
“I guess one squawk and the way his head is shaking means no,” Fish said. “Say something else!”
Walt’s eyes darted around the house. “Um, the recent snowstorms have knocked out transmissions to the reporting stations in Fishersville. The monitor at … Cabina une, Quebec, is also out of commission. To repeat an earlier report, a storm front has stalled over northeastern Ontario. We will update again in twenty-nine minutes. A storm front has stalled over northeastern Ontario. We will update in twenty-nine minutes. More later as this news develops …”
“Wow,” Katharina said, trying not to laugh, “that sounds like a pretty big storm. Where are Fishersville and Cabina une?”
Vincenzo wanted to have a second take on his entire day so far. “Not too far from here, actually, um, over in Quebec. Seems like a storm is brewing.” Twenty-nine minutes? They have to be high. “Is a beautiful day, yes?”
“Yes,” Katharina said firmly, “and I’d like to capture more of this beauty, but I can’t until I see that footage. Why don’t you go get your monitor?”
“He can’t get that monitor yet!” Fish cried. He worked feverishly to move Katharina’s headset footage to his computer so he could begin the edit. “No! I need at least twenty-seven more minutes!” Fish looked at the first footage and swallowed.
“Give him the raw feed,” Walt suggested, “and he can fast-forward or something.”
“She put the damn thing on before she went to the bathroom.” He fast-forwarded. “Geez. She was in there at least ten minutes. I can’t send this until I edit it.”
Vincenzo nodded to Katharina. “I am going to my cabin to get my camera and my monitor.”
Hes so wooden! Katharina thought. “I can’t wait to see this scene from both points of view.”
Neither can I. “Um, why don’t you, um, rehearse what you plan on doing for the rest of the scene.”
Katharina smiled and faced the large tree to her left. “Time for some target practice.” She pointed where she knew the camera was. “Is that thing rolling? I might do pretty well the first time and nail it.”
Vincenzo had trouble breathing. “I will hurry.”
Vincenzo hyperventilated as he collected his camera gear while Bianca ate some cereal at the table, a black and red flannel shirt her only clothing.
“Let me guess,” Bianca said. “Katha-diva came down early.”
“Yeah,” Vincenzo said, “and she found a hatchet, which I know Pietro planted, and then she did a dazzling scene, which we have over at Pietro’s house but don’t have”—he tapped the camera—”in here. And now she wants to see the scene from her headset and the tree camera on this monitor.”
Bianca looked at the monitor in his hands. “You weren’t there to get any of it, and Fish can’t send it for some reason.”
“He can send it, but not for twenty-five minutes or so. I’m sure he has to edit it first. I can’t stall her that long.”
“Lock yourself in the bathroom,” Bianca suggested. “Tell her you had diarrhea.”
Vincenzo relaxed. “She wouldn’t believe that.”
“She believed me.” She tipped the bowl to her lips and drank the milk. “Drop it, then.”
“Drop what?”
“The monitor.” She dropped her bowl. It bounced and flipped off the table. “Oops? So sorry, it broke, my mistake, I will get another.”
That has possibilities, but … “That would work, but this is a twenty-five-grand monitor, Bianca.”
Bianca shrugged. “Take it out of her pay …” She frowned. “Wait a minute. You said Pietro put the hatchet in the scene. Why would he do that?”
“To mock Katharina. To speed things up. I don’t know. He either wants to torture Katharina some more or just get this picture over and done with so he can go back to his lonely and barren existence. Remember, Bianca, with you quitting, Pietro has to deal with her the most now, and I’m sure he’s not very happy about it. She did say she hadn’t seen him today, and I bet he’s up in the woods having a good laugh at my expense.”
Bianca picked up her bowl and put it in the sink, running water into it. “I don’t know, talk her out of the whole idea. Tell her there shouldn’t be anyone else in the woods. Tell her we can’t call it A Woman Alone if we include this scene. Tell her the audience will see through it. No, tell her it will be Miss Thang all over again. Scare her out of it.”
And now Bianca is high. “Scare Katharina Minola?”
Bianca yawned. “Well, do something. Take her for a walk, get lost in the woods, barf near a tree.”
Vincenzo sighed. “But the scene was brilliant, Bianca. You had to be there. She was … She is dazzling now. And the idea of another person in the woods is compelling, even mysterious. The audience will be saying, ‘Uh-oh, there goes the neighborhood.’”
Bianca dove onto the couch. “But it is contrived and forced, Vincenzo. Audiences aren’t dumb. Like someone is just going to give a weapon to a runaway slave. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know it doesn’t, and that’s what’s so compelling. Who would do that? Who is it? And what does this person want? Why would this person leave it there and not use it on her? How long has this person been watching?” Whoa. Maybe … “Is it a man, and is he … ?” Can’t be. Pietro hates her with a
passion.
“Is he what?” Bianca asked.
“I was going to say, ‘Is he in love with her?’”
Bianca laughed. “Right. And this hatchet is his way of showing his love for her. That’s pretty twisted.”
Yeah. That is a strange love gift. Didn’t van Gogh once give an ear? Hmm.
“And who is he going to be? Pietro?”
Vincenzo shuddered. “Pietro? It can’t be Pietro. They hate each other.” He grabbed his gear.
“Then who? You?”
Vincenzo backed toward the door. “Not me, no. I don’t know, Bianca. Maybe … Fish? No. That’s extremely creepy. Walt? He’s a bit old, but he’s always had a thing for her. Maybe he’s loving her from afar. Maybe this is all Walt’s doing! Walt told Pietro to plant the hatchet so Walt could get in the movie. Every writer thinks he can act. It makes perfect sense!”
Bianca shook her head. “No.”
“A May-December thing in the middle of December might work!”
Bianca blinked at her man. “You’re under a lot of stress, aren’t you?”
Vincenzo nodded.
“It can’t be Walt, and you know it. It has to be Pietro or no one.” She sighed. “We can still make it no one. Maybe she never knows who helps her. Maybe she gets ‘gifts’ throughout the movie from an unnamed, unseen person …” I just got chills! “Or maybe it’s the ghost of someone, the ghost of an earlier runaway slave who’s doing this for her, an unseen being that walks these woods.”
Vincenzo blinked. She has to be kidding. We are not making Poltergeist II: A Woman Not Quite Alone. He fumbled for the door. “I gotta go. We’ll talk about it later.”
Bianca rolled over and stared at the ceiling. “What are you going to tell Katharina about her precious footage?”
Vincenzo pressed the squawk button. “Fish, do we have another monitor?”
“If you stall her for twenty more minutes, I can do this thing,” Fish said.
Vincenzo shook his head. “You know that’s impossible. You have another monitor, right?”
“Oh man, you know I do, but if you’re going to do what I think you’re going to do …”
Vincenzo snapped off the walkie-talkie, winced, and dropped the monitor. It didn’t exactly shatter, but the glass cracked and several dials bent. “I hope this works.”
Bianca laughed. “I hope it doesn’t work.”
“Oh yeah,” Vincenzo said. “Right.”
Vincenzo lumbered back to his log where Katharina waited. He put on his best hangdog look and shook his head slowly. “Miss Katharina, I am so clumsy. I dropped the monitor and it is broken.”
Katharina acted shocked. “You lost my scene?”
“No, no. I watched it in my cabin, to make sure it is there, and then I trip. It is there, and it is amazing. We will load onto a computer. You don’t have to do it again.”
Fish zoomed in on the broken monitor. “Vincenzo should take it out of Bianca’s paycheck.”
“You do have another monitor, don’t you?” Walt asked.
“Yeah, but how do I get it to Vincenzo? Pietro has vanished.” He looked at all the monitors, even at the ones in Pietro’s cabin. “Geez, we have a lot of cameras out. The snow must have melted and iced over the lenses.”
Pietro sat with his back against a pine tree, the camera lens facing him covered with a well-thrown snowball. It was just one of many cameras he had sabotaged earlier that morning. He looked down the hill at his brother making a complete ass of himself with Katharina and smiled. It was good to be back in the moviemaking business again, and for the first time, he actually understood it. It was total, utter madness. It wasn’t supposed to make sense, and despite the insanity in the making and the marketing, it was a good business. The world obviously needed its insanity and enjoyed paying for it. Escape, he thought. This is how you help people escape their troubles for two hours.
Pietro hoped he wouldn’t laugh too loudly during the next scene.
* * *
Katharina pointed at Vincenzo’s camera. “That still works, right?”
He turned it on. “Of course.”
“Okay. Start filming, and don’t laugh.”
“I am filming,” Vincenzo said. And why would I laugh? There’s nothing funny about any of this!
“I have to show whoever’s in the woods that this woods woman knows how to use a hatchet.”
She returned to the fire, picked up the hatchet, stepped into the clearing, and faced the tree to Vincenzo’s right, taking careful aim at the little camera hiding in the bark.
Vincenzo’s walkie-talkie squawked immediately.
Katharina let the hatchet droop. “What now?”
“Sorry. Another weather report.” Vincenzo turned away to listen with the walkie-talkie’s speaker hard against his ear.
“You can’t let her throw that hatchet at one of our cameras,” Fish said. “You have to have her throw it at the tree on your left.”
Vincenzo pocketed the walkie-talkie. “The weather is okay. It is, um, supposed to warm up. Um, Katharina, the light in this direction is bad.” He pointed to his right. “Throw at this tree over here.” He pointed to his left.
“But I’ve been looking in the woods to my left, your right. That’s where I ‘heard’ the noise. That’s where I think he or whoever is. I have to throw it in that direction.”
“A good point.” And we’ll probably lose another piece of equipment. It’s been that kind of day.
The walkie-talkie squawked.
“Oh, another report. Excuse me.” Vincenzo walked farther away from Katharina this time, leaning his back against a tree. “How high is the camera?” he whispered.
“Oh geez, here it comes!” Fish yelled.
Vincenzo looked around the tree in time to see a hatchet tumbling end over end to the tree on his right, sticking firmly five feet up the tree.
“That was close,” Fish said. “And very cool. Have her do it again.”
“You’re kidding!” Vincenzo whispered.
“She’ll never hit it, Vincenzo,” Fish said. “She’d have to throw it too high for her to retrieve it. And if she does hit it, what a shot! The audience will jump out of their seats!”
Vincenzo shook and winced a lot as he filmed Katharina throwing the hatchet for a half hour. Since the walkie-talkie stayed silent, he felt confident that the camera was still intact.
Katharina rubbed her shoulder. “I’m pretty tired, Sly. It’s not like I throw a hatchet every day.”
Vincenzo smiled, glad this ordeal was over. “You throw it well.”
Katharina stretched and rubbed her shoulder again. “I’m gonna call it a day, okay?”
That’s the best news I’ve heard all day! Vincenzo thought. “Sure. You take a rest, Miss Katharina.”
And then, he thought, I can go quietly crazy with Bianca.
Pietro packed another snowball, slipped behind a camera-less tree, and covered another lens with an accurate throw. Two more to go, and then I can get to Katharina’s back window unseen, climb in her back window, throw out some granola bars for Curtis to munch on, and give Katharina a backrub. He hoped she’d let him sleep a little. Tomorrow was a big day. Tomorrow he would return to the silver screen.
In a starring role with the woman of his dreams.
Who was one of the main reasons I left the States fifteen years ago to create this rugged paradise … so we could be together.
He packed another snowball. Life is strangely wonderful.
Chapter 37
“Where the hell is Pietro?” Vincenzo yelled into the walkie-talkie. “He can’t just disappear! This is where he lives! He has to be somewhere!”
Bianca rubbed Vincenzo’s shoulders, wishing her man would just relax and give her some good loving to forget all his problems.
“He’s not on any of the monitors, Vincenzo,” Fish said, “and believe me, I’ve been looking.”
“Find Curtis,” Vincenzo said. “Pietro wouldn’t just let a mule wander aro
und. Find Curtis, and you’ll find Pietro.”
“Curtis isn’t on any of the monitors, either,” Fish said.
“How can you hide a half-ton mule?” Vincenzo cried.
Bianca froze. “I am not eating the stew tonight.”
Vincenzo wanted to pull out his hair—and then pull on Bianca’s hair for a while. “I thought you said you had thirty acres covered, Fish.”
“I do,” Fish said, “but, A, Pietro owns one hundred acres, and B, we’ve got cameras out of commission all over the place now.”
Vincenzo sat up. “What? Why?”
“Hell if I know,” Fish said. “The cameras’ switches are all green, which tells me the problem isn’t with the cameras. I just can’t get a clear picture. They’re covered with something. Falling snow, snow melting and refreezing, pine sap, bird shit, who knows? I can almost see through a few of them, but the shots are fuzzy, like I’m looking through cotton.”
“Well, keep looking,” Vincenzo said.
“At what, Vincenzo?” Fish asked. “If I can’t see anything, how am I going to find him?”
I hate this job! Vincenzo thought. “Well, do something! Call me back when you find him.”
Fish looked up at the big screen where the camera in Katharina’s bedroom was capturing a quiet, sensuous back rub in progress. “Vincenzo is going to be pissed when he finds out we knew about this the entire time.”
Walt shrugged and ate some popcorn. “He’ll live. Pietro is a good masseur. I wish I had big hands like that.”
“And Katharina has a nice back.”
Walt squinted. “I think Katharina is asleep.”
Fish sipped his fifth Coke of the day. “When are we going to tell Vincenzo about this happy couple?”
“Let them have their peace and quiet,” Walt said.
“Well, all this is driving our director crazy.”
Walt pointed at the big screen. “Our director is asleep, right?”
Fish nodded. “Yeah. I’d take direction from her anytime.”
“Katharina and Pietro aren’t going anywhere for a while. Come on. Load up the monitor. I’ll take it to Vincenzo. I’ve got a bad case of cabin fever, anyway.”