by J. J. Murray
They celebrated buffet style and sat around Pietro’s great room, a roaring fire in the fireplace, a blizzard howling just outside the windows.
“So, how are my shoes, clothes, and Scottie doing in Costa Rica, Bianca?” Katharina asked.
“Notice the order,” Bianca said. “Shoes, clothing, dog.”
“A girl has to have her priorities in order,” Katharina said.
“Well, they’re doing just fine, darling,” Bianca said. “They all have tans, even Scottie and your thongs and your thongs. Oh, I do hope they put some sunscreen on little Scottie. Those Scottish breeds sunburn so easily.”
Katharina had found out quite a bit concerning the intervention, but she still had a few gaps to fill. “You didn’t fold any of my lingerie, did you?”
“Nope. Balled them all up. Squished them in. Wrinkled them to death.” Bianca winked. “You really like boxers now, don’t you?”
Katharina nodded. “I like the ventilation. Keeps me fresh.”
The men said nothing because they really had no intelligent things to add. Their thoughts, of course, ranged from the practical (Walt) to the romantic (Pietro and Vincenzo) to the downright erotic (Fish).
Katharina smiled. “I understand you were getting paid a nice chunk of change for this little charade, Bianca. What’d they give you?”
Bianca munched on a chicken wing. “One seventy.”
Katharina choked on a piece of turkey. “I didn’t get paid that much for My Honey Love, Vincenzo!”
Vincenzo, who hadn’t been able to sit comfortably since the moose attack, turned from the window. “Um, that was a long time ago, Katharina. You know, inflation?”
“Yeah,” Katharina said, “inflation of your penis and your ego! You’re old enough to be—”
“The love of my life,” Bianca interrupted.
There was a general “Aww” from those present.
“So,” Katharina said, squeezing and releasing Pietro’s hand, “you like ’em young and fat, huh, Vincenzo?”
Vincenzo blushed. “It’s not like that, I mean, it is like that now, but it wasn’t—”
Bianca jumped up from the couch and stalked toward Vincenzo. “One, I am not fat. And two, it was like that, oh yes, it was. I saw you looking at me in your office with lust in your heart.” She turned to Katharina. “He undressed me with his eyes at least five times in his office. I was getting chilly. His right eye was getting fresh with my legs, while his left eye blinked against my booty. His tongue was on the floor following me around the entire time. He even made me lie down in a very suggestive pose on his casting couch, Katharina.”
“Do tell,” Katharina said.
Vincenzo blushed again. “Hey, that’s not—”
Bianca silenced him with a kiss. “Thankfully, Penelope came in before he could deflower me. Innocence is such a burden.”
“You poor, poor dear,” Walt said. “Such a merciless business.”
Vincenzo looked into Bianca’s eyes. “You know it didn’t happen that way.”
Bianca winked. “It still can … when we get back to L.A. Give Penelope the day off, and we’ll see if that couch really works.”
There was a general “Whoo” from those present.
“Maybe we’ll even be able to see Catalina Island while we do it,” Bianca whispered. “And if it’s smoggy, we’ll have to look for Catalina a long, long time.”
Vincenzo added a quiet “Whoo” of his own.
Fish raised his hands in the air. “People, I think I have something. It’s raw as hell and jumps around a little, but it looks damn good. Get the popcorn, Walt, and dim the lights, Bianca. It’s showtime!”
After only one simple black-and-white title shot—A WOMAN ALONE—and one other shot—STARRING KATHA-DIVA BOLOGNA—the movie began with Katharina running through the stream.
“My nipples were so hard,” Katharina whispered to Pietro.
“Why do you think we did that scene three times?” Pietro whispered back.
As the film, and Katharina’s character, progressed and regressed, the audience made numerous comments.
“Just listen to that sound quality,” Fish said.
“Nice nails,” Bianca said.
“Nice hair,” Katharina said. “Why didn’t somebody tell me about all this pine sap up here?”
“Oh, I love your boots, darling” Bianca said. “Wherever did you get them?”
“You need a bath,” Pietro said.
“Oh no, don’t eat that!” Walt shouted.
The entire group whistled “London Bridge”—twenty-four times.
“Oh, don’t put the stick in there … ouch!” Fish cried.
“I didn’t know a squirrel looked like that on the inside,” Bianca said.
“That moose is in love with Curtis,” Katharina said. “Look at those eyes. How couldn’t a moose fall for a mule who had those eyes?”
When Pietro finally entered the clearing and stayed, despite Katharina’s character waving a knife in his face, the audience cheered.
“Hey!” Katharina cried. “Why didn’t you cheer for me earlier when I was running through the stream?”
“If the unidentified mute man didn’t show up,” Vincenzo said, “we would have been filming through Christmas and maybe even New Year’s Day, and we would all have gotten frostbite, lost toes, fingers, noses, and other appendages.”
Katharina pouted. “I would have finished that shelter on my own.”
Popcorn rained down on Katharina so hard that she had to pull Pietro on top of her for protection.
Fish stopped the feed before the climactic scene. “Now, I know we all want to get less than an R rating for this thing, but I have to warn you. This ending is, um, kind of hard to watch.”
Pietro squirmed in his seat.
“What’s wrong?” Katharina whispered.
“Just watch,” Pietro whispered.
The feed resumed, and the love scene began. Katharina said her line, moved closer to Pietro, and then—
“Geez, he’s got a boner,” Vincenzo said. “Pietro, please. It was 20 below that day.”
Pietro sighed. “She has the warmest hands.”
Katharina put her mouth to his ear. “You moved that entire bearskin. You aren’t holding back on me, are you?”
“I won’t hold back on you later tonight,” Pietro whispered.
They then watched the blooper reel. Katharina’s shelter fell and rose and fell—twenty-four times. Katharina fell in the mud—fifteen times. Katharina fussed at Curtis—too often to count. Pietro brought, at various times, a rubber chicken, a raccoon hat, a Hot Pocket, a granola bar, and a pot of stew for Katharina’s character to “cook” on her stone stove. Katharina ate berries and made faces, spitting something offensive from her mouth into the camera lens. Katharina cursed often. Katharina and Pietro threw mud at Vincenzo’s camera. The last “blooper” was yet another of Pietro’s pranks. He acted as if he chopped off his foot with the hatchet, a stream of red ketchup bloodying the snow. The shot of Bianca nearly fainting earned a standing ovation.
“We got you good,” Katharina said.
“I still have nightmares,” Bianca said.
The screen went blank. “Don’t get up, Katharina,” Fish said. “I want you and Pietro to see what Walt, Bianca, Vincenzo, and I finished while you two were out, um, shopping for food and having sex among the verdure. Before I show it to you, Katharina, you have to promise not to get mad.”
“I’m going to get mad,” Katharina said.
“It was all in fun,” Walt said. “You’ll like it.”
“Bianca, will I like it?” Katharina asked.
Bianca shook her head. “No. You’re not still carrying that knife around, are you?”
The blank screen went black until the MGM lion morphed into a tiger before morphing into Katharina’s Miss Thang character. A title—THE TIGER GOES TO CANADA—rippled onto the screen.
“I got your tiger, Fish,” Katharina said. “I know that was your i
dea.”
The next shot was of Walt in front of Pietro’s fire sitting in a plush lounge chair and wearing Pietro’s blue robe while chomping on a pipe. “Katharina Minola, Oscar-winning actress,” Walt said.
A shot of Katharina and Pietro from the cab scene in My Honey Love.
“Razzie-winning actress,” Walt continued.
A shot from Miss Thang with Katharina’s heavily lipsticked mouth wide-open.
“Diva,” Walt said.
A shot of Katharina in her tiger outfit snoring on the plane.
“Lover of mud,” Walt said.
A shot of Katharina flopping in the mud at the stream.
“What you will witness is beyond belief, ladies and gentlemen,” Walt said. “You will see a tiger-diva turn into a tiger lily before your very eyes. How did this happen? How could this happen? Let’s find out, shall we?”
The scene shifted to Walt standing in front of Cabin 3 wearing a yellow wig, Katharina’s tiger stilettos and sunglasses, and a bearskin. “Inside these rough-cut walls, Katharina Minola experienced agonizing, excruciating, unbearable heartache and deprivation.”
A shot of Katharina in the cabin on the first night: “Where is the humidifier? I have very dry skin. Oh, right. There’s no electricity. Where are the flowers? Oh, right. They’d already be dead in this freezer of a cabin. Where is the all-black furniture? Oh, right. We’re in the Dark Ages up here where everything is made of sticks, stones, and branches. Where are the blackout drapes? Oh, right. There’s no need. It’s black as bleep outside. But where … is my bleep … dinner? How hard could that be to have ready for me?”
Food scenes followed with Katharina eating (and not eating) stew, Kashi, oatmeal, macaroni ‘n’ cheese, and the infamous frozen Hot Pocket.
Walt appeared again, this time wearing what was left of Katharina’s dress as a bandana, her boots on his hands. “And then, friends, she hit rock bottom when her longtime assistant, Bianca Baptista, quit during a blizzard.”
Bianca’s horrible speech: “I put up with more bleep from you in seven weeks than most people put up with in a lifetime. You are the meanest, cruelest monster of a person I have ever met. I don’t know why I didn’t quit sooner. I would rather flip burgers or sell shoes at the mall than work for you. I’d rather get out some cardboard and a squirt bottle than work for you. You know why? Because you … ain’t … bleep.”
Katharina gripped Pietro’s hand tightly. “That was the old me,” she whispered.
“I know,” Pietro whispered. “Though I was pretty fond of the old you, too.”
The next scene had the camera bursting through Vincenzo’s cabin door and finding Bianca eating raisins and a granola bar while Vincenzo painted her toenails. “Yeah, I was Katha-diva Bologna’s last assistant,” Bianca said while chewing gum loudly. “Yeah, I quit on her bleep. She pissed me off. Be careful, Vinnie. Don’t get it on my skin. Bleep. That’s when Katharina went insane.” Bianca paused, and the camera zoomed in on her face. “If you ask me, Katha-diva Bologna was insane from the very beginning. Where is my bleep dinner, Vinnie! Bleep! I ask you to get one thing right, and you bleep it up!”
Katharina stood up and waved her arms in front of the screen, tears of laughter streaming down her face. “Okay, okay. That’s enough. Funny, but I’ve seen quite enough. Is the rest of this mock-umentary like that?”
Fish nodded. “It actually gets worse. You have to see my song.”
“No, you don’t,” Walt said.
“Forget you, Walt.” Fish found the segment and shot it to the screen, “The Diva Flew Into Canada” flying in letter by letter. “Walt filmed this, so if the camera jumps around, it isn’t my fault.”
As Fish’s voice whined its way through the song, the camera bounced from pictures of Katharina to pictures of Pietro to a broom and to Curtis’s tail, which somehow kept time with the music.
When the song ended, Katharina clapped once. “That was horrible.” She rolled her eyes. “But I liked it.” She turned on the lights. “Now, Fish, tell me the rest of the extras on the DVD are not going to be like that.”
Fish smiled. “We had a lot of fun, Katharina. Most of the extras are like that.”
“You had fun at my expense,” Katharina said. “It’s okay. I deserved it. I ought to do a disclaimer, too, you know, something halfway serious.”
Nodding heads all around.
“But,” Katharina said, “what will you do with the rest of the footage? And you know the footage I’m talking about.”
Fish frowned and looked at the floor. “Pietro and Vincenzo already have it all.”
Katharina smiled at Pietro. “You have it?”
Pietro nodded. “We will be watching it later.”
Bianca jolted and shouted, “Vinnie, tell me you haven’t already watched us in action!”
“Well …” Vincenzo said. “Yeah. I have.”
“Was I … ?” Bianca moved closer to Vincenzo. “Was I good or what?”
Vincenzo winced. “Fish, you better explain.”
Bianca turned to Fish. “You watched us?”
“Um, Bianca,” Fish said, not meeting her eyes, “um, the fish-eye lenses and even the infrared didn’t pick up much, I mean, enough. How can I say this without you hurting me?” He shook his head. “I can’t. Bianca, neither of you are that, um, endowed. Um, we might have had to use a body double for you, Bianca.”
“I have nice breasts!” Bianca howled. “I have a killer ass!” She stormed toward Fish. “You watched it all, right?”
Fish backed away. “I couldn’t see much. Really, Bianca.”
Bianca stamped her feet. “Cut it out!”
“No, I meant …” Fish pinned himself to the picture window. “You guys were up under that quilt for most of it.”
“Until the scene at the window,” Walt said, edging toward the stairs. “You remember. The howling scene.”
Bianca froze.
Vincenzo froze.
“Very seventies,” Walt said.
“And I thought the hills were just crawling with wolves,” Katharina said. “Damn, Bianca, show some damn restraint!”
Bianca faked several tears and sobs, falling into Vincenzo’s shaking arms. “They said they couldn’t see my tits, Vinnie.”
Pietro kissed Katharina’s ear. “Who’s the diva now, hmm?” He stood. “Okay, okay. Enough. What about the real movie? Do we think it has a chance?”
Fish returned to his command center. “If y’all will leave me alone, I’ll have it fine-tuned and ready to go in a couple of weeks.”
“That fast?” Katharina asked. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding,” Fish said. “We won’t have a soundtrack to lay down, just the sounds of nature. The sound quality was outstanding, and except for some cussing, which I can mute, we’re good there, too. But mainly, people, we did something very odd, very rare here. We shot a movie in order. Totally unheard of. Never happens. It’s an editor’s dream.” He smiled. “And if the real wolf sounds we recorded don’t work, I can always use Vincenzo’s and Bianca’s.”
Bianca and Vincenzo locked Fish outside for only a few minutes. Feeling returned to his fingers a half hour later as he compared the real wolves to the two making wolf puppies upstairs at that very moment …
“They’re very nice, Bianca,” Vincenzo said, cupping Bianca’s breasts. “Look. They’re perfectly proportional.”
“My left one’s bigger.”
Vincenzo looked more closely. “Really? Let me see … I can’t tell.”
Bianca reached under the covers and felt around. “Your left one’s bigger, too. We were made for each other.”
“I, um, had a little accident a long time ago involving a zipper.”
Bianca pouted. “Did Vinnie have a little boo-boo?”
Vincenzo nodded. “Yes. And it hurt very much.”
Bianca disappeared under the covers. “Then let me kiss it and make it all better …”
Meanwhile, across the hall, Kathar
ina and Pietro, fully clothed like an old couple and lying on top of the covers, shared a bag of popcorn while watching themselves in action on the TV in Pietro’s master bedroom.
“That’s gotta hurt,” Pietro said.
“Nope.”
Pietro winced. “That had to hurt.”
“Nope,” Katharina said. “And stop hogging the popcorn.”
Pietro listened to Katharina moaning. “You are a fantastic actress, Katharina.”
“Nope,” Katharina said. “That was real. You made me do that … and …” She watched a few seconds more. “I made you do that. You can’t fake that.”
Pietro turned off the DVD player. “Katharina, we, um, we did it an awful lot these last few weeks.”
“You’re not tired, are you?”
Pietro sighed. “No, not at all. That’s not where this is going. I mean, we did it a lot over, oh, about a month’s time. You know?”
Katharina threw a piece of popcorn at him. “Speak plainly, Unidentified Mute Man.”
Pietro fiddled with his hands. “I mean, if you get pregnant …”
Katharina turned to him, lying on her side. “You know, I think I already am. I have the strangest desire to sprinkle paprika and hot fudge on this popcorn right now.”
Pietro’s heart thudded. “You really think you’re …”
“If you didn’t live in the middle of Iceland, we could find out,” Katharina said. “I wanted to get a pregnancy test while we were over in Quebec, but I didn’t want to spoil my first escape from this place in eight weeks. But yeah, I think we made us a love child, Pietro. And next year about, oh, September, we could be filming the sequel up here. We’ll call it A Family Alone. I already have some ideas rolling around my head. My baby will get top billing, of course.”
Pietro slid beside her and rubbed her stomach. “Of course.”
Katharina lifted up her shirt, Pietro’s hands squeezing her skin. “And Fish can make her a cute little headset with big diamonds on it.”
Pietro unzipped the top of her jeans. “Or Fish could make him a manly headset with little bear cubs on it.” He slipped the tips of his fingers below the elastic of her boxers. “Katharina, I … I really …” He looked her in the eye. “I really …”