by Karen Karbo
“Is Rodney von Lager filming in Portland?” I asked.
“Under the Burnside Bridge. The skate park there, I believe. That’s the last I heard, anyway. I’m not sure if this situation with the lost diamond has halted production, or what. I overheard Louis suggest that he could rent von Lager a ring from the store—of course, it wouldn’t have a red diamond in it, the best Louis could do would be blue or champagne—but von Lager wasn’t interested. Those artistic types are so particular. More coffee, honey?”
She talked more about the dogs and their special diets, and how much work they were, but Louis loved them, well, except Ned, who had a lovely nature, but had disappointed in other ways. I smiled and asked a question here and there. I think Mrs. de Guzman was lonely. She asked me where I was going to go to high school. She asked if I thought Chelsea was too thin. I tried to listen and be polite, but beneath the kitchen counter, where Mrs. de Guzman couldn’t see, my legs were bouncing like mad.
Even though Chelsea was off playing golf with her dad, I decided to check out the set. I could be there in ten minutes.
Finally my T-shirt was dry and I’d eaten my Human Dog Biscuit and we’d run out of things to talk about. Outside, through the French doors, I could see Winkin’, Blinkin’, and Ned, lying on their sides, snoring in the sun. Mrs. de Guzman walked me to the door and told me not to be a stranger. She stood in the doorway of her huge white house waving as I sped off down the street.
Burnside is a long street at the heart of the city that begins in a hilly wooded area west of downtown, runs down a steep hill into a fancy shopping district, then on into Old Town, past the Salvation Army and a bunch of old brick warehouses. On top of the last warehouse before you reach the Willamette River sits the huge neon MADE IN OREGON sign, Portland’s famous landmark. Every night the white outline of our state, with a leaping elk in the center, shines over our city. Burnside becomes a bridge as it passes over the river. A world-famous skate park was tucked beneath the east side of the bridge, not far from Chelsea’s house. I knew right where it was.
At a stoplight I called Mark Clark and told him Chelsea and I were going to the mall. I didn’t like the mall, but I was glad they invented it. Adults believed girls my age could spend every waking minute there, so it was always a handy excuse.
The light turned green. I pedaled a few more blocks down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, before turning right down a narrow cobblestoned street. Down the hill, I could see the movie set two blocks away. A row of those huge silver movie-set buses were parked at the curb across from the skate park.
The skate park was a swimming pool–like structure whose concrete sides rose up to enclose a collection of vertical ramps, runs, bowls, and keyholes. The curvy stretches of concrete were painted lime green, splattered with random drips of red, pink, and turquoise. This was the best place to skate in all of the northwest; shady and cool in the summer, sheltered from the rain in the winter.
There were clusters of people here and there. Lights rose up on skinny poles above their heads. Once, Quills took me on the set of 53 Miles West of Venus and one thing that struck me was how everyone looked alike. The camera people and the sound people and the assistant-type people all wore grubby jeans, T-shirts, grody old Jack Purcell tennis shoes or cowboy boots. The actors looked exactly the same way. No one acting in the movie was dressed as a pirate, or a private eye, or in an evening gown. The only way you could tell the difference between the people making the movie and the people in the movie, was that the people making the movie had walkie-talkies on their belts.
It was the same situation with this movie, The Dude of the Rings. Everyone here looked like they came from the same nation of semi-grungy art majors.
My plan had been to simply watch, and to formulate a plan while I was watching. While I was riding my bike from the de Guzmans’ house I started thinking that Rodney von Lager had maybe hired Sylvia to buy the ring off Chelsea. Or maybe Sylvia and Rodney were partners. Rodney von Lager liked to be thought of as edgy. I remember Quills telling me that in 53 Miles West of Venus one of the actors was someone who’d just gotten out of prison for robbing a bank. He wasn’t a very good actor, but Rodney thought it gave him street cred. Given this, it made perfect sense to me that Rodney von Lager would snitch the red diamond, rather than pay Mr. de Guzman for it.
The problem was, no one in this big crowd of people looked anything like how Chelsea described Sylvia Soto.
I recognized Rodney von Lager from the time Quills took me to visit the set of Venus. He had the greasiest hair of all, graying and shoulder length, but was still sort of handsome in that male-model-who-could-use-a-shower sort of way.
He stood in the middle of three boys, explaining something with his hands. They stood in the parking lot next to the park. I couldn’t see who he was talking to, but one of the people had a black pug with a rope tied around his neck. The black pug wandered around, getting his rope wrapped around people’s legs. Rodney stepped aside to disentangle himself, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.
It was Tonio, Sylvia’s brother, and the dog with the rope around his neck was Tonio’s black pug.
I don’t think my mouth dropped open as I stared and stared. Maybe it did. I’d stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, next to the lot where Rodney von Lager was directing his actors, my feet on either side of the bike, gripping the handlebars. What was Tonio doing here? I scanned the crowd again for Sylvia, but there was no Sylvia. Suddenly, I flashed on the calendar on the wall of their apartment, and all the days that said “Tonio—Shooting.” It wasn’t shooting practice for a summer basketball league. Tonio had a role in The Dude of the Rings. Maybe it wasn’t Rodney and Sylvia who were partners, but Tonio and Sylvia. Sylvia didn’t need to be on the set, or know Rodney personally. Here was her brother, on Rodney’s set every single day. Suddenly, my stomach hurt.
A small angry girl was marching toward me. She wore her dyed black hair in tiny, angry pigtails. She’d been yelling something at me.
“You’ll have to move, we’re getting ready to shoot. Excuse me! Miss! We’re shooting a movie here. You’ll have to move.”
Before I could say anything, Rodney, and then Tonio, looked my way to see what the commotion was.
Tonio raised his dark eyebrows in what could only be recognition.
8
I must have stood there looking as if I’d just arrived from another solar system. The small angry girl with the tiny black pigtails motioned me across the street. “You can watch from over there.” Then she sighed, shook her head dramatically, so I couldn’t miss the point that I was the biggest idiot she’d come across in a long time.
I walked my bike across the street, to where another small knot of people were standing on the sidewalk, opposite the skate park. They were not movie people, but probably friends of the actors, or else people who’d stopped to watch. A lady—she could only be someone’s mom, in her pink polo, blue cotton skirt, and enormous sunglasses—was snapping pictures with her digital camera.
We watched Rodney direct the three boys, including Tonio. He was gesturing with his big hands, then stopped suddenly and held up a finger. He pulled his cell phone from where it was clipped on the belt loop of his jeans and chatted away. The boys stood there, waiting. Tonio picked up the black pug and rubbed the top of his head with his knuckles, staring intently at Rodney von Lager as he talked on the phone.
I watched Tonio watch Rodney talk on the phone. That was how it was with cell phones: People said anything, right out in public, no matter who was listening. What if Mr. de Guzman called Rodney and they talked about the diamond—when and how it was arriving—and Tonio just stood there quietly soaking up the information? Then he went home and told his sister.
Rodney flipped his phone shut, gave a few more instructions, then joined the cameraman behind the camera.
He didn’t yell “Action!” but somehow the boys knew to stride into the skate park. They all carried skateboards and wore black knee pads over their je
ans, held on with silver duct tape. Then one of the boys—smaller than either Tonio or the other boy and wearing a bright white T-shirt—stopped before the gate, and they argued. Then he walked away. Then Rodney yelled cut. Then they did it again, and again.
“Why are they doing so many takes?” asked someone.
“Rodney is a perfectionist,” said the mom with the digital camera. “He may not look like one, but he is. He’s a true artist.” She sighed.
Our group then began discussing how the scene they were shooting related to The Lord of the Rings. One sweaty, red-faced runner in T-shirt and shorts, who’d stop to watch, said he thought the three boys were members of the good street gang. They were like the three hobbits, aligned with the elves, the dwarves, and the other forces for good in The Lord of the Rings. They just wanted everyone to live in harmony and skate and have fun. There was also a bad street gang who wanted to run the good street gang out of the skate park. They were like the goblins, orcs, and other forces of darkness. I think Tonio was supposed to be like the hobbit Sam Gamgee, the one who was always following Frodo around like a nervous babysitter. I wasn’t sure who, exactly, the black pug was supposed to be. Golem maybe?
I wasn’t listening and didn’t care. Mrs. de Guzman’s coffee was churning in my stomach. I imagined it looked like some prehistoric tar pit in there. About half a block away they were setting up lunch beneath a big white tent, and the smell of grilled meat drifted our way and made me feel sicker yet. The film crew was shooting in the shade, but we spectators were stuck on the white sidewalk, baking. I tried to focus, tried to think: What does this all mean?
I wasn’t very good at thinking on my feet. I was like Jupiter, who, once he found a treasure—one of my old My Little Ponies, or a chewing gum wrapper—hid it in a secret spot, to be examined later.
A few things made no sense. First, if Tonio and Sylvia were partners in crime, why hadn’t Sylvia been home since yesterday? That left me with the she’s-taken-off-with-the-gem theory, but I still didn’t think a big sister would do that to a little brother, especially since it looked as if Sylvia was in charge of Tonio, the same way my brothers were in charge of me. Second, what about Shark, the security guard guy? What was he doing in Sylvia’s apartment when she wasn’t there? Not house-sitting, that’s for sure.
I wondered if maybe Shark was working security on the movie, but knew somehow in my bones that that would be too neat. Still, I scanned the crowd for any uniforms. Aside from two Portland police officers leaning against their car, I didn’t see any other security-type people.
I had a stomachache. I had a headache. I was hot. I needed to get home, now, so I could sort things out.
Just as I cranked the front wheel of my bike around to leave, I heard Rodney call for a lunch break. Tonio bounded across the street, making a beeline in my direction. He wore baggy jeans with torn knees and a green army jacket. I started to pedal off.
“Hey,” said Tonio. I kept going, hoping he would think that I hadn’t heard him. “Dude, you still lookin’ for my sis?”
I stopped. “Your sister Sylvia?”
“Only have the one.”
I laughed, even though it wasn’t really funny. My heart was beating hard. “Oh, right. I guess she’s home now?”
“Don’t know. She hasn’t been home in like a couple of days. I thought maybe you’d seen her. Normally she calls. I thought you and that other girl might have caught up with her or something.”
“No, not yet,” I said.
“Hey, I gotta eat. You want to …” He started walking toward the white tent, where two long tables of food were set end to end. I followed along behind.
“It’s cool you’re in a movie,” I said.
He shrugged, took a plate from a stack at the end of the table, and started inching down the food line, helping himself to grilled sausages, roasted potatoes, and salad. I trailed along at his shoulder. “How did you get the role?”
“Rodney came to school. He likes working with real kids, I guess.”
“When was the last time Sylvia was home?”
“It’s so not like her. She normally calls me like every hour, man.” He glanced over at me then. I felt as if he was really looking at me for the first time. “I thought you and that other girl were like her friends.”
“No, we don’t know her.” I took a breath to steady myself. “My friend sold her a ring by mistake. We were hoping to get it back.”
Tonio stuck a piece of bread on the side of his plate and grabbed a handful of silver-wrapped butter squares sitting in a small bowl. I looked at his profile, his long black eyelashes and perfect triangular-shaped nose.
“I don’t know anything about that,” he said. I couldn’t tell whether he was telling the truth or not. He wasn’t easy to read. I could not get over how much older Tonio seemed than the other boys I knew. There was something sorrowful about him, like the worst day of his life hadn’t washed over him like it did with most kids, but had dragged him out to sea, where he floated, lost.
“Do you know what ring I mean?” I persisted. We moved down the line, me at his shoulder. The girl behind him in line gave me a strange look.
“Nah, Sylvia loves jewelry. She’s got a million rings and bracelets. I just don’t get it. Even when she spends the night over with that boyfriend of hers, she tells me, you know? So I don’t go worrying. She calls me. No matter what.” He shook his head slowly, rearranged the silver butter pats so they wouldn’t fall off the edge of his plate.
“Sylvia has a boyfriend?” A lame question that wasn’t really a question, but it would keep him talking.
“She met him at the humane society, where we got Chichi.” He nodded over to where the black pug was sitting on someone’s lap. “The guy’s okay, but I can tell he’s trying to get on my good side. Nice, but phony nice, like he wants something. He told me once as a joke that he volunteers at the humane society just to pick up chicks. ‘Girls really dig a guy who loves animals,’ he says. He dates my sister and he’s telling me this?” We were at the end of the buffet. He leaned down and grabbed a cold can of Dr Pepper from an ice chest.
Suddenly, I thought of too-nice Shark, holding what had to be Sylvia’s cosmetic case, turned half inside out, smiling in a way that looking back seemed phony nice indeed.
“Is her boyfriend a security guard?”
Tonio raised his dark eyebrows. “Yeah, how’d you know?’”
I was saved from having to say how I knew by the short boy in the white T-shirt playing the Frodo character who strode over on his short bowed legs. He looked older up close—maybe in his twenties—and couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. Like Tonio’s, his plate was piled high with as much food as he could fit on it. Hanging on a thick silver chain around his neck was a ring. The ring of the title, I guessed, set with a huge red stone in its center. It was as big as a marble. It looked like a piece of cinnamon candy.
“Nice ring,” I said. “That’s, uh, not real is it?”
“You like it?” he said. Frodo had a deep voice and some type of East Coast accent, and a big smile that made his whole face crinkle up. His blond hair curled over his ears.
“Sure,” I said. “It’s … big.”
He took it off the chain around his neck and tossed it at me. “It’s yours. Compliments of another fine Rodney von Lager production.”
“Wow. Thanks,” I said. I was completely confused. “Don’t you need it?”
Tonio laughed. “We got about a hundred of those.”
“It’s a piece of junk,” said Frodo.
“That’s bizarre,” I said. “I thought Rodney von Lager was all about being authentic and stuff. This is so …”
“Big and fake?” said Frodo.
“Well, yeah. You’d think he’d use something that at least looked real,” I said.
“Yeah, well,” said Frodo. “He was working on having this mysto ring made using a real diamond. A red one, or a pink one, something like that. It was so we could like feel the p
ower and attraction of beauty and money and yadda yadda yadda, but the jeweler crapped out on us.”
“That must have made him really mad,” I said, half convinced by this whole conversation that it was indeed Rodney who’d put Sylvia up to buying Chelsea’s ring. I went back and forth—it was a Rodney/Sylvia scheme, no it was a Tonio/Sylvia scheme. Heck, maybe they were all three in it together.
“Not at all, actually. Not having the ring made Rodney rethink the whole scene. He decided that it’d be better to make a statement about how we risk our lives for things that turn out to be worthless or meaningless. Something like that. You know, all that glitters is not gold. Now he’s totally into the big fake stone. I heard him tell the art department guy that the stone didn’t even look fake enough.”
I couldn’t believe this. “So he doesn’t even care? He doesn’t feel cheated, or ripped off, or … or …” The moment the words leaped from my mouth I could tell I sounded too concerned. I mean, why would the fate of Rodney von Lager’s red diamond mean anything at all to me?
“Nah, he’s over it,” said Frodo.
But suddenly, I felt Tonio’s eyes on me. I glanced over. He was staring at me, lips pursed, eyebrows pinched together over his big brown eyes. For the first time I could read his face. He was trying to put two and two together, and was winding up with five. Me. Chelsea. The ring Chelsea sold his sister. His sister missing. And now mention of Rodney’s red diamond, which also for reasons that weren’t common knowledge, also had disappeared. I stared right back at him.
Tonio and the actor playing Frodo—whose name turned out to be Dusty—sat down at the end of a long table covered with a white tablecloth. There was a spare folding chair next to them, so I sat down, too. Dusty snuck me a soda from the ice chest. They ignored me, talked about when they were getting paid, and how they were going to spend the money. Dusty mentioned a college fund and a new deck for his skateboard. Tonio said he was sending most of it to his grandma in Puerto Vallarta, for an operation she needed. He didn’t know what it was.