by Adam Cesare
“No, we don’t. It will be back in three days, and in that time we will have enough footage for a film…as long as we shoot some filler when we get back to the city”
There was the sudden chug of an engine as the plane prepped for take off. Denny took a few steps forward, moving out of its path. He sidled up to Jacque and patted him on the back.
“I guess your resignation was rejected,” Denny said. “Three days isn’t that bad. It’s not a lot of time to make a movie, but at least you won’t starve. Buck up Jacky, m’boy.”
“I’m not your boy,” Jacque said. It was hard to tell if he was serious or not, so Denny just smiled. The six of them covered their eyes and noses in unison as the plane roared up into the sky, its engines whipping up a sandstorm to pelt them with dust and dirt.
After a moment, Tito coughed and spoke. “Denny, unpack the camera and pick up some footage as we walk up the beach. Alright everyone: let’s make a goddamn movie,” he yelled, the words pealing off into a hacking jag before he spit a glob of brown phlegm out onto the runway.
Chapter 4
Daria Casini
Makeup
How did I get here? Daria asked herself as she walked behind the group of movie-folk, the burning sand reaching up over her teal pumps and scalding the tops of her feet with every step.
Less than a week ago, when she had responded to an advertisement that read “makeup artist needed for film,” she was sure she’d be turned down due to lack of experience. Daria was an ex-beauty student who was forced to turn freelance makeup girl once she had run out of tuition money. Modeling gigs had been sparse and film work had been non-existent.
That was until her meeting with Signore Bronze at his office in Rome (an office that appeared to have doubled as his hotel room). She suspected the interview went about as well as one could with Signore Bronze. Her perspective employer had never taken his eyes off her chest.
Two days later, she packed her small makeup bag of tricks and set off on this adventure to godknowswhere.
The whole thing would have been romantic if she wasn’t so sweaty and tired from dragging her bags along the beach. Worse, the sun and sea-air had conspired to turn the slight curl of her thick black hair into a beachball-sized puff, making her feel even more out of place.
When she asked Signore Bronze what kind of movie it was going to be, Bronze had simply responded “a hit.” Eavesdropping onto the writer’s conversation during the plane ride had been just as useless. Jacque, the black French limey, was only interested in talking to the blonde black girl in English. Daria herself wasn’t used to being snubbed by men, but that’s the way it went when there was a blonde around. And in the rock-paper-scissors that was male attention, dark and gorgeous always seemed to beat olive-skinned and busty.
Daria had also tried asking the big movie star about it, Umberto Luigi, Brent Cisco, whoever he was, but he kept turning the topic of conversation to what color panties she was wearing. She resolved to minimize contact with the crew for the next three days.
“Look, over there! The path,” Signore Bronze shouted in Italian. He was the fastest walker among them, probably because he wasn’t carrying anything. “I told you.”
The short man led the group up along the beach, insisting that the village where they would be staying had to be close to the airstrip. It wasn’t, because the trip took about an hour. As they each hefted their personal belongings and equipment up the beach towards the jungle, Tito blocked their path to the shade of the treeline and lit a cigarette. He was no longer ‘Signore Bronze’ to her, never again after that hellish walk. Now he was simply Tito: an old man whose tacky floral print shirt was dripping wet, the armpits of his suit jacket a dark gray, and whose thin white pomp of hair was now matted against the side of his face.
Despite heaving for breath in the partial sunlight, Tito sucked in deep on his cigarette. Umberto shouldered his way past Daria, holding a large wooden crate and looking desperate for the cool of the jungle. When Umberto reached Tito the old man pointed his cigarette at him and put a hand down on the crate.
“Un momento,” the director said with a slight wheeze. In front of Daria, the writer translated his Italian to English for the two Americans, the actress and cameraman. “When we get there, the people will probably be…apprehensive. So everyone will let me do the talking.”
Jacque rolled his eyes at this as he related it to the others. Tito clapped his hands and made an after-you gesture to the American and Italian blondes. Umberto grunted and pushed in front of Cynthia, hefting the crate into the shadows and leaning on it for a rest.
The hike through the jungle may have been slightly cooler, but it was made worse by the constant assault of bugs and the treacherous, narrow path. Daria tripped on an exposed root and went toppling into a deep mud puddle.
Umberto stopped in front of her, set down the crate and wiped the dirt off his pants before helping her to her feet. The actor didn’t respond to her half-hearted “grazie.” She was starting to think that he was nothing like his on-screen persona.
From up the path, Tito shushed her. “Listen!”
The crew held their breath. Daria found it difficult to stop her own panting in the afternoon heat. There was a snapping of twigs and some rustling of foliage in the distance.
“Hello? Is there anyone out there,” Tito asked the trees. “It’s okay, you can come out. We’re from the cinema!” Daria wasn’t sure if that last part made any sense, even if you spoke Italian.
Before she could further consider her newfound disappointment with the great auteur, there was more movement. Whatever was in the dark of the forest, it was closer this time.
Jacque said something in French, and Tito responded with Spanish vulgarity. Bronze was trying to sound tough, but his eyes were frantic and locked out onto the darkening jungle just like everyone else’s.
“Show yourself!” Umberto spoke up, channeling one of his tough guy parts and tensing the muscles of his neck. The star attempted to puff himself up like a snake, but only made himself redder in the face.
There was a high pitched squeal as the shadow jumped out onto the path, knocking Umberto to his ass with an unmanly flop.
She could see it now in the light. It was a large pig, a boar. It paused for a moment, sizing up the group with beady black eyes and white curled tusks before darting into the jungle behind a prone Umberto.
There was a moment of stunned silence before Tito ruined it.
“Why did you let it escape?” he asked Umberto.
“Che?” Umberto flicked a dirt clod off his golden mustache.
“We could have chopped it up and used it for set dressing!”
The old man laughed, looking around at the rest of the crew trying to get them to join in on the joke. Jacque didn’t bother translating it for the English speakers. He just knelt and picked up his bag. Daria agreed that it was too hot for jokes.
After ten more minutes of walking, they found the village.
Chapter 5
Denny
The first time Dennis Roth got high on something other than liquor was in a movie theater on 42nd Street. It wasn’t one of The Deuce’s many porno theaters, but they catered to the same clientele, so it might as well have been. The crowd was comprised of people too poor, drunk or stoned to make a fuss about the smell of the place, or the occasional warm spots you found clinging to your seat.
That night two years ago, Denny sat in this musty theater and was so broke that he was savoring each individual Jujyfruit, trying to get them to last through the entire double bill.
When the first feature had ended—a movie called Up from the Depths which was exactly like Jaws, only minus the artistic worth or entertainment value—he got up to stretch his legs and go to the john. Going to the bathroom was a tricky proposition in a place like this, and he was on his guard.
He tensed up when the girl approached him, bouncing the baggy against her palm. Suspicious, it took Denny a while to make sure she wasn’t packin
g either a gun or a dick. She was dynamite though, so when she asked him if he wanted to get high there wasn’t much debate. The girl was all legs and spandex and bad ideas.
The next thing he knew, she was tying him off with her teeth. He was over the moon. They held hands for a bit and then fell asleep during the second movie. It had been a softcore Tito Bronze vampire flick by the name of Blood Delight (the domestic title) and it was the best movie-going experience of Dennis’s young life.
It was now a couple of years later and the girl from the theater was long gone, but the smack habit had stuck around. Denny wasn’t watching Tito Bronze movies anymore. He was making them.
He was making them damn well. Denny’s steady hand and ability to stretch a dollar were Tito’s real secret to success. Tito needed him because there were no dollies, cranes or helicopters, not within a hundred miles of a Bronze production. Denny’s skills ensured that even when the plots didn’t make any sense and the scheduling was tight: shit was in focus, framed properly and carried depth-of-field that was fucking deep.
If anything, the heroin had made him better at his job. The junk turned him skinny, caused him to itch like his forearms were made of mosquito bites, and left a terrible taste in his mouth whenever he nodded off. But the smack also opened up a kind of third eye for the “chin-e-ma,” as Tito would say.
The hippies dropped acid to create their whacked-out shit, and Denny shot horse to make his blood and beaver pictures.
All of that was fine and good, but he was also getting less and less time between fixes. This increased need became a problem in situations like this one they had brewing here on the island: close quarters situations where he was forced to be around people for an extended period of time.
Upon walking out of the dense jungle and entering the village, the urge was ripping through Denny like a hungry earthworm burrowing through the veins in his arm. Sweat dripped between his shoulder blades and his hands shook as he bounded through the jungle, ducking under branches and stopping in his tracks every so often to listen for voices in the distance.
Earlier, as they walked through the huts and looked for signs of life, he was hurting so bad that he didn’t really give a shit that the village was deserted. Now that he was alone with his thoughts, he allowed himself a sliver of concern that the abandoned town meant that they weren’t making a movie. That was beyond his control. At least now he was getting some alone time with his needle and spoon.
“This may seem like a bad time,” he had said back in the village, picking up a piece of dusty pottery. “But I really have to take a shit.” He let the terracotta bowl slip from his hand and it crashed to the ground in a puff of red dust. The sound reverberated out into the empty collection of native housing.
“I don’t think they big on toilet paper here,” Tito said. “Or indoor plumbing.”
“Banana leaves,” Jacque said with a shit-fondling smile on his face. He knew full well what Denny was going to do out in the jungle. The mouthy jig was torturing him. Why did I think that? Jacque is a nice guy. The need always made him edgy.
“I won’t go too far, and I’ll keep an eye out for any villagers or whatever.” Denny’s words were as put-together as he could make them while all the pores of his face were opening up and screaming for a fix. He ducked into the tall grass surrounding the village and headed south.
It was as if somebody hit the light switch as he crossed into the jungle. In the village, the sun was waning; but under the dense canopy of the jungle, nighttime was in full swing. Trying his best to remember landmarks, Denny walked south until it was impossible to hear the chatter of the rest as they searched the village.
“Fuck you, pig,” Denny found himself muttering every time he heard a twig snap somewhere in the darkening forest around him. When he deemed he was far enough into the wild, he stopped and wedged his ass between the intersecting trunks of two overlapping trees. The boughs made a cozy little seat, perfect for sitting down and cooking a fix.
He tried to whistle as he opened his kit, but the complete silence enveloping him as he puckered his lips kept him quiet. His hands shook as he tried to untie his balloon of golden magic powder.
“What are you doing?” a voice asked from the darkness.
Denny jumped, juggling the balloon between his sweaty fingers before clasping a tight fist around his valuables.
“Who’s there?” Denny froze and began to stammer. “This isn’t what it looks like.” He scrambled for something that could provide some semblance of an excuse. “I…I’m a diabetic.”
The little black woman stepped out of the darkness, stooped and gnarled by time.
“Oh thank god,” Denny said, not only relieved that he wasn’t caught by someone on the crew, but also to see a ‘native’ at long last. “Hello, ma’am,” he said, giving her a short Miss America wave and peering into the darkness. “My name is Dennis Roth. I’m with the movie.” He kept his voice loud and slow, figuring that she probably couldn’t speak English. But didn’t she ask what he was doing?
The old woman took a step forward, leaning on a curved driftwood cane for support. Her eyes were glassy black pearls, stuck far back in her head and surrounded by sunken brown skin. She blinked once.
“The film. Pelicula. Cinoche.” Denny held his hands up to his face and pretended to crank a camera.
“You’re making a film on our island?” The old woman’s voice was soft and warm and it swabbed each of his ears like a velvet Q-tip. There was something both pleasant and strange about the sensation.
“Where are the rest of you?” Denny asked her and squinted into the rapidly darkening jungle. He needed to discern whether his new friend was alone. There was no movement behind her. The only sound in the dusk was the rattle of her jewelry as she stepped forward once again.
Her hair was weaved with seashells. More bits of shell and polished coral hung around her neck in long ropes. The ropes were longer than traditional necklaces. They were more like primitive versions of his grandmother’s rosaries.
“What’s wrong with your feet?” Denny asked. This close to the old woman, he could see that her feet were on backwards, the heels facing him. It wasn’t ghastly. They weren’t twisted or broken. They just faced the wrong way.
“Never you mind that. It doesn’t matter,” she said, and Denny felt that she was right: it didn’t matter. “You don’t need what’s in that case, boy.” She motioned to the small black bag in his hand: his fix kit. His stash, man.
Before he had a chance to think about what she meant by that, he realized what was so special about the old woman. She wasn’t speaking English, but he could understand her anyway. These Euro directors like Tito, even some of the bigger boys like Leone: they were all too cheap to roll live sound on their films. All their movies had the dialogue track recorded separately. Even when it was the same language, the dubbing never matched up properly.
The old woman’s lips reminded him of that. They were moving in wide foreign circles, her tongue clicking down occasionally against her dirty teeth, but her words were reaching his ears in English.
“You’re hearing what you want to hear, Denny,” she said. He didn’t question how she was doing this, how she knew his name, how she knew what he was thinking. All he wanted to do was listen to her.
“Hand that over here, child.” She had gotten closer to him than he had realized. Holding out one hand, she unfurled her long skinny fingers and gave them a slight flutter. Denny placed his kit in her small hand.
“Who are you?” was what Denny wanted to say, but somehow the words came out: “Who am I?”
“You’re one of us, Dennis. You are not like the rest of those people in your group.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Denny said, feeling a bit more lucid now. Her words were giving him power. It felt good.
The old woman ran a small pink tongue over her brown lips before speaking again. “Listen carefully now, child. What you need to do is this.”
The nearby crack of t
he gunshot smacked Denny in the ears. There was a dropping feeling in his stomach as the sound crashed him back down into the jungle. Denny crunched his eyes shut against the shock.
When he opened them, the old woman was gone.
“What the hell was that?” he spoke to himself, prying his butt out of the crook of the tree. He ran back toward the village, not sure whether he was high or not, and wondering where his stash kit had gone.
Chapter 6
Jacque
The boar was dead in one shot, but its body didn’t seem to get the message. It squealed, blood pouring from the hole in its head, and plowed into the front of one of the huts.
The beast caught the thatched branches and dried grass of the flimsy wall with one of its tusks, and ended its life by ripping down a big chunk of island real estate with its death throes. The hut folded in upon itself in a cloud of dirt, collapsing on top of the pig.
“Fucking thing. Why would it walk into the middle of town like that?” Tito said. “Stupid, that’s why.” He smiled and pointed the muzzle of the small pistol to his own head, flashing the polished steel at Jacque.
“A Korovin, Soviet gun.” Tito said in Spanish. “When I was just a boy, my father killed a fascist with this gun. Decades later and it’s still killing pigs.” That little tidbit was meant only for Jacque. Neither of the girls spoke Spanish.
Umberto had been closest to the hut when it buckled. He flicked his cigarette into the abandoned dirt road and climbed over the debris to reach the dying animal.
Daria covered her mouth, Cynthia covered her eyes and Jacque made an unsuccessful attempt not to watch as the boar twitched under the heel of Umberto’s boot. Watching his step, Tito walked over the pig and gave Umberto a nod of thanks. He fired again, the gun pressed to the animal’s ear. The gun smoke curled off into an elongated question mark and the pig was still, no more rattling spasms.
“Maybe it walked through town because it thought it was safe. Because nobody lives here any more and hasn’t for a long time,” Jacque said after a moment of silence, either from shock or out of deference for the pig. “This place is empty. Just take a look around you!”