Scar Flowers (11 page)

“You like the taste,” she said. Or was it “Do you like the taste?”

Pleasant, her voice. Low and full. Her words flowed like water, each thought a part of the next.

“Bitter wormwood,” she continued. “You can get light
-headed drinking absinthe, dreamy. They say you can see visions, hear things. Dream strange things.”

He did like the
taste. His tongue lay heavy in his mouth, but he was relaxed. Just a drink. Talk about work. And what if she could influence him? He had never backed down from a dare before, a test of strength.

“You might wonder about me,” she said. “Wonder what I’m here for. Whether we’re just here to explore and learn. To make a film. A scene in a movie. If you’re not sure of something, it’s good to be reminded that it’s happening to someone in a movie.”
 

Yes, the movie.
Babylon
. Patterns formed in the shadows—they were even there when he closed his eyes: tendrils or vines, oozing like smoke. His eyelids grew heavy, his head wanted to fall forward. The idea of sleep washed over him until a cold wave nudged him.
No, don’t want that.
He opened his eyes.

“—that you won’t remember,” Nadia was saying.

Simon sat up, and she started, as if he had caught her doing something illicit.

“Want to,” he said. “Remember.”

His voice sounded odd, as if each word were packed in cotton. He recalled the summer of his first year of junior high school during a visit to his mother’s, when he stayed home in bed with a fever and Eva put the radio in his room. Her slippers scuffed the linoleum as she made soup for his lunch, and he faded in and out of consciousness in a stream of pop music lyrics.

Why had he spoken? Nadia’s lips moved, her eyes bright with fear or anger, and he drifted again to the tune of an old song. Something about diamonds in the sky.

“You’re tired. I’ll let myself out.” Nadia stood. “Goodnight. You’ll sleep now.”

Yes, he must be asleep. He remembered the door shutting behind her. The trailer was dark, he was in his
bed. Dreaming. That was all.

Monday, June
5, 5:45 a.m. Day 11 of shooting.

Simon woke from sleep like a bubble bursting, as if he had shed a layer of skin. His nerves tingled with half-remembered dreams, warm depths of female voices, mouths, hands. The sheets clung to him like silk, but he forced himself out of bed to turn off the alarm clocks. He showered and dressed in clean clothes from the pile on the table. Everything around him was too bright, too loud: birdsong, voices, the smell of fresh-cut grass and paint. He pulled his baseball cap lower and put his sunglasses on, body humming with energy, the way he felt after a run. But all he’d done yesterday was sit.

Simon felt as if he were swimming through a dream. Inside the set there were actors, shouts of the crew, and burning lights. Brian the DP perched on the crane, instructing the camera operators on the intricacies of the next shot. There ought to be a joke:
How many people does it take to work a camera on a union film?

Karen sulked in the makeup trailer, angry that Simon had not called her, had not seen her alone for two days. She was a jewel, though—bright and glittery if kept polished. He should be more attentive. Last night he had fallen asleep before he could phone her. That was all; an honest mistake.

Scene 27, of Blake running down the stairs. Two simple action shots. Simon had discussed it with Brian two days ago: handheld camera, overhead angle with a cut to a swoop and pan. Simon rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead. Hot. Hot as hell in here. His underarms burned and prickled. A headache crushed his skull, and a needle of pain poked his breastbone, yet he was filled with endless ideas, was back on top and riding the juggernaut. The pressure of his T-shirt against his chest made his skin crawl. He asked a production assistant for water, had Gunnar call for places. Maybe he could keep some bicarbonate of soda down.

“Where the hell is Victor?” said Simon.

“Right behind you.”

Of course. That was right, wasn’t it? Over there. Victor, his face powdered pale
with makeup, hair hanging in his eyes, his beard growing in. All so he’d look haggard, like he’d been through hell for . . . for at least eleven days. Funny. Just like he was a director shooting a movie. Gunnar tucked his clipboard under his arm, pinched his chin and then pointed to Simon, said something.

“What?” said Simon.

“Your beard. You shaved.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Are you okay?” asked Gunnar.

“I’m fine.” Simon picked at his shirt, winced. He took the paper cup of water proffered by the produc
tion assistant, a terrified-looking college girl with a moon-shaped face. Probably an AFI intern. Cool slosh of liquid on his hand, spilling over the lip of the cup when he held its middle too hard. He rubbed his chin. Yes. He had shaved, could recall now that this morning that he had gone through the motions of a non-shooting day, whistling at his reflec-tion. Giddy. How could he have done that, forgotten?

Take 2. Victor ran—
long arms, dark suit, and white shirt against the shadowy stairwell. Falling man, clattering. Squeak of his palm on the railing. Simon’s head felt full of helium, and he knuckled his shirt against his chest. Maybe it was heartburn. A voice at his shoulder: Gunnar, telling him to sit. Victor stared.

“
What are you talking about?” Simon brushed him away.

“
At least put this on.” Gunnar pressed a flannel shirt into his arms and said in his ear, “You’re bleeding.”

He stretched out the collar of his shirt. A vertical cut marked the center of his chest, weeping. Gunnar yelled for a five-minute break. It must be a joke, a spoof of
Lawrence of Arabia
, where the hero tries to hide evidence of his torture in the desert.

Torture?
More like hypnosis. This makes it twice that she’s gotten you, Mercer.

Had Nadia done this? Simon went down the stairs. Falling man.
Eleven days of shooting finished, forty-nine days left to go. Sweet, sharp, shards of candied glass, falling as he left the set, tinkling on the lawn. Was that a memory? He was outside now, under the dizzying sky, hot and bright and flat.

He could
remember nothing about how he got the cut. Not a thing.

2:05 p.m.

“Nadia, no hard feelings about the other day.” Outside the craft-service area, John leaned against a wall cleaning his nails with a paperclip. He fell into step with her as she passed.

“You made me look like a jerk in front of Simon, but I deserved it. Hey, you’re walking too fast for my friend to keep up.” John nodded at the ponytailed blond boy who had appeared at her other side, hands jammed in the pockets of his denim shorts. “Clark is a fan of wire-fu films. He wants to know who your favorite choreographer is.”

“Well, Bill Hobbs is a master too.”
Clark bobbed his head at Leah. “He uses simple fives too much, but otherwise, genius. You know his work, Nadia?”

“If you’ll excuse me
, I’m late.” She aimed her gaze at the horizon.

John stepped out in front of her, catching
Clark by his arm to block her way.

“Be a sport.
Clark drove fifty miles just come visit a movie set and meet a real live fight choreographer. Can’t you at least answer a question or two?”

“In
Rollover
, why’d you use Katana in the museum scene?” The boy’s face was pocked with blemishes. He lifted his glasses to rub his eyes.

She did not recognize either name from the real Nadia’s
resume, but the boy’s expression was earnest. He stood balanced on the outside edges of his sneakers.

“It was in the script.” Leah sidestepped the two men. “Excuse me, but I’m late.”

“That’s interesting,” John called after her. “You didn’t even work on
Rollover
. And that script wouldn’t’ve dictated which fighting style to use. It wasn’t part of the story. Come on, Clark. How’d you like to meet a director now?”

Leah glanced back as John and his friend headed toward a knot of people approaching from the soundstage. At its center was Simon. He nodded as John spoke in his ear, and then the director took out his cell phone and dialed. In a few seconds, the group passed out of sight.

11:19 p.m.

Simon went to bed, telling himself that he was tired, but in truth he was eager to dream again. That was all he recalled of the cut on his chest: a dream. For a few minutes he listened to the trucks on the highway, crickets. Tapping, creaking, like fingernails against the glass. A pressure in his brain like eyes were watching him. A shadow appeared outside, poured itself in through the window to become a woman. Long hair shadowed her face, her body shrouded in black, rippling and morphing. Whispering to him, coming closer. Wavering, smoke-like outline. He wanted to turn his head and look at her but couldn’t. Hadn’t he written this? Karen–Julia and Victor–Blake. He was dreaming about the script. But he should be able to move.

Cool slide of the sheet turning back, of air against his skin. Heat and pressure on his stomach, and the mattress sank down on either side of him as she crouched over him, hair curtaining her face. Fingernails on his face, his chest, tickling scratch.

Who was she? Karen? No. Her naked thighs cradled his sides. Everything shrouded in fabric. Her dress, the skirt of it draped them both. But he couldn’t reach her, couldn’t touch.

His arms were up over his head
, bound by something soft; that was what kept him from turning his face to look at her when she had stood beside the bed. He wanted to wake up, to touch himself and end this dream. But he had to burn just as he was.

A rhythmic boom throbbed. Heartbeat. His lungs labored under her weight. Warmth of her body in his bed, but he could do nothing. He waded in water that sank back into the earth as he bent to drink, grasped at laden vines that sprang out of reach.

Crackling sound, something ripping, stinging cold scent. Rubbing alcohol. The woman lowered her head, her breath a hot fog. Something sharp pressed into his chest. Her voice hummed in his ear. Metallic smell. Suction, the scrape of teeth. Something had bitten him; the shadow that crouched over him with her palm over his mouth. She smelled like flowers, like immersion in warm water. He made a sound to wake himself, but all that came out were muffled vibrations that died in his throat. She gazed at him, and her eyes gleamed with moisture. Sorrowful; she felt remorse. It was Julia, and she thought he was Blake. But then he should be the one apologizing; he hadn’t been telling her story right. Her fingers on his lips, then a splash fell on his chest, a single salt drop.

Before she left, did her mouth move? Did she say,
Will you give in to me? Will you tell me, the thing you fear the most?

Tuesday, June 6, 6:30 a.m. Day 12 of shooting.

To the
beep of the alarm clock, Simon woke to find a second cut on his chest, parallel to the first. He swore. Naked, he ripped aside the bedclothes, shoved everything onto the floor: blankets, clothes, notebooks. Nothing in the bed. No knife, no razor. No blood under his nails. Exhilaration crawled under his skin, his body primed to react.

Amid the detritus on the carpet he found a plain white packet, like the kind that holds condoms or samples of hand lotion, but it could have been there already. The trailer door was locked, the windows closed, the air conditioner humming.

He had not done this to himself. He knew that, had promised to remember.

Simon dressed and took a video camera, a drill, and a bag of tools from a box under the kitchen table. In a few minutes
, he ran a wire from the motion sensor porch light outside into an overhead cupboard, where he connected it to the camera. He left the cupboard door ajar and covered the red operating light above the camera lens with duct tape. But he should know what had happened without resorting to this; he had missed vital clues right in front of his face. Simon clipped the digital camera to his belt and ran the fiber optic cable up behind his ear. A camera would have to see for him, since his eyes had proved so fallible.

Seven
a.m. and there was no filming. Karen had locked herself in her hotel room, refused to work. And according to John, Nadia wasn’t a fight choreographer—Simon would probably have to fire her as soon as the detective agency finished the background check that he had already ordered. Fire her? Fran might want to press charges.

At the location, Gunnar was tight-l
ipped, the crew sullen. Teamsters smirked and slouched around the catering trailer, flicked their cigarette butts in the grass. They wore cowboy boots, brass belt buckles. One kept a box of toothpicks rolled in his sleeve.

Fran telephoned: “I don’t know what you did to my star, just fix it. Send her flowers, tell her she’s beautiful. This is costing me money. Get the picture made, or you’re history.”

Paul came to the trailer with budget projections and a reworked schedule, one that called for scenes to be shot without Karen for the next two days. Neither of them mentioned Nadia. After the producer left, Simon checked in the cupboard. Success: Paul had triggered the video camera when he entered. The conversation was on tape.

On the soundstage
, there were mutterings from the set dressers: “Locked herself in the john and won’t come out,” “Save me the Help Wanted section, will ya?” and “I hear she’s going into rehab.”

It was like a bad
dream in which he had done something wrong and everyone knew. Karen had called him late last night to ask why he had not shown up, and he said that he had to work. But he was just rerunning the dailies, watching without seeing. The phone crackled in his hand, a slide and a thump, and Karen’s tinny voice faded. Click.

So he would shoot the stunts. Give the actors some time off, who
cared what it would cost to pay them for being idle. Normally the second unit director would film the stunts, but John already had a series of extras shots to do today. Nadia was scheduled to be there.

Good a time as any to kill two birds with one stone
.

Wednesday, June 7, 7:30 a.m. Day 13 of shooting.

Simon woke half an hour late, all three clock radios playing different stations and a production assistant pounding on his door: “Fran’s on her way
. She’s asking for you!”

He raced to get dressed. He wanted to check his video trap, but with a Teamster idling outside the trailer ready to drive him to the location, he contented himself with strapping his camera on. On his way outside, Simon noticed a third cut on his chest.

The Teamster blared a reggae song in his Jeep. Simon rolled the window down and called a location scout to get her working on tomorrow’s schedule, then checked his messages. The Harlan Detective Agency had called.

“Mr. Mercer. We received your payment and the photo you sent, and we have a match on your person of interest. Her name is Leah Masterson, and she’s a sex worker from
Seattle. Former stripper who works out of her home as a dominatrix. No police record. I’ve got all the specifics if you want to call my office.”

Simon stared at the phone. Leah Masterson. Sex worker. The Teamster sang along with the music as wind roared past and pushed at the bill of Simon’s baseball cap.

Dominatrix. Isn’t that a call girl who slaps her clients around before she bangs them?

The Jeep hit a bump in the road or else his stomach took a dive on its own. She had lied to him. To everyone. What the hell did she want with his film? He’d had a stalker before, but not one like this. How far he had trusted her, letting her into his head.

Both times he went under, he did not remember what she had asked him to do.

Sex worker. How many men had she slept with? That shouldn’t matter, it had nothing to do with him or her work on the movie, but
. . .

Who was she, really?

By the time Simon arrived on location, everything was in place for the first shot. He asked about Fran, but she had not arrived yet.

Parked off to one side, next to a caravan of equipment, costume, and catering trucks, sat the studio’s backhoe, bulldozer, and dump truck. A dummy in a blond wig,
perched on a folding chair, had its tresses styled by a makeup man. The PAs had finished digging up all the shrubs in a fifty-foot radius so the terrain would be bleak enough for the cliff dream sequence, when Julia escapes by diving off the edge. Yesterday the crew built the platform forty feet below, where the stuntwoman would land on a five-foot-thick foam crash pad after her jump. Three cameras were set up to catch everything, one here on the edge and two at the other side of the gravel pit. Brian, in a ragged Army jacket, shouted into his walkie-talkie to the camera crews on the other side of the gorge.

Simon got out of the Jeep. Cold sweat stood on the back of his neck. Work. He would wor
k. He could direct a shot like this in his sleep.
Take it easy. When you’re done with this, take Gunnar aside, have him . . . what? Escort her from the set like she’s crazy?

Karen stood nearby at the edge of the cliff, her back to him as she talked to Gunnar. No, of course it wasn’t her
; that had to be the stunt double. This woman was shorter than Karen. Blond hair curtained her face as she checked her safety harness.

Simon stood at the edge and looked down. Rusted wires and stiff green arms of scotch broom protruded from the cliff face. Just a flimsy-looking platform below, with a neon-orange crash pad and a railing of two-by-fours. If the stuntwoman missed the platform and her harness and cable failed—both of which were unlikely—she would fall
a hundred feet to the bottom. He took out his walkie-talkie to check in with Brian.

The DP’s voice crackled in his ear: “Ready when you are. Looks good from all three cameras.”

It would not have killed him the other night to have gone to Karen’s hotel room like he had promised. If she had a nervous breakdown and couldn’t finish filming . . . He imagined being fired, going slowly insane from not working because no one would trust him with a film again. Because he had opted to be paid partly on salary and the rest in profit percentage-points,
Babylon
would only get him out of debt if it was a hit—and it would be. It had to be. That would save him, StarBorn or no StarBorn.

“The bottom’s not all that far away.”

It was a woman’s voice. Simon turned. A woman with Karen’s hair and the fight choreographer’s face. Nadia in a blond wig. No—Leah. Stripper, dominatrix. Not a fight choreographer. Gunnar stood over by the trucks, talking to Brian. The rest of the crew gathered around them, smoking and laughing with their backs to the cliff’s edge.

“You’re wondering what it would be like to jump,” she said. “Blake would wonder that too.”

A gulf yawned inches from his feet.
Witch
, Karen had called her.

This woman is a liar
, he thought, but the information floated by like a cloud.

“What if Blake and Julia affected each other so much that their fantasies merged, and he goes with her over the edge when she escapes? What if their inner worlds, their stories, were the same, and this is where they collide?” She nodded toward the edge.

This woman was closer to being Julia than anyone.

Careful what you wish for
.

Green. Her eyes were mineral-green in the center, olive-brown at the outer ring.

By the trailers, the script girl shouted the punch line of a joke.

“Do you want to know what it would feel like?” said Leah.

Her face came closer. Her perfume reminded him of something important he had forgotten. Pastel eye shadow, lipstick, powder, faint spidering fan of lines at the corners of her eyes. Makeup for a blonde; it didn’t suit her. She put her hand on his arm, looked down over the edge. A gentle pressure, not quite hold-ing on to him, with her eyes turned away. He was the one staring, not her: no mind control here, no hypnosis. They balanced on the brink of a drop deep enough to start a whirlpool of centrifugal force in the pit of his stomach.

What it would be like: slow-motion, fatal. Wind would tug his clothes as his body turned in space. Not like riding a motor
-cycle, with its penetrating, insulating vibration and adjustments of balance, but clean, simple, with just the sound of cloth flapping.

Stop. This was how people died, doing things they weren’t trained for.

It had the same flavor as the euphoric energy he felt waking up to find to a new cut in his skin. The answer to the riddle loomed.

No one ever learned anything useful sitting on the sidelines.

“I’m going. Are you coming with me?” she asked.

Leah Masterson,
sex worker.
Why hadn’t she come on to him? When they were alone, in his trailer?

What did she want? Blond hair blew across her face, brush
-ing her mouth. Only now, comparing her to the woman she was made up to resemble, did he recall his first impression of her as small. His intellect told him he should be able to pick her up and swing her around like a child, but his senses disagreed. The way she displaced the air around her communicated that she belonged wherever she chose to stand.

As if he were underwater, Simon moved. He
pressed a button on his walkie-talkie. “How’s the setup? Cameras ready? Let’s roll.”

He
pocketed the phone, zipped his jacket. What
would
it be like?

Julia would know. Here she was. Inviting him to find out.

“Like this,” she said, her breath in his ear. “It works like this.”

She folded her arms around his waist, collapsed against him, and stepped off the edge. Her leg was braced behind his
, and they teetered. Dirt dislodged by her shoe poured over the edge, as pebbles and sand bounced down the side of the cliff. Wind lifted his hair. The sky covered them, a blue-and-white blanket. He was pressed hipbone to hipbone with Leah, her hands locked in a fist against his spine. Simon slid his arms around her waist as the ground tipped and fell away. Her weight toppled him like a fist, and they fell. Someone shouted.

Instead of blurring into confusion, his senses sharpened, slowing time. The side of the cliff rushed by like so much freeway under the wheels of a car. So matter
of fact, how space gave way, allowed them room to race wherever it was they were going. They would plummet, they might die, but there was nothing to be done now to change it.

That was the response of the distant and immortal universe, but his body screamed
for life. His limbs burned and his heart punched his ribs, air freezing his lungs. The only solid thing was Leah, flesh wrapped around bone, locked around him, her wig whipping his face.

Wasn’t his life supposed to flash before his eyes? Nothing appeared but the roar of air and the turning of weightlessness.

Punched in the stomach, dead stop. The crash pad’s coarse weave pummeled the side of his face, and a dull pain punched him in the side. He heard breathing or the wind blowing. It was Leah, lying next to him, her legs tangled around his. Heat surged in his stomach. He kept hearing the sound they had made as they hit, a muffled whump that died away in the atmosphere over their heads. In moments, a dozen faces would appear over the top of the cliff, looking down at them. Asking questions.

But not yet.

He was alive.

That was all he could feel. It rushed through his limbs.
Just that:
I am alive
. Not even:
I am alive, I can’t die because I have sixty more pages of script to shoot
. This was the
I am alive
he had felt when he finished shooting his first real film, when he first made love to Kyra, the black-haired woman who had walked away from him in the town where it never rained, and she had whispered his name as their bodies connected. Thrilling shock, electric.