This Location of Unknown Possibilities (15 page)

“Certainly. In fact, there are several scenes that require extras.” Marta patted the script knowingly.

“Do you need any experience? To be a movie extra, I mean.” As she moved to pour coffee, Marta rattled the teapot's lid. “I did a commercial for OK New and Used up Penticton way last year. I played ‘young mother buying a minivan.'” Marta watched Loon's paired quoting fingers, aloft like rabbit ears. “I'm Luna. Luna Kwakowsky. Maybe I'm too old?”

“Please to meet you. I'm Mar,” Marta swallowed back “Sadie” as equal parts impulsive and foolhardy. “You'd be perfect, I'm sure.” Luna looked well under thirty.

“Ha, that's nice of you. Mar, eh?
That short for Margaret,” the woman asked. “Martha?”

“Marta, actually, but Mar works best.” Marta disliked abbreviated names. “Why don't you write down your number? On the back of the script is fine. I can pass it along to the Production Coordinator.”

“Will do, thanks. And don't you worry about the bill, it's on the house.” She grabbed the coffee pot but remained at the table. “We heard that Michelle Pfeiffer is staying up there at that fancy hotel at the Burrowing Owl winery.”

Think smaller
, Marta thought. “No comment. I really ought to go over the new script.”

“Keep me in mind.”

Marta nodded in reply and flipped to the final pages.

INT. SWINBURNE'S COMPOUND - NIGHT - MOMENTS LATER

Potter advances toward the alien hesitantly, palms open to show his peaceful intentions.

DR. POTTER

In the name of civility, stranger, I urge you to diplomacy.

The Alien hisses and crowds Potter into a corner. Lady Swinburne enters with stealth and watches events unfold. She holds a grain scythe.

POTTER

We are… We are men of Science. We must communicate!

As Potter stretches out a hand in welcome, the alien swells up and covers Potter to consume him in a frenzy. Lady Swinburne uses this opportunity for her assault.

LADY SWINBURNE

(rushing in)

To hell in swift dispatch, demon!

‘
Get away from him, you bitch,' or its early nineteenth century equivalent
, Marta thought.
Obviously
.

The alien spews liquid from gaping wounds and shrieks in pain. Lady Swinburne commits to a final attack and the alien falls away from Doctor Potter, whose wounds are too severe to heal. Lady Swinburne rushes to him and places her face close. She is in tears.

POTTER

(whispering)

The eyes of science have been blind, Lady.

Demons do indeed live.

SWINBURNE

(grabs his hand)

Reserve your breath, good man.

POTTER

I have loved you always, Harriet. Always.

SWINBURNE

Fear not, we shall commune again on the other side.

POTTER

Au revoir.

SWINBURNE

Au revoir.

Lady Swinburne turns to the doors of her chamber. They open and the few remaining villagers rush in. They stare horrified at the alien and then begin to chant Lady Swinburne's name in celebration.

Marta agreed that there would be little need for historical accuracy. In cut-rate movies like this desert dwellers in off-white robes would suffice; attention to actual details of national fashion was pointless, a costly indulgence. And the audience, as Jake and Lora had underscored, cared about cleavage, scary aliens, and gory action sequences, not fidelity to cultural history.

Marta waved to the waitress as she exited the booth. The woman strode to the till and handed Marta a scrap of paper. “They can leave a message if I'm not home.”

3
.

M
arta gripped the wheel, poised to shift into gear but unsure about the next destination. With her lettered expertise rendered as useful as an expired coupon, she'd been stripped of qualifications. What menial tasks Lora had in mind, Marta couldn't guess; this time tomorrow, Lora might ask her to go on coffee runs or taxi studio dignitaries alongside Chaz. Perhaps. Errand-runner was such a distant cousin to the nerve-centre job she'd projected that it scarcely registered. Speculating if she'd swallow the insulting demotion, Marta saw herself on the Skytrain platform on the day of the studio interview, a living definition of a sinking feeling. Still, the ready silent answer now—“Definitely not, if only for the sake of saving face”—comforted her.

Idling moments later, mitigating factors weakened her resolve. While cramming clothes into a suitcase, hurriedly checking out, speeding toward the coast while spewing a cloud of
eat my dust
, and being well paid thanks to someone else's oversight—the easy choice—made perfect sense, Marta felt invested in the chance invitation and the radical change of pace. And backing out because of fizzled plans smacked of unadventurousness, a species of cowardice.

The prospect of staying at the Star-Lite for even two days sounded dreary nonetheless; she hadn't packed many books and always wrote in close proximity to a library, a real one. The all-expenses-paid summer holiday the production's legal counsel told Jake to offer also had a limited appeal—vineyards and orchards would quickly fade as interests, and reclining under an umbrella at a lake while buttered with sunblock looked no better than biding time in a darkened motel room.
Maybe it's time to revisit
Angel, she thought.
While no respected critic named
Angel
an underrated masterpiece, it definitely overshadowed
Angel
4
; she could in similar fashion strive to guarantee that
The Battle for Djoun
became all it could be—not gold, but containing use-value nonetheless, like copper or zinc. Quality was quality, and serviceable B-grade ranked higher than
Mansquito
. The office weighed in too; frantic and quarrelsome, yes, but the overall Gemütlichkeit atmosphere refreshed with a tonic's effervescence.

Options existed, then. Marta backed up; touring around for a few hours would allow for productive brooding.

4
.

F
or the unscheduled free day Marta challenged herself with an assignment: to wander without items on a to-do list. She deemed fretting and organizing irrelevant; she'd been tasked with arriving at a decision and well over half a day remained before Lora required the answer. Disappointed at the turn of events and apathetic about Lora's proposed choice, Marta guessed that being penned up with plans and schemes in room
#10
would only squander time and breed resentment. As the solution gestated, she'd answer the beckoning of the valley's lazy bends and their powdery byways.

The habit of writing a few points in a notebook to outline the day's agenda was, as always, compelling; Marta resisted, tentative in her belief in the advantages of a break in orthodoxy. Still, she couldn't drive blind; she mimicked arbitrariness instead. About to signal a left turn for the sloping ersatz-Spanish main street of Osoyoos—a questionable master plan begun by one town council and abandoned by another—she accelerated directly onward, stopping at a roadside stand for cherries before approaching the low-volume border crossing. Her memory of Oroville, the region's flat farming hub on the American side of the border, wavered slightly.
While overlaid with images of other small towns, the recollection of her grandmother struggling to change gears—“Cheese and crackers,” she'd mutter at distressing grinding sounds—in the black interior of the shuddering red Chevy Nova while en route to the shopping bargains there possessed a photograph's detail.

The place hadn't grown much, though its economy still flourished with agribusiness; pallets and faded red plywood bins, fruit processing plants, farm machinery, sprinklers, and ditches bursting with weeds stood out as the only interruptions to the acres blanketed with trees laden with ripening fruit. Further south in higher altitudes the climate dried out further and business switched to resource extraction of another kind. Besides the region's searing winds, Marta recalled cattle pens and windowless slaughterhouses, stilt-legged truckers with plaid shirts and etched silver belt buckles proclaiming loyalty to truck brands, and an annual stampede with a parade of covered wagons, beauty queens, carnival rides, deep-fried batter, and widespread animal cruelty. She would drive no more than ten minutes southward today.

After another impromptu turn, Marta stopped for water—and toilet tissue, to replace the Star-Lite's supply, criminally flimsy yet seemingly manufactured from recycled bark—at the deserted supermarket where her grandmother had shopped for discounts decades before. Pulling over again minutes later, she spent a few silent and appalled minutes exploring a forlorn collectibles shop that specialized in settler cast-offs and grime-filmed ashtrays shaped like cowboy hats. Eyes watering, Marta tugged down a leg of her jeans, surprised that the snug fabric didn't amplify the impact of the heat. Further stops and starts to gawk at Americana struck her as ambitious as well as needless, especially since such a bounty of government-funded Points of Interest towered nearer to the Star-Lite.

Marta threw the final cherry pit out the window before approaching the return border crossing. There, a stiff-postured guard waved her through with a half complement of questions.
It must be my honest eyes and unthreatening face
, she thought.

She met the remaining destinations of the day with tinges of unwilled nostalgia. Before nosing the car up to the Anarchist Mountain lookout to ponder the immense blasted panorama with a congregation of RV travelers, Marta crossed the solid yellow line at an ice cream shop housed inside an imitation Dutch windmill. Standing a few paces from the menu fastened above the order window—the same hand-painted sign, although updated with taped-on cardboard adjustments to flavour offerings and of course prices—she concluded that besides the area's inevitable tourist- and retiree-targeting real estate build up, the only significant change appeared to be personal: a radically diminished tolerance for dairy products.

Following take-out lunch from a Thai restaurant in Penticton—eaten while seated at a willow-shaded picnic table facing Skaha Lake—Marta drove along gravel roads running toward railway tracks and farm houses and climbed higher on the banks for sips of wine flights at plateau vineyards with clever names. As much as she enjoyed the meandering, by day's end Marta felt satisfied that she'd seen enough. An additional week? None other than a sentence in a prison masquerading as a recreational paradise.
Just ask Robinson Crusoe
, Marta thought. Solitary confinement on the Island of Despair cannot be disguised by lush plant life and seductive beach sand. Whole days in the valley, heated stretches of hours—not a chance: Marta's limit for leisure was hardly a secret; and as mellifluous as the words looked on the page,
dolce far niente
didn't enchant her in the least
.

Yes, she'd explain the situation to Mrs. Simms, pack, and speed away into the night. Chaz might pass by and report the vacated room to Lora. A few days later she'd send a terse, unrepentant email with instructions for payment, the relationship terminated.

5
.

M
arta pulled in front of
#10
moments after the early evening sun—pretty but strange: fulvous, the yellow-brown of topaz—had dropped behind the mountains. The sky had turned darker than comfort for driving, but an exasperating search for the public library—simple pragmatism: the motel offered no computer access—delayed arrival. Eventually spotting the set of green awnings the gas station clerk described, she soon unearthed nothing about one of the script's co-authors. The second, however, kept busy: his name appeared promiscuously as a contributor to an extensive list of straight-to-discount-bin feature films as well as TV movies and apparently lacklustre episodes of short-lived series, the names of most Marta didn't recognize.

Marta noticed that the writer possessed talent of a diminished kind, adept—if that word fit—at churning out sequels and enfeebled formulas: science fiction, action, romantic comedy, holiday-themed dramas and issue-of-the-week specials. Dismayed, she read that he shared co-responsibility for
Ms. M.P.
, a ridiculous updating of
Mildred Pierce
she'd watched with condemning eyes late at night a few summers before. As visual and intelligible content it had struck her as depleted and sad, like a black and white photocopy of a Rothko canvas. Obviously, a predatory alien traipsing around in Lebanon circa
1825
wouldn't faze the screenwriter whatsoever; the man could cobble a script together during the office commute.

Marta removed the plastic
DO NOT DISTURB
sign she'd hung outside. The room was warm and as stale as before but undisturbed. She preferred to make the bed herself and avoid exposing the presence of sheets packed at Undre Arms.

After shucking off the canvas sneakers and jeans Marta stretched out on the bed and stared at venous ceiling plaster.
Since no note had been jammed under the door and the phone's red nub of a message indicator light threw no light, Marta sighed: she'd have to swallow the reluctance to call Lora. And though that simple conversation hinged on a response—yes or no—Marta realized that the day in the valley had not resulted in one fateful answer; her mind vacillated instead. Marta looked once again at the door step: no envelope. Lora hadn't mentioned per diem at the production office, and Marta guessed she might have to pick up the cash-laden envelope in person. The nocturnal drive to town might steel her nerves; and by the time she reached for the glass doorknob at Joan's, a solid answer would have coalesced.