NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD - Chapter 26 -by Peter Nolan Smith

TWENTY-SIX

Three days wearing the same suit from dawn to dusk under a Death Valley sun and six without a shower or a shave had fine-tuned Sean's dereliction along with less desired result of the ripening of his soiled clothing. No one in the crew would approach the male lead and Sherri also kept her distance, except for their shared scenes. Sean himself could barely tolerate what had become his second skin. Strangely his stench hardly bothered Lena.
Having already completed three scenes in the ghost town today, crawling out of his crusty suit and into the motel bed sounded like paradise. Sadly Sherri had other plans for him and the crew.
The director anxiously glanced at the long shadows running away from the ruins. There wasn't much light left. Maybe five minutes. The last scene should have been simple, however Sean had bungled his one line every time. "We have four takes. None of them work, let's get this last one right."
Everyone hoped Sean could snap off this forty-second monologue without a pause or a stammer or shifting from his mark or mispronouncing the word 'women', each of these being the previous reasons for the director having cried out, "Cut."
Unlike a Hollywood set with scores of extraneous drones, the crew of ADAM AND TWO EVES consisted a camerawoman, light tech, two gaffers, one grip, a best boy, a PA, a soundwoman, and the make-up lady. They were all pros of the porno trade and their glares made Sean feel like an interloper.
"Water, I need water. Give me that, and I'll do fine.” His mouth was parched and his lips cracked, but he was only stalling, for all the ease of the preceding three days of shooting had been evaporated by his inability to say his lines.
"Okay, make it quick. The sun's going to be down in less than five minutes."
Sean ran over to the crumbling skeleton of masonry and picked up a bottle of water from the catering table. Last night, this morning, and every chance between shots, Sean had recited these lines perfectly, but for the last hour in front of the camera, the speech of macho-domination over women blurred in his head.
"What's wrong, Mr. Tempo?” Sherri asked with plain exhaustion.
While the crew could sleep once the day's filming was over, there was no rest for the all-powerful director, for she had to go over the next day's schedules and view the rushes sent up from LA.
"I just can’t get this right." Sean could not get around the fact that it was his character, the last man on earth, was spouting off these sexist barbs, not him, for these women certainly couldn't judging from their reaction to his words.
"Calm down, Sean." Eventually any actor was bound to forget his lines, no matter how professional they were, but Sherri had too much riding on this for him to seize up. "This happens to us all. Usually when you least expect it and when it matters most. There's no explaining it. If we had the time, we could shoot it tomorrow, but we don't have time. Just do your best. If you don't, no one's going to take away your birthday. So give it a couple more seconds and come on out slugging."
Emboldened by director's advice, he announced, "I'm ready now."
"Okay, let's do it." Sherri hid her surprise that her talk had worked, for had been ready to call it a day.
As Sean returned to his mark by the facade of the ghost town's bank, Sherri lined up behind the camera, peered through the viewfinder, and took her place next to Lena, telling the crew, "One take. Straight through. No stops. Ready. Camera."
The camerawoman, an old veteran of feminist porno, re-aimed the French-made 16mm camera and gently pressed the button. The film whirred at 24 frames per second. The lens captured the image of the three people and bounced the light off a mirror, reversing it through the gate onto the exposed film.
The last three people on Earth.
Two women.
One man.
The smaller woman with the gun orders the man to turn his back to her. He shakes his head and refuses defiantly, "Go ahead and shoot me, but you're going to have to look into my eyes. Me, the father of the babies growing in your bellies, and what if two babies turn out to be both female? After them nothing. Is that what you really want? The end of the Us on earth. With me alive, you can have more babies. Our own little Eden. Adam and his two Eves. What's wrong about that? You hate men and what we've done to the world. Me, I did nothing to you. Maybe to other women, but now I know better. Hell, this time you women can be on top?"
The two women regard one another, saddened to acknowledge the truth of what the man had said, and the younger woman in tattered white dress lowers the gun slightly, but lifts it swiftly and pulls the trigger. Blam.
The man flinches.
The young woman keeps the gun trained on him. "One chance. That's all you get."
"That's all I need." the man promises.
"Cut." shouted Sherri, and the camera's shutter snapped shut. The wizened make-up artist commented cold-bloodedly, "I would have shot him dead and be rid of them."
Sherri smiled, figuring if Sean's monologue had sounded right in reality, then it would on film as well. "It's a keeper. Let's pack up and get back to the motel, girls. You too, Mr. Tempo."
The film crew loaded the trucks with the camera, sound equipment, wires, and electronic gear, while Sean stared at the dust devils swirling madly across the pancake-flat saltpans. Once more he reflected that, if he had not turned his head, a bullet would have drilled through his skull. Something had to make him forget what almost happened.
"Are you okay?" Lena handed him a paper cup filled with black coffee.
"Just feel like the air leaked out of the balloon." He sipped the bittersweet Java, wishing he had a dozen donuts to go with it, except that pleasure was a long way off from today.
"After a day like today I feel that same way too." Lena's rolled her head to relieve a cramp in her neck.
"Your neck hurt?" Sean asked.
"Like a knife is in a muscle," Lena answered, lifting up her hair.
"Let me see what I can do." Sean kneaded the young girl's knotted muscles and Lena leaned into him unexpectedly.
"Don't stop,” Lena sighed sibilantly.
Sean's fingers worked up her neck into the Suzie Wong black hair. The meat of his palms rubbed the taut tendons. In response the small Spanish girl swayed rhythmically from side to side without any need for music. "You have a woman in your life?"
"No, not for some time.” Sean confessed without an embarrassment, since he had grown too accustomed to being alone.
Even with her dress and his pants between them, he felt naked, especially when she asked, "Not even for sex?"
"Not even for that.” The sun went down behind the shattered hills and sprayed an ultraviolet corona through the evening sky, transforming the old mining town's ruins into a mystical city on another planet. Even the gritty dust became perfume to him.
"How long has it been?"
"Six months."
"Six months."
"I've gone longer."
"I'd die."
"Sometimes I think I have.” As his thumbs crisscrossed down Lena's vertebrae to the base of her spine, Sean could have sworn she was purring and asked, "You want your back cracked?"
"Oh, yes.” She threw her arms around his shoulders and when he bearhugged her, the discs cracked audibly and he elfin face shone with the sun's fading embers, as she gasped, "I needed that and more."
"I know.” Lena’s smelling like a road retarred with spice intoxicated his senses. Every cell in his body and mind told him to kiss her, but then he spotted Sherri over by the Skylark in conference with the camerawoman and released Lena from his embrace. She stepped back with her sea-green eyes sized him up for a later date before going over to the Skylark.
With the sun down and the wind blowing out of the mountains, the air rapidly lost its warmth. To the East the stars' pinpoints of light already pierced in the evening sky. Sean lifted his head to search for a familiar constellation, as if finding Orion might tell him where he really was or what Lena saw in him.
Sherri had been watching Lena with the man for the last few minutes. So had everyone else on the crew. Maybe their new-found intimacy was all pure as snow, except throughout her career in porno Sherri had seen hundreds of leading men and ladies fall into bed like cats in heat, for when you are making a movie, the two worlds of the screen and reality often get confused. She had done it herself so many times that she had never imagined herself being faithful to just one person no matter how much she desired it.
At least until she met Lena.
Now she had given her heart, she couldn't understand why Lena couldn't do the same and asked herself, "What does she see in him?"
In his ragged black suit, he could have been a homeless person. There had to be more to her attraction and he had shown a little of that in the last scene by actually becoming his character. This man from nowhere.
Sherri concealed the pangs of jealousy rather than risk an outburst that might estrange the younger woman or jeopardize the film and greeted Lena with a kiss, but slipped and asked, "You like him, don't you?'
"He's not a bad person."
"For a man."
"For anyone, Sherri, but he's not you.” Lena caressed her lover's cheek and watched, as the van and the truck pulled away. The man in the black suit sat on a ruined wall. It was just like the movie had become life and Sherri feared how closely the real people would follow the characters in the script. She could only hope not at all and yelled, "You want to stay here all night."
"No, the motel sounds good to me.” He ran over and sat behind Lena.
Sherri stepped on the gas and the Buick skimmed over the dirt away from Rhyolite. Where this man came from might be a mystery, but he would never get anywhere with Lena, because Sherri would stop him before the first kiss.
No matter what it took.