We Eat Our Own (17 page)

No Spanish? Okay. Beautiful girl, tell me your name.

English this time. In the corner of the room, Anahi returns with an armload of cups. She pauses in the doorway and stares at Irena.

He says it in Italian: Bella, qual è il tuo nome?

Her heart pauses. Her face is blank and smiling.

We're going, Hank says. He pulls her up by the arm.

But it's a party! The fat man says.

The men with the guns have their backs to the door. Hank pushes past them with both hands.

You'll leave your M-19 friend here alone? the fat man says.

Hank keeps moving, shouts something in Spanish so fast that she can't understand.

The fat man pounds his own chest once. Come on! That isn't the Jungle Hank I know!

One of the guards moves to bar them, but Hank keeps shoving.

Stay! The fat man starts pouring drinks, a fistful of shot glasses and teacups in one hand, sloshing silver liquid over all of them at once. Hey, hey, everyone, let's toast to Hank. Come on. Let's toast to Hank staying at the party.

The door rushes shut. The sound behind the door doesn't. As they stride into the jungle, Irena can hear the room shouting the toast, the liquid glugging in the neck of the bottle, the sticky sound of the men adjusting their grips on the rifles. She
looks back over her shoulder and sees them, the guards with their guns hovering just a bit higher in the dark. Hank drags her forward so hard that her gaze jolts. He grabs the flashlight from her and switches it on. She can see the guards' faces, but she can't make out their eyes.

The air in the trees has thickened: the heat is heavy like the dark is heavy, pushing against her legs and her chest as she moves.

Slow down, she says. Hank, come on.

You never come back here. Hank's hand is still heavy on her upper arm. His feet make a scraping sound against the ground plants.

Who was that guy back there? What did he call him, the guy from the M-19?

Hank exhales.

He was cute, she fakes. What if I wanted to party with him for a while?

He says nothing.

Hey, hey, she purrs. I'm not scared, if that's what you think.

Hank stops. He holds both of Irena's shoulders in his hands and keeps her there, his breath heavy in the space between them. The hotel is that way, he says, aiming the flashlight into a tangle of bush with a skinny path cleaved into the center of it. His face looks wild, like he'd been running furiously into a headwind. Follow the trail, he says. Forget everyone you saw.

Irena angles her face into the light, tries to make him look at her. Let's stay out. One more hour, come on. It's almost morning.

He gives her a look that says,
Stupid fucking girl
.

Then he clears his throat.

You forget everyone you saw, Hank says. You never come back. Stay in the hotel from now on.

He shoves the flashlight back into her hands, jogs off into the trees.

• • •

When Irena gets back to the hotel, there's someone waiting in the meal tent.

It could be Teo or Ugo or a hotel janitor taking a smoke break or someone she has never met. It could be anyone, but Irena knows, before her eyes confirm it, that it has to be the new American.

She knows because she wills it. She knows because her body signals her, before she even registers his height or the slouch in his shoulders or the boyish way he gnaws a cuticle, that this is who she wants to play her boyfriend.

Before he even sees her, she's practicing what she'll say to him, practicing the words behind her teeth. She will make her tongue flip like a tree frog's, a thousand times a second. Her mouth will be full of poison.

Just before he turns toward her, as he opens up his mouth and calls her toward him with a voice full of relief, Irena realizes: she can control him.

She can alter her elocution. It's as simple as that. This American, he will believe every word she says.

RICHARD

Ovidio

H
ere is something that fills you with shame when you think of it, three days later:

The morning after you saw the prop body and Irena finally told you what the film was about, after you'd stayed up all night doing Meisner exercises in the mirror to convince yourself that you were Richard Trent, you came up with what you thought was a brilliant plan.

You combed your hair eighteen times on each side. You did forty push-ups and walked a straight, fast line across the parking lot, your blood still jumpy under your skin.

You found Ugo at the meal tent.

I'm ready, you said. What are we shooting today?

The director pinched a piece of unbuttered toast between his fingers and looked at it, disturbed, like
it
had just spoken to him. We don't need you yet, he said, incredulous.

Something in you deflated, but you tried to smile over it. Is there a production schedule I could look at? You know, just to get an idea of what I need to prepare?

The director just chewed, gazing blankly past your shoulder.

You wondered if it was a translation issue. You tried again: Do you know when you'll need me next? For what scenes?

How would I know that? Ugo said, and then shoved the toast into his cheek, turned and whispered something urgent to his
DP
.

It happened three days in a row, some version of this conversation. The first day, you'd gotten on the bus like everyone else, waited on the sidelines in case he'd changed his mind. You watched Irena and Teo film a scene where Irena stepped half-naked into a river again and again, threw her arms over her chest when she realized he was watching. Ugo made her do a dozen takes, and every time, her body was a surprise—T-shirt tan lines and unexpected freckles. You were never desensitized to it. Every time, you waited for the director to say it was your turn, to call you into the scene with her.

He didn't.

The second day, you didn't get on the bus to set, just to see if anyone would notice.

They didn't.

You told yourself that maybe it's cultural; maybe American filmmakers are the only ones who are so neurotically organized, with their thick binders full of storyboards and shot orders, twiddling the sound levels for two hours before they let you say a word. They just have a different process, these Europeans, more associative, more free-form. They must.

The crew all speaks in Italian, so you didn't understand the things you heard them whispering as they loaded up: that Ugo had been filming nothing but the Indians hunting for days, close shots of spears bending into the surface of the river, close shots of impaled eels dragged out after. Close shots of Teo and Irena, gaping in reaction. You ignored the sound guy who
whispered, in English like he wanted you to hear, that maybe Richard's character has been cut altogether.

With everyone gone, you took long showers in the single outdoor stall that the cast and crew usually all have to share, studying the pattern of soap whirling down the chestnut-size hole someone's gouged for a drain. You felt the anxiety release from your muscles, and then you felt them seize right back up as the maid pounded once on the stall door, shouting in broken English: Water shortage, please, not a long time?

You tried exploring the town. Twenty-five mosquito bites just on the walk over; a collection of plywood shacks painted blue and pink and Creamsicle-orange, none of which ever seemed open in the daylight hours.

You sat in the hotel room and read
Respect for Acting
:
If I compare myself to a large, meaty, round apple, I discover that my inner and outer cliché image of myself is only a wedge of it—­possibly the wedge with the rosy cheek on the skin. But I have to become aware of myself as a total apple—

You closed
Respect for Acting
. You got the
TV
to work, finally. You watched a washed-out episode of
Petticoat Junction,
overdubbed in Spanish, the volume on maximum.

The third day, you didn't leave your room at all.

The third night, you tried to sleep. But hunger and anxiety worked on you, made all the air in the room feel like it was boiling. The table fan moved the hair on your scalp and it made you feel like tiny animals were running over your skull.

Around midnight, you went looking for Irena. You didn't know her room number, so you waited in the meal tent until she found you. You had planned just to ask her if she had heard any new rumors about your character or when in hell they might need you to film. But when you saw her, striding across
the lot with a worried expression on her face, it was like a seam ripped open in you.

Here is something else you are still ashamed of, the morning after:

That you cried on the shoulder of her little white T-shirt. That when you pulled away, when Irena looked you in the eye and spoke—listen, it's okay, we'll talk to him tomorrow—you saw that you'd left a wet pattern there like an archipelago.

After Irena put you to bed, you dreamed about Kay. She was sitting naked on your shoulders in mime makeup, shouting the same two words directly into the heat of the stagelight: Total apple! Total apple! Total apple! When you told her you were tired, when you tried to set her down, she said no; the audience is full of foxes, and they all paid full admission. How can we stop the play before we've given them what they came for?

• • •

The next morning, Ugo skips breakfast.

His seat at the picnic table has a ragged heart carved into it in the exact spot that's usually covered by his tray, the words
F
AT PUSSY
carved into the center of it with a blue pen.

You look around for Irena, but she isn't there either.

You tense your jaw and drop your own lunch tray on top of the heart, pivot-turn and march over to Fabi's table.

You demand a script from him—any script, so long as you're in it. He only has the scene for the day, handwritten on four sheets of legal paper, the letters angular and dark. You snatch it from his hands and stride off toward the far end of the tent, willing your ears to shut out all noise so you can think.

Under the centered heading, you see your character's
name—
RICHARD
—and a monologue, thank God, a
monologue,
and it is a full page long.

Your heart pounds with gratitude. On the page, Richard is impassioned, shouting straight to camera about the ferocity of jungle life, the daily violence of the strong consuming the weak. If Veronica has been consumed by these savages, Richard says, and the authorities are no help, then we must become the more savage force. We will make them tell us where she is. We will find her. And if we don't—on the page, the word
BEAT
is written in huge letters—then this will be our revenge.

Then you're supposed to give a cue—
Gayle, Joe! Now!—­
signaling the crew to torch the tree of hives.

You flip the page and there is a doodle of a cartoon girl shot through with arrows. You flip the page and it's the same girl again, a toothless crescent for a smile,
X
s for eyes, poorly drawn flames curling off her body. Someone's scrawled a few notes in the corner in Italian, a line of numbers and times, but there's no explanation. You flip the page over. The lines are blank yellow, stained with dirty fingerprints. There isn't any more.

Fabi is routing for something in a scrambled egg when you stride back up to his picnic table, slap the script back down.

I don't understand.

Fabi grins and chews.

You need to explain this to me.

You like it? Fabi says. Big—big words, for you?

Why does Richard do this? Where—how far into the movie is this scene?

Fabi nods, peppering his eggs.

I don't—God, you don't speak any English, do you?

He doesn't.

Then the voice comes from behind you. You don't recognize
it immediately: Baldo, the long-legged producer who drove you from the airport, still in the same powder-blue shirt. He's nattering in Italian to Fabi, crosses to Fabi's side of the table. He sits and starts eating somberly. His plate has nothing but meat on it.

Hey, you speak English. Do you know about this scene?

Baldo glances quickly at the page and exhales. I can't believe he still wants to do that.

So you've read it.

Baldo saws a sausage into thirds, exhausted. Yes. I'm going to have to beg the insurance company for forgiveness, but yes. We're doing it.

It's just that I—I thought the premise was that Richard was a journalist? You stutter. I thought this was, like, sort of a possible
rescue
mission—

So?

So this is crazy. This
tree of hives,
or whatever it's called—it's some sort of Indian dwelling, right?

Baldo sniffs, annoyed. Sure.

Then why would he attack these dwellings where Veronica might—

Why does it matter to you?

Because I need to understand his motivation.

Why?

You puzzle, stare into the mess of sliced ham on Baldo's plate. It's important for an actor. Motivation is always the most important thing.

Who told you that?

You blink. Baldo is looking you full in the face for the first time. There's a sag that tugs his left eyelid down, a brownish stain like a watermark on his cheek. You shouldn't stare. You shouldn't.

Then he sighs: Fine. I think he was talking about putting this scene at about . . . what do you call, the halfway point.

You nod vigorously. Okay. Okay, is this a
change
in his character, or—

Yes.

Okay, so, ah, he's compromising his ethics a bit, he's getting carried away by emotion, but his
intention
is still to find Veronica and—

Jesus, I can't listen to this.

I just need more information.

Fabi whisper-chatters something in Italian, points his fork at you and swirls it around.

Please, I just need to know why Richard would set a forest fire when he's trying to save someone inside it.

Then I'll make it easy for you, Baldo pronounces. You're not the director. You don't need to worry about what Richard would and wouldn't do.

The way Baldo says it, it's like a heavy stone has been set down on the table between you.

He eats. I
am
Richard, you try to say, watching him scrape up the meat with the side of his fork. I'm playing him, at least. But your voice sounds tentative, even to you.

Baldo rolls his neck once to each side and reaches for the salt. Richard is a bad man, he says. Okay? Is that enough motivation for you? Richard is a bad man. Why he does what he does is not your problem. He laughs. It's mine, if it's anyone's. I'm the one who'd have to pay off the lawsuit if this fucking stunt gets out of hand.

But how—

Baldo sets the saltshaker down and stands. Fucking ask your director. They'll film it this afternoon.

• • •

Here is something you don't know:

Richard and his crew don't arrive in the Yanomamö village until the second act of the film.

You don't know it, because you'll film almost none of the lead-up to the scene you'll shoot today. Ugo will find an Indian who can serve as a body double, and he'll be the one whose silhouette stomps over the last hill and looks out over the town. Ugo will have a store of reaction shots he can draw from; you saying Wow, look at this. You saying Are you rolling? You saying Quick, over there! The body double will be the one who spies on the Indians for the first time. The body double will be the one who hides behind a rock with Joe and films their ceremonial meal; he'll end up as your voice double, too, since he'll be the one making the disgusted sounds into the mic as the Indians hack the shell off a giant tortoise for a stew.

You'll be the one who films the scene with Gayle where Richard decides that diplomacy isn't the solution here. She'll be the one who says, We need to find a translator to question them, please, they might know what happened, and you'll stop building the campfire, look up at her and say: No, Gayle. That's not what we're going to do.

It will be the body double, though, who handles all the close shots. It will be the body double's hand that pulls all the triggers in the movie, swings all the machetes, holds every Indian facedown in the mud.

You won't be there to film those scenes.