• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 277 0

storefronts, and the Actress watched as the shops of downtown Bakersfield went by. The windows appeared small and meager to her, not like the showcases of Los Angeles, but the shops made the most of their space. In a record store window, she spotted the shiny discs hanging from the ceiling like black stars. An appliance store lined up a whole row of television sets all tuned to the same station, and the sedan drove by just as the owner began turning them off, one by one, for the night. A shoe store racked as many pairs as possible on the floor of its window display, leaving the windows open to scrutiny from the outside: a fat man stood at the front counter, chin in his hand, watching two young women scurry with stacks of thin boxes.

Gradually, the businesses turned over to gas stations and animal feed shops, small lumber stores and farm equipment repair barns, all of the various places that made up, as the Actress recalled from her own youth, the everyday landscape of small-town life. As Carter drove them out toward the access road, she got to thinking about her secretary character making a run for such a town, the desire stirring within her to seek love with a man who ran a hardware store, a business that could turn hardscrabble in a drought year, given a town like this. She pursed her lips at her own imagination, the extension she was granting to the story’s parameters. “If setting is so complicated,” she said to the Director, “I can imagine why you don’t want your players to overthink their roles.”

“Actors can interfere to a degree if they overplay. I don’t like actors placing too many emotions that aren’t there. It’s the audience that should feel sad or frightened or angry, don’t you agree? I think I’ve done my job well if the audience responds in that way.”

“If I may be so bold, then,” she said, “what, really, is there left for me to do, as an actress?”

“Well, your character has done a terrible thing. You’ve lied and you’re a thief, yet I want the audience to have some sympathy for you, to always consider you the heroine. Even when the police are chasing you, I want the audience to be rooting for your escape. How you do that will be up to you. I don’t know anything about acting. I just know who’s right for the part. Instinct tells me. So do the terms of the contract.”

She chuckled. The driver slowed down as he approached a cluster of motels, each of them announcing themselves with large neon signs already turned on against the coming dusk. The Mountainview, which faced north to the flat stretch of the rest of the Valley. The NiteNite and the Anchor Motel, surrounded on all sides by dirt and gravel.

“The Mountainview has a big, handsome sign,” said the Actress. Its large blue neon arrow descended straight down, narrowing to a point that curved to the driveway entrance and the motel’s name in bold white letters.

“Lovely facade,” said the Director. “It looks like what you’d picture if one said the word ‘motel,’ don’t you think? But the name’s all wrong.”

“I like the sound,” said the Actress.

“It’s not the sound. It’s the name. If I showed that sign on the screen, some fool in the audience is going to wonder where the mountain is.”

The Actress turned and pointed out the back window. “There’s a mountain there.”

“No, no,” said the Director. “You had to turn around to see that. It would break the composition to show that angle. You want the approach from the road, the motel sign, and then what happens in the motel. No one cares about the road scenery on the way to the place.” The Director leaned forward to get a better look at the other two motels. “Let’s go farther along the road.”

“What’s wrong with these two?”

“The NiteNite is a terrible name for an inn. Doesn’t sound very classy, does it? Even for a truck driver. And a place called the Anchor should be near water. Florida, cotton candy colors, and all that.”

Not much farther down the access road, a large, assuming rectangular sign came into view: watson’s inn, it read, and the Director tapped on the front seat to get Carter to slow down.

“Should I pull in?