What You See in the Dark - Manuel Munoz [52]
“May I ask why?” the Actress called out after her.
“To be honest,” said the woman, “I don’t like dealing with liars.”
“Tell her we’ll compensate handsomely,” the Director said.
“I do think we could manage a nice compensation,” said the Actress. “For all your time.”
“You Los Angeles people …” The woman shook her head. “You think money solves everything. You’re so goddamn money-grubbing. You could’ve just rented a room and scouted all you want when I wasn’t looking.”
“Just let her go,” said the Director.
“Thank you for your time,” the Actress said, and started to roll up the window.
The woman took a few steps back toward the car. “You know, if you hadn’t lied about who you were …” Her voice rose as in a pitch of anger, firm yet cracked through with a pain so apparent that the Actress wanted to hold the sound in her fingers, a small, angry pulse in her hands.
“We’re very sorry to have bothered you, ma’am,” said the Actress, rolling up the window with a rush, muffling the woman’s words, and she urged Carter to get them going.
The woman reached the car and rapped at the window with a flat palm, but they couldn’t hear what she was saying, and Carter pulled away with enough of a rush to kick up some of the gravel, the Actress staring straight ahead in a bit of embarrassment, yet at the same time filled with a need to turn back to see how the woman had been left standing.
“Awfully defensive,” said the Director. “Whatever was she talking about?”
“In the café,” said the Actress. “She was our waitress, the hostess. Did you see her, Carter?”
“I did, ma’am.”
“What was she angry about?” asked the Director.
“She recognized me and I told her she was mistaken,” said the Actress, and yet while she saw that such an exchange shouldn’t have warranted such a reaction, something else about the woman lingered with her, a strange understanding.
“So unpleasant,” said the Director. “In any case, I’m sure the set decorator can put together a typical room from a few photographs. It’s an easy layout to copy. Flat, rectangular. Nothing complex.”
No, the Actress thought, not complex at all. Carter drove them back into Bakersfield. She put her hand to her forehead and leaned against the door, sighing audibly as if she were tired, and the Director took the hint. The ride back was quiet. She thought about the woman, her fierce response to their presence, to her small white lie. What kind of person was she to react with such defensive hurt? she wondered. The woman was a café hostess, but what was she doing at the motel? Was it a second job? No, not if she was still wearing the uniform. Perhaps she was the wife of the man who owned Watson’s Inn, an unhappy marriage, given the way the Actress had noticed the woman casting glances at her and Carter during their meal. The woman had tried to figure out if she could place her as a Hollywood star, to be sure, but she had also paid mind to the way she set down the plates in front of Carter, her eyes darting quickly to his face as if to gauge if he was pleased. A café waitress. A wife. A motel owner. A harried café waitress. A lonely wife. A desperate motel owner. She spun the words in her head, more and more of them, inventing, watching Bakersfield come into view. Who could live in this city? What brought or kept them here?
The Actress thought of what she’d discussed with the Director that evening, about exteriors and brevity and visual cues, and she brought all this to bear on her character, the Phoenix secretary. A Phoenix secretary was not enough. For simplicity’s sake, yes. But a Phoenix secretary had an interior, too, a heart filled with dark hope and longing after she’d looked at a photograph and with justifications she’d made while lying awake in the dark. The Actress would not gloss over these things, however much she had to invent them, have hints of it flash across her face. It’s all in the eyes, the aging silent actress had told her many years ago, and she was discovering that this was truer than she ever thought possible, that the aging