What You See in the Dark - Manuel Munoz [68]
Now the Actress, facing the side wall of the shower—the shot from the first day of filming—her hands up in anticipation of the water, her hands up as if in ecstatic prayer.
The showerhead looked down at her like a giant eye.
The water warmer now, her face in relief at finally cleansing, nearly two days, remember, without a shower, a Phoenix secretary spending a night in her car out in the desert foothills east of Los Angeles.
Her arms to block her breasts, the soap beginning to lather. She was beginning to understand why the Director asked her to turn slowly to the left. Patiently. Even taking a shower requires technique. You don’t just stand. You turn to wet every part of the body. Turn, he had said. Slowly. Clean. She tilted her head back like a ballerina.
It came closer to her, the camera. Her head back like a dancer’s. That’s what she’d been thinking, but what it did was show her neck, offering it up to what was coming. Keep turning. Slower.
The showerhead, as if observing quietly, the way the crew had, respectful even though they had wanted an eyeful.
Then the camera, as if it had magically sat on the back wall of the shower, more water coming from another nozzle a little above, like a second curtain of water. Keep turning. Other direction now. Slower.
And there it was. When she had stood in the shower, anticipating. When the body double kept stumbling in too loudly; when they oiled the hinges on the door to a smooth silence. A silhouette coming with a horrific certainty that the Actress herself hadn’t been able to see from her position. A terrible silhouette darkening the frame, the Actress deliberately moving out of the camera’s eye as it closed in on the curtain. The menace of the silhouette terrifying her even now as she watched herself on the screen.
Up there, she turned around from her slow, deliberate dance.
Up there, the camera cut in close as she screamed.
Up there, the camera cut in even closer to just her open mouth.
A silhouette in women’s clothes, and a big butcher knife. Any knife will do in real life—a pocket blade in a street-corner mugging, a sharpened screwdriver in a jail cell. But this was the movies and it had to be a butcher knife.
The knife came at her like a tiger’s paw reaching through a cage, not able to strike, but the illusion was the same.
The silhouette brought the knife up.
What was (or wasn’t) a Las Vegas breast.
From overhead, it was heartbreakingly easy to see how she had nowhere to go, trapped as she was on all sides.
More screaming. Keep your face in the water. It will force you to shut your eyes.
Her hands over her breasts: an effort to conceal herself, the Actress knew, but now it read like a gesture of futile defense.
Her own open mouth. She hardly remembered screaming that loudly. Or for that long. But the sound editing made it interminable.
Her hands over her breasts: but by this time, no one in the audience would be thinking of breasts.
The silhouette bringing up the knife yet again.
Put up your hands now. All five fingers.
The silhouette, even closer. The head of a monstrous woman.
Her head moving side to side, as if to say no.
The only thing the knife ever cut through was the water.
Her hands up, but nothing to hold on to.
The knife coming through the veil of water even more forcefully, tearing through it as if it were flesh.
No, no.
When you bring down the knife, he had told the double, hold it like so. I want to see the glisten of your fingers holding it. I want to see the fingers.
The Las Vegas girl’s naked torso. A dancer turning to her left to meet the knife at just the tip. Not a breast curve or a pubic hair in sight. Not even blood on the knife.
No, no.
The arm still coming down. The knife in silhouette because by this point it would be dripping in blood. Not even all that water could wash it clean so quickly.
The Las Vegas girl kept turning, her breasts visible to everybody on the set, but on the screen, just the curve.
No, no. The futility