The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty

by Vendela Vida

  “Ouch,” she says. “The seat is cracked.”

  You head to the food trailer (they can’t have the food outside today, due to the traffic, and the pedestrians who might graze). You eat licorice, olives, cheese, crackers, and slices of salami. The salami here is larger, but cut thinner, like ham. You wait to see if you are needed again.

  You are needed one more time, when the actress’s makeup needs to be reapplied. The temperature in the car is rising as the day progresses and her mascara is clumping, her lipstick fading as her lips grow increasingly chapped. You return to the car.

  “Hello,” you say to the driver.

  He grunts in return.

  The director approaches.

  The director asks you to help him block the scene in which Maria exits the vehicle—that’s his word, “vehicle”—in a storm of rage so they can get the cameras set up right. You are to open the door, slam it, and walk through the traffic.

  You do this three times.

  Then the famous American actress returns to the car, her forehead dabbed, her lipstick reapplied and outlined with a red makeup pencil.

  It’s her turn.

  You walk through the fake traffic and back to the food trailer. Even you, who knows better, can’t seem to forget the traffic isn’t real. You signal to every driver to stop, to not drive; with your hands and your eyes you implore them to not run you over.

  You spend the remainder of the day waiting. You eat more olives, more licorice. You chew on mints to cleanse your breath (you’re too impatient to slowly let them dissolve in your mouth). Your services might be needed at any minute, you tell yourself. But you are not needed for the rest of the day.

  The sadness of being unuseful, which is a particular type of sadness, begins to vine through your body. By 7 P.M. you are wondering if you can take off your wig, scratch your scalp. You have already consumed too many rolls; you were instructed to not eat the sauce-laden dishes offered at the dinner buffet in case you spilled on your outfit, your scarf.

  Another two hours pass. The famous American actress comes to the food trailer.

  “Hey,” you say, surprised that filming, which has gone so slowly, has ended so suddenly.

  “Hey,” she says. “I’m starving.” She picks up a submarine sandwich and bites into it and a slice of tomato slips onto her scarf. She pays it no attention. “This tastes terrible,” she says, and places it back down on the tray with the other sandwiches.

  “Are you going back to the hotel?” you ask.

  “No,” she says. “There’s this music festival going on—Jazzablanca. Get it?” she says. “My friend Patti Smith is playing.” You’re tempted to say, You’re friends with Patti Smith? Instead you say: “She’s considered jazz?”

  “It’s just the name of the festival,” she explains. “Anyway, you want to come to the show?”

  You shrug only because you’re too excited to speak.

  The famous American actress opens the jar of M&M’s. She doesn’t use the silver serving spoon but instead she grabs a handful and pours them into her mouth.

  You get a ride to the concert in the famous American actress’s van. She has a van and a driver assigned just to her. You sit next to her in the first row of seats. One bodyguard sits in the passenger seat of the van, the other in the row behind you.

  The driver has difficulty finding the venue. It’s not a normal concert pavilion, but the grandstand of a racetrack that they’ve closed up with tenting. This is your experience of Casablanca thus far: no one can find the address they’re looking for. Most places that are not hotels are identified only by landmarks. The horse track has been described to the driver as exactly that, “the horse track.” It doesn’t help matters that the driver has been traveling with the film and is from Fez. This is his first week in Casablanca.

  Finally, you arrive at the racetrack. One bodyguard gets out of the car, followed by the famous American actress, and the other bodyguard is close behind. You’re the last out and you slide the heavy van door shut behind you. Cheers are erupting from inside the tent; the concert is beginning. Two people from the festival are waiting for the famous American actress at the now empty will-call line. She walks up to them and they escort her, you, and the two bodyguards into the makeshift theater.

  The stands in the back are filled with people and in front of the stage chairs have been set up in rows, the way they would be in a high school auditorium.

  The actress, the bodyguards, and you are escorted to your reserved seats six rows back from the stage. You always wondered who the assholes were who came late to a concert and took up a whole row near the stage, and now you know.

  You get into the chairs without drawing attention. Everyone’s focused on Patti Smith.

  Patti stands on a stage with a neon sign that says JAZZABLANCA behind her. She’s talking to the audience about how she’s always wanted to perform in Morocco because of the desert and because of Moroccan mint tea. She holds up her cup, which ostensibly is filled with Moroccan mint tea, and the audience cheers loudly. Very loudly. They love her.

  The actress whispers to you: “If I have to leave early, can you please go backstage after and say hello to Patti for me? Let her know I was here?”

  “Okay,” you promise, wondering why she’d have to leave early.

  You smell expensive perfume, and this is also when you notice the fur. All the women in the rows in front of you are wearing fur. They’re extremely dressed up for a rock concert. Some of the women are with men, all of whom are wearing ties, but the majority of women have come in groups with other women. They have coiffed hair and well-applied makeup, and are blessed with either good genes or the funds to improve upon them. None of the women wear hijabs. This is the upper crust of Casablanca. You observe that your group might be the only Westerners in the audience.

  Onstage Patti Smith is wearing faded baggy blue jeans, a white blouse, and a man’s blazer. Her gray hair is long and parted in the middle. She wears no makeup. She introduces a guitarist and a bassist, and the crowd claps politely.

  She sings a cover of Lou Reed’s “A Perfect Day” and the crowd goes crazy. Especially the women. The women of Morocco love Patti Smith.

  When she sings “Because the Night” everyone around you sings the lyrics too.

  Come on now try and understand

  The way I feel when I’m in your hands

  Take my hand come undercover

  They can’t hurt you now,

  Can’t hurt you now, can’t hurt you now

  Because the night belongs to lovers

  Because the night belongs to lust

  Because the night belongs to lovers

  You’re unable to keep your eyes on the performance because you’re focused on the women around you. They know every word, and sing along, joining Patti in proclaiming the night belongs to them, the lovers, the women who lust.

  Everyone is up on his or her feet except one woman sitting in front of you. She doesn’t want to stand. Every thirty seconds or so, her furred friends try to get her to join them, and she refuses. You notice that the bodyguards have their eyes on her, on this woman who won’t get up on her feet at a Patti Smith concert. Her refusal to stand makes her intriguing to the bodyguards.

  When Patti Smith sings “People Have the Power,” the crowd is raucous. Even the reluctant stander in front of you finally raises herself to her feet and you sense the bodyguards relaxing.

  But then a sound startles you—it’s the sound of trampling, like horses stampeding. You turn around to see if the audience members in the back are dancing so intensely that the stands are collapsing. Everyone near the stage begins turning around. And then the audience starts to collectively look up. You follow their gaze and see what they see—it’s raining. Torrential rain. The downpour sounds like rocks avalanching onto the tent, and it seems likely that the rain might succeed in bringing down the tent on top of everyone inside.

  You turn back to the stage and see that Patti Smith and Lenn
y Kaye and Tony Shanahan look confused; they have no idea why the front rows of the audience have turned around. They keep playing, but you feel you’re seeing them without their performance faces on. They seem baffled, concerned. It’s then that one of the furred women two rows ahead, who is looking back to observe the center of the tent, catches a good look at the famous American actress. The furred woman does a double take to be certain, and then tells her friend standing next to her. The friend turns around to stare, and then says something to the friend standing next to her. Within a matter of seconds you start to hear the famous American actress’s name being spoken. Then it’s not spoken but being called out. They’re calling out her first name as though she’s a friend they haven’t seen for a while. They want to see if she turns and looks in their direction. If she responds to the name they’ll know it’s her.

  Suddenly, a collective gasp erupts behind you. You turn to see what’s happening. The rain breaks though the tent. The power goes out. But Patti Smith and her guitarist and bassist don’t stop. They continue singing a cappella:

  I believe everything we dream

  Can come to pass through our union

  We can turn the world around

  We can turn the earth’s revolution

  We have the power

  People have the power . . .

  The crowd grows crazier than before. The rain is hitting the floor and you can feel the vibration of stomping feet. The energy of the crowd has swarmed and collected and is harnessed toward the stage. You are certain the performers can feel this focused beam of energy too because they’re singing louder and no longer look at all confused, but the opposite: they have intention. Everyone is singing now about the power to dream, to rule, to wrestle the earth from fools. You know this is the reason many people come to concerts, come to witness anything live. There exists the possibility of surprise, of power outages, of connection and communion, the possibility of people who have never before met singing the same song to each other about the power they have to change the world.

  You look to your right to see if the famous American actress is enjoying the concert as much as you are. But she’s not there. You look to your left. She’s not there. In the midst of the chaos, the famous American actress and her two bodyguards have vanished.

  You are by yourself for the remainder of the show. The women in front of you who recognized the famous American actress now turn to look at you with disapproving, judgmental eyes, as though you’re the one who drove her away.

  When the show ends you wait for the crowd to clear out and then head toward the stage. A security guard stands before a staircase, monitoring backstage access. You explain the situation. You tell him where you were sitting. You tell him you were with the actress.

  He has three conversations via walkie-talkie. Then you are patted down and allowed backstage. You are given a silver sticker that looks like a sheriff’s badge and told you must wear it on your shirt. The security person walks you to the green room, which is up a set of stairs. As you climb the stairs you hear laughter. It’s only as you get closer to the laughter that you realize the “green room” is in fact the changing area for jockeys.

  Approximately fifteen people are gathered around Patti Smith and her band. You did not know the backstage crowd would be so small. Plates of vegetables and hummus and cakes are arranged on a table. Enough food to feed sixty.

  “Hello!” a man says from a distance, and as he approaches he frowns. “Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” He puts on his glasses as though to explain his mistake.

  “It’s okay,” you say. “I’m with her. I mean, I was with her, but she had to leave.”

  “Great,” the man says, removing his glasses. He seems relieved to not have to wear them. “Have you met Patti?”

  The man who hasn’t yet introduced himself to you introduces you to Patti Smith. You shake her hand. You watch your hand being shaken by Patti Smith. You have grown accustomed to the actress’s elaborately manicured hands; in contrast, Patti Smith’s hands with their short unpolished nails are clearly those of a serious musician.

  You tell Patti Smith the actress had to leave and she tilts her head ever so slightly and says she understands, that you never know with crowds.

  You are introduced to other people—men who worked with Patti in various countries, and their girlfriends, who are taller than the men and are wearing low-cut shirts. One wears a bustier with a suit jacket over it. She is bursting from it and you try not to stare. You can see that everyone is trying not to stare.

  You are the first to dip into the hummus, the only one to eat the shallow glazed cake, topped with an array of orange fruit. When you feel you have stayed too long, you walk to the exit and turn and give a small wave. Everyone returns your polite wave with a more enthusiastic one. You try to interpret this as a good sign—they enjoyed meeting you—and not as a sign that they’re relieved by your departure.

  The next day, shooting starts at 9 A.M. You are reeling from the night before, and wake up at 7:30, earlier than you wanted to. You decide to swim laps. The pool at the Grand is smaller than the pool at the Regency, its shape more traditional. You dive in.

  You’ve swum twenty laps when you see the famous American actress approaching, flanked by her bodyguards. It’s 8 A.M. You swim underwater to the other side of the pool. When you lift your head, the three of them are standing there before you.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” the famous American actress says.

  You have the feeling you’re in trouble but don’t know why.

  “In private,” she says to the bodyguards. “We’ll be over there.” She points to two chaise longues out of the forty facing the pool. All are vacant.

  You hoist yourself up out of the water. The two men look at you for one second too long. You grab your towel and wrap it around your waist.

  The famous American actress sits at the foot of a chaise longue, and you sit down at the foot of the one next to hers.

  “Look at them,” she says, staring at the bodyguards. One is three chaise longues to your left, the other four to your right. They are both looking in opposite directions, waiting, watching. There’s no one else in the pool area.

  “I guess they got frightened last night,” you say. Then you add: “That was scary.”

  “You consider that scary?” she says. “You don’t know how it usually is in like L.A. or London or something. Last night was tame. I think the boys just got excited because before coming here we were in the desert for a month. There was no one around us for miles and they had nothing to do.”

  “It was a little weird how fast it happened,” you say, taking another towel from the chaise longue you’re sitting on and placing it on your lap like a blanket. Like an elderly lady who gets cold in her living room.

  “It’s always like that. One person spots you and then suddenly you see, like, a ton of heads turning your direction and—bam—it’s time to get out of there. Anyway, how was backstage? Did you get a chance to say hi to Patti for me? Tell her I was there?”

  “Yeah. I can’t believe I was talking to her. She said she understood and she was glad you came.”

  “Good. Thank you for doing that. I didn’t want her to think I was a no-show.”

  You tell her it was an honor to meet Patti Smith.

  The famous American actress looks at you for a moment and then gives you her famous lopsided smile. “You crack me up. You use words like ‘honor’ and stuff.”

  “It was an honor.”

  “You’re too much,” she says.

  You look at her and see her brain is already miles away, thinking. You’ve come to learn something about her that she tries to hide: her mind never rests.

  “What are you doing tonight?” she asks.

  “I have to work till seven or so. Which means you’re probably working later . . .”

  “Yeah, I work late tonight.”

  She looks at the pool, as though considering diving in. “I was wonder
ing if I could ask you a favor.”

  You shrug, but she’s not looking at you—she’s still staring at the pool—so you say, “Sure.”

  “I’m wondering if you’ll go out with someone tonight. I’m supposed to meet him for dinner at eight, but I have to work, and things are complicated . . .”

  “Who is he?”

  “It’s a long story,” she says, and sighs. “I was sort of dating this man . . . he’s a little older, Russian, debonair really, except for some of the bars he took me to in Moscow. Which were really fun, by the way. Bars in Moscow are amazing. Everyone gets naked onstage. Anyway, it was casual but then he fell for me pretty hard and . . .” She doesn’t finish the sentence.

  “So you want me to go have dinner with him and break up with him for you?” You laugh a little laugh.

  “No, no, no . . . the thing is he didn’t really fall hard for me, personally. He just fell for the idea of me.”

  “He fell for the idea of dating an actress?”

  “Not even that,” she says, examining her pedicure. “He just fell for the idea of youth. Of a young woman listening to everything he said.”

  “How long were you . . . ?”

  “I didn’t date him for that long. We’d see each other in different cities. Have dinner, that sort of thing.”

  “That sounds serious,” you say. “It must have taken some effort.”

  “It wasn’t that serious,” she says, and you sense she’s lying.

  “Is he an actor?”

  “God no. He’s a Russian businessman. A really successful one, actually. Like really successful.”

  “So he’s in Casablanca for business?”

  “No, no. He came to have dinner with me.”

  “And you’re going to stand him up?”

  She sighs as though you’re to blame for the situation she’s in.

  “I don’t feel like it. I know he’s seen pictures of me with other people recently and I know he’s going to be pissed and I’m just not up for it. I think he’ll be just as happy to see you.”