This Location of Unknown Possibilities

by Brett Josef Grubisic

  Lizzie’s penultimate appearance also contained the longest speech. In it, the solitary maid withdrew one of Lady Swinburne’s formal gowns from a steamer trunk and clasped it closely while directing a gaze to the polished sterling silver back of a hairbrush, held up with a free hand. Marta had tentative faith that an actor of the right calibre could squeeze pathos from the thudding words:

  INT. LADY SWINBURNE’S BEDCHAMBER - DAY.

  LIZZIE

  My dear Sultan, you are too kind indeed.

  (curtsying at the brush)

  Verily, I cannot accept so extravagant a gift.

  That you hold me in such high esteem is surely enough! You insist?

  Such a wealth of gems could only attract the covetous eyes of my impudent servants.

  True, I am indeed perhaps too kind to them, too kind altogether. And yet to cut off the hand of a thief, as is the custom in the land over which you reign, that extremity, if I dare say so, is contrary to the lawful civility of my fair island home.

  She pauses, as though listening to the Sultan speak. A beat.

  Oh, if it pleases you I shall place the necklace of rubies upon my neck.

  My, they’re so lustrous.

  A complement to my own fair beauty you say? You flatter me so, Sir!

  (giggles)

  ’Tis so, kind gentleman, I must inform you.

  After sunset, Lizzie’s ungoverned ambition propelled her to strike a diabolical bargain. Once Lady Swinburne had retired to the bedchamber, Lizzie harnessed a horse and rode toward the crash site. The consequence: predictably dismal. The maid’s blithe negligence of folklore—no one signs a contract with a demon and wins—foretold a severed head planted in the sand minutes later. Though in a roundabout way, Marta conceded, Lizzie did receive poetic justice in the form of a bloody ruby necklace. Very Angela Carter, Marta thought, touched by the screenwriter’s unexpected flourish.

  Marta could see that Lizzie’s revelation scene would appeal to any young actress on a quest for clips of CV-worthy material. Even with the dimwit echo of Lady Macbeth the hairbrush scene contained meat to chew through. Well, gristle anyway.

  Lizzie’s rationale for forming an alliance with the alien stayed opaque to Marta. The servant lived to better a lowly social status and drape her body with the aristocratic finery that she saw as a birthright. But the alliance with the alien could not result in a marriage of any kind; even for loopy logic of The Battle of Djoun a cross-species liaison was no possibility. Perhaps Lizzie lacked the backbone to murder Lady Swinburne and consequently needed to enlist the alien. The reptilian predator certainly had no qualms. If so, what could Lizzie hope to offer in exchange? Nobody debated the alien’s self-sufficiency. No matter, Marta had decided. Plumbing character psychology hardly defined the story’s central principle. A functionary, a necessary sacrifice to a bloodthirsty plot, Lizzie read as a villain, and the eventual headless corpse toppled in the sand provided reason enough for the scenes devoted to her. Gory punishment—the reassuring Romans 6:23 message T-shirt worn by the pro-wrestling fan who’d swear on his mother’s grave that bad things happen to bad people—reared up as the pay off. Revealing the drives of an embittered illiterate maid with delusions of silver-spoon refinement? Not a chance. The screenwriters must have skipped classes on kitchen sink realism to chase Tyrants in Resident Evil instead.

  3.

  “Well, speak of the devil,” Lora said, breaking off a conspiratorial huddle with Chaz. “Question: Are you ready, lady? We think we’ve come up with a special job, just for you.” Although Lora smiled gamely, Marta heard undertones of mischief in the bubbly voice, notes of a dark promise. The task, Marta suspected, would be belittling and unrewarding, in line with the miller’s daughter’s literally do-or-die assignment in Rumpelstilzchen.

  Marta believed her mother had thrilled at intoning “Once there was a miller who was poor” with a strange, richly portentous relish, the eventual emphasis in the telling underscoring the miller’s empty boast rather than the troll’s comeuppance. As Marta grew older Dianne served the tale alongside a real-life snippet from high school that involved pushing an uncooked bratwurst down a hallway with her nose, a sorority initiation rite that doubled as a queer public humiliation in a Prairie town of Teutonic immigrants. Eventually she dropped the fairy tale; the sausage parable, however, had staying power.

  Both stories, to the speaker at least, existed only to teach the same lesson: the trusting person is wise to grow a hard shell; wariness prevents injury. Thanks to Dianne, Marta’s childhood imaginings had been populated with normal-looking people with secret elaborate schemes and fairy tales with sinister parallels to daily occurrences—beware millers and false promises, beware popular girls carrying deli meats.

  “Chaz tells me you’re up to speed on the Dol’rez incident.”

  “Not exactly. I heard there was some problem with her.”

  Lora had already unraveled the detailed version of the incident several times. She reduced it to essence for Marta: “There was an accident on set and now we really need to replace that actress.”

  “Nothing serious, I hope,” Marta asked.

  “She’ll recover eventually. Anyway. That’s not our biggest headache. We can re-order the shooting pages for awhile, but our goal now—and I mean pronto—is a new Lizzie.”

  “What can I do?”

  “I need to pow wow with Jake first, but it’d handy for you to manage the process, not casting the actress of course but organizing the information flow. Liaising, in other words.” A paper shuffling frenzy competed with Lora’s words. “While you’re waiting, check out Cast It Systems online, that’s how we’ll start the process. Use the computer thingy on Jake’s desk.”

  Right, be careful what you wish for, Marta thought. “Alright, sounds good.” She recognized clerical drudgery beneath the gilt of responsibility: administrative secretary rather than data entry temp, a half-step promotion.

  “Let’s hit the road, Chaz.” Lora already waited at the front door, hat and celebrity-scale black sunglasses protection from external hazards—UV bombardment, perhaps, or unhinged fans. “I’m driving.”

  “Oh, don’t bother with the calls, Marta. Anything that’s important will get forwarded to my cell.” Lora raised palms of helplessness as the phones broke into chorus. “We’ll be back when we’re back, sooner than later I hope.”

  Marta wandered to the kitchen for a granola bar. Chewing, she sat at Jake’s desk and tapped halfheartedly on the screen. The actor casting website required navigational expertise, not to mention a membership and password: a dead end. Besides, Marta had learned enough to sense that slacking off wouldn’t be foolish. In the stretch of minutes between Lora’s departure and return, the entire situation might change, and with “Okay, we’re going in a different direction” the promise of greater responsibility could easily be rescinded. It wouldn’t surprise her that after Lora’s meeting with Jake and a rapid series of amphetamine phone calls between offices in various cities, they’d discarded the maid role altogether, Lizzie killed off without explanation. Or that an extra—a previously mute guard, cook, or shepherd—had been awarded with career-stimulating bonus scenes. Or: extended episodes of alien stalking and bloodshed added as substitutes. Anything was passable, Marta supposed, so long as it supplied minutes of useful screen time. Her prediction called for the line of least resistance—lowest cost, smallest effort—prevailing.

  Wandering from desk to desk Marta enjoyed the sunless quiescence of Joan’s. She settled behind Jake’s desk and listened to the refrigerator’s whir, incoming pages of the fax machine, and the orchestral ringing of telephones. After a quarter hour restlessness assailed her. Still, there was no point to beginning any project because, Marta suspected, Lora and company hovered in the vicinity. She’d outlawed the only option—checking in—telling herself that an absolute break from campus and city routines had to be advanta
geous; ear plugs for the siren call of work would be a nudge in an untried direction, so postulated the theory. And though the zeitgeist declared that constantly being in touch via email and a mobile phone emblematized success, the eroding of the line between career and the rest of life rankled her. If anything, the division should be shored up.

  Years ago on a whim Marta had called Judy—who’d opted, on the heels of a short-lived and ill-advised flirtation with auburn dye, a pixie cut, and a rebranding as Lilith, for “respectable yet icy” Judith. She’d also kissed the pursuit of a doctorate goodbye, widely proclaiming that any fool could see the results of even the most rudimentary cost-benefit analysis: serious time wastage during one’s prime. When Judith answered, Marta asked about the background noise. “Waves,” Judith said, explaining that her toes pointed to turquoise water on a beach in Hawaii; she’d thought it best to stay in contact “in case a listing should move.” That state of mind Marta wanted to permanently extinguish.

  The compromise—to check in with her research assistant, who’d agreed to take care of the balcony of thirsty plants in need of repotting at Undre Arms—became null and void when Chaz pushed the door open and held it for Lora and Jake. The trio thundered in, an excitable herd with immediate goals and directions. Vacating Jake’s chair, Marta sped toward Lora; technically, Jake held boss status, but his brusque indifference made Lora the easier choice.

  “That was quick. I barely had time to accomplish a thing.”

  “We passed by each other on the highway, so we met roadside and turned around,” Lora said, watching Chaz loiter near the front door. “Alright, Chaz, you know the drill. Or do you need a map?”

  “No, ma’am.” Chaz started toward a desk.

  “Marta, we’re all on the same page now, so we’ll bring you up to speed,” Lora said.

  Jake passed by, phone in hand. “Just give me five. We’ll meet in my office.”

  “Question: Did you check out Cast It?” Lora said.

  “So far as possible. Full access requires membership.” Marta followed Lora’s trail from desk to kitchen to fax machine.

  “Oh, damn it, I forgot, right, I’ll get that to you in a jiff.”

  The meeting in Jake’s office washed over Marta as déjà vu: agitated Lora—in fatigues and a bright T-shirt advertising a chainsaw manufacturer—perched fretfully on the desk’s right corner while rock-ribbed Jake, self-assured with the baritone, set jaw, and black T-shirt, sat tipped back behind the desk, eyes darting to computer screens.

  “The big cheeses,” Lora began, “thought of a few solutions for the cactus incident. I’ll spare you the details—and there was a fricking tornado of proposals—but the gods have spoken: Lizzie will stay in the script.”

  “So now all we need is a new Lizzie,” Jake added. “Yesterday, preferably.”

  “That’s where you’ll come in because Jake and I need to focus on rearranging the shooting schedule. Thanks to Little Miss Method the whole thing’s totally cockeyed now.”

  Envisioning a snaking procession of actor profiles, Marta said, “How can I help?”

  “I’ve outlined it all there.” Lora handed Marta a yellow pad of paper filled with words and a pencil etching of one-way arrows. Marta studied the messy oval flow chart. “Who gets called first, what everybody will want and expect, and so forth. It looks bewildering probably, but it’s a cinch.”

  “Alright.”

  “First thing first is the casting exec in the city,” Lora said, finger on the thickest arrow. “She’s already alerted and will have rounded up way too many wannabe Lizzies. Actors are about the same as us rubes buying lottery tickets: very few winners but a dreamy boatload of hopefuls.”

  “Anyway, the idea is to hire a look-alike,” Jake said, “so that some of the scenes shot with Lizzie in the background won’t need to be re-shot. Eventually we’ll come up with a short list, a really short one in this case, and we’ll pass it over to the network, and the director and production execs here and there. Got it?”

  “Yes, I do,” Marta stood. “Lora, it would be great if you could show me how to access Cast It.”

  “No problem, c’mon,” Lora said, on her way out. “Then we’ll line you up with Blanche at MetroPolis Casting. Oh, she’s a bully and will talk your ear off, so beware. She’s from some Baltic, no, make that Balkan, one of the two, republic where pushy browbeating is a way of life. Anyway, it’ll be Canadian casting, guaranteed. Tax breaks, sweetie, always depend on CanCon rules, a required amount of local hiring. You can report to Jake, or to me if he’s not around.”

  Lora explained the process, the arduous part of which rose inescapably: conferring with so many different people with such distinct and likely competing agendas. The production company, casting directors, and network decision-makers would each have directions and opinions and needs, and all would require updates and progress reports—and accomplished, if possible, in hours. “Lizzie the Second spitting out lines before Friday,” Jake had promised.

  Reassuring Marta about the inevitability of minor disasters, Lora added that obvious solutions rarely worked out: the back-up plan dating from initial casting was currently in rehearsal at “some dinner theatre in the f-ing burbs and totally unavailable.”

  “Let’s get this going.” Jake’s bark sounded chilly with ­impatience.

  4.

  Marta spoke on the phone throughout the day, leaving messages, talking to assistants, and answering questions from executives; exasperation clouded the atmosphere. The sun had set by the time she finished, left ear throbbing, nose bridge pinched on dozens of instances; if asked how much she’d achieved, or how near a Lizzie replacement stood to signing a contract, Marta couldn’t judge, the day’s biggest discovery being that movie people, despite the appearance of direct speech, clear motivations, set goals, and, above all, yes/no decisiveness—using, in other words, the black and white language of the business world—prevaricated habitually; vagueness and doublespeak poured from their mouths.

  In Department of English offices Marta recognized the approximate truth behind bureaucratic non-statements, but here she hadn’t fully grasped the rules. Promissory declarations—“Okay, let’s pursue that,” “For sure, we’ll liaise about it and get back to you pronto,” “Absolutely, she looks like a keeper”—often dispersed into nothingness, causing Marta’s stomach to flip at each of Lora’s frequent requests for progress reports. Marta felt battered and strong-armed, treated as a minor functionary with a forgettable name at one moment and as a nettlesome impediment the next, like a gate with a rusted hinge.

  ZONE

  1.

  Slumped and feeling atrophied behind the desk, Jake wondered about what women feel. Fingers tapping nonsense Morse on the smooth oak, he zoned out; the laptop’s screen clock ticked the fact that the day’s third marathon conference call with Vancouver dawdled behind schedule—half of every shoot was spent on the phone, he’d swear, sure as well that he’d gasp no surprise when his MRI scan eventually revealed a grapefruit-sized brain tumour.

  The question floating to mind sidestepped the matter of what women want—not Cosmo’s bread and butter: how to be happy, romantically fulfilled, paid attention to, and validated to the core while achieving multiple orgasm and large-carat birthrights. No, he wanted to comprehend exactly the physical sensation of being pent up, horny. Since he couldn’t walk a mile in lady shoes, Jake thought to pose the question to Lora; right after a shocked face—and a quip: “You could always ask, Jake. You know, just before sneaking out before morning”—she’d tell him straight up.

  He’d bet the sensation shared traits with hunger or thirst, real if challenging to describe, and needing to be slaked or else. Or not. Maybe being peckish was closer: not so much, “If I don’t have it now I will die,” but instead akin to, “A piece of chocolate would be tasty right now,” and then five minutes later she might still be thinking about it, or, equally possi
ble, would have moved on to another topic. Similar to his, yes, but also categorically different.

  He’d have to be cautious with Lora; she would jump down his throat about chauvinism if the phrasing sounded off kilter. “Jake, that’s totally inappropriate”: it wouldn’t be the first warning. Though “asswipe” and “prick” remained in heavy, office-wide rotation, she’d deep-sixed the circulation of “gash” and “snatch” with repeated mumblings of “out of control” and “union grievance officer.”

  His libido refused pleads of compromise, Jake knew. A sex drive was a hurricane force, the iron grip of winter over an Arctic town; and while he ordinarily thrived off the forward thrust—when a studio rep at a wrap party a year ago said some French painter had crowed how he painted with his prick, Jake had nodded with approval and recognition—the burdensome, bullying side irked him, much like a spoilt child whose super-enthusiast parents have brainwashed him to believe the world revolves around his every need.

  Jake’s sac had been weighty and full of urging for days in fact, and this morning his shaft was showing signs of unasked for off-and-on engorgement, depending on mobility. As it rubbed against fabric when he walked, Jake thoughts had wandered doggedly from set crisis management to available orifices, and further wood resulted. That only led to a new volley of compulsive thoughts—textbook vicious circle. And morning, he knew, would bleed into evening. His dick might be primitive and the polar opposite of Mensa material, but it had a wolf’s grasp on targets. And mole-like too, its instincts led him to places where that satisfaction would be within closest reach.

  Jake had taken care of the immediate problem early this morning in the rinky-dink toilet room in the back of Joan’s, quickly, a low groan accompanying a nominally satiating spurt of release. A wank’s merit, a relieving of pressure and nothing more, merited no poetry. The act wasn’t a letdown so much as muted, a partial sighting of a blurred metallic orb in the night sky when you really craved being beamed up right inside the heart of the mothership.