She's The One

by J. J. Murray

  Of all the hypocritical things I’ve ever heard! “I’ve never seen you cook, Miss Minola.”

  Katharina sighed. “Believe me, I can cook, thanks to my Grandma Pearl. I’m at a place in my life where I don’t have to cook anymore, but if the need ever arose, I could cook my man a real meal.” Katharina squinted at Bianca. “You are interested in men, aren’t you?”

  Can’t cook, and now I’m a lesbian? “Yes.”

  “You wear men’s clothing. You like the outdoors. You wear flannel undershirts and boxers, for Christ’s sake. You don’t wear makeup, you like wearing hiking boots. I just thought …”

  Bianca’s face felt hot. “I have a boyfriend, Miss Minola.”

  “First I’ve heard of it.”

  Me too. I can’t tell her his name is Vincenzo, since, well, Vincenzo doesn’t know he’s my boyfriend yet. “I do. His name is Louie, and he lives in L.A.”

  “Good ol’ L.A. Louie, right.” Katharina blinked. “When’s the last time you saw Louie?”

  He filmed your sorry ass today, wench! “It’s been … almost two months. Since I started working for you.”

  “And now you’re blaming me for keeping you from your man?”

  This could work. “You have me on call twenty-four hours a day, Miss Minola. What choice do I have?”

  “You call him at least.”

  “When you give me a few minutes of ‘free time’ I do.”

  Katharina frowned. “I don’t think I like your tone.”

  Rant and rave now? No. It’s too soon. “I’m sorry, Miss Minola. I’ve been cooped up in here all day with no one to talk to. I read the novel I brought twice out of sheer boredom.”

  Katharina widened her eyes. “Oh, cry me a river. I built a fire in the snow and cut peat all day. You had it easy.”

  “Will you be needing my clothes again tomorrow, Miss Minola?”

  “Bianca, I’m going to need them until we’re done with this thing.”

  Lovely. “So I’m just supposed to sit around this cabin in my jeans and go barefoot in my boots?”

  “You have a coat, hat, and mittens. I don’t have those luxuries. Suck it up.”

  After Katharina had finally snored herself to sleep, Bianca stood in front of the bathroom mirror. She whispered, “I’ve about had it, everybody. I have to get her to try to fire me. Tell Vincenzo I’m sorry I couldn’t last any longer.” She stepped away, then turned back. “And tell Vincenzo to save some of that movie-theater butter popcorn for me because that’s my favorite.”

  Chapter 22

  Bianca’s attempts to get fired started before she went to sleep that night. She didn’t clean the pot of oatmeal or let it soak in the sink, leaving it to harden on the table. That will be one crusty mess in the morning. She didn’t set her travel alarm clock so she could wake Katharina on time. Oh no! She’ll miss all that natural morning light! At least her face won’t shine. She didn’t stoke the fire or add any more logs, letting it die on its own as she snuggled under her covers with a granola bar. She wasn’t worried that Katharina would freeze solid because, she thought, evil never dies, and she’s wearing my draws!

  Katharina shivered herself awake and looked around. The room was much brighter than it was the previous days when she woke up. “Bianca!”

  She heard no reply.

  “Bianca, you let me oversleep, and I’ve lost all that good morning light!” I can see my breath? What the hell? “Why is it so cold?”

  She draped her comforter around her and opened her door, feeling at most another degree of warmth in the larger room outside. “Bianca!” Has she left for the shoot already? Did she even try to wake me? She opened Bianca’s door and saw a lump under the covers. “Bianca!”

  “What?” Bianca asked without moving.

  No one says “what” to me! “I’ve been yelling for you, Bianca. Why haven’t you answered me?”

  “I was asleep,” Bianca said.

  “You let me oversleep. You let the fire go out. You haven’t fixed my breakfast!”

  Bianca pulled her covers more tightly around her head. “Make it yourself,” she mumbled.

  “What did you say?”

  Bianca sat up. “What time is it?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  Bianca blinked and yawned. “I was having this horrible dream about a witch. Is it time to get up already?”

  What has gotten into this girl? “Yes, and I’m late, and I’m hungry.”

  Bianca ran her tongue over her teeth. “Man, I have a rug on my choppers. I need to brush my teeth.” She left the bed, sidestepped Katharina, and went into the bathroom, closing the door.

  Katharina scowled at the pot on the table. “Why didn’t you clean this pot?”

  Bianca smiled for the camera in the bathroom. “This is fun,” she whispered. “No, Miss Minola. I don’t smoke pot.”

  Katharina put her nose in the crack of the bathroom door. “I didn’t ask you that. This pot is useless!”

  Bianca gargled and spat. “Oh, I know pot is useless, Miss Minola. I never use drugs. I’ve seen all those commercials. ‘This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.’”

  The girl is on drugs! Katharina thought.

  Bianca opened the door. “Good morning, Miss Minola. How did you sleep?” She looked past Katharina to the fireplace. “And why is the fire out?”

  “Because you let it go out!” Katharina shrieked. “It’s not ever supposed to go out!”

  “Oh, sorry,” Bianca said with a little smile. “I was awful tired after yesterday. You ever feel real tired after you didn’t do anything all day?” Just like your life back in L.A., Miss Katha-diva. “That’s the way I felt. I mean, all I did was read my novel twice and make some oatmeal. That shouldn’t have worn me out, but it did. You ever have any days like that?”

  Katharina wanted to shake the living shit out of her. “Just … help me get dressed, Bianca.”

  “Sure.”

  Bianca skipped several buttons on the dress and tied one boot tighter than the other.

  “What is your function, Bianca? I feel a draft at my neck, and you have to retie both boots.” Is she sick or what? She’s acting higher this morning than those damn Italians have all week! Katharina slapped on her headset. “You’re coming with me this morning, Bianca. Get dressed.”

  Bianca crossed her arms over her heart. “But I’ll freeze.”

  “You’ll just have to keep moving, then.”

  Although Katharina exhorted Bianca to “keep up or else,” Bianca lagged far behind, and by the time Katharina reached the clearing, Bianca had disappeared for good inside Vincenzo’s cabin to get a hot breakfast (“Fudge Pop-Tarts!”) and a steaming mug of hot chocolate.

  “Why didn’t Katharina fire her already?” Fish asked. “That girl was begging to get smacked and sacked.”

  “This is going to sound crazy,” Walt said, “but I think Katharina needs her.”

  Fish wrinkled his lips and shook his head. “Yeah. That does sound crazy.”

  Despite a roaring fire and an “oven” of dried peat to greet her, Katharina looked unusually frazzled when she arrived to work on her shelter.

  “Are you feeling okay today, Miss Katharina?” Vincenzo asked, readying his camera.

  “Bianca didn’t set her alarm or something.” She looked behind her. “That little … She’s run off again.”

  “It is no matter,” Vincenzo said. “It is just you and me today, anyway. Alessandro had to take his mulo to the vet. A spastic colon.”

  In truth, Pietro was in the forest on the other side of his house cutting branches off fallen trees to transport later for Katharina’s use, and he needed Curtis’s help to drag it over. His goal was to space these massive, thick branches around the grid in the hopes that Katharina would use them for the walls of her shelter.

  “So, we begin,” Vincenzo said.

  Katharina’s first attempts even at digging into the soil were a dismal failure. No matter how much she stabbed an
d lifted her knife like a little trowel, she could break through only the top layer. She spent hours excavating a rough rectangle around her fire pit about four meters wide by three meters deep (thirteen feet by ten feet). Then she tried to plant a dozen sharpened stakes into the groove she had dug, only to have them fall over like dominoes again and again.

  “Why won’t they stay up?” Katharina muttered.

  “Cut!” Vincenzo yelled. “You must dig deeper.”

  “You got a shovel?” Katharina asked, her face streaked with dirt.

  “She would not have a—”

  Katharina heaved a long sigh. “Okay, okay. I’ll dig deeper. You have anything I can eat in your cabin? I’ll even settle for some oatmeal. You have any more of that good coffee?”

  Vincenzo tried to look as sad as a puppy dog. “I am so sorry, Miss Katharina. We ran out of coffee, and Alessandro gave Bianca the last of the oatmeal last night. It is already at your cabin, yes? Alessandro is supposed to bring some more home with him this evening.”

  “Great.” Sure, they’ll pay so a mule can get his colon checked, but a decent cup of coffee? No. I should have asked them to pay me only $4.9 million so I could get some damn coffee and some decent freaking meals!

  “So, you will dig again?” Vincenzo asked. “I will get closer to absorb all your intensity.”

  Oh, Katharina thought, I’ll dig. I’m so pissed the Chinese better watch where they step.

  Her knife dull, the subsoil filled with rocks deposited by the Ice Age ten thousand years ago, her stomach singing bass, Katharina floundered around her future foundation for another two hours. She cried when she struck an unseen rock. She moaned when she couldn’t pry up a particularly stubborn stone. She broke two more nails. She cut her finger on the edge of a rock. She earned a sliver in her right palm from an ill-fated jab of a stake into the earth.

  Vincenzo, the cameras in the trees, and Katharina’s headset recorded it all in living color and breathtaking sound.

  “I have a lot of editing to do, Walt,” Fish said. “Why does she curse so damn much?”

  “She has no lines,” Walt said. “She’s ad-libbing. Those are real feelings she’s expressing.”

  “And that is one pitiful start to a shelter,” Fish said. “We’ll be here for months at this rate.” He glanced at several other monitors and saw snow cascading down. In moments, all but the big screen showed a torrent of snow, and then—

  The snow made a sound as it landed on Katharina’s face, sizzled as it hit her fire, and rapidly swathed her foundation line into whiteness.

  “Miss Katharina,” Vincenzo said, “I cannot see you, and I am three feet from you. I am afraid what the snow will do to my camera and your headset. We are done for the day.”

  This is madness, sheer madness, Katharina thought. She stood, brushing flakes of snow from her shoulders and seeing more flakes take their place.

  “We will try again tomorrow.” Under a foot or more of snow! What a movie this is turning out to be! Vincenzo hurried away.

  Katharina was alone in the clearing, her fire hissing and smoking, her face completely blank.

  “There’s a poster shot,” Fish said. “One brown blur of a person standing in an ocean of snow. You can’t even see her headset.” He widened his shot. “No snow machine or indoor set could give us something this awesome. I hope she doesn’t stand there until she’s completely covered.”

  “Go back to your cabin, Katharina,” Walt said. “Go get warm.”

  Fish switched to the headset cam as Katharina slowly made her way up the hill to the bridge. “These are some nice shots, too. How can she even see where she’s going?”

  As she slipped and slid, Katharina tilted her head forward to keep the snow out of her eyes. Hers were the only footsteps in the snow, and it was easy for her to imagine her character trudging a similar path, feeling so isolated and alone, her every positive step thwarted by the brutality and unpredictability of unforgiving nature. She’s finally free and feeling safe when Nature with a capital N kicks her in the ass. If I didn’t know there was a cabin somewhere straight ahead, I’dfeel like giving up and dying, letting the snow bury me until the spring thaw … or until a grizzly bear made me part of him forever.

  Katharina walked much faster now through the waterfall of snowflakes, reaching out to trees to steady her shaking legs, using branches to propel her forward. She passed Alessandro’s cabin, dark and forbidding, no sign of man or mule. Snow a fist thick sat on the windowsills, a dusting on the porch itself. She fought the urge to rest under the cover of his porch and pressed on, the snowflakes abating the deeper she went into the thick forest. She looked up and saw only a trickle of flakes, the rest caught high in the treetops.

  I should have set up shop here, she thought. Those trees could be my roof, and I wouldn’t need much of a shelter.

  She stopped. “Hmm,” she whispered, “but when it rained …” She smiled. Maybe my character will have a winter home and a summer home.

  She continued until she saw the outline of her cabin, a ribbon of smoke fighting against the falling snow. She stamped off most of the snow from her boots, wiped off her shoulders and sleeves, and entered the cabin—

  And found Bianca curled up in front of the fire eating a steaming bowl of oatmeal while reading a book, her comforter wrapped around her.

  “You’re back so early,” Bianca said with a smile. She looked out the little window. “Oh, look at the snow! It’s so beautiful.”

  Katharina began to peel off her clothes. “Where did you go, Bianca? I told you to stay by me all day.”

  “I think I’m really sick, Miss Minola.” She coughed for good measure. “I was so cold, I coughed up something blue, and I think I have a fever.”

  Katharina nodded at the oatmeal. “And that’s to help the fever?”

  “I was hungry, too.”

  Why did I ever hire this woman? “Is there any left?”

  Bianca showed Katharina the empty pot. “Sorry. I can make you some more.”

  Draping her dress on the fireplace screen, Katharina took a deep breath. Then she yanked Bianca’s comforter from her body, wrapped it around herself, and sat in the other chair. “Go get me some dinner. Now.”

  Bianca stood, her legs a little shaky. “But it’s snowing like crazy, Miss Minola. I might get lost.”

  “I don’t care,” Katharina said slowly. “I need some meat. I need some protein. I’m turning into a bag of bones. Even your skinny little clothes are hanging on me now.”

  “But I’m … but I’m not feeling well, Miss Minola.”

  Katharina froze Bianca with a stare. “I don’t care if you are an hour from your deathbed, Bianca. Get off your ass and do your damn job. Now.”

  “Yes, Miss Minola. Right away, Miss Minola.”

  “What does Bianca have to do to get her ass fired?” Fish asked. “I would have fired her ass just for eating all the oatmeal.”

  Walt closed his eyes. “Maybe, just maybe now, Katharina didn’t fire all those other assistants.” He opened his eyes and nodded. “Maybe they all quit, and she just said she fired them to protect her reputation. While Bianca has shown remarkable patience and humility, Katharina has shown … more.”

  Neither spoke for several moments. The screen showed Bianca dressing, throwing on her coat, and leaving the cabin.

  “Okay, smart guy,” Fish said, “so what does this mean?”

  “Fish, I think Bianca has to quit. As venomous as Katharina is, she doesn’t seem to have the heart to fire her.”

  “Uh-oh,” Fish said. “Look at Katharina.”

  Katharina had stood and was folding Bianca’s comforter as she walked into Bianca’s room.

  “You see something shiny, Walt?”

  Walt nodded.

  “Zooming.”

  The picture grew until a silver granola wrapper jutting out from the mattress filled the screen. “Bianca did that on purpose,” Fish said.

  “Yep,” Walt said.

  They
watched Katharina snatch up the wrapper, stare at it, and shake her head. Then Katharina flipped Bianca’s mattress off the bed.

  “That’s a shitload of granola,” Fish said. “And raisins! I could go for some raisins.”

  “The wench!” Katharina howled on the screen.

  “Oh, it’s on now,” Fish said, laughing. “Call Vincenzo. I think Miss Baptista is about to lose her head.”

  Walt hit the squawk button. “Vincenzo? Bianca’s on her way to you to get some dinner, preferably meat. And, um, Katharina found Bianca’s stash.”

  “It was bound to happen sooner or later,” Vincenzo said. “I’ll tell her when she gets here.”

  Fish leaned under the table and flipped one of the two backup switches. In a few moments, a fish-eye-lens view of Vincenzo’s cabin filled one of the screens.

  Walt’s mouth dropped open. “That’s not a backup.”

  “Nope,” Fish said, adjusting the picture quality with a few keystrokes. “This is what happens when I have too much time on my hands.”

  “What’s the other one for, Fish?”

  Fish shook his head. “Oh no. I ain’t telling.” He “swapped” Katharina’s angry face showing on the big screen with Vincenzo’s wide body on the smaller monitor.

  “There’s only one other cabin, Fish.”

  “Look at that,” Fish said. “Vincenzo’s gaining weight. Fish-eye lenses are like that. They make everyone look”—he glanced at Walt—”um, fat.”

  “It’s Pietro’s cabin, isn’t it?”

  Fish adjusted the volume until he could hear Vincenzo breathing. “Look. It was partially Pietro’s idea from the start, all right?”

  “Both cameras?”

  “Okay, not both. He and I were just being careful. I mean, what if Katharina refused to go back to Cabin 3 and demanded the ‘nicest’ one? Vincenzo’s is a palace compared to the other two, right?”

  “That still doesn’t explain the one at Pietro’s.”

  Fish rubbed his hands through his thinning hair. “You can’t tell a soul, okay?”