The Fourth Wall

by Williams, Walter Jon

  And I see muggers. This is a recent development in AR, created by people who were fed up with the endless proliferation of icons crowding out their cityscape. Muggers are created for the purpose of attacking other icons—to heckle them, to bash them, and sometimes, if they’re designed cleverly enough, to actually kill them.

  I pass one on the way. He looks like Paulie Walnuts from The Sopranos, and he’s using a baseball bat to clout an ad for male enhancement. The other ad looks confused and keeps de-rezzing and appearing somewhere else. It’s a clear violation of Tony Sirico’s physiognomic rights, but it’s hilarious.

  “Hey there, Sean,” says a voice.

  I turn to see my agent, Cleve Baker, loping toward me.

  “Hi,” I say. “You’re not coming to the meeting, are you?”

  Cleve is a tall, well-groomed man of about forty. He came out of the music business and has a law degree. His clothes are casual but up-to-the-second, from the handmade Andean alpaca-wool sandals to the blocky Perry Ellis sweater worn over a white crewneck tee. His wrist plays host to a Blancpain Fifty Fathoms chronograph.

  I once asked him why anyone would call a watch “White Bread,” but he just stared at me.

  “No, I won’t be at the restaurant,” he says. “I’m going to be in the bar in the next room, and after you dazzle this Dagmar Shaw, I’m going to sashay in and nail down the contract.”

  Agents really shouldn’t be in meetings between the producers and the talent—those kinds of meetings are about finding out whether producers and talent are suited to one another, and agents are about what happens if the answer is yes. Agents step in to negotiate contracts if the talent gets hired. Until then, they should stay out of the process, because their presence just confuses things.

  “Cleve,” I say, “I dunno, that doesn’t sound like a hella great idea—”

  Then a series of screams sounds from my pocket, and I get out my phone. It’s Dickie Marks. I answer.

  “Dude,” I say to the phone. “I mean, really.”

  “Yeah. I know.” Dickie’s voice is subdued, barely audible against the sound of traffic.

  “How did you think this was going to end?” I ask. “Did you think at all?”

  “I didn’t think anyone gave a damn about me one way or another,” he says. “My last job was at a burrito stand, for Christ’s sake. I wore a bear costume and a sombrero.”

  “Now you can expect jokes about your burrito for the rest of your life,” I say.

  I’m taking a certain pleasure in this. The career of another former child star has augured into the pavement, right in front of the whole world, and he wasn’t me. Thanks to Dickie Marks, the entertainment news didn’t even mention Jimmy Blogjoy’s drowning me in the cottage cheese.

  It isn’t enough to succeed, as someone said. Others must fail.

  On the other hand, I’m also sorry for Dickie. Because he’s yet another wreck in the gigantic freeway pileup of onetime kid stars, like Darlene Gillespie who went in for securities fraud and perjury, or Gary Coleman who declared bankruptcy and was accused of domestic abuse, Melody Chastain who kicked the dog, or Dana Plato or Michael Jackson or Corey Haim or so many others who found ways of killing themselves.

  I have no right to feel superior. I too could leap at a chance to bring my career back, and not realize until it was too late how incredibly stupid and destructive it would be, how utterly desperate and insane I would have to be to even try such a thing…

  What am I saying? I’ve been that guy.

  As witness my attempts to get arrested. As witness Timmi’s getting killed. Now that was crazy.

  “Yeah,” Dickie says. There is a moment of silence. “The question is what I do now.”

  “I don’t know, man.”

  Traffic swishes by as I stand on the corner. A chorus of Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz march past, singing in silent chorus—I thank God that my AR specs don’t have audio.

  Dickie’s voice mutters in my ear.

  “In your voice mail, you said something about telling people I was just looking for love.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “It makes me sound sort of pathetic.”

  I say nothing and wait for the sheer pitiful nature of this statement to sink in. Dickie is far beyond pathetic now, so deep in the cottage cheese that he’s only seconds away from drowning.

  For several seconds I watch an icon of Mickey Mouse brandishing a dildo. He’ll be doing that until Disney’s lawyers, which tend to be deadlier than Paulie Walnuts at his best, hammer the host with a writ.

  “Yeah,” Dickie says finally. “Okay. I’m not going to walk away from this without egg on my face.”

  “Right,” I say.

  “Maybe,” he ventures, “instead of looking for love, I could be in love with…with one particular person.”

  “Your costar?”

  “God, no!” For the first time his voice shows animation. “I have some pride left. There’s no way I’m going to say I’m in love with Tandee Landes. It was bad enough just having sex with her!”

  “If you say so.” I’ve never heard of Tandee Landes, one way or another.

  “I mean, she’s the most brainless woman I’ve ever met. And those huge boobs—they don’t move. Not even a little bit. They just sit there like flesh-colored concrete and look at you.” He gives a growl of exasperation. “The scene wasn’t over till four in the morning. It was freezing on the soundstage. It smelled as if someone had died under that couch. And I still had to pretend I wanted to fuck that cow.”

  I clear my throat. “I don’t want to hear about your damn scene, Dickie.”

  “How about Samantha Hollock?” he says.

  It’s a name I vaguely remember from about a decade ago. “Is she still in the business?” I ask.

  “She’s retired from acting, but now she’s a producer and director. She produced my movie. I could say I did the movie to get close to her.”

  “You fell in love with her,” I say, “when you were just a kid.”

  “Yes!” His voice shows enthusiasm. “I did it for love!” He sounds as if he believes it.

  “You play that scene, Dickie,” I tell him. “You’ll absolutely kill.”

  He’ll get nationwide coverage, I think. He’ll get another fifteen minutes of fame, plus become the subject of dozens of jokes by late-night talk show hosts. Then maybe he’ll do a tour of morning radio shock-jock shows, appearing as the freak-of-the-instant and the butt of yet more fatuous humor.

  And then back to the burrito cart. Unless something clicks, and he actually finds work.

  But I don’t think so. Try to name actors who came back from porn, and you won’t find more than a couple. The rest are selling insurance, or working at Burger King. Or dancing in a bear suit in some parking lot.

  The traffic light finally changes and I start across the street while putting my phone back in my pocket. Hookers and Mickey and a gaudy ad for Van Cleef and Arpels flash in my AR shades. My phone won’t go into my pocket the first time and I pause to open the pocket with my free hand.

  Horsepower roars somewhere nearby. My pocket won’t cooperate and I keep trying to jam the phone into it. Then Cleve grabs my arm and yanks me out of the way as a battered black Ford Expedition blasts through the intersection. The slipstream tugs at my hair. I stare as the SUV speeds away down Rodeo in a cloud of blue smoke. My heart hammers in surprise and shock. There’s a sour oily taste on the air.

  “Jesus Christ!” Cleve says. “Get out of the road, Sean, will you?”

  I let him pull me out of the intersection. Impudent Smurfs waggle their blue asses at me. I realize the AR shades are a dangerous distraction and take them off.

  I look at the traffic light as I step onto the curb. According to the counter on the display, I have another eight seconds left to cross the street safely.

  Maybe in other places, New York or someplace, the driver of the Expedition wouldn’t be so totally unexpected. But in California pedestrians have such
absolute right-of-way over vehicles that it’s a little startling that the incident happened at all.

  I look at Cleve. “What happened?” I ask.

  “Fucking tourist made an illegal left turn across three lanes of traffic,” Cleve says.

  “Did you get the number?”

  Cleve barks a laugh. “I was too busy keeping the car from getting your number.”

  I take a breath and try to calm my thrashing heart. “Well thanks,” I say.

  “You’re welcome.” He gestures in the direction of the restaurant. “This way. Your future awaits.”

  INT. SALO RESTAURANT—DAY

  Salo is a kind of neo-Mediterranean fine dining establishment, white plaster walls mounted with bright Moroccan carpets that set off dark iron chairs and tables with deliberately crude, blobby welds. The façade features a couple of massive buttresses that call to mind the pylons of an ancient Egyptian temple. Inside are four dining rooms, each under its own pyramid.

  Believers in pyramidology probably think they can eat lunch and get their razor blades sharpened at the same time.

  The hostess tells us that our party has already arrived. Cleve calls the hostess by her first name and tells her that he likes her hair. It is generally unsafe to be female when Cleve is around. He keeps up a steady stream of compliments as she walks us to our table.

  I’m too keyed up to notice whether the hostess looks good or not. Lead in a feature. I’m surprised I’m not drooling.

  We pass some well-dressed Ladies Who Lunch, and one of them looks at me in surprise. “Look!” she says. “It’s Luggage Boy!”

  Luggage Boy. Something else they’re going to carve on my tombstone.

  Dagmar Shaw sits at her table, her head haloed from above by a big coach light on a black iron bracket. The first thing I think is Interesting fashion choice. Because her hair is a smooth uniform gray, the color of charcoal ash, and you don’t see that here, and she’s too young for gray hair anyway—she seems to be in her mid-thirties. Because no women in my part of the world have gray hair at all, she looks more striking than all but a few of them.

  Her eyebrows are dark, and set above eyes that are looking at me with a kind of half-puzzled expression. It’s the look that registers wrongness without quite being able to work out what the wrongness is. I’m used to it, I see it a lot.

  Eventually she realizes she’s staring too much and her face opens out into a smile, a little strained. I’m used to that, too. She lurches a little coming up out of her chair, and I realize she’s pregnant. I’m no expert on pregnancy but hers seems about the middling stage, five or six months.

  I jump to her side and steady her, guiding her so that her skull is not impaled by the coach light over her head. While she’s murmuring thanks Cleve sweeps in front of me and shakes her hand.

  “I’m Cleve,” he says.

  Dagmar is surprised, but recovers swiftly enough. “I’m Dagmar. This is my husband, Ismet.”

  I’ve been so focused on the woman who might offer me work that I haven’t even noticed that someone is with her. Ismet is a pale-skinned man, maybe a few years younger than Dagmar, with watchful brown eyes behind dark-rimmed spectacles.

  There’s something a little foreign about him—the formal way he carries himself, the way he inhabits his clothing—but when he greets me I hear an American accent.

  Dagmar looks at Cleve with a degree of suspicion. “Will you be joining us?”

  “Well,” he says. “I wasn’t planning on it, actually—but thanks.” He takes a chair and sits. Now I’m staring at Cleve.

  A waitress is right on the spot, wearing a cute tuxedo with a red sash. She takes our drink orders. I have iced tea.

  “Do you think the waitress is hot?” Cleve asks. “I think she’s hot.”

  I look at him. I’m really not happy that he’s here. “You like cross-dressers, Cleve?”

  “I’m gonna ask her out,” he says. His eyes track after her.

  Dagmar studies me, her face in a studious cast.

  “So,” she says. “How are you with children?”

  The question takes me aback.

  “You mean your child?” I ask, waving a vague hand in the direction of her pregnancy. “Or…?”

  “Acting with children,” she says.

  I haven’t acted with children since I was a child myself, but I’m smart enough in an interview to accentuate the positive.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “I like kids.”

  “Do you have children of your own?”

  “No.”

  “That he knows of,” Cleve says playfully, and jabs me in the elbow with his knuckles. A jolt of pain shoots up my humerus. I want to hit him over the head with a plate.

  “This picture is going to use a lot of green screen,” Dagmar says. “Do you have experience with that?”

  “Sure,” I say. “Green screen is everywhere.”

  You want to set a scene in Boston or Miami or Singapore without shipping your cast there? Have them act in front of a green backdrop, and then key Boston behind them in editing.

  But honestly, the question is a little naive. I turn to Dagmar.

  “I’m an actor,” I say. “I can act on a soundstage or in a fast-moving car or at the bottom of a swimming pool. With green screen all I have to do is pretend—pretend that the spaceship’s overhead, or that I’m flying, or that I’m talking to a pink, six-armed troll.” I mime each of these actions as I speak. I drop the mime and speak directly to Dagmar.

  “Pretending is what actors do,” I say. “I’m a pro. I’ve been doing this all my life. Just put me in front of the camera, and I’ll give you what you want.”

  I’m acting as I say this. I’m playing a great actor, and I’m playing it less than three feet from Dagmar’s eyes. Most folks aren’t used to people being so intense right in their faces. It usually makes an impression.

  “Sean is great,” Cleve says. “Sean knows what he’s doing.”

  Dagmar considers me. The waitress arrives with the drinks. She puts my iced tea in front of me, and Cleve says, “You have really pretty hands.”

  Cleve is always complimenting women’s hands. Men don’t usually do that, so it usually catches women by surprise, and—Cleve assumes—leaves them open to further encroachments.

  The waitress is flattered. Cleve asks her name.

  “Keisha,” she says.

  “I’ve always liked that name,” Cleve says.

  Keisha hands around the others’ drinks. Cleve has white wine and is the only person drinking alcohol.

  We order lunch. I have a Provençal fish soup, because the description in the menu sounds interesting. Dagmar asks for a Moroccan chicken dish that’s on special, and Ismet orders kofte. Cleve calls for a steak, and hangs on to the wine list so he can decide what red wine he wants with it.

  I turn to Dagmar. “You woke me up this morning,” I say, and when she looks blank, I say, “With the phone call about Dr. Dexter.”

  She laughs. “Sorry about that! The sponsor wanted the call going out at eleven New York time. They had a board meeting then, and they wanted the board to hear it live.”

  “The voice actress was good. Who is she?”

  “Terry Griff. And she is good.”

  “Terry? I’ve met her.” Terry is one of those people who’ve been around forever, talented, continually employed, yet somehow perpetually overlooked for anything but minor roles. You’d recognize her if you saw her, but you wouldn’t remember where you’d seen her before.

  “You know Terry?” She cocks her head. “Where from?”

  “Here and there. Premieres, charity events. We’ve never worked together.”

  “She may be in this project. That’s why I’m asking.”

  “It’ll be nice to see her again.”

  Dagmar sips her iced tea, then leans back and considers me. “This is going to be an unusual undertaking,” she says.

  “Unusual how?”

  I see a weary smile on Ismet’s face, a
nd I sense he’s been through all this before.

  “Because it’s going to use techniques that have been developed in alternate reality games.”

  I absorb this. “You’re going to have me wake up the audience by phoning them?”

  “Maybe,” Dagmar says, with perfect seriousness.

  I try to remember what Julian told me about ARGs. “So there’s going to be—like—interactivity?”

  “There will be interactivity going on around the film. Games. Puzzles. There will be interactivity in the film as well, but that won’t really concern you. You’ll just act in front of the camera the way you always do.”

  “Interactivity in the film?” A memory floats up. “You mean like the Kinoautomat?”

  Dagmar blinks at me. “Kino what?”

  “Kinoautomat,” I say. “It was a Czech invention back in the sixties. At certain points in the film, the audience would vote on how they wanted the story to go.”

  She seems both surprised and entranced. “Have you seen any of these movies?”

  “I think there was only one. A friend of mine is a collector. Clarence Musselwhite, who owns the Hollywood Museum of Film History. He’s got the hardware and everything, for the voting.”

  The Kinoautomat debuted at a world’s fair, and after the fair ended the Czechs didn’t want to ship their gear back to Europe, and they sold it for nothing. A collector was on the spot to pick it up, and eventually Clarence got it. But he didn’t actually get a copy of the film, Man in His House, till years later, after the Soviet Union crashed, and then he had a gathering for some friends in his little theater, and we all sat in the dark and pressed buttons to vote on the way we wanted the film to go.