The Fourth Wall

by Williams, Walter Jon

  I sip my fruit punch. The ice has melted and the taste is watery.

  I try not to think of what it was that Timmi, Mac, and Jaydee had in common.

  Me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Our Reality Network

  Live Feed

  Hippolyte says:

  I think our question about what Great Big Idea is up to has just been solved. A big billboard has just gone up on Sunset advertising a movie called Escape to Earth. “Going Live Worldwide July 28.”

  There’s a sem@code on a corner of the poster that leads to this address, which gives instructions for getting an account and downloading the movie when it becomes available.

  I’ve checked Online Hollywood, which reports Dagmar Shaw and Ismet Kadri as executive producers. The film stars Sean Makin, Nataliya Hogan, and a host of unknowns.

  Hanseatic says:

  That film has been advertised widely in Europe for weeks.

  Corporal Carrot says:

  Was it Sean Makin who played Luggage Boy? Or was it the other kid?

  Consuelo says:

  Have you seen what Sean Makin looks like now? Here’s a photo.

  Hippolyte says:

  Oh my.

  Corporal Carrot says:

  He’s on Celebrity Pitfighter now.

  Hanseatic says:

  Please tell me there isn’t a TV show called Celebrity Pitfighter.

  Consuelo says:

  Makin’s got a blog. We should look there for trailheads to any new ARG.

  INT. ARENA—NIGHT

  Whooooo. The primal sound of the crowd tries to lift me into the air. I keep my feet planted on the canvas, and my mind focused on the script.

  Lenny Castro and I have outlined three rounds of slam-bang entertainment. We haven’t been able to actually rehearse it, but we pretty well know what we’re going to do. And if any of it looks awkward, it’s because we’re new to the martial arts.

  Our handicap consists of a fifty-pound medicine ball we’re hauling behind us on a strap. We have to be careful backing up because we could trip over the thing. I consider using the strap as a weapon, a strangling cord maybe, but I decide not to try that kind of improvisation.

  We throw punches and kicks, and when we start to get tired, we grapple for a while. I take a few shots here and there, because we’re making it look real; but it’s nothing I’m going to regret, and nothing that’s going to leave a big bruise on my face.

  Halfway through the third and last round, I lock up Lenny’s arm as we’re standing, and then I fall backward to throw him over his head. It’s a really spectacular throw, with Lenny doing almost a somersault in the air, and the crowd roars in delighted surprise. Next thing you know I’m on top of Lenny in the half-mount, and I’m tightening up the armlock called the kimura. Lenny surrenders. The crowd goes nuts.

  I’m going to the finals. God, it’s great to be a winner.

  And the best part is that I’ve got all summer to work out how I’m going to beat Burt Taylor in the final. Recorded episodes of Celebrity Pitfighter will stretch into August, and then the final fight will be broadcast live. All I’ve got to do in the interim is train, and I don’t have to worry about getting damaged while Escape to Earth is shooting.

  It’s the best of all possible worlds.

  INT. SOUNDSTAGE—DAY

  Nataliya looks at me blankly. “Who are you?”

  “I’m a friend of Emil.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Aren’t you a little tall to be a friend of Emil?”

  “I—” I hesitate. “I could try to be shorter.”

  “Ring ring,” says Clarke, from off camera.

  “Your phone’s ringing,” I tell her. They’ll dub in the actual ring tone later, in postproduction.

  Nataliya half-turns to the cell phone on the kitchen counter, then turns back to me, then turns to the phone again. She holds up a hand.

  “Wait there,” she says, and reaches for the phone so she can retrieve her text message.

  It’s a moment of comedy in what has up till now been a mostly serious film. Over the course of June and July, Act I, built around New Delhi and Amir, has progressed to Act IV, built around Washington, D.C., and Emil, another of Roheen’s juvenile friends, the son of a German attaché.

  In the current scenario, I’ve been living for several nights in the basement of Emil’s Georgetown home without either his parents or the au pair knowing. The parents are always off to meetings, concerts, and receptions. Colleen the au pair is always present, but her head is off in textspace and cyberspace and HerSpace, and she has only the vaguest idea of anything that doesn’t come to her via her handheld, let alone what Emil is up to…which is hiding Roheen in the basement, and trying to work out a way to get him to the Tellurian Gate off in the Blue Ridge.

  Nataliya’s quality of self-absorption makes her perfect for the part, and I have to admit that she’s very good at the funny bits. The makeup artist has taken her long-nosed mutant beauty and skewed it slightly, so that it’s off-balance and comic. Nataliya can’t play to my timing, because she doesn’t recognize anyone else as a person worth responding to, but I can play to hers, and it works.

  Joey calls for a cut, and then they set up the camera so that I’m getting the close-up instead of Nataliya, and we do it again. And then again, some more. Nataliya goes all unfocused when the camera’s on someone else: she saves everything for the close-ups. She’s professional that way.

  And then the camera moves again, and we shoot another bit of the scene, and then we do all that again, and it’s time for lunch. Because Carter-Ann hasn’t made any suggestions, Joey’s had only a couple of excuses for sarcasm today, once at Clarke, another at Nataliya’s entourage of giggling young girls, who got themselves banned from the soundstage after about ten minutes—so far as I could tell, their job was to cluster around Nataliya after every single take and tell her how brilliant she was. Aside from Nataliya and her pack, everyone’s happy because we’re actually on schedule.

  Normally, after a scene is over I tell the other actor how well she did, but I don’t this time. It seems redundant when Nataliya pays people for that.

  It’s six and a half weeks since Jaydee died. All Jaydee’s costume designs were completed before her death, and most of the costumes made. All that remains for me is some fittings: her absence has caused scarcely a ripple in the production. One of her assistants was promoted into her place, and everything in the costume department seems to be running smoothly.

  I miss Jaydee painfully, but I’m too busy to spend a lot of time mourning. I’m in practically every scene. I remember how, a brief month ago, this seemed a cause for delight.

  “Joey?” Nataliya is following him off the set. I trail behind them, because I suspect something amusing is about to happen.

  Joey knows Nataliya well enough to be on his guard. He looks at her narrowly. “What is it?” he asks.

  “I wrote this monologue.”

  “Yeah?” He’s not terribly interested. “Good for you, sweetheart.”

  “It’s a monologue by Colleen.”

  He stops on his way to the door and turns to her. “You wrote a monologue for your character.”

  “Yes. And I think it should be in the movie.”

  He looks up at her for a moment—she’s half a foot taller—and I know his mind is replaying some of the key bullet points from her proposal to make herself the star of the picture. Espionage. Intrigue. Musical interludes. He laughs and heads for the door.

  “Honey,” he says, “we got a script.”

  She follows, heels clacking on concrete, her perfect Afghan wolfhound hair swaying.

  “It’s like I understand her,” Nataliya says. “I know she’s kind of a comic character, but, like, I know how sad she is inside. And I’d like to be able to express that sadness.”

  She says it very fast, with a kind of weird desperation that causes Joey to slow down. He turns on her.

  “What are you talking about?”

&
nbsp; “It’s—”

  “We have a fucking screenwriter,” Joey points out. “We have a fucking script. We have a fucking schedule, and we haven’t fucking fallen behind.” He points at her. “You have a part. It’s a great fucking part, and it was written just for you.” He slices the air with a hand. “So why are you writing fucking monologues?”

  Other people, on their way to lunch, have stopped at the sound of Joey’s voice. A circle of shadows stands around Joey and Nataliya, here to witness Nataliya’s destruction. Joey can’t seem to defeat Carter-Ann; but he can certainly take Nataliya to pieces, and it looks like we’re all going to get to watch.

  “I—” Words fail Nataliya, and she stomps her heel on the floor, as if to kick-start her brain. “I just think that Colleen—”

  “No one cares what you think!” Joey snarls. “Jesus Christ, it’s a small cameo part.” He gets up in her face as far as he can, as short as he is. “I’ve got a thousand things on my plate with this, and now I’m supposed to worry about your monologue? You’re out of your tiny freakin’ little mind.” He reaches up and taps her forehead. She winces. “Anyone home up there? Anyone up there realize that this project isn’t all about you?” He cocks his head and pretends to listen. “No one? No one at all.”

  “Joey,” says Nataliya, “you are not being very nice.”

  “I’m the director, baby!” Joey sneers. “Where does it say I have to be nice?”

  And he stalks away, leaving Nataliya standing by herself. For a moment I feel sorry for her, because the humiliation was so public.

  And for another reason as well. There’s something in Nataliya I recognize, a feeling that’s shared my life for years, intimate as any lover… It’s Nataliya’s desperation, the hopeless need that made her write a monologue that she knew she’d never have a chance to perform. But why, I wondered, was an A-list celebrity like Nataliya so needy for…for what? To be accepted as a writer? As a serious dramatic actress? A tragedienne?

  Good lord, I think, could her mammoth ego be cracking? If so, it would be a meltdown on the Melody Chastain scale.

  Nataliya looks after Joey for a moment, and then tosses her hair and clacks toward the exit, where her yelping posse waits, the girls she pays to admire her.

  Fuck, I think. No use hating her, no use despising her. Nataliya grew up in show business. She’s another victim of child exploitation. Just like me, just like Melody Chastain, just like the kids in Escape to Earth. Growing up didn’t cost her any of her popularity, but that could be tragedy, too. Now she’s got millions of fans who expect something from her, but who in hell knows what that is?

  “What just happened won’t make any difference.” Carter-Ann speaks at my elbow. I didn’t hear her approach, but that’s not why I’m surprised. This is the first time she’s spoken to me as if I were a normal person.

  “Narcissistic personality disorder is the most difficult condition to treat,” she says. “Mostly because you can’t convince the patient that there’s anything wrong.”

  “I’m an actor,” I say. “I can’t say anything against narcissism. Narcissism is my best friend.”

  She gives me a sidelong smile. “Oh,” she says. “You thought I was talking about Nataliya?”

  A laugh. “I’m not a narcissist,” I say. “If I were, I’d want to direct.”

  “No,” she says precisely. “If you wanted to direct, you’d be a megalomaniac.” She gives me a wink, and follows Nataliya toward the exit.

  If Carter-Ann is confiding in me, I think, speaking to me as an actual human being instead of a test subject, then she must be confident of winning her war against Joey.

  I decide that I can’t disagree.

  INT. SEAN’S TRAILER—DAY

  I have lunch in my trailer. It isn’t a trailer exactly, but a diesel-propelled Wanderlodge RV, a monster as long as a bus. I would be terrified to drive the thing. It has a double bed, a kitchen full of snacks and fruit drinks, and an area where the makeup artist can apply my daily dose of paint. Richard has installed a safe where I can safely hide my script when I’m not studying it.

  Today I have pasta salad with little shrimp. Bits of celery crunch between my teeth as I eat. I down a lot of pasta: the carbs keep me chugging through my long days.

  I get a menu every day and pick what I want, though presumably I have the juice to dictate a menu if I want to. I’ve never been one of those people who demand food cooked a certain way, or plates of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed. I’m just delighted to get a catered meal instead of having to sit at the crafts buffet.

  I’m drinking apple juice. I haven’t had alcohol in the weeks since Jaydee died, and I don’t particularly miss it. My life is full.

  I’m still experiencing flare-ups of paranoia, particularly when I think about Jaydee. But none of my other friends have been threatened or attacked, and I haven’t seen any black SUVs lurking about. I haven’t heard from the police about Jaydee or anything else. The case is still open, but I don’t know how actively they’re investigating.

  I turn on the little flat-screen TV, hoping to find entertainment news, but instead I get the regular news. UN troops are now in charge in Fiji, preventing the genocide but protecting the government from the Indians, who are hopping mad. I still don’t know what the genocide was about, or why the Indians are involved, but I’m glad it’s over.

  The war in Ethiopia seems worse, though.

  I find the controller and turn to the entertainment news. I hear about the grosses for the previous weekend, and I’m happy.

  There’s a knock on the door, and I cock my head toward the window to see Sawicki outside. I wave and catch his eye, and he opens the door and comes in.

  “Meeting at one o’clock,” he says. “Room 201.”

  This is a room in the Bruce Bennett Building, the shabby office adjacent to the soundstage. It’s a big room and we use it for read-throughs.

  “Did Nataliya walk out?” I ask.

  Sawicki’s surprised. “No,” he says. “Why would she?”

  “What’s the meeting about, then?”

  He sighs heavily. “Threats and heavy sarcasm, I reckon.”

  I shrug. “How’s that different from anything else happening here in the life of Chester A. Arthur?”

  I finish my lunch, take a bottle of mineral water from the fridge, and head for Room 201. Inside the office building the walls, brown and white, have been painted so many times that the plaster is almost smooth, except where there are cracks from one or another of California’s earthquakes. The cracks don’t bother me: the building’s lasted seventy or more years.

  I go up the stairs. Dagmar has a corner office here, and the inviting scent from her coffee machine drifts down the corridors. You can tell she’s not thinking like a big-shot producer yet: though the electronics in the office are up-to-the-second, the furniture is shabby, and it opens directly onto the corridor instead of making visitors run a gauntlet of secretaries and assistants.

  I pause outside her door when I hear a dry male voice inside.

  “I was confident in the budget projections,” he said, “until you started sending those handhelds to places like Waziristan and Tajikistan. You’ll never make back the investment.”

  “We’ll see.” Dagmar’s tone indicates that budgets aren’t really her concern.

  “And dubbing the final product into Pashto and six Chinese dialects and half the languages of Africa? You’ve got two dozen translators standing by full time.”

  “Consequences of serialization. They’re getting the script in pieces. I need them when I need them.”

  “Well. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Warned I am.” The voices begin to move closer to the door, so I amble forward and glance into the office as I pass by. Dagmar is with a middle-aged blond man who wears an elegant charcoal Abbey Road suit. Dagmar looks up at me as I pass, nods, returns her attention to her companion.

  I continue down to 201 and find I’m the first to arrive. The
room is as shabby as everywhere else, with a banged-up wooden oval table and banged-up wooden chairs. Posters of forgotten movies hang on the walls.

  I find a seat halfway down the table. Dagmar comes in about thirty seconds later, carrying a cup of coffee, and sits at the head of the table.

  “So,” I say, “I heard you’re going to make me a star in Waziristan?”

  “That’s the plan.” If she is surprised that I was eavesdropping, she doesn’t show it.

  “Where is Waziristan?” The place seems not to be mentioned in the entertainment news, and if there was a documentary about Waziristan on the National Geographic Channel, I must have missed it.

  “Pakistan,” Dagmar says. “It’s a tribal area.”

  “Spend a lot of time at the cinema, the Waziri?”

  Dagmar shakes her head. “I doubt they have much opportunity in their home area.”

  I consider this. “You figure the—the Waziri?”

  “Wazirs.”

  “You reckon the Wazirs are going to be able to make sense of this picture? Tellurian Gates, parallel worlds, invaders from other planes?”

  She offers a tight-lipped smile. “I think the Wazirs know all they need to know about invaders.”

  “And you’re giving away handhelds so that they can appreciate the film for free?”

  “Not for free,” she says. “They still have to buy a subscription, though it won’t cost much out there.” She gives a grin and pulls out her handheld. “We’re planning a whole series of films,” she says, “plus games, online sites, maybe film or television spin-offs featuring our juvenile leads. The giveaway handhelds will be amortized over several productions. They may not produce a profit on Escape to Earth, but I’ll make money in the long run.”

  I nod. It sounds smart, though the whole idea of a production company whose financial vision extends past the opening weekend is a little unusual in modern Hollywood.