The Fourth Wall

by Williams, Walter Jon

  “Next time,” I say, “you should probably give yourself more relaxed deadlines.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She nods wearily. “I just wanted to get the episodes out before someone stole a script and made everything public. I’m used to tight deadlines with the games, and…” She waves a hand. “I’ll get better at this.”

  “Kubrick was supposedly editing 2001 in the projection room just before the premiere,” I say. “At least things haven’t slipped that far.”

  She looks skeptical. “We’ll see.”

  “I’m just wondering,” I say, “if I’m going to have time for another project between now and then.”

  She cocks an eyebrow at me. “Do you actually have a project waiting?”

  “One may come along. My agent gets lots of offers these days.”

  She nods, not very interested in whatever offers Cleve might be fielding. Then she winces and presses a hand to her side. “The kid’s really active today. Seems to be pissed off for some reason.”

  “I’m glad I can’t get pregnant.”

  “All men are. Or so I’m told.” She gives a grunt and presses her hand to another part of her abdomen. I continue making conversation.

  “Another one of my earlier films, Mister Baby Head, will probably be released soon.”

  A smile tweaks the corners of her mouth. “Why do you think that?”

  “It’s been held up in legal limbo since Mac MacCartney died. Apparently all that’s been resolved.”

  “That’s right,” she says. “I was the one who resolved it. I bought the picture from the heirs.”

  I look at her in deep surprise.

  “They all hated each other so much,” Dagmar explains, “that they wouldn’t sell out to each other, but they’d sell out to me.”

  “So you’ll be releasing it?”

  “No.” A little shake of the head. “I won’t.”

  I gape at her for a few seconds, and then I feel anger begin to burn in my veins.

  “What the fuck?” I say.

  She sighs. I see that there’s a shine of sweat across the bridge of her nose. “I’m not releasing Baby Head until we’re done with Roheen. I can’t have people going into a theater expecting to see Roheen and instead seeing a sadistic maniac who burns women’s faces off with a blowtorch.”

  “Just market it as horror!” I tell her. “Everyone will know what they’re getting.”

  Dagmar looks up at me. “Who do you want to be, Sean? Roheen, who has an audience of over four hundred million fans, or the blowtorch guy?”

  The answer to that one seems obvious enough. “Both,” I say. “I was great in Baby Head. People should see it.”

  She waves a dismissive hand. “People will. Eventually.” And then her eyes narrow as she looks at me from under her dark brows.

  “So,” she says, “is there any particular reason why Melody Chastain was trying to wipe you out?”

  I assume an expression of baffled ignorance. “The police haven’t told me.”

  “I mean, did you even know her?” Dagmar says. “Did you date her, or steal her boyfriend, or…” She frowns to herself, and there’s an odd tic at the corner of her lip.

  “I know her to say hello to,” I say. “We’ve never been what you’d call friends.”

  Dagmar’s frown deepens. She puts a hand on her stomach. “I think…” she begins, and then she bends over and gives a sudden howl of pain.

  For a moment I’m paralyzed, and then I jump forward and grab one arm. Ismet puts his laptop down and takes the other. Corrie takes a step toward Dagmar, her arms outstretched, and then pauses, unsure what to do.

  “Get Dagmar a chair,” I tell her.

  “What’s wrong?” Ismet says. “What’s happening?”

  Dagmar utters a long, wrenching moan, like an animal caught in a steel trap. Corrie dashes to the set, finds a folding chair, brings it. Ismet and I steer Dagmar into the seat. She remains bent over, hands over her stomach.

  “It hurts,” Dagmar says in a whisper. “Something’s gone wrong.” I can see pinpoints of sweat dotting her forehead.

  I pat my pockets like an idiot, but of course I’m in costume and my phone is in my dressing room. I hold out a hand to Corrie and snap my fingers.

  “Phone,” I say.

  Numbly she hands me her phone. I punch in Simon’s number.

  “I need you to bring the car to the soundstage, northeast corner,” I say. “Dagmar needs to go to the hospital fast.”

  We’re collecting quite a crowd: Tessa, Jean-Marc, a dozen or more technicians. One of the grips overhears me and runs to the big garage doors in the middle of the north wall of the soundstage, and rolls them open. So when Simon arrives with the Super Sport, he’s able to drive right into the soundstage, park next to Dagmar, and jump out to open the rear door.

  The pain hasn’t let go of Dagmar. She’s bent over, panting for breath, barely able to talk. Her face is drained of color. Pens clatter out of her pockets as Ismet and I help her stand. We move her to the car and ease her into the backseat. Ismet runs around to the other side and gets in next to her.

  Simon is bent over Dagmar, trying to strap her into her lap belt. “Sherman Oaks is the nearest hospital, right?” I ask him. “Straight down the One-oh-one?”

  “Valley Presbyterian!” Dagmar gasps. “Big maternity center!”

  “The lady knows best,” I say.

  Simon buckles Dagmar in place and closes the door. “I’ll wait for you in my dressing room,” I say to him as he jumps into the driver’s seat, and he nods.

  Then the Super Sport guns its engine, and the car is away, leaving the scent of exhaust. I hand the phone back to a stunned Corrie.

  “Call Valley Prez,” I say. “Tell them Dagmar is coming, and describe what’s happening to her.”

  “I don’t know what’s happening to her!” Corrie says.

  “You know as much as anyone. And when you’ve made the call, tell Richard and Helmuth, then follow her to the hospital.”

  She nods, and makes the call.

  I join the crowd for a lot of nervous chattering and speculation. “Where’s Carter-Ann?” I ask. “She’s an MD, someone should have called her.”

  Nobody knows where she’s gone to. I suggest that someone call, and I believe someone does.

  The crowd slowly breaks up. I realize how tired I am. I’m on the verge of returning to my dressing room when I see Ismet’s laptop still sitting there, on the concrete floor. It’s gone to the screensaver, in which brightly colored blobby things bump up against other brightly colored blobby things.

  I pick up the laptop, close the lid, and take it with me when I leave.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  FROM: Parmita

  SUBJECT: Your Lawyer

  I am so angry at you! You have filed a “lawsuit” against Babaji and now everyone here is very upset!

  You don’t know how difficult a “position” this places me in! People are looking at me as if this is all my fault!

  I demand that you drop this “lawsuit” at once! Maybe God will forgive you but I may not!

  FROM: Sean Makin

  SUBJECT: Re: Your Lawyer

  If it’s any consolation, we haven’t filed a lawsuit yet. We’ve just told Babaji’s lawyer how much he’ll have to pay me in order to prevent me from filing a lawsuit.

  Considering that the local ashram engaged in a criminal conspiracy to murder me, I’m surprised the whole lot of them aren’t in jail.

  And of course Babaji has been holding on to nearly a million dollars in my money for over a decade now.

  You should tell your fellow inmates that this money means nothing, and that I am merely saving Babaji from a life of materialism.

  Oh, and by the way, thanks for all the compassion and concern over the fact that someone nearly succeeded in murdering me! I’m so glad to hear that this is all about you!

  INT. SEAN’S SUITE—NIGHT

  I’m arguing with myself about th
e laptop all the way to NoHo. Part of me wants to toss it in the nearest trash can, because possession of the laptop could get me killed. Part of me argues that I owe it to Jaydee and the other victims to find out why they died.

  Maybe I take the laptop just to shut up the voices that have been screaming in my head for the last twenty-four hours, and I just have to find out if I’m right. Or maybe it’s Roheen who dictates my final decision, who tells me that I simply need to discover the truth, and then figure out what to do once I know it.

  So once I get home I take the laptop out, put it on the desk in the front room of my suite, and stare at it for a while. If I’m right and anything with the Escape to Earth software can be bugged, I should be careful not to reveal that I’ve been snooping.

  I get a tonic water from the minibar while I’m thinking, and some mini pretzels because I’m hungry. Salt and quinine taste surprisingly good together: maybe someone should make a packaged food with that flavor.

  I examine Ismet’s laptop carefully and see that there’s a switch on the outside of the case that will allow me to manually turn off the wireless network adapter. I turn the switch to the off position. And in the unlikely event that the computer simply records everything for later broadcast, I open the lid carefully a crack, then stick a Band-Aid over the camera lens at the top.

  I open the lid all the way and see the screen flash into life. Ismet presumably had anything important password-protected, but I’ve never turned off the machine or closed any files, so whatever passwords he gave it are still operative.

  On top of the display is some email Ismet was reading, all of which has to do with the marketing of the Escape to Earth finale in Latin America. I minimize the email and scan the icons on the desktop. They’re mostly for running software that I’ve never heard of. I click the option that calls up recently viewed documents, and the name of one jumps right off the screen at me.

  Sean/Father02.

  I click it, and a program that runs video and audio jumps onto the screen. From the laptop’s speakers I hear my father’s voice.

  “Have you had a chance to look at the resort prospectus?” he asks.

  “Costa Magnifico?” my own voice replies. “It’s ungrammatical. It should be Costa Magnifica.”

  “No one who actually stays at this resort is going to care about that.”

  I listen as my conversation with my father is replayed, right to the point where I pretended there was someone at the door and I hung up. The audio quality is good, which tells me that the audio isn’t taken from a bug in the room, but from the phone signal itself.

  I was right. Richard has cloned my phone, and he and Ismet and for all I know half the Sri Sphere are listening to my calls.

  Then panic jolts me as I realize that my phone is sitting nearby, on the side table in the front room where I laid it down when I came into the room, and that someone might have heard me playing the sound file. In sudden terror I grab the phone, turn it off, and then put it in the closet, under the jacket, next to my tablet, where I hope it won’t pick up any more conversations.

  I return cautiously to the laptop, which has not exploded or otherwise behaved in an alarming way, and then I do a search to find out where Sean/Father02 is actually located on the drive.

  There’s a Sean Makin folder, and Sean/Father02 is only one file among a couple dozen. I click randomly on some of the others, and discover that most of the files seem to feature me practicing my lines for the next day’s shooting. I’ve been leading a pretty dull life in the last few weeks. The one exception is the night with my fan from Caltech, and mercifully the Sean Makin sex tape seems not to be here. Perhaps some unusually tactful person erased it. I hope so.

  I check the other files, most of which have names that I don’t recognize, but which generally seem foreign. Some have country names: India-Pakistan, Thailand-Burma, Korea, Mozambique. I click a few audio files at random, and it’s all men talking in languages that I don’t know. The audio quality isn’t very good, though it shows signs of having been cleaned up, probably by an automated program designed to remove background clutter. Then I click another one, and I hear a voice speaking English, though with a foreign accent.

  “The current-account deficit for July was higher than what we actually announced. Four point three billion rand.”

  Well, I think, I may not know what a rand is, or a current-account deficit, but I know there’s no way a savvy entrepreneur like Sri isn’t going to be able to make a packet off that piece of information alone, by betting against whoever it is who’s covering up his deficit problems. Maybe Sri will make enough to pay for this whole venture.

  I decide that I’ve learned what I intended to learn, and I close all the files I’ve opened. Then I panic again, because I realize the computer’s history will show what files I’ve been meddling with. I stop and think about this for a moment, and then I erase the existing history. I bring up the office suite and click a number of files at random—graphics from Ismet’s ad campaigns, spreadsheets of who knows what, text files proposing this or that. I fill up the history, and I call Ismet’s email back up.

  The display now looks exactly as it did when I first opened it. I doubt that Ismet has memorized his own computer’s history, and what the history now shows is at least plausible. I stop and think about what to do next.

  The laptop contains proof that Dagmar and Sri are conducting widespread, and presumably illegal, surveillance throughout the world. And it’s probably why three people were killed, though I still can’t figure out how Joey or Jaydee found out enough that they needed to be silenced.

  Okay, Roheen, I think. I’ve gotten all noble and found out what’s going on. What the hell do I do now?

  Roheen seems not to have an answer to this one. So Sean has to take over: I decide very sensibly that I need insurance. I rummage through the carrying case for my laptop until I find some portable memory, and then I plug it into one of Ismet’s USB ports, and I try to move a bunch of the files into portable storage.

  Except that the computer then asks me for a password. I remember the scripts that Richard’s been delivering on portable memory, and that Richard arranged it so I couldn’t copy the files to any other drive. Ismet has the same feature here.

  I cancel the transfer. I’m completely out of ideas, so I turn the computer off, wipe most of my fingerprints off the keyboard with a handkerchief—they know I handled it some, but I don’t want it to seem as if I’ve been groping the thing—take the Band-Aid off the camera lens, and close the lid.

  I have a persistent notion that I’ve just made an idiot of myself, though I can’t quite work out how.

  Greenland, in any case, is looking better and better.

  I decide to have something like a normal evening, by way of covering myself if nothing else, so I get my phone from where I’ve hidden it, and I let the Sri Sphere hear me call the hotel restaurant and order chicken marsala for dinner.

  While I’m waiting I decide it would be polite to inquire how Dagmar is doing, and so I call Ismet. The call goes straight to voice mail, so I call Richard instead.

  “Dagmar’s still in surgery,” he says. “The placenta tried to tear away.”

  “Good Lord,” I say.

  “Dagmar almost bled to death in the car. They wheeled her into the hospital and stuck the biggest IV I’ve ever seen right in her arm and started pouring blood into her. Then she had an emergency C-section.”

  “Wow.”

  I’m sort of useless when confronted by gory details. “Good Lord” and “Wow” are about as much as I can manage.

  “Her little girl is all right, though.”

  “That’s good,” I say.

  “Ismet is with her.”

  “Tell them I called.” There is a pause. “When you see Ismet,” I say, “tell him that I’ve got his laptop.”

  Even through the phone I feel Richard’s attention suddenly focused entirely on me.

  “You have Ismet’s computer.” He says th
is as if the fact is one of many he has to place in the right order.

  “He left it on the floor of the soundstage,” I tell him. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I picked it up.”

  Twenty minutes later there’s a knock on the door. I check the peephole and I see Carter-Ann’s pale, blond assistant. I open the door and hand him Ismet’s laptop, and we have a brief conversation consisting of a very few syllables.

  “Hi.”

  “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Bye.”

  A few minutes after that my dinner arrives, and after that I set my phone near my seat and entertain the Sri Sphere with the recitation of my lines for the next day.

  INT. SEAN’S BEDROOM—PREDAWN

  “Didn’t you know, Sean?” Timmi says. “UFOs are really made of bread. You can put butter on them and eat them.” She laughs and puts a finger to her lips. “It was the lilacs who told me. Don’t tell anyone that the lilacs can talk.”

  I wake with my heart pounding in a room that smells of lemon wax, and I fight through tangled sheets to the bedside light.

  The light reveals a silk-screen portrait on the wall opposite, Marilyn Monroe laughing and looking at me over her shoulder. Timmi’s elegant personality seems to attach itself for a moment to the portrait, and for a moment the sadness is so profound that I feel it like a dull knife twisting its way to my heart.

  The dream fades. I remember Timmi and Joey in it, lots of shouting, lots of anger. I don’t remember what any of it was about except that it didn’t seem to be about vehicular homicide. The fighting was like at that party six years ago, when Timmi and Mac were fighting and I didn’t know why.

  I rise from the bed and walk naked to the front room and turn on my computer. There are websites where you can look up car registrations, Richard said.

  It takes me half a minute to find one. In order to search the database you can enter name, address, registration number, or license plate number. I give it my credit card number and a name. A few minutes later I find that Timothea Wilhelm owns a car, a white Dodge Grand Caravan. Which is technically a van, not an SUV, but a motorist at night on the PCH might not be able to distinguish one from the other.