~ * * * ~
“I like your sister. She hates you.”
Bryce spoke as he leaned against the cruddy refrigerator and watched as Stan prowled about the shack eyeballing every nook and cranny like he was a pool shark calculating the geometry of his next shot. In part, he was.
“I’m her older brother,” Stan responded without even a glance in Bryce’s direction. “She’s supposed to hate me.” He appeared satisfied with his survey and strode up to Bryce like a car salesman eager get his customer behind the wheel for a test drive. “Okay, you ready, Bryce?”
“For what?” Bryce had the wary look of a patient who just observed a nurse handing his doctor a syringe with a needle the length of a conductor’s baton.
“Time to get back in character.”
“Oh, you mean Howie from Mars who’s trapped in this rat hole with a box full of who-knows-what and a hot chick who has no clue he’s an alien. That character?”
Not quite how he would have summarized it, Stan thought, but close
enough. He wasn’t sure, though, that he didn’t detect an undercurrent of mocking lurking beneath the comment. Perhaps a bit of positive reinforcement was in order at this point to bolster Bryce’s shaken confidence following his bitter defeat in the vote. Toss the doggie a bone and get his tail wagging again. “Right.”
“Wonderful. Because if he was Howie from Jupiter, I’d be absolutely clueless how to play him.”
Stan was a fan of sarcasm and, in fact, could not deny that he was an active purveyor of the occasional well-placed—and often deserved—zinger. However, in this case, he could almost hear the snicker that rode along with Bryce’s snide remark. It sounded like a taunt to Stan and, even worse, ridiculed Letter 13, which was not something he could overlook. Sure, he realized that a director was fair game for frustrated actors to take potshots at. It took some tough skin to fend off the barbs from cast and crew that were bound to be slung his way in the heat of the moment over the course of a production. It was part of the process of collaboration—a certain amount of head-butting was to be expected. The director was an easy target, and the relationship he had with his actors was not always without rancor. The degree and type of criticism that could be tolerated varied with every director. In this case, Bryce had crossed the line when he derided the origins of the character Stan created, the exact one he was chomping at the bit to play two months prior when he had been offered the part. Criticize me if you want, Stan thought, but Letter 13 is off
limits. Howie is an alien. He’s from Mars. Deal with it. End of discussion.
Stan strode across the room to within inches of Bryce and stabbed at his face with his forefinger. “Don’t push it, Bryce.”
Bryce appeared about as concerned with Stan’s aggressive posture as a hippo with an egret perched on its back. “Why? You going to call central casting and replace me?”
“If I could, I would,” Stan shot back.
Bryce leaned so close to Stan their nostrils nearly collided. “Well, I wish you would if you could!”
Respect. Without it, Stan knew, any director was bound to fail, his credibility tarnished beyond repair. It was an earned recognition, attained by demonstrating prowess and firm control on the set—a surefire way to gain the confidence of cast and crew to toe the line and heed the director’s wishes. There was no guarantee of permanence, however. Its ebb and flow depended on the director’s ability to weather the myriad of production storms and find solutions to the most bedeviling of problems that arose. Respect was ephemeral, easy to lose a grip on, difficult—if not impossible—to regain once gone. Thus, whenever there was a direct challenge being doled out that might disrupt the supply chain of respect—after all, it was a two-way street—counter-measures needed to be initiated to plug the dam before it burst. Sometimes that meant applying a patch over a tiny leak, a few soothing, placating words sufficing as damage control. Other instances—like this one, Stan realized—required a bolder approach. Backing off was not an option. Shoving Bryce was. And so he did.
“Well, I do wish I could!” Stan shouted.
Bryce was at first taken aback that Stan dared to confront him in such a physical manner. It was as though he had been slapped in the face and challenged to a duel at twenty paces come dawn. When he pushed back, the reaction was more of an involuntary response triggered by Stan’s unexpected offensive than a premeditated attack.
“Then wish harder!” Bryce yelled.
The blow staggered Stan as he stumbled backward, but once he found his balance again, he charged at Bryce like a lion pouncing on a hyena on the African savanna.
“You’ll wish I didn’t!”
Stan tackled Bryce around his waist and pinned him against the refrigerator. No amount of effort could dislodge Stan, his arms locked around Bryce’s body, the top of his head buried in his midsection.
“Irv, don’t just sit there, do something!” Bryce cried out.
Irv was parked on the sofa munching on a granola bar, as reluctant to become involved in the scuffle as a bystander observing two hotheaded, road-raging motorists arguing over a fender bender.
Stan continued to mash Bryce. “You give? Huh? You give?”
“Get off me!” Bryce slapped and punched at Stan’s shoulders to no avail. It was as futile as trying to escape the clutches of a ravenous python. “Irv, please, help me!”
Irv gazed over at the combatants, shook his head as if witnessing a ruckus between five-year-olds on a playground and stood. By the time he dragged himself over to the battle royal, Stan had lifted Bryce off the ground several inches as he squashed him against the fridge. Irv reached in like a referee separating a clinch, yanked Stan away from Bryce with the ease of splitting a popsicle in half, and held them an arm’s length apart.
“All right, break it up, kiddies. Promise to play nice if I let you ruffians go?” Irv asked, his voice unruffled, but more than a little annoyed as well.
Bryce was still seething. “He started it!”
“No, your crummy attitude is what started it,” Stan countered, his breathing heavy and labored, the exertion of the encounter leaving him spent.
“My attitude?” Bryce stared at Stan, incredulous at the accusation. “You act like an emperor instead of a director!”
“Well, if you could act, prima donna is the only role anybody would want you for!”
“All right, that’s it, I’m officially done with you two. You may now proceed to maim each other,” Irv declared, in an indifferent manner, as he removed himself from between Stan and Bryce. Once he stepped aside and the path was clear, they rushed at each other like rams in mating season, bashed chests in the typical ritual-like macho fashion popularized by showboating professional athletes, and glared at each other. Neither flinched nor displayed even the slightest of movements for what seemed like an eternity—perhaps twenty seconds in reality—before Bryce buckled and broke the silence.
“WHAT?”
A stalemate. After the multitudes of verbal slings and arrows they had hurled at each other, Stan concluded that all they managed to achieve was a draw: the equivalent, in his mind, of kissing your sister—never a very satisfying experience. Not even close. He knew that if he was going to be able to perform his directorial duties with effective results, a more definitive ending to this tiff would be required. Somehow, some way, Bryce would have to be thrown off stride. It was clear to Stan that the self-assurance of his nemesis had grown with each and every confrontation. He had settled into a kind of comfort zone, reveling in his role as a malcontent and griper. Stan realized that his pattern of insurrection needed to be squelched, his personal rebellion quelled once and for all. But, defeating Bryce couldn’t rely on mere rhetorical rhubarbs, which had proven to be an ineffective method of sparring thus far and had gained him no ground. No, he would have to be audacious, try something unexpected, an unorthodox tactic even. That’s when he recalled the words of Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military commander renowned for the strategy laid out in T
he Art of War. Stan’s report on the book in his senior year world history class in high school earned him an A for the course, his best grade in any subject that year, which is why Sun Tzu’s battle philosophies stuck with him to this day. He said that “war is deception” and “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy and break its resistance without fighting.” If Sun Tzu was right, then Stan’s next move would not just knock Bryce for a loop, but so disconcert him that he would be sure to succumb and raise the white flag of surrender. That was the plan anyway. Executing it, Stan thought, was a whole other matter. He decided it was kind of like getting a tooth pulled—the quicker it’s over, the better.
He brushed past Bryce, headed to the stove, and grabbed the nearby ladle. Without hesitating, he dipped it deep into the pot of squirrel stew and scooped out a heaping portion. Turning to Bryce—a quizzical look frozen on his face—he drew the dipper closer to his lips and without pause, began to slurp down the concoction with as much gusto as an alcoholic in a beer drinking contest. Once the ladle was empty, he licked it clean and mopped up every droplet with his tongue. “Aaaah,” he said, and rubbed his belly with the contentment of a man who just polished off a gourmet meal at a five-star restaurant.
Bryce observed the scene that unfolded before his eyes with a combination of disbelief and disgust, his mouth agape, like he’d just watched someone douse himself with gasoline, light a match and engage in an act of self-immolation—except maybe worse.
Stan once again lowered the ladle into the wretched potion and lifted out a load of the slop, but this time, offered it to Bryce. “Truce?”
Bryce gulped hard, took a few reluctant steps forward, reached out, and took hold of the ladle. His hand quivered as he raised the soupy mix upward toward his lips and held it just below to his chin. He gaped down on it with such repugnance it was though he had been asked to sample the excrement of a barnyard sow. After several moments of considering the effects of gulping down the glop, Bryce scurried to the stove, dumped out the liquid, and flung the ladle back into the kettle as though the handle were coated with cooties.
He glowered at Stan. “You’re one very sick puppy, Heberling.”
Stan smiled. Sun Tzu was right. And so, for a change, was he.