~ * * * ~
“NOW what?”
Stan stared down at Bryce, flat on his belly, teeth clenched, eyes jammed shut. He gripped the back of his right thigh and squeezed it like he was kneading a batch of bread dough.
“I’m cramping,” he whimpered.
Stan wasn’t buying it. “Aliens don’t cramp.” Maybe they do, but how would anyone know, especially Bryce?
Bryce swatted away Stan’s reasoning like he was brushing aside a fly that dared to invade his sacred space. “Well, this second-year theatre major does!” he erupted.
Keisha, Irv, and Dana gathered around. They had already gotten plenty of opportunities to witness Bryce’s various afflictions and maladies.
“Could be a hamstring,” Keisha said. “Might have pulled it.”
Bryce was eager to agree. “Yeah, that’s it. A hamstring. And definitely it’s pulled. I’m sure of it.”
Irv ran his hand up and down the back of his own leg behind the knee. “It’s not really a single string, you know. It’s a group of three muscles.”
“Really? Three? Oh, god, I must have pulled all of them!” Bryce appeared more pleased than distressed that his injury could be more severe than the initial diagnosis.
Stan kneeled next to Bryce. He smiled, patted Bryce on his leg. “Hurts, like the dickens, huh?” His tone was soothing and comforting.
Bryce seemed surprised by Stan’s unexpected compassion and responded with a feeble nod. He tossed in some back and jaw contortions for added effect.
“How about some water?” Stan snapped his fingers in the direction of Dana. It was not her favorite form of non verbal communication.
“I told you not to do that!” Dana snapped.
Stan’s voice was calm, but firm. “The water, Dana.” She knew that when her brother over-enunciated his words, it was always best to do what he wanted pronto, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
Dana hissed her disapproval, flung her backpack to the ground, removed a plastic bottle, and hurled it toward Stan. She also stuck out her tongue, just in case Stan hadn’t gotten the message.
Stan uncapped the bottle and held it while Bryce sipped. He leaned closer and put his hand on Bryce’s shoulder, gave it a gentle rub. “You know, maybe we should just cancel the shoot. Postpone it until you’re feeling better. What do you think?”
Bryce shook his head. “Yeah, super idea, Stan. We’ll reschedule.”
Stan glanced up at Keisha, Irv, and Dana, then turned again to Bryce. The look of empathy on his face had disappeared and was replaced by one of fury. “Here’s a better idea, Bryce. You’re going to suck it up and get your butt in gear because WE are not rescheduling anything! Letter 13 proceeds as planned. DO YOU HEAR ME?” Stan’s vocal chords strained, and his body shook like a death-row inmate strapped down on Old Sparky.
Bryce shrunk back, staggered by the severity of Stan’s full-boil eruption. Even Keisha, Irv, and Dana seemed startled by the outburst. After a moment of deliberation and with the initial shock worn off, Bryce lifted himself up into a sitting position and began to stretch out his leg with a series of piston-like motions. Meanwhile, Stan managed to recompose himself.
“Well?” Stan gestured with his arms, hands turned palms up.
Bryce pondered the question as though he had just been asked for his opinion on the Big Bang Theory. “Well…I think it’s a stupid title.”
That was the perhaps last comment Stan expected out of Bryce’s mouth, and it was so far off the grid that he was unprepared for a retort. He’d spent several agonizing months ruminating before he decided to call his film Letter 13. Stan knew that the title of a movie was its calling card, and that only in rare circumstances should it be more than one or two words in length (which is why he rejected his original title, Alien with an Alias). The idea was to keep it brief and punchy for easy recall by ticket buyers inundated with choices at a multiplex, like, say, Chinatown, Goodfellas or Casablanca. There were exceptions, of course. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs came to mind, but more often than not, it was a concise, pithy title such as Rocky or Taxi Driver or Pulp Fiction that was craved—required even—by studio executives. It was an arcane piece of cinema trade knowledge that Stan figured was best to withhold from Bryce so as not to overload the capacity of his brittle brain any more than it already was. “What’s stupid about it?”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Bryce proclaimed, in the self-assured manner of someone who was the acknowledged expert on the subject.
Stan had hoped an explanation of the origin of Letter 13 wouldn’t be necessary, because he preferred to keep it a mystery, even to his cast and crew (in order to provide future scholars with something to discuss in film journals, much like the meaning and significance of Rosebud, at the conclusion of Citizen Kane). “It’s cryptic.”
Bryce pressed on. “It’s crap.” He made sure to elongate the vowel in “crap” which made the scatological analogy sound more like the bleat of a goat.
Did this knucklehead really just call my title crap? Stan sprang up. Bryce’s jabs—low blows in Stan’s estimation—had scored some points. He realized the momentum had shifted back to Bryce. Once Stan caught glimpses of the doubt and concern that had trickled onto the faces of Keisha, Irv, and Dana, he knew he had no choice. He had to regain control of the situation. They had to know. They needed to understand.
Stan began to circle Bryce. “Okay, what’s the thirteenth letter in the alphabet, smart guy?”
Bryce shrugged. “Why?”
“Just go with it, okay?”
Bryce rolled his eyes and began to tabulate with his fingers. “A…B…C…D…”
By the fourth letter, Stan had heard plenty enough. “M, Bryce, m! And do you know what m stands for?” He paused and awaited Bryce’s reply.
“Oh, golly gee, that’s a tough one.” Bryce followed up his sarcasm with a snicker. “Maybe, uh…moronic?”
Stan had counted on him to answer incorrectly, and Bryce didn’t disappoint. Welcome back to my court ball, he thought.
“Martian. M for Martian. You’re an alien from Mars, remember?” Stan had gone over Bryce’s character with him at least a dozen times in the weeks leading up to this weekend. He knew perfectly well what his role was. No, this wasn’t about a memory lapse. This was a test of his authority and Stan was ready for it. Bring it on, Bryce.
“Okay, then, why not call it Letter 1? A for alien?” Bryce surprised even himself with the logic of his comeback, which left him with the smug look of a defense attorney who’d just tripped up the prosecution’s star witness.
Stan never considered that possibility, but it wasn’t a terrible suggestion and, as much as he hated to admit it, made sense. He just couldn’t let Bryce know.
“Because, uh, well, thirteen is a much cooler number.” In order to shut him up, though, Stan’s case had to be airtight, no openings for Bryce to wriggle out of. The camel’s back had to be broken and Stan knew he possessed the straw to do it. “Plus, it’s scarier. Everyone knows that, right?” He turned to the others for confirmation, and Irv delivered the perfect follow-up.
“Triskaidekaphobia. Fear of the number thirteen,” he stated.
Before Bryce could fully process Irv’s pronouncement, Stan leaped in with renewed vigor to put down the insurrection once and for all. “Which, as I pointed out numerous times in our pre-production meetings, is the central theme in Letter 13. Fear of the unknown. That’s why Keisha is running from you. She knows your secret. You need to mate with her to save your species and take over planet earth.” Stan let his explanation sink in a moment. “Ring a bell?”
Bryce still wasn’t convinced. “All I know is, thirteen is unlucky. Look what has happened already. We can’t even get through the first scene.”
We? Stan did a double take and squinted at Bryce. The last—and only—time he had ever gotten into a fight was on the playground at elementary school in the third grade. It was an unremarkable encounter th
at lasted less than a minute, resulted in nothing more than a scraped elbow (his opponent, a fourth grader of considerable corpulence, suffered the indignity of a bloody nose, which resulted in a trip to the nurse’s office and an afternoon of Q-tips lodged in his nostrils) and convinced him that engaging in a physical altercation with a mental midget was a futile endeavor. Until now.
“No, YOU can’t get through the first scene, Bryce!”
Stan charged at him, fists cocked, teeth bared. Bryce lifted his arms to shield his face and prepared for the onslaught like a horde of Huns was invading. “You going to hit me? That it, Stan? Go ahead. Then you’ll never get your stupid movie finished because I’ll quit!”
Quit? The mere mention of the q-word froze Stan’s advance like an Ice Age mastodon and made his heart skip a beat. Bryce was right. Pounding the bejesus out of his lone male actor didn’t solve anything and jeopardized the completion of his pet project. As much as it pained him to do so, Stan had to swallow some serious crow. He backed off, shuffled his feet, and lowered his eyes. When it did emerge after a couple of false starts, his voice was subdued and contrite.
“Sorry.” He looked over at Irv and Dana, forced an awkward, self-conscious smile, and then turned with an arctic glare to Bryce. “It’s not a stupid movie.”
Bryce shrugged his shoulders in one quick spasm. It was the kind of neutral gesture that was noncommittal, but Stan accepted it as a positive enough sign and was glad just to get past the squabbling—for the moment anyway. Besides, his only other actor had gone AWOL on him.
“Where’s Keisha?” Stan glanced around.
“She headed that way.” Irv pointed toward the east. About fifty yards ahead, the open field ended and another grove of trees awaited them. “The river’s just beyond that wooded area.”
Stan motioned with a grand sweep of his arm like he was guiding a train of Conestoga wagons on the rugged trail to the Oregon Territory. “Move it everybody. Heyoooh!”
Bryce dragged himself up and struggled to keep pace as he limped after Stan and Irv. Within a few steps, Bryce gestured at the camera trained on him by Dana, who followed behind the group. “Does she have to film everything?”
Stan wasn’t about to give Bryce the satisfaction of drawing him into yet another debate, so he didn’t hesitate even a beat as he continued surging forward with Irv at this side. “Yes, Bryce, as a matter of fact she does have to film everything. That’s why she’s here.”
Bryce was befuddled. It was as if Einstein had just scribbled an equation on the blackboard and announced a pop quiz. “But we’re not doing anything. We’re walking. It’s not relevant.”
Stan didn’t bother to turn around when he spoke. “Oh, but it is relevant, Bryce. Dana’s shooting the footage for the Making of Letter 13 video. All the behind-the-scenes stuff.” Stan knew that when it came time to market his movie, potential buyers would ask for any extras, like a “making of” feature, to help drum up interest in the film. “Keep the camera rolling, Dana, got it? You never turn it off unless I say so, hear me?”
Dana kept the camera glued to her face. “Yes, master.” It was obvious by the way she said “master” that she considered Stan no more her master than the irritating midges that swarmed around her head.
Bryce still wasn’t buying what Stan was selling. “Does your baby sister always do what you tell her?” It wasn’t clear if Bryce’s dig was aimed at Stan or Dana, but the identity of which Heberling nerve he’d struck soon became obvious.
“I’m not a baby!” Dana protested. It was as if Bryce just called Hulk Hogan a sissy. “I’m fifteen!” she vented.
Stan stopped short, twisted around, and sneered at Bryce and Dana. “I’m only going to say this once. As the producer, director, and writer of this film, EVERYBODY does what I say.” Stan paused to let his words resonate with the petulant duo before he stomped off. “KEISHA!!!”
Bryce waited until Stan and Irv were a safe distance ahead before he mumbled. “Friggin’ dictator if you ask me.”
In a final gesture of defiance, he shot his middle finger up in front of Dana’s lens and let it reside there several seconds. “Got THAT?”
She tilted the camera up and down as if to say “yes,” and they marched away together, gnats and all.
Chapter 3