Page 2 of Lost Souls

The woman stops for a moment, slightly thrown by the unexpected warmth of tone, and looks back at her producer for some sort of solace.

“Make some lunch for us now, eh babe? And don’t forget to add plenty of cumin. Ha!”

The woman nods and gives an appreciative little laugh, without quite getting what she picks up from his expression has to be a witticism of sorts, undoubtedly crude, as the majority of the things that emerge from his potty mouth firmly embrace this component. She makes for the kitchen, humming a Salvadorian folk song of her youth.

“How do you get away with it, Arnie?” asks the sound engineer when Dorita has gone. The older man looks simultaneously disgusted, appalled and genuinelyfascinated.

“With what?”

“With what?Treating people like something you trod in, spouting filth and ugly sexist abuse and not get your head handed to you. Or your cojones.”

Arnie throws the man his trademark and vaguely repellent twinkle. “It’s a gift, lamebrain. Now get this mix finished or I’ll have someone break your fingers. Again.”

“You got it, boss.”

Dorita’s magnificent forty-third orgasm suddenly blasts through the speakers.

Arnie Garth sighs as he makes for the door. “I’ll be on set if you need me.”

The harassed producer doesn’t notice as he storms out that Dorita herself has returned with a tempting plate of taquitos for her and the engineer. As they munch, they exchange a comradely shake of the head, their mutual gaze focused on the door out of which the bane of their lives, their tormentor-in-chief, the asshole supreme, has just barrelled. They know that he is on his way to give an equally hard time to the poor working stiffs – and this isn’t a random description – currently on set in the guest house just twenty feet to the right. But, as ever, the pair are still uncertain as to why the dickhead needs to hop into his golf cart to get there.

***

“Why is everyone standing up?”

Not, you might think, the usual complaint that a harassed producer of movies might voice on set. Butthis is not a usual producer of movies. At least not those movies that demand big studios, even bigger stars and all the statutory yet often inexplicable cinematographic apparatus. Plus a lot of people standing up.

The movies we are talking about this sweltering LA afternoon involve a cameraman, a sound guy, perhaps a make-up person and, of course, a director. With an efficient but hardly overstretched wardrobe lady and a keen, young, barely paid boy to lug the lights. All of whom you might expect to discover upright, unless maybe there’s a director’s chair or two just sitting around. But the stars of this particular genre of movie, the featured artistes, are more often to be encountered in a recumbent posture, on, say, a bed or a sofa (or even, more exotically, though less comfortably, a hammock). Hence Arnie Garth’s bitter disappointment when he finally steams into the guest house to discover his leading man still in his surgical scrubs and his regular and extremely healthy-looking leading lady as yet unrelieved of her flimsy, fantasy nurse attire. With a totally pristine hospital bed lying virginally unoccupied between them.

At first, no one responds. They all turn towards Arnie like escaping POWs caught in the searchlights. The handsome and impressively structured (even in scrubs) male lead eventually shrugs sheepishly and looks to his very attractive co-worker for the support he knows that only she can give.

“It’s not my fault!” yelps the young woman, unhelpfully, thrusting out her more than ample but currently still decent chest, as if this alone will demonstrate her willingness and indeed enthusiasm to get this showfirmly on the road and bedded down.

“It is too,” protests the would-be doctor/seducer.

“Is not!”

“Is too!”

Unimpressed by this quick-fire banter, redolent of so much of his early work, the irate producer attempts to ascertain what exactly is or isn’t his leading lady’s fault, only to be met with a barrage of exclamations and explanations, none of which appears in the least explanatory or even decipherable. Arnie Garth finds himself massaging his poor temples all over again.

“Will everyone just shut the fuck up?” he requests politely (for him) and takes advantage of the respectful silence to dial down his voice from incandescent to the merely homicidal. “Now. What exactly is going on that is in no way Cleo’s fault and that is costing me five hundred bucks an hour minimum?”

The leading man, whose name really is Brent Wood, as if his parents aspired to nothing less than porn stardom for their firstborn, points to Cleo and says, “Smell her! Go on, smell her.”

Arnie, who seldom does as asked, chooses this time to take the cue and moves closer to Cleo in order to sniff. Then he gently moves her glisteningly incarnadine lips apart and sniffs again.

“Little garlic. With a touch of lemon butter. And a hint of Cajun spice…”

“You loved it last night,” says Cleo, with a little grin.

“Lower. Sniff lower,” orders Brent, unhappy with the way things are going.

As he begins the downward journey, Arnie realiseswhat the younger man is saying and straightens up.

“I get it.” He nods. “So?”

“So, I’m allergic to garlic – I’m garlic intolerant,” explains Brent, putting his recently acquired medical knowledge to full use. “And I don’t want my schvantz breaking out in a rash. It is my instrument, after all.”