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The Other Half of the Rent

Pending resolution. This is an ongoing matter.

If the devil only knew...

April 23rd, 2008

Rating:

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

This was a finely made, riveting movie. Some reviewers in the NY Times Readers' Reviews say the scene on the porch between father and son didn't add much, or has been done better before, but for this viewer it was a gratifying explication for the motives which began the terrible events here related. This was the kind of thing missing from such highly rated (and Oscar-rewarded) stories as There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men. When those films were over I did leave the theater wondering why such pathological characters were the focus of our current crop of "great story-telling movies." Unexplained motivation leaves me cold.
In Before the Devil... Lumet has not missed a beat. Everything we need to know to be involved in these characters' tales is included. Sterling performances by all in an excellent display of cinematography, from Amy Ryan's few scenes up through the histrionics of Hoffman and Finney. Pooh to anyone who finds fault in this film, and Coen brothers, take a lesson in how to involve your audience in caring about dysfunctional characters. It's not enough to just be quirky and photograph it beautifully. It helps a lot to include even a small scene supplying motivation.

- michaelbrown7

The Last Lesson

Dear Haojun:

Thanks for your nice letter. I can tell from your tone China is very excited about the return of Macao. I hope the transfer is as smooth as that of Hong Kong. You seem all caught up in the festivities and they seem less worrisome than the Y2K business and millennium madness we are experiencing over here. I wonder how you are doing vis-à-vis computer problems. We have not exchanged e-mail in quite some time.

It has been a long time since we last communicated. I know you have been very busy redecorating your new home. It must be coming along beautifully. Perhaps you can send me a photo.

Let me tell you why I have not written. Just as you are trying to improve your English, I have been trying to better my writing abilities in my native language. As I told you before mostly I write fiction. There is much need for improvement if I wish to capture a readership. I wish I had the abilities of our mutual favorite Lu Xun, but that is another story.

I signed up for a six-week online writing course and have made many new friends. Each lesson required us to approach the craft of fiction writing from a specific perspective. One week we had to pretend to be one of our characters so as to introduce ourselves to each other. I found it difficult trying to discover my own personality as if looking at myself from the outside. Another time we had to focus on point of view and how to use it to tell a story. For that one, I wrote the assignment three times before I settled on telling it in the second person. I wrote, "You say..." and "You go..." as if I were telling the character what to do. It was critiqued positively so I guess the rewrites paid off. And once, we had to interview one of the characters we'd created as if he or she were applying for a job in our stories. That piece took me a while before I settled on a magazine type interview wherein I pretended the reporter wanted to speak to "the man on the street" rather than a celebrity.

Each week I struggled along slowly and painstakingly trying to get better at the craft. However, this last lesson I found most difficult of all. It was concerned with conflict, complications and plot. How to build to a crisis and then resolve it. And I was at a loss. My conflict was I could not come up with a plot I liked well enough to post and perhaps develop later as I go into further courses.

My friend John suggested I use the tension filled story I wrote about the boy and the unlocked window, but I had written it so long ago, I found it sophomoric. I really felt uncomfortable using any of my very early writing.

Then he advised me to use two characters who have been floating around in my head for a long time without a story, but as I explained to him, they don’t have a story yet. They are just colorful characters without conflicts of their own. I need to think up some interesting situations to place them in, but for this exercise I was drawing a blank.

I thought of writing to you to ask for help with something that would seem exotic to my friends over here, but there wasn’t enough time and besides, many of the online students are not from America, so if I wrote of something I was unsure of I would just look foolish.

What to do? What to do? Time was running out.

I came up with a plan, which I am not proud to tell you. I cobbled together an unbelievable labyrinthine plot from a book I purchased a very long time ago. It wasn’t much help back then and I should have known better than to try to make it work for me now, but I was desperate to end this course with a completed assignment. I used the book’s suggestion to string together little bits of action that were supposed to coalesce into a complicated tale of vengeance. What I wound up with was a tepid second rate murder mystery and it was so badly put together and underdeveloped, it read more like a summary than a story. As the final day approached and no other ideas were forthcoming, I threw up my hands in exasperation and went ahead and posted my work.

I regretted my action immediately.

As was to be expected, it was met with a lukewarm reception. We critique each other’s work and a few of my fellow students said some kind things, but most, including my mentor, made it clear they did not think it was my best work. They were right.

I was ashamed. It’s only a writing course, you might say, and there is always tomorrow to do better. It’s true, but my pride would not allow me to let this hodgepodge represent me in my final assignment of my freshman course. I was not being true to myself, and so, I deleted it from the postings. Now, I had nothing to represent me.

What to do?

I went out to take a walk to clear my thoughts and saw all the signs of the coming millennium celebration. I also saw a dead pigeon in the street. It made me heartsick to think of how many hours flying the poor useless creature had put in to arrive nowhere, and here it was, a pile of crumpled feathers someone had brushed off the sidewalk into the street.

When I returned to my apartment building, your letter was waiting for me and it made me feel so much better. Every time we communicate, I realize how big this world is and how insignificant some of my “problems” are.

I read your letter and like a flash, I came up with an idea and must run now to re-post my final assignment. I realize where the conflict is and how it could be resolved. I must thank you for writing and unknowingly helping me to see what was under my nose all the time.

Thank you very much for the stamps and the magazine clippings.

Please extend my greetings to your mother and the rest of your family.

I will write to you again soon now that this course is finishing up and I will have some free time.

Your friend,

Michael

Eight Years

It feels like yesterday. Still in my heart. Still in my head.

The What-If Factor

Ineradicable cobwebs fill the corners of my life.
The ghosts of things that might have been haunt me though they haven't.

In my dream, we said some terrible things -
No, I take that back,
I said some awful things to you -
Hate-filled words, untake-backable words,
And left you in confusion
Wondering what you'd done.

Then I walked through fire -
Returning to a past which had not, could not happen.

I took the consolation you deserved for myself,
In the arms of someone who no longer was there.
After thinking how good it felt, I realized it could not last.
It was a chimera.

I saw clearly I'd given away the present for a past I could not reclaim
And thus, my future was obliterated.

When you woke me and you were still real,
For a brief moment there was relief,
But then I noticed cobwebs
Constructed of motes of sadness
And felt the heat of the coming fire.

Somewhere in this there's a formula for figuring probability.
Somewhere there's a path to get to the average mean.
There's the murk of the future and the bottleneck of the recent past
And glorious worlds at either end,
But I'm stuck in between.

Sally Graham

Five years ago I was intimidated by Sally Graham. Well, I respected her superior intellect. She was almost ready to retire then. I think she told me she was fifty-eight. She's a psychiatrist and a member of the American Philatelic Society and at that time I think her stamp collection numbered in the 60,000s.
The way I met her was I was talking to the doorman and I mentioned I was just renewing my interest in stamp collecting, something I had done when I was a kid. And he told me there was someone in the building who was also a collector and if I wanted he would give her my apartment number. I told him go ahead, why not, I wanted to meet other people who were into it. That evening, she rang my bell. I invited her in and we talked for an hour or so.
She sat on my dining room floor explaining things to me like how I could always tell stamps that belonged to republics of the Soviet Union because they had letters on them in the Cyrillic alphabet that looked like CCCP and NOYTA and how stamps from Taiwan differed from those from mainland China because those from the Peoples Republic had an ideogram resembling a wishbone, and it was the symbol that stood for man. It was pronounced ren, but I only had to concern myself with that on the earlier issues because the later stamps now said China in the English alphabet and the sets were numbered. She was a free spirit and her hair was unkempt and she reminded of nothing so much as a wilted flower child, but she sounded very intelligent.
She told me I should join the APS and I would get circuits on approval. It was a good way to fill up my collection cheaply and it was a very secure procedure.
The difference in our ages precluded becoming very friendly but every once in a while I would see her in the lobby on my way out to work or coming home and I remember when she told me she had officially retired. She was looking forward to more time at home and not having to see patients. They all had so many problems. She said at times she felt like she might bug out.
About a year ago I had a problem with the APS. Someone from the Society called me and told me the next person on the Peoples Republic of China circuit did not receive the booklets I had looked at and sent on. He was a Chinese with a post office box for an address and I had my suspicions. The stamps were valuable. I called Sally and asked her advice, because whenever I received a circuit from PRC she was always the prior recipient and this particular time I had foolishly forgotten to save the priority mail insurance receipt.
She told me in her soft-spoken solicitous way, "It's a test. To teach you to follow the instructions. Why don't you call the APS and tell them the number and maybe they can track it down without the actual receipt?"
"And if they can't?" I asked.
"Well," she said, "It couldn't cost you more than a hundred dollars. That's all it was insured for."
I felt like one of her patients. It was not what I wanted to hear.
I was able to clear my responsibility with the APS with a phone call, but after that I asked them not to send me anymore stamps from China. My collection was pretty full and I didn't want to be responsible for something that expensive again.
As I say, that was a year ago.
This afternoon, in the crisp December weather, I went downstairs to buy some lunch in the new Garden of Eden gourmet food shop that recently opened in our building's ground floor. It is filled with the delicious aromas of all kinds of exotic foods, fruits and baked items, meats and poultry, cooked and ready to go. I bought some three potato salad and some roast beef and when I entered the lobby I ran into Sally Graham. I was a little taken back by how she looked. Her teeth were all discolored and her hair was still unkempt but now it was completely gray. It looked dirty and she had put on quite a bit of weight. She was wearing an ill fitting down jacket with food stains on it.
"You cost me five dollars," she said, and it really sounded like an accusation.
"How's that?" I asked. I really didn't want to stand there and talk. I wanted to come upstairs and have my roast beef.
She went on to explain since I wasn't on the Chinese circuit anymore, she had to walk all the way over to Fourth Avenue to the Post Office to insure her package and send it on to the next person on the list instead of leaving it with the doorman for me.
I asked her how many stamps she had now and she told me she had stopped counting when she went over 100,000.
"How do you catalog them all?" I asked.
"Well, I haven't gotten around to doing that," she said. "They're all in shoeboxes. Some of my friends who are dealers tell me I should, especially if I want to sell them, and I may have to soon. I'm running out of money."
I was surprised and said, "Oh?"
"Yes," she said, "I just paid October's rent."
That really surprised me. It was not the kind of thing I expected from her.

Views

Two people carry one thing and an argument ensues,
It ends with the big thing left on the street when one of them blows a fuse.
A patient sues his doctor and the lawyer sports new shoes,
The doctor makes excuses, saying, "I'm always the one they accuse!"
Fans at the game are anxious to see the visitors lose,
Though the leading player rolls on the ground and rubs a swelling bruise.
Mom and Dad watch a crime in progress on the local news;
A hateful man in an interview hurts with the words he spews.
Three competing suitors are hoping the beauty will choose
Against a backdrop of music and hearts of pink in varying hues.
The tenants default on their rent with excuses by ones and by twos,
And complain of the neighbor who stinks up the hall with the garbage that he strews.
Robert propounds on Kate's erroneous definition of clerihews;
In order to get her to see the light, he gives her a book to peruse.
The church falls short on worshippers who can't sit in predestined pews,
And Masons turn out their membership for failing to pay their dues.
A husband abandons his wife in aborted attempts to amuse;
Her demeanor is drowned in pot luck casseroles, soups and stews.
A detective sifts through the ashes searching remains for clues;
He's found an earring, a tooth and a nail, but he doesn't know whose.
Teenagers wooing, say they aren't smoking. They are. It's only a ruse.
They're thinking of eloping because her father is turning the screws.
Workers waiting for jobs are standing outside in queues,
While the hardnosed factory owner seeks alternatives to use.
Someone is at the zoo with a child his girlfriend won't let him abuse,
And an old man who's lost a fortune regains it by singing the Blues.

Check out student writing at TEC Inglés.

One Wish Left

“What’s that?” Lisa asked, “It looks like one of those genie bottles.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” Richard said, “A little six month anniversary gift for you.”
“Oh, Rich, you’re so sweet.” Smoothing out the edge of her black silk negligee, she sat at the vanity and reapplied her make-up. “But it actually looks like a giant phallus. I can’t bring that home. How would I explain it to my husband?”
“Tell him you bought it at a flea market.”
“It’s so large.” She rubbed the gnarled wooden bottle. “I wish you were this big, all the time.” She giggled and aimed it at him like a rifle.

Back at the office, Rich received a telephone call from the ancient sage who sold him the bottle. “I make grave mistake,” said the old man, “I meant to sell you novelty copy of actual bottle. That one contains very powerful magic. You not be able to handle consequences.”
“Well, that’s too bad, pop,” Rich said, “I’ve already given it to my girlfriend as a gift.”
“Please, you must return it to me. I give you copy. She is in grave danger. I'm sorry I make mistake. You must believe me.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see, pop.” Rich hung up the phone while the old man was still protesting.

Twenty minutes later, Rich felt a twitching in his pants. His crotch area became uncomfortable as a certain part of him began to gain about three pounds of flesh. For a moment he thought he had subconsciously recalled his afternoon tryst with Lisa, but then he remembered the wish she made.
He tried calling her at home, which he almost never did. There was no answer.

She was in her white Camaro, stalled in traffic. ‘I hate having to deal with situations like this,’ she thought, ‘I wouldn’t have to if I were a wealthy woman with a chauffeur driven car. I could be in the back of a limousine, eating caviar and drinking champagne.’ “I wish I was rich. Really Rich,” she heard herself saying aloud. Suddenly the gridlock cleared and she zoomed off.

Rich drove toward Lisa’s home, finding it somewhat uncomfortable to fit his newly developed bulk under the steering wheel. She was going to go wild when she saw that. He hoped he could get to her before she wasted her other two wishes.
He had to slow down and stop as he approached the scene of an accident. A white car was badly banged up and wrapped around a divider. Traffic at a standstill, Rich got out of his Lexus and asked one of the attending policemen, "“What the hell happened, officer?"
The cop did a double take as if he recognized him. “Er, uh,” he stammered, “Damn fool guy must have been drunk. Wracked up his vehicle pretty good.”
As they removed the body from the wreck, Rich almost fainted. It could have been his twin. The dead man’s face looked so much like his own. And the guy had a huge bulge in his bloody pants.
The driver’s side door was mangled. It wouldn’t close properly. When the tow truck lifted the Camaro, a gnarled wooden bottle fell out of the car, rolled across the highway and disappeared into the grass.

Commuters' Rage

It used to be a long comfortable commute on the train from Westchester down to her job on Wall Street during which Alison immersed herself in books from the bestseller list. "I can never find time to read evenings or on weekends, so I always read on the way to work," she told her friend Macy once, before Macy married and moved to an island off the coast of South Carolina. They still compared notes on the latest bestsellers, but not as often. Alison found little time to write letters or e-mail with all the work she brought home to do in the evenings and over weekends. There were so many details. She had to be careful not to leave anything out.
One day, a man ran through the train shooting at people indiscriminately. Alison, looked up from her book at the sound of the first shot and for an elongated moment she could not comprehend what was happening. Then she was hit in the shoulder by one of the bullets, just inches from her heart.
She spent her long recuperation reading accounts of the man's life. Various newspapers told how he had been arrested on burglary and assault charges several times, but had served only two years in prison. He was the son of a teen-aged unwed mother who had died early of a drug overdose. He had been raised by his grandmother who could not understand where he had gone wrong. He was always a good child. She had three other daughters. Each had several children. None had turned out like Vaco. "Vaco's cousins cannot understand this tragedy either," the grandmother said. A photograph showed her crying, next to a photograph of Vaco, with his arm reaching forward, as if to block the photographer's view. From what Alison could see of his face in that picture, he appeared to be smiling. In another, he had a glazed look in his eyes. His defense attorney said Vaco was filled with an uncontrollable rage against society. This rage anesthetized him to the wrongs he commited. The attorney argued, under the powerful grip of such rage, a person, surely, cannot be held completely accountable for how he reacts to the society he feels has wronged him.
Details of Vaco's life filled newspapers for many weeks. Alison read them all. She had plenty of time in her hospital bed and later at home. There was very little written about the sixteen people who were hurt or the man who was killed on the train that day. When she mentioned this to Macy during a phone conversation, Macy said the victims' stories would be related in the soon to be published book about commuters' rage. Alison told her nobody had interviewed her for such a book, and that she thought that was a callous thing to say. After hanging up, she thought it might be a long time before she could speak to Macy again.
Alison went back to work eventually. She still commutes from Westchester, but these days, she never reads on trains no matter how long the ride is.

2007 Story Roundup

The Din
The Day Before the Incident
Static
Almost a Man
Panic on the Comeback Trail
Alice
Blind-Sided
Intrigue
Finished
Descending and Rising Damp
Why Not?
It's My Belief We're All Crazy

Las Vegas

Las Vegas 12/16/2007

The Din

The television volume was on high, at least 25.
“But, Evelyn, you sleep all the time!”
“Only to avoid the draft from the swinging door.”
“Sweetie,…”
“Don’t touch me. There’s no quickie sex here. No on-again-off-again, got-fifteen-minutes-between-meetings, try-to-keep-her-quiet sex here. Get it from someone else, but, you get it—I go, and the gravy train ends.”
The gigolo undone.
Almost the story of my life, Theresa thought.
“Bull shit. Bull shit,” kept ringing in her ears. Her own words from two hours earlier.

From across the courtyard, the discordant sound of one of the Mexican pop songs being rehearsed by the as yet unprofessional neighbor’s band came to layer itself over Evelyn’s retribution on the television.
Theresa sat watching a tiny bodied, long-legged spider weaving its web in the corner where the windowed wall met the bare one. What a waste of time, she thought, as she could also see the little gecko who would soon make dinner of the spider, only a short distance away. “Bull shit. Bull shit,” still reverberating.

Through the window, with its makeshift curtain tied back, which was on an angle to the living room, she could see Armando’s leg dangling from the couch. He was oblivious to Evelyn’s melodrama. She didn’t know it then, but he had stopped breathing fifteen minutes earlier. She would be told that he had died of alcoholic poisoning by a relative a week later over the telephone.
She thought for tonight she would rather not sleep here and went upstairs to pack a little bag. She would check into the Sheraton near the plaza. In the morning, she would purchase a one-way ticket back to New York on the last of her Mexican pesos.
With her overnighter in hand, she clicked off the television.

On her way out, she noticed Armando was not snoring, but her thoughts turned in another direction as the raucous neighbors finished rehearsing and the sound of crickets filled the courtyard.

Almost a Man

Uncle Jack and Marti and I arrived with the children at the Bensons' apartment at about three.

It was going to be a surprise party for my little brother Raymond. Uncle Jack always remembered birthdays just like Mom and Dad used to. On the way up the stairs, I remarked, "I wish someone would do this for me."

Uncle Jack said, "You're almost a man, Philip." I was fourteen. "This one's only four," he added, trying, I guess, not to spoil the surprise for Raymond, who on hearing the word four seemed to know he was being talked about.

Nobody answered the door.

We walked in and the place seemed deserted. It was so quiet.

We soon found everyone sitting around the dining room table or lying on the floor. At first I thought they were all sleeping, which seemed a strange thing to do at a party. The children with colorful hats on sat slumped forward onto the table. I checked their pulses as I had been trained to do in my Phys. Ed. class. They were all right, just unconscious. The two women, Mrs. Benson and her grown daughter Marion also seemed to be comatose. Then I saw a pair of legs. Ernest Benson had no pulse. He lay in the corner against a smaller table, halfway behind the chair in which he usually sat. His eyes were wide open, but he wasn't breathing.

Alison had tears welling, and Marti, with her hand over her mouth, backed out of the room; then ushered Raymond and Alison toward one of the back bedrooms, as there came a knock on the door. Uncle Jack went to see who was knocking and I picked up the telephone to call the police.

Uncle Jack opened the door, but there did not appear to be anyone on the other side. Suddenly, he clutched at his chest and fell to the floor. As the door slammed shut, I could see no one in the hall. I didn't know where Marti had gone with the children and I could not move. I tried to call out Uncle Jack's name, but my throat was dry and produced no sound.

I stood rooted to the spot with the telephone receiver in my hand. Not sure what to do next, I stood there a long time.

Somewhere very far away I heard a voice saying, "There appears to be a receiver off the hook. Please hang up the telephone, then lift the receiver and dial your number...There appears to be a receiver off the hook...

Panic on the Comeback Trail

Britney, once again on the comeback trail, was attempting to portray Gertrude Quintanilla in a bio-pic with music. Her agent had advised her that if she pulled this one off, she would probably be back in place and not have to worry about her future as an actress.

Gertrude was an English teacher with a method. What she would do is begin her lesson with excess clothing on and casualy remove one item as she presented each grammar point until midway through the lesson she was standing in front of her group in hot pants and a halter. She would then proceed to redress, but her art was in being able to keep the students’ attention while she did so. She knew of no ecdysiast who had followed a strip act by putting on clothes, and in any case, she did not bump and grind in an erotic manner. She was teaching.
She didn’t do her “act” during every lesson. It was always an impromptu thing. So her students, mostly young males, never knew what to expect. Thus, they filled her classes hoping any day would be their lucky day. The price they had to pay was learning. Her exams were extremely detailed and difficult to pass if the topics had not been studied.
And she never stripped on exam days.
She had other “revolutionary” methods that fairly guaranteed a high success rate, but the clothing thing was what she had become known for.

Britney called her current paramour Ryan because he looked like either Ryan Gosling or Ryan Phillipe. She could never remember which one it was actually, but he didn’t seem to mind her nicknaming him because he claimed he wasn’t very attached to his given-name which was Oliver.

Gertrude, now over fifty and no longer in the physical condition to teach using her method, had turned to writing; novels mostly, which sold relatively well, but it was her memoirs that provided the means by which she was able to retire from teaching. She was still quite attractive, and had bridled on first learning that Britney was going to portray her, but could not say much because she had sold the rights to her story. In any case, her initial dissatisfaction had lessened when she took to visiting the set and conversed with Britney. She was so malleable and graciously accepted suggestions on how best to play the character, for that was, after all, what Gertrude had made herself, a character.

Britney, on the other hand, never saw herself as a character. The papparazzi blitz had long ago ended. Her last few concerts had garnered little praise and less revenue than she had been able to achieve in her prime. Her hair had not grown back so luxuriously after her breakdown stage, and she had taken to wearing wigs. She was always careful to wear underwear these days, even under slacks and bathing attire, though without the surprise photos being snapped it did not seem entirely necessary. There were the children to consider. That was why she took such precaution. Her most enjoyable activity over the last few months was when Ryan took her and the kids somewhere for a day’s outing. These had continued until the movie crew went on location to film Gertrude’s after-teaching life.

Gertrude had accompanied the family on several outings and surprised Britney when she offered to watch the children for the three weeks she would be off filming. Ryan had meetings to attend in Seattle and Portland, and would then join Britney in Texas when those had wrapped up.

Britney sat now in her trailer. She was drinking mineral water and lightly massaging the abdomen of a pet white rat, which lay on its back submitting to her ministrations. The rat had had its tail clipped and resembled a hamster, but the thought passed Britney’s mind that it was still a rat. She worried that at any moment it might suddenly become moody and bite her. The massage was a trust building exercise for both parties. When her cell phone rang, it startled Britney and her longish nails grazed the rat’s belly. Then it did snap at her hand, but she had moved too quickly. Disappointed, the rat scurried away and ran under an endtable. It was watching her in what she considered a sinister fashion as she spoke on the phone.

Gertrude asked how the filming was going and said she anticipated Britney’s return. The children, while she loved them dearly, were quite a handful, and she wasn’t getting any writing done. Having been a teacher, she had assumed she could easily manage youngsters, but perhaps she had misjudged her enthusiasm.

Britney, at a loss for words, looked at the rat, and suddenly panicked. She felt she must stay on the phone, for as long as she did so, she was safe. The rat would maintain its present size and not attack. Where was Ryan when she really needed him? She must say something to maintain her connection with Gertrude. Something. Anything.
So she said, “We’ll be wrapping a little earlier than expected. It seems the producers are looking over their budget and feel money would be better spent on the musical numbers. We still have two more to do, and they can be filmed back in L.A. But Gert, there’s something I wanted to ask you. I didn’t think of it as a problem until I saw it in the script. They have you in a relationship with a much younger former student after your first book was written. How did you go about that? I mean, was that something like a mid-life crisis?”

Gertrude responded, “You said you’d read my book. Do you remember any part about an affair with an ex-student?”

“No, well, I, that’s why I’m asking I guess.”

“That never happened. Sweetie, you didn’t actually read the book, did you?”

“Oh, Gert, I’m sorry. I’m dyslexic and have trouble reading. I didn’t want you to think I was stupid. I knew you didn’t really want me to play you in this movie, and I wanted you to believe I could do it.”

“I wish you had at least listened to an audio version. If you had, you’d know the one thing I value above all else is honesty.”

“I’m so sorry. I never meant to…You see, this rat is crouching here ready to pounce on me, and I…”

“Well, at least you’re honest with yourself,” Gertrude said. “Listen, dear, I have to go. The children are making a lot of noise up in my bedroom and I have to go investigate. Hurry home, won’t you?”

“Wait. Please don’t hang…” Britney said, but it was too late. Gertrude had disconnected. Britney, maintaining eye contact with the rat, quickly dialled Ryan’s number, but it rang several times and then his message came on. She pretended he had answered anyway, and preceded to make light conversation in her most controlled voice. She didn’t consider herself a great actress, but she had taken several lessons, and she remembered a few things. She just wished the director would call, “Cut.” sooner rather than later. She wanted the rest of the crew to return to the set. Those were always the best moments of the day.