I shake the bottle. A Viagra tumbles into my fist. I pop the pill and crush it between my molars.
Jack, the director, looks like a Hollywood screenwriter who never sold a script. We stand knee-to-knee in a makeup room the size of a parking space. This close, I taste the menthols on his breath. The fluorescent lights from the bank of vanity mirrors settles on our skin like a layer of soot.
He says, “You strike me as a man who understands the value of money. He laughs and flops down onto the futon. A head taller than me when standing, he sinks between the fold of the mattress like a forgotten nickel. Jack stops laughing, looks at me and says, “We’re going to have April call you a ‘nigger’ during the scene!”
“…What?”
Jack says, “It’s not racist. It’s porn!”
I hear a muffled, woman’s voice from the other side of the closed door: “Do what you’re told, you purple-lipped beast! Obey me!” There is a loud smack and a man wails.
“Goodbye, Jack.” I grab my shaving kit from the counter and turn for the door.
“Wait!” He springs to his feet. “Where are you going? I’m paying cash!”
“There is no way I’m letting anyone call me a nigger.”
He says, “There’s a dozen guys I can call right now that’ll do it for half what I’m paying you.”
“So call them.”
He sighs. “Okay, fine. We won’t say ‘nigger’ in your scene, but how-a-bout–”
He pulls out a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and reads:
“–darkie…jigaboo…coon…spade…spook…jigaboo, ha-ha, I said that already–”
I take the doorknob and twist it.
“Wait!” He pulls a fold of one-hundred-dollar bills from his pocket, peels one off and holds out in the space between us. “I’m sorry.”
Amanda and I are short this month’s rent. I snatch the cash from his hand and shove it in my pocket.
The woman on the other side of the door says, “Oh my God! The stereotype is true–you don’t eat pussy!”
Jack holds up a fist to give me a pound. “It’s all good, Playa!”
“Fuck off.”
“Sure, sure,” he says. “Go ahead and out the paperwork, and I’ll have a talk with her. There’s only one scene up before yours–April with Jim Crowe, which shouldn’t take long.”
Jack takes my IDs and my HIV test, then opens door a to leave–
“GET BACK HERE AND FUCK MY WHITE CUNT!”
Jack steps back in the room and slams the door shut behind him.
I hear her yelling from set, “NIGGER!”
#
I follow Jack through the warehouse. He has long strides and I have to trot to keep up with him. He tosses sentences back to me over his shoulder as we talk.
We pass several set build-outs. A doctor’s office with an examination table…a college dorm…
He says, “I already spoke to her, and she promised not to say anything offensive–”
We pass an executive’s office…a graffiti covered wall with a waist-high glory hole…
We stop at the set where April and Jim Crowe just shot their scene. A Jail. April is gone. Jim, behind bars, sits on bench. He looks wild-eyed and disheveled. He stands up and approaches the cage door when he sees us.
A rape kit sits on the floor. Jack picks it up and hands it to me, then slides the (unlocked) cell door open, releasing Jim. He pulls his fold of cash out and shoves some money into Jim’s hands and says, “Okay, here you go.”
Jim counts the money. He speaks. The deep, rumbling timbre of his voice sends my adrenal screaming. He says, “It’s a hundred dollars short.”
Jack says, “Do you think you gave a performance worthy of your full rate? Because–”
“Yeah, man, I did my job! I mean, it was kinda hard to concentrate on the pop shot with her beatin’ on me and all, but–”
“Immaterial. If a bukkake-line mope can come at will–”
Jim says, “My clothes are torn…ruined!”
“The budget for this movie is inflexible! Because of you I’ve got to pay overtime on location fees! Every extra dollar has to come from somewhere–”
I slide my hand into my pocket, where the c-note Jack gave me rests. I run my fingers over the paper’s crisp texture and caress its folds. Then I stuff it down deeper.
“–and the location owner doesn’t care why you struggled,” Jack says. “And neither do I. Time. Is. Money–”
“Yeah, but–”
“–and right now, you’re jeopardizing our business relationship by wasting more of it!”
Jim’s shoulders slump. He shuffles through the door. He never bothers to put his wad of cash in his pocket, so he drops a bill as he walks past us. Jack picks it up and pockets it.
“Ha-ha-ha…”
#
April sits on a schoolteacher’s desk, holding an eraser. Her legs dangle and swing over the edge. She looks like she dove into her mommy’s makeup box, then got bored with the game of dress-up and stopped somewhere in the lingerie drawer. The kid looks up at me with big Disney princess eyes, smiles, and opens her legs. The bald folds of her cunt peek through the sheer fabric of the panties.
She says, “Hello, mister.”
A blackboard looms behind the desk. Columns after column of chalk-scribbled writing say:
“I will not say nigger in this classroom.”
She hops off the desk, and skips to the board. Her butt wiggles as she erases “nigger” from each sentence.
My jaw clenches. Lava churns in my gut, but some of heat seeps down to my crotch. A desire…to grab her and rip her panties down…but to spank her bottom red, to spit on my cock and force my way inside her cunt. I look at Jack. Jack looks at me through the camera’s viewfinder. The camera’s greedy lens sucks my image through it, and splashes my pixilated ghost across his face as pale blue light.
I open my mouth to speak, but her hand tugs my chin so that my face is square with hers. She wraps her arms around my waist and pulls herself into me. We kiss.
#
Stephanie stops kissing me and the girls giggle and laugh and laugh… Eileen slides my backpack off my shoulders…All of us are in the house next door to Eileen’s house…Eileen told me that she had something that she wants to show me and I said okay and followed her and Stephanie and Krista into the house…The house is not finished being built and I wish I wore my jacket and my hat because there’s no wall on one side…Just some wood…The floor is cement…I’m sitting on it now…It’s cold…
Krista says, “It’s my turn!” but Eileen pushes Krista out her out of the way because Eileen is a lot bigger than Krista. She is bigger than I am too.
Eileen says, “Now we’re gonna play ‘Show us yours and we’ll show you ours.’”
“What do I hafta show?”
The girls giggle and laugh and Eileen says, “Your penis.”
“What’s a penis?”
“Stand up.”
I stand up.
“This.” She unzips my pants and pulls them down and then she pulls my underwear down too. She grabs my thing. “This is a penis.”
The other girls…They don’t giggle…I can see everyone’s breath in here but my face feels very hot.
Eileen tells the other girls to pull their pants down but Stephanie doesn’t. She leaves. Krista doesn’t pull her pants down either so Eileen grabs her but Krista gets away and she runs away too.
Eileen lifts up her skirt. No underwear.
I know I’m not supposed to look but I can’t help it…She has hair…A lot of hair.
“Have you ever seen a pussy before?”
I nod.
“Come here.”
My thing kinda hurts and I look down and I see that it’s standing straight up.
Eileen says, “Wanna touch mine?”
I look over at the front door of the house. It kinda feels like last week when I got in trouble for fighting and my teacher said she was gonna call my dad at dinnertime and when we’re sitting at the table and dad asks me why I’m not eating. I’m looking a the phone and hoping that it doesn’t ring…I shake my head no and Eileen gets mad and pulls her skirt down again…
Someone is coming. Krista’s mom walks in the house and Eileen starts crying and runs away past Krista’s mom. My pants are still down and I try to pull them up. My belly feel like it did when I went to sit down and Johnathan pulled my chair away.
She stops in front of me and I have to bend my neck to look up to see her face…Krista’s mom looks kinda like Cinderella…She has yellow hair like Krista and all the daddies in the neighborhood talk real sweet to her. Her perfume smells really nice.
SLAP!
My eyes are full of water and I see her all blurry.
She says, “You dirty goddamn pervert! I knew something like this this would happen the moment you niggers moved in. I’m telling Krista’s father, then I’m going to the police so we can get rid of you!”
They leave. I still feel her hand on my cheek.
I hate living out in the country. I hate my new school and the kids. What’s AJ is doing back in Philly? I wish he was here. He always stuck up for me. He stutters. I can’t stay here because the cops are coming.
I walk past my house and hide behind a station wagon…The lights are off and dad’s car is gone. It’s starting to rain. My clothes stick to me and I shiver, so I keep going. I know where I can hide.
Robert answers the door and we walk to his back yard and he opens the woodshed…I sit down on a pile of firewood…It smells like Christmas in here. He says he’ll be right back and leaves but he takes a very long time to come back…When he comes back he gives me a piece of cake. Sometimes Robert sits next to me at lunchtime when nobody else will.
I tell him what happened, and I tell him what Krista’s mom called me and he tells me what a pervert is. We eat some cake.
He asks if sometimes don’t I wish was white like everybody else?
There’s a safe…like in the cartoons…It’s tied to my heart and falling off of a cliff…
I say…Yeah.
Somebody bangs on the shed’s door.
My dad yells, “Get your ass out her, boy!”
#
I open the bathroom door. Jack is there.
He says, “Great job. April had to go but she wanted to tell you she had fun. We’re going to add you to our male talent rotation. What are you doing next Thursday?”
I grab my towel from the shower door, and pick up my shaving kit. The money earned from today is already spent, but Sun Tsu says when dealing from a position of weakness, feign strength.
I say, “I’d have to look at my schedule.”
We don’t speak as we walk though the warehouse. When we get to the front door, Jack hands me my money. Unlike Jim’s crumpled wad, he hands me my cash in crisp, neat bills. I count it. It’s all there.
I push the door open, pause, and turn to Jack. I say, “How many guys let you call them a nigger?”
He looks down at me and laughs. “All of them.”