Winter Oranges (10 page)

One he was about to reprise?

He considered the script locked away in his drawer before turning back to Ben, who sat watching him intently, waiting for him to go on, but Jason was ready to change the subject from his train wreck of a career.

“That’s it. Pretty boring, huh?”

Ben grinned and shook his head emphatically.

“It’s wonderful!” Ben said, once Jason had turned the key again. “It must be so exciting, traveling all over and meeting so many different people! And pretending to
be
different people and getting paid for it!”

“I guess.” He wished he could muster even half the enthusiasm people expected from him when they talked about acting.

“Are you rich?”

Jason laughed. “No.” But he stopped, considering. “Well, yeah. I guess by most people’s standards, I am. But not by Hollywood standards. Not even close. I’m a nobody.”

Ben shook his head, suddenly somber. “Not to me.”

It was a frank statement, spoken with something that bordered on reverence. Jason wasn’t sure how to respond, but Ben saved him by speaking again. “Can I see one of your movies?”

Jason fidgeted with the turnkey on the bottom of the globe, not because it needed to be wound again already, but because it gave him something to look at besides Ben’s spectral eyes. “You don’t want to see those.”

“Yes, I do. I want to see everything you’re in.”

“They’re low-budget horror flicks with shitty scripts and cheap cinematography. They’re barely watchable.”

“They’ll be the first movies I’ve seen in twenty-five years. Trust me. I’m easily entertained.”

Jason searched Ben’s face for signs of mockery, but found none. He saw only an innocent eagerness that was refreshing, especially compared to the cynicism of modern audiences. “I don’t know where any of my DVDs are, but we could probably stream some of them.”

Ben laughed. “I have no idea what you just said, but it sounded like a maybe.”

“Maybe,” Jason agreed, although he knew what he really meant was
yes
.

They started with
Alley of Blood
—not because it was any good, but because it somehow made sense to Jason that they go in order.

“Promise me you won’t hold this against me,” he said as the movie started.

Ben’s facial expression was almost comically solemn. “I promise.”

Like a lot of actors he knew, Jason never watched his own movies once they were finished. The prevailing wisdom of people outside the business—people who didn’t know a damn thing about acting or filmmaking—was that the only way to get better was to analyze your own work. What they didn’t seem to realize was that acting wasn’t about planning out each sigh or bat of the eye. It wasn’t about stepping outside yourself and viewing your body as an outsider, wondering if your hair was a mess or whether there was snot coming out of your nose as you cried. It was about occupying the character completely, one moment at a time, and trusting that everybody else involved, from the gaffers to the hairdressers to the editors, would take all the fragmented pieces of art and make them work.

But once the scenes were filmed, why watch them again? There were the exceptions of course—the actors and actresses who were anxious to see their footage and analyze what they’d done, but in Jason’s experience, they were the minority. Most actors he knew shuddered at the thought. After all, it was over. Nothing could be changed or revised or reshot. Why watch a movie afterward only to find out the scene you’d torn your heart out for had landed on the editing room floor, or that in the sequence you’d done your best work in, you’d actually been halfway out of focus, just part of the background of another actor’s shot?

In the end, it didn’t matter. The success of the film had very little to do with acting. It had a lot more to do with the total vibe of the project. There were a hundred different things that went into making a movie work.

Or
not
work, in certain cases.

And for better or worse, about two-thirds of the way through a production, most of the cast and crew knew how things would shake out. They knew in their gut whether the film would rock, or whether it was a dud. When that happened, the only thing anyone could do was try to laugh it off. Hold their heads up and walk back on set every day until it was done. And Jason had done that. No matter how shitty the role or the film, he’d given it his best. But in nearly every case, he’d walked away feeling like it had all been for nothing.

Alley of Blood
had been like that.

Jason took a deep breath and prepared for a hundred and three minutes of hell. He knew watching the film would be tough, but he realized immediately he hadn’t thought things through. The opening scene was all Andrew, so bright and young and full of life, it took Jason’s breath away.

“That’s him,” Jason said, his throat tight. He felt Ben’s concerned gaze on him. “That’s the boy I was telling you about. Andrew. The one who died.”

Ben frowned. “We don’t have to watch it if it’s upsetting for you.”

And it was. There was no denying the gentle ache in Jason’s heart, but it also seemed wrong to turn away. As if stopping the movie now somehow diminished what Andrew had meant to him. “No, it’s fine.”

He settled in, mentally steeling himself for the onslaught of bad memories, and they came. He remembered fighting with the director over a certain scene, and a key grip being fired in the middle of another, and the debilitating off-screen drama surrounding the director and his affair with the actress. It had made the entire project seem unbearable at the time.

And yes, seeing Andrew was hard. God, he’d forgotten so much, like the way Andrew ducked his head when he laughed, as if he was embarrassed at his own amusement. He’d forgotten how Andrew flexed his arms whenever he was on camera, as if trying to take up more space. But he’d also forgotten the shadows under his eyes, and the twitchiness and unpredictable bouts of surliness. They hadn’t been lovers yet—that hadn’t happened until after the movie had wrapped—and so he hadn’t understood at the time, but hindsight was twenty-twenty: Andrew had been strung out, using God-knew-what kind of drugs, even back then.

It was a startling realization.

Ben sat next to him, rapt. As the tension built through the first act, he leaned forward on the couch, his hands clutched tight in front of his chest. When the first coed died an appropriately violent death, it startled him so much he popped right out of existence.

Jason paused the movie and wound the globe while he waited for Ben to reappear.

“What happened?” he asked, once Ben was next to him on the couch again.

Ben’s spectral skin seemed paler than before, his eyes wide. “That was horrifying!” He gestured at the screen, which was frozen on a shot of fake blood splattered across a battered No Exit sign. “I wasn’t expecting it to be so graphic. Is the whole movie like that?”

“It is. That’s why people watch. It’s a trademark of the genre.” He glanced over at Ben. “Are you sure you want to watch it? We can turn it off if you want. I won’t be offended.”

“No, I still want to see it.” He rubbed his chest lightly. “I suppose I’ll get used to it, right?”

“Probably.” Jason tapped the remote on his thigh, remembering. “The funny thing is, this entire sequence was cobbled together after the fact. The shots of the killer while he’s chasing her, and the shots of her as she’s running away weren’t shot on the same day. They weren’t even shot in the same location. If you watch carefully, you can see that the building behind her is red brick, but when they flash to him, it’s a cinderblock wall. That’s because her death was originally scripted for later in the movie, and the killer looks different by then. They changed it about halfway through production, moving her death to the end of the first act, but we were already overbudget, and the director figured we may as well use the footage we’d already shot rather than wasting time and money doing it right.”

“I didn’t even notice.”

“Well, that’s what they were counting on. You’ll also see that her shirt is buttoned when she’s running, but when they show her on the ground afterward, it isn’t. That’s just slop. It happens. Here. Watch. I’ll rewind it a bit.”

“You can do that?”

“Of course.”

“Is it one of those VSH things?” he asked.

Jason laughed. “VHS? No. Those have gone the way of the dinosaur, but this works the same way.” He rewound the globe first, so Ben wouldn’t lose his voice, then the movie, glancing sideways at Ben as he did. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Why do you disappear the way you do?”

“Oh.” Ben put his hand over his chest, as if trying to steady his breathing. “It takes concentration to stay here, and if something surprises me or upsets me, I lose the connection. It’s worse when I’m tired.”

Jason thought back to the first time he’d seen Ben, and how when he’d sought him out a second time, Ben was gone. “So that first night, when you saw Dylan and me on the balcony, you were upset or—”

“I was surprised! You looked over, and you
saw
me. I was sure of it.”

“You scared the hell out of me!”

“I felt the same way. I’ve spent a hundred and fifty years spying on people, but that’s the first time I’ve ever been caught at it.”

Jason laughed self-consciously, wondering if Ben would ask about Dylan. He turned back to the movie, deciding it was better to nip that one in the bud. He didn't want to talk about Dylan. “Here, I’ll start it when she comes out of the bar.”

The second time through the coed’s death, Ben managed to stay present on the couch.

After that, it was one spectacularly gruesome Hollywood death after another. Jason tensed as Andrew’s cinematic demise drew near. He feared watching it would bring back memories of his lover’s actual death, but it didn’t. Instead, he found himself smiling at the scene, remembering how they’d flirted between takes, even though Andrew was covered in fake gore. He remembered hoping Andrew would kiss him. He recalled with stunning clarity the butterflies in his stomach, wondering what might happen between them once the movie had wrapped.

They’d had good times. Not only he and Andrew, but all of them. After all, at the heart of it, they’d been nothing more than a group of teenagers, hanging out and goofing off. They’d learned to roll their eyes when the director wasn’t looking and to bolster each other when things got rough. They’d eaten lunch together and played video games in their downtime and dreamed about the future.

They’d had fun. That was what he’d forgotten. It seemed odd, but it was true. He’d forgotten that acting had once been fun.

“That was fantastic,” Ben said when it was over. “You died better than anybody.”

“If you say so.” Jason had been lost in thought during the last half hour of the movie. Now that he focused on Ben again, he realized the boy looked drained. His image on the couch was fainter than before, his translucent cheeks somehow paler than Jason remembered. “Are you all right?”

“I’m tired,” Ben admitted. “This has worn me out more than I expected. I’m used to lingering, but I’ve never interacted before. It’s harder, although I’m not really sure why.”

Jason felt guilty and a bit disappointed. “I’m sorry.”

“No. Please don’t be. This has been wonderful. I know I should go rest, but . . . I’m so afraid this is all some kind of dream. I’m afraid if I leave you now, that’ll be the end of it.”

“Well, I can’t make any promises since I’ve never dealt with a magical snow globe before, but I swear to you I’m not going anywhere. And first thing tomorrow morning, I’ll get
Stalker in the Woods
queued up and ready to go, just for you.”

“Thank you.” Ben smiled sweetly, his image flickering. “In case for some reason I don’t see you, I want you to know this has been wonderful. Truly, my best day ever. I’ll never forget it.”

In the blink of an eye, he was gone, leaving Jason alone with his parting words.

Sitting on the couch watching soap operas and bad horror movies with a man he didn’t know was the best day ever?

It sort of put Jason’s worst days into perspective.