THE EATING HABITS OF FAMOUS ACTORS

All the main characters are dead now. I am afraid I’m all you have left. You probably noticed me in a couple scenes. I was there. Less beautiful, scripted with less erudition, less suavity. My wardrobe was selected for neutrality, my lines written for the simple advancement of plot. I made no bold declarations, no professions of love. I delivered the facts so my more prominent, more romantic counterparts could voice lines as if reciting poetry. The soft focus of their faces filled the whole screen for every smile and tear, while I stood, smallish, in the perpetual background of my existence.

They’re all gone now, as the real names of the people who pretended to be them scroll up the screen, accompanied by a swelling string orchestra (there goes the name of the man who pretended to be me). The copyright halts in the center of the screen and the music fades and then everything is black. This is usually when you leave, if not before. But we are still here now, together.

What is my name? Military Officer #2. On my costume, on an embroidered patch, chest-high right, it says Pendleton. My rank insignia makes me a colonel. But in the script I am identified only as Military Officer #2. I am too young to be a colonel. I know this, and you, the observant viewer, must have noticed it. I have no obvious subordinates, partake of no battles, lack even a gun. But I am Military Officer #2. I will tell you my story.

There is an explosion, shown from many different angles so you can appreciate the pyrotechnics. I am with a group of people like me. Soldiers and Lab Techs and Townspeople. Lab Tech #1 and Military Officer #1 are shown in close-up, tears of admiration in their eyes (tears that net them considerably more pay than the rest of us). Then you are looking down from a helicopter. The view pulls farther out and the fire is a small yellow speck on the landscape. An ocean creeps into view. It is supposedly the Pacific but we filmed on the coast of Maine. The camera pans up until the screen is filled with sky. Fade to black. Credits.

We are on a vista, those of us still alive, overlooking the burning facility. This is the sort of location that you only ever see in movies. You’ve never experienced a vista from which you can watch important action. Important action happens where it will, with little regard for scenery.

The explosion wasn’t that impressive to us. It won’t realize its onscreen glory until the digital effects people get their hands on it. They will expand the ball of fire. They will add a shower of debris and plumes of smoke. Maybe even a mushroom cloud. Was there a mushroom cloud? I have no way of knowing until I sit beside you, watching myself watch the thing that wasn’t actually there for me to watch.

One by one we walk away, leaving Lab Tech #1 and Military Officer #1 behind. Their close-up has separated them from the rest of us. One day you will see them in a different movie and wonder where you’ve seen them before. You will wonder for days. You will wake up in the middle of the night and remember. The vista. There were other people with them, but you remember only these two.

Townsperson #3 walks with her head tilted back, looking up at the forest canopy. She has known this forest for as long as she can remember, as long as she doesn’t remember too far back. This whole Californian coastline is her home. These trees, the likes of which do not grow in California, are hers, as are the species of birds unique to the East Coast, and other animals, and the color of the ocean.

Behind us, the facility continues to burn, making loud cracks, sounds that will be replaced in the final version of the film with a steady roar. The cracking fades as we move farther away. You’d think we would be upset, but we knew all along the fate of the facility. It was there in the script. We knew the flames before we saw them.

I’ve forgotten how long the walk back to town is because we’ve been cutting from one place to another with impossible immediacy for the last two hours. Beads of sweat burst through the layer of makeup on our faces. Solider #5 wipes his forehead with his sleeve and smears flesh tone across the camouflage fabric. Two of the older Townspeople stop and rest on a rock. We leave them behind. The scene on the vista was their last.

The trees thin out and the low buildings of the town become visible. Once white walls yellowed by time, small square windows full of yellow light. Towns like this, lethargic and homey, are perfect counterpoints for the action of a movie like ours. Through convention, when seen on screen, instead of providing the comfort they would in reality, these towns instead inspire agitation. You are conditioned to anticipate the shattering of the illusion of tranquility. Plus you’ve seen the previews. Before you ever sat in your seat in the darkened theater you had seen the final explosion, from at least two of its dozen angles, many times on TV. The last time you came to the movies, prior to the movie you had come to see, you were treated to three minutes of this town overrun with gunfights and car chases. You’ve seen beneath the surface. But it is a real town, not a set, and outside the realm of our movie it is, in fact, peaceful. With the main characters dead and burned up and resting comfortably in their trailers, there is nothing to upset the image of this town. It is what it looks like. You may abandon your previous apprehension. If this weakens the plot of the story I’m telling now, then so be it. I will lie about this town no longer.

The streets are empty except for those of us returning from the vista. The crew has already packed up all the equipment and rolled out in the trucks. The extras have gone back home. Most were from neighboring towns. They are left unmentioned in the credits. They sat next to you in the theater and waited for themselves to appear on screen, pointing out stray limbs in the tangle of crowd shots, claiming ownership of this hand or that elbow. You shushed one of them.

The actual townspeople, as opposed to our Townspeople, are all at home eating dinner by now. At first they were excited when the film crews arrived. They stood behind tapelines and watched as famous people said things to other famous people. But after weeks and weeks of disrupted lives, I know they will be glad to see us go.

I tell Solider #2 to get me a cup of coffee. It is the last time I will have this authority. I will remove the uniform and everyone will remember that I was never a solider, much less an officer. I sit on a bench in the town square. The square is a small grassy spot where they planted trees instead of built buildings. The grass around the base of the bench has grown taller than the top of my boots. Lab Tech #7 sits next to me, but we do not speak. We have no lines to say to each other. Soldier #2 never returns with my coffee.

Several Townspeople claim the gazebo in the middle of the square. They are talking and laughing and sharing stories like old friends. They have known each other for years, though we all met only a couple months ago, and they have just together experienced the kind of adventure that doesn’t usually happen to Townspeople. The first round of laughter is over and they realize that they have no other history, nothing much before the vista. They get up, patting shoulders and shaking hands. They walk each in a different direction, as if they were the debris expelled in an explosion.

Lab Tech #7 rises from the bench and walks off, her white lab coat billowing ghostlike behind her. I want to say goodbye, but I am unsure of exactly how I should say it. I am unsure of who is saying it. My uniform feels suddenly uncomfortable.

There are only three of us left in the square. Soldier #3 and Angry Townsperson hold hands on the other side of the gazebo. I see them as black shapes against the sunset. The clouds are distant and flat and gray. The trees barely have any green left in them. It is a beautiful scene but maybe too obvious. It announces the end too loudly.

We all, the men at least, tried to woo Soldier #3 from the first day of filming. I did my charming best over the cold cuts on the catering table to impress her. But there was Angry Townsperson. You recognize him from a TV show. He was younger then, just a kid, but you remember the cut of his jaw and now he has the broad shoulders to match. When he doesn’t shave at least twice a day, a thick growth of stubble covers his cheeks.

The sun is gone over the horizon. The shadows kick up like dust. I watch the couple leave the square, still holding hands, and for a moment I forget their names. Jen and Ryan? No, that’s not right. She is just a Soldier. He is a Townsperson, albeit an Angry one. I am a Military Officer.

The lamps flicker on in the empty park. I look down at my chest to remember my name, but I can’t read the patch in the low light. The streets are still empty. People don’t wander the streets at night in small towns. Nightlife is a phenomenon of the big city. I used to have a life there, in the city, before boot camp, before casting. It is a place that I would never have walked alone.

I round the corner and the darkness is overcome by the glow of a movie theater marquee. In mixed black and red letters it says the name of our movie. I fish money from one of the many pockets of my uniform and I buy a ticket. Inside, a zit-faced boy takes my ticket and salutes me. It seems like I have not seen a zit in forever. I salute back. It is an unfamiliar gesture. I am the highest-ranking officer in the movie, and have been, until now, on the receiving end of all salutes. My fingertips touch my eyebrow and it is unclear which part of me is feeling the other.

The theater is dark. I follow the little lights in the floor and ascend the steps. I move into the row. I sit down next to you. Now you are part of the story. You were the audience, now you are The Audience. There is no one else in the theater. It is too dark to see your face. We’ll call you #1. Audience Member #1. Don’t say anything until you’re supposed to. And never, ever look at the camera.