“It’s a movie. You’ve never seen The Onslaught?”
“I’ve never had the pleasure.” The ready light flickered like a candle, the red tint blinding me as I stared into the screen and glimpsed my ungodly reflection. My black hair was clawing its way out of my ponytail holder, eyeliner smeared and smudged beneath my eyes. I couldn’t have been more attractive (see: vision-damaging) if I tried.
“The camera really doesn’t like you.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was going to be the star of your low-budget indie film documenting the pitfalls of our basic human incompetence. Forgot to notify my hair and makeup team.”
“Perfect,” he whispered into the camera. He switched a button, and the red light ceased to harass me. “That was cinema magic.”
“You’re a loser.”
“You’ve really never seen The Onslaught?” He tucked the camera into the corner where the wooden leg of the countertop touched the wall. “Margaret? Maks? The best doomed-from-the-start circus romance thriller of all time?”
I blinked at him, going so far as to fake a yawn to convey my disinterest.
He placed his hand over his chest and declared, “I don’t need you to love me, Maks. I need you to look at me and see decay. And temporariness. And death. Because that is the essence of who we are. All these fantasies, they’re uselessness. Sheer uselessness, that’s our condition.”
I recognized his bleak, and apparently stolen, life motto from our anti-date. “Sheer uselessness? You based your entire life around a lame circus movie? Plagiarizer.”
“Not a plagiarizer, a pupil. Margaret shaped the way I see the world. The Onslaught inspired the film I’m making, which you’re in, by the way.”
“What’s it about?”
“Loss. Love. Fear. Life as a theoretical tightrope into the bleak nothingness of oblivion.”
“I was talking about your movie.”
“So was I.”
He studied me with a self-satisfied gleam in his eye, awaiting a response that would match my folded arms and vacant stare. It would have been easy and predictable for me to mock his undoubtedly shitty movie. The problem was, I was sort of intrigued, as stupid as it may have been. I wanted to know how big a role I played. I wanted to know if the movie would hold up just as well without me.
I decided to stick with the expected. “Using a person’s likeness without their consent is illegal, you know.”
“Well, do you consent?”
“Of course not.”
“I guess you’ll just have to sue me, then.” He grinned with triumph. “Because there’s no way that I can make a film about tragic mediocrity and not have Reggie Mason in a starring role.”
“I thought the camera didn’t like me.”
“I can fix you up in post. Besides, if you looked good, it would take away from your terrible personality. And I can’t have anything outshining your mean-spirited glow.”
He had a way of complimenting that was like an insult reversed to sound pleasant. Afterward, he waited with an expectant smirk, hoping I would get super angry and tell him off, or that he could slowly break me down.
The song on the radio had shifted to a saxophone band with intermittent trumpet sounds. It was worse than the movie soundtrack lady, if that was possible. Snake sprang out of his chair, belting the words to the tune in such an uninhibited and embarrassing display that I lost whatever respect I had for him in a shorter time than it took him to air trumpet.
“I don’t think I can love her no more!” he squawked. “She’s got her hand in mine, sweet kiss to my ear, time’s passing by, and I’m still standing here. I shout it to the sky, and it echoes back clear. No! No! No! I don’t think I can love her no more!”
Being exposed to his singing voice was pain of an exponential variety. It was worse than the time Karen had forced me to attend a junior knitters camp in the church basement and I spun a lime green sweater that I had to model at the Sunday school picnic. That was pain. This was agony.
“If you don’t shut up in the next ten seconds, so help me God—”
I was on my feet. Not only was I on my feet, but I was in Snake’s arms. His sharp, bony, in-desperate-need-of-muscle-toning, semirelaxing arms. He had grabbed me right out of the chair, right above the waist, and just kind of held me in front of him. And stared. It wasn’t a pimple stare so much as an I-can-see-the-depth-of-your-soul stare. Peculiarly unsettling, yet coincidentally charming. Yes, Snake Eliot was capable of being charming sometimes. A fact that was similarly proven when I went to yank out of his grip but stopped when his nose crinkled in a goofy, boyish way as my hand grazed his. He smiled when he realized that this wasn’t going to turn into one of those near-assault encounters.
“Sing,” he pleaded.
“Let go.”
“May I propose an exchange?”
“Don’t you always?”
“I’ll let go if you sing.”
The saxophones jived on. “I don’t know this song.”
“I’ll help you.” He waited for the chorus to make its way back around. Then he looked at me, though I could barely see his eyes beneath his curls. “I don’t think I can love her no more,” he whispered. The lyrics weren’t being screeched or yelped. They weren’t especially unpleasant, either. He was just talking. Murmuring. “She’s got her hand in mine . . .”
“Sweet kiss to my ear?” I continued uncertainly.
“Time’s passing by, and I’m still standing here. I shout it to the sky, and it echoes back clear.” He paused, waiting for the real singers to catch up. “With me now, belt it.”
“I don’t think I can love her no more!” we both shouted (see: indulging). His voice wasn’t such an eardrum murderer with my slightly less agonizing voice there to mask it. The trumpet blared its final solo as the song streamed out, the station transitioning to a Taco Bell commercial.
Snake didn’t let loose of my hips. “We really should watch a sneak peek of my movie together soon. It’s nowhere near finished, but I could use some input.”
“My mom probably doesn’t want me hanging out at your house.”
“Why?”
“If her snide comments weren’t clear to you, she thinks your family is an abomination.”
He beamed, most likely at the insinuation that he was a topic of conversation in my house. Positive or negative, it was the ultimate compliment. “On behalf of my family, we’re flattered.”
I wrapped both hands around his wrists. “I sang.”
He let me go, lightly touching the skin where my shirt had ridden up because he thought that move was slick. It wasn’t.
“Cut,” he said. I eyed him to explain. “If I were directing our lives, I would cut this scene right here. Tension. Angst. Buildup. It doesn’t get much better.”