The Extra - Hardcover

Sims, Elizabeth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312377290 ISBN 13: 9780312377298

Verlag: Minotaur Books, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Rita Farmer knows what it’s like to be flat broke. Even now, when studying to be a lawyer, Rita is so far in debt that she has to scrounge for acting jobs to keep herself and her son afloat. Decked out in police uniform as an extra on a low-budget movie shoot, she wanders into a rough part of town and is pulled into a vicious assault. Rita chases off the two men but doesn’t escape unscathed, and the boy they attacked isn’t out of danger yet. His injuries could last the rest of his life.

Rita’s heart goes out to him and his grandmother, Amaryllis B. Cubitt, the director of an urban mission that Rita had turned to for help years ago. But the mission has changed from its unassuming past and is now flush with secret donations and gruff guards posted at the doors. Rita can’t help but wonder if now Amaryllis is too proud to ask for the help she needs.

Smart and charming, Rita Farmer is back in the spotlight in The Extra, a second act that is as dazzling and delightful as the first. 

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Elizabeth Sims, a Lambda Award winner, is the author of both the Lillian Byrd and Rita Farmer mysteries, most recently The Actress. A former bookseller, she lives on the West Coast.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One

The picket line surged again, and the police, already nervous, got panicky. I know my heart was pounding. Those of us not in riot gear stayed at the edges and tried to contain the crowd. It was near noon and very hot. One protester, a rangy young woman with flower-child green eyes, stepped up to my face, shook her fist, and sneered, "How do you sleep at night?"

As if I personally had taken a blowtorch to the earth to make it hotter. As if I personally had chained a Malaysian ten-year-old to a machine that dangerously stamped out American waffle irons.

All up and down the picket line the protesters were doing their mightiest to provoke the cops, yelling, swearing—everything short of actually striking us. I felt especially uneasy wearing an ordinary uniform, no helmet, no riot shield.

Someone behind the line threw a bottle. I watched it arc through the air, safely over the heads of the front-line protesters, and explode in shards against a riot shield. My goodness, that could have been recycled.

And on that signal, the protesters’ fury amped into the red zone and they rushed us, blindly flailing their signs. Following orders, I stood my ground, narrowly missing getting brained by another bottle.

I heard the phot! phot! of tear gas canisters being fired, and more screaming. A plume of poupon-yellow smoke began to drift my way.

"Cut! Cut, goddamn it!"

The director flung his cap to the ground and almost hurled his bullhorn too. He leaned riskily over the scaffold railing and bellowed, "I didn’t want the tear gas yet! The riot squad’s supposed to move in as soon as the bottle breaks! Didn’t you hear me? Where’s Stuart? And then the tear gas after they pull back! You people look like a buncha drunken sheep down there! Where’s Stuart?"

His orange cap, embroidered with what looked like a stylized Tweety Bird, lay crown up on the oozy asphalt. We were here on a little stub of Eighth Street near the Los Angeles River, not that the river had any cooling effect, running only a few inches deep. The director continued to holler. "And they’ve got to get in front of the non-riot police! Right away, as soon as that bottle—which by the way, good throw, see if you can do that again—breaks, because—"

A squeal of feedback cut him off as the first assistant climbed up the scaffolding with his bullhorn. I heard him say calmly to his boss, "Look, we need to rethink this." Then he announced, "Let’s break for lunch, the caterers are ready. Everybody back on set in forty minutes."

I walked past the scaffold and the orange cap with the yellow bird, the logo for the movie we were all making: The Canary Syndrome, yet another conspiracy-theory film about who’s to blame for the fact that we’re all going to hell, and not soon enough. A lackey snatched up the cap and scampered up the scaffolding. Everyone was wearing the same cap; all the crew, that is.

Something clammy and protoplasmic nudged the back of my bare elbow. I turned to find a German shepherd the size of a minivan looking up (barely) at me. Panting cordially, he nudged me again with his nose. My friend Sylvan, in police costume as I was, held his leash.

"Hey, Rita," said Sylvan.

"Hey. Where were you guys? I didn’t see you."

"We were about to attack the flank, over there. If he’s going to get his money’s worth out of us, he needs to shoot some stuff of the dogs taking people down well before the tear gas, so the tear gas will make sense."

"Man, you’re sweating like a Coke bottle."

He laughed. Thick shouldered and at least six two, he said cheerfully, "It’s the dog days." Perspiration poured from Sylvan’s heavy brown face and darkened his uniform this August day. He was an animal wrangler who usually worked off-camera with the actors and critters, but sometimes he got roles handling dogs himself if he fit the scene. Big Black Fucker was the politically incorrect yet crystal-clear casting designation his agent used.

"Thanks again," I told him, "for helping me get this gig."

"Least I can do. You’ve helped me out plenty. Glad that rumor wasn’t true about you being through with acting."

"Well, I am. Basically."

He looked at me.

"I am," I insisted. "I’m just doing little jobs here and there to help me get through law school."

He smiled. "Once an actress, always an actress."

I shrugged that off. "Are you doing just dogs on this one?" He handled rodents too.

"Just dogs, yeah. But me and a hundred mice start shooting tomorrow on a made-for-TV on Louis Pasteur."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I read that he actually used dogs for his testing, but the producers think mice’ll be cuter."

"Plus imagine the spin-off possibilities."

Sylvan laughed.

"Wanna do lunch?" I asked.

"Nah, I’ve got to water and feed this guy and the other burly boys. Come on, King."

The Canary Syndrome was supposed to be a labor of love for everybody involved (French for low budget), but at least the extras, which I was one of, got scale, almost two hundred dollars a day.

And as in all good low-budgets, they were making the few do for the many: there were only about forty protesters and fifteen cops, including Sylvan and the other two dog-handling officers. The cameraman had snaked through the scene with his handheld, guided by the belt by his assistant so it looked chaotic and tight-packed. The director shouted from above, one eye on the remote monitor that showed what the camera was seeing.

When Sylvan had phoned to give me a heads-up about the extras call, I thought I’d have a better chance if I dressed as a protester, given that I’m blond, fairly small, and, well—that clatter you’re hearing is my false modesty falling to the ground—pretty. I thought I’d make an unconvincing cop, so I put on an angry-looking outfit of tight torn jeans and a hot pink top. But first thing I knew I was hired as Police Sergeant I / Nonarmored, I guess in the name of diversity.

When I touched that police uniform, a special feeling came over me. A sense of potency filled my body, inch by inch, as I pulled up the pants and fastened them. They felt bulletproof. "Wool?" I asked the mohawked dresser in surprise. "Yeah," she said, "it’s a great fabric, wool gabardine. The LAPD’s used it forever, that’s why they look so good. The shirts are tropical weight. Here."

I drew on the short-sleeved shirt, with its badge and insignia, and it felt great. I put on the black socks and duty shoes, buckled the leather gun belt around my waist with the dresser’s help, put on the hat, and looked in the mirror. There behind all that officialdom was little old Rita Farmer. But my expression was clear and authoritative, and I looked powerful and proud.

I slipped my own small wallet into my back pocket, not quite trusting the security of the wardrobe room, a messy space rented in the very building providing the façade for the shoot.

The belt was so heavy, what with all the stuff on it—handcuff case and so on—that I thought the gun was in the holster already. But no, I had to see the prop guy for my fake gun, which looked and felt totally real. It must have weighed two or three pounds.

"Are you left-handed?"

"No, right."

He made me take off my belt, and he found a right-handed holster to replace the left-handed one.

"It doesn’t make any difference, you know," I said. "I’m not even going to draw it, much less—"

"It does matter," he said. "You’ll look maybe two percent more natural, having the gun on your handed side. It’ll feel different to you."

"Yeah?"

"And from my perspective all...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Minotaur Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312377290
• ISBN 13: 9780312377298
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar