00:06:44:02
VITO PALUSO IMAGINES each brief shot in the experimental short he is making a heavy gray stone. His project will be to sew them all together into a suit of rocks, which he will wear everywhere he goes. Some people will say the suit makes walking a formidable task, but Vito Paluso believes it will also allow him to fully appreciate each step he takes. He plans to embroider it with delicate butterfly wings.
00:06:47:28
THE SECOND MIGUEL Gonzalez touches her down there, Angelica Encinas understands she does not like boys. Boys make noise. They breathe like old people sleeping. Their muscles feel all wrong and sometimes they smell like iron filings and this is not desire. There are many other words for what this is but desire is not one of them. Angelica likes Miguel’s short spiky hair. It reminds her of a styling brush with nylon pins. She likes the dimple that forms to the left of his mouth but not to the right when he grins. But Miguel is a boy and boys say nothing for half an hour and when they finally do say something it is clear they don’t really want to be saying it. Angelica withdraws her hand from the hot bowed thing inside his fly and understands she does not like boys. Maybe it is just that she does not like this one. Maybe that is it. Only she does not really believe what she is thinking. She is just trying on the idea like a new pair of pre-washed jeans to see if they fit her hips. Angelica withdraws her hand and reaches down and pushes Miguel’s away from her chocho beneath her panties beneath her dress. She sits up straight and begins paying too much attention to the previews although really she is not paying any attention to them at all. Because girls. Because their skin. Because the way they touch each other. Angelica wonders what this person who just put his fingertip into her chocho will do next. What he will say or not say. Angelica wonders what it is she is trying to feel. Because it is not Miguel Gonzalez sitting next to her anymore. This much is clear. It is not him. It is a staticky wedge of disbelief and resentment. It is just another boy.
00:06:49:08
STUART NAVIDSON is right. Someone really is tailing him: the athletic man in the Armani suit and designer stubble sitting two rows behind him whose name is Giuseppe Rosi. Giuseppe Rosi has made a mistake. His job is convincing people whom he doesn’t know that they don’t want what they think they want. Once or twice a month he receives a phone call, drives to the address given him, and starts improvising. Unluckily, when the last one arrived, he was in the middle of a great bench press at the Los Campeones Fitness Center. Giuseppe set the bar back in its cradle, picked up his cellular, listened, and repeated the information the man on the other end told him without actually writing it down. Then he got back to his set. In the time it took him to complete seven more presses, his memory had transposed two digits in the mark’s address. Giuseppe therefore should not be convincing Stuart Navidson, whom he can hear counting backwards anxiously two rows in front of him, that he doesn’t want what he thinks he wants, but another man of similar build and attributes who happens to live one block north of Stuart in a much nicer neighborhood. Giuseppe reaches into the inner pocket of his Armani jacket and fishes for his own Palm device in order to send Stuart a message asking him to please shut the fuck up. People are trying to watch a fucking movie here.
00:07:01:11
AT THE PRESBYLERIAN church bake sale, tall white-haired women in pastel suits surrounded Juanita Chamorro like chickens waiting for feed. All Juanita wanted to do was eat the slice of apple pie topped with a huge dollop of whipped cream they had offered her. The bus she was riding toward her new life stopped late the first night on a winding road high in the mountains. The full moon was very bright. Juanita calculated a long time, carefully constructed a gringo sentence of thanks, and stumblingly articulated it. The tall white-haired women in pastel suits unleashed a verbal hurricane in response. There had been an accident. When it became clear to them Juanita had no idea what they were saying, they spoke louder, not slower. There was no railing and the bus in front of hers had gone over the side of the cliff. Juanita was wearing her best cotton dress, white decorated with yellow, blue, and red flowers. Her mother had made it for her. Every night Juanita washed it, sorry it smelled less and less like the memory of her village. From what Juanita could see from her seat, it appeared as if someone had stepped on a large milk carton far below among the rocks. They made her stand on a stage while she worked at her apple pie, saying things about her she didn’t understand. Around the large crushed milk carton were scattered what looked like fingertips dressed in skirts and slacks and scarves. They began to applaud her at the second she slipped the last piece of apple pie into her mouth. Someone put a microphone into her hand and Juanita dropped it. It made a squeal when it hit the floor. One of the fingertips, Juanita could see, was still moving. It was trying to crawl away from the bus. The old man beside her was still sleeping. The driver of her bus was standing outside with several other people, pointing and watching. Juanita couldn’t think of anything to say. Everyone waited politely. “America,” Juanita began, and then her mind went blank. “America,” she began again, then paused. She remembered how the fingertip appeared to be trying to use its arms to swim among the boulders. “America,” she said into the microphone, “is a land of excellent pies.” Then she handed the microphone back. Soon the fingertip stopped trying to use its arms to swim. The tall white-haired women in pastel suits erupted into charmed applause. They loved Juanita” no matter what she said or did. The fingertip lay its head down on the ground very gently and then there was no more movement. The one who had handed Juanita the microphone locked her in a powerful hug, kissing the air next to her right ear, then kissing the air next to her left. Juanita waited for what would happen next, but nothing did.
00:07:11:11
1. A minor tingling in her fingertips. Cynthia Morgenstern looks down. They are gone. She looks down. They are not gone. Cynthia is almost positive she is gradually becoming transparent.
2. When she was a teenager she took a trip to L.A. to see a taping of her favorite women’s talk show, My Feelings. A bloated man stood behind the camera waving a white towel over his head to indicate when the audience was supposed to clap. During a break he yelled at her because she kept looking at the monitors to see how she was doing. “You’re not watching television, lady,” the bloated man said testily. “You’re making it.”