Safety Film, Part II

The women were young and they were very well put together. Nylons, foundation, rouge, shadow, nails teased by file and by lacquer into thoroughly useless ornaments, their white teeth flickering in the twilight like dissociate advertisements on a projection screen. The women were all brunettes with their hair done up in the same way, and though I could not see all their eyes from where I sat, what eyes I did see were of a such an accomplished blackness that I had to furnish the pupils by induction. The uniforms were all high skirts and low necks and long leggings setting off lush expanses of taut, disciplined and possibly fraudulent flesh. I looked at the girl next to me and asked what kind of production we were in for.
"Oh, it's for an airline. We're shooting a safety video."
"Ah. Now I get it. You gals are flight attendants."
"Not quite," she said. "We're models dressed as flight attendants."
"Even better than the real thing, huh?" She smiled.
I turned and looked out the window. Our burgundy boat was slowing. There was a break in the fence. The driver took the turn and the traffic spikes at speed and the vehicle wallowed as it started down the access road. At first it looked like it was going to be more of the same, just the barren clearing and a straight road running down it. Gradually a series of low, long buildings came into view through the windscreen. They must have been several miles down from the access gate. Suddenly, as if born of a hallucination, I could also see a great many indistinct forms strewn over the wide and flat land. It was hard to make out what they were in the deepening gloom, but they suggested machinery reverted to their more primitive constituents by destruction.
As we neared the buildings a sudden wind gusted off the plain and shivered over the car, trailing behind it a great wake of dust that blotted out the plain and the forms on it, the buildings and the sky; blotted out everything, in fact, but the coarse neck of the driver, the dapper neck of the man in the suit, and the lovely progression of slender necks and shoulders ranged along the bench in front of me. The driver did not slow, nor did the women cease speaking in low voices. By the time the veil of dust had lifted we had pulled up in front of a gray prefabricated building and it was almost night.
The man in the suit got out of the vehicle and we piled out in turn. He looked first at the sky, then out over the darkness of the plain, and then at his watch.
"All right girls. It may take a long time to get this right. Now follow me in." He turned on his heel and went for the door, which stood unlocked. There was no lettering or signage of any kind on the building. He ducked in, trailed by the girls. I remained with the driver and the wide emptiness and the cold. The working man was leaning against the hood smoking a cigarette. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a flask. I looked at him and could feel my lips working. He turned his back to me and spat contemptuously before I'd worked up something to say. I turned to take in the scene before following up the crew. Just beyond the building was a hulking black form like the one I'd seen on the cover of the old newspaper, uncommunicative in its gloom, a dead end.
Aside from a small lobby area with two bathrooms and a pantry, the interior of the building was a single cavernous space. In the middle of it stood a raised platform supporting a section of aircraft fuselage that was surrounded by cameras and lighting equipment. The man in the suit had taken off his jacket and draped it over one of the seats. He was pacing up and down the aisle counting steps and muttering to himself. The women had taken up positions against a wall on a deracinated row of airplane seats, their crossed legs composed into a helix of platonic loins. The uniforms, the hair color, black eyes framed in the white skin that sleeved those delicate cheekbones. It would be hard, I thought--down to the shapes of the points made by their kneecaps--it would be hard to find six women anywhere who looked so much alike.
"You," the man said. "Grip." I turned. "What's your name?"
"Benjamin," I said. "Benjamin Hornugrad."
"All right, all right. Ben. Your last name doesn't concern me. I'm Rick Riddeking, director, producer and what have you. And we are making a film here. I normally deal in arthouse films, but I'm not a one-trick pony, and I see this as an opportunity to get into something both more and less real. I gather you've gathered we're making an on-board safety video, and that's so. At first I was just going to have you move things around and hand us water when we're parched, but there's something about your face and your frame that's...how to put this? You have something downright reassuring about you, something just so. So I think we're going to have you play pilot as well, how does that sound? You don't need to say more than a line or two. Other than that it's just a matter of sitting there and being what you are. You're wondering what's in it for you, I can tell. I'll tell you what. A couple of meals and a couple of bucks. Maybe even a beer. Which is a lot better than you would have done out on that road, am I right?"
I considered what he said and then nodded.
"Chock full of words, aren't we? That's good, that's the pilot type all over. So we have a deal?"
"Sure," I said. "Deal." We clasped hands.
"And listen." He leaned in as if to speak confidentially. "Don't mind Jenks, I mean the driver. He's been with me for a long time. He's got a little temper and a big drinking problem. He also hates just about everyone who doesn't drive for a living. Of course he hates most of them too, to hear him swear at them, but other than that he's all right. So--why don't you start by seeing if the girls have everything they need?"