Page 33 of All That Glitters

Chapter twenty-five

Women Things and Explosives

The cemetery was its usual whirlwind of semi-controlled chaos that afternoon.

Carrie fetched a donut and coffee from the tailgate of Carl’s truck and headed to her trailer.

Inside, she sat down on the futon that served as a couch and resumed reading Tony’s script with renewed interest. They’d spent almost the entire night at his motel batting around ideas for movies, and to her surprise, he not only took to her ideas, but came up with ways they could build on them.

It wasn’t at all what she’d expected; and neither was he.

It didn’t bother him that the ideas came from someone Hollywood had dismissed as a blonde, B-movie bimbo; he listened and seemed genuinely excited about fleshing them out into scripts.

This slightly dorky writer from San Diego was someone she could actually enjoy being friends with.

Something small, furry, and gray suddenly skittered across the floor and under the futon. With a shriek, Carrie sprang to her feet and leaped onto the futon. She looked down, but it had already disappeared into the wooden frame.

Those guys were so dead.

Tony sat on the steps outside his trailer, watching the madness on set from what was hopefully a safe distance.

But you never knew with this crew. His thoughts kept going back to the night he’d spent spit-balling story ideas with Carrie at the motel.

Outside of Debbie, he hadn’t had anyone to bat around ideas with until now.

But Carrie not only shared his excitement, she had a natural instinct for story.

And her ideas were solid — like movies he’d pay to see.

The fact that she looked ridiculously hot in her short dress barely registered once the ideas started flowing.

He learned that she’d been acting for the past five years, ever since moving to LA when she was twenty. She knew a lot of people in the industry, but Tony got the impression that none of them wanted to talk to her about her film ideas. The way he saw it, it was their loss.

It was probably a good thing that Debbie hadn’t shown up.

Nothing happened, but the optics would have been bad.

And he wasn’t sure his health insurance covered being drowned by an irate grad student.

It did seem odd, though, that she hadn’t returned any of his texts or calls.

He planned to try her again after they wrapped for the day.

“So, what’s this I hear about Carrie coming over to your place?” came Craig’s voice.

Tony looked up to see him heading over, a goofy grin plastered on his face. It was one of those grins that said he had some juicy gossip he couldn’t wait to confirm.

“Who told you that?” Tony said as Craig sat down on the step beside him.

“Steve said she was askin’ about you and where you was stayin’. Only made sense that she’d be stoppin’ by.” Craig’s grin broadened. “Noticed you ain’t denying it.”

Tony grinned. “Yeah. She came by the motel.”

“And... she beat up the motel staff or throw any furniture out the window?”

Tony laughed. “No. She was actually really cool. She has some ideas for movies we were talking about.”

“No kidding?” Craig said. “So, she ain’t all ice under that blonde hair?”

“She’s really not. I got the feeling she has a hard time trusting people. And I think it frustrates her that people don’t take her seriously.”

Craig nodded. “I can certainly relate to that. Ain’t nobody takin’ us seriously as filmmakers.”

“That’s why we’re gonna prove them wrong,” Tony said.

Craig slapped a meaty hand on Tony’s shoulder as he rose to his feet. “Let’s go have us a look at the effects they’s makin’ for the next scene.

They walked over to a picnic table, where Todd was carefully spooning gunpowder into a ketchup-filled condom, while Kevin, Roy, and Jethro watched.

“How’s them squibs comin’ there, Todd?” Craig asked as he and Tony walked up.

“Just about finished,” Todd grunted, not looking up.

“Can we blow up Carrie with them?” Kevin asked hopefully.

“Naw,” said Craig. “Accordin’ to Tony here, she really ain’t all that bad.”

“Compared to what?” asked Jethro. “A bobcat?”

Craig chuckled. “I say we cut her some slack. We ain’t exactly been all that easy to work with either, shootin’ her in the butt with condoms and all.”

Roy thought about it. “Guess putting the mouse in her trailer probably weren’t that nice.”

“And the snake we left outside her car,” Kevin added.

Craig nodded. “She’s put up with a lot of crap from us, boys, and she ain’t called the union on us yet. That’s sayin’ a lot. I say we go easy on her.”

The gang all exchanged looks, then one by one they nodded in agreement. They turned their attention back to the table, where Todd was inserting two thin copper wires into one of the ketchup-filled condoms before tying it shut with a piece of twine. He held it up to the light.

“That’s a squib?” Tony asked.

“Kinda like one,” said Todd, “but we’re a little on the cheap here in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I hadn’t,” Tony laughed.

“But it still works the way them fancy squibs do,” Todd continued. “You put some gunpowder in the condom there, and when you touch the wires to a battery, whole thing goes kapow! Splatters ketchup all over like a gunshot.”

“Think it’ll work?” Tony asked, eyeing the makeshift squib skeptically. It looked like a prop from a very weird, very dangerous party that ends in a visit to the emergency room and police investigation.

“Oh, it’ll work,” Craig said. “Todd here’s been blowing up stuff since he was five. Ain’t ya, Todd?”

“And that ain’t countin’ my kindergarten classroom,” Todd added without a hint of irony.

Inside her trailer, Carrie was crouched on top of her futon, cautiously peeking over the side for any sign of the furry invader. A knock came at the door.

“It’s open,” she said, refusing to step down from the safety of the futon.

Todd walked in, then stopped. “Er, uhm... if yer busy, I can come back.”

Carrie frantically shook her head. “No. You need to catch it.”

“Catch what?”

“The mouse. One of you guys put a mouse in here.”

“Oh, that’s just Wilber,” Todd said. “He ain’t gonna hurt you.”

She looked at him. “The mouse is named Wilber?”

“That’s right. Roy named him after his granddad.”

“So, Roy’s the one I need to kill?”

“If it makes any difference, I’m sure he feels real bad about it.”

“He’s going to feel even worse.”

Todd smiled. “I’ll have Carl come get it while you’re filmin’ this next scene. Meantime, we gotta get you wired with this here squib.” He held it up.

Carrie looked at the strange ketchup and gunpowder-filled condom with the two wires hanging out of it. Could this day get any weirder?

“You’re kidding me.”

“No ma’am. This here’s for the scene where Jessica gets shot accidental like.”

Carrie frowned, still crouched on top of the futon as she eyed the latex explosive with deep skepticism. “Is it safe?”

Todd shrugged. “Tested it on Elvis last night. Ain’t heard no complaints.”

That wasn’t at all reassuring. “Where does it go?”

Todd pointed vaguely at her chest. “Under yer shirt. Near yer… er, women things there.”

She looked down at her chest, then back at him. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope.”

Carrie groaned. “Alright. But if you blow up my women things, you’re dead.”

Todd swallowed. “Understood.”

“Good. Now I need you to distract the mouse while I get off this futon and put that thing on.”

A few minutes later, Carrie stepped down from the trailer with Todd and crossed the set to where the crew were setting up the shot.

She spotted Roy doing his best to hide behind the camera, and mouthed ‘you die’ as she headed over to her mark by a large tombstone, the two thin wires dangling conspicuously from beneath her shirt.

Seeing that his actress was ready, Craig plopped down in his director’s chair, while Todd ran the wires over to a car battery sitting on the grass.

Steve clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. “Okay! Places everybody! Quiet on the set!” He looked over at Craig, who gave him a nod. “And roll sound!”

Steve held up the slate. “Scene thirty, take one.”

CLACK!

“Action!” Craig yelled.

With the focus of a bomb disposal expert, Todd kneeled beside the car battery. He licked his thumb and held it up to test the wind, a completely unnecessary gesture that he probably saw in a movie. Then, he touched the wires to the battery terminals…

Just outside the cemetery gate, a loud KABOOM! ripped through the quiet afternoon. A perfect, comical mushroom cloud of black smoke rose slowly over the cemetery wall.

A beat of stunned silence… then Todd tore out of the gate at a full sprint, his face a mask of pure terror as he raced off down the street. He was followed moments later by the rest of the inmate crew, running for their lives like a scene from a Keystone Cops comedy.

And then came Carrie.

She burst out the gate swinging a baseball bat, her clothes shredded and smoldering, and face and hair covered in soot. She was a vision of apocalyptic fury as she chased the soon-to-be-deceased production team down the street.