Chapter 30: CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Fenwick was eating lunch at the diner. Alice placed a glass of apple juice on the table. “Anything else I can do for you?”

“No thanks.”

“How’s the film?”

“Who’s Renney?”

The name was prominently displayed on the front window, in reverse, looking at it from inside the diner. “Oh, that. Gerald Renney, my father-in-law. He started the diner when they built the village for the aliens. I didn’t think we’d need it, considering the aliens are hunters.” She paused a moment, then said, “He died last year.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, that’s all right. I always thought he was a bastard.”

Fenwick poked his eggs, stopped. “You have a husband?”

“You’re kind of nosy, aren’t you?”

“Just trying to make conversation.”

“I have to go now. Chandrha and her family just walked in.”

Aliens. Male, female, cubs. The male’s genitals were hidden inside his body unless he had some use for it, so one sure way to distinguish the two sexes was the fine hairs around the perimeter of his ears.

“Now that Arak and the Colonel are dead, Chandrha is making sure everything is running smoothly here.”

“How can you tell?”

“What?”

“How can you tell that’s Chandrha? They all look alike to me. Well, I can tell the males from the females, but if you were to ask me who’s who, I’d be at a loss.”

“The collar,” she said.

“I can’t read what’s written on there.” He squinted his eyes as the aliens walked by.

“It’s that symbol they have at the throat,” she said. “The collars are different colors, but that red diamond symbol is on all the collars. Chandrha told me that back on her world that red diamond symbol was supposed to represent the blood of all the Tereskàdians slaughtered by the Alharhanians. Once all the colors of the collars were white, with the red diamond symbol at the front, but when they came here they decided each family would have a different color for the collars. Chandrha’s family’s is light green.”

“So that’s how you know.”

“That’s right.”

“I guess you learn something new every day.”

She turned, headed to Chandrha’s table. “Have to see about my guests,” she said over her shoulder.

Fenwick had to get back to the cast and crew soon. He didn’t want to because he was the one screwing up the picture. No matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t satisfy Creighton. It wasn’t his fault, though. Creighton kept changing the script even as the film was being shot. Damn that son of a bitch.

He finished his lunch, stood up, left a ten on the table. When he opened the door, Creighton was waving at him. He walked a little faster, wondering what the man wanted now.

“Do you think I have all day?” Creighton barked. “Half an hour is half an hour, not forty minutes. I’m trying to make a movie.”

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“I’m not sure I want to do it,” he said.

“Damn it, Fenwick, you can’t do this to me. Your part may not be that great, but it’s important.”

“Write my part out of the picture. Give it to someone else. I’m sure there are some here who are just standing around doing nothing.”

“I need you. I need that character.”

“You’ve been changing this picture ever since you started writing it back in L.A. You’re changing your mind more often than... than...” He sighed. “You’re getting real exasperating, you know that? The same thing happened with ‘Teen Monsters from Mars,’ and look how that turned out.”

“Sometimes changes have to be made,” Creighton said. “If you don’t like it...”

“Are you firing me again?”

“I want to, but... Are you going to quit again?”

“I want to.”

Creighton smiled, a quick, shy smile. “We can’t live with each other, and we can’t live without each other, can we?”

“Let’s go.” He walked ahead of the director, turned around. “I’ve been studying my lines, so please don’t be such an asshole, and cut me that slack.”

“We’ll see.”

That didn’t mean anything to him. It depended on what mood Creighton was in. The man seemed rather spirited and uplifting right now, as if he had won a sizable amount in the lottery, but that could change any moment.

Creighton was filming a scene with Benita Corovelli and Cal Torrence. Benita’s acting left him shuddering at her poor delivery, her heavy accent which almost vanished when she took her time speaking, but Creighton seemed pleased. And why not? She was his bed partner, wasn’t she? She could have coughed out her lines, and he’d have told her she was great. And Cal? Such a monotone. No inflection at all. And his movements were so precise as if he were walking on broken glass. No spontaneity, no flowing, graceful movement, just a lot of precisely measured walks and turns.

He watched them briefly, walked away. At the diner the aliens were still eating. Raw meat. He didn’t want to look at anyone eating raw meat. They couldn’t eat anything else, something he found rather boring. He was glad he was a human being because the variety of food he could eat was endless.

Whistling dragon milk. Now there was something different. These aliens drank a liquid they withdrew via the whistling dragon’s two teats in the lower region of the animal, not far from the genitals. Bad design. Those teats should have been located between the front legs, like an elephant.

Male Tereskàdian, female whistling dragon, female Tereskàdian, male whistling dragon. Interesting arrangement.

Aliens. He had to remember that. These were not human beings.

But why did they suck the teats of their whistling dragons? Was the dragon’s job to provide some type of special liquid for their Tereskàdians? Even as he watched through the large window of the diner, the oldest cub – what was her name again? - took one of her whistling dragon’s teats in her mouth.

Milk? At that age? He’d have to read more about these aliens.

“Fenwick,” Creighton called, “are you ready for the next scene?”

“What about Chandrha and the trek through the forest?”

“I’ll get to that later,” Creighton said. “Benita, you and Fenwick and Delmore are in this scene. And Chester... where’s Chester?”

“Last time I saw him he said he had to go to the bathroom,” Fenwick said. He didn’t want to tell Creighton what he suspected Harrison was doing.

“Fine time to take a piss,” Creighton said.

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