Janine Armin - Toronto Noir

“Let’s try the scene again,” she says, “and I’ll play it up.”

She’s such an easy mark, I almost feel bad about what I’m doing to her. Almost.

Karen slips out during the afternoon to watch what she can of the shoot from behind a barricade on the street, and reports back that multiple takes were done of a scene that involved Honey. When I press her for details, like were Honey’s reactions the focus of the retakes, and did Honey seem to be overacting, she says she doesn’t know, the whole setup was a little confusing. Also disappointing, because boo-hoo, she didn’t see Denzel.

I force myself to saunter outside rather than run when I emerge from the Market Building after 6, after we’ve closed up shop. Dusk has fallen, Front Street rumbles with rush hour traffic, and on the side streets, crew people are packing and loading up equipment. The day’s shooting is done then, but is Honey also finished? As in fired? I’m starting to think she’s skipped off without saying goodbye, when she comes out of a trailer in her street clothes, her bag over her shoulder, a tissue in her hand. Could she be wiping her eyes? She is wiping them. Fucking A.

I erase the diabolical smile that has come out to play on my face, replace it with a picture of innocent concern, wave, and say, “Hey. How’d the day go? You still alive?”

In answer, she hugs me. Right there on the sidewalk, in the middle of the evening foot traffic, in front of random strangers rushing by on their way home from work or going out to dinner and the theater. She hugs me, and she laughs her annoying merry laugh, peals and all. “It went well, thanks to you! The director loved my energy and passion — he said my performance was perfect for the high drama of the scene. He liked it so much he got the kids to ramp up their reactions to match mine and did lots of takes. And get this: Denzel said that he’d never seen anyone act so well in their first movie role, that I was a natural!”

Her energy and passion? Please. My chest feels tight and my eyes ache. How much good luck — how much of my goddamned share of all the goddamned available luck in the universe — does this little twat have? I’m about to start sobbing, that or stabbing, but all I can say, stupidly, is, “I thought you were crying just now. You were wiping your eyes.”

“I was trying to remove some of the makeup they used to cover my freckles. But who cares if I look pancakey? I’m a real movie actress now, woo-hoo! Want to come for a drink with me and celebrate? I’m meeting some friends at a pub around the corner.” She steps over to the curb, then turns back to where I stand, stunned, behind her. “Come,” she says. “Join us. Come and be happy for me.”

A flower truck, high and wide and white, accelerates along the street behind her, gunning to make the green light. I don’t have to shove her. A good nudge — like a hurrying pedestrian could give her by accident — is enough to topple her, in her silly high-heeled boots, over the curb, onto the road, into the path of the oncoming truck, all five tons of it.

She died instantly — I know, because I stuck around long enough to watch some guy who’d seen too many medical shows on television run over and feel for a pulse on the neck of her mangled body after the truck driver had slammed on his brakes (and dragged Honey another ten yards) and jumped out of the cab and freaked out big-time. “Call 911!” the guy directed an onlooker, and he bent down to listen for breathing, to see if her chest was moving. A minute later, when he stepped back from her corpse, he said, “Does anyone know this girl? Was anyone with her? Who saw what happened?” People spoke all at once, no one noticed me, the truck driver wailed on, and I walked away, unlocked my bike, plugged in my headphones, and rode home, let music drown out the sounds of the crash that still reverberated in my ears: the screech of the brakes, the dull thud of the impact, the crunch and squeal of metal bending.

Tomorrow I’ll go to work and Karen will be all teary — she’s boring that way. She’ll ramble on in a quavery voice about how she can’t believe such a tragic accident happened to someone so young and sweet whose life was so full of promise and isn’t it horrible? And I’ll say yeah, I heard it on the local news this morning, what a shock: It is horrible.

What I won’t say is how horribly unfair it was for Honey to make it without paying her dues, without suffering for her art, without living, every night and day, for years and years, with self-doubt and self-loathing and shame. I won’t say that for Honey to do so well, so easily, was not just undeserved, but not right. Not right at all.

I’ll let Karen pat me on the arm in the way she does that makes my flesh crawl, and I’ll change the subject, talk about Denzel. Later, when I take my smoke break, I’ll call my agent and tell her enough with sending me out for the ingenue gigs or to play young moms, I’d like to start reading for character roles, for parts that are a bit more meaty and complex and nuanced. I don’t want to get my hopes up — and I won’t, because I know better than to be optimistic, after all this time, after everything I’ve been through — but I think I could do justice to that kind of shit. I really do.

Parkdale

Apparently, Bonnie Brown-Switzel couldn’t shop for an affair. One week away from their third anniversary, she kissed Mr. Switzel (as she affectionately called him) goodbye as they both left the loft. She set off through the city to do her errands — grocery list neatly tucked inside an angora mitten. As she headed west, each step her Camper boots took felt extra long. The February street smelled like wet newspaper. The wind carried a rancid whiff from the tucked-away abattoir that kept their condo affordable. Bonnie felt like she was carrying the idea of the affair inside her mouth — words she couldn’t say. She bit her lips to keep it inside, in case it should fall out onto the snow, only to get picked up by the wrong person.

The boy at the Price Chopper who helped her get the olive oil from the top shelf — “No, the virgin” — had long pink fingers that limped across the labels self-consciously. Two distinct spots of red blazed on his cheeks. His blush was endearing, as were the pale thick lashes that fused above his large eyes. The bone nubs in the back of his pants as he stretched for the proper brand and bottle were irksome. Bonnie urged the dizzy-wheeled cart away.

She would have to take more decisive action. The last flirtation she’d had was five years ago, with an actor, genteel and passionate, the type who noticed everything, the type who wooed. On her way out of the store, she passed by the karaoke bar where they had met, the black and silver Applause sign still propped up in the front window beside the stage. Five years. Post-marriage, it seemed seven times as long. Not that she had anything to complain about. As marriages went, hers was supine. They were only three years in, but they had passed without quarrel. The memory of the long-past flirtation nibbled at her mind.

Drawn out again, after ten minutes of walking — farther into the worn-down and newly built-up neighborhood of Parkdale — she turned onto the street where he lived. She didn’t know which house the actor lived in, only the street. It had been so long, and she had never been inside; declined his offer coyly when they’d shared a cab, he stumbling out, she traveling on to the safety of Roncesvalles and High Park. Now, she pulled a tube of Mac from her pocket and coated her mouth without stopping. Her boots punched semi-circular tracks into the snow. Today she enjoyed the tap-tap-tap sounds. Today she wanted to be noticed.