John Domini: Movieola!

Then came the low comedy with the neighbor.

Alya had neighbors, part of the script that she and the ex had been following. No ranch in Montana for them, no compound on Virgin Gorda, they lived in a neighborhood , they walked to the store, even if what they bought there were saffron and morels. Once in a while, too, they could gab over the fence. They could share a sack of tomatoes or a peek into another soul, and come a night when somebody sent up screams powerful enough to set the spoons and wineglasses tinkling, well, that person had neighbors.

Thank God—or, considering Alya’s current project, the gods ?—the face at her door turned out to be phlegmatic. Decidedly phlegmatic, deeply wrinkled, the face of the widower who lived uphill, an industry long-timer who could always say he’d heard worse. He could play it like a trump: he’d seen so much back in Da Nang, everything else was No Thang. He’d caught a magic carpet to the States, he’d swooped down amid the other Vietnamese in sets and costume (they ran the union for years), and tonight was just another ripple in the ride. Just another white girl gone batshit, and never mind that she was wearing VC pajamas and a face that called to mind a napalm victim. As for the monster, it’d gone scoot. The gargoylino had shown off its leap at the first long syllable of the doorbell, ahnnng- , and it leaped, -gehlll-l , and it caromed farther, lamp to divan, legs dangling, you thought of a wasp with jet propulsion, and Alya might’ve been startled but she was done with screaming. As the creature scuttled behind the divan, she only let go a long, low syllable of her own, a sigh out of doo-wop.

After that, as she stood in the doorway before the refugee-made-good, well, talk about sets and costumes. Alya cloaked herself in a story. She kept her back to her house.

The neighbor took it quietly, his wrinkles staying put, though from time to time he brushed his thumb across his iPhone, keeping the screen aglow. You could see he’d brought up the speed dial, one touch would summon the police—and it was kind of the man that he’d come to her first. It was kind of him to think how it would look if she had a black’n’white show up at the house. The paparazzi had a sixth sense for this, a star with her head on a pike, but Alya lived alongside the local sachem, an industry sachem.

Thank God, or the gods. Yet even as she told him so, her smile genuine or almost, the actress stuck to her story. She insisted that tonight was about the work.

A convincing scream, she said, people don’t understand, it’s work.

Now it was his turn to sigh, more Delta than doo-wop.

You’ve been there. Never enough rehearsal, the budget is such a, a bogeyman. Now tonight, here, I’m sorry, but where else?

I’ve heard worse, he said.

The screen on his phone had gone dark.

A comedy, that encounter, call it The Beggar at the Gate , except Alya came away feeling as if she’d been the beggar and her neighbor had brought just what she needed. A cup of apathy, he’d brought her, because now, as her creepy stowaway re-emerged, wasting no time hopping back up on her desk, she went on past without breaking stride, making for the guest bath. In there she fished out the stub of a spliff from the baggie at the bottom of the ibuprofen jar, her assistant had a dispensary permit, and as she got her first toke she came back into the room and stretched out on the divan. If she’d had a feather boa she would’ve draped it around herself. She sipped on her spliff and sized up her new house pet.

And vice versa, insofar as she could tell where it was looking, this hybrid of rat and crab and hornet. Its triceratops head hung above the bookkeeping, long enough for the reluctant host to stop picturing herself with her throat torn open, or with dæmon larvae in her belly. Rather she fretted about her wrinkles. At this hour her dimples lost their charm, and the smoking didn’t help, especially not month-old weed, stale enough to send her into a fit of coughing. By the time Alya got her next level breath, her hideous guest had returned to its invasion of her privacy. Pawing once more through her financials, its movements almost polite, it appeared to be concentrating. It extended a longer claw into a desk drawer and pincered out her checkbook. Alya was old school about the checkbook, too, she kept her own set of figures, and the drawer might’ve popped open during the earlier ruckus. In any case it was time to quench the spliff and drop it back in her baggie, time to fold the baggie back under the ibuprofen and run the bottle back into the guest bath (where a guest might’ve left it, see…). If there were any psychedelia stranger than a monster in your house, it was a monster with a CPA.

Its movements remained delicate over her scribbled math, and the actress saw no reason not to draw nearer. No reason not to study how the limbs and torso, if about ten times their size, might strike a killing blow. And look, lo—what was prophesied by Zachariah did come to pass!

Today’s mockups, ka- ching ! Look, lo, the wings, their veins and texture. So too the tail, the flex of the unused claws, these had an ugliness entirely familiar, as did the ribbing and abdomen. Alya fell into a bob and weave, her offense, her defense, taking full advantage of the synchronicity, her swami-nerd who’d seen the future. Because didn’t every actress have a story like this? A career move that would never have happened without some mad synchronicity? They all had a story like this, some gift freak they’d known better than to look in the mouth, and Gwyneth had ended up with an Academy Award. A gilded dingus without hair or genitals, now there was a household monster Alya could use, and so tonight she parried and kicked, she skipped and threw jabs, and she came up with questions.

Is that all you got ?

The wee mooncalf once more raised its head.

Don’t you want to rip out my guts, gnaw on my bones, and leave me nothing but a spot on the floor ?

Its mandible retracted, almost sheepish.

Not that Alya could go on trying to read the thing’s mind all night, not with the medical MJ burning in the throat and weighing on the brain. That Grey Goose in the freezer was calling: time to migrate. As for her ugly nocturnal emission here, she had plenty to keep it busy, a couple of scary notices about her investments for instance. And how about that photo album from before the breakup? She and the ex had kept a photo album, sure, printouts and stickum were part of the narrative, and now she dug the book from its hiding place and opened it across the mess on her desk. The shots from the Maldives, why not, she’d rocked that bikini. When some scum with a telephoto lens had caught her topless, when he’d sold the pics to TMZ, well, she’d rocked that too.

Through some miracle she made it to the far end of the bedroom wing, and after that insured herself hours upon hours of unconsciousness, setting her Droid on mute. She figured she retained star power enough to keep the studio from sending a gofer, for one morning anyway. And when Alya showed up on the lot, it was refreshed and without apology. She hid the chill of what she’d seen before leaving the house, the nips the bastard’s claws had made in the photo album. The book wound up back where she’d buried it, of course, but before that she couldn’t help but notice: divots, nibbles, nips, along the edges of a page or three. Also, on a bank alert about a recent withdrawal, itty cuts and slashes, as if her life were a whittle stick. The recollection gave her a chill, but she could hide the chill, she had enough to contend with right here on the sound stages, in particular her romantic lead. Her solicitous pretty boy: Got your beauty rest? You feeling it, now? If the kid had his druthers, she’d sleep longer than Snow White. He’d prefer just one name above the title, one set of abs flaunted against that blank screen, and come to think, wasn’t that the worst of what Alya had to contend with? Wasn’t that the fission core, that rectangle of dumb pale matte? High time she stood up on her hind legs and showed off her chops, what had she been doing since yesterday if not the work, the chops, and before the boy lost his concerned pout (adorable, Brando goes Disney), she was back in her chiton and cleavage. She had her dialogue, that had never been the problem, and the actress got her sword out, she began sketching Z’s before a spot on the wall, and at that point the director had his nose in the latest budget report, but in half a minute he let the papers drop. He nudged aside the principal cameraman. The director needed to see this, a girl and her monster soaring to a height from which they could peer into the very goop of the Unconscious, and choreography wasn’t even the word, not any longer, not the way Alya was feeling it, not the way she was hearing it, the director’s new pitch to the press, another dream of another life taking shape as a murmur in her head, a burst of movieola patter, the words all insect segments, like “post-apocalyptic” or “Pixar- Matrix ,” “splatter-saga” or “aggro-buzz” or “B.O.-whammo,” or maybe “S-&-M-Whack-a-Mole,” or then again “myth-o-matic,” “freak-smack” or “Clyteme-nation,” way past the old school like “thumbs-up” or “topline,” instead perhaps “nano-alchemy,” “wanna-palooza,” “blog catnip,” “retro-viral,” “widget-able,” “gawk’n’gag,” or then again “Oscar-prime” or “Oscar-pimp,” or could be “3D-world,” “world-boff,” “world-preem,” “world-whammo”…