Dana Spiotta - Lightning Field

MAX (O.S.)

Why don’t you take the lamp shade off? I’m not getting enough light.

She does this. She just casually bats the shade off. She looks at the camera, smoking. The naked lightbulb lights her from down up, casting backward shadows on her cheeks and brow.

MAX (O.S.)

You look like night of the living dead. Zombielike. But a sexy zombie.

GIRL smiles at the camera.

MAX (O.S.)

It’s the naked bulb. The cigarette. Your slightly dirty smile. Tabloid, like those Hollywood Babylon police photos. Starlet found murdered in bed.

MINA

Black Dahlia. Fatty Arbuckle. Errol Flynn.

MAX (O.S.)

Bloodstained sheets and empty whisky bottles. She’s clutching the suicide note in her white fist.

MINA

Clara Bow. Lana Turner. Sal Mineo. Lupe Valez. Virginia Rappe.

MAX (O.S.)

Uremic poisoning. Yes, that’s the feel. That’s the general ambience.

MINA

But it’s just a no-name girl. A quiet, simple, everyday infidelity, your bad lighting and your messy apartment. You provided the sordid frame.

MAX (O.S.)

But it suits you. Squalor and dirty sheets and a solitary moment on camera. You look sexy.

GIRL exhales and reaches over to extinguish her cigarette. The sheet falls from her breasts and she lets it bunch by her waist. She looks at the camera.

MINA

Max—

MAX (O.S.)

No talking. Just sit there.

MINA

Max, I think I’m not into where this is going. Seriously.

MAX (O.S.)

Shh. I don’t want talking. Just be quiet. This time quiet. Girl, in bed, no-name girl. This is postcoital. This is the tryst at its most signifyingmoment. There is the smell, slight but there too, of sex. The camera gets this somehow, too. Maybe removing the light shade is to compensate for not being able to have the smell on camera.

MINA

It’s a bit cliché, don’t you think? It’s not very interesting. Besides, there is no coital anymore, is there? Not post or pre. We are perpetually faux coital.

MAX (O.S.)

Don’t spoil things, Mina.

MINA

Spoil things? In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t like this video shit anymore.

MAX (O.S.)

Let’s not have an Edward Albee moment, shall we? And it’s not videotape. It’s digital, by the way.

MINA

Jesus. The thing is, I’m really bored. Really. Don’t look so surprised. Besides, I thought you found the truth so fucking fascinating.

There is a long pause.

MAX (O.S.)

What’s fascinating to me right now is your silence and my filming it here on this bed withthe dirty-cliché sheets and the smell-evoking Hollywood-scandal lightbulb.

GIRL shrugs and puts out her cigarette. She waves him off and gets up from the bed. She starts to get dressed.

MAX (O.S.)

What interests me is that dirty smile on your face. The utter lack of regret or even a vague sadness. No thought of your young husband waiting at home. No thought of climbing into bed with him when your long blond hairs are still mussed from my sheets. And not just anyone, no, but David, young kind trusting David, has not only had his wife sleep out, but she’s chosen his oldest and best friend to fuck. In one act his life is transformed into the tritest, most distasteful display. And he doesn’t even know it. Humiliations visited beyond his belief.

GIRL purses her lips. She listens, but continues dressing.

MAX (O.S.)

And there you are, unembarrassed. Unashamed. You think, Well, it’s you too, Max. You are his best friend. But we know I’m a bastard. We know no sordid situation is too much for me. We know how I crave aberrance. It’s in my makeup, isn’t it? That’s why you want me. I would never have talked you out of it. I wouldsolicit it. That’s what you desire in me. You were so bored and frustrated with your own stupid life, you can only be turned on by humiliation and aberrance. His best friend. That’s why you like the dirty sheets and the naked lightbulb. That’s what you’re here for.

GIRL is now dressed. She grabs her purse, glances at the camera. The camera pulls in to a CLOSER SHOT. She shakes her head.

MAX (O.S.)

Mina.

GIRL shakes her head and turns away. She heads to the door.

MAX (O.S.)

You’re not leaving, are you?

Another long pause. GIRL is putting on her earrings.

MAX (O.S.)

Mina? Don’t leave, c’mon.

MINA

I am leaving now.

The camera stays on GIRL. We hear MAX breathe off camera. She is about to leave and then she goes back, reaches over to the lamp, and clicks it off.

TITLE: END

* * *It was the three of them again — on the porch. Max sat at David’s feet, and Mina was thinking, I want to kill Max for having it over on David. It was a slow pulse, it was in how he inhaled his cigarette. It was how he ate his chips. It was the subtext of his conversation. I fucked your wife. It occurred to Mina, the lousy and far-reaching meanness of what Max and she did. She thought, Christ, he really must never know. No matter what happened. She swore if Max gave her one goddamned look, one “special” smile. . But no. He sat there, laughing and talking as usual. He had no heart. Or he hid it well.

“So watch this,” David said. He threw a bottle cap across the porch. It bounced once, then landed on the wood molding, where it stopped, perched.

“Impressive,” Max said, and chucked a bottle cap in the same direction. It hit the porch floor, then skidded off to the side. No bounce.

“Shit,” Max said. David took another bottle cap and threw it. It bounced perfectly, and followed the trajectory of the first, coming to a stop on the wood molding.

“Shit, David.” Max picked up another and got ready to throw it.

“Turn it sideways as you throw,” David said.

“OK, now I see,” Max said. He bounced it. This time it got a bounce but missed the ledge. “OK, all right, now I’m almost there.”

David threw. It did precisely what the first one did. Max threw. It was off but closer. David threw. Max. David. Mina sipped her beer. She watched them.

“So, this is your afternoon writing distraction,” Max said, aiming. David laughed.

“You figured it out. What about your work?”

“I’ve got some crappy trailers I’ve been writing to make a few bucks. No time for anything else.”

“What about that girl from Taylor’s?” David asked.

“The barista,” Max said.

“Yes, the barista,” David said. They both said it annoyingly, as if it were a strongly accented Spanish word. Bareeesta. The bareeeesta.

“Well, the barista is not likely to make a second showing,” Max said.

David hucked one more bottle cap. He missed this time, actually.

“Really, why is that?” David asked. Max grinned closed-mouthed.

“Well, she got offended by something I did. Or didn’t do, I guess.”

“What?” David asked, smiling, “What happened?”

“Well, nothing. I just spent some time with her, and then I had to leave right after it was over because it was late. .”

“Oh, no. Right after?” David asked.

“Well, after I washed off in the bathroom. Yeah, pretty much right after. I could tell she was irritated. When she saw I was getting ready to go, she started to say, rather nastily, I might add, ‘Just go. OK, I have to get up. Please hurry.’ That kind of thing. I felt bad, but I was tired and I didn’t want to be there. It’s lousy, I know.”