“—fellas, fellas?—”
“—Clete, you haven’t got what it takes and?—”
“—and do you?”
“—well, ask the lady, just ask her whether?—”
“—fellas, now—” And then Franklin noticed the camera. “Did you cut that camera, for Christ’s sake?”
And at that moment, all the men on-screen froze with the sudden realization that the entire argument was being recorded. There was a kind of momentary tableau with all of them looking at the camera.
“Cut it now,” Franklin said. “Cut it right now.”
And then the film went white.
A moment later, the footage ran out of the projector and made a slapping sound before the banquet hall lights came on. I looked at Perkins.
“Very interesting,” Perkins said. He got up out of his chair. “Let’s go see the still man.”
* * *
Larry McBroom’s room smelled heavily of marijuana. He opened the door and smiled pleasantly. “Right on time.”
“I am always on time,” Perkins said. He looked around the room. There was a lot of camera equipment spread out on the bed. “Is that all of it?”
“Yeah,” Larry said. “That’s all of it.”
“I want to borrow a camera for tomorrow,” Perkins said.
Larry shot me a questioning look.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Give him whatever he wants.”
“What do you want?” Larry asked.
“You have a motor-drive Nikon?”
“Yes...”
“That’s what I want,” Perkins said.
“For tomorrow? Gee, I was going to use it myself. We have a stunt sequence?—”
“You mean the wire-pull?”
“Right.”
“I need it before that. You can have it back before the stunt.”
Larry wasn’t happy. I could tell he wasn’t sure he’d get it back soon enough, and like everybody else on the crew, he didn’t ever want to be the reason for holding up a production.
“There’ll be a couple of minutes delay before the stunt. You’ll have time to reload.”
“How do you know there’ll be a delay?”
“Because I’ll cause it,” Perkins said. “Now what about film?”
“I shoot Tri-X.”
