Unsympathetic Magic Read online

  But Nolan said, “I feel like I’m going to throw up. Have you got something for that?”

  The makeup artist signaled to a production assistant, who in turn spoke into her walkie-talkie, asking someone to bring something to “Mr. Nolan” for his nausea. The makeup artist went back to trying to tone down the color of Nolan’s face, but he brushed aside her hand again, irritably insisting that she wait until he felt better.

  I sighed and went to find a chair, since standing around in Jilly’s high heels for any length of time made my feet hurt.

  As I expected, Nolan’s queasy stomach led to delays while he rejected various remedies offered to him, then threw a tantrum about the crew’s failure to have on hand the exact product he wanted. A production assistant was sent to 125th Street, a few blocks away, in search of an open shop where the correct item could be purchased for poor Mr. Nolan’s aching tummy. I resented the delay—especially after having been through numerous delays this week, always because of Nolan—but I also didn’t particularly want him vomiting while I was kneeling right in front of him. Besides, I was just a guest performer, and an unknown one, at that. So I sat quietly, the perfect picture of patience, and endured the lengthy wait that ensued before Nolan finally felt ready to work.

  By then, I was pretty sweaty. The breeze from the Harlem River notwithstanding, it was a hot night, and Jilly wasn’t dressed for this weather. (Based on a line in the script about her needing to find someplace to stay before the weather turned cold, I assumed the episode was set in autumn.) I was wearing a low-cut leopard-patterned Lycra top with sleeves that came down to my elbows; an uncomfortably short, tight, red vinyl skirt with a studded belt; purple fishnet stockings; and black high-heeled boots. Completing Jilly’s ensemble was a curly lamb vest. Wearing that vest in this weather was unbearable, so it always stayed on the garment rack until just before I stepped in front of the cameras.

  Now that Nolan was pacing around in front of the cameras and revving up for the scene, I let the wardrobe mistress slip the pale, furry vest over my arms and onto my shoulders. A few minutes later, Jilly’s immense purse, containing all her worldly goods, was slung over my shoulder. A production assistant stood nearby with some knee pads, which I’d be using later; I would only have to kneel directly on bare cement in the master shots where my legs would be visible.

  In the opening portion of the scene, Conway and Jilly would exchange a page of dialogue face- to-face before he’d rough her up and force her to her knees. We had already worked on the blocking for this, and now I joined Nolan in front of the cameras so the crew could verify all our marks. Television and film work tends to involve a lot of technical considerations, such as making sure you’re in focus, in the frame, audible, and correctly lit on every shot, as well as ensuring continuity from take to take of the same scene being filmed from multiple angles.

  Finally ready for our first take—a mere ninety minutes behind schedule—Nolan and I now stood face-to-face, waiting for the director to call, “Action!”

  I was close enough to see that, under his recently freshened layer of makeup, the actor looked even redder than before. But our lighting for this scene was so shadowy, I supposed it probably wouldn’t matter.

  “Action!”

  Nolan turned into Conway in a nanosecond. He grabbed me and shook me, his hot breath brushing my face as he demanded I tell him what I knew. I struggled and prevaricated, pretending I knew much less than he supposed, but I didn’t waste any breath trying to appeal to his compassion. My resistance infuriated him. He shoved me away—so hard that my heel caught in a crack on the sidewalk and I staggered sideways before I fell back against the wall. He pursued me, closing in on me. I knew we were off our marks now, as did he, but the scene was working so well that we kept playing it. As he leaned into me, though, I could see that he was even redder now, and sweating again.

  An instant later, Nolan tripped over his lines. He tried to save the moment, but then he swayed dizzily, closed his eyes, and put his hand to his forehand.

  He shook his head and, completely out of character now, said, “Nah, I lost it. Let’s go back.”

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Yeah, fine,” he said tersely.

  He didn’t look all right. He looked . . . well, not all right, anyhow.

  I said, “Are you sure? Because you look a littl—”

  “If you could manage to hit your fucking marks, that would be a big help,” he snapped.

  I fantasized about stomping on his genitals with my high-heeled boots.

  We started the scene again. This time I fell backward into the wall exactly where I was supposed to. But when he pursued me and leaned into me . . . I saw that his eyes were watery, and his gaze was blurry. Nolan uttered Conway’s next line with a thick, clumsy tongue. I kept going, whining Jilly’s dialogue at him. He blew his next line completely, stumbling over a few disjointed words then falling silent.

  There was a long pause. My tormentor just stood there, gripping my shoulders, looking dazed and sweaty. In contrast to his deep flush only moments ago, he was now sickly pale, as if suddenly drained of all his blood.

  “Are you okay?” I prodded at last.

  Nolan gave a little start, as if suddenly realizing I was there. He let go of my shoulders, staggered back a step, and mumbled, “I think I’m gonna . . .”

  A moment later, he vomited all over the sidewalk, splattering my boots.

  2

  Jilly’s boots were a nuisance to put on and take off, so the wardrobe intern who got assigned to clean Michael Nolan’s vomit off them told me not to bother removing them. I took off Jilly’s curly lamb vest, then went and sat in the wardrobe van, where the intern sponged at my leather-clad feet.

  After getting sick on camera, Nolan had been escorted into an air-conditioned location trailer, where he awaited the attentions of a medic. It was hoped that, now that he’d evidently gotten something nasty out of his system, he would be able to finish the night’s work after a brief rest. Meanwhile, though, we were all stuck waiting around, and it didn’t take long for people to start getting bored. Also hungry. And since Nolan, who’d just tossed his cookies all over the sidewalk, had eaten food from the catering van earlier, no one wanted to eat D30’s catered fare now.

  When I emerged from the wardrobe van, one of the other cast members told me that the production intern who’d purchased Nolan’s stomach remedy on 125th Street had seen an eatery there which boasted the best fried chicken in Harlem. The cast and some of the crew had gotten permission to go there for a meal while waiting for the verdict on Nolan. They had strict instructions to be back within one hour.

  As they walked down the dark street, headed toward 125th, I debated the wisdom of eating anything, let alone fried chicken, if I was going to be on camera later tonight in this tight, revealing outfit. However, simply hanging around the set waiting for Nolan to get better wasn’t an enticing prospect. Especially not with the other actors fleeing to a restaurant for the next hour.

  “I suppose one piece of chicken won’t show up on camera,” I murmured, trying to suck in my Lycra-clad stomach where it spilled over the waistband of Jilly’s extremely tight skirt. “One small piece.”

  I don’t have the svelte or surgically enhanced body of a Hollywood leading lady, but I do watch my weight and try to stay in shape, given my profession. And the camera adds weight and enhances puffiness, so I’d been eating carefully in preparation for this role.

  On the other hand, excessive self-denial is just morbid.

  And now that I was recovered from the mild revulsion of witnessing Nolan’s gastric episode up close and personal, I was feeling a bit peckish. Especially when I contemplated the prospect of working until dawn, thanks to these delays.

  So I called after the departing actors, “I’ll get my purse and catch up to you!”

  I went back into the wardrobe trailer, collected my purse, and promised faithfully that I wouldn’t get any stains or splotches on Jill
y’s outfit. Then I went back out into the hot, humid night in pursuit of my coworkers and a satisfying piece of fried poultry. I was already more than a block behind the others and didn’t really know where they were going, so I walked at a brisk pace, despite the height of my heels.

  Trailing that far behind my colleagues in Harlem around midnight wasn’t as foolhardy as it might sound. We were filming directly east of Mount Morris Park, which is a nice neighborhood, one that reflects the almost-frenzied renovation and rehabilitation projects that have characterized real estate development in Harlem for the past decade or so. In fact, much of Harlem is increasingly inhabited by white yuppies, a somewhat controversial state of affairs in the nation’s most famous black neighborhood.

  The main drag that I was headed toward, 125th Street, was at the forefront of this controversy. The famous commercial avenue of Harlem is now home to a large number of national chain stores and corporate-owned businesses. Fewer and fewer black merchants and small Harlem businesses are able to pay the skyrocketing prices for commercial space there these days. Harlem had changed a great deal in recent years; and whether that was ultimately a blessing or a curse, it did at least mean that I didn’t feel anxious about being alone in this area after dark.

  A moment later, however, I realized that might be naive of me. As I passed a narrow alley between two apartment buildings, a sudden noise startled me. I jumped and gasped. This, in turn, startled the individual who was poking around the Dumpsters there. The person whirled to face me, moving with noticeable grace in the murky shadows.

  At the same moment that I saw he was a young African-American man, I also saw that he was armed! I made a choked noise and staggered backward, my eyes on his—his—his . . .

  “Sword?” I choked out, scared and stunned.

  He looked down at the long rapier in his hand, as if surprised to find he was pointing it at me.

  I backed up a little farther, wondering whether he was an underconfident mugger, an armed robber with equipment problems, or someone attempting an anachronistic gang initiation involving seventeenth-century weaponry.

  “I’m not looking for trouble,” I said, taking another step backward.

  “Chill,” he said, lowering the sword. Enough light from the streetlamps crept into the alley that I could see his tense posture relax as he released his breath. “This isn’t for you.”

  His voice sounded cultured, his consonants well articulated. Now that I felt safe taking my eyes off the sword, I saw that he was probably in his late teens, wearing dark pants and a dark tank top, and had close-cropped hair. He was too far into the shadows for me to see his features very well, but I got the impression of a well-proportioned fellow with good bone structure.

  “What are you doing?” I said, now that I wasn’t afraid that he intended to run me through with his sword.

  “Hunting,” he said tersely.

  “Hunting?” I had a vision of rifle-toting guys in bright orange vests tromping through the woods in search of deer. “In Manhattan?”

  “What are you doing?” He had evidently taken a good look at me by now. “This is a good neighborhood. We don’t want crack whores turning tricks around here.”

  “I’m not a crack whore,” I said without rancor, since his mistake was understandable. “I’m with the TV crew that’s filming on the next block.”

  “Filming? Oh. So that’s why that street’s blocked off.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re an actress?”

  “Yes,” I said again.

  “Well, you shouldn’t walk around here alone at night, miss.”

  “Why? Do you think I might get attacked by a guy with a sword?”

  “There’s dangerous shit around here,” he said seriously.

  “I thought you just said this is a good neighborhood.”

  “I don’t have time to talk about it.” He sounded impatient now, as if I’d interrupted him in the middle of work. “But you should go back to your people. Right now.”

  “My people have gone for the best fried chicken in Harlem,” I said. “That’s where I’m going, too.”

  Despite the darkness, I could see that he was shaking his head. “It’s after midnight. Miss Maude’s is closed by now.”

  “Is that on One Hundred Twenty- fifth Street?” I asked, feeling my stomach give a disappointed rumble.

  “No. But it’s the best fried chicken in Harlem.”

  “I see. But that’s not where my friends are headed.”

  “Well, you’d better catch up to them,” he said, brushing past me. “And watch your back.”

  “Er, what sort of dangerous sh . . .” But the young man’s purposeful strides were already carrying him down the street in the direction from which I had just come. I watched him disappear into the night. “Okay. Never mind.”

  The encounter, and particularly his comments, made me a little uneasy. But, after all, he seemed pretty young, and the sword certainly suggested a love of melodrama. In fact, the street that I continued walking down now was much nicer than the street I live on in the West Thirties near Tenth Avenue. However, I kept my eyes open, just in case.

  On the next block, getting closer to Mount Morris Park, I walked past beautiful turn-of-the-last-century row houses that displayed crisp, ornate stonework, freshly painted trim, and polished wooden doors in the glowing light of the streetlamps. The sidewalk was free of litter, the street was quiet, and the garbage cans that had been set out for the following morning’s trash collection were arranged in tidy clusters.

  My footsteps slowed when I saw a shadowy figure dart across the dark street directly ahead of me. It was much too small to be a man, so I was more curious than concerned when an identical figure followed it a second later. I frowned. A couple of children out after dark, perhaps? Small children, though—too small to be outside this late at night, let alone out here without adult supervision. Still walking, I glanced around the street for an accompanying adult, but I didn’t see one.

  Then I heard some growling up ahead of me. I wondered if the two small figures had run across the street in pursuit of a dog. If so, that didn’t seem like a good idea. The growling sounded angry. Dangerous. Vicious, I realized.

  “Dangerous shit?” I muttered.

  I halted, peering ahead. The street was adequately lit for walking, but not for seeing that far away, and the figures were immersed in shadow.

  Then I realized I heard two dogs growling. Was that what I had seen crossing the street—a couple of dogs? I had thought the figures were upright, not running on all fours . . . but the shapes had been only a faint blur in the dark, and they were indeed low to the ground, so I might easily have been mistaken.

  The growling seemed to be coming from behind a cluster of garbage cans directly ahead of me. I supposed a strong scent in the garbage had attracted a couple of stray dogs, and now they were fighting over food that someone had thrown away.

  Vicious dogs on the loose in this neighborhood explained the young man’s warning to me. It also explained his reference to “hunting.” Apparently he’d been poking around the Dumpsters in hope of encountering these dogs so he could dispatch them—though why he’d chosen a sword as his weapon remained a mystery.

  I decided to give the snarling dogs a wide berth. I was just about to cross the street to avoid them when I heard the clatter of tumbling garbage cans. Looking in that direction again, as the growling got louder, I saw a large figure trying to rise from the ground, flickering in and out of the shadows.

  I gasped as I realized that the two dogs were attacking the larger figure, growling furiously as they flung themselves at it. The larger figure was trying to rise, moving clumsily under the onslaught of the two growling animals. One of the dogs seized an appendage and tugged, keeping the large figure from moving freely.

  As I saw it silhouetted in the faint light of the streetlamps, I realized that the appendage in question was . . . an arm. A human arm.

  “Oh, my God!”

&nb
sp; I didn’t think, I just reacted. I raced down the street with a horrified shriek. When I reached the struggling human’s side, I swung my purse from my shoulder and whirled its not-inconsiderable weight directly into the head of one of the attacking dogs with all my might.

  In the same moment that my blow knocked the growling creature backward and off its feet, I saw that it wasn’t a dog at all. It was . . .

  “A gargoyle?” I said incredulously.

  It was about three feet tall, with two arms, two legs, and a hideous, menacing face, replete with long, ugly fangs and eyes that glinted red under the streetlights. It also had pointy ears, sagging flesh that looked sickly green in this light, and extremely hairy legs. If it had genitals, I didn’t see them—but, then, I wasn’t looking at its crotch. I was looking at the sharp claws on its hands as it hopped to its feet with an enraged growl and reached for me.

  Terrified and flooded with adrenaline, I clobbered the thing with my purse again, and it fell down again. We did this once more with feeling, and I was just starting to think the gargoyle was reassuringly stupid when it changed tactics and, instead of attacking me, now attacked my purse.

  The other creature, also a gargoyle, was still struggling with the large human figure nearby. I didn’t have time to take a good look, but the size, like the deep grunts and moans, confirmed that the vicious creature’s victim was a man. In my peripheral vision, I could see that he was trying to get away, but was moving clumsily and staggering around in evident confusion, tugging ineffectually at the arm that the growling gargoyle clung to.

  “Hit it!” I shouted at him, while I played tug-of-war for my purse with my own adversary. “Kick it!”

  The creature wrestling for possession of my purse was surprisingly strong for its size. I was fighting with all my might to keep the thing from ripping my purse out of my hands as we scrabbled around on the sidewalk, circling unsteadily with it caught between us. The gargoyle’s growls were rabid and enraged, and its breath was so foul I thought I’d be sick from the stench. I had a feeling that letting it scratch me with those filthy claws would be a big mistake, so when it tried to do so, I reluctantly let go of my purse and jumped back. With a foamy-mouthed shriek of triumph, the creature turned around and ran away, clutching my purse to its chest like a war trophy.