They wrapped the shoot a few minutes after that. The production assistants took down the tape while the camera crews cleared the street. Suddenly there were young men in shorts and baseball caps everywhere, coiling cables or moving lights. The costumes woman collected all the briefcases from the extras. Within moments you couldn't tell there had been a film shoot there at all, except for the trailers and the extras still standing around in a group. I had no idea where the stars had gone.
I found myself beside the man with the French accent again. "Well, now what?" I asked.
"Now we wait for the cheque," he said. "If it takes any longer than a week, call your agent. These guys may not be in business a month from now."
"You do a lot of this kind of thing?" I asked.
"This is all I do," he said.
"So television commercials are your job?"
"Blending in is my job," he said.
Most of the other extras went down the street to catch the bus, but I went over to where one of the cameramen was pouring himself a cup of coffee. "How did I look?" I asked him.
He squinted at me and said, "Who are you?"
"I'm one of the extras," I said. "I had the newspaper on my leg."
"Oh, right." He took a pill from his pocket and ground it up in his hand, dropped the powder into his coffee.
"I'm just wondering how everything worked out," I said. "Did I look real?"
"Oh yeah," he said, stirring the powder under. "Better than real."
THE AGENCY GOT ME all kinds of shoots. Once, I was hired to be an audience member for a new talk show. We shot it in the middle of the night, in a downtown studio. I sat between a woman doing a crossword puzzle and a man who looked under his seat when he sat down. "Sometimes the day show puts prizes there and people forget to take them," he explained to me. "Or sometimes people just forgot what they brought."
"The day show?" I said.
"That's the show the set belongs to," he said, nodding at the stage. There was nothing up there but a beige backdrop and four chairs that had been taken from the back row of the audience. "It's been on for years."
"But they changed the chairs," the woman on my other side said. "The day show has those upholstered ones."
"Oh yeah," the man said. "They wouldn't want to waste those on this operation."
"The day show is those chairs," the woman added.
The host came out of the back just then and started talking to the one cameraman. He still wore the cloth to protect his suit from the makeup. His skin looked orange.
"How many times have you worked for this show?" I asked the man beside me.
"This is the first time," he said. "It's the pilot."
"But you've worked here before," I said.
"There's one of these pilots every week," he said.
"And how many of them make it to air?" I asked.
"I haven't seen any yet," he said. "But all it takes is one."
A man wearing a headset and carrying a plastic bag walked over and said to me, "You have to take that shirt off."
I looked down at my shirt. It was a plain black T-shirt. "But it's all I have," I said.
"Too many T-shirts in the crowd," he said. "Everyone looks unemployed. We need some professional-type people." He reached into the bag and took out a white button-down, tossed it at me. "Just remember to give that back when the shoot's over."
I took off my T-shirt and dropped it under my chair, put on the button-down. My skin started itching right away. I couldn't stop thinking of lice and crabs.
The host gave us a speech before they started the show. He was still wearing his makeup cloth. "Remember," he said, "we're the new kind of talk show. We don't want people sitting on their chairs clapping when the applause sign comes on and then stopping when it goes off."
"Do they even have the budget for an applause sign?" the woman beside me asked.
"We want people throwing their chairs," the host went on. "We want confrontation. Conflict. Drama. Spectacle. Don't be afraid to shout things out or do something spontaneous. If you're exciting enough, we may even get picked up."
"He gave the exact same speech with the last pilot," the man beside me muttered.
The host walked to the center of the stage and nodded at the camera. The man who'd made me change shirts ran up and yanked off the host's makeup cloth, then went to the edge of the stage and held up a sign that had Quiet hand-painted on it.
"Welcome to The Zone," the host said to the camera, "your new guide to the afternoon."
The woman beside me rolled her eyes and looked at the ceiling. The man on my other side looked under my chair and picked up a dime off the floor.
"You'll like today's show," the host said. "It's about people who are afraid of the end of the world."
The man with the Quiet sign yelled "Cut!" and the host sat on one of the chairs while the cameraman moved the camera into a new position.
"This is a sorry fucking operation," the man beside me sighed.
"Isn't everyone afraid of the end of the world?" the woman on my other side asked.
The first guest was a man in a military uniform. The host told the camera that he was a colonel in the army.
"Ex-colonel," the other man said. "They kicked me out on account of me revealing all their dirty little secrets."
"What secrets are those?" the host asked.
The ex-colonel leaned forward and glanced between the host and the camera. "They're already poisoning us slowly," he said in a stage whisper.
"Who's poisoning us?" the host asked.
"The government," the ex-colonel said. "They're putting chemicals and nuclear waste in the water. Next it'll be a nuclear device in one of our cities. Maybe not a full-scale one, but a dirty nuke at least."
"Why would they do that?" the host asked.
"So they can increase our taxes," the ex-colonel said. "On account of the threat and all."
"What exactly does all this have to do with the end of the world?" the host asked.
The ex-colonel leaned back in his chair. "Where there's one nuke, there's more," he said. "You can make them with intel from the Internet now. All it takes is one to start, and pretty soon everyone's blowing one off in the back of a rental truck."
"I don't know," the host said, shaking his head. "Let's see what the audience thinks." He looked out at us, and for a moment no one said anything. The ex-colonel cleared his throat several times.
I raised my hand. The host quickly pointed at me. "You have something to say," he said. The man and woman beside me turned and stared.
"I think you've been watching too much television," I told the ex-colonel.
"Yes!" the host said, nodding. The man who'd been holding the Quiet sign now held up a sign that had Applause painted on it, and audience members here and there clapped.
"It's all true," the ex-colonel said.
"I don't think so," I said.
"Haven't you been watching the news?" the ex-colonel asked.
"In fact," I went on, "I think I saw that very movie last week." The man with the sign raised it over his head and more people applauded.
The ex-colonel stood up, knocking his chair over as he did so. "All right," he said, "pretend like nothing's happening." He walked off the stage and into the back area. He paused just before going around the backdrop. "But don't say I didn't warn you when you're nothing but a shadow burned into the side of a building."
"I saw that show too," I said.
"What is wrong with you?" the man beside me asked when the ex-colonel was gone and the crew were getting ready for the next segment.
"I know, I know," I said. "That guy has probably been trained how to kill me a thousand different ways."
"I think I went to theatre school with him," the woman on my other side said.
The second segment of the show was a family. A balding husband in a navy blazer, a daughter with braces, a mother with black hair and red-framed glasses. This was Iris, although I didn't know her name at the time. The host asked them what they were afraid of.
"Asteroids," the husband said. "It's only a matter of time before a planet-killer hits us."
"We've seen that movie too," the host said, looking at the audience and rolling his eyes.
"Tell that to the dinosaurs," the husband said.
"What about you, darling?" the host asked the daughter. "What are you afraid of?"
"Nuclear meltdown," the girl said. "Radioactive fallout that kills all the livestock and causes cancer for hundreds of miles away from the epicenter. Firestorms. Nuclear winter. Entire cities abandoned. Outbreaks of disease. Foot and mouth. Tuberculosis. AIDS."
The host just looked at her.
"Like that Chernobyl show," the girl added.
"We've been letting her watch A&E," the husband said, nodding and smiling.
"And what about you?" the host asked, turning to Iris. "What are you afraid of?"
"God," Iris said.
"God," the host repeated. He looked at the camera and smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.
"God is the atom," Iris said. "Remember, when Oppenheimer saw the atomic bomb explode at Los Alamos, he said, 'Lo, I am become God, destroyer of worlds.'"
"Who's this Oppenheimer?" the host asked, frowning. "Is he a terrorist or something?"
"God is our destroyer," Iris went on, "and only God can save us from himself." She dropped off her chair, to her knees. "Let us pray."
The host didn't know what to say. He looked to us for help.
Iris dragged her husband and daughter down to the floor with her. The little girl actually started to cry. "Who will join us?" Iris asked. She looked out over the audience, and our eyes met. She stared at me for a few seconds, and then I was up out of my chair and pushing past the woman beside me and running up to kneel on the stage too. The host's jaw actually dropped as I went past him.
Iris took my hand and smiled at me. Then she looked straight into the camera. "Heavenly father, destroyer of worlds," she began.
How could I not fall in love with her?
AS IT TURNED OUT, Iris worked for the same agency as me. Once, it got us work together in a commercial. This one was in a burned-out warehouse across the city. The shoot took place in the front lobby. It was just one scene: Iris and I had to walk hand in hand across the lobby, which the crew had cleaned and filled with fake potted plants. We were in the background of the shot.
"What's in the foreground?" I asked the woman in charge as she directed the cameramen where to set up their equipment.
"I don't know," she said. "They're going to add it in later with computers."
"What's the product?" I asked.
She shook her head. "I don't know that either."
"But people will still be able to see us, right?" I asked.
"Oh yeah," she said, "you'll be stars."
Iris had a son who came to the shoot with her. This was her real son - the family from the talk show worked for our agency too. This boy was in a wheelchair, and when I looked close I could tell there was something not quite right about him. He had the body of a boy, but his skin was all wrinkled and his hair was starting to fall out, like he was an old man. Iris parked his wheelchair to the side of one of the cameras, where he could watch us work. He had a camera of his own - a digital one - and he filmed the crew setting up with it.
I asked Iris what was wrong with him while she was doing her stretching exercises.
"He's got that aging disease," she said, not looking up at me.
"Is it fatal?" I asked.
"Aging usually is," she said.
"What's his name?" I asked.
"Walker," Iris said.
"Isn't that a little ironic?" I asked.
"I don't know what you mean," she said, doing the splits and touching her head to the floor.
I wandered around the place while we were waiting. The rest of the warehouse was divided into large rooms, each holding different appliances. One room was full of televisions stacked on skids that had been put down in loose, winding rows. Another room was full of fridges and microwaves, their white exteriors scorched by the fire that had closed down the place. Another room was computers piled loosely on the floor. For some reason, the monitor on each one had been smashed. Water dripped from the ceiling in each of the rooms, and I could still smell smoke.
Back in the lobby, I asked the woman in charge what kind of warehouse this was.
"I don't know," she said, "I think it was one of those places they stored things that nobody wants any more."
"Who wouldn't want all of this?" I wondered.
"I mean, I think it's stuff that's not in fashion any more," she said. "You know, things that got old before people were done with them."
"Oh, I know all about that," I said, but she didn't answer because the cameramen were yelling that they were ready for the shot. Iris and I took our places.
We walked across the room, hand in hand. Iris's palm was moist in mine, and I could feel her heartbeat when our wrists touched. When we were done, I asked the woman in charge how it looked.
"You're supposed to be in love," she said, shaking her head.
"Oh, we are," I said. "See?" I was still holding Iris's hand.
"Then try to show it more."
"How would we do that?" Iris asked.
"A look," the other woman said. "A smile. Something."
"How about a kiss?" I suggested.
"Let's not get carried away here," Iris said.
We went over to where Walker sat in his wheelchair. He'd filmed all this but he put the camera down when we approached.
"Did you get it?" Iris asked.
Walker nodded but didn't say anything.
"What are you filming this for?" I asked.
"It's for the archives," Iris said.
"I see," I said, although I didn't. I reached out and ruffled Walker's hair, and when I brought my hand away, there were individual strands of hair clinging to it.
"Please don't do that," Iris told me. "He needs all he's got."
When they were ready with the cameras once more, Iris and I went and did the shot again. This time I looked over at her and smiled as we walked. She smiled back. I squeezed her hand. She squeezed mine back. It was like we were actually a couple.