The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty (13 page)

The cameras start rolling, and they move forward and backward on their tracks. The director watches the monitor, his expression indecipherable.

You walk through the part, uttering your lines without forgetting one of them. The young sisters give warm hugs. Kareem's mother is dressed head to toe in black; she's grieving and rude. For a moment you forget it's make-believe and interpret her coldness as a personal affront. When she introduces you to Kareem's best friend, you find him sexy, though two minutes before, when the cameras were off during the run-through, you didn't notice much about him. You wonder
if it's the lighting. No, you think, it's the realization that the cameras are on.

You are distracted and forget your line and your stage direction. You were supposed to be seated at the dining room table by now. The director yells a word that you know must mean “Cut!”

“Do you want to talk or should we try again?” he asks.

“Let's try again,” you say.

The second time goes well. You move from place to place with ease. As you feel some other rhythm take over your body, you're reminded of diving. You loved diving because your mind could be quiet; your body knew what to do.

You go through the scene a third time and you can feel the magic fading—in part because the cinematographer's experimenting with a new camera movement that's too abrupt, too close, too violating for the actors. The director must sense this too. He asks everyone to return to the way they shot the second take. You know this because just before shooting again, he says to you: “For those of you who don't speak Arabic, we're going back to the before.”

Go back to the before,
you think to yourself. You know that, in your own life, it's not something you will ever choose to do.

After the fourth take, you're finished with the scene. There are many hours remaining before the famous American actress comes on set. You wait. You watch others move equipment around and eat and look busy. For the first time in your life you wish you smoked and consider accepting a cigarette if someone offers you one. No one offers you one.

The snack bar is inviting. There are large jars of various
colorful candies and a tray of sliced oranges. You place oranges and licorice sticks on a small plate and stand in a corner eating more than you need. You have no one to talk to, no place to retreat to.

Finally, the famous American actress shows up. She greets you hello informally, as though you've barely met. You are saddened for a moment, until you remind yourself that she is going to work, this is serious for her. She can't keep track of everyone's feelings, let alone yours. She is introduced to the sisters, who beam when they shake her hand, and then to the actor playing Kareem's friend, who tries so hard not to be impressed by her that his resistance proves his infatuation.

You watch the famous American actress go through the scene you just rehearsed and you can see all your shortcomings and failures. You were pretending to be Maria; she inhabits Maria. You watch the director do three takes and then say to the famous American actress, “We've got it!”

You are happy for her, happy for the film. You have no right to feel so proprietary after your short period of work but you feel you've played an important part.

The tattooed man yells something in Arabic. Then translates. “Everyone on staff can go have dinner outside in the tent,” he tells you.

The crew and the actors are asked to be quiet. You are all reminded this is a residential neighborhood. In the dark you move slowly and clumsily, like cows, down the street to the tent that's been erected at the bottom of the small hill.

Dinner is rice, salad, and stewed vegetables. The meal is
served buffet style and you sit at a table with the woman in charge of props and the woman who is the script supervisor. Both of them are young, both are graduates of a film school in Morocco. The three of you talk for ten minutes in English and then they turn to Arabic. You focus on your food. You did not know there was so much sitting around on film sets, so much waiting.

The next scene involves Maria sitting in bed, reading a book. You return to the trailer, to the cigarette smoke. A long and demure dark blue nightgown has been selected. While you're getting changed the smoking woman in charge of costumes gently reprimands you for not taking off the blue dress before eating dinner. “Next time you take off first,” she says.

You wear the nightgown and are directed to a room on the second floor of the house. It's a beautiful room with a canopy bed. Now the owner of the house, the woman in the bejeweled sweater, is taking photos of you. She's smiling and you can see she's become much more comfortable with the shoot. She's invited two friends over: one wears a leopard-print blouse and the other also wears a bejeweled sweater. You try not to think about her. The bejeweled sweater lady's friends take pictures too. You want to tell them you're no one, but the occasion doesn't arise.

You are propped on the bed for a long time while the director and the cinematographer deliberate over how to shoot the scene. The director comes over several times to adjust your body's posture. “Sorry,” he says. “To look natural it is a bit uncomfortable.” While the director and cinematographer
talk and point and adjust the cameras, the prop woman tells you to pick a book from the bookshelf—any book that appeals. You select a book of poetry by Rumi, an English translation. You flip through it until you find a title that appeals to you and you read the poem four times:

    
T
HE
D
IVER'S
C
LOTHES
L
YING
E
MPTY

    
You're sitting here with us, but you're also out walking

    
in a field at dawn. You are yourself

    
the animal we hunt when you come with us on the hunt.

    
You're in your body like a plant is solid in the ground,

    
yet you're wind. You're the diver's clothes

    
lying empty on the beach. You're the fish.

    
In the ocean are many bright strands

    
and many dark strands like veins that are seen

    
when a wing is lifted up.

    
Your hidden self is blood in those, those veins

    
that are lute strings that make ocean music,

    
not the sad edge of surf, but the sound of no shore.

The poem resurrects an image in your mind. The summer you were fifteen you were training as a junior lifeguard. One night an older boy whose parents were out of town had five friends over and your sister drank too many margaritas, took off her clothes, and jumped in the crescent-shaped pool. She was too drunk to swim, and you rescued her. Gave her CPR. How strange it was to have your lips on hers. They were salty
from the margaritas, cold from the pool. She made you promise to never tell your parents.

The director and the cinematographer have reached a decision.

“You are done,” the director tells you.

“That was it?” you ask.

“Yes.”

The movie star is ushered into the bedroom and you are ushered out.

The woman in charge of props follows you. “I need the book,” she says, and takes it from your hands. She doesn't know you've earmarked the page of the poem.

It's after 9
P.M.
Outside, there is a man with three cell phones. He is the director of transportation. He tells you he'll get you in a van going back to your hotel. You stand there, waiting while he makes more calls. Ten minutes later you and the tired young girls and the young American producer and the Indian producer and two Moroccan members of the crew are directed toward a van.

The driver takes you a few blocks, to the edge of the affluent neighborhood of California, and suddenly it ends. There are large empty dirt lots that will be built upon one day, but now are vacant and frightening. The driver takes a right. Then another right, and another. Soon you have gone around the block and the van is once again facing the dirt lots.

“Do you know where you're going?” the young American producer asks.

“Yes,” the driver lies.

It's decided the girls will be driven home first because their
house is on the way to the hotel. They know the name of their street but they're unable to give the driver directions.

“It's by the big mosque,” they tell him, unhelpfully.

Fifty minutes later you arrive at their house in the dark. Their parents are standing outside, worried, and stare suspiciously at the driver and the van in general. The girls do not say good-bye to you or your fellow passengers, and don't thank the driver for the ride.

You don't realize until the doors close behind them that you're still wearing your wig. You take it off and set in on your lap like a pet.

It takes forty-five more minutes before you're back at your hotel. When the van doors open and you all emerge into the bright lights outside the hotel you see that everyone looks as wrecked as you feel from the drive.

You say good night to each other without really looking at one another, and then realize you all need to take the elevator up to your rooms. So you stand awkwardly in front of the elevators, waiting for one to descend to the lobby. When the bell dings, and the doors open, you all rush inside, as though you can't wait to be enclosed in a small space together again. As each person exits to go to their floor, they are bade good night, in an extra-polite manner to make up for the rushed good nights everyone murmured when they exited the van.

You slide your key card into your lock and the moment you open the door you hear the hotel phone ringing in your room. You run to the phone, allowing the door to slam behind you.

“There you are!” says a voice. You know it's the voice of the famous American actress. You knew her voice before you met her. You once had a conversation with your twin about how actresses today don't have voices that are as recognizable as actresses from classic Hollywood. Katharine Hepburn's voice is a thing of the past. But you cited this famous American actress's voice as an exception. She has a good voice, with a bit of gravel and grit to it.

“Yes, here I am,” you say, overly out of breath from your simple dash across the room. “It took us forever to get home.”

“Really?” she says. “You should have come with me. I've been back here for over an hour. At least. This is maybe the fifth time I've tried your room.”

You ask if anything's wrong.

“Wrong? No, not at all. Oh, I see. Because I called so much. No, I just really wanted to get a drink, and you're the only person I could think of.”

“Thank you.” You say this flatly, facetiously. You say it like you're talking to an old friend.

“I didn't mean it that way. I mean, I thought you'd be up for a drink and we could talk a little.”

You look at the bedside clock: 11:13
P.M.

“Sure. Where do you want to go?”

“Go?” she says. “I can't go anywhere. I already said good night to the guys.”

You realize she means her bodyguards.

“Right, of course,” you say. There's so much you have to learn.

“But what if you met me in the tenth-floor lounge?”

The Regency. You should never go back there again. There's a chance that by now Sabine Alyse's credit cards have been traced, there's a chance the manager will recognize you.

You remember that you have the wig. “Okay,” you say.

“Great. I'll see you in five minutes, Reeves,” she says, and before you can say anything else, she hangs up.

You go to the bathroom and put your wig on in front of the mirror. You look exhausted. You are exhausted. Your sides for the next day are on the desk. Your pick-up time the next morning is at 7
A.M.
Tomorrow is a complicated day, you've been told: they're shooting a scene outside, in traffic. You vow to yourself to be in bed by midnight. The famous American actress must understand—she has to work tomorrow, too.

You exit your hotel and cross the narrow street to the Regency. You touch your wig and take a deep breath before entering. No one you recognize and no one who would recognize you is in the lobby. You take the elevator to the tenth floor. You remove the wig before the doors open and place it behind a pot that holds a small tree with long fronds, just outside the entrance to the lounge.

The famous American actress is sitting in the lounge wearing flannel pajamas with pastel-colored hippopotamuses all over them. Pink, lavender, and baby-blue hippopotamuses.

“Don't laugh,” she instructs you, by way of greeting. “I know they're ridiculous but they're comfortable. My boyfriend never lets me wear them at home, so I have no choice but to wear them here.”

You want to say,
You do have a choice to not wear pajamas at
all in public since most people don't and that Moroccan bartender there could take a photo of you and it would be all over the Internet in about thirty seconds,
but you refrain. You suddenly have empathy for the pale practical secretary; this actress needs supervision.

The bartender comes over. He's the same one from yesterday. You half expect him to pull out his phone, take a photo, and run away, out of the hotel and into the night and onto the Web.

“What do you want to drink? I'm having a G and T,” she says.

“Sounds good. Same.
La même,
” you say to the bartender.

“Why'd it take you so long to get back from the set?” the famous American actress asks you.

You explain that the young sisters needed a ride home, and they didn't know directions.

“Their parents weren't on set?” she says.

“I guess not.”