A young blonde opened the door to her apartment. As she did, a nerdly man roughly the same age fell into through the doorway, ending up sprawled at the feet of the blonde’s companion. Said companion was a man a few years older and a few stone larger than he was. Words swirled around in the nerd’s head. Words like: “Oh fuck.” They were mixed in with signals from the pain receptors in his shoulder. Finally his mouth moved.
“Hello”, he spat out, trying to be as charming as he could manage after falling on his keys, bruising his shoulder, and being subjected to the glare from several large fresnel lights behind the camera which was focused on him.
“Cut!” said the Director.
“Cut!” barked his Assistant.
“Oh hurry up.” Thought Kevin as the cameraman tracked back out and the three actors stood up. The Nerd brushed himself off and rubbed his shoulder. As well he should, thought Kevin to himself. This was take twenty-three of this particular shot.
Eighteen of the previous twenty-two times the Nerd had fallen through the doorway the Director had been disappointed with the Nerd’s performances. Three others, takes sixteen, twenty and twenty-one, had been spoiled by the Nerd saying some variant of “Ouch” instead of “Hello.”
Take five had been spoiled when the door refused to open.
And on take nineteen the camera had run out of film.
“All this”, Kevin thought, “for a teen sex comedy called *Toilet Duck*.”
*Toilet Duck* was currently in the middle of the filming schedule at Megalon Film Studios with no end in sight. Not because production was running behind, but simply because no one involved in writing the damn screenplay had come up with a satisfactory ending. Although judging by the poor quality of the completed scripts and the idiocy of the central concept, almost any ending would be satisfactory. Producer Martin Escadrille had in fact become so frustrated with the numb-witted screenwriters working on the film that he had them locked in a wooden gardening shed in his backyard (with a typewriter, of course) until they wrote an ending that didn’t involve angels or flying shrubberies destroying downtown Boston.
The writers had been sequestered in Escadrille’s backyard for more than two weeks now. They finally received a laptop when it was learned that neither of them could figure out how to use a typewriter.
None of the principal cast could use a typewriter either. But, of course, they were not likely to be in a situation where they would need to use a typewriter, so there were no problems on that score.
Of those actors present for the scene currently not being completed, the Nerd’s real name was Michael Douglas. He was using the name Mike Tucker since there already was a Michael Douglas, and had been for quite some time. Despite the reasonably nice character he was cast to play in the film, Michael was, in the words of Kevin, the film's director Joseph Branham and several other members of the crew, “a sniveling little prick.”
By a strange coincidence, ‘Prick’ was Michael’s middle name. Except it was spelled Prique and pronounced ‘Octagon’ – at least according to Michael.
The unfortunate actor Michael had to fall in front of and share a large amount of screen time with was Alex Keppel, an erstwhile drama school graduate whose considerable talent was – however remarkable it sounds – genuine. So naturally he was stuck doing teen sex comedies until someone bothered to read his resume more carefully.
These two men were supposed to be fighting for (or, rather, bickering for) the attentions of the blonde star of the film, Sarah Louise Forth. Kevin had recognized her as the incredibly attractive star of the wildly popular network television drama series that he had never bothered to watch. Her blonde hair was reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe’s when it (the hair) was in the right mood, her figure could be used by research scientists to define the term ‘shapely’ to multiple decimal places, her acting abilities were sufficient enough to ensure that she could conceivably still have a career after turning thirty-one or going back to being a brunette, her personality wasn’t rated as ‘queen ice-bitch’ by the film crew, and she wasn’t dating or indeed even showing any interest in dating a member of a boy band or any other popular musicians. In short, she was a very nice girl, which almost entirely excused that fact that her name was Sally Forth.
It didn’t stop them from calling her Sally Forth either.
Although Sally didn’t know it, she was more or less the reason that Kevin was here.
Nominally, Kevin’s job on *Toilet Duck* was an Assistant to the Chief Electrician. In reality, he never did assist the Chief Electrician very much, and in fact Kevin spent most of his time locked in a prop storage room reading Cornelius Ryan’s The Final Battle while listening to the instrumental score from *Saving Private Ryan*. It was what he’d done during every high school play he had worked on, and he would be damned if he would be stopped now.
To keep people from becoming curious at why he wasn’t fired, or at least less curious than they were already, he did some actual work on occasion. Work such as fixing the large fresnel sitting in the corner of the studio collecting dust. No one else had bothered to fix it, since there were plenty of other lights to use.
Kevin had examined it, and determined that all it needed was a new base. And try prying something like that from the studio accountants, who were hoarding every penny to afford hiring Jim Carrey for a documentary about salary inflation in Hollywood. Kevin appreciated the unintentional irony of this, even if no one else did.
As far as they were concerned, irony was something reserved for Jane Austen adaptations. And since those were usually made by the British anyway, they saw no reason to come to grips with the difficult concepts irony involved.
The net result of this was that Kevin couldn’t get the studio to spend the money on a new base for the fresnel. So he ended up fixing the broken one. To do this, he had to visit a local stage lighting retailer, which he did often because it was the one thing the Chief Electrician could get his “assistant” to do.
Kevin enjoyed visiting the stage lighting retailer because (a) he enjoyed looking at stage lights and colored gels and quartz lamps and other stage lighting paraphernalia and (b) he had developed a crush on one of the employees.
Her name was Carol. She mostly worked at the counter, and that was where Kevin first met her.
He had been reluctantly sent to pick up some large sheets of gel when he saw her at the counter. Her black hair was curled and it flowed down to her shoulder. Her blue eyes, her nose and her mouth were all rather plain when taken separately, but the features fit together in a way that Kevin thought was both pretty and cute at the same time. And since he considered pretty and cute to be separate concepts, this was no mean feat.
He walked up to the counter, trying to determine what best to say to her. He noticed her nametag said Carol. So he decided to –
“Are you Kevin?”
“Wha, err…huh?” he said, confused. He realized that the girl at the counter was speaking to him.
“Are you Kevin?” she repeated. He liked her voice. It sounded like a clear mountain stream, he thought to himself, before realizing that sounded incredibly stupid even inside his own head. It was a nice voice, however.
“Sir?” Carol asked again, her voice losing that nice quality.
“What – oh, yes.” Kevin managed to spit out through his suddenly quagmired mouth.
“I have your order here.” she took a large rolled up collection of gels from behind the counter and set them down by the register.
“Great, thank you.” Kevin said, taking the gels and almost walking away before her voice caught him in its grasp. Or would have if her voice was something besides modulated sound waves.
“You have to sign for it.” she observed,
“Oh right…I forgot.” said Kevin lamely.
“Happens a lot.”
“I’m not surprised, what with…”, he trailed off before saying something which would have either ended with an embarrassing compliment or a punch in the face, depending on how Carol would have reacted.
“With?”
“Oh, nothing.” lied Kevin as he scribbled out his name onto the pick-up receipt. A second later a thought came to him.
“How did you know my name?”
“Your boss called earlier and said that you’d be by to pick it up.”
“Oh. But couldn’t I have been someone else?”
“Not today, we’ve only got one order so far. Yours.”
“Ah ha, I get it.” said Kevin, who didn’t. In any case he was finished filling out his pet’s last name and his second cousin Roger’s martial status on the receipt, which was amazingly thorough. Especially for a receipt acknowledging delivery of a few colored sheets of petroleum byproduct.
“Thank you, sir.” said Carol it her best thank-you-random-client-from-my-employers-who-don’t-pay-me-near-enough-to-deal-with-people-like-you-all-week voice.
“You don’t need to call me sir, just Kevin.” said Kevin
“Alright Kevin.” she said cheerily, even though she was growing to loathe him. It wasn’t conscious or even particularly appropriate, but this happened to her with almost all of the customers she encountered. By the end of the day she had to focus to keep from hitting them over the head repeatedly with the credit card reader.
“Thank you.” he smiled at her, picked up his order and walked towards the door. She felt her anger dissipating. This Kelly (or was it Kenneth? Keith, maybe?) fellow seemed nice enough, come to think of it. At least he hadn’t said “Have a nice day” or anything.
“Have a nice day.” said Kevin, walking out of the store.
“Damn.” Said a not-really-tiny voice in Carol’s subconscious. She visualized herself spearing Kevin with a harpoon.
Kevin, meanwhile, was making a mental note to visit this store more often.