CHAPTER 108 — Don’t Dream It’s Over

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?”

George Eliot

Middlemarch

Los Angeles.

Culver City.

Friday, 3 October 2008.

According to the folder Trent Davis had given her, Eppie should have been standing on this lawn two days ago.

That is, until Lucia Lancet took her away in her father’s Dassault Falcon 7X.

She ended up enjoying the “southern hospitality” of Sans Souci for the better part of a week, because Delphine Richards had offered, and Eppie far preferred the [Causality] coming in whenever they interacted, talked about music, and discussed her borrowed notions from the immortal Virginia Woolf.

The two of them were a total vibe.

How many creatives had taken the idea of their spouses and made it their own?

How many female artists had used the name “Anonymous”, and later had their credit taken by better-known male colleagues? How many publishers had felt no desire to keep contractual promises with female authors throughout history? Such as Austen’s loss of Pride and Prejudice?

She told Delphine of English authors of the same circumstance, especially “Gregory Eli”, the present-day George Eliot, who had composed Adam Bede under a male pseudonym to great sensation, only to have some douchebag called Joseph Lagrant insist that he was the author.

It took the intervention of the great writer Charles Dickens, who recognised Maria Evan’s writing, to affirm that, yes, it was she who wrote such literary wonders her Londoners, and thus Pax Victoriana, loved.

Then the world found out Maria lived with a married man as his mistress—and she almost lost her fame and career until her later novels had high society so arrested that her free-thinking nature seemed more of an artistic quirk than a moral failing.

And so, with rearrangements from her management, from people in high places making phone calls, she signed the contract that would move ownership of House of the Rising Sun, received Delphine’s blessing to continue the Bully Boy Shanty, and finally touched down in Los Angeles with the thermostat set for humans.

A Sony town car did the rest.

Now Eppie stood at the dead end of Garland Drive, on the old Lot 2, where a film studio lay buried, and houses had been repurchased to turn into sets.

There she met Merric Webber, wearing what she was fairly sure was the same grey cardigan.

“Hey there, stranger,” Eppie said, smiling.

Webber pushed his knit cap back off his forehead. “Welcome back, stranger.”

The two shared a brief laugh. “I really did volunteer, by the way,” the director said. “Filming you is a pleasure, Miss Fontaine.”

“And filming with you is mine.” Eppie performed a rather performative curtsey.

Then they were off to business.

They arrived at the cul-de-sac and the pavilion was already set up. Everything was ready: the Condors at the corners, the silks along the tree line, the generators humming in tune.

“Priya,” she said. “Reggie. Bram. Sol. Deb.”

Webber whistled.

Five heads came up.

Reggie’s travel mug halted on its way to his mouth, as did Sol’s. Bram looked behind him, in case there was another Bram. Priya, clutching the call sheet, smiled the smile of a First AD being acknowledged, which was a rare feeling.

Mrs Okafor was there as well, with her lettuce sandwich and her watch, because Euphemia Fontaine was both emancipated and a child, and no one was taking chances until a certain piece of paper said otherwise.

Next week, Eppie promised the woman.

“The kids absolutely adore your Bully Boy Shanty,” Mrs Okafor said, shaking her hand. “They can’t stop singing it. It’s driving me up the wall.”

The set laughed and agreed, and Eppie apologised.

“Come and meet your co-stars,” said Webber, sighing in appreciation. “You know, I had my start doing product videos. It’s rare that I get to do both through a single art form, and the sales are going to a Trust?”

Eppie affirmed that, indeed, she would see a few cents, but the bulk of it would provide for the long artistic winter to come.

Webber looked contemplative, then, with Mrs Okafor looking, he gave her a hug and a thanks for his indie colleagues.

The crate sat on a trestle table under the pop-up tent, stencilled THE BAUBLE COMPANY — SAMPLES — THIS WAY UP. Inside, in beds of shredded paper, lay twelve Bully Boy Wallys.

Each was a walleye the length of her forearm, glassy-eyed and olive-gold, mounted on a plaque of pretend walnut. Webber lifted one out and waved his hand in front of its fish-mouth.

The fish turned its head, opened its mouth, and sang.

O blow, my bully boys, blow,

You’ll take my name where’er you go;

You’ll have the tale and not the hide—

O blow, my bully boys, blow.

It was Eppie’s voice, more or less, if her voice were mono, 8-bit, and coming out of a speaker the size of a coin.

Odette Kessler had redesigned the insides. One could tell, because the head did not jerk. It regarded the viewer.

“Isn’t he horrible?” said Webber, delighted. “I am going to get a dozen and send them all to my relatives.”

“He’s perfect,” said Eppie, and couldn’t stop laughing. It was just… too funny. The physical comedy of it, the absurdity of it.

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Webber handed the fish to Sol and took out his boards. “Alright, here’s the script, as approved by your corporate overlords. Today, you’re the bully.”

Eppie’s smile showed teeth.

Her first stop was the makeup station with Deb, and her MUA was… pumped.

“Finally.” Deb flared her foundation brushes to soften the tips. “We get to make art!”

Her foundation went on a shade too warm, then bronzer over that, until Eppie’s cream-like complexion looked like it had developed a love of tanning beds. Her brows were made thinner, more mean and surprised-looking. Her lips were glossy and wet, as ridiculous as they were alluring. The final touch was the mascara and eyeshadow, made deep enough that she easily looked two years older and magnitudes meaner.

“Deb,” Eppie said, looking at herself in the mirror. “Can we do the hair… like this…?”

Deb ironed her hair flat, parted it at the side, and stood back.

In the mirror sat a girl who had never once been told no, whose father worked too much, and whose mother was a “cool mum” wearing her daughter’s velours.

Get in, loser, thought Eppie, and practised the smile she knew all too well.

“Ooo… that’s mean.” Deb made a face. “I feel harassed already.”

Eppie did her best not to laugh out loud.

When she stepped out of the trailer, she was the Queen Bee of Sweet Summer High, ready to deliver some cruel cyberbullying to the uncool music nerds of her conservatory. Her bedroom was upstairs; it was pastel pink in a Cape Cod-style house in marine-and-white, and it held the lair of a girl beyond being spoilt. She had a computer… an old beige tower covered in stickers, a monitor as deep as an oven, a flip phone, and nails done this way and that for the close-ups.

“We’ll play the song while you type,” said Webber. “Every key is percussion. The Enter key is my cut. Try to imagine it, type—type—type—cut! Type—type—type—cut! There once was a ship that sailed… You get the idea. When you snap that phone shut, that’s the downbeat. You’re not acting, you’re drumming. Does that make sense?”

“Too easy.” Eppie nodded, then looked past Webber at the circus.

Two Condors stood at the corners of the street with their arms up, each holding a lamp the size of a washing machine. A silk as wide as a tennis court hung over the lawn to take the edge off the sun. A dolly track ran down the middle of Garland Drive like a toy railway, and beside it sat the camera, hooded and patient. There were flags on stands, sandbags on the stands, cable in fat black rivers and parked trucks ready to move the rented equipment. Under a tent, four monitors glowed for nobody.

Last time, the equipment had been scenery. Now she could name every piece.

“What do I type?”

“Whatever a teenage girl types.” Webber shrugged. “We’re doing this with minimal scripts, haha… I rang Trent Davis the moment I heard about your fish.”

Eppie nodded. She did not need a script. She had [Act Natural], and she had real-life being-bullied experience as the victim, and real-life bullying experience as a [Usurper].

Bram had wanted several set-ups. One that opened wide while he stood on a scissor lift, one that shot her through the window, the same angle, involving a telescoping crane pushing in toward the back of her head, then the interior shots of her back, the over-the-shoulder shot, and the extreme close-up of her fingers, as well as the screen itself.

Fifteen seconds on screen.

About two hours of work in real life.

The funnier thing was that Eppie’s bedroom was almost entirely empty while on the Garland Drive lot, save for the angle of the external camera’s POV. The actual bedroom was on a sound stage.

She would “run” from the “sound stage”, which was her home’s interior, into the “lot” of Garland Drive. Jarring in reality, yet smoothly transitioned on film.

Scene one was her persona viciously typing on a mocked-up MySpace page, mirroring the real-life incident of only months ago, when a mother went on trial for running a MySpace account to torment a girl.

Scene two involved Eppie in bed, pleased with herself, checking all the affirmative attention placed upon her attacks, because she was the popular girl.

Scene three, on the same bed, involved her receiving the reception—the Bully Boy Shanty.

Then came the absurdism. The song plays, and her persona thinks nothing of it—only it keeps playing everywhere—

She walks down the street; she hears it.

She closes her eyes; she hears it.

She’s hearing it metaphorically and psychologically from the mouths of the Wally fishes.

In the Bible, the Lord once opened the mouth of an ass to rebuke a prophet. For the world’s meanies, Eppie has settled on a singing walleye.

“Alright.” Eppie loosened her body, her [Act Natural] and her natural [Charisma] taking over. In the space between the lenses and her unwitting body, [Love the Light] winked at the camera operators. “Let’s do this.”

 

“A pair of trust fund babies. Performing on Daddy’s dime.”

Eppie typed out the entire conversation she had heard while visiting Valorie, verbatim, word for word via [Memorisation]. Despite her obnoxiously long fake nails, she typed like a professional secretary, hammering home the keys to the beat of the song thanks to her [Clockwork Pulse].

It was the easiest role she had ever played. Lana had ended careers with emails and messages containing no emojis.

Her [Act Natural] did not even have to pretend.

Snap went the phone.

Then affirmation turned to resistance from her victims, and resistance turned to rage, turning her mouth upside down, just like the first time she saw Valorie.

Outside, on cue, a fish began to sing.

That was the persistent motif of the visual narrative. Across the street, a garage door is rolling up, and there on the back wall, above the paint tins, hangs a Wally on a plaque, singing her own bile back at her in four-four time. A father and two children are singing with it. She shuts the window. The song plays in her head.

She goes for a jog on Garland Drive.

Webber had filled the garages with extras of every age and shape. Each garage had its Wally, and each Wally had its defiant victims of bullying. Eppie ran. That was her whole afternoon. She ran down the middle of a street in a pink velour tracksuit, growing more and more unnerved until she was psychologically wracked, with her hands over her ears, every chorus meeting her like a wall.

Then she arrived at the final house, whereupon Eppie nearly lost it.

When the last garage pulled up, she saw Zara, with her guitar, a fish behind her, slapping the guitar as Eppie had done on stage, at Johnny Kimball’s.

Eppie almost broke character.

Instead, she stared at Zara in horror. Zara looked up, her ponytail loose; the Steadicam operator ran a three-sixty around the stunned Eppie and her priceless expression.

“CUT!”

They shot the scene two more times for safety. Eppie ran to Zara, and the girls hugged, with Eppie lifting the larger girl off her feet and twirling around, drawing strange glances as it happened. Between the takes and the resets, the girls sat on the brick fences and enjoyed the coffee and sandwiches provided by Sony.

They shot the ending last, with the sun going orange behind the sycamore.

The bully runs home. She slams the door, takes the stairs two at a time, and tears the plug of the beige tower out of the wall. The screen dies. The street, at last, is quiet. She stands in the middle of her bedroom with her chest heaving, her face pink, trying her darnedest not to think of the song.

Then the beat starts again.

Then she turns around.

On her own wall, between a Relish Girls poster and all her awards, now hangs a Wally.

It turns its head and regards her. It opens its mouth.

I have a mouth, and I must scream, is the final coda and the fate of the mean girl bully.

“Cut,” said Webber softly. “We’re done.”

They were done, but that didn’t mean Wally stopped singing. As it belted out the chorus of the shanty, the whole crew, Zara included, laughed until they were wheezing.

They were very careful to avoid walking within its detection range after that, at least until someone could depress the red kill switch beneath the lettering.

Eppie looked at the fish. The fish, its sensor satisfied, looked at nothing.

When the crew started packing, a taco truck pulled up…

O Dad… Eppie couldn’t help but feel loved.

Zara walked up beside her.

“Fresno?” she said, as the trucks were loading and tacos were unloading. “First thing next morning?”

“Fresno,” said Eppie, already eyeing the taco varieties. “Thanks, Zara.”