At 6:45 the next morning, I look at my freshly made-up face in the mirror.
"I look like a corpse," I say.
It's true: my skin glows white, my lips are painted raven black, thick purple eyeshadow rims my eyes.
"You're supposed to," says Sharon the Makeup Artist, in the mirror. "That's what they pay me the big bucks for."
She tucks her makeup brushes into the black apron tied around her waist. "You can eat and move around as much as you want. That shit's not coming off until I take it off."
"Great," I say, only slightly sarcastically. "Thanks for killing me, Sharon."
"No problem!" she says, going away. She might as well be skipping, she's so goddamn chipper.
Today we are shooting MacBeth. We are vampires. The gothic mansion has exactly the right creepy yet glamorous vibes for this sort of thing, but I'm still skeptical of the makeup. I'm playing Lady MacBeth, to Jamie's MacBeth. At some point, I get to "slaughter" King Duncan, AKA Jason Moon himself, though today we're filming "the aftermath." (Translation: Jason Moon is already dead, and me and Jamie have to be proud then distressed about what we did.)
SIDEBAR: This whole filming-a-music-album-thing is absolutely absurd. All the scenes are shot all out of order, and it makes no sense. With theater, you do the same thing over and over again, on loop, (who said eternal return of the same's not real, bitches?!) from beginning to end, every day. Your character has an arc and you're stuck in the Sisyphean reality of that arc. So this out-of-order shooting thing is really fucking up my brain! Like, who am I even supposed to be half the time?!
Now I head out of the dressing room.
I am excited for this vampire-Macbeth shoot. I get to cradle Jason's head on my lap for endless takes, which I am definitely looking forward to...
Especially since Flynn's Say Anything boombox-outside-the-window rip off totally interrupted my and Jason's magical night last night.
(Just so you know, nothing happened. After Flynn left last night, I put on my old Stevie Nicks t-shirt and we sat in bed smoking cigarettes and talking about nothing until Jason said he was too high to stay awake and that his lungs felt like balloons, three cigarettes in, and passed out on top of the duvet. Leave it to Flynn to ruin what could have been a perfectly magical night.)
I head downstairs.
The stairs creak.
The carpet is worn thin.
Something flashes in a mirror. A ghost?
I come into the dining room.
A breakfast feast —scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles with bowls of sprinkles & chocolate chips, oranges, berries, grapes—on silver platters covers the long mahogany table.
No one is downstairs yet, except for Flynn. He wears a tank top, glasses, and his blonde hair in a man bun. He's piling a waffle with strawberries and fresh whipped cream on his plate. An entire pitcher of orange juice sits before him, like he's going to drink it all to himself.
Flynn looks up and drops the whipped cream spoon. Whipped cream splatters on his pink polo. He blushes.
Well, this shouldn't be awkward at all.
(I briefly consider sitting at the far end of the table, as far from Flynn as possible, but I figure that would make the awkwardness worse.)
"Hey Flynn," I say, sitting across the table from him. "I see you haven't been bitten yet."
I pour myself some coffee into a red mug.
"Hey," says Flynn. "Can't say I have...Look, about yesterday—"
"Flynn, it's totally fine," I say, hoping he'll back off and we don't have to relive that embarrassment.
"No it's not," says Flynn. "I'm so sorry. I was a little drunk—okay, a lot drunk. And Verona got to me. He was going off about how you're all into the love thing now, and then on top of that him and Sage are together and being all lovey dovey, and it was just a lot, you know? I thought maybe we could...But I'll totally back off now."
"No worries," I say. I take a piece of bacon.
"Besides, it's not you, it's Jamie," I lie. "I gotta have a serious talk with that boy." (I decided I'd tell Jamie about the lie—I can't throw him under the bus and not tell him I lied about him. I feel guilty but also know he'll understand—all part of being a good wingman.)
Just then, Jason comes into the dining room.
Jason looks like an actual corpse. His face is white, his eyes rimmed purple. His dark hair is disheveled and streaked with silver. Two red holes on his neck drip blood.
He ignores Flynn, goes right up to me.
"Hello, gorgeous." Jason says it the way Barbara Streisand says it to herself in the mirror in Funny Face.
"Oh, hello," I say.
Jason kisses my mouth. It's quick.
"That's a good look for you, babe," he says.
"Right back at you," I say.
"I'll see you in there," he says, grabbing a handful of bacon and disappearing through a door on the other side of the room.
When I look back at Flynn, he's staring into his waffles.
"Flynn—" I start to say.
And then: Enter Jamie. Dressed up like a vampire, just like me. White face, black lips, purple eyes.
"I think I'm MacBeth?"
YOU ARE READING
Electric Moonlight Shuffle
Lãng mạnWren Snow and Jamie Verona have been best friends since preschool. Now juniors, they're the two coolest kids at their private high school. Wren just wants to cut class and make out in the back of her Mustang with the top down. Jamie doesn't want to...
