Read Online Glass (Small Press Distribution (All Titles)) by Sam Savage - Free Book Online Page A

director and the producer, who could see as well as anyone that they were heading for disaster, were in constant dispute over the direction the film should take, and they kept changing their minds, forcing Clarence to rewrite the same scenes over and over. There were no air conditioners in Venezuela in those days, just electric fans, and it was extremely hot. And when the great stone pyramid they had built just for the movie burned to the ground, Clarence had to go back and rework the whole thing once again, taking out the Aztecs and transposing the story to a convent, because there was an abandoned convent near where we were shooting. The pyramid was not made of actual stone, obviously; it was made of wood and covered with canvas painted to look like stone. I sat in the courtyard drinking iced tea and writing letters to everyone I could think of, while Clarence was drinking Scotch in our room, and in between the noise of the parrots—and other birds too, there were a lot of other species of noisy birds—I could hear the tick-tick of his typewriter. More than once, I think even several times during the last week or so, he was seen leaning out the window screaming at the parrots. The electric fans had metal blades in those days, with just the most cursory sort of guard on them and openings big enough to put a fist through. We argued a lot during our stay there, Clarence objecting to my friendships with some of the crew, and I would be talking, trying to explain about the friendships, and Clarence, shirtless and sweating at his desk, would hold a pencil against the fan blade. It made an awful clatter, and of course I would have to cease talking and just wait until he stopped doing that. He was also angry, I am sure, because I would not help him with the script. The truth is I could not have helped him had I wanted to. There are certain types of things I cannot possibly write, cannot, I mean, possibly bring myself to write. All Clarence’s class resentments would come out then, when I would have to refuse, and he would accuse me of all sorts of things. He finally did put his fist into the fan, and it chewed his knuckles up. He told people later, when they noticed the scars, that he had done it in a fight. He meant for them to think it was a fistfight, of course. This table is not really suitable for typing—not sturdy enough to withstand the vibrations. Had I known at the time that I would one day be typing again, I would have bought a desk instead. I type, and the pages I have typed already and placed in a neat stack behind the machine jiggle their way across the tabletop, inching millimeter by millimeter (if one can say that) across it until they reach the edge, where they cantilever out, farther and farther out over the edge until they suddenly tip downward and cascade off, as several have just done, one after the other, like lemmings. I could type in the kitchen instead, if I wanted. There is a sturdy table topped with white tiles in there, or I could just move that one into the living room, if I felt up to it. I don’t feel up to it. The moving men had to remove the legs to get it in there, and besides, the sun does not rise in the kitchen, cannot be seen rising from that room. I am thinking of moving the rat’s cage, into the bathroom perhaps, where I won’t have to see the animal constantly. I considered carrying it back down to Potts’s place but doubt I could manage that alone. I am not sure where I can put it in the bathroom, unless on top of the laundry hamper. And now I see that I have made Clarence look ridiculous, without intending to, when I described him leaning out the window screaming at the parrots. I suppose some people will wonder about my motives—though he would have looked even more ridiculous had I gone into detail. I did not even mention that while he was doing that, howling out the window and such, he was naked except for a ragged straw hat. The hotel staff would rush into the courtyard and