Free The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen by Ellen Datlow Page A

insteps wavered in a rising heat mirage. He detected a smell that was dangerously like burning meat. He needed to get away, back to his sandals and a patch of shade. But there was no shade here except in the tent.
    “I’ll stop by later,” he suggested. “Do you take your meals in the dining room? Perhaps I’ll see you this evening. I won’t be alone, but you might enjoy meeting a friend of mine.”
    She shook her head. “There’s no time. He needs me. Always.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Every hour, every minute, every second!” she said with shocking bitterness, almost spitting the words. She gazed longingly at the pool as though it were an impossible distance away.
    He moved off. “Well, I’m sure I’ll see you later. This afternoon, probably. Good luck, Mrs. . . . ?”
    “I was like my mother. I believed the dream. Young girls always do. We marry, thinking what a joy it will be. But somehow it changes.” Her eyes distended above her puffy cheeks. “And now, God help me, it’s too much!”
    She lumbered toward Wintner to prevent his leaving, but too late. She stood there sadly, her fat bosom heaving, then wheeled around wearily and stooped to reenter the tent. Wintner could not avoid seeing the shapeless mass inside struggling to turn onto its side, the misshapen features, the ruined arms batting out for leverage. Resigned, the woman returned to her duties. She took up cotton and alcohol and began cleansing the pores on his neck.
    Wintner retrieved his sandals and beat a hasty retreat.
    The path was harder to follow than he remembered, but he hurried back faster than ever through the lush vegetation. Blood-red bougainvillaea dripped over arbors, huge ivy choked off plots of delphinium and quivered at the borders of the walk, eager to overgrow and split the painted cement. The table setting next to the hidden cottages remained immaculate and untouched. Below, in the botanical gardens, variegated plants were locked in a stalemate of symbiosis. He came to the gazebo, white as a lattice of crossed bones, and finally saw that the hole in the roof had been cut out to make room for a rapidly maturing tree; as he passed, heavily pruned limbs were already thrusting upward to fill the empty circle.
    He realized that he could not call the girl from the pool even if he wanted to; he had forgotten to ask her name.
    Now he would never know.
    He remembered the last image of the man in the cabana, face crawling with sweat, mouth open on darkness in a desperate rictus. Wintner lay sprawled on the bed in his room and tried to put the memory out of his mind, but could not.
    The morning lagged, the afternoon slackened until the sun came to a standstill above a blanket of smog. He made the call twice in the first hour, then every twenty minutes, then every ten. Each time Joe Gillis’s voice droned the same prerecorded message. The actor’s presence projected through the telephone to an extraordinary degree; even on tape his dark power was immediately recognizable. By midafternoon Wintner gave up leaving any word at all on the machine.
    He pitied the man in the tent, but soon felt nearly as confined himself. The walls of his room narrowed in the lengthening shadows. He rode the elevator down to the lobby, which now seemed nothing more than a fey decorator’s wet dream, hand-rubbed and unlivable. When he returned with a newspaper and a sandwich, the ceiling had closed in even more dramatically.
    He considered renting a car. He had Gillis’s address. He could simply drive over.
    Why not?
    He picked up the phone directory.
    There was a knock on the door.
    At first he didn’t recognize her. She had put on a blouse and skirt; the lapels of the blouse, slightly too large, hung wide over the bathing suit so that she appeared childishly small, half-hidden in her loose clothes. She kept a reasonable distance and blinked at him from beneath dark curls.
    “Were you sleeping? I can come back.”
    “No! No, please. I’m glad to