Free KW 09:Shot on Location by Laurence Shames

held Bert’s stare a heartbeat longer, until Sandra appeared in the open doorway and called over to Joey. “Can you give me a hand in here? I’m cooking on four burners.”
    ---
    Inside the airy kitchen, water was heating for pasta. Spinach was sautéing. Garlic was slowly toasting and tomatoes were cooking down, farting out a viscous bubble now and then. Joey picked up a wooden spoon and started stirring.
    “How’s Bert tonight?” asked Sandra, brushing back a wisp of caramel-colored hair from her forehead. Just past forty, Sandra didn’t look her age and never had. Twenty years in the Keys and her skin was still smooth and unfreckled.
    Just slightly defensively, Joey said, “He’s fine. Sharp as a tack.”
    “He still calling the dog by the wrong name?”
    “Sandra, what does it matter what he calls the dog?”
    “It worries me, that’s all.”
    It worried Joey too but he fought against admitting it. “You think the dog cares what he calls it? Six months ago dog was on death row, one bowl of kibble from the gas chamber. He’s happy to be called anything. Plus he had a stupid name before. Nacho. That’s like, whaddyacallit, racial profiling. Mexican dog, name him after an appetizer. That’s not right.”
    Sandra said, “I’m not talking about the dog’s ethnic background, okay? I’m talking about Bert. I sometimes worry he’s not so with it anymore. That he’s living in the past.”
    Reluctantly, Joey said, “On this one thing, maybe. Other than that, he’s sharp, he’s fine.”
    Sandra said nothing. Joey stirred tomatoes. Agitated, he stirred them a little too hard so that hot red starbursts shot over the edges of the pan. After a moment he went on, “Come on, Sandra, guy’s almost ninety, he’s entitled to a little … a little, let’s call it eccentricity.”
    His wife just leaned over and kissed him softly on the cheek.

15.
    “We need something sexy,” the publicist was saying. Her name was Jacqueline Mayfield. She was six-foot-one, African American, and well on her way to becoming legendary for her persuasiveness. Her secret for getting the media to do her bidding was that she didn’t just convey a message, she became the message. She put her whole self into it, and everything about her whole self was commanding and large. Big shoulders, big hips, big voice, big smile, big scowl, big laugh. “A random, non-fatal accident just isn’t sexy,” she went on. “An injury to a stuntwoman just isn’t sexy.”
    “Inconveniently, though,” Claire Segal say dryly, “an accidental injury to a stuntwoman is what happened.”
    “Maybe,” said Jacqueline. “But come on. We all know there’s a difference between what happened and what the story is.”
    They were meeting in Jacqueline’s suite at The Nest, the discreet and elegant boutique hotel where the more important people from
Adrift
were housed. Rob Stanton, the director, was at the meeting, along with a couple of key cast members. Quentin Dole and several suits from the network were video-conferenced in from Los Angeles; their slightly distorted faces swam and smeared across computer screens; they looked like fish bumping their noses against the glass of an aquarium.
    One of the suits, his words just slightly lagging the blurry movement of his lips, said, “I think what’s right in front of us is pretty damn good. Classic human interest. The stuntwoman — what’s her name again? — she’s a perfect unsung hero.”
    Jacqueline was shaking her big impressive head. “Hold that thought.
Unsung.
The little people behind the stars. That’s old. That’s a one-day story. We can do better than that.”
    “We better do better than that,” said another of the suits. He leaned forward as he said it so that his swooping face looked both menacing and entirely goofy. “Look, the show’s losing momentum. Ratings have been flat the last three weeks.”
    “Flat at a damn high level,” put in another executive.
    “Flat is flat,” came