Free B008J4PNHE EBOK by Owen King Page A

inside. A little while after that, he hollered for Sam to get his ass down if he wanted lunch.
    More weary than nervous, Sam descended. He had told himself that he was absolved of shame, but this time, the verdict hadn’t stuck. He felt wrung out; he felt like he’d walked into something face-first.
    They ate at a dinette in the kitchen, which had steel appointments and the hypersterility of an operating room. Central air snored faintly from the bowels of the house and made Sam’s damp shirt turn icy.
    Rick Savini planted a cold whole chicken on a tinfoil server in the middle of the table, flipped Sam a paper plate and a packet of plastic utensils.
    “I’m going to play the part straight. I’m in and out in a day.” Savini, standing at a counter, dismembered the bird as he talked, using his long silver knife to hack off the drumsticks and separate the body. “And you’re cutting out the part where Merlin takes a dump.”
    “Why?” asked Sam. He could concede that it was obvious, but it was a funny part.
    “Why?” The other man paused. “One, because it’s his office. Who drops a deuce in their office? And two, there’s a few things I don’t want to do on film, and pretending to shit is at the top of the list.”
    “Okay,” said Sam, The logic of the former point was hard to refute; as to the latter, he guessed he could see where the actor was coming from.
    “Super.” Savini stabbed three hunks of chicken and, with a finger, shoved them off onto Sam’s plate. “Leave the potholes filled. I’ll find a different way to remember my house.”
    “Okay.” Sam picked at his cold wet shirt.
    Savini knifed himself a piece of chicken and sat down. They ate for a while without talking. The meat was salty and gluey. Sam considered requesting pepper, but didn’t dare. Instead, he said, “I like your knife.”
    “It’s a Lord of the Rings replica.” Savini sawed off another piece of chicken. “It’s Bilbo’s sword, Sting. I got it from Flight Emporium .”
    “The airplane catalog?”
    “Yeah. They have some tempting shit in those things.”
    “Are you into those—swords?”
    “No. I’m just a sucker for airplane catalogs. I fly so much for work. The stuff they sell, you don’t exactly want it, but you want to know if it works or what it looks like up close, you know? So I got this. And it is a real sword. I actually use it around the house quite a bit. The edge glows in the dark, so it doubles as a half-assed flashlight.” The actor cupped his hands around the tip of the blade to show Sam the flare of fuzzy blue light at the tip where some kind of glow-in-the-dark finish had been applied.
    “So are those, like, elvish runes on the handle?”
    Savini grimaced at the hilt. “I don’t know. Probably.”
    Sam nodded. His teeth were nearly chattering, but his stomach had loosened. It was working out. Savini’s loquaciousness had encouraged him; the actor couldn’t hold a grudge. What Sam had done, it had been worth it, and the actor understood.
    “You know, seriously, this isn’t how you’re supposed to behave.” Rick Savini took a deep, huffing breath. “Kid. I know you’re a kid, but—it isn’t.”
    The half-eaten bird lay between them on the table, grisly flaps of skin peeled back, white meat hanging in ribbons. The unmarked steel surfaces gleamed, but only dully. They hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights.
    “I know,” said Sam, and maybe he did, but not as well as he would learn.
     ■ ■ ■ 
    Who We Are filmed from mid-July to mid-August on the Russell campus.
7.
    On the first day of production, they did a table reading of the script with Sam subbing for Rick Savini—that was it for rehearsals. Rehearsals had never worked well in his career as a student director. Rehearsals seemed to solidify performances, to turn everything into dance steps, and to sap the tension. Worse, rehearsals gave the actors openings to suggest script changes. Sam supposed that he might have needed to