Single: Miss Tennessee b/w The Cryerer | Page 9

thin, brown film and he tried to remember not to touch his mouth or his face, going so far as to retrieve his cigarette pack from his pocket and a cigarette from the pack all with his left hand as he drove to the studio. When the Brazil Nut called, the Cryerer considered the phone and the thin, brown film before answering. She was crying.
"You are where?" she sobbed.
"On my way to the studio," he said. "Where are you?"
"In darkness," she blubbered.
"You'll be fine."
"No."
"You're fine. Take a Valium. Do you have Valium?"
"Already I take."
"You'll be fine."
"I am dying."
"You are not either dying," the Cryerer said.
"No."
"I have to get ready. I'm late."
"No," the Brazil Nut sobbed as the Cryerer hung up the phone.
At the studio, the guard waved him through with barely a pause. He parked the car and sat, wiping his hand on the passenger seat, taking a few moments to collect himself. He dialed a number and let it ring. When the redhead answered -- "Hello, this is Alex." -- he hung up, relieved she was still alive. He smelled sulfur and heard metal scraping on metal. He recalled yellow gun-shaped controls that sent tiny cars flying around the track, and often flying off the track, at what seemed like impressive speeds. There had been no intensive training and everything was left to chance. Hold the trigger tight and so what if the car, filled with oil from a tiny plastic bubble, comes flying off the track and across the carpet amid smells of sulfur and reckless speed? These were not historic runs.
He remembered the day, four days after Christmas, that the track caught fire, right there under the tree. It was the scraping of the trigger back and forth, lurching the cars around the track, that set the black plastic pieces of track on fire. Pieces of metal like two wooden sticks scraping together to make fire. The gorgeous smell of electrical fire.
The Cryerer limped into the studio. He had worked with the Sister, the woman playing the Mother of the Baby, before. She had had a sitcom once and had since been in many of these missing baby capers. The director was somber and supportive. He nodded whenever people spoke and looked into their eyes. The Cryerer thought he recognized him from Van Nuys. He couldn't be sure, but if so he had once been known as the Skin Doctor and he might have the tapes that could wreck that beautiful Malibu wedding.
"So," the director began solemnly. "You are the Mother of the Baby." He fixed his eyes on the eyes of the Sister and nodded. "And you are the Brother." He turned his eyes to the Cryerer, nodding and fixing. "And the Baby is gone."
Brother and Sister both nodded.
He repeated: "And the Baby" (looking at the Cryerer), "your baby" (looking at the Sister, the Mother of the Baby), "is gone" (looking intently at both).
When the Brazil Nut called, the Cryerer was having make-up applied.
"You are where?" she sobbed.
"I'm at the studio. I told you."
"I am dying."
"Can I call you back later? Listen I'll call you back later," he whispered. "You're fine."
"No. I won't be here," she said. "I'm going away."
The Cryerer couldn't remember how long he sat there, watching blankly as the racetrack melted and the Christmas tree dissolved in flames. It was engulfed almost immediately. He was not startled; not even amazed. He sat there on the living room carpet, watching the tree spit bits of itself onto the rug around him. His father appeared, suddenly and aggressively, stomping viciously on the racetrack and headlong tackling the flaming tree in a counter-intuitive attempt to make it stop flaming, which (more counter-intuitively still) seemed to work. He watched with fascination in lieu of horror, his father wrestling the green, smoking limbs back and forth across the deep-pile carpet before finally standing up and kicking ridiculously at the smoldering branches, sending storms of dried needles across the carpet.
His father, covered in botanical soot, loomed over him. The Cryerer sat awed amid the wreckage, pulling the trigger of the pistol-shaped controller. Metal on metal. Back and forth.
"Put that fucking thing down," his father boomed, grabbing the cord and snapping the controller out of the child's hands. The moment the controller left his hand, he returned to the scene. His father looming. The Christmas tree smoldering. He had begun to cry all at once, uncontrollable spasms racking his small body, terminating in a full, open-mouthed blubber.
"Look at this," his father roared. "You think this is funny?"
The boy shook his head, gasped, and moved his lips in an airless, "No."
"Quit your damn cryin'."
Another airless, "No." When the Brazil Nut called again, the Cryerer was on the set in the Valley, preparing to embrace and comfort the Mother of the Baby.
"You