Tribesmen Read online

  “This is it. A film for the eighties. A film for every market,” Tito said, twirling the end of his off-white beard like some homeless magician.

  “Except for Portugal,” Pressberg said under his breath.

  “To tell you complete truth,” Tito said ignoring him, “I have already booked flight and put in order for equipment.” Tito would drop articles from his speech when he was trying to get away with something.

  “Booked a flight?” Pressberg said, concerned with where his money was quite literally flying off to. “A flight to where?”

  “You never heard of it,” Tito said. In twelve years of business, Pressberg had never refused to write a blank check for the director. Still, every time the funny little pervert tried to take more money from Roland, he wanted to snap his wallet shut and then bust Tito in the nose.

  Tito must have sensed his agitation, because he added: “But this place is bellissimo and worth taking the flight. Caribbean Island. Pure and untouched by the cinema…and the fucking tourists. A dream location…and very cheap.”

  “Caribbean? I thought you said that this asshole actually filmed in the Amazon.” Pressberg motioned at the projector to indicate that he meant the director of Cannibal Fury Atrocity (a direct translation from the original Italian title).

  “Why shoot in Amazon when you can have palm trees with your jungle? Plus I no get eaten by fucking tiger or gorilla or some such shit,” Tito said and smiled. The long slit of a grin exposed the dead teeth at the back of his mouth. “Plus there are primitives all over. The Amazon has no monopoly on savages.”

  “Fine, whatever. Bring it in fast and under budget. Don’t let these Italians beat you to the punch with one more film than they already have. I’m sure those Guinea bastards have made three movies during the course of this conversation.”

  Pressberg put up a finger to signal that his terms were not yet finished. “Take the money, but promise me one thing.”

  “Anything for you, maestro.”

  “Promise that I never have to sit down and watch the fucking thing.”

  Roland Pressberg made a theatrical gesture, wiping his palms on his chest and washing his hands of this whole damn thing. He was Pontius Pilate with a checkbook.

  “That’s a promise, you big baby.” The two men clapped hands. Tito was slick with sweat and nicotine stains.

  As much as it pained him, they shook on it.

  Chapter 2

  Jacque Fuller

  Screenplay

  Umberto poked Jacque in the ribs with a strong, bronze finger and told him to get the blonde girl’s attention. Jacque finished scribbling down the sentence he was working on before speaking to her.

  “Pardon me,” he said. He had to yell slightly to make himself heard over the plane’s engine. “Umberto would like to ask you a question.”

  “Yes,” she said, looking up and folding her glamour magazine against her lap. On the cover was Bo Derek’s smiling face. Jacque had read that Bo was following up 10 with a Tarzan picture. That was probably not a great idea.

  Umberto reached across Jacque and offered the woman a pocket mirror with three perfectly sculpted lines of powder across it.

  “No thank you,” she said, smiling wide. It was obvious that she was not looking to make a bad first impression.

  With looks like hers, bad first impressions were practically impossible. She had the dimpled face of the all-American girl-next-door combined with the milk chocolate complexion of an African goddess. The blonde hair was from a bottle, but somehow it suited her.

  She was still smiling as Umberto pushed the mirror closer. She was being too polite. This wasn’t going to be a long shoot, but Jacque guessed by looking at her that she was a people-pleaser.

  Umberto began speaking in Italian. The girl looked at him, puzzled, and then back down at the mirror which was still extended. The Italian’s hands were shaking. Jacque decided to intervene before Umberto spilled the powder all over his lap.

  “He says that it’s not cocaine,” Jacque said to the girl. “He’s crushed up some downers and thought they might help you get some sleep on the flight.’

  “Could you tell him that it’s alright? Tell him that I’m fine,” the girl said and pressed Umberto’s manicured hand, and the mirror, away.

  Jacque told him and Umberto shrugged. The bodybuilder-turned-actor mumbled some things in Italian that Jacque thought it was best not to translate for the girl. The massive golden-haired Italian turned to the seat behind him and offered Daria, the makeup girl, a line before taking two big snorts and cleaning off the pocket mirror himself.

  After five minutes, he was snoring, and Jacque couldn’t decide which state of consciousness made the minor Italian movie star less appealing.

  “What are you writing?” the blonde asked him. She was very pretty and only spoke English. Considering what he knew (that this was a Tito Bronze production and the fact that Jacque had never seen her before) he concluded that she was, in all likelihood, an American porno star.

  “I’m writing the script,” Jacque said, closing his pencil inside the notebook, ready to talk. The script was halfway finished and it was a long flight. He had the time.

  “For this movie?” she asked. He watched her expression as her enthusiasm deflated. “The script for this movie isn’t finished yet?”

  “Yes, but don’t look so surprised,” Jacque said. “It’s not that odd at all for these types of productions to still be writing up until the last day of shooting.”

  “Oh. Okay,” she said unable to hide her disappointment. She had obviously been led to believe that this was a much bigger step up for her career. It wasn’t.

  “Don’t worry though,” Jacque said and reached out to pat the back of her hand. “I’ll make sure that your lines are very good.”

  She smiled at him, but he could tell that he’d done little to assuage her fears. “I’m Cynthia, by the way.” She gave him a slight but assertive handshake. It was an American shake to be sure. East coast, probably New York, he guessed. “Thank you for translating before. You speak Italian very well, but you don’t sound it. Where is your accent from?”

  “My name is Jacque. I grew up in Paris but studied in the UK.” He assumed that she meant that he didn’t look Italian either. She probably had not met many black Italians. He hadn’t either, so he wasn’t calling her a racist.

  “Wow,” she said. Her tone of voice suggested that this was her first time out of the States, and it made him ashamed of his comparative jet-setting.

  “Where are you from?” he asked.

  “Queens,” she said. “New York. What did you study in Britain?”

  “English,” Jacque said, ashamed also to admit to his education. “Literature. At Cambridge.”

  “You studied English at Cambridge,” she asked and did not bother to hide her fascination or disbelief. “Then what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Making a living,” Jacque said. She went silent for a moment. It was his turn to ask a question.

  “How long have you been acting?” Jacque asked and immediately regretted it. He had surmised that this was the girl’s first feature after some ‘modeling gigs.’ Maybe a few sweaty casting sessions that never resulted in a callback. He had asked this question enough times to know the embarrassing silence it was usually answered with.

  “All my life,” Cynthia said, surprising him. “My parents were both theater people, and I’ve been in stage productions since I was an infant. I started out playing the baby Jesus in our church’s nativity, and I’ve been going ever since.” Her eyes lit up. He could tell that this was a monologue she’d delivered before, but she still enjoyed it. “I’ve laughed, sung, cried, tap-danced. Everything a person could do on the stage.”

  That was not the answer he’d been expecting. “What are you doing here?” he asked, but then shushed himself after seeing her piquant smile. “Never mind. You’re making a living.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “This may sound silly, but
are all of us working on the movie?” She whirled a finger around in a circle, indicating that she meant the entire contents of the cramped charter plane. “I mean: are we all there is?”

  “The whole kit-and-kaboodle,” Jacque said, feeling like the cool man-in-the-know. “Hair, makeup, camera, lights. If it needs doing, there is someone in this flying shitcan that can do it. Pardon my language.”

  “Oh please,” she said, the Queens-lilt busting out so she sounded like a New Yorker for the first time. “So who is he?”

  She pointed to the unconscious Umberto. His upper lip and blonde mustache was quivering in his sleep, and there was a long string of saliva linking it to the lapel of his olive green leisure suit. He must not have been lying about the downers. They were probably the only way to get to sleep on the cramped, turbulent plane.

  “That’s Umberto Luigi. He also goes by Brent Cisco, his American stage name.”

  “He can’t speak English, but he has an American stage name?”

  “Well doesn’t he look American to you?” Jacque asked.

  “His hair is blonde, but there’s just something Italian about him. Some kind of extra quality,” she said. She was the most polite and demure New York girl that Jacque had ever met.

  “Could be that every time he exhales, my eyes tear up from all the garlic and bad cologne, couldn’t it?”

  She chuckled and covered her mouth the way Geishas in old Japanese movies did when they laughed. Jacque liked that. Maybe this job wouldn’t be so bad.

  “Hello, my darling.” A thick plume of cigarette smoke heralded Tito’s approach. Before the smoke had a chance to clear, he was leaning over Umberto’s seat, his sweaty old-man gut pressing up against the big unconscious Italian’s ear. “My exotic jewel, my starlet for a new age, my mulatto Fay Wray for the 1980s.”

  Tito’s accent was in full swing, but his English was perfect. Jacque suspected that he turned it on and off at will. Tito sank down lower, going in for the kiss and spilling his drink onto Jacque’s notebook. Cynthia offered only her cheek, not wanting to kiss the old Euro-pervert.

  Jacque breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t think he could handle watching this lovely girl lock lips with Tito Bronze.

  “Hey you, uh, Jacque,” Tito said, pretending to forget his name and slurring enough that Jacque could tell he was halfway drunk. He cringed to think that he’d spent enough time around Tito (three films now) to tell when he was sloshed. “Where is Denny? I look everywhere for Denny. I want to talk about apertures, f-stops, light meters, all that shit.”

  If he was trying to impress Cynthia by discussing the finer points of cinematography, he was doing a terrible job of it.

  “I don’t know,” Jacque said. The cabin was only about twelve feet long. Jacque made an exaggerated attempt to look for Denny, the camera man, even turning around in his seat to check behind him. “I don’t see him, do you? Maybe he’s in the bathroom.”

  “That fucking kid has some kind of bladder problem. He’s always on the shitter,” Tito said. He took a sip of his scotch and then flashed a caustic smile back at Cynthia. “Ciao, bella,” he winked and stumbled off to find his seat, fighting a losing battle against both the turbulence and his buzz.

  Chapter 3

  Dennis Roth

  Cinematography

  The touchdown of the small plane jolted Denny awake. The needle in his arm bobbed up and down until it finally clattered to the floor of the cramped bathroom.

  He rubbed his eyes and then worked the strip of rubber tubing from around his arm into a loop and tucked it into his back pocket. After he daubed a bit of toilet paper against the flecks of semi-dried blood in the crook of his arm, he tried to stand. Failing, he flopped back down into his seat.

  His closed his eyes for another moment, re-awoke to banging on the bathroom door.

  “I’m coming,” he yelled as he stood up from the toilet.

  The water from the sink flowed out a dribble at a time and Denny was too impatient to fill his hands before wiping the few drops on his face and beard. He rolled his sleeves down over his pale skinny arms and buttoned the cuffs.

  His shirt was sticking to his flesh. This was no good: he was already caked in sweat and he hadn’t even stepped foot on the tropical island yet.

  Around this time last year, he would have inspected himself in the mirror to make sure that he hadn’t drooled down the front of his shirt, and paused to ask himself why he kept doing this. But he didn’t even bother doing that much anymore.

  Denny took a deep breath before undoing the latch and sliding the door open, shielding his eyes against the light of the cabin.

  “Where have you been? Did you fall asleep?” Jacque asked, tossing him his duffle bag. “We’re here and all the gear is already unpacked, so let’s go.”

  Jacque knew. He had to have known. Jacque was a smart guy, even if Tito talked down to him and treated him like shit because he was a Negro from France. Denny knew that Jacque could see the signs written all over his junkie face (never mind the occasional track mark that peeked out of his cuff). Knowing this made him feel nauseous, sicker than the trash had made him feel on an empty stomach.

  The suspicion that he had been found out made him grip his duffle tighter against his chest as he stumbled towards the metal stairs that led off the plane. Trading the rancid, stale air of the cabin with that of the fresh sun-drenched island was probably exceedingly pleasant for everyone disembarking. Everyone but Denny. The light inside had bothered his eyes, but the light outside blinded him. The rays of the sun bounced up off the sand and sent flesh-colored bolts of pain shooting through his clenched eyelids.

  Using the flimsy railing for guidance, Denny made his way onto the packed sand of the runway.

  “Where are they?” Denny heard Tito’s voice raise in indignant, impudent director-rage. Even when they aren’t on set, directors think they can get away with anything if they use this tone. There was the screech of metal on metal from behind Denny. He concluded that the pilot must have been waiting for him to get off the plane so the crew could pull up the stairs.

  “Where is who?” Jacque asked. Denny tried opening his eyes but the people around him on the runway were just five formless blobs.

  “The fucking natives!” The shortest of the blobs waved its hands in exasperation. That one was Tito. Denny smiled through the pain that throbbed from behind his eyes down into his empty stomach.

  He began to discern the rest of the shapes: Tito, Umberto, Jacque, Daria the makeup girl and Cynthia the new actress stood next to piles of their luggage and a few crates of equipment. Including Denny, there were six of them. The plane hadn’t carried a full crew because Tito had insisted that they would be able to find cheaper labor on the island.

  “They should have seen the plane land and come to meet us! Why do our modern wonders not thrill them? Where is our welcome party of savages?” Over the few years he’d been working with him, Tito had always found new and ingenious ways to outdo his own tastelessness. His blunt and hilarious lack of tact warmed Denny’s junkie heart.

  “You arranged for a welcome party of savages?” Jacque didn’t sound half as amused by the idea as Denny was.

  Umberto spoke up in Italian, momentarily breaking up the conversation. Denny could see fine now, and he could tell that the Golden Guinea was addressing Jacque directly.

  He babbled for a while, peeling off his ugly green jacket as he spoke. The others turned in his direction. Denny and the new girl couldn’t understand him, but everyone else on the crew spoke Italian.

  “You want us to start walking to what camp?” Jacque said in English; he must have been translating for Cynthia’s benefit. The pretty girl squirmed uncomfortably behind Jacque, looking down at her shoes and then back at Umberto.

  “What do you mean there’s no hotel?” Jacque’s voice was raised to the point of yelling now. He walked up to the Italian, needing to crane his head to meet eye-to-eye. Umberto spoke some more and Jacque’s expression blossomed i
nto one of both understanding and despair. The actor was telling him something he didn’t know. Denny thought that everyone had known that they were camping with the natives. The island didn’t have a hotel.

  “Hold on now. If I tell you, Mr. Prissy writer,” Tito said, placing a hand on Jacque’s shoulder before having it shaken off. “If I tell you that we’re sleeping in native huts instead of nice fluffy hotel, would you have come?” Tito’s arms contorted into an exaggerated shrug. “This way it is better, more authentic.”

  “Cheaper is more like it. And to answer your first question: no, I wouldn’t have come.” Jacque gave a look around. “So where are these natives, or how about just their ‘native huts’ for starters?”

  Tito looked around and Denny looked, too. There wasn’t much to see. Thick jungle surrounded both sides of the runway with a beach and the Caribbean Sea on either end. Behind them the plane was beginning its trek to the end of the strip, creaking on its landing gear like an oversized Volkswagen bus.

  “Where is the plane going?” Jacque asked. The plane turned to face them on the far end of the runway.

  “What, I’m a Warner Brother now? I buy private plane? No, I rent the plane.”

  “Well then, call it back, because I’m not staying here,” Jacque said and turned to lock eyes with the blonde. “And I don’t think the rest of you should either. This man is a huckster who probably won’t even compensate you properly for your time. I’m quitting.”

  “Big talk from the big man. You want for me to call it back?” Tito usually spoke with less of an accent. He was done being cute. Denny didn’t like Tito Bronze, per se, and he hated working with him, but some sick part deep down inside of him kind of admired the director’s titanic stones. “Oh, I’ll just call it back with my magic telephone that can place calls to airplanes.”

  “That is a real thing, you know. It’s called a radio and I take it that means we don’t have one.”