TAXI GIRL
Chapter Ten
After the workshop, Tania and Dan sat across from each other in a booth at the Lincoln Park Hotel coffee shop.
“It was the first thing that came into my head. I just wanted to shut him up, if you know what I mean,” said Dan.
“Oh, I know what you mean. I get angina every time one of their hands goes up cuz I never know what’s gonna come out of their mouths. You do have a camera, don’t you?”
“It’s upstairs; I’ll show it to you.”
“Will I have to take off my clothes to see it?”
“No, Tania. I’ve given up trying to get you to have sex with me.”
“Have you? Or are you using reverse psychology?”
“I’m not assholy enough to do that,” said Dan. “Let’s order.”
After they finished eating, Tania spoke up.
“I’d like to see the camera.”
“I’ll get it.”
“That’s okay; I’ll come upstairs.”
Dan opened the door to his room. There was a full-size bed with a yellow chenille spread, a dark-wood chest of drawers, a TV and an easy chair.
“This is the kind of place your boss brings you if you’re having an affair.”
“Well, I’m not your boss, and we’re not having an affair, so come in.” Dan opened his closet and pulled down a black case from the top shelf. He took out the Bolex, flipped open its lens hood, looked through the viewfinder and pointed the camera at his only window.
“Here, look,” he said.
Tania held the camera grip and pressed her left eye against the rubber viewfinder cup.
“Whaddya see?” asked Dan.
“I see trees and part of the farm in the zoo.”
He reached around her; his chest was pressed against her back. Tania’s nipples tingled. He turned the focal length lever.
“Now what?” asked Dan.
“Now what what?” asked Tania.
“Whaddya see?”
“I see the barn up close and less of the trees, but everything’s blurry.”
Dan adjusted the focus.
“Better?”
“Much.”
“Now, all you’d do is shoot.” Dan wrapped his hand around Tania’s and pressed the trigger with her index finger. The Bolex’s motor whirred.
“We just need film . . . and an editing machine,” he said.
“Don’t we need a projector and a tape recorder?”
“Eventually, yeah.”
At Tania’s apartment the next day, Dan pulled out her table’s gateleg and propped up its drop leaf. She set two mugs of Constant Comment tea on the leaf, and he took a seat on a wooden folding chair. She returned from the kitchen with spoons and a plastic bear-shaped bottle of honey. Then she sat down opposite him on another wooden folding chair and gathered up the kids’ character choices, which were spread out on the table.
“They all want to be superheroes except for James and Daphne; he wants to be a bad guy.”
“No shit,” said Dan.
“She wants to be a nice person from space; let’s make her the star.”
Tania’s intercom buzzed.
“It’s Billy Miller; can I come up?”
“No, I’d rather go over to your place.”
“Is someone with you?”
“Yes, but it’s not like that.”
Tania came downstairs and walked with Billy to his three-flat.
“So, you’re moving?”
“Yeah, I’m gonna teach in Portales and do an Apache version of Othello at a reservation a couple of hours away; I’m calling it Illanipi, the Mescalero of New Mexico.”
The pair arrived at Billy’s landing; he opened his apartment door.
“What about Celine?”
“She’s living with her mother’s mother and starting boarding school in the fall,” he said. “It’s better for everybody.”
What’s better for everybody, Billy Miller, is that you had a vasectomy, thought Tania.
“Are you getting rid of anything else?” she asked.
Billy looked around his living room.
“Yeah, I wanna deep-six this mass-produced crap.”
“You do . . . ? Great,” said Tania. “I’ll take your projector, the movie screen and your cassette player.” She peeked into the kitchen.
“. . . and the cast-iron frying pan. If you have a portable record player, I’ll take that too. Can I use your phone?”
“Uh . . . sure.”
Tania called her apartment; after the tenth ring, Dan answered.
“Tania Wildman’s residence.”
“Dan, leave my building, turn right on Sedgwick, cross Wisconsin and come to the red brick three-flat on the corner. I’ll buzz you in.”
Dan arrived five minutes later.
“Do you know how to type?” asked Tania.
“I took a course in high school,” answered Dan.
Billy watched as Tania and Dan gathered up the film equipment, record player, frying pan and Remington upright. Tania pointed to an orange Steelcase office chair.
“Can I take that too?” she asked.
“Go ahead,” answered Miller.
Tania and Dan made one trip downstairs, and before they left on a second, Tania kissed Miller’s cheek.
“Bye, Billy.” She turned to go, swung around and whispered in his ear.
“I thought you were more than you turned out to be.”
Tania opened the door to her apartment; she and Dan hauled Billy Miller’s stuff inside.
“You can set the typewriter on the table,” said Tania. She closed the wooden folding chairs, put them in her dressing room and wheeled the Steelcase office model up to the gateleg table.
“I got this so your ass won’t fall asleep while we’re working.”
“Thanks; that was very thoughtful of you.”
Tania pulled out pages from a spiral notebook, cut off the ragged edges and handed the stack of paper to Dan.
“This’ll have to do for now.”
He sat down on the Steelcase, loaded a sheet and turned the platen knob. Tania sat down opposite him in her upholstered chair; she twirled a pencil between her thumb and index finger.
“Type this. In a secret chamber, the evil Dr. Sfinks harnesses the power of the Great Pyramid to uh . . .” She tapped the pencil’s eraser on her temple, then flicked the pencil in Dan’s direction. “. . . Destroy the earth.”
“How are we gonna show that?” asked Dan.
“We can use title cards like in silent movies.”
“We can record a voice-over and sync it to footage of a building collapsing,” said Dan.
“How do we get footage of a building collapsing?”
Silence permeated the room. Then Dan rubbed the side of his index finger back and forth across his chin crease and spoke.
“We hang a black curtain, stack blocks we’ve painted gray in front of it and stick a sign on top that says EMPIRE STATE BUILDING. I start filming; you punch the blocks from behind the curtain. They collapse, and you throw talcum powder on the rubble.” He paused. “Whaddya think?”
“I think you’re a fucking genius,” answered Tania.
The pair finished the script at 3:25 Monday morning. Tania set her alarm for 6:15 a.m. and lay down on her bed. Dan plopped beside her, and they fell asleep.
During the week, Tania bought eye patches, space helmets, a nose clip with a safety strap, swim goggles, wigs, bald-head caps, a toy camel, poster board, markers, a Chicago Sun-Times, a photo of Elvis Presley and Beagle Puss glasses. Dan constructed an origami pyramid while Tania fashioned capes from kitchen curtains and headphones out of paper cups. The pair collected sand from North Avenue Beach and bought a reel-to-reel, hand-crank Super 8 editor. Tania got permission to use the sound and lighting booth at City Theater, and after work on Friday, she stopped by John and Larry’s to borrow the Polaroid SX-70.
Dan and Tania arrived at the theater early Saturday morning to set out costumes and props. At 10 a.m., Tania opened the auditorium door and ushered the kids inside. She addressed the parents.
“See you in an hour.”
Tania stood onstage; the costumed kids sat cross-legged in a circle around her. She read from the script.
“In a secret chamber on the thirty-first floor of the Great Pyramid, the evil Dr. Sfinks . . . uh . . . that’s you, James.”
“Wait a minute—we’re back in Egypt?”
“Yes, we’re back in Egypt because that’s where the Great Pyramid is, and the evil Dr. Sfinks is harnessing the electromagnetic power of the pyramid to destroy the earth. Show them, Dan.”
The kids gathered around the Super 8 editor. Dan hand-cranked the film reels. In the viewer, the origami pyramid stood on the North Avenue Beach sand with the toy camel parked in front of it. Dan cranked the reels some more, and sparks appeared to come out of the top of the pyramid.
“How’d you do that?” asked Alex.
“I scratched the film with a needle,” answered Dan.
“That’s so cool,” said Alex.
Tania continued reading.
“In another galaxy, members of the Federation of Superheroes and a nice person from space named Daphne respond to a desperate plea for help from Earth’s king.” Tania held up the picture of Elvis Presley.
“Who’s that?” asked Meg.
“He’s the king.”
“Oh.”
“Here’s where each superhero does an action that says, ‘No way, I’m not going to Earth to help the king.’” Tania demonstrated. “You can shake your head or give a thumbs-down.”
James raised his left hand.
“Yes, James,” said Tania.
“I know an action they can do.”
What’s it gonna be, James? Flipping the bird or bending over and pulling down your pants? wondered Tania.
“What’s that, James?” she asked.
James slowly raised his right hand with the palm facing him.
Here it comes . . .
He thrust his palm forward. On it was written the word NO in ballpoint pen.
Tania’s eyebrows flew up her face, and her jaw went slack.
“Jaaaaames, what a great idea!” she said.
After they filmed each superhero’s negative response and Daphne’s thumbs-up, Tania took a Polaroid headshot of every kid for the credits. Then she took an additional full-body shot of Daphne.
The entire group entered the theater’s sound and lighting booth. Tania added swim goggles, a nose clip and a cape to Daphne’s costume. She directed her to sit at the control panel, pretend to move the dimmer switches and open a book with HOW TO GET TO EGYPT written on the cover; Dan shot the scene.
They all stepped outside the booth, and Tania told James to take a seat in front of the theater’s circuit breaker panel and put on the Beagle Puss glasses. She handed him the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Dr. Sfinks,” said Tania, “you’re in your secret chamber reading the sports section on the back page.”
Dan filmed James with the front-page headline NICE GIRL FROM SPACE COMING TO SAVE EARTH FROM DR. SFINKS facing the camera.
“Now, turn the newspaper around, Dr. Sfinks; look shocked when you see the headline and throw the paper to the ground. Good. Now, jump up and pretend to move the switches on the panel. Good. Now, turn to the camera and give me a big evil laugh,” said Tania.
James shook his fists in the air, threw his head back and opened his mouth so wide you could see his uvula.
“MWAHAHAHA . . . !”
The group returned to the lighting booth; Tania directed Daphne to sit down at the control board.
“Dr. Sfinks is using the power of the Great Pyramid to bring down your spaceship, Daphne. The ship is shaking, and so are you. Shake, shake, shake.”
Daphne shook, and Dan shook the Bolex as he shot the sequence.
“Stand up, Daphne, shake, shake, shake, go to the door, shake, shake, shake, open it, shake, shake, shake. Now jump into space,” called out Tania.
In the auditorium, Tania cut out Daphne’s form from her full-body Polaroid and glued it to a white cardboard disc with a red spiral drawn on it. As the kids watched, she lined up the center of the disc with the turntable spindle on Billy Miller’s portable record player. The kids pressed in closer. Tania turned on the phonograph, and the spiral with Daphne on it spun round and round.
“She’s falling to Earth in a swirling vortex,” said Tania.
“Wow! She sure is,” said Mandy.
“I wanna try that at home,” said Alex.
After the workshop, Tania and Dan stored the costumes and props at the theater.
“Do you wanna get something to eat?” she asked.
“I can’t,” said Dan.
“Oh,” said Tania.
The pair headed out of the building; waiting in front was a young woman.
“Sarah, this is Tania; she’s my boss,” said Dan.
