Scar Flowers by Maureen O'Donnell

Before his foot touched the opposite curb, an explosion thumped him in the chest. A man flew out of one of the windows, limbs jerking. The glass in the north face of Simon’s set burst out over the lawn, followed by billows of bitter black smoke. His house, Blake’s farmhouse. Shouts punched the air, and the people between him and the set scattered, revealing yellow caution tape around the house. Crew members wielding fire extinguishers rushed forward. Cell Phone Man turned and left, muttering.
    Simon paused outside the safety zone. Each window stared from under an eyebrow of soot and bubbled paint, the empty frames gaping like missing teeth in a scarred face. The house had become timber, the front door splintered on the walk. The man who had been blown through the air stood and unhooked his safety harness.
    “Cut! Great work, everyone. Hey, Simon!” John waved. “How d’you like it? Just a little housecleaning!”
    Crew members high-fived each other as they hauled debris to a waiting truck.
    Simon picked up a shard from one of the broken windows and put it in his mouth, where it melted back to sugar. That’s right; Tuesday is explosion day.
     
    12:18 p.m. 
    At lunch , Simon sat under the awning by the craft-service trailer, his legs aching from hours of standing on the soundstage. Karen leaned on her elbows across the table from him. Rows of steam table trays stood behind her on vinyl tablecloths: one surface was smooth metal and the other was faintly pocked, like something’s greasy skin. Checkered red and white.
    Textures.
    A voice from some long-ago NYU film-school lecture announced in his head: A film is a combination of visual and emotional textures, and directing a film is the art of recognizing the right combination . Karen’s face was powdered smooth, tinted and contoured. Swept by cool filaments of hair as she moved, striated shades of color. Her fingers showed tender creases at the knuckles. Unlike the rest of her, which was cool and rounded like a marble statue. Smooth as an agate and carefully perfumed. Karen must have felt his eyes on her. She smiled, and her stockinged foot stroked his ankle. She gazed at the table, whispered something to him. He could not hear all that she said, only the phrase “last night.” Beyond her was the horizon, the sky, and wide smears of cloud spread thin as watercolor on their leeward sides.
    The voice continued: Everything you do or say in front of the actors is part of directing the script.
    He ripped a piece of bread in half to scatter the words, and a new phrase appeared in the back of his brain: the actor–director relationship .
    He craved another confrontation like the one outside the set that morning with the suit and his cell phone. Some excuse to act without thinking.
    Karen picked through a plate of fish and fleshy vegetable twigs that looked like pickled sea plants—the usual health-food meal her assistant cooked her. Simon watched a butterfly’s accidental course from rooftop to hedge, put his knife in his mouth for the surprise of pulling it out again, the serrated jolt of it against his teeth. Under his feet, the dust was trampled with footprints.
    It all felt familiar, a mistake he had made before. He had gone so far in his attempt to reach some things and to flee others that he had lost direction. In trying to hold together the vortex of emotion that the actors created, he had absorbed Blake’s paranoia and alienation, and Julia remained an enigma, a fantasy. As he had watched the dailies last night, it became plain that Karen and Victor were acting in two separate movies. The story was there, but the chemistry between the two leads was not.
    What he should be thinking about was Karen. Someone he had crossed a line with —not like with Angela, whom he had already been seeing when he cast her in Critical Mass . Afterward, in bed, Karen had said, “I hated you for making me do the pushups in front of everyone. But I couldn’t stop thinking about