Scar Flowers by Maureen O'Donnell Page B

number anymore. Is there something going on?”
    The picnic benches were empty, and the steam-table trays had been taken away. A shadow had crept under the awning, almost made it to his table. Twenty minutes had passed.
    Nadia was gone.

Chapter 8
     
    Friday, June 2, 7:15 p.m. Day 10 of shooting.
    Simon hunched over his laptop in the trailer. The living space was five paces long, not including the bed. Props and sketches hung overhead—a gun, a rubber monster mask, blueprints of the set—and the closet groaned with papers and costume samples. Coffee from his evening work sessions stained the buff-colored carpet and blond cabinets, and a limp filter full of soaked black grounds perched on the trash can.
    He should be marking out tomorrow’s shots. Instead he replayed this afternoon’s encounter with Nadia, how he had slipped into another world just like wading into the ocean. Had he wanted to go under, as she had said, or had he just wanted to follow her wherever she led? Someplace warm and deep, lined with her voice.
    Why would a fight choreographer know hypnosis? She had certainly made enemies quickly. John the second-unit director still insisted that she did not know what she was doing. But her work with Karen and Victor had been good, though that scene had not been technically demanding.
    Simon wrote a list on a yellow legal pad— Paul Jonas, fight choreography, martial arts, ballet teacher, hypnosis —then put a question mark after Paul’s name.
    The phone rang.
    “Someone tried to get on the lot to see you,” said Gunnar. “Security has him. He said he was a packer, but they didn’t find any weapons. Should we get rid of him?”
    Simon paused the video he had been running on his laptop. “Tom Kazaan’s here? He’s a good friend of mine . Let him in. Tell security to treat him like a suit, not a thief.” No weapons found—hoorah for them.
    Ten minutes later , Gunnar knocked on the door. With him was a dark-skinned man in black motorcycle leathers who wore his waist-length hair in thick dreadlocks, tied back from his face with a torn strip of denim. A curved yellow bit of ivory hung from a thong around his neck, and he carried a plastic garbage bag tucked under his arm.
    “Hey, Cob b.” The giant grinned at Simon, showing a gap at the edge of his smile where a tooth was missing (“Grizzly bear swapped me his claw for it,” was his favorite explanation). Kazaan was almost as wide as he was tall; beside him, Gunnar looked frail.
    “Tom! What’re you doing here? You ridin’ that old pan -head?”
    “Yep. Put my hog on the Seattle ferry and took a run down I-5.”
    “Cob b?” Gunnar put his cell phone away.
    “Gunnar, this is Tom Kazaan, my old friend from Alaska.”
    The first assistant director put away his phone to shake Tom’s hand.
    “Cobbler and I go way back, to high-school days.” Tom spoke with what he referred to as an indigenous lilt, a cadence similar to a Canadian accent. “He was the prettiest shoe-gazing Goth boy you ever saw, right down to the eyeliner. When he wasn’t puking his way through summers on the slime line at the cannery, he was stickin’ a camera in everyone’s face.”
    “Let’s not talk about what we used to call you.” Simon grinned as he held the trailer door open for his guest to enter.
    “Don’t make no difference to me. I still answer to Packer.” The trailer groaned as Tom climbed the stairs.
    “ Six a.m. call tomorrow,” said Simon to Gunnar. “Can you also make sure someone checks the suspension on this trailer? After lunch.”
    By the time he closed the door, Tom had seated himself on the bed, the only space large enough for him.
    “Good to see you,” said Simon and clasped his friend’s hand for a moment in an arm-wrestling grip. “I dunno why you stay up north in that narrow-minded burg.”
    Tom’s leathers creaked as he brushed dust from his sleeves. Smudges of windborne grit dusted his face. “You tend to forget the good times. And you