He could pay her double the rate he’d paid before. Just a day or two, that was all they needed. Over a confused drink that the coffee shop referred to as chaider, Filip explained that there had been unexpected difficulties, that they were running behind. They walked to a coffee shop around the corner. “No discounts for days not used.” But when she realized that Filip was there for precisely the opposite reason, she said, “Let’s not talk here.” On day eleven of the shoot, he went by the realtor’s office. But, yes, basically, he had his finger on the pulse of the project. And of course the woman doing wardrobe, the makeup artist, a best boy, a gaffer: they were unknowns too.

And the producer himself, who he didn’t really know, who had come through the cameraman, was a friend of the latter’s father. He was union, which meant he saw this all as a job, complete with overtime. Which meant that he could see in his head exactly how every piece of the project would go.īut then again, there was the lighting person, who he didn’t know, who the producer had brought aboard. The actors, too, were all people he had gone to school with. He had grown up down the street from the cameraman: they had a rapport, so even if he wasn’t the cameraman he knew exactly what this particular cameraman would do. He, Filip, was the heart of the project: he had written the thing, he was directing it, he was handling the sound, he was doing the editing in post-production. He figured at the time that the time limit was just so the realtor would feel like she could ask for more money if they needed a few extra days. And for exactly two weeks, starting tomorrow.” In no earlier than six at night, out by seven in the morning. But Filip had a word with the realtor and since they only needed to film at night, she struck a deal with him that involved a lump cash payment of three hundred dollars, a sum that Filip suspected would never make it farther than the realtor’s pocket.

To lease a place like that for a few weeks would normally have cost well over what they had budgeted for locations.

It was for sale, with the old couple who lived there now both in hospice and their children living on the other side of the country and eager to sell. It was empty and spacious and hadn’t been updated since the seventies, which was exactly what Filip wanted. At the last possible moment he found the perfect house.

The Open Curtain by Brian Evenson