Lancelot

snapped his fingers.
    â€œWe’ll have to use the new Subiru motion activator.”
    â€œWhat is that?” In the very offhandedness of his voice I could catch the excitement, the exhilaration of his knowledge and skill.
    He shrugged. “You know, the voice-activated sound tape recorder? It only goes on when there is a noise.”
    â€œLike the President had?”
    â€œYeah.” He was too happy to notice irony. “Same principle. Transferred to light. The tape only moves when something or someone in front of the camera moves.”
    â€œSomething or someone. You mean it wouldn’t just record a sleeping person?”
    â€œOnly when he or she turned over. All he got to do is move—or talk.”
    When something or someone moved. Yes, that was it. That was what I wanted. Who moved, toward whom, with whom.
    It was necessary to visit the set, something I never did, in order to see how long the shooting would take and to warn Elgin should my houseguests decide to return to Belle Isle early. He must have time to arrange his own “set,” place and wire his cameras.
    I needn’t have worried. They spent all day on one short scene between Margot and Dana. Fifteen or twenty times he had her up against the library stacks performing “simulated intercourse.” He was filmed from the rear doing something to Margot quickly and easily. He was clothed.
    Merlin was surprised to see me, but pleasant and talkative as usual. I told him I had come to make him welcome at Belle Isle and to be sure they had removed from the motel. Though the danger from the hurricane was slight, the motel was built in a swamp and could be flooded.
    â€œYou’re a beautiful guy!” Merlin came close and took my arm. He had a way of making any encounter between us exclude the others. His blue eyes were fond; the white fiber made the iris spin with dizzy affection. “How extraordinary that a real hurricane should be approaching the same time as our make-believe hurricane. Actually though, this scene has nothing to do with the hurricane.”
    â€œI want to hear the zipper,” Janos Jacoby told Dana.
    The set was the small public library in town. Town folk watched, standing, arms folded, sitting on aluminum chairs, on the sidewalk, on the grass, in the doorway. Inside, the library was a mess; it looked as if the hurricane had already hit, everything moved out of the way to shoot Margot and Dana in the stacks. The blue-white lights were brighter and hotter than the sun outside. Heavy cables snaked over the trodden grass like a carnival ground. Between shots Dana zipped his pants, fell back, and cleaned his nails, listened inattentively to Jacoby. As the librarian in the movie, Margot wore glasses around her neck, white blouse, cashmere cardigan, sleeves pushed up. She was not at ease. Her face was cheeky and her movements wooden. She was. I saw instantly, not a good actress. What she was doing was not acting, that is, imitating someone else, but acting like an actress imitating-someone-else. She was once removed from acting.
    Dana was something to see: barefoot, tight jeans with silver conch belt, some kind of pullover homespun shirt, necklace with single jade stone, perfect helmet of yellow hair, perfect regular features, perfect straight brows flaring like wings. He moved well and had grace. He was an idiot but he had grace. He was a blank space filled in by somebody else’s idea. He was a good actor. His eyes had somehow been made up so they seemed to gather light and glow of themselves. The town folk gaped at him as if he were another species. Perhaps he was. Perhaps somewhere on the golden sands of California had come into being a new breed of perfect creatures, young and golden.
    Margot couldn’t see me. The lights were too bright.
    â€œThis is a very short scene but a very critical one,” Merlin explained. “It is the sexual liberation of Sarah.”
    â€œSexual liberation?”
    â€œYeah. You remember. Dana is the stranger who wanders into town from nowhere and is so extraordinarily gifted—everyone is immediately aware of it. Thank God for the movies. Dana gifted? He barely had sense not to drown when he fell off his surfboard in Beach Blanket Bingo. But look at him, isn’t he something? We can create him from the beginning like a doll. I created Dana—Dana himself is nothing, a perfect cipher. This character, this stranger is immediately