The release of Alpha lifted my profile, and now a media outfit
wanted to interview me, and get a word from Jen as well. So, while I was home, Jen
and I went into the arts district of the city, not far from the café where we’d
met Farris, and visited the studio where the interview would be held.
It was a little smaller than the modeling studio, but contained a
similar set-up.
I sat in a fold-out chair while my face was hit with a burst of
light as the aide angled one of the standing softboxes. The back of the chair
stretched up like a monument behind my head. Possibly a deliberate prop: empty
air filling the chair above me, and lack of presence, was more eye-catching
than if a famous celebrity was sitting in it.
There was a blue screen Cyclorama behind us, and a man in
headphones had a boom mike telescoping overhead like a black crane arm. Behind
him, the camera operator and aide were readying their equipment; of two
cameras, obvious which one was trained on me; it was angled downwards on its
stand. Suddenly the white bulb point of a Q-tip was bulging and bobbing into my
direct perception as a make-up girl and all-round ‘toucher-upperer’ crouched
over me, lathering over my face with a light application of cool cream while
having to lean in so close that my head was made the target for concentrated
streams of warm air from her nostrils. I was still, playing as a living
sculpture as much as possible, a tiny doll whose facial features were being
painted on; at this point in my career I was used to having my face was used as
a tiny canvas for a make-up person’s artistic sketching.
Seated in the opposite chair, the journalist interviewer, who said
her name so fast that I didn’t catch it properly, her skin lit up angelically by
exposure from the other softbox, fresh-faced, but not industry-naïve. Her chair
was pulled closer to mine than usual, due to my size creating an illusion of
distance to her, and the camerapeople seemed keen to get us both in the frame,
for the size comparison.
The female interviewer crossed her legs so that one businesslike
black heel rose into my eye level, and twirled in mid-air as the foot rotated.
The make-up artist gave her face one last touch up before one of
the camerapeople gave a signal for the surrounding chatter to mute and the crew
and technicians to settle down.
Farris had referred a publicist for me to schedule my modeling
shoot, and the same publicist had fielded the interview team’s request and
reviewed the list of questions they intended to cover.
The female interviewer scrunched her brow as she made a last
second survey of a clipboard. She beckoned over a harried-looking assistant,
handed him the clipboard and he hurried out of the frame before the cameras
began rolling.
“OVER TO YOU, JERRY,” the woman turned her head to face me and
leaned in, her hands crossed over her lap. “WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO GO INTO
ACTING?”
She spoke in clear, polished sentences . This wasn’t a shy, coy or
fawning interview and was keen to dive right into size-related matters,
straight off the bat.
I straightened my spine and turned my head up to meet her eyes.
Her leg was still crossed and foot hovering off to my side, performing slow
loops in the air, level with my head, but I kept my gaze locked on her
face.
“The production for Alpha
asked me to play a dog and I said yes.”
Some of the people behind the cameras guffawed quietly.
“I like roles that explore life at my size, what it’s like to be
me, how it feels at this size. Films that get the audience to think this could
actually happen to them, and think about what they’d do if it did...” Then I
blurted, “That I’m real, not a special effect – or just a spectacle!”
The questions rolled through my biography: upbringing, family,
schooling. Then the interview moved to the miniaturization.
The female interviewer’s lips pursed, drilling me with a level
stare.
“LET’S PRETEND THE SHRINKING DIDN’T HAPPEN. WHERE WOULD JERRY
MOUSSEAU BE RIGHT NOW?”
My thoughts reeled back to pre-GPR days. I huffed, so quietly no
one could have heard it. Jen shifted, clamping her thighs together, squeezing a
hand on her knee. Something inside me twanged unpleasantly.
“After the party,” I began, “I had planned to make a clean break.
Move away. New job. Basically get myself a whole new life.” New girlfriend, a tiny voice in my brain
added, but by now my lips had clamped shut.
“BUT INSTEAD A NEW LIFE FOUND YOU.”
“Heh. You could say that.”
I coughed but it didn’t alleviate the irritation in my throat. My
eyes got stuck on the interviewer’s heel, completing a slow whirl clockwise,
then clounter-clockwise. I wrenched my gaze away, to meet her eyes, now
narrowing in a way suggesting another serious question.
"GIVEN YOUR ACTING SUCCESS FOLLOWING YOUR MINIATURIZATION,
WOULD YOU WANT TO REVERT TO YOUR
PREVIOUS HEIGHT IF IT MEANT RECEDING BACK INTO OBSCURITY?"
"Guess I'd just have to get a normal job. I’d make the
trade-off."
"ACTING IS NOT A NORMAL JOB? TELL ME ABOUT THAT."
"I think my co-stars would agree. I miss the daily routine;
that's one thing. There’s a lot of scrutiny.”
“PRESSURIZING FOR ANY ACTOR, BUT FOR YOU IT MUST BE LIKE GIANTS WATCHING
YOU. DON’T YOU FEEL LIKE A ZOO ANIMAL?”
I laughed, which turned into a cough. Yes, some levity, please, the tiny voice whined. It’s a press
cover, not the therapist’s chair.
“Guess that’s why I became a performer. I must like it or
something.”
“YES…” she rejoindered with a suggestive tone, “…THE ATTENTION
CAN’T BE ALL BAD…”
Her foot was now bobbing and angling with excitation. The shoe’s
toe was unconsciously pointed at my head, its steady rotations drawing an
invisible circle around me.
“HAVE YOU EVER GOTTEN A CRUSH ON ANOTHER CAST MEMBER?”
Jen had gone very still as if the question had been directed at
her and she was pondering an answer.
“Yes,” I said.
Then ran my hand down the nape of my neck. My face was clammy with
sweat but the outside warmth was being efficiently swept through the ceiling
ductwork and pumping out the fans droning on the rooftop. Those whirring rotor
blades seemed to be rumbling loud in my ears.
Then I realized the interviewer was staring at me expectantly,
waiting for elaboration.
“But I won’t say which one.”
“CAN YOU SEE YOURSELF SETTLING DOWN AFTER ACTING?”
I shifted in the seat, swallowing. I coughed again. One cough
turned into three, and my throat was still raw.
The cameras cut while an assistant brought me a bottle of water,
tipping up the lid and handing it to me. I guzzled it as Jen draped her arm
over my chair and the faintly mirrory surfaces of her polished nails brushed
against the side of my head.
Then the female interviewer repeated the question.
I answered:
“I don’t think very far into the future. Acting is my world right
now.”
"WILL WE SEE A MOUSSEAU JUNIOR ANYTIME ON THE HORIZON?"
How ‘Junior’ would a ‘Mousseau Junior’ be? I wondered. A baby
proportionate to my size would be as big as a normal-size thumbnail. The sheer
thought made me queasy with worry. My heart banged around in my ribcage like an
animal trying to escape confinement, and – with a chill flash – I realized the
beats weren’t coming regularly.
After a micro pause, I emphasized:
“Uhhh…see my answer to the previous question.”
The crew tittered, and then the interviewer’s attention turned to
Jennifer, introducing her as my other half.
The cameras paused while a crew member skipped forward and plucked
me up off my seat, placing me in Jen’s lap. Without looking down, her hand swept over her lap and met
me by instinct, and the fingers narrowed in, allowing the bumps and bulk of my
form to contour the insides of her curled fingers comfortably. Her pointer
finger lifted to stroke my head, and as it daubed across my forehead, it
paused, as if alerting to the copious perspiration flecking my face. But as she
became distracted by the next question, the finger lifted away from my brow and
decided to just rest its firm weight on top of my skull.
“THAT LITTLE REVELATION IS BOUND TO BREAK SOME HEARTS,” the interviewer remarked. “HOW’S IT FEEL TO BE ENGAGED TO JERRY
MOUSSEAU, THE WORLD’S SMALLEST MAN?”
Now my
torso was being absent-mindedly massaged. As she considered her response, my
ribcage was squeezed and flexed in a curious and explorative way – as if it was
an object she’d never felt before – my heart fluttered in pain. I wriggled in
alarm and she tightened her grip without thinking, until my cardiac organ felt
like it was being rawly pinched between her fingertips. More sweat trickled
down my brow. My vision flashed white and red for an instant.
She
answered smoothly, and without a beat:
“LIKE WINNING FIRST PLACE IN A SPRINT AND GETTING THE GOLD TROPHY.”
“HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR RELATIONSHIP? MANY PEOPLE WOULD SAY YOU TWO
MAKE AN UNUSUAL PAIR.”
“OH, JERRY’S THE NORMAL ONE.
I’M A STORM AND HE’S THE CALM IN THE CENTER.”
The
interviewer levelled some other questions at Jen. My awareness snagged as my
heart started firing like an automatic gun, sending blood fluttering throughout
my body.
The
interviewer appeared to note my flushed, sweating countenance and called a
short break. I stared up and identified Jen’s face against the bright, swimming
lights. She was biting her thumbnail, faintly troubled. I couldn’t say why
because I couldn’t recall the previous two questions. My awareness was bouncing
and flashing.
“Got any
aspirin?” I asked, and heard my own voice inside my head through what sounded
like a wall of water.
Her eyes drifted
down to me, brow tensing slightly.
“YOU OKAY?”
“Joint
pain. That medicine I’m taking…”
Her
expression turned to steel, but she said nothing. She dug into her handbag and
broke a tablet out of the foil sheet. I gnawed at the tablet desperately, until
a corner had been worn away, and threw out the rest.
One of the
assistants stepped out the door, and the incoming stream of outside warmth was
like a soothing balm against the unflinching cold of the thermally-controlled
studio. I asked to step outside. Jen gave me a look, shifting forward in her
chair as if to stand. I shook my head and waved her off, padding over to the
door, held open by the assistant.
The
studio’s chemical agent smell dissipated out the back door into the fresh air
of the gated car park, which dried up my perspiration immediately. The air
quickly turned harsh with the smoke from an assistant who’d come out with me
for a cigarette. I paced around to get clear of the smoke trail and then
propped my laptop-sized phone against a brick wall. I didn’t have a cigarette
to look busy with, so I tried to look engaged with my phone, checking if I’d
received any calls while my phone had been muted during the interview.
The screen
scrolled through my recent call list and stopped on a number I didn’t
recognize, from some weeks back, the one Raf had caught. Wanting to look like a
phone call was the reason I’d gone outside all along, I pressed the ‘dial back’
option, and waited for it to pick up. Then, staring out across car park, I
waited for the call to pick up.
Even as the
number was dialling, a thought occurred to me: where had the woman even gotten
my number? I didn’t go handing out business cards.
The phone
was still dialling.
I wracked
my brains for any memberships I’d signed up to recently and willingly
volunteered my phone number. There was only the personal training – could it be
Larissa? But she would have left her name, and I doubted Raf would have
described her accent as ‘sexy’ or even an ‘accent’. It had to be a work thing,
I decided, regardless of whatever Raf said. One of the modelling people, a
fashion editor, clothing brand representative, or entertainment journalist. Not
strictly ‘work’ but ‘work-related’.
The phone
still wasn’t picking up.
Alternatively,
I knew that, for a fee, you could source people’s contact details via contact
or ‘skip’ tracers. Jennifer had told me about it, based on her own enquiries
with a private investigator. But that gave me a creepy feeling. As the phone
rang the final time, I’d already firmly decided it was not some creepy fan
stalker, but was a media rep with a legitimate business enquiry. So, while the
phone rang, I put on my business face.
The phone
picked up and a woman’s voice answered:
“Pronto.
Listening.”
She had to
be a secretary. People in entertainment didn’t dial direct. Wanting her to flip
me onto the real string-puller, I launched right in without pause:
“Hi, this
is Jerry Mousseau. I received a call from this number about some business.”
“Jerry.
Thank you for returning my call.”
It was a
half-British, half-Italian accent, and I was awash in an uncanny feeling like
in a dream; the kind of dream of somehow, impossibly, stumbling into a room with
no doors. Even a booty call wouldn’t have had my heart galloping like this. And
this wasn’t something aspirin could fix.
She was
speaking again:
“The
business in question refers to a proposal of mine, to you: if you are not too
busy, I suggest we meet somewhere soon.”
My throat
tightened as I tried to say something, nothing came out.
The voice
on the end faltered.
“…Could
you…give your response now…?”
Now my
throat was working again, but my mind was blank. It didn’t even occur to me to
end the call.
From the
other end, barely audible:
“Cazzo…”
“I heard
you,” I said, but with a weird, disconnected feeling like someone else was
talking, “there’s a lot going on right now, I’m not sure I understand where
you’re going with this, and I could be called away again any second—”
“Then I
will keep it brief: what time were you planning to depart Skyros on Friday
night?”
My jaw
dropped.
“Where did
you – How did you know about that?” I gasped.
“Your
secretary told me, eagerly.”
Raf? I
thought. Well then, he needed a better ‘front-office’ screening system for
incoming calls, I decided – ‘sexy accents’ got far too much priority.
She
remarked in her brisk, disaffected way:
“I must say
a casino would not be my first preference locale for rendezvous.”
“It’s a
nightclub,” I grunted. Then: shut up
Jerry, don’t give away even more details.
“Where are
you?” I demanded.
She didn’t
say. Instead:
“I travel.
It would not be difficult for me to reach you.”
I had
nothing to say to this. It did not compute. In the meantime, there was a small
murmur on the other end, like she was thinking.
“If I was
to catch you there,” she went on, “it wouldn’t inconvenience?”
My brow
screwed up as I closed my eyes.
Inconvenience
who – me? What about her? Where was she calling from, a prison cell? ‘Catch you
there’ on what – her parole? What the heck was going on—?
“Um...I’ll
be with a group. It’s on them.”
“Then,
another time might be more suitable? Or, perhaps our paths will cross
elsewhere.”
“I’ll get
back to you.”
I punched
the hang up option and then stared down at the phone warily, as if it might
lunge at me like a wild dog. My breath felt thin like I’d just been running,
and my brow clamming up, even with the warming beams of sunlight stretching
down past the clouds. But the aspirin must have kicked in, my chest soon
calmed.
Still a little shaken, I returned to the studio. Jen looked at me
but I avoided her eye. I was lifted back onto my chair and the interview quickly
resumed.
“HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOUR FAMILY TO ADJUST?” The interviewer's eyes were piercing into mine. I tried to keep my gaze on her face, even as her enormous shoe was bobbing large to the side of my vision.
“My mother died when I was younger," I answered, "and my dad and I never really
saw eye to eye,” I replied. “My shrinking compounded that –” literally and figuratively, I thought. “He
has a life with a new woman.”
“LET’S GO BACK TO THE WOMAN IN
YOUR LIFE. YOU MET YOUR fiancée
BEFORE THE SHRINKING.”
“We ran into each other by accident three years ago, and we
haven't been able to be rid of each other since.”
“AND SHE WAS AT THE PARTY, SO…SHE SAW IT ALL HAPPEN?”
“Yes.”
“THAT MUST HAVE BEEN SO AWFUL.”
She directed this enquiry at me. I paused and then answered:
“I was unconscious. Only my fianceé knows what it was like. But it
sounds like it was completely…“
The rest of the words wouldn’t come.
Jennifer had once given me an abrupt, breathless summary of the
GPR night. But she’d told me the parts I already knew; that I’d been shrunk and
ended up at her house. She’d never actually said how she’d felt about it, what had been running through her mind the moment I’d shrunk. And why it specifically occurred to
her to take me to her house.
“Well,” I said hastily, “it sounded like it must have been…It
seems like from her point of view it was…I mean, if you asked her, she’d
probably say it was—”
All eyes were on me. The cameraman shuffled in place, anticipating
an imminent ‘cut’ to put me out of my misery.
“You’d have to ask my fiancée,” I concluded.
So the interviewer did.
“UNEXPECTED, FOR SURE,” said Jen. Once she started, her slightly
husky voice got its own upbeat, propulsive momentum as she became quickly
comfortable talking in front of the camera. “IT WAS—”