Green Screen

I cranked up the radio. The poppy synths of Phoebe Ryan’s “Should I” elevated until they bumped into the roof of the car and started hammering at it. On the right, the blue satiny fabric of the Pacific Ocean filled most of the window. White speckles of sunlight dotted the spread of color like sequins. A thin stretch of chalky sand etched a precise line separating the road from the ocean. On the left side, where Natalie was sitting, a large expanse of beige cliffs rigidly circumscribed her silhouette. Dinky identical houses dotted the top in a uniform pattern. It looked almost fake, like she was sitting in front of a green screen. 

“Give me the model gaze,” I said, positioning my Polaroid at her. 

“Dude, I’m driving, can’t you--”

The camera’s mechanical click cut her off. I placed the black photo on the dashboard next to a pack of Marlboro Reds. 

Weird. I could never stand cigarettes. They reminded me of the stench in my mom's ramshackled apartment in Downey. Did Natalie’s car always have them lying around like that?

“If I lost control of the wheel earlier and we both fell into the ocean, I would’ve really hated you,” she sighed.

“Ah well, better than crashing into another car and clogging up the freeway.”

I glanced at the photo on the dashboard. The colors were still a bit dark, but it looked pretty much done developing. The camera’s flash somehow made the background look even more like a sloppy post production add-in by a middle schooler following an Adobe After Effects tutorial. 

I flashed the picture at Natalie.

“You look like you’re on the set of Californication.”

“My nose looks humongous,” Natalie grimaced.

“Come on. You look fine.”

Natalie squinted at the photo.

“I also look like I’m holding in a fart.”

“I think you just look concerned and shocked.”

“Isn’t that bad?”

“No, it tells a story. I don’t know what though...” I mulled.

“That I’m holding in a fart?” She scrunched up her nose.

“No. For all anyone knows, you might’ve narrowly avoided an accident in this picture. Or maybe you’re fighting with a stranger in the passenger seat,” I quipped.

“Whatever, man.”

I ripped the photo in half and tossed it out the window. 

“Hey, I didn’t mean it like that. It was a nice picture.”

I kept my eyes on the road ahead.

“No, it’s just like -- I know none of this is real right now. I thought maybe taking a picture would let me make sense of things, but I’m even more confused now.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a feeling.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I’m either dead right now in some kind of afterlife or I’m dreaming. Or maybe I’m stuck in a simulation. Nothing right now is real.”

“You’re tripping, bro.”

“Like, who the hell even are you? For some reason, I know your name, but like are we friends? Are we siblings? Was I a hitchhiker that you picked up off the side of the road? I have no idea.”

“Come on, you know me.”

“What are we doing right now? Like, where are we going? Can you tell me?”

Everything suddenly suspended in motion. Natalie's hand froze clenching the steering wheel, mouth open and eyes widened in bewilderment. All the cars stopped moving and the waves of the ocean came to a halt. Then, slowly, all the colors surrounding me dimmed until all I could see was black. 

The darkness slowly materialized into blurry bokeh circles. As the blobs of highlighter green, various shades of skin tone, and denim conformed into organic shapes, I was able to make out an extremely familiar looking figure sporting Michael Bay’s signature side swept blonde hair and deep set blue eyes. The man sat slouched on a stool in front of a green screen.

“What the, wait a minute--”

“I’m Michael Bay, your favorite director.”

“That’s not true, I hate Michael Bay -- or you, no offense, sorry. I’m a Tarantino guy.”

“That’s what you always tell other people, but you secretly love rewatching Transformers and you were a little too excited when they announced that they were making a new Bad Boys movie last year.”

“Can you just explain to me what’s going on right now?”

“I was in the middle of directing your movie, but you forgot your lines.”

“No, I mean, what’s really going on?”

“I don’t really know. The human mind is weird. I think you’re having a near death experience.”

“Oh. So, is that why I can’t remember anything?”

“I guess.”

“Does that mean I’m a ghost right now? Or that Natalie person is a manifestation of my dying fears or something?”

“Wrong..”

“Tell me what’s going on then,” I said, crossing my arms.

“Filmmakers show, they don’t tell. You know that,” Michael Bay chided.

“What was that whole explanation about my near death experience then?” 

“I’m not M. Night Shyamalan. My plots are extremely straightforward and I don’t wait until the end to reveal the plot twist.”

“Ok then, Michael Bay. Striking! Camera A rolling! Camera B rolling! Sound rolling! Take 2, action?”

“I’m the director here, I say action.”

“Well, it’s the inside of my head so…”

“Don’t stretch yourself too thin.”

“Stretch myself too thin?”

“You’re the lead actor. Focus on remembering your lines and feeling the emotions. Leave directing to the director.”

The greenscreen faded into white. An image resembling my old dorm room in Westwood slowly began increasing in opacity until it became completely superimposed across the blankness. A Nipsey Hussle poster hung above my bed. My tripod and Ronin S were strewn across the floor at the foot of my bed. A lensless Sony a7 III peeked at me from across the room, perched on top of a shelf. The small technicolor electric dots from the windows of distant city buildings were the only splashes of life in the pitch black outside my window. Inside, there was plenty of mood lighting from the dim blue lights in my PC tower and my pink flamingo-shaped neon sign hanging next to the poster. 

Natalie sat up, the pink and blue LED lights tracing the outline of the loose strands of her curls and long spidery lashes. Her caramel complexion was tinted a purple hue under my room’s soft lights. She had one arm propping herself on top of my bare body. She looked down at me, half-smile plastered on her face as her eyes settled on mine gently. My heart started beating out of my chest. I darted my eyes away. I knew it was irrational, but I felt like if I kept staring at her, she’d start reading my mind.

“What are you looking at?” I said, eyes pointed at my desk on the other side of the room.

“Now I can’t look at you?” I could hear the widening smile in her voice.

I turned my eyes back toward her and our gazes met once again. My heart thumped in a chant-like rhythmic, like “LOOK away, LOOK away, LOOK away”.

She leaned down and kissed my cheek, grazing her lips down my face until hers met mine. I let myself enjoy the softness of mouth until a sense of overwhelming anxiety and panic creeped into my body. My heart sped up and beat another mantra, ”STOP now, STOP now, STOP now”.

I gently pushed her off of me.

“We can’t do this. You have to leave.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. But it just doesn’t seem right.”

“Why?”

“I… don’t know,” I said dejectedly. I cupped my head between my hands and massaged my temples. “I can’t remember.”

As I was sitting there, I allowed myself to space out. A microsecond of complete darkness followed. Suddenly, I jerked awake. After that inelegant smash cut, I found myself sitting in front of a desk. Bookshelves adorned with colored neon lights surrounded me. To my right, there was a gigantic window exposing a wide angle view of a nighttime downtown LA skyline. 

Next to me, Natalie was gulping down a can of beer. We were seated on a leather loveseat. Empty bottles of hard seltzer and beer were strewn across the table in front of my old Macbook. I was hit with a sudden sense of deja vu.

“Are you ok? You just passed out for a second there…” she said, slightly slurring her words.

“Yeah. Weirdly, I think I remember this.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you tipsy?”

“Clearly not as tipsy as you.”

I looked at my laptop screen. There was a clip playing from this anime movie called Mind Game.

“The art in this video is cool as hell by the way. Where do you find all this dope indie stuff?” She pointed at the screen.

“Mm. Right before this I showed her ‘Fantasy’ by dyE, Waking Life, and some Thundercat songs.” I chuckled under my breath.

“What did you say?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Do you mind if I lie in your lap?”

“Go ahead.”

She curled herself against my stomach and put one arm around my waist with her eyes closed. She delicately traced a finger down a small corner of my back.

“You’re so comfortable.”

“Hey, Natalie?”

“Mm?”

“I already know what you’re going to say, but… what are we doing right now?”

“I want somewhere to sleep and you’re my pillow.”

“What about Ryan?”

“What about him?”

“Aren’t you seeing him?”

“Yeah, but what does that have to do with us?”

“Isn’t this wrong?”

“I feel like this is pretty innocent, no?”

“If you say so.”

The colors around me gradually desaturated. A faint luminous image slowly gained opacity, overlapping the still of the library translucently until it completely eclipsed it. The first thing I felt was a small breeze wafting its way through my loose T-shirt. As I took in my surroundings, I was hit with another wave of deja vu. Next to me, the red neon lights from the Hard Rock Cafe sign illuminated the highlights of Natalie’s profile. The dim yellow of passing cars’ headlights shaded in the highlights and midtones of her face, complementing the butterscotch of her skin. Across the street, the sign for Capitol Records stood erect against the plain building. Cars drifted lazily down the road, filling the asphalt until it resembled a red and yellow LED river.

“You know, I really admire you.”

“Why?” I said, trying to hold back a knowing smirk.

“When I tagged along with you to that one shoot, I’ll be honest, I was like… how the hell are you going to make this work? The model had no idea what she was doing and you were shooting in like, the grossest part of the metro.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I watched you work, and I was like, damn… I gotta learn from him. You just like, followed your gut and kept at it. Not a lot of photographers can get that creative with such a limiting location.

“Thanks. That really means a lot.”

“I’m not just saying that to suck up to you either, I mean it.”

“I know.”

“Really--”

Everything froze again. All the cars stopped moving and Natalie’s mouth hung open mid-sentence. As everything quickly lost opacity, the green screen rematerialized, along with Michael Bay.

“So, what, Natalie was my girlfriend? My ex?”

“Not quite.”

“What do you mean?”

“You guys were a little more complicated than that.”

“I thought your plots were straightforward and easy to follow.”

“I’m doing the best with what I’m working with here.”

“So… explain?”

“Well, Natalie was your best friend.”

“Best friends don’t… do all the stuff we did.”

“Exactly. She strung you along for years and used you for validation.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because she liked the attention you gave her. At the same time, she valued your friendship too much to cut you off.”

“Ok. So why did I feel so anxious in that one scene in my room together?”

“It’s related to a bad memory you don’t want to remember.”

“I can handle it.”

“Listen, you know how you ended up in this near death situation?”

“How?”

 “She veered off the side of the road with you in the passenger seat off the Pacific Coast Highway when you guys were headed to San Diego. Your last thought before losing consciousness was, you wish you could just forget all the bad parts of your relationship and live in the good.”

“Oh…”

“We’re in your mind right now. If you genuinely wanted to die with all the bad, toxic parts of your relationship, you would have remembered them by now.”

“Then… why the hell would you tell me she basically used me?”

“That’s how you want to remember things. You as the rosy-eyed victim, her as the selfish bitch. Owning up to your own mistakes wasn’t high on your list of priorities.”

“Isn’t that kind of… messed up?”

“Hey, it’s your way of coping with the end of your relationship. She was the love of your life, after all. Who am I to judge?”

“But like, aren’t there other things I should be coming terms with right now too? I literally almost died, shouldn’t I be thinking about my messy family or my other friends?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you’re thinking about it in another part of your head. Or this relationship is the most important for you to sort out first. Like I said, the human mind is weird.”

“Ok, so the scene that I was acting in earlier, it was what happened right before I became unconscious?”

“No, that was a different trip you guys took up the PCH. You were headed to a photography convention in this specific scene. You felt like a failure and just about gave up on your dreams to pursue film. But she forced you to go up there, where you regained your passion for art and started your photography business.

“Oh. Well, that sounds nice. Classic happy ending.”

“It was. Until you forgot your lines.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Do you want to try another take?”

“Screw it, why not. Let’s do it.”

The ocean and the cliffs reappeared, slightly tinted with green until the light crimson sunbeams allowed the white balance to restore itself. Phoebe Ryan’s voice filled up the inside of the familiar car. Michael Bay was no longer anywhere in sight. Natalie had one hand on the steering wheel, the other casually draped over the metallic blue door of her convertible. Her fingers were loosely grasping a Marlboro Red, smoke trailing off the end.

“Yeah, that’s right. You were a smoker.”

“What?” She gave me a sideways glance.

“Nothing. I love you. I think.”