HOLD ME DOWN 'TIL I LOVE YOU

     "Lucifer’s Tarantella" is going to be huge on the indie film scene. That’s what the Italians at the big table in the back of Adolph’s think anyway. Pavlon, the film’s director, who sits in the corner, away from all of them, has different ideas however. He wrote the thing and now he’s having his doubts.
     When Pavlon goes out for a smoke, the producers join him and immediately attack his underplayed mood.
     "Pavlon, it’s going to be fine," says Guiseppe, the roly-poly producer in broken English. You’re letting this process get to you. Just do what you do and don’t think about anything else. We’ll handle it." He turns to the skinnier of the two producers. "Cuffy! Tell him."
     Pavlon shuffles his feet, looking down as he smokes.
     "Your best work is the only thing we care about, Pavlon," Cuffy says softly. "And ‘Lucifer’s’ is going to be monumental, I’m telling you. Now, come join us at the table. Please."
     Guiseppe and Cuffy each take turns kissing Pavlon on the cheek as they re-enter Adolph’s.
     Pavlon smokes his cigarette down to the filter, flicks the cherry into the street and looks down at his fingertips. He notices the age lines around his knuckles and the scarlet ring he wears on his index finger. He tries to remember where he got it from, but he can’t come up with the place or the time. His thoughts meander. The pressure to produce cinematic transcendence, the pain of making sure that this one is far superior to his last, his dissatisfaction with his characters and how they changed from the time he wrote them to the moment that the film was cast with flesh and bone actors, none of which he’s content with. The compromises he’s made up to this point to get ‘Lucifer’s’ made is staggering to him. So many. And once Guiseppe and Cuffy entered the picture – the money men – everything changed.
     "Vision is nothing without money," he thinks, "yet money will destroy the vision, eventually."  He lobs the cigarette butt and slowly walks back into Adolph’s with his head hung low.
     The entire table of Italians immediately rises and explodes with applause and cheers, led by Guiseppe and Cuffy.  "Directore, directore," they all shout in unison, again led by the two producers.
     As the applause dies down, Guiseppe heads to the bar and begins chatting up the bartender, pointing at the table as he speaks. Pavlon takes his seat at the table and is set upon by ‘Lucifer’s’ ingenue, Sheron Atille, a buxom, dark-haired presence of a woman.
     "I hear from Guiseppe that you’re a darker shade of blue," she says. "What can we do?"
     "Nothing, I’m afraid," he replies.
     "We shall see about that," she utters, pulling back his long, black hair and whispering into his ear. "You are the light, Pavlon. You are piercing the dark tunnel we ride in. Don’t stop or we are all doomed to die in the darkness."
     Pavlon’s hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as Sheron’s words brush warmly against his earlobe.
     "Do you think Guiseppe knows?" he asks her.  She pulls away quickly from him, a shadow of the woman she was but a second ago.
     Guiseppe suddenly lets out a wail as he enters, helping a waiter with bottles of wine and wearing a napkin on his balding head.  "To Pavlon," he shouts as he pours into the glasses set down by the waiter. The rest of the Italians, actors, writers and various hangers-on let out a brash ‘To Pavlon’ on the heels of Guiseppe’s.
     Sheron leans back into Pavlon.  "When he knows," she says, "we’ll know. Now, drink. We only have tonight. This moment. And what if it is our last?"
     Pavlon takes a great swig from his wine glass and wishes he was outside smoking again.




-SLL