KW 09:Shot on Location by Laurence Shames Read Free Book Online Page A

two men and a stretcher. They carefully maneuvered the motionless Donna onto it and flew away.
    Once the engine noise had faded there was a shocked and shamefaced silence around the set. People had a hard time meeting one another’s eyes. The cast and crew seemed in the grip of an obscure, unfocused guilt, as if they secretly believed that, by their lack of interest in Donna’s big scene and in Donna herself, they had somehow conspired in the calamity, tossed her away as a sacrifice. Cameras sat idle, lenses cast down. Lights and scrims hung forgotten in trees like pieces of last year’s Halloween display.
    The Marine Patrol arrived, then the cops. They started asking questions, and the queasy silence was replaced by a chorus of nervous, staccato answers, people jumping at the chance to speak, to purge themselves of what they’d seen. But it turned out they had almost nothing of use to say. The incident had been filmed, correct? Well, actually, it hadn’t been. It
should
have been, but it wasn’t. Only a single camera had been trained on Donna as she swam. The cameraman, knowing that the take was ruined when he saw the sound man toss aside his headset, then catching the general panic as the boat wheeled into the channel, had abandoned his post to join in the futile waving and shouting. The camera had pivoted, capturing serenely useless images of blank horizon and innocent sky.
    That left eyewitness accounts, and it turned out that, in the rush and terror of the moment, no two people had seen the exact same thing. The most basic details were a muddle. What color was the speedboat? Some people thought the hull was black, some remembered it as dark blue or green. Some people recalled an open cockpit and a windshield, others thought the cabin was enclosed. Some people had seen a lone man at the wheel; some thought they’d seen a pair of men, and others had seen no one on the boat at all. Did the boat ever seem to be intentionally steering toward the victim? No one could say one way or the other. Did it seem at any point, before or after the collision, to slow down? That was the one thing everyone agreed about. The craft had never slowed.
    The cops left. The silence returned. The cameraman who’d failed to shoot the scene busied himself with trivial tasks and tried to disappear. People wandered, paced. No one quite knew what to do with the rest of the morning. After a brief and awkward time, Jake told Claire he had to leave.
    He took the barge across to Big Sandy Key to meet the driver with the black Town Car. Seeing him alone, the driver said, “Holy shit. That chick they med-evac’d. Was that your girlfriend?”
    “She’s not my girlfriend. Where’s the hospital?”
    ---
    At the front desk of Florida Keys General, the switchboard was flashing and the receptionist was frazzled. No, there was no information available on Donna Alvarez. No, she had no idea when there would be. No, there was no one else he could speak with at this time. He was welcome to wait in the lobby but she really saw no point in it. Information would be made public as it came available. She had no other advice, she had to pick up on a call.
    For a few minutes Jake paced through the lobby, slaloming around the potted palms, his feet still squishing in his sodden sneakers. Belatedly, it occurred to him to wonder why he’d gone to the hospital at all. He and Donna were mere acquaintances. And he was, generally speaking, a rather aloof sort of person, a watcher, a teller of stories rather than a participant in them. So why was he getting involved? The best he could come up with was that he didn’t seem to have a choice. You didn’t always get to pick the people or events you cared about. Sometimes things just happened. You started as a mere bystander, a chance witness, nothing more. Then, either suddenly or by slow degrees, you noticed you’d been tricked out of your detachment, you’d crossed a line and actually gave a shit how this thing turned