We Eat Our Own by Kea Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

is on the floor across the room where you’ve just hurled it, and hot tears are clotted up in the corners of your eyes,the telephone in your hand. You’re spinning the dial without thinking, missing the country code, yelling Shit and pounding the hang-up button and swiping furiously through the numbers again. Your thoughts are so loud—Fuck the hotel bill, I don’t care if it costs seven bucks a minute—that when you hear the sound of Kay’s phone ringing, it barely registers. Your blood is pumping hard in your ears. When you hear Kay’s voice, it punctures you.
    Hello?
    The air-conditioning whirs. You swallow salt. It’s me, you manage. It’s me, I’m here.
    There is static on the line. She says your name and hangs a question mark on it.
    I’m in Colombia, you say. I got a movie. I’m sorry I couldn’t talk about it, I—it was a sudden thing.
    There is a silence. When her voice comes back, it is striped by static.
    You have to talk—I can’t hear—tell me where—
    Kay, you’re breaking up.
    Static. Please—
    You shout every syllable: I’m in Co-lo-mbia!
    A terrible electronic sound scribbles out of the phone.
    Kay?
    Static.
    Kay!
    Your face is wet and your palms are wet and the phone is wet in your hand. The static changes pitch and squeals for a full minute before you give yourself permission to hang up.
    As soon as you do it, the phone rings again, so loud it makes the nightstand tremble. You pick it up quick and shout her name.
    On the other end, someone is speaking English with an Italian accent. A man.
    Who is Kay? he says.
    You can’t remember your own language. The plastic blinds slap in the breeze from the air conditioner. Your suitcase is already packed and zipped, lying at a diagonal across the brown carpet. You will never feel a quiet again like you have in this room: humid, incomplete.
    My girlfriend, you say, as slow as you can. Kay is my girlfriend, I was just talking to her. I’m sorry. Who is this?
    The voice is aggravated, speaking too fast. He tells you he is an associate of the producer, and that he’s left the meter running in the taxi. That we are very late and need to leave for the airport. Please to get down here, now?
    A surreal heat spreads through your face and down the veins of your neck. Your mouth moves by some mechanism you’re not controlling. Now? We’re leaving now?
    The associate sighs loudly and hangs up the phone.
    Before you leave, you stand in the door with your suitcase, the teeth of the key biting into your palm. If you stay right here, facing into the hotel room, you can feel the churning cold of the air-conditioning on your front and the laundry-room heat of the hallway behind you, each in equal measure, dividing your body into two exact halves.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    In the final cut of Jungle Bloodbath, there are no shots of your character on a plane, no mention of how he got to the jungle. Just smash cut from the opening sequence, and there he is: Richard, sitting on the bench of a canoe. He is slipping off a lens cover, filming the center buttons of his own shirt as he struggles with the focus. Then he picks the camera up and holds it high above his head to block the sun out of his eyes.
    Richard in safari khaki, in a green boat floating over khaki-­colored water. He squints straight into the lens and says, Veronica Perez went missing six weeks ago.
    The delivery is uncertain. By this point in filming, you won’t even know who plays Veronica—if anyone will play Veronica, or if, by the time you find her, Veronica will be reduced to a couple of prop limbs and a gallon jug of corn-syrup blood splashed across a sacrificial altar. You’ll shoot this scene at high noon, a weird midday wind loud over the camera’s built-in mic, water flashing at the edges of the frame. Two other actors will be in the boat behind you, rowing at the stern and the midship thwart,