Scar Flowers Read Online Free PDF Page B

nose and rubbed his eyelids.
    “ I’m over here,” Paul said. He kept his voice low but not so soft that she might think he’d be afraid to raise it. She was not wearing the cameo today.
    “You’ve changed from the Paul I know,” she said without turning. “I’m starting to think you don’t need to see me anymore.”
    The smell of his neighbor’s toothpaste mixed with the odor of overly sugared coffee, chemicals from freshly printed festival brochures, and new carpeting. He wished for an open window, fresh air.
    “Only last week you were all too glad to get my help,” he said.
    Mercer left his companions and headed toward the dais, where Gloria showed him to his chair and introduced the panelists.
    “Mr. Mercer, if you could address your outsider status that you mentioned this morning,” she began.
    “In the industry or the culture?” Mercer pulled the micro -phone closer. “In the industry, as a former independent director I’m what’s known as newly assimilated, thanks to StarBorn Studios. Happily so, for my agent and my accountant especially. I have a unique perspective on popular culture because my ethnic background is so diverse that I have no real racial identity. As filmmakers, your perspective is your art, your gift. That’s the important thing.” He pushed the microphone back toward his neighbor.
    “Would you care to elaborate on your heritage?”
    Mercer didn’t actually roll his eyes, but just about. “For those of you with calculators, the formula is three-eighths Métis, one-eighth Cree, and a scant one-half mongrel European with a jigger of French-Canadian. I’ve got that memorized for when I talk to Indians from the rez. Exact heritage and whether you were raised on a reservation or not—and I wasn’t—matters in native culture. And which tribe . . . Métis is French for mixed, usually French or British with Indian. Politically, the Métis aren’t considered true Indians by some, but that just means I don’t have a tribe to answer to if I end up making a flop with StarBorn’s money.”
    That got a laugh.
    The moderator smiled. “In thirty seconds or less, how would you say your identity—or lack of it—affects your career? Is it a liability or a blessing?”
    “I got a grant for Native Americans to get into film school—a blessing. But when I tried to get financing for St. Sebastian , the first twenty investors I approached couldn’t make the leap from imagining me as some kind of Tonto to my playing a Christian martyr. That perception of Indians as stoic, as either side-kicks or savages, has been the hardest barrier. And I’m not even really Indian.”
    Beside him, Leah sat riveted, hands clutching her brochure. What did she find so interesting? Mercer slouched and turned his name card end over end. His shirt was wrinkled, one cuff frayed and both unbuttoned. His gestures, when he stretched or pushed the hair out of his eyes, had a languid, feminine quality, and his rumpled hair could be either purposely styled or just unwashed.
    F ran had fallen for it too. Paul had heard from her about Mercer’s publicity stunts, sending one lead actress, then his wife, dressed as her film character to talk shows, to go onstage with mud and grass plastered in her hair, shred her clothes with a razor, wander into the audience, and interview the other guests with absurd questions. For his Critical Mass premiere, Mercer hired “paparazzi” and rented a red carpet for stars’ entrances; the event took place in a dilapidated drive-in theater in Kansas. Of Mercer living in his car while he made a documentary on street people, Fran said it made him a “fresh voice.”
    Shrewd marketer was more like it.
    “. . . before contact with white culture, native visual artists were concerned only with conveying the essence of a thing—not what the eye sees. And that frees the thing from a restricted iden-tity and makes it a symbol.” Mercer dropped his name card on the table. “So does