The Diamond Lane Read Online Free PDF Page B

twisting the bottle shut.
    â€œSorry, poppet, going to be the opening scene. A lyrical moment ’tween a girl and her nail polish.”
    â€œI’ll sue.”
    â€œOn what grounds?”
    â€œEmotional stress caused by the revelation of all my beauty secrets.”
    â€œIs that a threat?”
    â€œA promise, bwana .”
    Mouse was opposed to fiction of any kind. She was against many things that documentarians did all the time to get the damn thing shot and over with. She was against going back and filming reaction shots. She was against staging events, against editing a sequence dramatically and passing it off as reality,against scripting people’s lines. She was a purist. Tony teased her about it all the time.
    It made her job and her life difficult. For example, the recent BabWani wedding shoot. An hour before the wedding, the bride had backed out.
    Marie-Claire was only twelve years old. She’d sat huddled against the mud wall of her mother’s hut, her skinny legs pulled up to her chest, her chin thrust between kneecaps as bony as elbows. Everything was wrong. First her hair. Then her face. In truth, the groom.
    â€œAyyyyyy-ayyyyyy-ayyyyy …” Terese, the bride’s mother, moaned. She stood over her daughter, slapping her shoulder with the backs of her wrinkled fingers. Get with it! the slap said. You should feel lucky anyone wants a skinny girl like you!
    Marie-Claire said the groom was a drunk and a glutton. She said it was well known in the village that he was cruel to his other wives. He beat them silly. He poked their buttocks with the sharp quills of porcupines, which he was supposed to sell, but would instead drag into the forest and eat all by himself.
    All this was told to the translator, Ovumi Obrumba, who turned and translated it into English for Mouse and Tony.
    As a single woman who thought marriage was dicey under the most ideal circumstances, Mouse couldn’t blame Marie-Claire for not wanting to spend the rest of her life yoked to some palm wine-guzzling sadist twice her age; however, as a documentary film producer who had spent the better part of a year trying to get this shoot off the ground, Mouse wanted to strangle her.
    â€œSo the wedding’s off?” asked Mouse, instantly regretting her words. It hadn’t come to that yet. Perhaps this was just part of the BabWani wedding experience. Perhaps all BabWani girls went through this. She didn’t want to give anyone any ideas. “What’s going on?” she amended.
    â€œThe man not good,” sniffed Ovumi. “He have pygmie wives also.” The BabWani, who shared the Ituri forest with the Bambutipygmies, thought the pygmies were stupid and odd. They had pygmie jokes like Americans had Polack jokes.
    â€œWe don’t want to interfere, but we need to know. We’re leaving tomorrow, tell her. Nous partirons demain . So if the wedding’s off …”
    Mouse tried not to think of the money they’d spent just to get this far, but she couldn’t keep herself from the cash register in her mind. It was huge, an ominous old-fashioned cash register, the kind which exists in the mind of every documentary film producer.
    Travel expenses. Ca-ching! Food. Ca-ching! Ovumi, who received a salary and expenses. Ca-ching! The BabWani guide, Tanisa, who’d brought them through the forest from the Catholic mission. Ca-ching! In addition to the cigarettes and clock-radio, Tanisa was receiving a daily wage out of petty cash. Ca-ching! The matabeesh , to secure a reliable Land Rover from the Office des Routes, the highway department, to get to the Catholic mission. Ca-ching! The film stock. Ca-ching! The audio tape. Ca-ching! A new magazine for the camera. Ca-ching!
    Ca-ching! Ca-ching! Ca-ching!
    Thousands of dollars, hundreds of days, dozens of arguments. Mouse saw the production flash in front of her eyes. She told herself: Get a grip. It can still work out. Never forget