Silver Nitrate(22)
A waiter made the mistake of heading toward their table. Cornelia immediately turned to the poor kid and began talking at a brisk speed. “I’d like tuna on lettuce. No, no mayo, no mustard, no tomato, just tuna on lettuce. Okay, maybe tomato. Yes, one little tomato. I’ll have a Diet Coke with a twist of lemon and a cup of coffee. Forget the coffee, I drink too much coffee. Mineral water and a twist of lemon. Can you bring everything out at the same time? You know what, make it a chicken breast with a salad on the side.”
Montserrat had already ordered, so she simply raised her glass of water at the waiter in solidarity. He turned around in silence, with the professionalism of a man who had seen his share of eccentric customers and was not fazed by anything anymore. Cornelia was, as Tristán liked to put it, an acquired taste.
“I’m trying this nicotine patch, and all it does is piss me off,” Cornelia said as she leaned forward and set her elbows on the table. “What about you? I was going to phone you last month but then I got stuck with an assignment and how have you been?”
Montserrat informed Cornelia that she was doing fine, and Cornelia replied by beginning a long story about a mole on her back that she was having checked. Conversations with Cornelia were never linear. They diverged, her thoughts doubling back then steamrolling forward, but she was a decent friend and a good production assistant.
Finally, Montserrat was able to guide Cornelia toward the topic of Enigma and their current episode lineup.
“My hours at Antares are getting cut all the time.”
“I told you if you trained that kid, soon they’d have him doing your job in no time. Never teach anyone anything! How long have you been there? For years and years! It’s because you’re not in the union. Leeches. That’s what these people are.”
“If the owner even heard the word ‘union’ he’d fire us on the spot. Which brings me to Enigma: I have an idea for an episode.”
“Finally! I told you to get out of the sound business. It pays peanuts. What’s the idea, then?”
“I met this director, Abel Urueta. He used to make horror movies back in the day and turns out he worked on a film that was written by an occultist: Wilhelm Ewers.”
“They don’t ring a bell,” Cornelia said, scratching the spot on her arm where she wore her nicotine patch.
Montserrat talked about Urueta’s filmography and explained she could get an interview with him. By the time their food arrived, and Cornelia began picking at her chicken, Montserrat suspected she was fighting a losing battle.
“I thought you said you might have something for me if I came up with ideas for the show,” Montserrat said. “Get into production, you said.”
“Yes, but I was thinking something more like finding the Mexican Amityville. Haunted houses. Lloronas and chaneques. Jaime Maussan has people talking about energy lines, and the cover of Conozca Más is about the fate of Atlantis. You have an unknown director and a dead German writer.”
“And A?o Cero says we can discover the secrets of ancient civilizations by mediating with a crystal pyramid. My story doesn’t sound any crazier than that.”
“That’s the problem. It doesn’t sound as meaty, at least not the way you’re selling it. You’re making it all sound very proper and elegant.”
“It’s a retrospective about a lost film.”
“Yeah, and the Nazi occultist is the interesting part. So, what else do you know about him?”
“Not much,” Montserrat admitted, although she’d spent plenty of hours daydreaming about Beyond the Yellow Door.
“There’s your problem,” Cornelia said, waving her fork at Montserrat. “You need to get more info on the guy.”
“Could you give me an advance on this? That is, if I began the research,” she said, feeling that tickle of excitement she hadn’t felt in a long while with a project. At Antares they kept her on a leash.
“If you want to work for the show, you need to give me more than that. Can you sit Urueta down for a pre-interview? I can tape the formal interview in the studio, but a pre-interview would help me figure out what we have here. And show notes, research. Otherwise, it’s too difficult to gauge the material.”
“You want him on camera?”
“Yes. Nothing fancy. If it looks meaty, our going rate for freelancers is good, but without some proof of concept I can’t do anything. It’s the way the system works.”
“I know. Leeches,” Montserrat said, balling her napkin tight.
“Oh, come on. Don’t make that face! I don’t make the rules, if I could, I’d pay you ten advances. You think about it, all right? Otherwise, we could wait and see if anything opens up in the sound department.”
Fat chance. Montserrat knew she could be waiting for years for that. On Friday, Montserrat checked Riera’s Historia Documental del Cine Mexicano and searched for information on Urueta’s movies. There wasn’t anything in the eight-volume compendium about Beyond the Yellow Door, not that she expected there to be, but there was no harm in double-checking. She phoned the Cineteca and asked if she could drop by the archives and look at their fact sheets and press clippings for Urueta’s other films. She typed up a page of notes with whatever she remembered about Urueta and what she’d heard about Beyond the Yellow Door. She had no idea who had worked on the production aside from Urueta and the screenwriter, Romeo Donderis. She’d check his filmography at the Cineteca, too.