Montserrat’s mother had criticized Tristán’s decision loudly, too, warning that if her daughter ever dared to pull a stunt like that, she’d beat her bloody. Montserrat graduated from high school, studied accounting like her mom wanted—her sister was already working in that field, and her mother thought it was a sensible job for her younger daughter, too—and worked part-time at a business that rented audio equipment for musicians and for parties. She graduated with mediocre grades, spent most of her time trying to learn everything she could about audio, and quit her part-time job to get another part-time job at a post-production place with awful hours and awful pay.
Her mother still thought that was the worst decision of her entire life. Maybe the woman hadn’t been so wrong after all.
“Who do you work for, Montserrat?”
The last thing she wanted to discuss was her job. This was a sore subject with her mother, and she insulated her sister from her workplace issues, but the way Abel asked the question was with real interest, without any judgment. She found herself answering with a smile.
“Antares. I work on a bunch of projects. I did a bit of anime in the summer.”
“What is that?”
“Japanese cartoons. Tristán does voice work for a series from there. He plays Lancelot in Legend of the Round Table.”
Japanese was the hardest language to dub. English was also problematic. People used fewer words when speaking in English; the language was full of contractions. When you had to speak the same lines in Spanish, the dialogue could balloon. Tristán, however, dubbed Japanese cartoons with ease. It wasn’t so much that he synchronized his words to the lips of the characters, it was that he simply became the drawings on screen.
Lancelot, for example, was the most handsome and the bravest of the knights, and when Tristán spoke like Lancelot he sounded like an eager, twenty-something hero, brimming with bravado and courtly virtues. Other voice actors could master the art of the labial synch, but their performance felt wooden. Tristán seemed almost careless when he bumped into a studio, smiling, script in hand, but he was a pro nevertheless.
“Do you ever do any audio editing for films?”
“Yeah. Some post-production stuff, sometimes dubs for films they broadcast on TV, I’ve even done ‘foley art.’？”
“What is ‘foley art’？”
“Sound effects: chopping a head of lettuce to make it sound like a person is being decapitated,” she said, making a motion as if she were swinging an axe. “It varies.”
“God. It’s been so long since I worked, I probably wouldn’t be able to recognize an editing bay,” Abel said, shaking his head. “In the old days we didn’t call it that.”
“It was efectos de sala, yes. Or, to pull a ‘Gavira,’？” she said.
“Gavira! A genius, that one. Have you met him?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. Gonzalo Gavira had been a legendary Golden Age sound man. He’d worked for Bu?uel and invented the distinctive sound effects of The Exorcist. She doubted he’d worked with Abel, but the man might have a juicy tale about him after all. She suspected Abel Urueta had many juicy tales.
“A Gavira! You should have said that first,” Abel said. His tone was that of playful admonishment, like a grandfather teaching a child a lesson.
When had Urueta shot his last movie? 1966, perhaps? And afterward he mustn’t have had much contact with filmmakers. It was a little sad, when you thought about it, how a great director could be forgotten and detached from his previous world.
“Sorry, we use a lot more Americanisms now,” she said. “When they shot Tarzan in Mexico they didn’t shoot it with sound, and they had to send it to Los Angeles for all the sound effects. But we do that now.”
“They shot that at Estudios Churubusco back when…oh, it would have been ’69?” Abel said, rubbing his chin.
“From ’66 until ’68,” she said breezily. Montserrat had a good memory. You needed it with editing. “It wasn’t the first Tarzan production in Mexico: Weissmuller shot The Mermaids in Acapulco in ’48.”
“Weissmuller used to like eating at this little place near Caleta back then. Such a long time ago! I would have been twenty years old when RKO was rolling their cameras in Acapulco.” Abel smiled wistfully and refilled her wineglass. “John Wayne owned the Hotel Flamingo in Caleta, did you know that?”
“And Errol Flynn anchored nearby and lounged around the Sirocco. But I can’t remember if that was before or after his trial for statutory rape. A big creep, that one.”
“Hardly the worst or most interesting of the lot,” Abel said. “I’ll tell you a fun story after dinner, since you like old movies and their stars.”
The evening was flowing better than she’d expected. She thought she’d either clam up or talk too much, but Abel was a pleasant host; he knew what questions to ask and listened to the answers with real interest.
After the plates were cleared, they moved into the living room. This, like the dining room, was crammed with objects and furniture from previous eras, with shelves extending as high as they could, overflowing with dusty treasures. Two overstuffed velour couches were set in the middle of the living room, and that is where they sat. Tristán quickly took out a cigarette, and Abel handed him an amber-colored ashtray.
“Would you care for a brandy?” Abel asked, as he stood next to a bar cart and began filling a glass.
“I’ll have one,” Tristán said.
“I’m fine,” Montserrat said.
“Nothing better than a brandy and a cigarette in the evening. It helps with the digestion,” Abel said, filling a second glass for Tristán. The old man then sat on the couch in front of them.
With his handkerchief around his neck and his horn-rimmed glasses you could discern what Abel Urueta must have been like in his youth. A cool, snappy dresser. A rich boy. He spoke with a luxurious voice that plainly telegraphed the distance between their upbringings. Montserrat had grown up in a tough neighborhood and weathered a rough childhood. Urueta had not. And his history was imprinted in his voice. It was very difficult to erase such things. They lingered, like the scent of faded flowers. Of course, there were certain people who were able to shed their old skins and their primordial speech patterns. Tristán, for example, had the gift of mimicry. But these were rare creatures, and Tristán had never wanted to be himself in all the time since she’d first met him. When they watched horror movies, it was the sight of the monster, the Other, that terrified Tristán and the idea of becoming the hero that seduced him. Montserrat saw herself in the faces of monsters and did not wince.
“Tristán said you’ve been looking for a poster of Beyond the Yellow Door. That was a very curious movie and the last of the horror films I ever shot. Now, let me ask you something: what would you say is the most infamous horror film ever shot?”
“Infamous how? Freaks caused a scandal,” Montserrat said, thinking back to Browning’s pre-Code masterpiece. It was an oddly affectionate horror film, and in her mind far superior to Dracula. “And a few years ago Carlos Enrique Taboada was editing Jirón de Niebla when Salinas confiscated the film. I heard it from a trusty source.”