Raymond Chu's message contained an address that Kein had copied into the notes app on his phone the night before.
[Mayne Cold Storage — 3820 S. Alameda St. Tuesday. Your call time: 11:00 AM. Badge at reception.]
The bus dropped him off two blocks away at 10:51.
He showed his ID to a man with a clipboard at the entrance. The man searched for his name, crossed something out with a pen, and handed him a laminated badge without looking at him.
"Door B, all the way to the left."
Door B was a gray metal sheet someone had left slightly open with a wooden wedge.
[59 Units]
Kein pushed it.
The cold of the warehouse had completely disappeared.
Eight meters of ceiling. Twelve tripod lights turned on since early morning, each the size of a man. Cables crossing the floor in every direction, marked with different colored tape. Two large cameras on rails. A lighting crane at the back. Forty people moving without colliding with each other, as if they all knew a map that no one had handed out.
Kein stood in the doorway for four seconds.
'Chaos, but chaos with order.'
He identified three groups.
The first was in the center, near the main area: folding chairs with names written on paper taped to the backrests. Actors holding drink cups and portable fans on the floor. Two makeup artists doing touch-ups while the actors looked at their phones or talked to each other.
The second was on the left, behind a production tape line: cushioned chairs, a long table with snacks, two men in suits who didn't look like actors or technicians. A man with three-day stubble pointed at something on a monitor with his finger.
John Thorne.
The third group was at the back, separated from the rest by a corridor of stacked equipment: at least thirty people, some sitting on the floor with their backs against the wall and others on wooden stools.
No fans.
An assistant passed by handing out pages.
No one in the back received one.
Kein looked at the three groups.
Viktor was a minor character with ten minutes of screen time.
Not main.
He walked toward the back.
———//————————————//———
The stool was exactly the wrong height.
Not dramatically. Accumulatively: too high to rest both feet flat on the floor, too low to lean back comfortably against the wall. After ten minutes, the spine began to register its opinion.
The heat was another matter.
At that distance from the lights the air was dense and static. No circulation. Kein felt sweat on the back of his neck fourteen minutes after sitting down. The room smelled of hot cables and old wood.
A camera technician crossed the corridor without looking at the group.
Then a lighting technician.
Then an assistant with a tablet and four folders under his arm.
None of them looked up.
Kein observed the pattern.
'The people in the back do not exist until someone needs them to exist.'
A man around fifty sat on the stool next to him. Broad face, the wrinkles of someone who had spent many hours under lights or under the sun, which in practical terms was the same thing. His badge had worn edges.
He took a paper napkin and wiped his forehead.
"First time I've come to a set without air conditioning."
He didn't say it to anyone in particular.
Kein counted the active lights from where he sat.
"There are twelve high-power units and four auxiliary ones on the side. The ceiling is lower than usual. The heat has nowhere to go."
The man looked at him.
"Well then." He folded the napkin. "Do you study lighting?"
"No."
The man put the napkin away.
"Brent."
"Kein."
"First time on a shoot?"
"Yes."
Brent nodded with the calm of someone who no longer expected anything different from a first time.
"The second one is already different. The tenth you don't even remember."
Another technician crossed without looking.
Kein made the calculation in silence.
"How many do you have?"
"Shoots or years?"
"Years."
Brent thought for a second.
"I started at twenty-two." He looked at the ceiling for a moment. "There has to be something close to thirty-four."
He cleaned his glasses with the inside of his shirt.
"Which character did you get?"
"Viktor."
Brent left the glasses still.
He looked at him.
"Viktor…? The one who confronts the detective in the interrogation room?"
"I have the lines. I haven't seen the full context yet."
Brent slowly finished putting on his glasses.
"For your first shoot that's…" He searched for the word. "Significant."
He looked toward the main area where someone had just brought sparkling water to the seated actors.
"I have the third body in scene four." He gave the stool a light slap. "No lines. Like always."
He said it the same way as before.
Like data.
Then he added:
"Some of us start with 'something small.' Then we keep doing 'something small.' And when you realize it, twenty years have passed."
An assistant shouted a number from the other side of the set.
Brent didn't even look.
"Small fish have it hard here. But something is something, right?"
Someone called Brent from the corridor with two fingers raised.
The man stood without hurry, picked up his badge and gave Kein a brief pat on the shoulder.
"Good luck with Viktor."
He left.
Kein looked at the space where the stool had been.
Thirty-four years.
The third body of scene four.
A camera technician passed beside him without looking.
Then someone from lighting.
Then the assistant with the folders, returning in the opposite direction, still without raising his head.
Kein stood up, found a table with stacked cardboard boxes near the wall and took one. Inside: a sandwich wrapped in wax paper, an apple, and a 500 ml bottle of still water, neither cold nor sparkling.
He returned to the stool.
He unwrapped the sandwich.
Ham. Sliced bread. A lettuce leaf that had lost the battle against the warehouse heat before someone had put it inside. He ate without rushing.
It didn't taste bad.
It didn't taste good either.
It had the exact taste required to be edible.
He drank half the water.
He looked toward the center of the set.
The main actors were rehearsing a scene.
An assistant held a portable fan in front of one of them.
Kein calculated the distance.
Thirty meters.
'Thirty meters can be the difference between two completely different careers.'
He waited.
———//————————————//———
At 13:42, someone shouted his name from the other side of the warehouse.
It wasn't a calm voice.
"Adler!"
Kein stood up, followed the sound through the corridor of equipment, and found John Thorne with a headset in his hand and the face of someone who had spent time looking for something that should have been easy to find.
"What were you doing back there?"
"I didn't know where to go."
Thorne looked at him.
Looked toward the back where Kein had been.
Looked at him again.
He exhaled through his nose.
"Come."
He led him to a folding chair with his name on the back. Next to it was a small fan already running. On the nearby table, a bottle of water with ice and a plate with cut fruit.
Thorne went back to the monitor without adding anything else.
Kein sat down.
The fan moved air from the floor.
The interface appeared on the edge of his field of vision.
[57 Units]
A camera technician passed by and nodded at him.
Then an assistant placed another bottle of water on the table without Kein having asked for it.
Three minutes later an actor approached with a folded script under his arm and asked if it was his first time working with Thorne.
Kein looked at the fan.
'Thirty-four years.'
"Yes."
The actor nodded.
"He's demanding. But fair. The only thing he asks is that you show up where you're supposed to."
"Adler."
It was Thorne from the monitor.
Kein stood up.
"Your shoot starts in five minutes."