Measure Her

By Connor Kerns

Harris is obsessed: with Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure; and with the woman playing Isabella in his film version of it. Perdita, doing makeup for Harris' film, is convinced that a friend's death was not suicide. Portland, Oregon stands in for Shakespeare's seedy Vienna as Harris seeks redemption from a bad marriage through art and love. Meanwhile, Perdita plays novice detective. The two stories parallel the elites and the comics in Shakespeare's play.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Connor Kerns
• Release date: Dec 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370073405

Connor Kerns

Connor lives in Portland, Oregon. He started writing poetry at the age of 11, and his first published poetry book was Image Made Word (1990, Roan LTD).He got up the nerve to start e-publishing novels in 2020, and the following titles are available: The Hero of Houston, an eco-thriller; Measure Her, a comedy-romance; Blue Blossom, a historical memoir set in World War II; and a sci-fi/fantasy trilogy, The Three Books of Wisecraft series.Premieres of play adaptations of Jane Austen novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, were produced by Quintessence: Language & Imagination Theatre, where he was Artistic Director. Other productions of his plays include: Pride and Prejudice, The Child is Father of the Man, Face Reader, and Treatment (Quintessence); A Bawdy Tale (Montgomery Street Players); Zaney (Arts Equity); I Go to War and Vaward of Pallas 3 (Epicurean); The Folio (CoHo) and Where No Storms Come (Stark Raving Theatre).He is also a director, having received his MFA in Directing at the University of Portland, and he taught acting for 24 years. His book Imaginative Doing, Collected Essays on Acting was published in 2013.

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Measure Her

By Connor Kerns

Copyright 2016 Connor Kerns

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. Measure Her remains the copyrighted property of the author, Connor Kerns, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy. Thank you for your support.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Caldera for assistance in writing the opening chapters.

Thanks also to Alexander Lumiere for his film expertise and Ron Floyd for editorial assistance.

Prologue

She was so still she might have been a sculpture.

Suddenly she raised the broadsword to cheek height—fast!--glinting in the sunlight before she struck his shield. His whole body shuddered and he backed off, but she came on without pausing; he blocked a cut with his own sword and grunted. His palm was sweat-wet. She didn’t make a sound—not a sound in bed, either. Why did that cross his mind now? He blocked a thrust with his shield, but he was exposed on the right side. She pivoted and the sun pierced his eyes for a moment and he cursed and fell backwards, hearing her stroke whoosh over his head. He chucked the shield and held the sword up just in time to fend off another blow bringing him to the ground. He rolled and readied again, panting.

She stood still like before. Distracted, he watched her chest heaving, and he smiled, a remark on his lips. He never got it out—dropping her shield and raising her sword with both hands overhead, she charged. As he shifted his weight he marveled she had such strength in her small arms. He angled his blade to receive the blow but she feinted, arced to his right side, swung parallel to the ground; he lowered his own sword to parry, but the weapon slipped from his hand and fell to the turf, and the last thing he heard was:

Thou’rt dead.

Chapter 1: L.A.

Be absolute for death. (Measure for Measure)

In Harris’ dream the black leather whip cracked.

Harris sat up suddenly, a little groggy, afternoon lull. A rancid meaty smell—maybe the kitchen garbage, maybe something outside the open sliding door. He swallowed a strange taste in his mouth—metallic and salty.

He started to swear and then remembered he could have awakened at his day job several years ago, his desk surrounded by cheap faux wood dividers, fluorescent lights, moldy-mottled carpet squares and piles of busy-work. He closed his lips and heaved himself upright. He gripped hard the vinyl chair back and steadied himself, welts whitening on his fingers. As he walked to the slider the thick carpet pad cushioned his steps, his polished shoes reflected the track lights.

He slid open the screen and squinted outside. No clouds, a warm wind, smog, the sky an artificial purple-orange. He could never shoot his film in California—too much sun. He needed grey to shoot his film. Whenever he could he was thinking about it, planning it, imagining camera angles . . . but he was supposed to sign Zig’s next contract today.

He stood on the balcony, a little dazed. He had fallen asleep instead of facing the reality that he should escape, now, before he never did get the hell out. He was sleeping 12 hours a day sometimes. Now he was awake. Now he had to decide.

He leaned his belly against the balcony rail and looked down—15 stories to pavement. How many feet? No matter, far enough. He could just step up onto the lowest bar, lean over and fall off.

For the last three years and nine months death had fascinated him. He stepped up and leaned a little farther and stared hard at the concrete. He thought, These are the last things I will think before I die. He closed his eyes. He slowly shifted his weight forward and felt the blood pressure in his nose and behind his eyes. He felt his abdominal muscles tighten and complain—he was out of shape. He spread his arms out. Some lines from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure jumped into his mind:

"If I must die,
I will encounter darkness as a bride

And hug it in my arms."

He lurched backwards, off the rail. He regained his balance against the door frame. He leaned there breathing hard.

He weaved back to the desk and picked up his treatment of Measure Her—his film project. He held it hard against his chest. He stood still, holding it. Then, he relaxed and spread his arms out.

I gotta get outta here, he said out loud.

He packed everything he wanted in less than a half an hour.

Harris, yer gaining weight—not really! Sit down, have a cigar? Coke? Joint? Drink?

Harris shook his head four times. He imagined Zig’s childhood—a small, unattractive skinny kid with a hook nose, an abusive father and a weak mother. He shivered a little.

Fuckin monk. Zig laughed. Harris looked at himself—his slack hands, lean frame, pale skin—wiry, Kelli had always called him. Zig was right--Harris had been a monk since he’d arrived in L.A.. Sorry I kept ya, I was doin a little business. Zig winked at him and chuckled. Zig’s tie, resembling braided pubic hair, jiggled with the laugh. I love this job. So, what’s new? Before Harris could reply Zig’s fingers were fluttering and his mouth moving again. Oh, ya shoulda went to Tahoe with us—what a party, Marty. Almost drove off the road, Lube and Rocket started in the backseat before we even got to the mountains! Wish ya’d had yer camera, Christ—FREE FOOTAGE! The tie jiggled again.

I saw the contract, Zig, and--

How ‘bout some olives or crackers or somethin?

No thanks, nothing, umm, the contract--

Ya know that last flick had a lotta talkin in it, Harris. Okay? Ya see what I’m sayin? Not enough cum shots, okay, so less on the talkin and more on the spew, right? D’ya see what I mean? I know yer the ‘artist’ (Zig made big quotation marks with his fingers) but I gotta answer to the motherfuckers who’re distributin, all right? If they squeeze my testicles I gotta squeeze yers. Zig laughed. Know what I’m sayin?

Zig, I want my paycheck, I’m taking a break.

What happened to the—huh?

I’m going back to Oregon for a while.

Shit, you don’t like the contract? What’s wrong with it—this is good, these are all the people you like ta work with—what, you don’t want Mounds? You don’t want Lush-us? You don’t want Teze?

Zig, I’m taking a break, I’m not negotiating your contract because I’m not taking your contract.

Fuck, man. Fuck. Zig’s hands stopped fluttering. His nose twitched. His tie sagged. He stared at Harris and Harris waited. Fuck. More silence. Fuck. Whatta ya doin to me?

Zig, I need a break. I’m going to Oregon. Harris suppressed everything he felt: a mixture of annoyance, impatience, fear and condescension. Give me my paycheck, man, for the last flick.

Zig got up and started gesticulating and pacing. He swore, mostly. Behind him the 500 glossy stills (of women with semen dripping off their faces) flushed under the lights. Then he talked about his relationship with Harris and everything he had done for Harris and asked, rhetorically, how could Harris do this? He talked about how good of a producer he was and how good this next porno flick would be and how the world was begging for Harris—with a little less talkin—to pump out another fantastic feature. He argued that Harris couldn’t leave, because he was Zig’s best man and the Film Maverick of L.A., the director who ‘made’ the actresses sigh and put out and who ‘made’ the actors act like men instead of lugs, who brought integrity and cleanliness to the biz by discouraging body-piercing, boob jobs and anal action and who actually cared if the women had an orgasm, Jesus: a fucking genius!

Harris reached out and opened Zig’s checkbook while the speech continued. He wrote himself the check while Zig reminded him about expectations and promises and orgies, while he pointed out that in Oregon they still drove around in covered wagons and didn’t have electricity for Christ’s sakes, and chided him that L.A. is heaven on earth and that leaving it was not only stupid but harmful to the health of an artist’s ego, because Harris was one hell of a fucking artist! Harris handed Zig the check and a pen. Zig’s mouth kept working but the pubic hair tie wilted and touched the desk and the hands stopped fluttering and signed the check.

Zig paused a moment when Harris opened the door, and Harris said, Bye Zig.

Wait, ya comin back, aren’t ya? When ya comin back?

Don’t know, Zig. Harris closed the door.

Wait!

He heard the door open and Zig follow him down the hallway and past the dressing rooms where a couple of ‘actresses’ were getting high, across the sound stage past the kitchenette where Maria del Campos was on her knees scrubbing the refrigerator grill—

Adios, Señora, vaya con Dios.

--into the small lot full of Beamers. He heard Zig swearing and calling, Wait! right as Harris shut the door to his old Nissan; he heard Zig get louder as he backed up, pulled forward and signalled. Zig’s hands and his mouth never stopped working.

But Harris did not speak. He waved once and turned the wheels north and did not look behind him to see if, for the first time in two years, he’d silenced Zig at last.

He didn’t want to stop the car until he crossed the Oregon-California border, but he needed gas and a bathroom.

He picked a gas station on the right side of the road just before the freeway on-ramp. The retail area was littered with Styrofoam cups. He served himself coffee, first washing out one of the cups from the fountain and then cooling the hot bitterness with chemical creamer. He paid, guzzled the coffee and tossed the cup. As he walked to his car the hot sun beat down and his face grew prickly from it and the coffee.

He breathed in. The smell of the baking asphalt and the look of the developments hanging along Interstate 5 made him anxious.

He opened the Nissan’s trunk. It contained a laptop, a bottle of rum left over from Zig’s birthday party, his unfinished screenplay, a small tattered copy of Measure for Measure, a whip, and a briefcase full of $500,000--every dollar he’d saved during his three-year monastic career as a porno director.

He picked up the rum, thought better of it, and opened the briefcase. He took out $60 and closed the trunk. One of the bills blew out of his hand and landed in an oil smear.

Fuck.

He remembered that his car was so old the stereo didn’t have a pod jack, so he rummaged through his old discs, glancing up at I-5 periodically. He looked for something mindless and settled on Van Halen:

"You know I’ve been to the edge.

And then I stood and looked down..."

Freeway lanes, expensive cars, crouching apartment complexes, strip malls, fumes, L.A. rock, a caffeine buzz…

Harris wanted some release as he drove. He wanted to escape himself and the way his mind worked. But his mind worked the same. It ran over the same thing it always ran over.

He replayed the look on Kelli’s face as she told him she wanted him to leave. That repeat moment. That moment seemingly sealed onto his inner eyelids so that he could not escape seeing it replay every blink, or when his eyes were shut, in every detail and always looking for more or for different shades of meaning, altering his responses and hers, re-writing, rehearsing, re-shooting the scene a hundred different ways . . . subtly different each time.

It was three years and nine months today. He had moved and taken a dirty job—that was how he had reinvented himself without Kelli. The result was a darker, bleaker version of his already dark and bleak self.

Kelli’s mouth. He had been looking at Kelli’s mouth, not her eyes, when she had said, I’m not in love with you any more. I’m gonna leave.

The acid those words had generated coursed through him.

Kelli had seemed so far away. It was a complete surprise in the moment, what he called the ‘darkest’ moment . . . but not all that surprising after analyzing it afterwards. He wasn’t surprised when their friends divided and most of them went with Kelli. He lost patience in work at his inane office day job, and in living alone. He lost interest in the plays he directed and the acting classes he taught and the family each new one engendered, even though they had once seemed so important.

After a few months worth of rum and sleep, he sobered enough to pursue his dream of being a film director. It seemed like the only good thing left in him—the only thing that wasn’t bleak. He had to get the hell out of Oregon. That’s when he went south to California.

All the interviews, the parties, the ass-kissing, the bogus screenwriting courses, the phone calls . . . everything he did was driven by Kelli’s final words. Months later, when all the smiling and schmoozing had gotten him nothing, he frowned and found Zig and the patios of pornstars. Kelli’s words drove him to sign a contract and to write the ‘story’ for his first feature, which he named Kelly Green’s Mean Snatch.

And now, he was going back north so he could get the hell out of L.A.. Every grain of coke he’d been offered he’d stashed and sold; every porno flick check he’d put in the bank; and now every one of those dollars spread tight in his locked briefcase.

Van Halen started over and he ejected the disc. Some annoying radio voice prompted him to punch the power button off, and he drove with the air conditioning blasting and I-5 gradually surrendering lanes as he moved north.

His phone rang. He considered throwing it out the window. It rang again. He couldn’t stand the noise—maybe he should just smash it with one punch.

Harris.

Hey, man, it’s Toby. Listen, can you come over tonight?—I think my uncle might be at this party--

Toby, I’m on the road—I’m leaving L.A.

What?!

I shoulda told you. I had to get the hell out.

But what about our film! I mean . . . my uncle . . . shit, man . . . do you know how much work I put in?

Toby was a nice 25-year old film-school drop out. The other camera guys called him Wiggle. During a shoot Toby could not stand still, so Harris gave him the steady-cam tracking shots and instructed him to wear baggy pants and boxers to alleviate his ‘tension’. Harris even let him go to the bathroom between takes. But he still wiggled.

He had been fired routinely by other directors, but Harris kept him because the two of them talked film and philosophy. The other crewmen mostly talked about what toys they bought themselves: SUVs, boats, entertainment systems.

Toby wanted to be a ‘real’ cameraman. He liked Bergman and Soderbergh (weird pairing, Harris thought). One night, drinking too much rum, Harris had outlined his film idea of Shakespeare’s dark play, Measure for Measure. Toby was hooked and dedicated himself to finding a backer.

My old uncle’s loaded, Toby had said. Pitch your film to him, man.

You’ll set it up?

Yeah, yeah. I’ll have him over for drinks. Hey, did you know old Zig’s brother-in-law is a distributor? Maybe we can hit him once we got it shot.