Another Thing to Fall by Laura Lippman Page A

was a run-down meeting room. “The union hall.” Tess stepped into the room, marveling at the level of detail — the newspaper splayed across the Formica-topped table, the mismatched chairs, the faded memos tacked to the bulletin board, the coffee cups. There was even a fake coffee stain on one table. Tess couldn’t help but approve of such conscientiousness.
    She was taken aback, however, by the view through the “window” — an extremely realistic photographic backdrop of the waterfront, with cranes rising in the distance, the blue smear of the harbor just beyond.
    “So the things we see through the windows in a movie or television show — they’re not real?”
    Greer looked amused, superior — Tess’s intent. People tend to reveal more to those they consider ignorant.
    “Of course not. Think about the lighting and continuity issues created by a real window.”
    “But it looks so
real
. I mean, on film. Here, it looks like a photograph, but on a screen, you can’t tell.”
    “The camera has no depth perception,” Greer said. “And, of course, sometimes they cut in a shot of the real view — say a character had to look out the window and see something in particular. You edit that shot in, and it heightens the illusion. But look up and you can see the lights hanging from the ceiling, which allows us to light the view for day or night.”
    It was an intriguing insight, but Tess wasn’t sure she
liked
this behind-the-scenes view of things. While movies weren’t as magical to her as they had been, back in her late teens and twenties, she still wanted to be able to suspend belief, not think about all the ways she was being fooled. She didn’t share these thoughts with Greer, however. Instead, she continued to inspect the set with pretended awe, as she assumed most people did.
    “You said they were filming today?”
    “They are, but it’s way off in another corner of the set, where we’ve created Betsy’s world.” We, we, we. To hear Greer tell it, she was part of everything that happened on
Mann of Steel
. “I’ll take you there.”
    Tess had not necessarily wanted to watch filming, but she figured she should. Observing Selene at work might give her a sense of what her charge would be like at rest. Restless, she supposed.
    They wound their way through the maze, stepping over endless rivers of coiled cords and cables, until they finally found themselves in a thriving hive of activity, where young men and women — and they were overwhelmingly young, Tess noticed — rushed around with ferocious certainty. She was shocked at how many people there were working — twenty, thirty, maybe even forty. It was hard to keep track, given how they kept moving. Maybe
Mann of Steel
could be a good little economic engine for Baltimore, assuming these technical folks were locals, not imports.
    “Last looks,” someone called out, and Tess watched as makeup and hair people swarmed Selene and a puffy middle-aged man — oh dear, it was Johnny Tampa, seriously gone to seed. “Last looks” turned out to be a flurry of pampering — makeup was tweaked, hair smoothed and coaxed into position. One woman produced a camera and shot Polaroids of both actors, instructing them to hold up their hands.
    “Continuity, again,” Greer said, as if sensing what Tess was about to ask. “We have to keep careful records, so if there are reshoots, or other scenes in this time frame, everything matches up. If Selene’s wearing a ring, we can’t have it disappear later.”
    A round-shouldered man lumbered over to Selene and Johnny, mumbled something inaudible to them. Selene, stroking her much-amplified mane of hair, nodded absently while Johnny Tampa looked confused, not unlike an animal that had just been poleaxed. The round-shouldered man shuffled away. Whoever he was, his posture made him quite the saddest sack that Tess had ever seen.
    “The director,” Greer said. “Wes Stark. Flip calls him Willie Stark, but I’m not sure