She exhales, her entire body deflating in front of him. “Okay,” she says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to accuse you of—”
“Of what?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“Can I put my briefcase away?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. Of course.”
He guards his checking account like a rabid wolf, keeping two sets of check registers. There is the real one with the monthly fifteen hundred dollars deducted kept at work. Then there is the doctored one he keeps on his desk at home meant for Angie’s eyes. The videotape — he only keeps one at a time — is kept deep in the locked desk drawer.
Brittany has started playing soccer. She comes home after practice with grass stains on her clothes, her knees and elbows rubbed raw from her rough style of play. Angie spends more time with her, helping with homework, watching rented movies on the VCR in the living room. Carter knows it’s nearly impossible, but can’t help imagining Brittany accidentally finding one of his tapes and sliding it innocently into the VCR out of curiosity. The thought makes him nauseous.
But the time spent locked in the den only increases.
Another month goes by. The tape of the barn has become overcome by a fuzzy snow, the prostitute’s screams garbled as if the television speakers have been immersed in sewage.
When he leaves his fifteen hundred in the empty video box, he finds it still there when he returns to collect the tape. Only now there is a note attached to it.
PLEASE DEPOSIT $500 MORE.
He freezes with anger. He’s been ready to see something new, has been anticipating this for the last three days. But he lets the anger melt off him and goes to the bank, withdraws five hundred dollars in cash, and places it along with the previous fifteen hundred in the box. When he reaches in the hollow of the tree two days later, there is a new cassette. No labels. Only a shiny black plastic shell, the miracle it surely contains palpable in Carter’s sweaty hands.
INT. AN EMPTY HOUSE — DAY
She’s a real estate agent — maroon blazer, black pants, a name-tag that says BARBARA WHITEHALL in crisp black letters. She leads the camera through the rooms smiling, pointing out the features of the house.
“You’d be surprised at how many people bring a video camera to these showings,” Barbara says. “I thing it’s a great idea.”
She climbs a set of stairs covered with beige carpet. The camera follows her up. She turns at the top.
“Right this way.”
She leads us to an empty bedroom, turns a circle, then slides open the closet.
“Decent closet space. Southern exposure.”
Indeed, the sun spills in through the blinds, it’s light spliced with lines of shadow as it splays over her body. The cameraman likes this and zooms in on the interplay of light and dark on her neck. He only backs off at the moment the scalpel appears and makes a quick, precise cut across her jugular. The blood appears only slightly before her eyes register confusion, then terror. She reaches up to her neck as the color of her blazer becomes saturated. The scalpel enters the picture once again and makes short work of her hand. It cuts through her fingers as the sound of the cameraman’s breath, so close to the microphone, cuts through the woman’s piercing screams. He cuts deeper, and the screams abruptly stop as the lens follows her to the floor. The fountain of pumping blood diminishes to a slow seep, and again, the exact moment of her death appears on-screen in glorious color, captured like a butterfly in an empty peanut butter jar.
He is greeted that evening with Angie’s harsh stare.
“What?” he says.
She waves a bank statement in front of his face. “What the hell is this?”
His stomach turns inside out. Where did she get that? It was supposed to be mailed to his work address. Not here. How the hell—
He tries to bide for more time.
“What are you talking about?”
“You know damn well what I’m talking about.” She reads off two large withdrawals that total thirty-five hundred dollars.
“Investments,” he blurts. “I’m investing in the stock market. I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Bullshit.”
“Honey, I—”
As she crumples the statement in her hand and throws it at him, hitting him squarely on the jaw, she says, “Pack your crap and get the hell out of here. You’re through.”
“But I—”
His words are lost in the room’s chilled air as she slams the door shut behind her, locking herself in their bedroom.
A month later, Carter’s tape is almost fully depreciated, the face of the victim lost in a blizzard of static. He rents an apartment now, and has no spare cash with which to feed his habit. He writes this on a white half-sheet of college-ruled paper, adding that he can have the money in one short month if he can please just have a new tape. He folds the paper and places it in the empty tape box, mentally keeping his fingers crossed.
When he goes to retrieve the box, it is empty save for another piece of paper. He unfolds it and reads.
The option of trade. What exactly does that mean? He says the words over and over in his mind.
Option of trade.
His hands shake. His unshaven chin works back and forth as if his jaw is trying to free itself from his skull. He pulls a pen from his pocket and scrawls on the paper one word.
Brittany’s soccer team has made it into the playoffs. Carter watches them win from the shadows of a giant silver maple tree. He cries uncontrollably when she scores a goal. He wants so badly to run to her, pick her up and carry her away.
Instead, he wipes at his eyes with the back of his shirtsleeve and leaves. He drives to a nearby pawnshop. Uses his wedding ring and a wrinkled hundred-dollar bill as payment for a used video camera.
That night he rents a motel room and sets the camera up on the dresser, aiming it at the motel room bed. He places a shirt over it so that only the lens pokes through. When the call girl knocks, he presses the record button and answers the door.
“Come in,” he says.
“I’m Cherry.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
INT. MOTEL ROOM — DAY
A call girl named CHERRY comes into view, placing her purse on the bed. She wears too much rouge and eye shadow, and speaks to someone who is off-camera.
“Mind if I use the bathroom?”
She disappears from view, and the camera is lifted from its place on the dresser. It focuses on the bathroom
