the circling craft for two minutes and forty-five seconds, capturing their lead actor looking up at the machines circling over the wires, the expression of foreboding and curiosity on his tanned face completely in line with the themes of the screenplay. Electrical towers appeared at the end of each of the film’s three acts, and the cinematographer had shot other towers and wires in the San Bernardino Mountains, and in the plain of tumbleweeds outside Henderson, Nevada, and the Cimarron Grasslands of southwestern Kansas. The Huntington Park shoot was intended for the epilogue, the towers and the barren channel of weeds at the actor’s feet symbols of the protagonist’s failed search for self in Las Vegas casinos and a Kansas beef-processing town.
“I told you these Eastside locations were a bitch,” the key grip said. “I told you.” Most of the local residents had behaved themselves: they were used to being put out by film crews drawn to the grim and epic backdrop, and only the appearance of an A-list actor or Mexican television star really got them very excited. Every few minutes, however, there was the straggling homeless person, or a gangbanger on his bicycle, people who hadn’t read the letter: Sorry for the inconvenience: We’re bringing a little bit of Hollywood to your neighborhood!
“Now I see him,” the director said.
“Her. It’s a she.”
At that instant a helicopter swooped in close to the trunk line and a police car emerged with a squeaky skid on one of the streets that cut through the corridor. Two officers jumped out of the car and the figure of the woman began to run toward the crew.
“Whoa, they’re chasing her.”
“They’ve got their sticks out.”
“Is this real?”
“Batons. You call them batons, not sticks.”
“Are you getting this?” the director yelled to the cinematographer. He called out the name of the lead actor, a bright young prospect whose presence in the film had assured its funding—he was a twenty-four-year-old Australian with a sparse chestnut beard that matched his eyes, and a Gary Cooper everyman quality that screamed out he was destined for big-budget greatness. “In character,” the director said. “Stay in character.” The actor took a breath and a moment to remember his drama-school improvisation training and stretched his arms down at his sides. He relaxed his facial muscles into a look of genuine puzzlement and muted pleading captured in profile as he watched the foot chase that was now headed in his direction, a Mexican woman towing a cloud of dust and two running men in black, a spectacle now about one hundred yards distant.
“They’re going to beat her,” a crew member said breathlessly. “They’re going to beat her to a pulp.”
“Take a step toward them. Just one step.”
The actor moved hesitatingly toward the running woman, as if he wanted to help her but was not sure he could.
“Good. Now one more. Just one. Are we still getting this?”
“Yes, I’m on a tiny f-stop,” the cinematographer said. “The depth of field is magnificent.”
“Beautiful.”
Weeks later in the editing room, the director and his editor would incorporate about seventy-five seconds of this footage into the final version of the film. Araceli never saw the camera, or the actor, or the film crew. She was focused on the men trailing behind her and the idea that she might elude them. They had come to grab her and bind her hands in plastic strings, but she still found herself suppressing a laugh as she ran, even with brambles scratching at her ankles, because there was the quality of a schoolyard game to being chased around like this. There are other, easier ways of returning to Mexico. They will grab me and drag me across the dirt like a calf in the rodeo, and then cage me. We must endure these rituals of humiliation: this is our Mexican glory, to be pursued and apprehended in public places for bystanders to see.
If you let me go, señores, I will merely walk to the bus station and buy a ticket back to my country. No les molesto más. They were far behind her, at first, and for a moment she entertained the thought that if she could reach the next street, or slip into an alleyway or a backyard, she might elude them and find her own route home. But she was not a good runner. The first police officer quickly closed the gap, sprinting with a determined, middle-aged ferocity that surprised and frightened her, his face turning crimson and sweat bursting from