Background Noise by Peter DeMarco 

Henry lived inside the lie of the film set. He was an actor, not really an actor, but an extra. They were planted and decorated around the set like the most elaborate form of horticulture, waiting for someone with a bullhorn to call for background noise, which was their cue to begin fake talking. Sometimes he had a girlfriend to dance with, or a suit and briefcase to feel important.

One night they massed together on the steps of a church, looking like a black cloud. They knew nothing about the movie.

I heard DeNiro plays a priest, someone said.

They heard the cue and began whispering in the somber muted tone of mourners. Henry didn’t know what they were supposed to be mourning.

Then someone said cut.

A woman with a headset touched his arm. Can you come with me please, she asked. He’s getting fired, some extras laughed.

Henry was led to a group of men around a monitor. They stared at him. Not really at him, but at his hair.

It will glow nicely in the lights, the director said. 

Like a halo, someone else said, maybe an assistant director.

They didn’t even bother introducing him to DeNiro.

The famous actor’s face had the color of a tombstone gray. You’ll kneel in front of Bob, the director said. He’s dying but has the Christ stigmata on his hands and can heal everyone, the sinners, the cripples, the diseased.

A soft brush grazed Henry’s hair and the hand of a make-up woman caressed it, back and forth, the way his mother did when she’d tell him it was movie star hair.

Action.

Henry stared into the eyes that unveiled true confessions, and DeNiro whispered in a priestly cadence, his voice the most comforting thing Henry had ever heard in his life, and a tear moved down Henry’s cheek, it felt like acid, and the actor wiped it away, and there were more tears, and someone said what the fuck and someone else said to keep rolling, and then DeNiro began talking in tongues, a babbling language of gibberish as his finger traced the craggy scar in the shape of a question mark on Henry’s scalp from a car accident in high school when he was on a date and the girl said he had the most beautiful hair and he looked at it in the rearview mirror to confirm its allure and swerved into oncoming traffic where the headlights of a car passed soundlessly through them.

The actor’s eyes probed the wound like it was a new form of hieroglyphic.

The extras closed in.

Amidst the klieg lights and cables and tables full of donuts they searched for the deliverance that eluded them on Sundays, licking the tears that tasted of penitence, touching Henry’s hair, clawing and sucking at his scar.

Peter DeMarco published a New York Times “Modern Love” essay about becoming a New York City high school English teacher and meeting his wife. Before teaching, Peter had a career in book publishing, and spent a considerable amount of time acting in regional theater and attempting to be funny on the amateur stand-up comedy circuit in New York City. Other writing credits include pieces in trampset, Maudlin House, Monkeybicycle, Hippocampus, SmokeLong Quarterly, Cleaver, Flash Fiction Magazine, Pithead Chapel. Read more at: peterdemarcowriter.com