It
was my moment. The phrase flashed on and off in my head like the
blue neon Pabst
in the window down at Morey's. A tombstone then floated into view
and there it was again, engraved beneath my name: "Hobbled to
glory."
Clearly
this was it. All my days' dreaming, scheming, writing,
blogging, pouting, propagating, proclaiming, pretending and any
other "p" you can imagine had come down to this one huge
life-defining Portentous Pretend. I was to limp with stunned,
growing horror, as I navigated through the swirling smoke and maze
of human corpses while the cameras rolled around me and probably
above me and, for all I knew, under me.
I
was an extra, or, as we're called nowadays, "background."
This insider's term I learned from my daughter, who'd landed a
background job for another remake of the old swashbuckling romance
To
Have and To Hold.
It was being filmed at various locations. Our set was within an hour's drive.
