Guest of Honor

At the birthday party for the dead, there was a wonderful chocolate cake filled with raspberry jelly that oozed like blood onto the muddy surface of our paper plates.  "Delicious," someone said.  There was a muttering of agreement, "Delicious, delicious."  They were nodding to one another, approving, the corners of their mouths collected bio-waste as if they too were cannibals.   

At this point the, camera steps away a little.  The invasive/earnest quality of the lens that we will come to associate with the  young detective (and with the dead girl as well) relaxes into a languid playfulness that will mirror the flirtation and tension betwixt Pabla and Nero.  For the audience, the personal and emotional quality of these scenes is best elicited in an ambience that is romantic without being saccharine, nostalgic without being delusional.

Climactically, after dancing a long time with Nero,  Pabla, glistening with sweat, the cotton of her dress well-soaked under her arms and on her back, stumbles off the floor and tosses herself--"like a Raggedy Anne Doll"--onto the folding chair beside her aunt Eileen.  She is lost in the music, in the drunken sensation of "love."  She doesn't see the discarded plate smeared with the sweet filling....

It was as if the savage's arrow had found its mark, as if the collaboration between make-up and special effects had cemented the lie.  Splat!  The raspberry blood was suddenly not the sacrament of the (virgin) victim's blood.  It was, instead, the suggestion of shame.  Shame for....   being a woman?  bleeding in public?  having an accident?  The red tide had arrived without warning and smeared the yellow gingham of a girl's wholesome secrets.