CORTNEY PHILIP
THE EXTRA

The movie crew had made it snow earlier that day in Gilbert, Arizona. When the snow fell, it looked like magic itself wafting down from the cloudless sky. A leftover layer of white plastic flakes dusted the decorative scrub outside the restaurant where Lydia worked. The busboys complained loudly about the sweeping they would have to do at the end of the night, but the wrap party continued slapping each others' backs over the winter spell they had cast over the desert town.

The extra said excuse me, miss, three times before Lydia's gaze focused correctly upon him. She could not tell if he was tall or short, husky or thin. His eyes were an indistinct color of hazel that blended into the rest of his head. In fact, he was extraordinary in his absolute ordinariness. Lydia had always felt plain, that she had no distinguishing features other than her smooth, blemish-free skin. She often wished she had moles or eczema so that folks might look longer upon her face before getting distracted by some movement beyond her left shoulder. But she had nothing on this man, who was so average as to be invisible in the crowded diner.

He didn't want to trouble her, but could he have another cup of coffee? She stared at the hand wrapped around his mug. His fingers seemed long and narrow like those of a piano player, until she stepped closer and they became the stumpy, blunted fingers of a dock worker. Coming closer still and leaning in with her order book, she saw nothing but the average hand of a regular guy with no identifiable trade, fingers so average they could do anything passably well. She imagined that hand around her waist, wondered how that hand might transform her, however briefly.

Lydia realized he had already asked for something and she was still hovering. She made her mouth move. You're with the production, right?

Yes, he was a professional extra, the kind who hung around for the whole shoot to appear in multiple crowd scenes. For this particular movie, he was Townsperson #2. No, he never had any lines. He took up space real well, though.

He was so good at fading into backgrounds, she wondered how many times she had seen him before. Had she ignored him skiing down the mountain in his giant green parka as the evil mother-in-law sipped hot chocolate and plotted revenge in the lodge? Could he have been carrying shopping bags down Main Street as the wistful but overweight teenage girl window-shopped for prom dresses?

He replied that he got paid very well to never be recognized, to go about the business of daily life in the most anonymous way possible, to serve as a backdrop for the events we were meant to see.

So can you tell me how to make snow? Lydia asked. As he shifted in his chair, she swore he took on the countenance of an old-timey bandit before settling back into his ordinary body.

When two extras make love far from the focused gaze of an imaginary audience, is it a non-event? As she turned to get his coffee, she knew that no one would notice her drop her phone number on his table with the check. No one would hear her phone ring later that night, and no one would care about the awkward small talk she would make before inviting him over. Lydia would be the only one to hear him whisper sodium polyacrylate like a thought inside her own head as he moved on top of her, and Lydia would be the only one to see snow behind her eyelids as they fell asleep tangled in her summer sheets.