Black Is the Fashion for Dying (7 page)

“For timing,” Alf said.

The pair hurried away, Alf still loading the second revolver, and at the same time the loudspeaker spoke again, sharply: “
Miss Garnet. Come to the set at once, please! Miss Garnet
…”

Caresse Garnet

“All right.” she said aloud. “I'm coming.”

Three Caresse Garnets glowered at her from the winged mirror above the white dressing table. She leaned forward to examine the full-faced Caresse in the center. The eyes were too bright, feverish, almost; and the skin was taut over cheekbones and jaw. Caresse looked old and vindictive.
Yes, old.
Even under the heavy make-up, crow's feet showed at the corners of eyes and lips. That would never do. She brought the lips up in a smile, made the face friendly, blandly welcoming.

Come in, Hedda darling! Come in!

What a lovely dressing room! Those walls—real leather?

Yes, white calfskin. I had it done over when the picture started.

Scrumptious!

Hedda, my contract's been renewed for another year.

That's not news, Caresse. We all expected that.

I know, but I thought my public
(such as it is)
would be interested.

Of course, darling. But an item like that, all alone. Pretty bald. If we had some sort of a story to tie in with—

Well, something funny happened last night, at a weird party I gave to celebrate the option. It makes rather a fool
of poor Ashton Graves—you know how sensitive he is about his legs—but it's amusing
…

Yes, she thought. That was it. No matter what Ashton said, they'd believe the story in the papers. Believe that it was a macabre joke rather than—

“Miss Garnet,” Herbie Adams spoke urgently from the dressing room door. “Mr. Gordon says—”

“I'm coming!”

She followed Herbie across the camp set, circling to avoid tractor and workers hauling a camera into place, and found Josh Gordon waiting with the litter bearers by the pool. His face was flushed.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“On the can,” she said. This caught him off balance and before he could recover she demanded, “How long will this take?”

“Thirty, forty minutes.”

“Just
one
scene?”

“We're going right on into the camp. They're setting up now.”

“No.”

“No? Well, well. That's interesting.” The flush deepened. “Why do you think we just rehearsed it? So as not to do it?”

“In fifteen minutes I have a date with Hedda.”

“You can see her at lunch.”

“I'm going to see her in fifteen minutes.”

“With a black eye!” He advanced on her, crimson with rage. “So help me, if you don't climb onto that litter—”

“You wouldn't dare.” She smiled coolly. “Go ahead, Josh. See what it gets you.”

For a second she really thought he was going to hit her. Then he turned to Herbie, watching open-mouthed. “Get a whip from that guy with the tiger,” he said. “And Ashton Graves.”

“Ashton!” she exclaimed.

“He's just drunk enough to do it, Caresse. And, besides, I hear you like it.”

“You bastard!”

“It'll make a nice story for Hedda. Go ahead, Herbie. I mean it.”

“I'll remember this,” she said.

“Are you going to get in the litter?”

She glared at him, hating the implacable, hawklike face. In front of everyone on the set, too. She'd get him for it, if it was the last thing she did.

“All right, Josh.” She moved to the litter, held by the two half-naked bearers, and sat on it. “You win.”

“Now stay put,” he said. “Until they move you onto the cot in your tent. You understand?”

“I'll stay.”

He eyed her suspiciously, then turned to the bearers. “After the pool scene, when you drink and then pick her up again, hang on to the litter. Don't put it down. I want you to bring it into camp when I give the signal. Got it?”

“Got it, Mr. Gordon,” one of the bearers said.

Gordon stared down at her. “If I have to chase you again—”

“I told you I understood,” she said sweetly. He started to turn away, and she added, “Josh …”

“Yes?”

“Does Agnes know about that redhead you've been keeping on Miller Place?”

She stretched out on the litter and pulled up the blanket, loving the image of Josh's face, teeth clenched, jaws rigid, eyes suddenly baleful; that lingered in her mind. It was a start. Clever Caresse. He wouldn't have any teeth to clench when she got through. She smiled up at the lights glowing on the metal scaffolding above the set, let herself relax in the familiar warmth.

The litter joggled unevenly as the bearers hoisted her higher, started along the jungle path toward the place where they would start the scene. A branch slapped at her face and she said, “Goddamn it! Look where you're going!”

“Sorry, Miss Garnet,” the bearer in front said.

She went over the scene in her mind. Nothing to do but react to the rifle shots, and she had practiced that look of orgiastic satisfaction and triumph in her mirror. In fart, she thought, amused, she had practiced it two-thirds of her life, in various and sundry beds. No trouble there.

As the men turned on the path, the litter swayed.

“Watch it,” she said.

“Fear not, memsahib,” the bearer in back said. “We answer to the rajah if you are hurt.”

She lifted her head. “You being paid for a bit part?”

“Why, no.”

“Then knock off the gab.”

The bearer grinned uncertainly, then turned away. Over his bare shoulder, not ten feet off, she saw a face peering at her through the jungle. She saw it was Fabro, half-hidden by underbrush and a huge wardrobe cabinet, and almost laughed aloud. Checking to see if she'd really lost her buttons. She raised her hand, waved languidly, would have spoken if he hadn't brought a finger to his lips. Shaking his head, black homburg pulled down over his brow, raincoat hung cloak-wise over thick shoulders, a squat bomb-thrower from the East bank of the Danube, he let his eyes roll towards the camera platform and Josh Gordon.

For a second she was tempted to call to him anyway, knowing he would be promptly thrown off the set by Josh, but then she remembered she was mad at Josh. And there was no special reason to annoy Fabro, now her contract was safe. Lifting a finger to her lips, she nodded. Fellow conspirators. Then, smiling to herself, she leaned back on the litter.

She thought about her last scene, the big speech in the tent. Gordon didn't like what Blake had written, but it really wasn't bad. Poetic, yes, but what was wrong with that? From a woman who believed she was dying? “Black's the fashion …” she repeated to herself. Why wouldn't Barbara Phelps say something like that? Well, it didn't matter. If Blake came up with something better before lunch, she'd use it. If not, the old speech would do. With a few cuts.

She thought about Blake, wondering how she had deluded herself into believing he was anything like Edgar. A pleasant hack with a certain amount of talent, she knew now, but with no real fire. She had reached out for him at the start of the picture, she supposed, because of the emptiness, more than emptiness, the hollowness that came when Edgar died. Six years, and it had never left. She was still a hollow woman, a part of her insides, or brain, or soul, even, gone, as though removed by an inept abortionist. She grimaced, remembering that night in her house when driven by the pain that was part of the hollowness, by the capsules that gave her no sleep, by the liquor that deadened nothing, she had actually believed for an insane moment that Blake was Edgar, had clung to him, sobbing and pulling at his clothes.

Oh, Edgar!
she thought, feeling the tears start.
What have we done to each other?

The loudspeakers asked for quiet on the set, and she made the tears stop. It was too late for them anyway. Six years too late. The last time for tears was the day she had watched them put the white cross on the grave she had never visited since. Yet she could see the words as clearly as if it had been yesterday:
EDGAR ALLAN PIXLEY POET
1911—1953. And already she was planning the betrayal, already fixing in her mind the terms she would demand that evening at the meeting in the empty house.

“
Roll 'em,
” said the loudspeakers.

The bearers shifted the litter, preparing to start with it along the path. She felt for tears under her eyes, found there were none, and composed her face. You are Barbara Phelps, she told herself. You are pretending to be unconscious. Your husband is about to be killed by Masterson, the man you love. She closed her eyes.

“
Action!
” said the loudspeakers.

The litter bearers began to march up the trail. Everything was quiet now, except for their bare feet padding on the soft earth. It was stifling under the blanket, but there was nothing she could do about it. The litter tilted a little as they climbed the embankment by the pool, became horizontal again when they reached the top. They halted and lowered her gently to the ground. She could hear their breathing, and then she couldn't. They were moving away, down the embankment to drink at the pool. Now was the time to open her eyes.

She saw the camera, a dark, heavy rectangle on the end of the long boom, moving in for the close-up, saw back of the camera the intent faces of Tom Billings and Josh Gordon. The camera drew closer in the noiseless arc described by the boom. Then tilted by Billings during the last few feet of motion, it peered directly down at her face. As she was wondering where the shots were, they came; two sharp reports from the right, and she let the faint smile, the sexually satisfied, cruelly triumphant, cat-ate-the-eanary smile she had practiced so many years, curl her lips.

She saw Josh Gordon nod, and then the camera swung towards the pool, the entire crew pushing the crane forward on its rubber-tired wheels until she was behind everyone. She threw back the blanket and sat up on the litter, rubbing her hip where a crosspiece had chafed her. Then she yawned, stretched lazily. There was plenty of time. The camera had to record the bearers' reaction to the other three shots from Masterson's heavy elephant gun, and then it had to pan back up the embankment with the two men as they came to carry her the rest of the way to camp.

She looked towards the pool but all she could see was the wheeled base of the camera crane and the backs of a couple of heads. She was yawning a second time when she caught sight of Fabro coming towards her from the wardrobe cabinet on the opposite side of the stage. He nodded approvingly as he neared her. He had the raincoat slung over one arm now, but his face was dripping with perspiration.

“Better not let Gordon catch you,” she whispered.

“The shots'll warn me,” he whispered back, kneeling beside her. “That was good, Caresse.”

“Sure it was good.”

“I just wanted to tell you—everything's all right.”

“It better be, Fatso.”

The sound of the first shot echoed through the stage and she waved him away impatiently, leaned back on the litter.

Richard Blake

Over the gray metal door marked Stage 17, dimmed by mist, the red bulb glowed sullenly. He pushed open the door, went through the darkened sound lock, and pushed open the inner door. A studio policeman moved to intercept him, but he brandished the freshly typed pages, cut past the man towards the circling canvas screen that shielded the sets from the stage walls. He was just approaching the battened canvas, white on his side but painted to represent trees and sky on the other, when he heard the shots. Three explosions so close to his head they made him duck.

He realized, after a confused instant, that they came from the jungle side of the canvas and simultaneously recognized them as the ones the bearers were to react to at the pool. Gordon was making good time, he thought, starting along the canvas again. And it was a good thing he'd borne down on the rewrite of Caresse's speech. At this rate they'd be getting to it before lunch.

He came to the opening of the screen back of the camp, peered around the wing to make sure he wasn't in anybody's way, then walked into the camp. He saw the set was ready for the next scene. Three scenes, actually, the way Jenkins had it planned. Sound equipment and the three cameras were in place, overhead all the lights were blazing. Some men were working on the TV monitors, banked along a wooden platform. In the hunters' tent he glimpsed Ashton Graves, seated on a cot, his usually ruddy face a fish-belly white. He looked around for Lisa and, not seeing her, turned towards the pool set.

He saw the bearers were scrambling up the embankment by the pool, accompanied by the panning camera. With just the right amount of clumsy haste they lifted the litter, dog-trotted down the trail with it. But Caresse, he saw, even though hampered by having to pretend she was unconscious, wasn't giving them the scene. She allowed one arm, on the camera side, of course, to slide off the litter, dangle helplessly. The shrewd ham, he thought. Exactly what the audience would see and remember.

Josh Gordon, astride the camera crane, called, “Cut! And thank you.”

People began to hurry towards the camp, trampling power cables, connection boxes, sound cords, ropes, camera blocks and other debris that lay between the sets. Overhead, ghostly voices called, “Hook up Number 4!” and “For Chrisake, Charley, this way!” Gordon, too, was shouting. “Litter bearers!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Remember. Don't put Miss Garnet down. We're going right into the next scene.”

Cranked back to earth, Gordon jumped from the crane, started down the embankment. At the same time Herbie's voice came over the loudspeaker: “
Miss Carson and Mr. Graves! Places, please!
”

Somebody yelled, “They're all set,” and somebody else yelled, “Where're the guys with that stuffed tiger?” A voice from above called, agonized, “Charley, for Chrisake! To your right!”