Death of a Blue Movie Star (2 page)

Cowboy asked, “What’s that about, ‘Revelation? Like getting inspiration?”

The priest gave a polite, noncommittal laugh before he realized the cop wasn’t joking. “What it’s about is the end of the world. The Apocalypse.”

Which is when Brown Suit noticed Rune, looking through the crook of Cowboy’s arm. “Hey, you, move along.”

Cowboy turned, but didn’t say anything.

“I’ve got a right to know what’s going on. I walked by there just a minute ago. I could’ve been killed.”

“Yeah,” said Brown Suit. “But you weren’t. So count your blessings. Look, I’m getting tired of telling you to get out of here.”

“Good. ’Cause I’m getting tired of hearing it.” Rune grinned.

Cowboy reined in a smile.

“Now.” Brown Suit stepped forward.

“Okay, okay.” Rune walked away.

But slowly—just to show they weren’t going to bully her
too
much. Her leisurely departure let her overhear something the young priest was saying to Cowboy and Brown Suit.

“I hate to tell you this but if that note has to do with the bombing it’s not such good news.”

“Why not?” Cowboy asked.

“That verse? It’s about the
first
angel. In the whole passage there are seven angels all together.”

“So?” asked Brown Suit.

“I guess that means you’ve got six more to go until God wipes the slate clean.”

In the office of L&R Productions, on Twenty-first Street, Rune took a beer from the fridge. It was an old Kenmore and one of her all-time favorite objects. On the door was a raised pattern like the grille of a 1950 Studebaker and it had a big silver handle that looked like it belonged on a submarine hatch.

Looking at her reflection in a scabby mirror above the receptionist’s desk, she saw her muted black-and-green portrait, lit by the fluorescence of the office: a girl in a red miniskirt, printed with silhouettes of dinosaurs, and two sleeveless T-shirts, one white, one navy. Her auburn hair was pulled back in a ponytail, which made her round face somewhat less round. In addition to the watches, Rune wore three pieces of jewelry—a double-terminated crystal on a chain, a single fake-gold earring in the shape of the Eiffel Tower and a silver bracelet in the shape of two hands clasped together, which had been broken and soldered together. The little makeup she had put on that morning had vanished in the sweat of the August afternoon and the spewing water from an open hydrant on Thirty-first Street she couldn’t resist dunking her head
under. Rune wasn’t much for makeup anyway. She did best, she felt, with the least attention. When she got elaborate with her looks, she turned sophisticated into clowny, svelte into whorish.

Her theory of fashion: You’re short and occasionally you’re pretty. Stick to the basics. T-shirts, boots and dinosaurs. Use hair spray only to kill flies and to paste things into scrapbooks.

She rubbed the cold beer bottle against her cheek and sat down at the desk.

The L&R office was a good reflection of the cash flow of the company. Gray steel furniture, circa 1967. Peeling linoleum. Stacks of yellowing invoices, storyboards, art directors’ annuals and papers that had grown the dense fur of city grit.

Larry and Bob, her bosses, were Australians, documentary film makers, and—Rune’s opinion on most days—maniacs. As producers of commercials for Melbourne and New York ad agencies they had developed something more than their massive artistic egos; they were, in their own words,
accurate
words, “bloody fucking good.” They ate like farm animals, belched, lusted over blondes with big boobs and indulged in gloomy moodiness. In between doing TV commercials they now produced and shot some of the best documentaries that ever ran on PBS or England’s Channel 4 or at the Film Forum.

Rune had wheedled a job here, hoping some of their magic would rub off.

It was now a year later and not much had.

Larry, the partner with the longer beard, walked into the office. His uniform of the day: boots, black leather pants and a black, blousy Parachute shirt, every button of which his gut tested.

“About bleedin’ time. Where’ve you been?”

She held up the Schneider lens she’d picked up at Optirental in Midtown. He reached for it but she held it
from his grasp. “They said you’re behind on your account—”

“Me account?” Larry was deeply stung.

“—and they wanted a bigger deposit. I had to give them a check. A personal check.”

“Right, I’ll add it to your envelope.”

“You’ll add it to my
pocket
.”

“Look, you can’t keep being late like this, luv. What if we’d been shooting?” He took the lens. “Time is money, right?”

“No, money is money,” Rune countered. “I’m out some and I want you to pay me back. Come on, Larry. I need it.”

“Get it out of petty cash.”

“There’s never been more than six dollars in petty cash since I’ve been working here. And you know it.”

“Right.” He examined the lens, a beautiful piece of German optics and machinery.

Rune didn’t move. Kept staring at him.

He looked up. Sighed. “How fucking much was it?”

“Forty dollars.”

“Jesus.” He dug into his pocket and gave her two twenties.

She smiled curtly. “Thank you, boss.”

“Listen, luv, I’ve got a big pitch meeting going on—”

“Not another commercial, Larry. Come on. Don’t sell out.”

“They pay the rent. And your salary. So … I need four coffees. One light, one regular, two sweet. And two teas.” He looked at her with a gaze of refined kindness, forgiving her the sin of asking for reimbursement. “Another thing—I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need it, but me sports coat … you know, the black one? It’s at the cleaners and I’ve to go—”

“No laundry. I’m a production assistant.”

“Rune.”

“Write it down and read it. Assisting with production. Does not mean assisting with dry cleaning.”

“Please?”

“Produce and laundry. Very different. Night and day.”

He said, “Let you use the Arriflex next time out.”

“No laundry.”

“Jesus.”

She finished the beer. “Larry, I want to ask you about something.”

“I just gave you a raise.”

“There was this bombing? In Midtown. A porn theater got blown up.”

“Not a place you frequent, I ‘ope.”

“I walked by just before it happened. It looks like this religious group did it. Some right-wing fanatics or something. And what it is, I want to do a film about it.”

“You?”

“A documentary.”

When she was in her characteristic slouch Rune came to Larry’s second button down. Now she stood up and rose almost to his collar. “I came here to learn how to make films. It’s been eleven months and all I do is get coffee and pick up equipment and coil cables on the set and drop off film and walk Bob’s mangy dog.”

“I thought you liked him.”

“He’s a wonderful dog. That’s not the point.”

He looked at his Rolex. “They’re waiting for me.”

“Let me do it, Larry. I’ll give you a producing credit.”

“Bloody generous of you. And what do you know about documentaries?”

She forced her small mouth into a smile that impersonated admiration. “I’ve been watching you for almost a year.”

“Balls. All you got is balls. You got no film technique.”

“Two outa three,” Rune said.

“Look, luv, not to make myself into a flamin’ genius
but I got fifty, sixty resumes sitting in me desk right now. And most of them’re dying for the privilege of getting me fuckin’ laundry.”

“I’ll pay for the film myself.”

“All right. Forget the laundry. I got a roomful of people need caffeine.” He put a crumpled five in her hand. “
Please
get some coffee.”

“Can I use a camera after work?”

Another glance at the watch. “Fuck. All right. But no camera. The Betacam.”

“Aw, Larry,
video?
”

“Video’s the wave of the future, luv. You buy your own friggin’ tape. And I’m checking the Arris and the Bolexes every night. If one’s missing, even for a half hour, you’re fired. And you do the work on your own time. That’s the best you’re getting.”

She smiled sweetly. “Would you like some biscuits with your tea, mate?”

As she turned to leave Larry called, “Hey, luv, one thing … This bombing, whatever ‘appened, the news’ll do the story up right.”

Rune nodded, seeing that intensity she recognized in his eyes when he was on a set shooting or kicking around ideas with Bob or the cinematographer. She paid attention. He continued. “Use the bombing like a ’ook.”

“A hook?”

“You want to make a good documentary, do a film that’s about the bombing but not about the bombing.”

“It sounds like Zen.”

“Fucking Zen, right.” He twisted his mouth. “And three sugars for me tea. Last time you bleedin’ forgot.”

Rune was paying for the tea and coffee when she remembered Stu. She was surprised she hadn’t thought about him before this. And so she paid the deli guy two bucks of
her own money, which is the way she looked at Larry’s change, to have somebody deliver the cartons to L&R.

Then she stepped outside and trudged toward the subway.

A low-rider, a fifteen-year-old beige sedan, churned past her. The horn sang and from the shadows of the front seat came a cryptic solicitation, lost in the ship’s diesel bubbling of the engine. The car accelerated away.

God, it was hot. Halfway to the subway stop, she bought a paper cone of shaved ice from a Latino street vendor. Rune shook her head when he pointed to the squirt bottles of syrup, smiled at his perplexed expression, and rubbed the ice over her forehead, then dropped a handful down the front of her T-shirts. He got a kick out of it and she left him with a thoughtful look on his face, maybe considering a new market for his goods.

Painful hot.

Mean hot.

The ice melted before she got to the subway stop and the moisture had evaporated before the train arrived.

The A train swept along under the streets back up to Midtown. Somewhere above her was the smoking ruin of the Velvet Venus Theater. Rune stared out the window intently. Did anyone live down here in the subway system? She wondered. Maybe there were whole tribes of homeless people, families, who’d made a home in the abandoned tunnels. They’d be a great subject for a documentary too.
Life Below the Streets
.

This started her thinking about the hook for her film.

About the bombing but not about the bombing
.

And then it occurred to her. The film should be about a single person. Someone the bombing had affected. She thought about movies she liked—they were never about issues or about ideas in the abstract. They were about people. What happened to them. But who should she pick? A patron in the theater who’d been injured? No, no
one would volunteer to help her out. Who’d want to admit he’d been hurt in a porn theater. How ’bout the owner or the producer of porn films.
Sleazy
came to mind. One thing Rune knew was that the audience has to care about your main character. And some scumbag in the Mafia or whoever made those movies wasn’t going to get much sympathy from the audience.

About the bombing but not
…

As the subway sped underground the more she thought about doing the document the more excited she became. Oh, a film like this wouldn’t catapult her to fame but it would—what was the word?—
validate
her. The list of her abortive careers was long: clerking, waitressing, selling, cleaning, window dressing…. Business was not her strength. The one time Rune had come into some money, Richard, her ex-boyfriend, had thought up dozens of safe investment ideas. Businesses to start, stocks to buy. She’d accidentally left his portfolio files on the merry-go-round in Central Park. Not that it mattered anyway because she spent most of the money on a new place to live.

I’m not good with the practical stuff, she’d told him.

What she was good with was what she’d
always
been good with: stories—like fairy tales and movies. And despite her mother’s repeated warning when she was younger (“No girl can make a living at movies except you-know-what-kind-of-girl”), the odds of making a career in film seemed a lot better than in fairy tales.