Death of a Blue Movie Star (35 page)

Improvised Detonation Techniques
was right next to
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
.

Sam Healy might be an easy person to fall in love with, and have fun with, but Rune could see it’d be tough to be married to him.

She walked back into the kitchen and sat at the table, which was covered with diseased Formica, and stared out into the backyard.

Nicole …

Nicole, suckered in by the glitz and bucks and hot lights. The coke. God, that teased hair, the glossy makeup, the dangerous fingernails, the aerobic thighs … A sweet simple girl, who had no business doing what she did.

Shelly and Nicole.

The Lusty Cousins …

Well, they were both gone now.

It seemed awful to Rune, to stumble into your death like that. It’d be better to face death head-on, to meet it, even insult it or challenge it some, rather than have it grab you by surprise….

For a moment, Rune regretted the whole business—her film, Shelly, Nicole.

These porn films—it was a shitty little business and she hated it. Not a good attitude, dear, you want to make documentaries but, goddamn it, that’s how she felt.

Images from last night returned. Tommy’s face, Nicole’s—worse, the red-stained sheet. The network of blood on Tommy’s hands. The heat of the lights, the steady, terrifying eye of the camera lens aiming at her as Tommy walked forward, the sound of the bullet hitting his head. She felt her hand shaking and a terrible spiraling churn begin deep inside her.

No, no, no
…

Sam Healy’s sleepy voice called from the other room and broke the spell. “Rune, it’s early. Come back to bed.”

“Time to get up. I made breakfast.” She was about to add, Like a good wife, but figured why give Cheryl a plug? “We do the final cut of that House O’ Leather job today. The one I told you about? I’ve got to be at work in an hour.”

“Rune,” Healy called again, “come here. There’s something I want to show you.”

“I burned toast just for you.”

“Rune.”

She hesitated, then stepped into the bathroom and brushed her hair, then sprayed on perfume. Rune knew a lot about men in the morning.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

She didn’t intend her life to be violent. She certainly didn’t intend to die violently. But Shelly Lowe was an addict—addicted to the power that the films she made brought her, addicted to that raw urge that perhaps all artists feel to expose herself, in every sense, to her audiences
.

And just like for all addicts, Shelly ran the risk that that power would overwhelm her
.

She understood that risk, and she didn’t back away from it. She met it and she lost. Caught between art and lust, between beauty and sex, Shelly Lowe died
.

Carved into her simple grave in a small cemetery in Long Island, New York, is the single line: “She lived only for her art,” which seems a fitting epitaph for this blue movie star
.

FADE OUT To:

CREDITS
…

“What do you think?” Rune asked Sam Healy.

“You wrote that?”

Rune nodded. “It took me a hundred tries. Is it too, you know, flowery?”

Healy said, “I think it’s beautiful.” He put his arm around her. “Is it ready to go?”

“Not hardly.” Rune laughed. “I’ve got to find a professional announcer to do the voice-over, then spend about three weeks editing it all together and cutting about ten hours of tape down to twenty-eight minutes. Shooting was the fun part. Now the work begins…. Hey, Sam, I was thinking. Anybody ever done a documentary about the Bomb Squad?”

He kissed her neck. “Why don’t you call in sick today. We can talk about it.”

She kissed him quickly, then rolled out of bed. “I’m already in the doghouse with Larry and Bob. I didn’t bring in fresh croissants the other morning.”

“This is for House O’ Leather? Is that name for real?”

“I just make the commercials. I’m not responsible for the client’s poor taste.”

She finished her coffee. She sensed him looking at her.

No, it was more of a stare.

No, it was worse than that; it was one of those sappy gazes that men give women occasionally—when they get overcome with this
feeling
, which they think is love though it usually means they’re horny or guilty or feeling insecure. You can die of suffocation under one of those gazes.

Rune said, “Gotta go.” And started toward the door with a coquettish smile that sometimes had the effect of throwing cold water on men who were sloppy drunk on love.

“Hey,” he said in a low way that made him sound like a cop.

I’m not going to stop. Keep it cool. Keep the distance. There’s no hurry.

“Rune.”

She stopped.

What I’ll do is wink at him, on my way out the door, all flirty and bitchy.

“Come here for a minute.”

Wink, girl. Come on.

But instead she walked back to him slowly. Deciding that she wasn’t really
that
late….

Rune sensed it the moment she walked into the office, and what she noticed was not a good feeling.

Rune hung her coat up on the peeling, varnished rack and glanced around.

What was it?

Well, first: The mail was still on the floor. Larry usually carried it to Cathy’s desk—well, Rune’s desk now—and looked through it.

And there was the coffee machine, which Larry always got going right away, but which was now unplugged and wasn’t giving off its usual sour, scorched smell.

And there was Bob.

Who was already in the office—at 9:45! Rune could see him though the bubbly-glass partition.

Something big was up.

Two heads moved, distorted by the fly’s-eye effect of the glass. Larry was in too but
that
wasn’t unusual. Larry always got in early; he was afraid client checks would dissolve if he didn’t pick them up early.

“It’s ‘er.” The voice was soft, but came clearly over the partition.

Her
. That tone was not good.

“Right. Less ’ave a talk.”

The door opened and Larry motioned to her. “Rune. You come in for a minute?”

She walked into the office. They both looked tired and
rumpled. She began an inventory of recent screwups. It was a long list but included mostly minor infractions.

“Rune, sit down.”

She sat.

Bob looked at Larry, who spoke: “What’s happened is we got us a call from the client.”

“Both of us,” Bob threw in. “At nine this morning.”

“Mr. Wallet?”

Son of a bitch, the postpro house missed the shipment. She said, “I told the postpro to ship it right away. I threatened him. He absolutely guaranteed me—”

“The tape got delivered to the client, Rune. The problem was they didn’t like it.”

They want me to take a cut in pay. That’s what it is. House O’ Leather’s talked down the fee and they’re going to cut my salary.

She sighed. “What was it he didn’t like? It was the dominoes, right? Come on. I did the setup three times. I—”

Larry was playing nervously with a coin in his hand. “No, I think the dominoes were okay. “‘E said the logo was still a bit, you know, dodgy. But ’E could live with that.”

Rune said, “The transitions? I did the dissolves real carefully….”

Bob said to Larry, “Show ’er what he wasn’t too ’appy about.”

Larry hit the play button of the Sony three-quarter-inch tape player. A colorful copyright slate appeared. The countdown from ten began, each second marked off with an electronic beep. At three, the screen went blank. Then:

Fade in: the smiling daughter, explaining how House O’ Leather wallets were handcrafted from the finest cowhide, treated and dyed according to old family traditions.

Cut to: Factory workers making wallets and billfolds and purses.

Cut to: The daughter caressing a wallet (Model HL/ 141).

Dissolve to: The dramatic domino shot.

Cut to: Two women performing oral sex on a water bed as the closing credits for
Lusty Cousins
come on the screen.

Rune said, “Oh.”

Fade out.

Larry said, “’E fired us, Rune. They aren’t paying the fee, they aren’t paying expenses.”

Rune said, “I guess something kind of got mixed in.”

“Kind of,” Larry said.

Bob added, “So we’re out the profits and also out of pocket about seventy-five thousand.”

“Oh.”

Larry said, “I know it was an accident. I’m not suggesting it wasn’t but … Rune, you’re a sweet kid….”

“You’re firing me, aren’t you?”

They didn’t even bother to nod.

“You better pick up whatever you got ’ere and ’ead out now.”

“We wish you the best of luck,” Bob said.

He didn’t mean it, Rune could tell, but it was nice of him to at least make the effort.

Didn’t mean she was no good.

Rune walked along the Hudson, staring at the olive-drab shadows stretching outward into the rippled texture of the water. Seagulls stood on one leg and hunched against the cool morning breeze.

After all, didn’t Einstein get kicked out of school for failing math? Didn’t Churchill fail government?

They went on to show everybody.

The difference was, though, that they had a second chance.

So that was it: no distributor. And no money for editing, voice-overs, titles, sound track …

Rune had thirty hours of unedited tape whose value would go to zero in about six months—the time when the world would stop caring about Shelly Lowe’s death.

She went home to her houseboat and stacked up all the tape cassettes on her shelf, tossed the script on top of them and walked into the kitchen.

She spent the afternoon sipping herbal tea as she sat on the deck, browsing through some of her books. One that she settled on, for some reason, was her old copy of
Dante’s Inferno
.

Wondering why that volume—not the one about purgatory or the one about paradise—was the best-seller.

Wondering about the levels of hell people descend to.

Mostly she meant Tommy as she thought this. But there were others, too.

Danny Traub, who, even if he donated money to a good cause, was a son of a bitch who liked to hurt women.