Death of a Blue Movie Star (4 page)

“Yo, film me, momma, come on, film me.”

“Hey, you wanna shoot my dick? You got yourself a wide-angle lens, you can shoot my dick.”

“Shit, be a microscope what she need for that.”

“Yo, fuck you, man.”

Walking out of the Times Square subway, Rune ignored her admirers, hefted the camera to her shoulder and walked along the platform. She passed a half-dozen beggars, shaking her head at their pleas for coins, but she dropped a couple of quarters into a box in front of a young South American couple giving a tango demonstration to the rattling music of a boom box.

It was eight p.m., a week after she’d first met with Shelly and Nicole. Rune had called Shelly twice. At first the actress had been pretty evasive about doing the film
but the second time she’d called, Shelly had said, “If I
were
to do it would you give me a chance to review the final cut?”

From her work at L&R, and her love of movies in general, Rune knew that the final cut—the last version of the film, what was shown in the theaters—was the Holy Grail of the film business. Only producers and a few elite directors controlled the final cut. No actor in the history of Hollywood ever had final cut approval.

But she now said, “Yes.”

Instinctively feeling that it was the only way she could get Shelly Lowe to do the film.

“I’ll let you know in a day or two for sure.”

Rune was now out looking for atmosphere footage and for establishing shots—the long-angle scenes in films that orient the audience and tell them what city or neighborhood they’re in.

And there was plenty of atmosphere here. Life in the Tenderloin, Times Square. The heart of the porno district in New York. She was excited at the thought of actually shooting footage for her first film but remembered the words of Larry, her mentor, as she was heading out of L&R studios that night. “Don’t overdo it, Rune. Any frig-gin’ idiot can put together ninety minutes of great atmosphere. The
story’s
the important thing. Don’t ever bleedin’ forget that. The story.”

She eased into the swirl and noise and madness of Times Square, the intersection of Seventh Avenue, Broadway and Forty-second. She waited at the curb for the light, looking down at the accidental montage embedded in the asphalt at her feet: a Stroh’s bottle cap, a piece of green glass, a brass key, two pennies. She squinted; in the arrangement, she saw a devil’s face.

Ahead of her was a white high-rise on the island of concrete surrounded by the wide streets; fifty feet up, the
day’s news was displayed along a thick collar of moving lights.
“… SOVIETS EXPRESS HOPE FOR …”

The light changed and she never saw the end of the message. Rune crossed the street and passed a handsome black woman in a belted, yellow cotton dress, who was shouting into a microphone. “There’s something even better in heaven. Amen! Give up your ways of the flesh. Amen! You can win the lottery, you can become a multimillionaire, billionaire, get everything you ever wanted. But all that gain cannot compare with what you’ll find in heaven. Amen! Give up your sinful ways, your lusts…. If I die in my little room tonight, why, I’d praise the good Lord because I know what that means. That means, I’m going to be in heaven tomorrow. Amen!”

A few people chorused with
amens
. Most walked on.

Farther north in the Square, things were ritzier, around the TKTS discount ticket booth, where one could see the huge billboards that any out-of-towner who watched television would recognize. Here was Lindy’s restaurant, with its famous and overpriced cheesecake. Here was the Brill Building—Tin Pan Alley. Several glossy, new office buildings, a new first-run movie theater.

But Rune avoided that area. She was interested in the southern part of Times Square.

Where it was a DMZ.

She passed a number of signs in stores and arcades and theaters:
STOP THE TIMES SQUARE REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT
. This was the big plan to wipe the place clean and bring in offices and expensive restaurants and theaters. Purify the neighborhood. No one seemed to want it but there didn’t seem to be organized resistance to the project. That was the contradiction of Times Square; it was a place that was energetically apathetic. Busyness and hustle abounded but you still sensed the area was on its way out. Many of the stores were going out of business. Nedick’s—the hot dog station from the forties—was closing, to be replaced by
slick, mirrored Mike’s Hot Dogs and Pizza. Only a few of the classic Forty-second Street movie theaters—many of them had been grand old burlesque houses—were still open. And all they showed was porn or kung fu or slasher flicks.

Rune glanced across the street at the huge old art-deco Amsterdam Theater, which was all boarded up, its curvaceous clock stopped at five minutes to three. Of which day of which month of which year? she wondered. Her eye strayed to an alleyway and she caught a flash of motion. Someone seemed to be watching her, someone in a red jacket. Wearing a hat, she believed. Then the stranger vanished.

Paranoid. Well, this was the place for it.

Then she walked past dozens of small stores, selling fake-gold jewelry, electronics, pimp suits, cheap running shoes, ID photos, souvenirs, bootleg perfumes and phony designer watches. Hawkers were everywhere, directing bewildered tourists into their stores.

“Check it out, check it…. We got what you need, and you gonna like what we got. Check it out….”

One store, the windows painted black, named Art’s Novelties, had a single sign in the window.
LEISURE PRODUCTS. YOU MUST BE TWENTY-ONE TO ENTER
.

Rune tried to peek inside. What the hell was a leisure product?

She kept walking, listing against the weight of the camera, sweat running down her face and neck and sides.

The smells were of garlic and oil and urine and rotting food and car exhaust. And, brother, the crowds … Where did all these people come from? Thousands of them. Where was home? The city? The burbs? Why were they here?

Rune dodged out of the way of two teenage boys in T-shirts and Guess? jeans, walking fast, in an arm-swinging, loping roll, their voices harsh. “Man,
mothafuckah be mah boss but he don’ own me, man. You hear what I’m sayin’, man?”

“Fuck no, he don’ own neither of us.”

“He try that again, man, an’ I’ll deck him. I mothahfuckin’ deck him, man….”

They passed her by, Rune and her camera, as she taped a visual history of Times Square.

A place like no other in New York.

Times Square …

But every Magic Kingdom needs its Mordor or Hades and tonight as Rune walked through the place she didn’t feel too uneasy. She was on her quest, making her movie.
About the bombing but not about the bombing
. She didn’t have to justify the creepy place to anyone or worry about anybody’s shoes but her own and she was careful where she put her feet.

Behind her, a huge snort.

Fantastic! Knights!

Rune turned the camera on two mounted policemen, who sat rod-straight in their saddles, their horses lolling their heads and stomping solid hooves into the piles of granular manure under them.

“Hey, Sir Gawain!” Rune called. They glanced at her, then decided she wasn’t worth flirting with and continued to scan the street with stony gazes that streamed from under the visors of their robin’s-egg-blue helmets.

It was when she looked down from the tall, chestnut horse that she saw the red jacket again. It vanished even more quickly than earlier.

A chill ran through her, despite the heat.

Who was it? she wondered.

No one. Just one of the ten million people in the Magic Kingdom. And she forgot about it as she turned the corner and walked up Eighth Avenue toward the site of the former Velvet Venus Theater.

Along this stretch she counted six porn theaters and
adult bookstores. Some had live dancers, some had peep shows where for a quarter or a token you could watch films in little booths. She stuck the camera through the door and shot a sign (
ONLY ONE PERSON PER BOOTH. IT’S THE LAW AND OUR POLICY. HAVE A NICE DAY
) until a big guy selling tokens shooed her away.

She got some good footage of commuters on their way to the Port Authority and their homes in suburban Jersey. Some glanced in the windows; most wore glazed faces. A few businessmen turned quickly into the theaters, not pausing at all, as though a gust of wind had blown them through the door.

It was then that a humid wind carried a sour stink of burn to her. From the theater, she knew. Rune shut off the camera and strolled up the street.

Still spooked. The paranoia again. But she still could hear, in her memory, the terrible bang of the explosion. The ground moving under her. Recalling the bodies, the
parts
of bodies. The terrible aftermath of the bomb and the fire. She glanced back, saw no one watching her.

She continued along the street, thinking: The press coverage of the event had been good.
News at Eleven
had devoted ten minutes to the incident and the story had been a hook for a
Time
magazine article on the trends in adult films (“Hard Times for Hard-Core?”) and one in the
Village Voice
on the conflict the bombing presented to the First Amendment (“Disrespecting Religion and Abridging the Press”). But, as Larry had predicted, those were all spot news stories, hard news. Nobody was doing a human-interest piece on the bombing.

Come on, Shelly, she thought. You’re the key. I need you….

As she approached the ruins of the theater Rune paused, resting her hand on the yellow police tape. The odor was stronger than the day of the bombing. She almost gagged on the air, thick with the smell of wet,
scorched upholstery. And something else—a sickening cardboardy scent. It would have to be the scorched bodies, Rune figured, and tried to force the image out of her thoughts.

Across the street was another theater. The neon said:
THE FINEST IN ADULT ENTERTAINMENT. COOL, COMFORTABLE AND SAFE
. Rune assumed that patrons were not much soothed by the illuminated reassurance and that business was slow.

She turned back to the destroyed theater and was startled by motion. Her first thought: Shit, he’s back. Whoever was following her through Times Square.

A man’s face …

Panic took her. Just as she was about to turn and run she squinted into the shadows and got a better look at her pursuer. He wore jeans and a navy-blue windbreaker that said NYPD in white letters on the chest. It was Cowboy. The guy from the Bomb Squad.

She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. Tried to steady her shaking hands. He sitting on a folding chair, looking at a white sheet of paper, which he folded and put into his pocket. She saw a thin brown holster on his right hip. Rune lifted the camera and shot a minute or so of tape, opening the aperture wide to get some definition in the gloom.

He looked at the camera. She expected the man to tell her to get lost. But he merely stood and began walking through the ruined theater, kicking at debris, bending down occasionally to examine something, training his long black flashlight on the walls and floor.

The image in the viewfinder of the heavy camera faded. Dusk had come quickly—or perhaps she just hadn’t noticed it. She opened the lens wide but it was still very dim and she didn’t have any lights with her. She knew the exposure was too dark. She shut the camera off, lowered it from her shoulder.

When she looked again into the building Cowboy was gone.

Where had he disappeared to?

She heard a scuttling of noise near her.

Something heavy fell.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

“Hey?” Rune called again.

There was no answer. She shouted into the ruins of the theater, “Were you following me? Hey, Officer? Somebody was following me. Was it you?”

Another sound, like boots on concrete. Nearby. But she didn’t know where exactly.

Then a car engine started. She spun around. Looking for the blue-and-white station wagon, emblazoned with
BOMB SQUAD
. But she didn’t see it.

A dark car pulled out of an alley and vanished up Eighth Avenue.

Uneasy once more. No, damn scared, for some reason. But as she looked over the people on Eighth Avenue she saw only harmless passersby. People on their way to the theaters. Everybody lost in their own worlds. Nobody in the coffee shops and bars paid her any mind. A horde of tourists walked past, obviously wondering why the hell their tour guide was leading them through
this
neighborhood. Another teen, a mean-looking Latino, propositioned her harmlessly and walked on when she ignored him, telling her to have a nice night. Across the street a man in a wide-brimmed hat carrying a Lord & Taylor shopping bag was gazing into the window of an adult bookstore.

Nobody in a red jacket, nobody spying on her.

Paranoia, she decided. Just paranoia.

Still, she shut down the camera, put the cassette into her leopard-skin bag and headed for the subway. Deciding that she’d had enough atmosphere for one night.

In the alley across the street from what was left of the Velvet Venus a bum sat beside a Dumpster, drinking from a bottle of Thunderbird. He squinted as a man stepped into the alley.