"Oh, what the hell." She stretched out her arm as if to show off a ring. "Are you gonna immortalize it, me and my hand?"
"Stranger things have happened." He cradled her hand in his, scrutinizing it like a jeweler, top and bottom. "Beautiful," he declared. "The fingers of a musician."
She laughed again. "I'm afraid the only keyboard I've ever played is a Macintosh." She tried to pull away but his grip held firm.
"You don't encounter symmetries of this perfection that often. I could really do something marvelous with these."
Finally he released her. She looked at her own hands as if she'd just noticed them for the first time. "Well, Lyle, I don't want to tell you your business, being a professional and all, but frankly, I can't see it. If these aren't the broken-nailed mitts of a glorified keypunch. . ."
"Please, you do yourself a disservice. And your profile, too, you know, is quite interesting."
"Yeah?"
"Very Roman."
"Well, I eat a lot of pasta, so that probably accounts for it."
"It's all in the proportions. Millimeters, really. Beauty, you know, a matter of fractions."
"Carla," called another woman, squeezing her way through the crowd. "Our table is ready."
"Okay, I'll be there in a sec."
The woman, who might have passed for Carla's cousin, stood before Johnson and openly looked him up and down. She gave no sign of what she had seen. "In the corner," she said, "by the window."
"All right, give me a minute." Carla began gathering up her purse, her drink.
"Carla," said Johnson. "What a lovely name."
"Yeah, it woulda been Charles if I was a boy. Well, it's been fun chatting with you -- I'm sorry, what was your name again?"
"Lyle," he said. "Lyle Coyote."
"Right." She laughed and shook his hand. "Of Visions and Things."
"Listen, let me give you my number." He jotted some figures down on a wet napkin. "I'd be honored if you'd consider allowing me to do your head and hands sometime."
"Why, thank you, Lyle, it's very flattering, I'll keep it in mind."
"I mean it, I think we could do beautiful work together."
"Nice meeting you," she said.
He watched her slip away into the dining room. He finished his "Precious Water" in one long swallow and shouldered his way out the door and into the parking lot. From the front seat of his car he had a clear view of the entrance, all the different people coming and going like shapes on a screen. Sometimes, especially when he was in his car, he imagined that he could see behind himself, too, that his head was equal in compass to the full horizon 360 degrees around and the sky was the polished concavity of his skull and that everything he could see or think possessed equivalent reality and the people scurrying about so industriously through the city of his mind were merely ideas that could be explicated, adapted, or refuted.
When at last she emerged from the restaurant, in the protective company of her female friends, he left his car as if in a trance and came toward her across the wide expanse of black pavement as if she were the only living thing on a deserted planet. At the unexpected sight of him her smile vanished and she spoke hurriedly to her companions, who all turned now in unison to see for themselves this man they'd already heard much about at lunch.
"Carla," he called, flashing his teeth, Mr. Geniality radiating a youthful frat-boy charm. "Hi. I'm sorry to interrupt, but could I possibly talk to you for a minute?"
She and the friends traded wary looks.
"It's important. Please." He seemed the most reasonable of men.
"Go on," said Carla to her hesitating companions. "A couple minutes. I'll be fine."
"We'll be right here," said the one who had come for her at the bar. "Over by the car."
Carla looked at Johnson now as if she'd known him longer than the five minutes they'd already shared. "I've got to get back to work."
"That's okay. So do I." He took her by the arm and led her away from the busy entrance, around the corner, where the foot traffic was less pronounced. "Please forgive me for bothering you again, but I simply couldn't allow this chance to pass without seeing you again."
She looked at him without expression, without even blinking her eyes.
"I don't know about you, but something rare happened a while ago back in there."
She waited, she would let him speak before revealing a single thought, a single emotion.
"Did you feel that sensation when we first moved toward each other at the bar, not just physically, although that was surely there, but something secret and special, moving invisibly together until it went click! loud and solid like pieces of a puzzle falling simultaneously into the exact right places at exactly the right time. Did you feel that, the tumblers dropping in a lock?"
She looked directly into the holes of his eyes for the space of one measured beat. "I gotta go," she said, bending her head and taking a step to pass him.
He reached out for her. "You won't have this opportunity again, maybe ever."
"No," she said, looking him again in the face, "I guess I won't."
He watched her step around him in an unexpected elaboration and around the corner and back to the car where her friends huddled in a vigilant group and listened to her report. He could see them begin to laugh. They were all looking at him now. Then Carla turned and called out. "Your mustache," she shouted, "I think it needs more glue."
He reached up and felt along his upper lip, where the adhesive had begun to peel away and the strip of false hair was lifting off the skin like a caterpillar on the move. Then he couldn't remember what happened between that moment, stuck out there in the middle of the cackling parking lot, feeling his face like a fool, and the moment later, out on the Santa Monica Freeway, having chased and caught up to their car; he was beginning to pass, to run it off the road, when he looked over and saw, in the driver's seat, a lone, startled man in a black mustache and a security guard's uniform. Who was
he
masquerading as?
His day was ruined now. There was nothing to do but drift around until the churning stopped. When he looked into other cars, he saw people like himself. This was L. A. Everyone was on patrol. Eventually he found himself meandering down the smooth familiar curves of Valhalla Drive. Where else was there to go?
Then, rounding the last turn before home, he was stopped by the startling chaos before him that blocked the road and transformed his dull backwater neighborhood into the scene of a natural disaster: there were trucks and cars and monster RVs and a couple of open semitrailers and a ragtag army of intent good-looking people of all ages in baggy shorts and baseball caps, many clutching hand walkie-talkies as if the hard gray rectangles were bricks of precious metal, all moving earnestly among the tables loaded with good-looking food, the folding chairs, the cables, the light stands, with a self-important arrogance, an air of imperviousness, of brute inevitability, because, goddamn it, they were members of a goddamn movie crew.
Johnson parked his car and, before he could even unbuckle his seat belt, noticed the tall thin man with rounded shoulders and a golfer's tan give him a dramatic shrug and head in his direction -- a neighbor he recognized from early morning walks on the beach. "What could I do?" called the neighbor. Bright camera lights burned in his front window. Through his open door moved an army of grips, electricians, and other assorted etceteras. A set of dolly tracks ran down the edge of his driveway into the street. "They offered a lot of money," he explained. "It's a Rudy Lobo film."
"You could have said no."
"It was a
lot
of money."
"Oh," said Johnson with a sarcastic shift in his voice, "then, in that case, you had no choice." He clapped his neighbor on the back. "Dawn of the Dollar Zombies," he proclaimed, cheerfully. "Never fear, you are not alone."
"Now, look," said the man whose name Johnson had never known, had no desire to know, "I was planning on notifying the neighborhood, but this all happened rather suddenly. They weren't supposed to begin shooting for two weeks."
"And how long are they staying?"
"Three days."
Johnson continued to stare at him.
"Five days, tops."
"And how do I get home during all this fun?"
"Between takes," said the man. "They allow cars through then. They're not unreasonable people. Actually, most of the time you can come and go as you please. But it's pretty fascinating, I have to admit, to watch all these folks scurrying about doing mostly nothing or standing around doing even less."
"Quiet please!" shouted a young woman through a battery-powered loudspeaker. She had a stopwatch around her neck and a walkie-talkie in her other hand. "Rolling," she said.
"And -- action," ordered someone else in a quiet unamplified voice. Everyone hushed then, turned expectantly in the same direction like sheep grazing in a field. There followed a long-drawn-out moment of held breath in which nothing happened. And continued to happen. But no one moved, no one breathed. Suddenly, the now-closed front door crashed open and a frantic man in a torn T-shirt and jeans came charging out and across the sloping lawn. He was pursued by a woman with disheveled hair and blood on her face. She was waving a gun in the air as she ran. They fled down into the street, the camera moving on its tracks with them. The woman shouted something, then she fired the gun once, and the man pitched face forward onto the pavement. No one moved. No one breathed. "Cut!" shouted the unamplified male voice. He was seated in a folding chair with his glasses pushed up onto his pink forehead. He looked like a trial attorney having a bad day.
Then from out of the crowd of spectators came the knowing, eternally nasal adolescent voice of the true cineast: "Quite reminiscent of the famous final scene in
The Killers,
1964. Remember: 'Lady, I don't have the time,' says Lee Marvin, gut-shot himself, then he plugs that bitch Angie Dickinson with a gun sporting a silencer the size of a tin can, staggers out of the nice suburban home, spits a gob of blood on the drive, and falls dead on the sidewalk, his briefcase pops open and all the money he's been after goes flying up into the wind, which, of course, is reminiscent itself of the final scene in
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Very pretty. Great movie. It was also, incidentally, the last picture Ronald Reagan made before going into politics. He played an evil crook. No comment."
The camera was hauled back up the tracks, the actors huddled with the director, then went back inside the house. After a while someone yelled "Rolling," and the front door crashed open, and etc., etc. And again. And again. And to those watching from behind the barricades there appeared to be no significant change from one repetition to the next.
"Maybe they should have him shoot her," suggested Johnson.
"Maybe they should try making a movie with no shooting at all," said someone else.
"They did," cracked Johnson. "It's called
Fantasia."
As the fifth take was being readied, a member of the crew in a black satin bomber jacket with the title
The Bonfire of the Vanities
emblazoned on the back strolled over to where Johnson and his neighbor were observing with amused concern a trio of harried makeup artists applying additional coats of blood to the already gore-stained face of one grimacing actress. Loftily, he informed Johnson that the First A.D. wished to see him.
"What's that?" asked Johnson. "The year Christ was born or a new rock group?"
"Follow me."
The First A.D. turned out to be a skinny, pretentious kid in his late twenties with the title of assistant director. At a glance Johnson could see he'd fucked both of the attractive young women with whistles and other silver doodads hanging fetchingly from their slender necks and who hovered attentively about the A.D.'s chair like the ladies-in-waiting they indeed were. In the magical enterprise of contemporary movie-making even the least acolyte at the very bottom of the end credit roll was touched and redeemed and illumined by the dazzling wand of media technology, everyone was a knight.
"I've been watching you," the First A.D. said.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. You got an interesting face. You hold yourself in interesting ways." He looked up at his girls and their shiny obedient heads nodded in agreement.
Johnson said nothing. He waited to see what was next. The A.D. was staring at him as if it was his turn to produce a response. He stared back. "Look," the A.D. said at last, "how'd you like to be in pictures?"
Johnson was silent, waiting politely to see if there was more. There wasn't. "You gonna make me a star?"
The assistant director glanced up yet again to check that his assistants were enjoying this little exchange as much as he was. "No, not exactly -- but, hey, who knows, everything in this industry's a crap shoot, who knows how far you could go? I want to talk to Brian about it" -- another telling glance -- "but I think you might be just right for our next project. You've got the look. Ever done any acting before?"
Johnson caught one of the girls studying him on the sly. He smiled. "Just the normal day-to-day stuff," he said.
"Yes, the Actors Studio of life. We get some of our best people from there. Well, listen, here's the deal. It's called
Blunted.
Cop picture. Elite multicultural squad of specially trained officers infiltrates an international gang of drug dealers and professional assassins. Bang, boom, bong. Public can't get enough. As I said, I like the way you carry yourself. I'd like you to read for us."
"As a cop or a thug?"
The A.D. laughed. "And a sense of humor, too. That's great. You have a number where you can be reached?"
"Here," said Johnson, pulling out his wallet, "let me give you my card."
"Great," said the A.D., accepting it. "So, Mr. Talbot," he said, reading the name off. "It's Larry, is it?" The two men shook hands. "And you're in insurance?"
"Sure am, got a minute?"
"Ha," he said, pointing at Johnson as he turned toward his audience. "This guy. He's great. So, listen, we'll be in touch." They shook hands again.