He grasped Martin’s arm and together they struggled back out of the crowd. It took them almost five minutes to reach the opposite side of Hollywood Boulevard, but once they were clear of the police lines they were able to dodge and shuffle their way along quite quickly. They reached Ramone’s store, The Reel Thing, and Ramone unlocked the front door, switched off the burglar alarm, and let them in.
‘What’s on your mind?’ Martin wanted to know.
Ramone took him across to the side of the store, where there were rails of old movie costumes. Right in front, with a label on it, was the painter’s smock that Spring Byington had worn in
You Can’t Take It With You
. Ramone, however, was rummaging around at the far end of the rails, and after a few moments he triumphantly came out with two immaculate tuxedos.
‘If you’re the same size as William Powell, this’ll fit,’ he told Martin.
‘You’re as crazy as I am,’ said Martin.
‘I don’t think so. Now, listen, I have shirts, too, and neckties, and evening pumps. Go into the back and wash up and I’ll have it all laid out for you, better than a valet.’
Martin went through to the back of the store, splashed his face with cold water, and combed his hair. By the time he returned, Ramone was already half dressed. ‘Believe me,’ said Ramone, ‘you and me are going to look like a couple of swells.’
Within ten minutes, they were leaving the store, dressed this time in tuxedos. Martin’s vest was far too tight, and so he had ripped it up the back. Ramone’s pants flapped around his ankles. But in the crowds and the excitement, they hoped that nobody would notice.
‘God help us,’ said Martin.
‘He will,’ Ramone reassured him. ‘He will.’
Their timing was almost perfect. They managed to push their way through to the front of the crowds just as the last official limousine was pulling away, and the police were dragging a trestle to one side. Martin elbowed his way around the edge of the trestle, and slipped behind two policemen into the roped-off area reserved for celebrities and guests. Bud Zabetti from Columbia Pictures noticed him and waved, obviously unaware that he had no invitation, and that was enough of a credential for a beady-eyed security guard to turn away satisfied and let Martin and Ramone shoulder their way into the throng of people in the theater lobby.
The lobby was hot and crowded and smelled strongly of Giorgio. Martin gradually eased his way through the crowds, nodding and smiling to people he knew. At last he approached the magic circle: June Lassiter, in a striking but somewhat extraordinary directional evening dress, more like a turquoise kite than a dress; Lester Kroll, all wavy gray hair and protruding upper teeth, and heavy gold rings on his fingers that had been given to him by various boyfriends; Geraldine Grosset, always smaller than she looked on the screen, tiny in fact, in a black gown with a gold spray over one shoulder; some starlet who was showing her naked body through a gauzy white dress; Miss Redd; and in the epicenter of this small tornado of Hollywood influence, Boofuls himself, with noticeably staring eyes, gleeful, pale, sucking in every moment of adoration as if he needed it to stay alive.
Martin came right up to him and stood beside him and said nothing; but at last Boofuls turned and saw him. He registered a split second’s surprise, then looked away.
‘You’re not actually supposed to be here,’ he said. Martin was appalled at the way Boofuls looked. For the first time, he really looked
dead
, like a boy who had been killed and then resurrected. There was paint and powder on his face, as if he had been prepared by an unskilled mortician for viewing by his relatives.
‘You could have sent me an invitation,’ Martin told him. ‘After all, I wrote sixty percent of the dialogue.’
Boofuls smiled to Esther Shapiro. ‘It’ll be out on VCR before you know it. Then you can watch it all you want.’
Miss Redd touched Martin’s hand with her own hand, as cold as chilled chicken. ‘I think Pip would prefer it if you left now, Mr Williams.’
Martin ignored her, and leaned toward Boofuls and said, ‘It’s tonight, Boofuls, isn’t it? It’s tonight.’
For the first time Boofuls looked up at him directly. His eyes were rimmed with red. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Martin. Go on, now. Go home. You’d be better off watching this on television.’
‘Tonight’s the big night, when you and Miss Redd plan to kill off one hundred and forty-four thousand innocent people, all at once, so that you-know-who can come back.’
‘You’re mad,’ said Miss Redd in a low, harsh voice that was more like a man’s than a woman’s.
‘We’ll see,’ Martin retorted. ‘But let me tell you something, Boofuls. Mad or not, I’m going to do to you what your grandmother did; and that is to chop you up into more bits than anybody will ever be able to put together again. And this time there won’t be any mirrors around to save your soul.’
‘Martin,’ said Boofuls. ‘I’m trying to save you. I’m trying to do you a favor.’
‘I don’t want any favors from you. I just want this madness called off, that is all. One hundred forty-four thousand people, Boofuls. Think of the slaughter. Think of the grief. And what have they ever done to you?’
Boofuls took two or three deep breaths, feverish, unhealthy, like a child in a sickroom. ‘I’ll tell you what they did to me, Martin. They brought down my father; they brought him down; and my father has lived a life of exile and agony ever since.’
‘Maybe he deserved it,’ Martin replied.
‘Oh no,’ said Boofuls, vehemently shaking his head. ‘Nobody deserves a punishment like that. Nobody deserves an exile that never ends. In the end, everybody deserves forgiveness, no matter how great their misdemeanor.’
‘And this is the answer, to sacrifice all these people?’
‘Martin,’ June Lassiter interrupted, ‘are you monopolizing our star? Come on, Pip, we have to get upstairs to our seats.’
But Boofuls beckoned Martin closer, and touched his shoulder, and whispered, ‘
And I looked, and behold an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. And authority was given to them over the fourth of the earth. To kill with sword and famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth
.’
Martin, in spite of himself, shuddered. ‘Boofuls,’ he said, although he was quite aware how pathetically ineffectual he sounded. ‘Boofuls, for Christ’s sake, don’t do it.’
Boofuls laughed. ‘I liked you, Martin, from the moment I first saw you. I think I always will. But go home, now. There is nothing else that you can do. And don’t ever ask me anything, for
Christ’s
sake.’
‘I can bring the mirror down here and damn well force you back into it.’
‘You’ll never be able to lift it. You know that.’
‘I’ll try, God help me.’
For a fleeting moment, Martin thought he saw Boofuls flinch, as if the prospect of Martin trying to move the mirror somehow disturbed him.
‘Leave the mirror where it is,’ Boofuls told him. ‘If anything happens to it, then Emilio will die. Do you want Emilio to die?’
Miss Redd now swept herself protectively in between them. ‘Enough,’ she said, staring at Martin with glittering eyes.
Martin tried to step around her, but she seized hold of his left hand and dug fingernails into it. The pain was sharp and intense; just like being scratched by a cat’s claws. Martin whipped his hand away and it was bleeding.
‘Is anything wrong here?’ asked Lester Kroll, benevolently tilting his way over. He smelled strongly of whiskey. ‘It’s time we took our seats, isn’t it? Come on, Pip, you young pipsqueak.’
June Lassiter came up to Martin and said, ‘I don’t know how you managed to inveigle yourself in here, Martin, and I don’t think I want to find out. But since you’re here, and since you wrote so much of the picture, and since poor Morris is in such a bad way … well, you can have a couple of seats at the back.’
‘You’re a princess, June,’ said Martin, trying to tug his vest straight.
‘Think nothing of it,’ June told him. ‘You’re a good writer; and now you’ve gotten Boofuls out of your system, maybe you’ll turn out to be a
great
writer. Tell me one thing, though.’
‘Anything.’
‘Where the hell did you get that tuxedo? It looks like it came off the city dump.’
Martin looked down at his drooping elephant’s-ear lapels. ‘You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.’
After a few minutes, Martin and Ramone were beckoned through the crowds by Kathy Lupanek and shown to two seats at the very back of the theater. The auditorium was already packed, and there was an endless cascade of excited conversation, as well as the usual coughing and shuffling and waving and women calling out, ‘Aaron,
darling
! I didn’t know you were here!’
‘Long time since I sat in the back row,’ Ramone remarked. ‘And I never sat in the back row with a
guy
before!’
At last, the theater lights dimmed; and a single spotlight fell onto the stage in front of the drapes. There was a roll of recorded drums, and then Boofuls appeared, in the white suit that he would be wearing toward the end of the film, when he was pleading with God to let him be an angel. The audience roared and cheered, and one after another they got out of their seats to give Boofuls a standing ovation. ‘And – Jesus – they haven’t even seen the movie yet!’ marveled Ramone.
‘The power of publicity,’ Martin remarked, standing up so that he could get a better look at Boofuls, but not clapping.
Boofuls raised his arms and eventually the clapping spattered away to nothing and everybody sat down. He paused for a short while, not smiling, but bright-eyed, and then he said, ‘You don’t know how happy you’ve made me. I hope only that I can make
you
just as happy in return.’
The audience applauded him some more. Again, he gently silenced them.
‘Once upon a time,’ he said, and his piping voice sounded weirdly echoing and distorted through the loudspeakers, as if he were talking down a storm drain. ‘Once upon a time there was a boy; and that boy was a legend in his own short lifetime. Once upon a time there was a musical; and that musical was never finished.
‘The story of that boy and that unfinished musical is too tragic for us to think about tonight. Instead, let us celebrate another boy, and a musical that has been finished. A boy, and a musical, which all of us who worked on
Sweet Chariot
have grown to believe will change the world.’
A large woman in a tight black dress who was sitting just in front of Martin leaned over to her red-faced companion and whispered, ‘Cocky little so-and-so, isn’t he? Just like Vernon was telling us. Do you know he wouldn’t even let the
producer
see the whole picture. And they went through seven editors. Seven!’
‘Ssh, Velma, he’s magic,’ her companion replied.
‘Magic, my ass,’ Velma retorted.
Boofuls left the stage and went to sit between June Lassiter and Miss Redd. The audience cheered him so vociferously that he had to stand on his seat and wave to them. At last the drapes swept back, and the audience fell silent, but there was a low murmuring of excitement all around.
Then the first chords of music sounded; and New York appeared on the screen; and the audience settled down.
Martin stared at the screen for over an hour without moving or saying a word. He was completely hypnotized. The music was so ravishing; the dances were so dazzling; the photography was unlike anything he had ever seen before. And right from the moment when he first appeared on the screen, Boofuls wrung his emotions in a way which Martin wouldn’t have believed possible.
Martin hated this boy; he absolutely detested him. Yet when he was kneeling on the sidewalk trying to save the life of a dying friend, Martin found that his eyes filled up with tears and his throat choked up. He looked around the theater and saw everybody was weeping,
everybody
, including Ramone, and that some women were so upset that they were hiding their faces in their hands.
When the musical reached the moment when Boofuls has to choose between staying with his mother and becoming an angel, and sings a song while his mother goes about her daily chores, unable to see him, the grief in the audience became almost uncontrollable. Martin found himself smearing tears away from his eyes with his hand; and several people were sobbing in genuine grief.
‘
Mother
…
how can I leave you
Even when the angels are calling?
Mother
…
how can I turn away
Into the rain that will always and always be falling?
’
Martin turned from Ramone to wipe his eyes. But, as he did so, to his bewilderment, he caught sight of Boofuls and Miss Redd hurrying hand in hand toward the theater’s side exit. And when he saw that, the melodramatic spell that
Sweet Chariot
had been casting over him was immediately and unexpectedly broken. He said, ‘Ramone!
Ramone!
’ and Ramone looked at him tearfully. ‘Ramone, something’s going down here, something bad.’
‘Man, this movie makes me feel so goddamn
sad
,’ Ramone said chokily.