Laugh Lines Page 11

  “Sonofagun,” Oxnard said, “you broke his nose after all.”

  Earnest bounced up from the bed and fled from the room, wailing and holding his bloody nose with both bands.

  Brenda looked displeased. “You shouldn’t have done that. It just complicates things.”

  Gabriel was rubbing his knuckles. “Yeah. I should’ve belted him in the gut a few times first. Would’ve been more satisfying.”

  “He’s probably going straight to the lawyers. Or the police,” she said.

  Starting for the door, Oxnard said, “I’m going to the American consulate. They can’t hold an American citizen prisoner like this.”

  “No. Wait,” Brenda said. “Let me handle this.”

  “I don’t care how you do it,” Gabriel said, “but I want out.”

  Brenda faced him squarely. “Ron, that would be the end of everything. The show, the series, the whole Titanic company . . . .”

  “What do I care? Those bastards have been screwing me . . . .”

  “Ron, please!” Now it was Brenda who was pleading, and Oxnard wished he were in Gabriel’s place.

  “I’m walking,” Gabriel insisted. “High school kids in a writing contest . . . making models and sets like tinker-toys . . . .”

  “I’ll straighten things out,” Brenda said, as strongly as Gabriel. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why you wanted me here, wasn’t it?”

  “Well . . . .” He kicked lightly at the suitcase, still on the floor.

  Brenda turned to Oxnard. Her eyes are incredibly green, he noticed for the first time. “Bill, if I get B.F. to straighten out Earnest and give you authority to act as science consultant, will you stay?”

  “I’ve really got to get back . . . .”

  She bit her lower lip, then said, “But you can come up here on weekends, can’t you? To make sure that the crew’s building things the right way?”

  With a shrug, he agreed, “Sure, I suppose I could do that.”

  Turning to Gabriel again, Brenda went on, “And Ron, if I get you complete authority over the scripts and make Earnest bring in some real writers and a story editor, will you stay?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Gabriel scuffed at the suitcase again, like a kid punishing the floor for tripping him. “Because these flatworm-brained idiots are just going to screw things over, one way or the other. They’re a bunch of pinheads. Working with them is hopeless.”

  “But we’ll form a team, the three of us,” Brenda said. “You head up the writing and creative side, Ron. Bill will handle the scientific side. And I’ll make sure that Titanic does right by you.”

  Gabriel shook his head.

  “Listen,” Brenda said, with growing enthusiasm. “They haven’t made a decision on the male lead for the series. Suppose I tell B.F. that if we don’t get a major star the show will fold. He’ll understand that kind of talk. We can go out and get a big name. That’ll force everybody else to live up to the star’s level.”

  Gabriel’s eyebrows inched upward. “A big name star?”

  “Right.” Brenda smiled encouragingly.

  Oxnard could see wheels within wheels at work inside Gabriel’s head.

  “Okay,” the writer said at last. “You go talk to B.F. But first . . . get Rita Yearling over here. I want to talk with her. About who she thinks would make a good co-star.”

  Oxnard looked at Brenda. She understood perfectly what was going on in Gabriel’s mind. And she didn’t like it.

  But she said, “All right, Ron. If that’s what you want.” Flat. Emotionless.

  She started for the door. Gabriel stooped down and pushed the suitcase under the bed. Oxnard called out:

  “Wait up, Brenda. I’m going with you.”

  9: The Star

  The studio was alive at last. It rang with the sounds of busy workmen: carpenters hammering; electricians yelling to each other from atop giddy-tall ladders; painters and lighting men and gofers carrying the tools of their trades across the vast floor of the hangar-sized room.

  Four different sets were being erected in the four corners of the studio, fleshing over its bare metal walls and reaching upward to the girders that supported row after row of lights which seemed to stare down at the beehive below in silent disbelief.

  Ron Gabriel was standing in the middle of the big, clangorous whirl. He wore what had come to be known over the past few months as his “official working costume:” a pair of cutoff Levis and a tee shirt with Starcrossed lettered on front and back. Somewhere in the offices and workshops adjoining the studio, the art director was dreaming up a special symbol for the show. Gabriel would get Badger or Titanic to make tee shirts for the entire cast and crew with the symbol on them, no matter who protested about the cost.

  Standing beside him, in a conservative one-piece business suit, was Sam Lipid. He was only slightly taller than Gabriel, roundish, with a prematurely balding pate. His face was soft and young looking. Lipid was Production Manager for the show and Gabriel’s major point of contact with Badger Films. Gregory Earnest had given Gabriel a wide berth ever since bouncing off the bed in his hotel room, months earlier. There had been some talk of a lawsuit, but Brenda got Titanic to pay for a nose job and Earnest wound up looking better than he ever had before Gabriel socked him.

  “ . . . and here on the turntable,” Lipid was saying, “will be the ‘planet’ set. We’ll redress it every week to make it look like a different world.”

  Gabriel nodded. “Why the turntable?”

  Lipid’s babyface actually pinked sightly with enthusiasm, “Oh, we used to use this studio for filming a musical show, the Lawrence Welk Simulacrum, you know? It was very popular. They had audience seats along all four walls of the studio and the orchestra rotated at a different speed for each song, in time with the music.”

  “You’re kidding,” Gabriel said.

  “No, they really did it.” His face went pinker. “That is, until the speed mechanism broke down and flung all those animated dummies into the audience. It was a terrible scene. That’s when they cancelled the show.”

  Gabriel chuckled to himself as he and Lipid slowly walked across the noisy studio to inspect the “bridge” set. This would be used as the bridge of both starships, with slight redressings to change it from one ship to the other.

  “What do you think of it?” Lipid asked, over the shouting and hammering.

  Gabriel took it in. The two walls of the corner were now lined by desk-type consoles studded with elaborate keyboard buttons and viewing screens. About them were big observation screens, taller than a man and many times wider. They were blank, of course, nothing but sheets of painted plastic covering the studio’s bare walls. But with electronic picture matting, they would appear to look out on the vast universe and reveal stars, strange new worlds, other spaceships of the series. The floor had been turned into a metallized deck, thanks to judicious spray painting, and there were very modernistic chairs and crew stations arranged in a semicircle facing the corner.

  Nodding, Gabriel admitted, “It looks good. Real substantial. Needs some personalized touches, though.”

  Lipid quickly agreed. “Oh sure. Right. We’ve been talking with one of our Ontario vineyards . . . they might come in as a sponsor for part of the show. One of the captains can have a flask of wine set up at his command console.”

  Gabriel said, “Just make sure it’s a futuristic flask. We’re seven hundred years in the future, remember.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  Gabriel stood there and tried to visualize how the actors would look on the set. Not bad, he thought. It’s finally starting to shape up.

  “You like it?” Lipid asked. His voice went a little squeaky, like a kid who’s desperately anxious for a word of approval.

  “It’ll do, I guess. At least we got rid of that damned steering wheel.”

  Lipid blushed. “Oh. That. I didn’t understand what you needed. Dr. Oxnard straightened me out on that.”

&nb
sp; “He’s been a help,” Gabriel said.

  Lipid stared down at his sneakers. “You don’t like it, do you? What’d we do wrong?”

  “I like it,” Gabriel said. “It’s okay. Nothing’s wrong.”

  Looking up at him, the Production Manager said, “But you’re . . . well, you’re not excited by it. It doesn’t really raise your metabolism.”

  With a weary smile, Gabriel said, “Listen kid. I’ve been going flat out for more than three months now. I’ve been trying to get the scripts in shape, working with high school kids and every amateur playwright north of Saskatoon. I haven’t seen a single script or story treatment that I didn’t have to rewrite from start to finish. I’m hoarse from talking to these bean-brains and going blind from reading and typing twenty-eight hours a day. My ass hurts from sitting and my feet hurt from running and my gut hurts from fighting. So don’t expect me to flip handstands and start swinging from the rafters. Okay?”

  Lipid’s face glowed with awe. “Oh sure, Mr. Gabriel. I understand. There’s been a lot of talk around the studio about how hard you’ve been working on the scripts.”

  “Okay,” Gabriel said. Then, looking at Lipid’s trembling lower lip, he added, “And call me Ron. I don’t like this Mr. Gabriel shit.”

  “Oh . . . okay, Mr. Ga . . . uh, Ron.”

  Gabriel forced a smile and they started for the next set, in the next corner of the studio.

  Lipid asked as they walked, “Uh, Ron . . . can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.” They had to detour around a burly guy carrying a long plank on his shoulder. Laurel and Hardy would have a field day in here, Gabriel thought.

  “Why do you do it?” the Production Manager asked, his voice filled with admiration and wonder.

  “Do what?”

  “Why do you put up with us? I mean, you could be working with the bigtime outfits down in Hollywood. Or writing books. I’ve been reading your sci-fi books since I was a kid . . . .”

  Gabriel winced. Twice.

  But Lipid didn’t notice it. “You’re a famous writer. You’ve won a lot of awards. Why are you putting up with this cheap outfit? I mean, this is the best job I can get right now. But you . . . you can do a lot better.”

  Gabriel looked at him. The kid means it. He’s not putting me on.

  Without breaking stride, he said gruffly, “This is my show. Comprend? Mine. I created this idea; it came out of my brain. I may have to deal with shitheads at Titanic and beaver-brains at Badger, but that doesn’t matter. I want this show to be good, man. Not pretty good. Not good enough to get some sponsors. Not good enough to get renewed after the first thirteen weeks.”

  His voice was rising and the heat was building up inside him. Months of anger and frustration were bubbling close to the surface.

  “I want it to be good! Good enough to satisfy me. Good enough for any one of us to point at with pride. I want you and me and every carpenter and electrician in this crazy cave to be proud to have worked on ‘The Starcrossed.’ I want even assholes like Earnest—and Finger back in his padded room in California—to feel proud of this show. They won’t, because they haven’t got the capacity. But we do, you and me. That’s what I want. Pride of accomplishment.”

  “Wow,” gasped Lipid. “What commitment.”

  And the money helps, Gabriel added silently. And the fact that nobody else in town would touch my work because Mongoloid idiots like Finger convinced everybody I’m too tough to get along with. And I’m broke. And this is the only decent idea I’ve had in the past year. And if I don’t make some money out of this I’ll have to give up my house.

  As they stopped and looked over the next set, Gabriel realized that even those eminently practical reasons that didn’t sound so good when you voiced them, even they didn’t go deep enough.

  I’m staying because she’s here, he admitted to himself. Rita’s close enough to touch and so beautiful that she’s driving me crazy. She smiles and says all the right words to me, but she never gets within arm’s reach.

  He laughed silently, sardonically, at himself. They do articles in magazines about me, one of the ten most available bachelors in Hollywood. I have all the women I want. I spend half my Blue Cross getting cleaned up from them. And this one goddamned girl just smiles at me and I’m all putty inside.

  His mind completely detached from his physical surroundings, Gabriel wondered where Rita Yearling was at that precise moment. Getting her costumes fitted? Taking color tests with the new camera system? Talking on the three-dee phone Finger gave her? Talking to him? Planning to go back to L.A. for the weekend to be with him?

  Gabriel grimaced inwardly. I haven’t been writing fiction, he realized. I know exactly how Romeo felt.

  Rita Yearling did not go to Los Angeles that weekend. Bernard Finger came to Toronto.

  Gabriel was standing on the balcony of his hotel room, looking out disconsolately at the park-like front grounds of the hotel and beyond to the towers of the city that blocked what had once been a decent view of Lake Ontario. There wasn’t much smog in Toronto, since the Canadians used nuclear energy to a large extent. But the lake was still a fetid cesspool of industrial wastes.

  Rita had smilingly accepted Gabriel’s dinner invitation the night before; he had treated her to a quick jet flight to New York for authentic delicatessen fare. All through the evening she was warm, friendly, outgoing, obviously happy to be with Gabriel. And that’s as far as it went. She eluded his grasp. Even in the plush passenger compartment of the rented jet (five thousand bucks, Canadian, for the night) she somehow managed to stay at arm’s length.

  Gabriel couldn’t figure it out. Women didn’t act that way. Or at least, he’d never had any patience with those who did. “You either do or you don’t,” he had told hundreds of girls. But Rita’s different. Shy yet friendly. Innocent yet knowing. Desirable but distant. She’s driving me nuts, Gabriel told himself for the thousandth time.

  He burped pastrami. The morning air wasn’t helping to settle his stomach. Just as he decided to go back inside and take some antacid, a long stream of cars came purring off the superhighway and onto the hotel’s approach road.

  Finger! Gabriel knew instantly. No one else would demand such commotion. The carefully landscaped grounds of the old hotel had never seen such a flurry of sycophants. Bellmen and doormen seemed to spring out of the front entrance. Yesmen by the dozens poured out of the cars and yeswomen, too. Finger was no sexist.

  As Gabriel leaned over his balcony railing to watch, it seemed as if the hotel was disgorging whole phalanxes of flunkies. It was easy to tell the Californians from the Canadians. The L.A. contingent wore the latest mode: fur-trimmed robes and boots and hats that made them look like extras from an old Ivan the Terrible flick. Or the minions of Ming the Merciless. The locals wore conservatively zippered business suits, while the hotel staff was decked out in bluish uniforms faintly reminiscent of the old RAF.

  The whole conglomeration swirled and eddied around the cars for nearly fifteen minutes. Then everyone seemed to fall into a prearranged pattern, and the rear door of the longest, blackest, shiniest limousine was opened by one of the RAF uniforms. Despite himself, Gabriel grinned. He ought to have a line of trumpeters announcing his arrival.

  Bernard Finger’s expensively booted foot appeared in the limousine’s doorway, followed by the rest of his Cary Grant body. He looked gorgeous, resplendent in royal purple and ermine. And he bumped his head on the car’s low doorway.

  Gabriel hooted. “You’re still a klutz, you klutz!” he hollered. But his balcony was too far above street level for anyone to hear him. Briefly he wondered if he’d have time enough to make a water bomb and drop it on Finger’s ermine-trimmed hat. But he couldn’t tear himself away from the barbaric splendor of the scene below, even for an instant.

  Finger straightened his hat and sneaked a small rub on the bump he’d just received, then stood tall and beaming at the sea of servility surrounding him.

  Rita’s not there
to greet him, Gabriel noticed, and felt good about it.

  Then with an expansive gesture, Finger said something to the people nearest him. Several of them were holding recorders and minicameras, Gabriel noticed. Media flaks.

  Finger turned back toward his limousine and ducked slightly, beckoning to someone inside. New girlfriend? Gabriel wondered.

  It was a man who got out. A guy who wasn’t terribly tall, but looked wide across the shoulders and narrow at the hips. Muscleman. He wasn’t wearing Hollywood finery, either. He wore a simple turtleneck sweater and a very tight pair of pants. Athlete’s striped sneakers. Dirty blond hair, cropped short and curly. Rugged looking face; nose must’ve been broken more than once. Good smile, dazzling teeth. Must be caps.

  The newcomer grinned almost boyishly at the cameras, then turned and, grabbing Finger by the shoulders so strongly that he lifted the mogul off his feet, he kissed B.F. soundly on both cheeks.

  As he let Finger’s boots smack down on the pavement again, Gabriel howled to himself, He’s got a new girlfriend, all right! Wait’ll Rita sees this!

  But Gabriel was completely wrong.

  Les Montpelier phoned almost as soon as Gabriel stepped back inside his room, inviting him to a “command performance” dinner.

  “The whole team’s going to be here tonight,” Les said gravely, “to meet the show’s male lead.”

  Gabriel blinked at Montpelier’s image on the tiny phone screen. “You mean that guy is going to be our big star?”

  “That’s right.” Montpelier cut the connection before Gabriel could ask who the man was.

  Briefly, Gabriel considered throwing himself off the balcony. But he decided to attend B.F.‘s dinner instead.

  Finger bought out the hotel’s main restaurant for the evening and filled it with media people and the top-level crew of “The Starcrossed.” No working types allowed, Gabriel grumbled to himself. No painters or electricians or carpenters. Just us white-collar folks. Not even Bill Oxnard had been invited, although Gabriel knew he was in Toronto for the weekend.