The Starcrossed Read online

  The makeup man pursed his lips, inspected his handiwork and then said, “Okay, mon ami. That’s the most I can do for you.”

  Dulaq bounded up from the chair.

  “Come on,” Earnest said, “you’re already late for the first scene.”

  As they left the makeup room and headed down the darkened corridor toward the studio, Dulaq put his arm around Earnest’s shoulders. “Sorry I gotta buzz off, but th’team’s important, y’know.”

  “I know,” Earnest said, feeling dejected. “It’s just… well, I thought we were going to have dinner tonight.”

  Dulaq squeezed him. “Don’ worry. I’ll be back Wensay night. I’ll take d’early plane. You meet me at th’ airport, okay?”

  Earnest brightened. “All right. I will.” And he thrilled to the powerful grip he was in.

  “But you can’t walk out on us!” Brenda pleaded.

  Mitch Westerly was slowly walking along the windswept parking lot behind Badger’s square red-brick studio building. The night was Arctic cold and dark; even the brilliant stars seemed to radiate cold light.

  “It’s h… hopeless,” Westerly said.

  His head was bent low, chin sunk into the upraised collar of his mackinaw, hands stuffed into the pockets. The wind tousled his long hair. Brenda paced along beside him, wrapped in an ankle-length synthetic fur coat that was warmed electrically.

  “You can’t give up now,” Brenda said. “You’re the only shred of talent left in the crew! You’re the one who’s been holding this show together. If you go…”

  Westerly pulled one gloved hand out of his pocket. Under the bluish arclamps the leather looked strange, otherwordly. The hand was trembling, shaking like the strengthless hand of a palsied old man.

  “See that?” Westerly said. “The only way I can get it to stop… make my whole body shop shaking… is to pop some cat. Nothing less will do the trick anymore.”

  “Cat? But I thought…”

  “I kicked it once… in the mountains, far away from here. But I’m right back on it again.”

  Brenda looked up at the director’s face. It looked awful and not merely because of the lighting. “I didn’t know, Mitch. How could…”

  It took an effort to keep his teeth from chattering. Westerly plunged his hand back into his pocket and resumed walking.

  “How can anybody stay straight in this nuthouse?” he asked. “Dulaq is bouncing in and out of the studio whenever he feels like it. Half the time we have to shoot around him or use a double. Rita’s spending most of her time with that snake from FINC… I think she’s posing for pictures for him. He told me he’s an amateur photographer.”

  Brenda huffed, “Oh for god’s sake!”

  “And when she’s on the set all she wants to do is look glamorous. She can’t act for beans.”

  “But you’ve gotten four shows in the can.”

  “In four weeks, yeah. And each week my cat bill goes up. Earnest is making a fortune off me.”

  “Earnest? He’s supplying you with cat?”

  “It’s all legal… he tells me.”

  “Mitch… can you stay for just another three weeks? Until we get the first seven shows finished?”

  He shook his head doggedly. “I’d do it for you, Brenda… if I could. But I know what I went through the last time with cat. If I don’t stop now, I’ll be really hooked. Bad. It’s me or the show… another three weeks will kill me. Honest.”

  She said nothing.

  Earnest has a couple of local people who can direct the other three segments. Hell, the way things are going, anybody could walk off the street and do it.”

  Brenda asked, “Where will you go? What will you do?”

  “To the mountains, I guess.”

  “Katmandu again?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. I’d like to try Aspen, if Finger will let me off the hook. I owe some debts…”

  “I’ll take care of that,” Brenda said firmly. “B.F. will let you go, don’t worry.”

  He looked at her from under raised eyebrows. “Can you really swing it for me?”

  Brenda said, “Yes. I will… but what will you do in Aspen?”

  He almost smiled. “Teach, maybe. There’s a film colony there… lots of eager young kids.”

  “That would be good,” Brenda said.

  He stopped walking. They were at his car. “I hate to leave you in this mess, Brenda. But I just can’t cut it anymore.”

  “I know,” she said. “Don’t worry about it You’re right, the show’s a disaster. There’s no sense hanging on.”

  He reached out and grasped her by the shoulders. Lightly. Without pulling her toward him. “Why are you staying?” he asked. “Why do you put up with all this bullshit?”

  “Somebody’s got to. It’s my job.”

  “Ever think of quitting?”

  “Once every hour, at least.”

  “Want to come to Aspen with me?”

  She stepped closer to him and let her head rest against his chest. “Its a tempting thought. And you’re very sweet to ask me. But I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Reasons. My own reasons”

  “And they’re none of my business, right?”

  She smiled up at him. “You’ve got enough problems. You don’t need mine. Go on, go off to the mountains and breathe clean air and forget about this show. I’ll square it with B.F.”

  Abruptly, he let go of her and reached for the car door. “Can I drop you off at the hotel?”

  “I’ve got my own car.” She pointed to it, sitting alone and cold looking a few empty rows down the line.

  “Okay,” he said. “Goodbye. And thanks.”

  “Good luck, Mitch.”

  She walked to her car and stood beside it as he gunned his engine and drove off.

  : : : : : :

  PINEAPPLES CLINCH PLAYOFF SLOT

  AS TOHO LEADS 56-13 MASSACRE

  : : : : : :

  It’ll look like Orson Welles, Gregory Earnest told himself as he strode purposefully onto the set. Script by Gregory Earnest. Produced by Gregory Earnest. Directed by Gregory Earnest.

  He stood there for a magnificent moment, clad in the traditional dungarees and tee shirt of a big-time director, surrounded by the crew and actors who stood poised waiting for his orders.

  “Very well,” he said to them. “Let’s do this one right.”

  Four hours later he was drenched with perspiration and longing for the safety of his bed.

  Dulaq had just delivered the longest speech in his script:

  “Oh yeah? We’ll see about dat!”

  He stood bathed in light, squinting at the cue cards that had his next line printed in huge red block letters, while the actor in the scene with him backed away and gave his line:

  “Rom, we’re going to crashl The ship’s out of control!”

  Dulaq didn’t answer. He peered at the cue card, then turned toward Earnest and bellowed, “What th’hell’s dat word?”

  “Cut!” Earnest yelled. His throat was raw from saying it so often.

  “Which one?” the script girl asked Dulaq.

  “Dat one… wit’ de ‘S.’”

  “Stabilize,” the girl read.

  Dulaq shook his head and muttered to himself, “Stabilize. Stabilize. Stabilize.”

  This is getting to be a regular routine, Brenda told herself. I feel like the Welcome Wagon Lady… in reverse.

  She was at the airport again, sitting at the half-empty bar with Les Montpelier. His travelbags were resting on the floor between their stools.

  “I don’t understand why you’re staying,” Montpelier said, toying with the plastic swizzle stick in his Tijuana Teaser.

  “B.F. asked me to,” she said.

  “So you’re going to stick it out until the bloody end?” he asked rhetorically. “The last soldier at Fort Zindemeuf.”

  She took a sip of her vodka gimlet. “Bill Oxnard still comes up every weekend. I’m not completely surrounded by idio
ts.”

  Montpelier shook his head, more in pity than in sorrow. “I could ask B.F. to send somebody else up here… hell, there’s no real reason to have anybody here. The seventh show is finished shooting. All they have to do now is the editing. No sense starting the next six until we get the first look at the ratings.”

  “The editing can be tricky,” Brenda said. “These people that Earnest has hired don’t have much experience with three-dee editing.”

  “They don’t have much experience with anything.”

  “They work cheap, though.”

  Montpelier lifted his glass. “There is that. I’ll bet this show cost less than any major network presentation since the Dollar Collapse of Eighty-Four.”

  “Do you think that there’s any chance the show will last beyond the first seven weeks?” Brenda asked.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Thank god,” she said. “Then I can go home as soon as the editing’s finished.”

  The P.A. system blared something unintelligible about a flight to Los Angeles, Honolulu and Tahiti.

  “That’s me,” Montpelier said. “I’d better dash.” He started fumbling in his pocket for cash.

  “Go on, catch your plane,” Brenda said. “I’ll take care of the tab.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Give B.F. my love.”

  “Will do.” He grabbed his travelbags and hurried out of the bar.

  Brenda turned from watching him hurry out the doorway to the three-dee set behind the bar. The football game was on. Honolulu was meeting Pittsburgh and the Pineapples’ star quarterback, Gene Toho, was at that very minute throwing a long pass to a player who was racing down the sideline. He caught the ball and ran into the endzone. The referee raised both arms to signal a touchdown.

  Brenda raised her glass. “Hail to thee, blithe spirit,” she said, and realized she was slightly drunk.

  The gay on the stool at her left nudged her with a gentle elbow. “Hey, you a Pineapples fan?”

  He wasn’t bad looking, if you ignored the teeth, Brenda decided. She smiled at him. “Perforce, friend. Perforce.”

  Even though he knew better than anyone else exactly what to expect, the sight still exhilarated Bill Oxnard.

  He was sitting in the darkened editing room—more a closet than a real room. He knew that what he was watching was a holographic image of a group of actors performing a teleplay. (A poor teleplay, but that didn’t matter much, really.)

  Yet what he saw was Francois Dulaq, life-sized, threedimensional, full, real, solid, standing before him. He was squinting a little and seemed to be staring oft into space. Oxnard knew that he was actually trying to read his cue cards. He wore an Elizabethan costume of tights, tunic and cape. A sword dangled from his belt and got in his way whenever he tried to move. His boots clumped on the wooden deck of the set. But he was as solid as real flesh, to the eye.

  “You!” Dulaq was saying, trying to sound surprised. “You’re here!”

  “You” was Rita Yearling, who in her own overly heated way, was every bit as bad an actor as Dulaq. But who cared? All she had to do was try to stand up and breathe a little. Her gown was metallic and slinky; it clung in all the right places, which was everywhere on her body. She was wearing a long flowing golden wig and her childinnocent face gave the final touch of maddening desirability to her aphrodisiacal anatomy.

  “I have waited for you,” she panted. “I have crossed time and space to be with you. I have renounced my family and my home because I love you.”

  “Caught up with you at last!” announced a third performer, stepping out of the shadows where the holo image ended. This one was dressed very much like Dulaq, complete with sword, although his costume was blood red whereas Dulaq’s was (what else?) true blue.

  “You’re coming back with me,” the actor recited to Rita Yearling. “Our father is lying ill and dying, and only the sight of you can cure him.”

  “Oh!” gasped Rita, as she tried to stuff both her fists in her mouth.

  “Take yer han’s off her!” Dulaq cried, even though the other actor had forgotten to grasp Rita’s arm.

  “We can dub over that,” an engineer muttered in the darkness beside Oxnard.

  “Don’t try to interfere, Montague dog,” said the actor. “Stand back or I’ll blast you.” But instead of pulling out the laser pistol that was in the.original script, he drew his sword. It flexed deeply, showing that it was made of rubber.

  “Oh yeah?” adlibbed Dulaq. And he drew his rubber sword.

  They swung at each other mightily, to no avail. The engineers laughed and suddenly reversed the tape. The fight went backwards, and the two heroes slid their swords back into their scabbards. Halfway. Then the tape went forward again and they fought once more. Back and forth. It looked ludicrous. It was ludicrous and Oxnard joined in the raucous laughter of the editing crew.

  “Lookit the expression on Dulaq’s face!”

  “He’s trying to hit Randy’s sword and he keeps missing it!”

  “Hey, hey, hold it… right there… yeah. Take a look at that terrific profile.”

  “Cheez… is she built!’

  Oxnard had to admit that structurally, Rita was as impressive as the Eiffel Tower—or perhaps the Grand Teton Mountains.

  “A guy could bounce to death off those!”

  “What a way to got”

  “C’mon, we got work to do. It’s almost quittin’ time.”

  The fight ran almost to its conclusion and then suddenly the figures got terribly pale. They seemed to blanch out, like figures in an overexposed snapshot. The scene froze with Dulaq pushing his sword in the general direction of his antagonist, the other actor holding his sword down almost on the floor so Dulaq could stab him and Rita in the midst of a stupefyingly deep breath.

  “See what I mean?” came the chief engineer’s voice, out of the darkness. “It does that every couple minutes.”

  Oxnard looked down at the green glowing gauges on the control board in front of him. “I told them not to light the set so brightly,” he said. “You don’t need all that candlepower with laser imaging.”

  “Listen,” said the chief engineer, “if they had any smarts, would they be doin’ this for a living?”

  Oxnard studied the information on the gauges.

  “Can we fix it?” one of the editors asked. Oxnard smelled pungent smoke and saw that two of the assistants were lighting up in the dimness of the room.

  “We’ll have to feed the tape through the quality control computer, override the intensity program and manually adjust the input voltage,” Oxnard said.

  The chief engineer swore under his breath. “That’ll take all humpin’ night.”

  “A few hours, at least.”

  “There goes dinner.”

  Oxnard heard himself say, “You guys don’t have to hang around. I can do it myself.”

  He could barely make out the editor’s sallow, thin face in the light from the control board. “By yourself? That ain’t kosher.”

  “Union rules?”

  “Naw… but it ain’t fair for you to do our work. You ain’t gettin’ paid for it.”

  Oxnard grinned at him. “I’ve got nothing else to do. Go on home. I’ll take care of it and you can get back to doing the real editing tomorrow.”

  One of the assistants walked out into the area where the holographic images stood. He wasn’t walking too steadily. Taking the joint from his mouth, he blew smoke in Dulaq’s “face.”

  “Okay, tough guy,” he said to the stilled image. “If you’re so tough, let’s see you take a swing at me. G’wan… I dare ya!” He stuck his chin out and tapped at it with an upraised forefinger. “Go on… right here on the button. I dare ya!”

  Dulaq’s image didn’t move. “Hah! Chicken. I thought so.”

  The guy turned to face Rite’s image. He walked all around her, almost disappearing from Oxnard’s view when he stepped behind her. Oxnard could see him, ghostlike, through Rite’s image. Th
e other assistant drew in a deep breath and let it out audibly. “Boy,” he said, with awe in his voice, “they really are three-dimensional, aren’t they? You can walk right around them.”

  ‘Too bad you can’t pinch ’em,” said the chief engineer.

  “Or do anything else with ’em,” the assistant said.

  Oxnard lost track of time. He simply sat alone at the control desk, working the buttons and keys that linked his fingers with the computer tape and instruments that controlled what stayed on the tape.

  It was almost pleasant, working with the uncomplaining machinery. He shut off the image-projector portion of the system, so that he wouldn’t have to see or hear the dreadful performances that were on the tape. He was interested in the technical problem of keeping the visual quality of the images constant; that he could do better by watching the gauges than by watching the acting.

  All of physics boils down to reading a dial, he remembered from his undergraduate days. He chuckled to himself.

  “And all physicists are basically loners,” he said aloud. Not because they want to be. But if you spend enough time reading dials, you never learn how to read people.

  Someone knocked at the door. Almost annoyed, Oxnard called, “Who is it?” without looking up from the control board.

  Light spilled across his field of view as the door opened. “What are you doing here so late?”

  He looked up. It was Brenda, her lean, leggy form silhouetted in the light from the hallway.

  “Trying to make this tape consistent, on the optical quality side,” he said. Then, almost as an afterthought, “What about you? What time is it?”

  “Almost nine. I had a lot of paperwork to finish.”

  “Oh.” He took his hands off the control knobs and gestured to her. “Come on in. I didn’t realize rd been here so long.”

  “Aren’t you going back to L.A. tomorrow?” Brenda asked. She stepped into the tiny room, but left the door open behind her.

  He nodded. “Yes. That’s why I thought rd stick with this until the job’s done: The editors can’t handle this kind of problem. They’re good guys, but they’d probably ruin the tape.”

  “Which show are you working on?” Brenda asked, pulling up a stool beside him.