Quarry's cut q-4

by Max Allan Collins

  Castile seemed a little uncomfortable during this speech. Apparently he didn’t want Oui magazine to know his wife/star considered the star of the picture a turkey.

  “And speaking of Frankie,” she said, now talking directly to her husband, “I’ve decided I don’t want to shoot that insert this evening. Maybe tomorrow morning.”

  “Now, baby…”

  “Jerry, please. When I washed my hair, my make-up got messed up, and so I took a shower, and I’d have to start all over again with the makeup, and…” (She spoke to me now.) “… and on a fuck movie make-up is a real nightmare. You got to go the whole glamour route, foundation, eye make-up, nails, and then body make-up, some of it going in places where you don’t generally put make-up, I mean, when you get your tits, among other things, blown up the size of a steamship on some movie screen, make-up is pretty important, believe me, and…” (She spoke to Castile.) “… I just can’t bear to go through that whole trip again. Not when I know what’s waiting for me when I get there. Please. Maybe tomorrow morning. What the hell, we’re snowbound anyway.”

  Castile thought about it. His ever-present smile was not present, however, when he nodded assent.

  “Thanks, doll,” she said and gave him a peck on the cheek.

  “I’ll go tell him,” Castile said, gesturing for her to get out to let him out, which she did, and he put his smile back on long enough to shrug goodbye to me, and left.

  His wife got back in the booth.

  “My movie name is Helen Ready. That’s R-e-a-d-y. My real name is Mildred Castile. Glad to meet you.”

  She extended a small, almost dainty hand and I shook it.

  “My husband’s a little upset with me, I think,” she said.

  “Because you don’t want to shoot that scene.”

  “That, and because I got a big mouth. I mean, he’d rather I put on a front for you, since you’re a media person and all.”

  “Your front looks okay to me.”

  “The back ain’t bad, either, but that’s something else I don’t do that my husband would probably go for.”

  “Pardon?”

  “He’d probably like me to come on to you and take you off in the bushes somewhere and give you something to remember me by.”

  “I was just making a smart remark. I wasn’t coming on to you, Mrs. Castile.”

  “Millie, please. No, I know you weren’t, but I was just trying to get back on a subject we were talking about earlier, which is my being an actress and not a whore. See, my husband thinks that since there’s nothing wrong with me humping on screen, why not hump an occasional media guy for a little better press, you know? Only familiarity breeds contempt and I don’t think giving the boys in the press room a free ride would do my career any good, and certainly not my husband’s. I mean, I would think it would tend more to make media people contemptuous of him, and do his career harm in the long run.”

  “You’re certainly frank about all this.”

  “Which is what makes my husband upset with me. He’s afraid you’ll put every word I say into your article. Will you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Do you want me to?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” She smiled. Very genuinely, showing her gums. “All this frank talk may be a front after all, huh? Just my way of catching your imagination and getting some play in your magazine? And without even once going into the bushes with you.”

  We both laughed a little at that, and I said, “You said before you ran a beauty shop. Do you mean you worked in one, or managed it, or what?”

  “I owned it. It was my family’s. My folks and my only sister got killed in a plane crash when I was in high school. So I inherited the family business. An aunt helped me run it. She ran it solo, while I went to beauty school. Why? That’s certainly boring stuff. Does Oui want that?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just interested. What about your husband? How did you meet him?”

  “Well, he’s older than me, I’m just over thirty. He’s in his thirties, too, but closer to forty. He was managing a restaurant in the same neighborhood… this was in New York… and we were going together. He was into old movies, was taking some courses at a college, not going for a degree or anything, just taking courses, anything to do with film: I was bored with what I was doing. I’d done some little theater type stuff, and high school drama before that, and liked it, liked it a whole lot better than doing somebody’s hair. Always did have stars in my eyes, I guess, and so Jerry and me hit it off, and he’d heard about the porno stuff people were doing, a lot of it was on the West Coast, nothing too good was being done in the east, so we decided to get into it. I financed it… I had money, from my parents, and I have an uncle who’s a soft touch, and is to this day.. and we started making movies, That’s, what… maybe five years ago. And we both always figured we’d use it as a springboard… never had any intention of staying in porno. We always knew we’d go aboveground. And it’s finally happening.”

  “You mean the contract your husband signed to do a movie for American International.”

  “Well, it’s really more than that. It’s got options that make it a multi-picture contract, really. It’s the bigtime, it really is.”

  “What about you? Your movie career?”

  “I’ll be in everything Jerry does. You just saw me shoot my last fuck scene, kiddo. I may take my clothes off on camera again, but it won’t be to do anything obscene.”

  There was a sort of logic to that that was somehow irrefutable.

  Across the way, in another booth, Richie and the fat cameraman, Harry, were sitting, talking. Or anyway Richie was talking: Harry just sat and scowled. Richie seemed a little frayed around the edges; he was waving his hands a lot and maybe was thinking about crying. I couldn’t hear anything they were saying: the one-sided conversation was intense but the volume was low.

  “Lover’s quarrel,” she said, noticing me watching the two men.

  “That so?”

  “Yeah. I think Richie was in the sack with Frankie last night, and Harry found out, and brother. “

  “Oh. Is everybody around here queer?”

  “Not me. But I’m a married lady. If you’re horny, you’ll have to take a shot at Janet.” And she smiled. “That’s a laugh. If you can get that cold little bitch in the sack, you can have me for dessert, married lady or not.”

  I was tempted to take her up on that. She was, after all, one of the best looking women I’d ever seen. And I liked her. For an actress, she was remarkably honest.

  But that had been her exit line; she rose and swayed off, and just as she did, fat Harry rose and left his friend Richie alone in the booth.

  So I joined him.

  19

  “Mind if I join you?” I said.

  The kid looked up, smoothed the front of his demim jumpsuit absent-mindedly. He pursed his lips, which made his scraggly blond mustache quiver like a caterpillar thinking about starting its cocoon. Then he looked down again, and muttered, “Go ahead.”

  He sat with his elbows on the booth’s transparent plastic tabletop, heels of his hands pressed to his forehead.

  I sat across from him and waited him out. I think he wanted me to start, wanted somebody to ask him what was wrong, to make sympathetic sounds. I’m not particularly good at sympathy, so I waited him out.

  “Ever had one of those days?” he finally asked, peeking out at me with those slightly bloodshot eyes, between the heels of his hands.

  “Get out of the wrong side of the bed?” I asked. Innocently.

  “You can say that again.”

  I decided not to.

  “I’m a screw-up,” he said, lowering his hands. “It’s that simple.”

  I couldn’t see arguing with him. He’d been a real asshole when he’d met me at the door; I was still holding that against him.

  Which happened to be the subject he started in on, to illustrate that he was a screw-up.

  “Like when you came to the door,” he said. “I misjudged
you. I thought you looked… I’m sorry… but I thought you looked suspicious. I know that’s silly. You’re a very normal looking guy. I mean, nice looking, even. But I misjudged you. Screwed up.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. Not meaning it.

  “No, really. I mean, if I’d known you were from Oui magazine.. ”

  “You might not’ve called me ‘smart-ass’ so many times?”

  “I had that coming. Go ahead. Lay me out.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Look, I… I’m glad you sat down. I’d like to start over.”

  “I only sat down because for my article’s sake I need to get to know everybody involved with the filming… including you. But according to what your friend Harry said, I guess you might not be too willing to talk to me. He doesn’t seem to be.”

  “Harry just doesn’t want it getting out he’s done a porno. He.. he just doesn’t understand.”

  “What doesn’t he understand?”

  “A lot of things. Jerry Castile, for one. Harry doesn’t understand who Jerry Castile is. All Harry can see here is a porno film being shot. He doesn’t see this for what it is.”

  “What is it?”

  “Film.” He said it almost religiously.

  “I see.”

  “Castile is… he’s a director. What more can I say?”

  “Not much.”

  “That’s right. After you’ve said it… after you’ve seen him for what he is… a director… it makes all the difference. Subject matter, what’s that? It’s not substance that counts. It’s style. Look at Howard Hawks.”

  “What?”

  “Look at Howard Hawks. He did westerns, he did comedies, war pictures, a private eye picture, crime pictures. but in them all, through them all, he was Howard Hawks.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” I admitted.

  “Look at Hitchcock,” he went on. “Suspense films. That’s what the public thinks of when they think of Hitchcock. But is it the subject matter of those films that’s important? No. It’s the style. It’s Hitchcock.”

  “That’s a real good point.”

  “I could make the same point about Alan Dwan, Fritz Lang, Samuel Fuller, a dozen others.”

  “I’m sure you could.”

  “They’ll be doing books on Castile someday. This period… the sex films… will be just one small, if interesting, part of his oeuvre. He’ll go on to do other films, initially simple genre pieces, I’m sure, but whatever he does, he’ll remain one thing, essentially.. Castile.”

  “And a director.”

  “Yes! A director. Might I say… an auteur?”

  “You might.”

  “I’m glad you understand what I’m getting at. It’s so frustrating to talk to someone like… like Harry, who just can’t see the forest for the trees.”

  “It’s hard, in a snowstorm.”

  “Yes,” he said, smiling solemnly, nodding, finding several layers of meaning below the surface of my flip remark. If I’d said it before, when I was some guy knocking at the door, he’d have called me “smart-ass” and let it go at that; now that I was with Oui, I was suddenly deep.

  He leaned in close to me, across the plastic tabletop; he was wearing cologne that smelled like fruit, and I resisted the temptation to look for any layers of meaning in that. “Harry doesn’t understand,” he said, “what a rare privilege it is to work with a director of Castile’s standing. And this particular film is particularly important.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It’s Castile’s last sex film, and as such is, well, historic.”

  “Then I take it you don’t have the reluctance to have your name seen in print, regarding this film, that your friend Harry has.”

  “Not at all. The name is Richard Hudson. H-u-d-s-o-n.”

  “Is that your real name?”

  “Legal name. I had it changed.”

  “From what?”

  “From,” he said, coyly, “something I didn’t like.”

  I let that pass, asked, “If Castile is such a meticulous filmmaker, why is he working with such a small crew?”

  “Well, we did have some other actors here, but they finished their scenes and left yesterday. And actors, on a film like this, assuming they aren’t superstars like a Frankie Waddsworth, will often help with the technical side of things, when they aren’t in a scene. But this is a small crew… normally, a picture like this would probably require, oh, twice as many people… but the difficulties of lining up good people, in Chicago, willing to work on a film like this, well

  … it limited Mr. Castile. But then he has a reputation for working with a smaller crew than most. Does a lot of his own camerawork… all the hand-held stuff. That’s how he helps retain control, puts his personal stamp on every frame of film. He even does his own cutting and editing as well. Part of his reputation comes from the quality he has been able to achieve on very low budget productions. He’s doing quality comparable to Radley Metzger… the hardcore films Metzger has done he’s done as ‘Henry Paris’… and Castile’s budgets are far smaller, perhaps a third as big.”

  “And that’s one reason the Hollywood people want him.”

  “Yes. You, obviously, can see what this could mean, working with Castile, and at this point in his career… but Harry can’t seem to grasp it. He doesn’t see how this could open so many doors. If Mr. Castile should happen to like my work, or Harry’s for that matter, we could be in California shooting film, in a matter of months, weeks, days! We could leave commercials, industrial films, pornography, all the demeaning shit behind, and do real films.”

  For a moment I wondered what happened to the triumph of style over subject matter, but never mind.

  “Harry’s a good friend of yours, I take it. His opinions seem to mean a lot to you.”

  “I’m not afraid to tell it like it is.”

  “That’s admirable. What is it?”

  “I’m… bisexual. A lot of people in the arts are.”

  “There’s a lot of it going around.”

  “Yes, and there’s nothing wrong with it.”

  “I didn’t say there was.”

  “I don’t mean to be… defensive. I didn’t imagine you’d be terribly shocked by my admission.”

  No, nor interested. But I said, “We run pictures of women together, in Oui. People are getting more open-minded on the subject,” and hoped that would mollify him.

  “Harry and I met through our work… we both work for the same agency, doing, as I said, commercials and industrial films and so on. And despite his Archie Bunkerish exterior, Harry is a sensitive man, intelligent, and a little enigmatic. We’ve been… together… for six months now. But he’s very possessive.”

  “Is that right?”

  “He’d even be upset if he saw us talking. He’s that small.”

  “Size isn’t everything.”

  “Last night, I… well, I got a little something going with Frank. You know… Frankie Waddsworth, the star of the picture.”

  “Frankie Waddsworth likes boys?”

  “And girls. Bi — sexual. Bisexual. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

  “I still didn’t say there was.”

  “That’s good, because there isn’t. And there’s nothing wrong with

  … having a little interpersonal relationship now and then, is there?”

  “Not as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I mean, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but, as I said, I tell it like it is… and if you want to print it in your magazine, so be it. I won’t try to stop you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So Frankie and I, we were kind of fooling around, and things got out of hand, and Harry butted in. Made a scene. It was ugly, I don’t mind telling you. Can’t he understand? Frankie Waddsworth isn’t just anybody. He’s a superstar.”

  “Superstar?”

  “He’s been in movies with every major porno actress. And after all of that, he still had time for me. Can you imagine how that ma
de me feel?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “And, so, now Harry is angry with me. I wish I could make him understand.”

  “Has anything like this ever happened before?”

  “No. Not with Harry and me. Though he’s always been the possessive type. That’s hard to cope with, sometimes, and anyway, who can resist a superstar?”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  Then Janet appeared, with a platter of sandwiches, which she set on the bar, and everyone-except Frankie Wadds- worth-appeared to get something to eat. With the arrival of Harry, Richie and I parted company, so as to not further aggravate the situation, although later I saw Richie sneaking off with some extra sandwiches tucked under his arm, probably going up to serve Waddsworth his supper in bed.

  Janet and I shared a booth. The sandwiches were good. They were on rye and mine was corned beef and Swiss cheese. There was beer, too. Olympia and Budweiser. I chose Oly, which is Clint Eastwood’s favorite. Who can resist a superstar?

  Castile was sitting with his wife. His brown-tinted goggle type glasses were gone, now. Apparently that was part of his directing costume that he discarded when shooting for the day suspended. He was still wearing the DIRECTOR sweatshirt, though.

  I had to get him alone and talk to him. Soon. Before Turner beat me to him.

  20

  After everyone had had their fill of the sandwiches and beer, Castile disappeared upstairs with his wife. I was starting to think there was no way to get him by himself, and I couldn’t say what I had to say in front of his wife.

  There were several small lounge areas on the first floor, most of them living rooms on the order of the sunken one, though without fireplaces, and dominated by the large windows that were standard throughout the lodge. The windows were draped, but looking behind the drapes you could see frost and nothing much else.