by Joan Hess
“Hal is such a pig,” Gwenneth began, then stopped and shielded her eyes with her hand. “Oh, shit! Here comes that horrible man from last night! He’s sleazier than the janitor at Cedar Rapids High School.”
Ruby Bee looked over her shoulder. Jim Bob was bearing down on them like a garbage truck, and carrying a bottle in a plain brown wrapper.
Gwenneth started to rise, but Kitty caught her wrist and in a voice so low Ruby Bee nearly missed it, said, “Remember what Hal said, dear. We must be at our loveliest, mustn’t we?”
“Oh, shit,” Gwenneth repeated, but without emotion.
Ruby Bee was downright amazed when the blonde transformed herself into a coy little Kewpie doll and went so far as to wiggle her fingers at the approaching figure. Kitty murmured something and fled into #4. Although Ruby Bee thought of a few biting remarks to make to Hizzoner, she settled for a sniff as she went past him on her way to the barroom.
“Oh, you are such a sweetie!” she heard a giggly voice say.
Despite her best efforts to hear anything else, she didn’t. She wasn’t all that perturbed, however, since she’d picked a whole passel of interesting tidbits, including a reference to someone’s husband (she couldn’t wait to see Estelle’s face when she was presented with that), hints that had sounded scandalous, and a sort of flimsy theory concerning the upcoming movie to be made in Maggody.
All of it would have to sit on the back burner for the time being. It was getting close to happy hour at Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill, and she figured the crowd would be larger than the evening before.
I opened the door of the PD, and for the first time ever, I did so cautiously. I don’t know what I expected—a sheet of fire, a bomb rigged to the doorknob, or someone waiting in the back room. I found none of the above. As far as I could tell, the only person to have set foot inside was the postman, who never bothers to ring once.
I was filing the mail, with the largest percentage going into the metal wastebasket, when the door opened. I had to bite back a gasp, which was pretty damn silly, but I did and glanced up with a facsimile of a smile for the couple.
The woman held out her hand. “I’m afraid we didn’t have a chance to meet last night, Chief Hanks. I’m Carlotta Lowenstein, and this is Hal Desmond, the producer and director of Wild Cherry Wine, and the head of Glittertown Productions. We’re hoping you have some time to run through the shooting schedule.”
“Okay,” I said as I shook her firm, dry hand. “Nice to meet both of you.”
“I’m sure it is,” Hal said. He sat down in the chair across from my desk and snapped his fingers at Carlotta.
“Do you have an ashtray?” she asked me.
“I’ll get a saucer,” I said. She seemed pleasant enough, but unlike Anderson St. James, Hal Desmond wasn’t winning any Oscars in my PD. I fetched a particularly chipped saucer, handed it to him, and resumed my seat on the far side of the desk.
Hal took out a pack of cigarettes, tapped one out, and lit it, all the while regarding me with reptilian curiosity. “So you’re the chief of police. How’d that happen?”
“It happened,” I said with a shrug. “How’d you happen to choose Maggody?”
“Carlotta did that, didn’t you, sweetheart?”
I might have recoiled from his sardonic tone, but she didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. “One of the actors suggested the area. I rented a car in Springfield and cruised through every hamlet until I found the perfect site to shoot the film.”
“It’s quaint,” Hal said, flipping cigarette ashes on the floor. “I can’t deny its essential quaintness. In fact, I’d say its quaintness is unparalleled.”
“Perhaps,” I said, having no idea if we’d been praised or slapped across the face.
He didn’t seemed concerned with my minimalistic response. “And the citizens. Now we’re really talking quaint, aren’t we, Carlotta? We’ve had the good fortune to meet some of these very quaint people, and I am at a loss for words to convey how exceptionally quaint they are. If I can capture only the epidermis of their quaintness, I’ll be the toast of the Cannes Film Festival. Don’t you agree, Carlotta?”
“Right, Hal.” She glanced at her clipboard, then smiled at me. “Hal and I have been running by some of the specific sites we’ve lined up. One gentleman was eager to assure us he would keep his sow outside while we’re there.”
“Fuckin’ quaint,” Hal said, shaking his head. “It’s so fuckin’ quaint I told Carlotta here that we ought to bang out a few revisions and utilize the situation, which has incredible undertones of rural depravity. Sometimes those of us in the industry lose touch with the real people.”
“Raz Buchanon isn’t real,” I said.
“Good,” Carlotta said with a wry laugh.
Hal held up his hands, his thumbs meeting and his fingers erect to form three sides of a rectangle, and framed my face. “You’ve got good cheekbones—not anything to alarm Hepburn, but not bad. If we did something with the hair … You ever do any acting in high school? Think you might be interested in a screen test?”
Carlotta looked as if she might hurl the clipboard at him, and her voice was icy as she said, “Hal, this is the chief of police. She already has a career—in law enforcement.”
He tilted his makeshift camera back and forth, winked at me, then let his hands drop. “A director has to be on the lookout. I personally discovered Gwenneth D’Amourre, you know. She was—what, seventeen or eighteen? A sweet little thing fresh off the farm, but I could see the potential, and that’s what counts. When Gwenneth came over to my personal booth at the Polo, wiggling like she had an eel up her ass, I knew I had a star within my reach.”
Carlotta scribbled a note on the clipboard, but I doubted she was recording his words of wisdom. I settled back in my chair and stonily watched him.
“Same thing with Frederick Marland,” Hal continued, his hand jerking so much that cigarette ashes drifted down like dandruff. “Not that he wiggled like that. He took the more forward approach of sitting in the reception room of the office for—I dunno—maybe two, three weeks, every day, just like a brass lamp. You gotta admire that kind of perseverance, and I finally took pity on him and let him into my office. His accent was worse than the rubes who live around here, but I looked at his body and I thought P-O-T-E-N-T-I-A-L. Then I thought, Hal—what’ve you got beyond potential? Two kids, both saddled with hick accents. So I signed ’em both up, took the hayseeds out of their mouths, lined ’em up with a speech coach and an acting coach, straightened their teeth, dressed ’em up in the right clothes, and created the hottest pair of actors in the industry today.”
I suspected I was supposed to clap. “I don’t think I’ve heard of either of them,” I said sweetly.
Carlotta stepped on Hal’s foot. “The first two films have had limited release,” she told me, ignoring his yelp. “The third should be out this fall, after we’ve concluded the distribution negotiations. I’m sure Chief Hanks has more important things to attend to, so let’s run the schedule by her and get back to the motel before our cast and crew start killing each other.”
“You know something,” he said as he rubbed his foot, “you’ve got a real attitude, Carlotta. One of these days I’m gonna have to do something about it.”
She looked down at him. “Only if I don’t do it first.”
It was more exciting to be in her apartment during the day, when at any moment she might return. The previous night had been too easy, but he’d wanted to make it clear he could start a fire anywhere, not just in shacks on dark, deserted roads.
He opened the drawer in the night table, but it contained nothing of interest. Aware that his footsteps might be heard below, he walked soundlessly to the dresser. Inside the second drawer he found what he wanted, although he could not have explained the sudden urge to touch a woman’s clothing, to let silky underthings ripple through his fingers like water.
Not water, he corrected himself. Water was the dragon’s poison. He fingered a red slip e
dged with lace. This was better, he thought as he used it to wipe the sweat off his face, then stuffed it in his pocket.
He tucked a small present under the remaining items, and smiled as he imagined her expression when she found it. She would know he could come and go as he pleased. Would she begin to realize he was nearing the moment when he could seize his rightful power from the dragon?
Chapter 7
24 INT. BIGGINS’S HOUSE—LORETTA’S BEDROOM—NIGHT
Loretta is undressing in front of the mirror, gazing at her image.
LORETTA
(softly)
Oh, Billy Joe, if only Pa would let us be together.
WE HEAR a distant church bell, followed by a tap at the window. CAMERA WIDENS to include Billy Joe, who gestures for Loretta to unlock the window. Covering her breasts with folded arms, she crosses the room and does so. Billy Joe opens it and vaults over the sill.
BILLY JOE
I had to see you, my love. I saw you and Cooter Grimmley right there in his living room. He may live in a fine, big house, but he’s still a filthy sumbitch.
LORETTA
Hush, Pa’ll hear you. He and Ma are sitting in the other room. I think I’d better put my clothes on.
She reaches for her shirt, but he catches her wrist, pulls her other arm back, and stares longingly at her breasts.
LORETTA
(continuing)
Billy Joe, don’t do that. No, you got to stop. I cain’t think when you does that to me. You’re making me … excited.
BILLY JOE
Am I? Lemme see about that.
LORETTA
No! Please stop. Pa’s not ten feet away on the other side of the door.
CAMERA MOVES behind him as he backs her up to the bed and eases her down, all the while AD-LIBBING endearments and caressing her.
BILLY JOE
(distractedly)
I got a plan, Loretta. We can get away from this filthy town and start a new life together. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Then I could do this … and this … all the time.
ZACHERY
(off screen)
Loretta, what’re you doing in there?
LORETTA
You got to go, Billy Joe!
Billy Joe reluctantly stands up and starts for the window.
BILLY JOE
I’ll figure out a plan. I’ll get a message to you … somehow or other.
DISSOLVE TO:
Carlotta frowned at the crowd on the far side of the dirt road, but she was used to it and was doing her best to ignore the gawkers with their cameras, coolers, picnic baskets, and aluminum chairs. Fuzzy was inside the shack, in theory setting up the equipment, but he’d been in there so long she was beginning to worry that the crazy old coot had done something to him—or vice versa.
Hal was pacing in the weedy yard, a cigarette in one hand and a copy of the script in the other. He was dressed just like everybody thought a Hollywood director was supposed to dress: sunglasses, a battered canvas hat, a loud pink shirt, a khaki safari jacket, and plaid shorts. The only items causing dissension among the spectators were the black socks that clung to his calves like bark.
He was acting just like everybody thought a Hollywood director was supposed to act, too. He’d nearly bitten Joyce Lambertino’s niece’s head off when she ventured too near the fence, and she’d skedaddled back to Joyce, bawling. When he reached one side of the yard, he reeled around and took off lickety-split like he’d been shot out of a cannon. It was a most satisfying scene for all concerned.
Carlotta consulted her shooting schedule. There were eleven interiors in the Biggins’s family home. Although they’d considered doing some of the exteriors while the weather was good, she decided to wait a few days until the locals lost interest and drifted back to whatever dreary things they did on a daily basis. Anderson was getting chummy with Chief Hanks. Perhaps she could be cajoled into blocking off the road during some of the less-clad encounters. She made a note to remind Hal to make a lot of comments about artistic integrity and symbolism—and to stop capsulizing the film as “the Clampetts do Romeo and Juliet in the nude.”
Gwenneth and Frederick drove up in the van. When they disembarked, the buzzing stopped. It might have been due to their selection of clothing, in that Frederick was wearing ragged overalls that seemed to call attention to his privates. His bare chest was resplendently muscular and thick with curly brown hair.
Gwenneth was wearing cut-off jeans so tight that most of the crowd couldn’t figure out how she got into them, or if there was any way she could get out of them short of surgery. Her shirt, on the other hand, was nigh onto gossamer, and Kevin Buchanon, who was right up front, realized he could see her nipples just as clear as day. It was enough to make him dizzy and send his Adam’s apple into a frenzy.
Jim Bob was feeling a bit overheated himself, as his eyes dwelled on each lovely breast, then slid on down to strip the rest of her naked. From what she’d said the night before, when they’d again gotten real cozy in the last booth, he might get his wish. He wondered if she liked to wear a black lace teddie and a matching garter belt. He wondered if he could buy them in Farberville. He did not wonder what his wife would say if she could read his mind, because she was sitting in the living room, dressed like she was going to church, and beadily awaiting the movie company. She was doing this because he’d said they were coming right soon. Later he’d explain that they misinformed him.
“Put your eyeballs back in your sockets,” Eilene Buchanon said to her husband, her voice more tart than a green persimmon. “You look like a bullfrog.”
“You’re embarrassing me,” Millicent McIlhaney said to her husband, sounding just like Eilene if not more so.
“If you disgrace me,” Dahlia muttered to her betrothed, “you’re going to find yourself stuffed in this here mailbox.”
“I ought to call the Woman’s Commune in Bugscuffle and arrange a demonstration,” said one of the hippie women who ran the Emporium. “I cannot believe in this era that some sexist Hollywood pig would encourage such flagrant misconception of a woman’s worth based on physical attributes.”
“Right on,” said the other one, ogling the dude in the overalls. She doubted she had any misconceptions about his physical attributes, but she was willing to explore the thesis.
“Like, wow,” said the bearded wonder who lived with them. Neither responded to him, but they rarely did.
“I am gonna pass out,” Heather Riley whispered to Traci. “Doesn’t he have the cutest buns you’ve ever seen? Wouldn’t you like to see ’em in the moonlight on a blanket alongside Boone Creek?”
“What’d Darla Jean say about last night?” Traci whispered back.
For a brief moment, Heather took her eyes off the attraction across the street and wrinkled up her face like a Pekinese. “Nothing. The first time I called, she was real nasty and said I’d woken her up. I waited a whole hour, about to pee in my pants the entire time, but then she said she had to take in the laundry or she’d be grounded and then she banged down the phone before I could get in one word.”
“So you don’t know what happened?”
Heather shrugged and resumed her analysis of Frederick Marland, who might be as old as thirty but was holding up real well. The fantasy that ensued was enough to make her gulp like she was swallowing cracker crumbs.
“They are too married,” Ruby Bee said to Estelle with a snooty smile. “I heard Miss Kaye say she was going to fetch her hubby from that poker game.”
“It matters not to me, Miss Marital Almanac. I have better things to do than sneak around the parking lot and eavesdrop on other people’s conversations.”
Carlotta, who’d heard none of this but could have written wittier dialogue in her sleep, frowned at Gwenneth and Frederick. “Where are Buddy and Kitty? I told Anderson I didn’t need him until eleven, but unless poor little Loretta wants to whine to the wall, we need her doting parents.”
“I knocked on their door,” Gwenneth sai
d, “but nobody answered.”
Hal joined them. “Is this a business or a corporate picnic? Let’s get with the program, people. Everybody has a copy of the schedule, fer crissake. I could understand if one of these pinheads missed a call, but those two have been in the business since—since—I don’t know.” He glowered at Carlotta. “Didn’t you bother to check with everyone last night before you guzzled beer half the night?”
“I confirmed the details with everyone,” she answered evenly.
“Well, go call that goddamn motel and tell Aunt Bea to kick them out of bed!”
“Do you honestly believe there’s a telephone inside there? Is it in the billiard room, or hidden under the ferns next to the Jacuzzi?”
“Then go get them! Take my car! I cannot sustain my creative flow with all these delays.” He stalked across Raz’s porch and went inside. The slam of the door was a perfect punctuation mark; from across the road came a smattering of applause.
“I saw them in the barroom last night,” Gwenneth contributed, wishing that the dreadful mayor person would stop staring at her so hard she was apt to pop the button on her shorts.
“They were there until about ten,” Carlotta said. “Kitty and I watched all the local widows fight to sit in Buddy’s lap. You were preoccupied with a bit of lap-sitting, yourself.”
Gwenneth pursed her lips into a pretty pout. “Hal said we had to make nice with these people until we had a wrap. I was doing what I was told.”
“And we know why you do what Hal tells you, don’t we?” Carlotta said with the faintest hint of venom.
“Do we?”
“Can it,” Frederick said, not at all interested in the exchange. “I am beginning to sweat, and I’d like to do something more lucrative than be leered at by high-school girls. Gwenneth, my precious young nympho, let’s go inside and block what we can until Buddy and Kitty get their buttocks here.”