Arty Short had thought it up. This system would guarantee a level of realism he’d never get otherwise. And the scene they were going to shoot needed absolute realism. But business was good these days. Really good.
This latest effort was going to bring in more money. “We’re in at the start of a new era,” Arty told his pupil, the one everybody knew as The Punisher. “The two of us, we’re starting it. You and me.”
The girl lingered in the middle of the set, twisting her hands. She was embarrassed, she didn’t know what she was supposed to do. She felt tense. She tried to smile and look relaxed, but it was all dark beyond the splotch of light, and she couldn’t see anybody. Not the director, no supporting cast, nobody. They’d contacted her the day before, while she was waiting in line with a lot of other extras hoping for a part in The Wedding March, a new movie directed by Erich von Stroheim. A man had come up to her and said he’d like her to try out for a part that would lift her out of the anonymous crowd. It was a small film, but all the leading Hollywood producers would see it. And so would everybody else who mattered in Hollywood. She hadn’t been able to sleep, she was so excited. A screen test! She’d hoped the makeup girl would be able to hide any sign of her sleepless night, but nobody made her up at all. They just gave her a dress to wear for the test, and some underwear. The wardrobe woman told her the director was a stickler for realism, but she still thought it was strange. It was funny, too, that no other girls showed up for the audition. But Hollywood didn’t expect girls to ask too many questions if they wanted to get an acting job, she reminded herself. After all, she’d already had to make a few compromises since she came to Los Angeles. She didn’t regret them. She’d posed as a model for “Graphic,” and to do so she’d had to go to bed with the photographer. And she’d had relations with a married man who was a friend of Jesse Lasky’s, and that had gotten her jobs as an extra in a few movies. That was how you got ahead in Hollywood. It was to get ahead that she’d left Corvallis, Oregon, in the heart of the Willamette Valley, three years before. If she’d gone to bed with a photographer and then with a married man in Corvallis, why, they’d think she was a prostitute. But the rules were different in Hollywood and she didn’t feel like a prostitute. She didn’t go to bed with just anybody. She didn’t do it for pleasure or for vice, either. It had only happened with the photographer and Jesse Lasky’s friend. In Corvallis, her beauty would only have gotten her a husband who worked for city hall instead being a logger, like the ones all her friends had married. That was all you could expect from Corvallis, a town whose official flower was the chrysanthemum. One day in the town library she’d read that in some parts of the world chrysanthemums were the flower of death. Well, she didn’t want to go through life like a dead person.
The door of the set opened and the director appeared. He had an ugly face — too thin, with old acne scars — and a sour expression. But she wanted more out of life. So she smiled at him.
“Okay, are ya ready?” Arty Short asked her.
“What should I be doing?” she laughed, as if she were perfectly at ease, like any consummate actress. “Is there a script?”
Arty just stared at her. He touched her hair, squinting. Then he turned toward the open door. “I want two braids!” he shouted.
An insignificant woman shuffled onto the set. She had four ribbons in her hand, two red and two blue. “Tied with a bow?”
Arty Short nodded.
“Red or blue?” she asked tonelessly.
“Red.”
The woman pulled a comb out of her pocket, stood behind the girl, and started parting her hair.
Arty stood watching as the woman began braiding her long hair. “I want you look innocent, understand?” he told the girl.
She nodded at him and smiled. She hated braids. Every girl in Corvallis had braids. She thought they made her look like a hick. But this was the screen test she’d waited all her life for. A leading role. She was ready to do a lot more than wear pigtails to get a part like that.
“What was your name again?” Arty asked her.
“Bette Silk …” she hesitated, laughed. “That’s my stage name. In real life I–”
“Okay, Bette, now pay attention,” said Arty. “Here’s what I want you to do …” He glared at the hairdresser impatiently. “How long does it fucking take to make two braids?”
The hairdresser tied the second bow and left the set.
“Sorry, Bette,” said Arty, softening his tone. “It’s just that I don’t like sloppiness on the set when I’m shooting. So, are you nice and calm?”
“Yes,” she said.
“All right. Now: You’re a girl on the run. Trying to escape. When I say ‘action’, you come in here, panting, terrified. Shut the door with this chain–” and Arty pointed to a light chain halfway up the door. He fastened it.
“Not those two?” said the girl, indicating two heavier ones at the base and top of the door. “If I’m running away–”
“Bette,” Arty stopped her, annoyed. “Bette, don’t start. If I say just use this one, then you just use this one.”
“Sure, I’m sorry, I just–”
“If I tell you to throw yourself out a window, you jump, Bette. Is that clear?” Arty said in firm voice.
Bette blushed and looked down. “Yes, sure. I’m sorry.”
“Fine. All right. That’s all you have to do,” and Arty’s voice was sweet again. “You’re escaping. And you come in here, trying to find a refuge.”
“I’m escaping from who?” she asked.
He just stared at her. “Are you ready?”
“I guess so,” Bette said timidly.
“Fine.”
“Do I say any lines?”
“They’ll come naturally. Spontaneously. You’ll see,” and Arty gave her a friendly smile. “Lights!” he shouted upwards.
The spotlights aimed at the scene came on. Bette could feel their heat wash over her. And in that moment she understood that she was about to be in a movie. A real one. A leading lady.
“Come on,” said Arty, guiding her by the shoulder off the set. He took off the chain and opened the door.
Bette looked back at the illuminated set before she stepped into the darkness offstage. She could feel her heart beating fast.
“He’s your partner,” said Arty.
Bette turned and saw a fellow about twenty-five. He was looking into her eyes without the slightest emotion. She felt suddenly chilled, and turned back to look at the brightly lit set.
“Camera!” shouted Arty.
Bette’s heart beat even faster.
“Action!”
Her dream was coming true. She took a deep breath and rushed onto the set. She stumbled and fell. She got up and hurled herself at the door. She closed it and set the chain.
Then Arty turned to Bill. “She’s all yours,” he told him.
Bill pulled a black leather mask over his head. It was fitted, with slits for his eyes, nose and mouth.
“Go, Punisher!” Arty laughed.
Bill lunged at the door. The chain snapped. The door flew open wide.
Bill stood there, looking at Bette, her long braids, her shapely figure. He watched her back up towards the wall, a look of feigned terror on her face. She was one lousy actress. He turned back towards the door and closed it. With one foot he kicked the lower chain into place. He fastened the one at the top of the door, too. And then he turned back to look at his victim. The girl put a hand to her mouth, dramatically, the way actresses in silent movies used to do. She mewed, “No … no … please … go away … no …!” Bill grabbed one of her braids and threw her on the floor. When she got up, her look of fear was more convincing. But it could be better. Bill punched her in the stomach. She bent double, whimpering. And when The Punisher tilted her head back, letting the cameras dwell on her face, her pain and terror couldn’t have been more realistic. Bill laughed and then he ripped her dress, still raining blows on her. He listened to the whir of the cameras and he could f
eel his excitement growing.
“Cut!” shouted Arty after ten minutes.
In the silence he could hear the click of the generator switch. The spotlights went out, crackling a little as they cooled down. The stage was in semidarkness now. The one lamp hanging over the set spread its splotch of light on the floor. Bill took of the black leather mask and left the set. The girl lay still for a moment, as if she were dead. Then she put a hand over her crotch, covering it, moving with unnatural slowness. With her other arm she covered her naked breast. She glanced towards the camera that had stopped whirring, saying softly, “Oh God …”
Around her, in the dark, everyone was quiet.
“Doctor Winchell!” shouted Arty Short.
A man about sixty came into the circle of dusty light. His sparse white hair had retreated to his temples. He wore round gold-rimmed glasses and a gray suit. One hand was gripping a small leather bag, and the other held two thin blankets. He knelt beside the girl and spread one of the blankets over her. Then he rolled up the other one and placed it under her head. He opened his scuffed leather case and took out a syringe, filling it with a clear thick liquid. The girl’s head was still turned towards the darkness, towards the stilled cameras. When she felt the doctor gently take hold of her arm and tighten a piece of hemostatic tubing around it, she turned to look at him.
“This is morphine,” Dr. Winchell said. “It’ll get rid of your pain.”
He sank the needle into her bulging vein, undid the tubing and injected the liquid. He pulled out the needle and pressed a piece of cotton soaked in alcohol against it.
While the doctor was replacing his materials in his little valise, Arty Short came over. He pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket, leaned over her and put the money in her hand. “Here’s five hundred dollars,” he said. “I’ve already talked with a producer who’s ready to give you a part. But if you even think about going to the cops, you’ll only be hurting yourself.” The director stood. “You did just fine,” he told the girl. Then he walked away, his footsteps echoing in the dark shooting stage.
Dr. Winchell smiled at the girl uneasily, then took a gauze pad and began to clean and disinfect the wounds on her face with great delicacy, washing the blood away.
“You were great!” they heard Arty Short say from further away. “Let’s see what comes out of it when we cut. Let’s go get a drink, Punisher. You’re gonna be a legend, believe me,” and his laugh echoed.
The girl looked at Dr. Winchell, who was still cleaning her wounds. “You look … like my grandpa,” she said.
44
Los Angeles, 1927
“Did you mean it when you told your wife you’d help me?” Ruth asked Clarence Bailey, when she showed up at Wonderful Photos, his photo agency, on the fourth floor of a building on Venice Boulevard.
Mr. Bailey looked at her. Ruth had a suitcase in her hand. An elegant little green crocodile suitcase. “Are you in some kind of trouble?” he asked, stepping aside to let her come past him.
Ruth didn’t move. “No,” she said simply.
“And I don’t imagine you plan on getting me into trouble, either, do you?” he asked her.
Ruth looked astonished. “No, of course not,” she said quietly.
“Come on in, Ruth,” said Mr. Bailey.
She stood in the doorway awkwardly. Unable to move.
It hadn’t been hard to leave the house in Holmby Hills. When she got back from the clinic the huge house struck her as even more unwelcoming. The vast living room where her parents had thrown sumptuous parties was almost empty now, except for a few pieces of undistinguished furniture. The walls that had once been covered with paintings had been pillaged by art dealers. The floors were bare, without the French and Persian rugs that used to adorn them. The pool had been drained and was filling up with dead leaves. Her father spent the day either waiting for possible buyers to show up, or else slipping out furtively to meet with his new business associates.
When she noticed her husband leaving, Ruth’s mother would rush after him, shouting, “Are you putting some whore through a screen test? Try to come back with at least a few dollars in your pocket, loser!” Then she would sink back in the armchair where she spent most of her days drinking. From early morning on.
But it wasn’t the gloom of the household that had made it easy for Ruth to leave. After three days, during which she hadn’t quite been able to do what she’d announced she was going to do, her father had come into her room one morning, accompanied by a man in a sharp-looking suit. His face was sharp, too, with little cold eyes. He had looked all around her room, not showing the slightest interest. Mr. Isaacson kept his gaze lowered, never meeting Ruth’s eyes. “Okay, this,” said the man, indicating the heavy silver frame that held a daguerreotype of Grandfather Saul. Ruth’s father didn’t move. The man picked up the frame, opened the its back, and shook the picture of Saul Isaacson onto the bed. Then he went out of the room holding the frame and saying, “What else have you got? I don’t have a lot of time.” Ruth’s father hadn’t had the strength to say a word to his daughter. He closed the door quietly and disappeared.
That very same day Ruth took her green crocodile suitcase, filled it with her clothes, the daguerreotype of her grandfather, and the lacquered heart that Christmas had given her. She left the house in Holmby Hills. It hadn’t been difficult.
And it hadn’t been difficult to find her way to Venice Boulevard and the fourth floor offices.
“Come in, Ruth,” Mr. Bailey said again.
Ruth looked at him. Then she looked at the floor, and the brass strip that separated the hallway flooring from that of the photo agency. Like a border between countries. As if this last step weighed more heavily than all the ones she’d taken up till now. As if, once she’d crossed the threshold, there’d be no turning back from her decision. And, as she looked at the brass strip that marked the threshold, her nose and her mind went back to the smells of Monroe Street, when she’d gone to say goodbye to Christmas. Just for a second, it was Christmas, not old Mr. Bailey who was being reflected in the bright brass. She could see his smile, his blond hair, his pitch-black eyes, his carefree expression. And she felt herself infused by his sunny nature, his courage, his faith in life.
She glanced up at Mr. Bailey. He was smiling at her as if he understood. “How’s Mrs. Bailey?” she asked.
“As she always is,” he said. “Come in.”
“You must miss her a lot,” said Ruth, the deep sadness in her voice filling her remark with all the yearning she felt for Christmas.
Mr. Bailey took the green suitcase in one hand and with the other guided Ruth inside the office. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll talk inside.”
Ruth saw that he stepped right on the brass strip, and that he didn’t wear elegant handmade English shoes but heavy American ones. She hesitated for a second, then crossed over the shining border. There, I did it, she thought.
Ten minutes later, Mr. Bailey’s secretary set down a tray with hot tea and cookies on the desk. Then she went out of the office and closed the door.
“It wasn’t my decision to put Mrs. Bailey in that place,” the old man said, even though Ruth hadn’t asked him anything. “I’d never have done it. If it were up to me, I’d have quit working and dedicated myself to her body and soul, day and night. No … not my idea,” and his eyes dimmed for a moment, pained and expressive. “One day — this was months after she’d been caught in the trap, as she’s always called her illness … anyway, one day she sat down across from me and said, ‘Look at me, Clarence. Can you see that right this minute I’m lucid? I want you to take me to a clinic for mental illnesses.’ Just like that, no leading up to it, nothing roundabout. I tried to object, but she stopped me right away. ‘I don’t have time to argue with you, Clarence,’ she said. ‘Ten more words and I’ll be talking nonsense again. You’ve never broken faith with me in all these years, so don’t start now. I don’t have time to argue.’” The old photographer gazed at Ruth. “I too
k her hands in mine, and I looked down, like a coward, because I didn’t want her to see me weeping … I didn’t want her to see how weak I was. I held her hands and when I looked up at her again … Mrs. Bailey was no longer herself. She simply … wasn’t there. And so I did what she asked me to do. Because if I had kept her with me, I would have been … faithless.” Mr. Bailey’s eyes smiled, but they were full of sadness. He took a sip of tea, got up and went to stand at the window with his back to Ruth. When he turned towards her again, his expression was serene. As if he had managed to shake off his sadness.
Ruth looked at him. The teacup was warm in her hands. And Mr. Bailey’s look was even warmer. Suddenly she wasn’t afraid anymore; she felt safe. As she had with her grandfather. As she had been with Christmas.
“Mrs. Bailey had to perform a huge act of will to get free of the trap long enough to ask me to look at your photos,” said Mr. Bailey. “And she did it twice. What extraordinary strength … do you see that?”
“Yes,” Ruth agreed softly.
“So let’s get to work.”
Mr. Bailey came around the desk, took Ruth by the hand, and led her out of his office. The walls of the agency were covered with photographs. Still holding Ruth’s hand, he stopped by his secretary’s office. “Odette, from tomorrow on, if the door to the archive room is closed, don’t go in, and try not to make noise. We have a guest now,” he said. Then he went on down the corridor until they came to a pale wooden door. He opened it. “All right. You’ll have to help me clear out this room,” he told Ruth. He began to pick up bundles of photos. Others were scattered everywhere, on the floor and on furniture. He carried them into the adjacent room, recreating the identical disorder. “You can sleep here until you find something better. I live just upstairs — an apartment on the fifth floor. If you need anything at all, just ring me. There would certainly be room for you there, too, but … well, it’s just that it wouldn’t seem right for a grass widower like me to install a young girl in his house, do you see?”
The Boy Who Granted Dreams Page 39