“I’ll tell you where you’re wrong, Sid—principle. With guys like Lips, it’s principle. I mean, I know the neighborhood he grew up in . . . well, that neighborhood, there was a lot of things he didn’t learn, but one thing he knew: ‘If you fink, you’re dead.’”
“Okay, Mort,” Sid cautioned, his finger wagging sternly, “but you just better make sure you’re right—because if he blows the whistle on us . . . I mean, if that old man finds out we got his kid stashed in a nut house, shooting him full of dope every two hours, it’ll be us who’s dead! That’s a fucking federal rap, buster—kidnapping, they call it!”
Mort began to perceive the grotesquely serious possibilities and was quick to don his trouble-shooter’s hat. “Right, Sid,” he said tersely, “I’ll check it out.”
Meanwhile, everyone—except, perhaps, Jenny Jeans—was pleasantly surprised that C.D. had not made a thorough nuisance of himself. Instead, he had been quite content, thus far, to look at some of the “Maude, as a child” footage, making only a single comment throughout the screening, though Sid sat alongside, with a yellow-padded clipboard and ball point poised, ready to take any note or critique required. His one comment occurred during a sun-lit exterior, when Maude (Jenny) at age eight, pigtails and short, starched pinafore, in a full-figure medium-close shot, turned away from camera to lean over and pick up a kitten from the grass—a movement which filled the screen with the back of her limbs, beginning at the white ankle socks above the patent-leather Mary Jane shoes, and going up the back of calves, back of knees, back of thighs to the pert bottom—gift-wrapped, as it were, in her little-girl, plain-edged, white-cotton, Fruit-of-the-Loom panties.
“Uh, make sure she wears those same underclothes, all right, Sidney?”
“Check,” Sid replied at once, Mr. Efficiency, reflexively snapping on the light at the top of the clipboard, then realizing it wasn’t the sort of note he need—or, in fact, should—take, so he went into a small coughing spasm instead, and switched off the light. “Take it off your mind, C.D.,” he said, jovial and brisk, trying to get back in the ball game, “I’ve got it covered.”
But C.D., as he continued staring expressionless at the same shot, just nodded and grunted.
About then Lips arrived to pick him up. Sid was surprised because he had scheduled an hour screening and it wasn’t finished. He looked at his watch—still fifteen minutes to go. “You’re a little early, Lips.”
Lips, who, after a hushed exchange with C.D., was now helping him with his coat, looked at Sid, but avoided his eyes. “No, I don’t think so, Sid. I mean, you know, not really.”
“It’ll keep, Sid,” said C.D., gripping Sid’s shoulder as they left the projection room, rather hurriedly it seemed, while yet another take of the fabulous “Maude bends over to pick up the kitten” shot filled the silver screen behind them.
But the boss surprise for Sid was yet to come—and did, indeed, at the next day’s screening, during one of the most engaging sequences of the assembled footage—or so Sid felt, being as it was the scene in which “Momma” (Louise Larkin) explains to Maude the concept of “noblesse oblige” as it pertains to a young lady of the South. During this scene—and Sid was pleased to observe, out of the corner of his eye, that C.D. seemed to be enjoying it—the door of the projection room again opened with a stab of light, just long enough for someone to enter. Lips Malone. He bent over C.D. and whispered—completely unintelligible, except for one word which sounded like “warm,” but Sid couldn’t be sure; in any case, C.D. responded with the serious alacrity usually reserved for rushing to a mother’s deathbed.
“I’ll see this later, Sidney, it’s beautiful,” he said hoarsely as he left, carrying his coat, and this time Lips didn’t say anything at all, or even look at Sid—just hurried after the old man, in his hand the chamois-skin bag Sid had seen before.
14
IT DID NOT take the able Mort Kanowitz long to learn the true nature of the odd friendship between Lips Malone and old C.D.—albeit more by chance than design that he did. It was on the second day of C.D.’s screening—when, as it happened, the interruption coincided with the very time Mort was required to leave the bedside of his “patient,” for a trip to the local chemist to replenish his waning supply of morphine, now being consumed in ever increasing dosages.
Having completed the transaction, he emerged from the apothecary and was alarmed to see the big studio Merk swerve past him, Lips at the wheel, driving insanely, while old C.D. crouched hawklike in the back seat, looking sinister indeed in his jet-black shades and clutching his chamois-skin bag in a taloned grasp. Mort reflexively drew back into the doorway, his first thought being that Lips had spilled, and they had followed him to the dope connection; he looked wildly about, fully expecting, also, to see some cop-type with them, or behind—and was greatly relieved when he did not, and again, when the huge car continued past the apothecary to turn the corner, one building farther along. His relief, however, gave way to surprise and curiosity when the car stopped, as he could tell by the sound, a few seconds later. With rather obtrusive stealth, he walked to the corner and peered around it. There was the great Merk, parked near the rear of the building, empty. This was the building next to the apothecary—and, from the looks of things, they had left the car, and gone in the rear entrance. What the hell’s going on? Mort wondered, and he stepped back to study the front of the small building, trying to determine what it was. There was something strangely familiar about it, but it escaped him for the moment. Then he did remember—this was where they had rented the hearse; it was the mortuary. This realization almost staggered him with panic; it could mean only one thing—Les Harrison had died of an overdose. Yet how was that possible? He was all right fifteen minutes earlier, and that had been when he was more than half an hour into his fix, whereas, the symptoms of M-overdose are instantaneous. He must have died from something else, Mort decided. In any case, he must find out at once. “If those guys think I’m taking the rap for it,” he muttered, “they’re nuts!” He checked his watch—he could be out of the country in twenty-five minutes.
The front of the mortuary was dark, its shades drawn, the door locked. He walked around to the side, down to the Merk, and then into the narrow alleyway where the rear entrance was located. Three wooden steps led up to a door and a window beside it; Mort cautiously ascended. The window was partially open, but its shade was drawn, and the door was shut. At the bottom of the windowshade, however, was a slit of light, and he found that by leaning down so that his eyes were on that level, he could see, quite clearly, into the room. Standing close together, in the center of the room, were three distinct figures, two of whom he recognized immediately to be Lips and C.D. The third man, he then recalled, was the man from whom they had rented the hearse, and he appeared to be counting small packets of currency as they were handed to him from Lips, while C.D., holding his chamois-skin bag in one hand, stood alongside them, trancelike, staring down at the fourth occupant of the room, lying on a narrow table—a figure which Morty had overlooked before, but which he now saw very plainly—a dark-haired woman of indeterminate age, half covered by a sheet, and quite obviously a corpse.
“Hurry it up!” he heard C.D. whisper tersely as he took off his jacket.
Lips and the mortician completed the count, and started for the door. “I’ll wait in the car,” Lips muttered.
Morty jumped off the steps, and ducked behind, on the side away from the street—so that when the two men reached the bottom of the steps, they turned in the opposite direction from where he was hiding.
He waited for a minute after they had rounded the corner, then he came out, tiptoed up the steps again, and looked in beneath the shade.
“Holy Christ” he muttered, his mouth dropping open.
Inside the room, standing naked by the table, C.D. was in the process of strapping an odd, dildolike extension device, which appeared to be made of plastic, onto his already erect member, giving it a startling, even caricaturish length
and girth. From the chamois-skin bag, which now lay open on the floor, he extracted a jar of what was, presumably, a lubricant and began applying it vigorously to the device.
Standing naked, wearing only the device and his dark glasses, he presented a bizarre spectacle indeed as he massaged lubricant onto the absurdly exaggerated phallus, with serious mien.
While Mort looked on in astonishment, he removed the sheet from the corpse with a flourish, arranged the legs, pulling up the knees to a coital position, placed himself between them, and maneuvered the device to penetration.
Morty, who had begun to feel somewhat dizzy, half turned away to descend the stairs, but stopped short at the sound of what he recognized to be C.D.’s voice. He leaned down again, peering intently, cocking his ear to one side, straining to decipher the husky tones. Then he made it out, being delivered in a theatrical stage-whisper, expressing an almost frightening urgency: “You slut, tell me you can’t feel it! I dare you! Tell me you can’t feel it, you dirty slut!”
15
“NOW THEN,” BORIS WAS explaining to Angie, “the obligation of this scene, as I see it, is to establish beyond any doubt exactly where Maude’s head is at this particular moment—that is to say, the full extent of her mania, which takes her, in fact, to the very edge of madness. Right?”
She stared at him, eyes glistening with adoration. “You’re so wonderful,” she said softly.
The drug she was on, as far as Tony had been able to determine, was a combination of methedrine and liquid opium, presumably tinctured with something to stabilize the mixture. In any case, its effect was that of a mammoth tranquilizer, embodying as it did both boss-upper and boss-down dream. It had arrived in her studio fanmail about a month earlier—a small carton containing twelve large capsules, each in a separate compartment. The accompanying letter read:
DEAR MISS STERLING:
I am a graduate student at Berkeley, where I study Advanced Chemistry.
Needless to say, I am also a fan of yours, and the other day I read (in Silver Screen) that you were ‘sometimes blue.’ The next time you are, try one of the enclosed capsules.
With best wishes for your continued success,
HOWARD K. LAWTON
The inside flap of the carton was marked: “For Little Girl Blue.”
She had promptly put the carton aside and forgotten about it, only to come across it again when packing and hurriedly toss it in with her many other medicines. Then, on an impulse, when she was having such trouble with the first scene, she had taken one—and the rest was cinematic history, or hopefully soon to be.
Tony had learned the nature of the concoction by stealth and ruse—rooting about in her things until he found her “medicine box”—followed by a lengthy, highly impressionistic process of trial and error. He identified the meth by its effect, and the liquid O by its taste and blackness. He showed up at the set absolutely zonked. “This is it,” he said, handing Boris a sample. “I advise you to take one immediately.”
“What is it?” asked Boris, scrutinizing the capsule.
“Well it’s something else, whatever it is. ‘Blue’ it’s called, ‘Little Girl Blue.’”
“How many does she have?”
“Uh, seven . . . no, six . . . well, five, if you don’t count that one.”
“Well, put it back,” he said firmly, returning it, “and don’t you take any more. She needs them.”
The strength of the scene in question appeared to lie more in its intensity, if fully realized, than in anything novel or erotic about the action per se—which was fairly straightforward, portraying, as it did, Maude and a single lover, engaged in the conventional, or classic, “sixty-nine,” with cunnilingus and fellatio being simultaneously rendered.
“I think the beauty of this,” Boris continued, his voice soft and serious, his hands moving in tentative gestures, “will arise out of its total . . . purity.”
“You’re the one who’s beautiful,” breathed Angie, “. . . and pure. You’re everything that’s beautiful and pure.”
“Hmm.” He regarded her with certain concern. She looked so whacked out he was beginning to doubt she could do the scene. On another level, however, he was wondering, somewhat wistfully, if perhaps now, under the spell of this rather obviously spellbinding sense-deranger, she might not just possibly be persuaded at last to do a full-pen without double. No, he immediately thought, it was madness—Angela Sterling would never stand still (so to speak) for being “fucked on camera” . . . she had said as much herself.
“Okay, Laz,” he said wearily, turning away from Angie, “I guess what we’ll do here, we’ll shoot toward the cut-away . . . setting it up for the old, pardon the expression, ‘insert,’ eh? Ha-ha,” his laugh like a death rattle.
“Listen,” he went on after a pause, head down, eyes closed, rubbing his temples with thumb and forefinger—much in the manner of the late, great Lester H., “I think we’re in trouble on this one . . . ‘sixty-nine’ . . . wow, well, I mean that’s full-on clichéville, right? To do a serious . . . noncontrived . . . relevant . . .” and he opened his eyes and looked at Laz—who was waiting with a soft, benevolent expression that seemed to say: “You lay it down, B., and we’ll pick it up!”—and then he resumed: “I think we’d better go for anal-tongue on this one, Laz. Otherwise we’re in trouble,” he put his head down again, hand to brow, thoroughly wasted physically, and at the same time getting some sort of curious debilitating contact-high through Ange and Tone, “. . . otherwise,” he repeated, in a disturbed and oddly plaintive way, “this scene is just going to curl up and die—D.H. Lawrence style. I mean, we’ve got to get some generation-gap stoppage going for us in here, you dig?”
16
“NOW THEN, FERAL,” Boris was explaining with great care and deliberation, “in this scene you will be kissing Miss Sterling’s . . . how do you say, ‘pom-pom’?’”
“Pom-pom,” Feral nodded, grinning wildly, “yes, pom-pom! But not real kiss, yes? Only make-believe kiss, yes?”
“Uh, yes, well, that’s what I want to talk to you about. Now, she’s wearing that thing, right? That piece of cloth . . . over her pom-pom, yes?”
“Yes, yes, cloth-piece over pom-pom!”
“Right. Well, what I’d like you to try to do, Feral, is get your tongue—” he stopped long enough to stick out his tongue—”tongue, yes? To get your tongue under the cloth . . . and into her pom-pom. You understand?” Speaking with his tongue thrust out, and twisting it down and around to demonstrate the maneuver, caused his speech to be fairly garbled, so he had to repeat it a couple of times—but, even so, Feral was quick to grasp.
“Yes, yes, Feral-tongue in pom-pom! She know? Missy Sterling know?”
“Yes, well, that’s the thing, you see. We’ve got to do it very . . . carefully . . . just a little at a time . . . very slowly . . .” he wasn’t sure of what words to use, so he did a brief pantomime with his hands, “like the lion and the . . . antelope, yes?” and his hands moved in a meticulous simulation of the stealth of the hunt. Feral nodded vigorously to show understanding.
“She like?” he wanted to know, “Missy Sterling like Feral-tongue in pom-pom?”
“Hmm. Well, I think she just might at that. Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained,” he patted him on the back. “Right, Feral? Ha. But remember, easy does it.”
“Yes, yes,” Feral’s head bobbed in hearty agreement, “yes, yes. We hunt like the lion! We hunt the pom-pom!”
17
THE “C.D. AT THE mortuary” incident had so unnerved Morty that, after fleeing the scene—down the alley, in opposite direction of the Merk—he had stopped at the first bar he reached and went inside for a few quick belts to steady himself. But he must have required more than he’d anticipated, because by the time he’d finished lushing it up and got back to the hospital, his “patient” had flown the coop, leaving coiled through the corridors behind him, like the discarding of an extraordinary white snakeskin, a seemingly endless trail of the
gauze in which he had been so carefully swaddled. To judge from appearances, he must have been moving through the corridors with terrific speed and determination at the time.
18
PHILLIP FRASER, A YOUNG London film-editor, who had worked with Boris before, was brought over shortly after they started shooting—and, under Boris’s supervision, worked continuously on a rough assembly of all that had been shot to date. He had completed the Arabella-Pamela Dickensen sequence—“Premiere Amour”—which, in terms of the “aesthetic eroticism” Boris had been trying for, exceeded all expectations.
Sid, whose Hollywood conditioning had given him a rather Pavlovian reflex to screenings—that is to say, blind, boundless enthusiasm—and especially when he himself was holding a piece of the action, let this be no exception. The nature of the material, however, did require a certain change in the substance of his praise so that, instead of the usual weeping or guffawing to express appreciation when the lights went up, he was shouting: “I swear to Christ, B., I never got such a terrific bone-on in my life! Like a fucking rock, I swear to Christ,” over and over, litany style, before catching himself, genuinely embarrassed, “. . . Jeez, I didn’t mean to say it like that—I got carried away, I guess.” But he was quick to see the positive side of it—“Just goes to show what a powerful picture it is! I mean, listen, you guys, I think we got a fucking hit on our hands, for Chrissake!”
The Angela footage was also being edited and assembled as it was shot, including the flashback intercuts, and, since they were shooting pretty much in sequence, it was possible to keep the continuity of the assemblage almost up to date. So far, however, only Boris, Tony, and the editor had seen it.
“I can’t fucking believe it,” said Tony softly, “it’s just too much.”
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