“Not too fast! Take your time! You’re only a kid! You’re just a young artist! You don’t have too much experience with women! You’re a little bit uncertain whether you can perform with this dame!”
I stopped and stood stock-still, my hands at my sides. My mouth worked a little. I was hardly aware of what Reiter was saying. It didn’t matter. I was transfixed by the sensuous shadow hanging before me in the lucid white air.
“Okay, Moira, he’s standing there like a dummy, so you moved forward! The klieg on her just as she reaches him. That one there.” He pointed to the light he wanted. “Go, Moira, go! Slink forward!”
She passed into the glare from the klieg and her face became visible again, her eyes unnaturally widened as though with belladonna.
“Take her in your arms, Alys! You may be only a kid, but you’re a man after all. She’s waiting. Careful—keep your hands off her boobs or we’ll have to reshoot the whole scene.”
Moira’s face was suffused with desire. “You can put your hands some places,” she whispered without changing her expression.
The shifting and elusive levels of reality around me blurred, and I was no longer sure what I was doing. “Moira …”
“Her name is Charmian! It has three syllables!”
“He can hear us.”
“No, he was just reading lips.”
“CHARMIAN…”
With one hand on her cheek, I bent to kiss her. Then I hesitated, my face eloquent with the struggle going on inside me.
“IF I THOUGHT THAT IT WAS BECAUSE…”
Her glance still locked on mine, faintly smiling, she shook her head slowly back and forth. “If you think this is hard, wait till you …”
“NO, I LOVE YOU. WE WILL ALWAYS BE
TOGETHER.”
“… have to lie on top of me on the bed.”
“If only they would all go away,” I murmured, “Reiter, the cameraman, all of them, and leave us here alone.”
I bent forward and our lips touched. I turned my head sideways to press my mouth tightly against hers. Her entire body, from shoulders to knees, was touching mine through the thin negligee.
“Cut! Pine! Okay! Print that!” yelled Reiter. “Cut the lights now or Moira’s going to melt. Where are we now?” he asked the script-girl.
“Take Thirty-one. The lovers fall on the bed.”
“Now you kids, see,” said Reiter, “you’re writhing around here on the bed, and meanwhile Hellingham from the office is trying to get his wife. He suspects something. But the phone is off the hook because you’ve kicked it, although you didn’t notice. So you just go right on writhing, and later we’ll cut in the shot of Hellingham trying to phone from the office, getting madder and madder. Okay, try the lights over here on the bed. Camera medium close, about ten feet. You got your satin filter on?” he asked the cameraman.
“Yep.”
“The idea with the lights is, we keep them a little to one side so the lovers are in shadow. That way we can get away with more than if we lighted them directly.”
He had one of the grips lie down on the bed. The electricians pushed the lights around until the figure on the bed was shadowed the way Reiter wanted it. “Good, good. Now Moira, you see the depression the guy left in the bed? You’ve got to fall right into that or the lights won’t be right. And Alys, watch yourself. Hands off her boobs and nothing below the waist.”
I nodded.
“Can he slip his knee in between my legs?”
“Okay, if it seems natural. He can’t just jam it in there like he’s hammering nails. Okay, everybody? Let’s roll. Moira, you stand there, and Alys there. You’re still in each other’s arms. After a while you just sort of naturally float down on the bed. You don’t notice what you’re doing. All ready? Lights—camera. Action!”
He began roaming around behind the camera like a tiger, slapping his boot with his crop. “Get your hand up there on her face! You just finished kissing her, remember, Alys? Now you sort of swirl around and finally land on the bed. But you start writhing while you’re still standing up! Haven’t you ever done this before? You’re acting like a high school boy at a prom. You’re going to be sticking it in her in only a minute. You want her! You can hardly stand it!”
My hand still rested on Moira’s cheek. From a few inches away I could see her only in a kind of blur. Her dark eyes swam, slightly out of focus. I moved my lips forward to kiss her again, but she floated away from me, pulling me gently and insistently with her arms. Her face hung just out of reach, and I followed it. Then, as though we were suspended in an invisible and viscous fluid, we sank slowly through the lucid air down onto the bed.
“Right on the dent where the guy was lying! A little more to the left!”
I managed to shift Moira a little farther to the left. I found that my knee had somehow slipped between her legs, which parted slightly to make room for it. My elbow, or hers, struck the white telephone on the night stand. It fell to the floor with a thump, the wire dangling.
Now I really had three things to think about. I pretended to make love to Moira, and I lay on top of her in a perfect agony of unrequited and impossible desire. Meanwhile, in a third part of my mind, I imagined Mr. Bellingham in his office endeavoring to call his home number. He waited, but there was only a busy signal. He held the old-fashioned black telephone with one hand and pressed the receiver to his car with the other, shaking the telephone and frowning.
“Camera in! Center on the lovers on the bed! The two of you talk in whispers! You say something and she says something! It doesn’t matter what!”
“I can’t take much more of this. There must be somewhere we can go.”
“There’s nowhere, nowhere.”
“Let’s try.”
Her head moved spasmodically from side to side. “It’s no use, I tell you.”
“I want to be alone with you. Not here, among these people. Somewhere else. Alone.”
“I know, Alys. It’s what I want too. But we can’t …”
“We can just go out through the gate and run. There’s a whole world …”
“You keep saying that, but I’m telling you it’s no use.”
“I’ll find some way or other.”
“Say her name, Alys!”
“CHARMIAN …”
I lifted my head slightly so that I was gazing into her eyes. Her head moving slowly back and forth, her lips parting slightly in the anguish of desire.
“Now you say his name!”
“LOUIS …”
With a spasmodic impulse she reached up and pulled my face down onto hers. Our lips crushed together again and I felt the hardness of her small sharp teeth, the trembling nervousness of the searching tongue between them. This made a dagger of flame leap through my nerves. Frantically my hands roamed over the negligee. I hardly knew what I was doing.
“Good! Cut!” I heard Reiter shouting. “Print that! Okay, Alys, you can stop now. The scene is over.”
I sat up dazed on the bed. Behind me Moira was sitting up too, adjusting the negligee over her hips and touching her disarranged hair. My temples pounded and I felt hot and cold at the same time; a tight knot of desire was still clenched at the center of my body. I stared as though half deranged into the darkness off beyond the camera. At last I stood up and wandered away from the bed.
“That’s just great,” said Reiter, taking off his hat and mopping his head. “One of your best, Moira. Alys, what have you got there in your pants, a coat hanger? Better go take a shower and cool off.”
Take Thirty-two. The breakfast scene. I wasn’t in this take and so I stood in the shadows at one side of the camera, watching the others work. Reiter paced back and forth, slapping his bull chest and going around to look through the viewfinder of the camera. “Bring up the klieg behind the window. It’s morning. Sunlight streaming in. On set everybody. Are we ready?”
Moira, that is Charmian, and her husband were having breakfast in the breakfast room. The furniture was chrome tubi
ng and white leather, much like that in Mr. Bellingham’s office. The maid was seen through the doorway doing something in the kitchen. Mr. Bellingham was seated at the breakfast table, and Moira was standing at the buffet behind him. On the table was an object I recognized: a nickel-plated toaster on four Bakelite legs. Mr. Bellingham, without taking his eyes off the newspaper, opened the door on the side and put in a slice of bread. Moira, facing the camera, watched him intently. She was wearing a morning dress in a printed fabric with two pockets in the front. Without looking down, she slipped her hand slowly into the pocket and removed the vial. Still keeping her eyes fixed on her husband, she opened the vial and shook two tablets into the teacup on the buffet beside her. Then she lifted the teapot and filled the cup. All this without looking at what she was doing, as though she were blind, so to speak; she never took her eyes off her husband. Only once did her glance rise a little to look over his head, and she caught sight of me in the shadows behind the camera. Her glance fixed on me for an instant or two, with a look of calm but portentous significance. She set the teacup and saucer on the table.
“YOUR TEA, DEAR.”
He nodded without raising his eyes from the paper. Lifting the cup, he drank half its contents and set it down again.
“THE WORKERS ARE STRIKING AGAIN,
THEY SHOULD BE PUT DOWN RUTHLESSLY.”
He drank the rest of the cup of tea.
“Camera up!” yelled Reiter. “Roll it right up to the table! Close-up on the toaster!”
The dolly rolled up, so close that the words “Omega Homemaker” were clearly visible on the toaster. A thread of smoke appeared over it and spiraled slowly in the air. Then it began emitting smoke heavily.
Take Thirty-three. The courtroom scene. Here we had to move to another studio and everything was trundled across the main street of the lot: the camera on its dolly, the kliegs trailing cables, and the script-girl with her book following behind. A whole crowd of extras was herded onto the set: twelve jurors, a lot of spectators, a bailiff, and a few more to spare in case they were needed. Charles Morton, looking like Lincoln without his beard, played the judge. Moira sat in the courtroom in the front row of the spectator section in a prim tailored suit and a white blouse, without makeup. The entire take consisted of my examination by the district attorney, who was a suave young man with an insinuating way of glancing at the jury between questions.
“WERE YOU AWARE THAT A POISONOUS
SUBSTANCE, TO WIT TWO FIVE-MILLIGRAM
TABLETS OF POTASSIUM CYANIDE, WAS PUT
INTO MR. BELLINGHAM’S TEA?”
I caught Moira’s eye. Her expression as she gazed back at me was searching and intent. I turned back to the district attorney, said something, and nodded.
“DO YOU KNOW WHO THE PERSON WAS WHO
PUT THAT POISONOUS SUBSTANCE INTO MR.
BELLINGHAM’S TEA?”
I hesitated. Reiter, from behind the camera, shouted, “Look at Moira again! You look at Moira between every question!”
She and I exchanged another long and significant glance. She said something too faint to hear, but her lips formed the words, “I … love … you.” The camera took all this in. I turned back to the district attorney and spoke.
“YES, I DO”
The jurors stirred in their seats. The district attorney glanced at them from under his brows, as though calling on them to pay close attention, and then he faced me again.
“WHO WAS THAT PERSON?”
“Don’t answer too quickly! Keep up the suspense! Look around the courtroom! Let the audience sweat! What are you going to say? They don’t know!”
My glance traveled slowly around the courtroom: to the judge, across the row of jurors in their box, to the bailiff, then the spectators, and finally fixed on Moira’s face. I turned back to the district attorney.
“IT WAS MYSELF.”
Sensation in the courtroom. Everyone began buzzing. A few spectators stood up and had to be admonished by the bailiff. The judge, frowning, struck his gavel.
“WAS MRS BELLINGHAM AWARE THAT YOU
PUT THIS POISONOUS SUBSTANCE IN THE TEA?”
“Camera up on Alys! Medium close on his face!” The dolly rolled up. The glass eye stared at me. Behind the machine was the cameraman with his cap turned around, reaching up to adjust something and then watching me intently with the others.
I drew myself up in the witness chair. I was pale but resolute. There was no hesitation in my manner. If I paused for a long and silent moment before speaking, it was only to be sure that everyone heard what I said.
“NO, SHE WAS NOT. SHE KNEW NOTHING OF IT.”
Another sensation. More murmurs. “Cut to Moira!” yelled Reiter. “Move it! Get going! Roll it around for a close-up of Moira’s face!”
The camera on the dolly turned at right angles and rolled across the courtroom, the kliegs following it trailing cables. It closed in and fixed on Moira’s face. She had never taken her eyes from me.
The Death Chamber set was next to the Courtroom, so there was only a short wait while everybody was moved over to it and the camera set up again. The extras who had played the spectators in the courtroom scene were used again as witnesses. The district attorney was there too, the smooth-talking bastard; now he had his chin grimly set and it was clear that he was ready, at the cost of any mental suffering, to see the thing through to the end. The witnesses buzzed. They kept looking around at the door behind them. Finally I came through it, in handcuffs, with a prison guard on either side. I looked for Moira among the witnesses and caught her eye. It was not clear why she was a witness to the execution of her lover, except that the star had to be in on the end of the picture.
“Surge forward, Moira!”
As she caught sight of me Moira surged forward, and hands reached out and held her back. With the hands still restraining her, she watched as the guards led me past the witnesses and up to the crudely made wooden chair with its straps and electrical wires. I was coatless and wearing a white shirt with the collar cut off. They sat me down in the chair and turned back my shirtsleeves.
HE PAYS THE FINAL PRICE.
Now it was I who mouthed “I … love … you” silently with my lips. Her dark eyes were fixed on me, her mouth working as though she were about to speak. Don’t worry, her expression said. They can’t kill you, any more than you can take off my clothes. I stared back at her calmly. A little smile played on my lips. Then it disappeared and I impassively awaited my fate. Fadeout to black.
THE END
14.
The white morning sunlight beat down onto the main street of the lot. A truck was parked at one side of the street and workmen were unloading some lath-and-canvas flats from it and carrying them into a studio. Now and then an automobile came down the street and had to thread its way around this truck. I squeezed through the narrow space between the truck and the building. Ahead of me, a hundred yards or so down the street, I saw a brand-new Ford roadster parked at the curb.
I went on down the street and stopped to look at it. It was a new Model T, painted a midnight black, so glossy that I could see my reflection in it. I stood for a while examining it covertly, with particular attention to its mechanical features and controls. The engine in front was concealed under a tiny hood the size of a baby-coffin, with a black radiator. Only the radiator cap with its two handles was nickel-plated. Everything else was black. The upholstery was black horsehide, quilted in a diamond pattern held down by large black buttons. There was a black steering wheel with a pair of levers protruding from the column, a black dashboard with a speedometer as the only instrument, and a number of black iron pedals on the floorboard. The car was so new that the paint had not yet been worn off the pedals by the driver’s feet. The windshield was a large upright expanse of glass held in what seemed a rather fragile black frame. There was no top, or more precisely it had disappeared in some way into a compartment behind the seats. The windshield wiper consisted of a rubber squeegee on the outside of the winds
hield and a hand-operated lever on the inside to work it back and forth.
Everything now depended on my solving this very simple problem. I had to figure out how to drive a Model T Ford. Dirk had been a classic-car fancier and I myself had operated all kinds of exotic cars. It shouldn’t be too difficult.
After a furtive glance around to be sure no one was watching, I reached in and turned on the magneto switch. Then I went around to the front. The crank was quite hard to turn, and I seemed to remember that if you didn’t retard the spark you could break your arm. I hoped the spark was retarded. The engine coughed and wheezed a couple of times and then started, and the Ford inched forward and nudged gently against my shoulder. I now remembered something else about Model T’s, that you had to set the hand brake before starting them. What to do? The car was pushing against me quite strongly and it was all I could do to hold it back. Possibly, I thought, I could let go of the radiator, run around to the side, and get in before it got going too fast for me. But more probably it would outpace me and speed off driverless down the street, perhaps turning the corner of its own volition and going off to join some zany comedy. It was a dilemma. I couldn’t let go of the car and I couldn’t stand there forever holding it back. Luckily, at that moment the engine gave a wheeze and died.
Breathing a little heavily, I went around and set the hand brake, then I returned to my task at the crank. This time, when it started, the engine took hold in a businesslike way but the car stayed in place. A workman in overalls stared at me curiously from across the street. I opened the tiny side door and got in. The controls were simple. Under ordinary conditions the car was always in high gear. There was a low pedal for starting out in low gear, a reverse pedal for backing up, and a foot brake. The throttle was one of the two levers on the steering column. I didn’t know what the other one was. I released the hand brake, pressed down on the low pedal, and away I went.
Screenplay Page 17