by Jack Finney
There was a sound, too, I realized, a hammering roar, and a sensation: I was chilled by a steady pressure of air against my ribs and chest. And now I could hear and feel the loose-cut cloth of my shirt fluttering audibly, tugging at my skin. My eyes moved slightly and I saw a taut varnished surface just over my head and caught a glimpse of angled guy wire.
I held off the knowledge as long as I could: that I was not dreaming but actually stood crouched on the lower wing of an ancient biplane thousands of feet above Los Angeles. My head turned a little more; I saw my own white-knuckled left fist wrapped around a stanchion, and—to my left and behind me—the leather-helmeted, goggled head of the pilot, and my throat went dry, my intestines shriveled, my eyes widened in shock. For a moment longer I stared out at the misty, infinitely distant horizon miles ahead and miles below me, then the dimming sensation roared up through my senses, and this time I understood that I was truly and genuinely about to fall unconscious.
Just before it happened I felt once again the sense of someone pushing toward me, pushing against me yet without crowding, until suddenly we were occupying the same space, and Rodolpho Guglielmi was back. Curiosity is the strongest emotion, of course, and I was able to wonder where I had heard or read this vaguely familiar name, then I remembered. This was Rudolph Valentino up here with me on this cloth-covered wing, signed up under his actual name as a stunt man, if that’s what he had to do for a comeback.
But he wouldn’t take over completely. We stood there, far up in the sky, standing on a piece of varnished cloth . . . and then I understood that he was as scared as I was!
He deserted me! Took a look at the horror stretched out before and below us, and left me once again! My arm was going dead, I was squeezing the stanchion so hard. I looked past it: at the long, long old-fashioned hood of the plane; at the rusty exhaust pipe stretched along its side; at the paint peeling off its vents; at the shivering, filmily transparent circle of the propeller. And my knees went fluid, shoulders sagging, about to pitch limply forward into space.
Let me say to the eternal credit and glory of Rudolph Valentino—that he came back! He came back; we stood together, took a deep, deep breath, then he turned to the pilot and he made himself smile. It was a heroic act. He was a real man. He’d got us up here, and he’d get us back. With infinite relief I let nothingness overwhelm me.
Only minutes passed I understood this time, as—abruptly, no warning—I once again saw the vast misty plain that was most of the Los Angeles area horizon to horizon, this time from an even greater height.
But the wing was gone! I heard the steady, hammering, old-fashioned drone of the single engine close by, yet the plane had disappeared! I was looking straight up—Up? Yes, up!—at the tiny lines that were roads and dots that were rooftops. The backs of my knees hurt—why?—and the blood was congested in my face and neck. Then I understood: I was upside down, my head tilted far back to stare straight down through nothingness at the slightly tilted, slowly revolving earth far below. I looked away fast, looked down—up?—saw my wildly fluttering white shirt from mid-chest to wide leather belt, my jodhpurred legs to the knees, and—that’s all. No puttees, no shoes, only the fabric-covered wing of the plane. I heard a strangled sound in my own throat because—oh, God—I was hanging upside down by my knees from the metal loop of the skid at the tip of the wing.
My head swung away in terror and I saw the helmeted, goggled head watching me. His lips grinned, he lifted a gloved hand to wave at me, and the blackout began, and I was glad, truly preferring to slide into unconsciousness and die than continue for even one more second to see and understand the horror of where I was.
• • •
More time had passed, much more, when I felt thought and consciousness returning again, and this time I felt it return all the way, felt how terribly tired I was in my body and mind both, and I knew that Valentino was fully gone. I couldn’t, would not open my eyes, afraid to look. But I heard, and the drone of the airplane motor was gone. I realized that I was hearing the murmur of scattered voices in casual talk, and I opened my eyes.
I was indoors, in a room—no, it was a movie theater, though a strange one. The blank white screen up front, the first thing I saw, was miniature, two-thirds size at most. And there were only half a dozen rows of perhaps a dozen seats each. People sat here and there, maybe a dozen of them. Two rows ahead and off to my left, Hugo Dahl sat with two other men, including Fred of the exterior unit. A girl with a clipboard on her lap sat just behind Dahl; she held a metal pencil with a tiny light near its tip, and she flicked it on and off a couple of times. Here and there sat other men and women—actors maybe. I felt a nudge, turned, and Marion—I knew it was Marion from the expression—sat beside me. She’d been back to the hotel, apparently, because she wore a green dress, one Jan had never liked and seldom wore, though it looked good on Marion. I looked down at myself; I’d been back to the hotel, too; I was wearing another suit, shirt, and tie. Marion said, “I think they’re going to start, Rudy. I’m so nervous.”
I whispered, “It’s not Rudy; it’s Nick.”
“Well, believe me, I’m glad! He’s impossible! I never realized but with him it’s nothing but I, I, I, I. I couldn’t get a word in all through dinner!”
“Marion, what’s happening? What time is it, did you take your test? Where are—”
“Oh, yes; this morning. They developed prints late this afternoon. We’re going to see them now; Hugo invited us.”
“Well, what are they for? What’s the picture?”
“I don’t know; no one has said. But I think—”
Hugo Dahl had turned in his seat to look around the theater. “Everyone here?” he called now and, without waiting for an answer, glanced up at the projection booth. “Okay, Jerry. Let ’em roll.”
The houselights went out immediately, and a rectangle of light appeared on the screen, slightly flickering. It turned milk-white, and a scribbled number 4 in reverse flashed by, then some felt-penned letters, also in reverse, a scrap of old film used as a leader. Abruptly and out of focus, a man appeared on the screen, facing the camera and holding something: the focus instantly sharpened into a long-haired young man with a drooping mustache and wearing a fringed leather jacket. He was holding up a slate on which HUNTLEY was roughly printed in white chalk, and below it, TAKE 1, KAY MEISSNER. In his other hand he held the lower jaw of a black-and-white clap board attached to the bottom of the slate, and he immediately slapped it shut and walked off the scene.
The scene—he’d hidden most of it—was a four-man band in close-up, wearing red-and-white-striped coats and straw hats. Hands poised, the pianist sat looking at the others, then brought his hands down to the keys; the trombonist lifted his instrument and the right hands of the other two, banjoists seated on high stools, began to move so rapidly they blurred. The sudden burst of music was marvelous old-time jazz, the beat fast and pronounced.
Immediately the camera drew rapidly back to reveal a scrap of footlighted stage with a white-velvet backdrop, a girl walking out from the wings. She wore a knee-length fringed red dress and a headband across her forehead and around her short hair. Smiling professionally out at us, she began to dance. It was fast and in exact time, an approximation of the Charleston, I realized. But there was a learned, mechanical quality about her movements, and I had a sudden hunch that this girl had bluffed, saying she knew the dance when she didn’t, maybe having a quick coaching session the night before the test. The dance lasted maybe twenty seconds; then, winking broadly at a supposed audience whose sound-track applause burst out, she walked quickly off the stage as a final note sounded from the banjos. From the strained quality of her wink I felt that she knew she’d failed.
There was no response from the real audience. Marion leaned toward me to murmur, “That’s about as close to a Charleston as a polka,” and with no pause after the final note, the young man in the fringed jacket walked on screen, holding up his slate. The bottom two lines had been rubbed out, and no
w chalked in new letters under HUNTLEY I READ TAKE 2, JUNE VAN CLEE.
The stick clapped, he walked off, revealing the band again, the pianist’s hands once more poised over the keyboard. The camera drew back as his hands came down, and the same tune began again—wild, and with a great disciplined beat; I wished I could hear hours of it. A second girl, taller and thinner than, but dressed like, the first, walked on from the wings.
She was much better, very skilled. But all she was doing up there on the tiny stage was performing an accurately done chore for money. In spite of her smile, it was joyless and uninspired. So was her departing wink—and so were the girls in takes three, four, and five.
Again with no break of the film, the slate was held up—TAKE 6, MARION MARSH—the black-and-white sticks were clapped together, and the pianist’s hands dropped to the keys. The driving blare of sound began again, and now Marion walked out onto the tiny stage in a short tomato-red dress, red headband, and—this was different from all the others—a string of beads that hung to her waist. As she walked out, she, too, smiled at the imaginary audience across the footlights, but this was a smile easy with the confidence of what she knew she could do superbly. Her smile said she was pleased with herself and that she was happy, that she liked the audience that was about to have the pleasure of enjoying her. For a moment I remembered the tiny black-and-white figure I’d seen on the screen of my television set—long, long ago, it seemed—in Flaming Flappers. This was that girl—larger than life now, in full brilliant color and blaring sound—but with that same magic presence. I was smiling, responding to her happy arrogance, and I knew with an actual physical thrill moving up my spine how good she was going to be.
Her body slipped effortlessly from walk into dance without pause or transition, her rhythm free and easy. She wasn’t listening to the music and carefully coordinating her movements with it: her body simply flowed into, joining and becoming part of that wild, happy jazz. Feet and elbows flashed so effortlessly that the beat seemed slower than it had in other takes. And then—just once and simultaneously—the fingers of each hand snapped, abandon shot through her body, and the dance took fire. Her legs flew in a controlled ecstatic frenzy, her chin slowly lifting, her eyes closing in sensual pleasure. She loved what she was doing—you could see that and feel it—every atom of her excited body thrilled by it. It was wild, and then on an abrupt final note it stopped, her eyes opened, and when she smiled and winked out at us, it was so lecherous a man yelped, and we broke into real applause.
On the screen the man with the slate for Take Seven was walking forward to hold it to the camera, but Hugo Dahl was on his feet saying, “I knew it! I knew it! I said so! Jerry, did you splice a lead-in and lead-out to a print of that? I asked you to!”
“Yeah! It’s set up on the second projector,” a muffled voice called from the projection booth.
“Then show it for crysake! That’s it! That’s the one!” On the screen the band had begun once more, but the screen abruptly went black, the sound cutting off. The little audience murmured, and in the darkness Dahl called out, “Marion, Baby, grandma never did better! You got a future in this lousy business, that I can promise you!”
Marion’s hand had gripped my forearm, lying on the arm of the seat, squeezing so hard I could feel each separate finger. The screen lighted up, a numbered countdown began flashing past, and in its light I looked at Marion. Her one hand gripping my arm, the other lay spread on her chest as she stared up at the screen, her mouth slightly open in stunned, incredulous, glorious relief. 7, 6, 5, 4, 3—I thought we’d see Marion again, but a giant squatly shaped bottle suddenly filled the screen, and its label, though plainly visible, was read aloud by a man’s deep voice: “Huntley’s Old-fashioned Tomato Catsup!” The wide bottle top revolved itself loose, flew off the screen, and the bottle tilted forward, the voice continuing, “In the smart new bottle with the great big mouth!” On the word “mouth” a comic-strip speech balloon appeared over the bottle’s mouth, and as the words popped into being inside the balloon, a high, nasal comic voice—the voice of the catsup bottle—spoke the same words: “But I’ve still got all my old-fashioned flavor . . . with all its Huntley old-time zing!” And now Take Six, Marion’s dance, began on the screen once more, but this time as the pianist’s hands dropped to the keyboard the high funny voice was saying, “Yessir! All the fine old-fashioned flavor . . .”—the blaring jazz began simultaneously with “flavor,” and smiling out at us again, Marion was walking on stage in her tomato-red dress—” . . . with all its Huntley old-time zing!” the voice continued as she walked, and precisely on “zing” she began to dance.
During the twenty seconds of that spectacular dance, the funny voice was saying, “Yep! Still that fine old-fashioned flavor . . . that famous Huntley old-style taste.” And again, the dance ending, the voice was saying, “With all its old-time Huntley”—precisely as Marion winked—“zing!”
Marion off stage, the final banjo-string fillip dying, the giant bottle again filled the screen, tilting forward to reveal its open mouth, another speech balloon appearing above it. Simultaneously the printed word and comic voice both said “Wow!” and the screen went white.
“Great! Oh, great! Hugo Dahl was shouting. “That’s it, that’s it! That’s all we need to see. Marion, love, have your agent phone me in the morning. Fred, your stuff ready?”
In the moment before the projection beam cut off, I saw Marion’s face. It was pale; it was stunned and astonished, as though someone she loved had slapped her. Then in the darkness I felt the breath of her voice on my cheek as she whispered, “Nick, what is that? What is it?”
Up ahead Fred was talking, and I leaned toward Marion and whispered miserably, “A commercial.”
“A what?”
“It’s . . . like an ad. An advertisement. It’s . . . not for the movies, Marion. It’s for television.”
“That . . . thing we saw my movie on? That’s what this was for? Not a movie, but—That’s all my dance was for, to advertise catsup?” I nodded in the darkness, and reached over to take her hand.
Fred was saying, “We tried a pool-table sequence with a professional; trick shots. And the guy was great. Interesting but no excitement, no zing; I eliminated it. We tried some comic stuff; villain tying the girl to railroad track; you know. It doesn’t work, Hugo. But we filmed one thing that did; a damn good day’s work. We spliced on a lead-in and lead-out; wait’ll you see it. Jerry, you ready? Roll it.”
I knew. As the giant catsup bottle tilted forward, the comic voice booming “In the smart new bottle with the great big mouth!” I knew what was going to appear on the screen, and closed my eyes. But when the catsup stuff stopped, and the drone of an ancient biplane motor abruptly filled the tiny theater, I clapped a hand over my eyes just as they popped open. Then I spread my fingers and sat helplessly watching.
Incredibly, there I stood in flowing white shirt, jodhpurs, and leather puttees on the lower wing of an antique biplane against a pale-blue sky. The view was from the side and back at a little distance from the plane; I hadn’t noticed the camera plane or heard its engine over the drone of our own. The view was taken from just slightly below. My stomach contracting, I knew that Los Angeles lay a mile under my feet on that cloth-covered wing on the screen, but the camera showed only the man on the wing and the sky above; it might have been only twenty feet above the ground.
Again, and almost physically, just as it had happened in the Olympic theater in San Francisco, I felt the merging, felt my body occupied—felt the almost irritable attempt to push me aside down into some remote corner of my own being. But this time I resisted angrily. This time I held on, and—up on the screen the scene changed, and, our interest caught—we watched it together.
An old-fashioned touring car, its black canvas top down, was speeding along a dirt road, weaving erratically from side to side; the view had obviously been taken from a helicopter flying just above and behind it and well to one side. The bareheaded driver of the
old car, one hand on the steering wheel, was holding a struggling girl beside him. She wore a long white dress, her hands tied behind her back, and was gagged. “Yep!” the comic voice was saying. “All that great old-fashioned flavor . . .” and now the ancient biplane edged onto the upper corner of the screen from the other side of the speeding car, my own upside-down body, white shirt fluttering, hanging by its jodhpurred knees from the wing skid. Directly over the back seat of the car—I actually let out a muffled cry in the theater—the figure dropped from the plane, revolving in mid-air in a neat somersault to land on its feet in the back seat. Cut to a close-up: standing in the back seat of the racing car, I held the driver around the neck with one arm, reaching past him with the other to turn off the ignition and grab the steering wheel. Cut to another shot: the car stopped beside the road, the driver tied and gagged, the girl in my arms looking over my shoulder at the audience. “With all the old-time zing!” said the funny voice, and precisely on “zing” the girl in my arms winked, and I felt the sudden disengagement from my muscles, nerves, senses and mind.
Up front, filling the screen, the great catsup bottle tilted forward, the funny voice speaking. But I had turned in my seat to stare toward the rear of the theater, and I saw him. Walking slowly across the back cross aisle just under the white beam of the projector light, clear but transparent, the wall of the theater visible behind him, I saw the eagle profile, narrowed brown eyes, and slicked-down black hair—utterly familiar to me from a hundred old-movie books and a dozen pictures—of Rudolph Valentino. He was wearing what may have been the costume he had chosen for eternity: long, dark baggy pants almost to the ankles; boots; a ten-inch-wide studded leather belt; a coarse striped shawl thrown over one shoulder of his shirt. But now the once proud shoulders under that shirt and shawl were slumped. And upside down in his hand, he carried the rest of that costume by its chin strap: the broad-brimmed, flat-topped hat of a gaucho, dangling in rejection and defeat. His face averted from the screen, cringing from the voice of the Huntley catsup bottle, he walked toward but never visibly reached the exit. As the funny voice from the screen said “Wow!” Rodolpho Guglielmi disappeared like a light snapped off.