Frames

by Loren D. Estleman

  “It’s an unholy mess right now,” said a new voice. “We’re in the middle of switching from Dewey Decimal to Library of Congress. I spent all day yesterday looking for the last century of the Roman Empire. Hello, Kyle, you look like James Thurber.” A silver-haired woman in glasses with round heavy black rims abandoned a paper pattern spread out on a cutting table to come forward and grasp the professor’s hand. She wore a smock from neck to heels, stained with a rainbow spectrum of dyes.

  Broadhead, in his trenchcoat and bucket hat, chuckled malevolently. “I see you’re still wearing Edith Head’s prescription.”

  “Just the glasses. Don’t spread it around, but they were a prop. Windowpane lenses.” She tapped hers, which were as thick as shuffleboard shuttles and no windowpanes. “What’s so urgent I had to postpone Sandy Bullock?”

  “I love her,” Fanta said.

  “You never had to fit her.” She slid down her glasses and surveyed the young woman head to foot. “Size four.”

  “Two.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “How much?”

  “You’d lose,” Broadhead told Fanta. “Meet Sister Agnes, the finest wardrobe mistress in the business. She put Buster Keaton’s hat on Johnny Depp in Benny and Joon. The rest is Hollywood history.” He introduced Fanta and Valentino.

  “That was at Metro.” The woman didn’t shake hands. “And I’m a costume technician. Wardrobe mistresses went out with blackface.”

  “Right on, sister,” said Fanta.

  “Are you a nun?” asked Valentino.

  “I’m Presbyterian. I took my vows at Our Lady of Perpetual Alteration.”

  “She got the monicker when she slapped Mickey Rourke across the knuckles with a tape measure,” Broadhead said. “That’s when they asked her to leave Metro.”

  “They asked me back after Rourke crashed and burned, but I’d just finished reorganizing this rattrap.” Pointedly she checked the watch she had pinned to a lapel.

  Broadhead told the others to take the tour. “I’m going to tell Sister Agnes what we want.”

  “Maybe then you’ll tell us,” Valentino said.

  Fanta tugged at his sleeve. “Let’s browse. This is like being locked up in a toy shop.”

  They walked away, leaving the professor and the ersatz nun conversing in low tones.

  “What’s he up to now?” Valentino asked.

  “If it’s no worse than a misdemeanor, he’s heading in the right direction. Wicked! Check it out.”

  While she admired a spaghetti-strap dress with a label sewn inside reading J. ROBERTS/ERIN BROCKOVICH, he wandered toward a triptych mirror mounted on a carpeted platform, where a former member of the ensemble cast of a hit sitcom whose name he couldn’t remember was being fitted for yet another incarnation of a Jane Austen classic.

  The actor fussed with his breeches. “Man, these are tight. How do you, um … ?”

  “Peel them down and squat, both functions.” The young man kneeling at his feet took a pin from his mouth and transfixed a loose seam. “Picture Mr. Darcy doing that in Technicolor.”

  Valentino rapped a knuckle on a Trojan breastplate on a torso form and got the hollow thump of papier-mâché. A mannequin dressed for evening told him Al Pacino was even shorter than he’d thought, and the uniform of a four-star general smelled heavily of marijuana. He managed to try on a greasy Stetson with Gary Cooper’s name stenciled on the sweatband before a small woman with a thimble on one thumb snatched it off his head and returned it to its place on a shelf lined with heads made of Styrofoam.

  “Go to Grauman’s and try your feet in his prints,” she said. “This is a place of work.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What did you do, wander away from the group?”

  “I’m an archivist, not a tourist.”

  “Is your name Gary Cooper?”

  “No. It’s Valentino.”

  She charged off, speaking in rapid Polish.

  After that his interest waned. It was just a warehouse after all. He was circling the room aimlessly, trying to stay out of the way of thundering racks on wheels and personnel darting about with hat pins and giant shears, when Broadhead caught his eye and waved him over to where he and Sister Agnes were standing. Fanta was nowhere in sight.

  As Valentino approached, a handsome black woman dressed in a smock similar to the costume technician’s unloaded a pile of clothing onto Agnes’ cutting table. The woman in charge scooped a military shako off the top of the pile and stuck it on his head.

  It was two sizes too large. When he raised it to clear his vision, she was holding a matching tunic up in front of him, pressing the shoulders against his at arm’s length to judge the effect. “It needs to be let out a little at the waist,” she said. “They wore corsets then. Unless … ?” She lifted penciled brows above her glasses.

  “No corset,” Broadhead said. “Anyway, he looks like he’s in a marching band.”

  She threw the tunic next to the pile and snatched away the shako as he was taking it off. They were hard on hats there, and even harder on humans.

  Broadhead said, “No uniforms. That’s just a little too on the money. The old guy’s senile, not stupid. What else have you got?”

  Valentino said, “Just what—”

  Fanta glided up to the table, shoulders bare above a lace bodice and lifting pounds of skirts and petticoats clear of the floor. She was beaming. “Michelle Pfeiffer and I wear the same size.” She turned a malicious glance on Sister Agnes. “Two.”

  A young man came hurrying up behind her with a tape measure draped around his neck, looking nervous.

  Sister Agnes fixed him with a cold stare. “That dress is on loan from Columbia. Is this how you impress pretty girls when I’m not around?”

  “Uh, that isn’t an issue,” he said. “I mean, I’m sorry. She was so excited, and I saw you talking to her a few minutes ago, so I thought she was a VIP.”

  “You’ll be DOA in Human Resources if you don’t get it off her and back on the rack in five minutes. Unless you want to pay for it out of your salary.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He put a hand on Fanta’s shoulder to steer her away.

  “I didn’t mean to get anyone in trouble,” she said.

  Valentino turned to Broadhead to intervene. The look on the professor’s face startled him. All the muscles had gone slack, as if he’d suffered a seizure.

  Broadhead said, “You look stunning.”

  Fanta eyed him closely, suspicion stamped on every feature. “You mean like something a Victorian threw up all over a wedding cake.”

  “No. Really beautiful. You should look like that more often. What I mean is, it wouldn’t kill you to put on a dress now and then.”

  Sister Agnes cleared her throat loudly. Every sewing machine in the room stopped whirring. “Can we do this? I’m expecting a plague of Baldwins at six.”

  Fanta went away with the young man to change, stopping once to glance back at Broadhead. The sewing machines started back up.

  “Sorry for the distraction.” Broadhead pointed with unnecessary violence at the next item of apparel on the pile. He seemed to be skewering an invisible adversary. “Let’s see that one.”

  It was a black swallowtail coat, intended to be worn with a shirt board and a low-cut formal vest. Those items and a pair of gray striped trousers lay next on the stack.

  Broadhead vetoed the coat as Sister Agnes was trying it on Valentino. “Too late in the day. What happened between them took place twenty-five years before Sunset Boulevard.”

  At last the archivist realized what was going through his friend’s mind. “This is harebrained,” he said. “If I had any idea this is what you were hatching, I’d never have let you drag me down here.”

  “If I had any idea you would, I’d have told you what I was hatching. What the devil’s this, another comic-opera uniform? Universal must be planning a full-scale adaptation of H.M.S. Pinafore.” He pawed down through the pile.

  “It won’
t work.”

  “Someone is forced to say that in every screwball comedy, and of course it always does. Is this Harris tweed?” He held up a brown herringbone Norfolk jacket.

  “Ray Milland wore it in Bulldog Drummond Escapes,” Sister Agnes said. “I wouldn’t keep it on more than a couple of hours. It’s been in mothballs so long it’s probably toxic to the skin.”

  “A couple of hours should be more than enough.” Broadhead held it up against Valentino. “Perfect, and that’s as much praise as your physical charms will ever receive from me. Milland cut quite a figure in his day.”

  “I won’t wear it.”

  “It’d be a crime not to, a fit like this. Von Stroheim couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be a proper English country gentleman or Frederick the Great. Since walking shoes are more comfortable than jackboots, Brittania ruled. Try it on.”

  “No. It’s a numbskull notion. What’s more, it’s sick. I didn’t get into this profession to take advantage of an old man’s illness no matter what he’s done. And we don’t know if he’s done anything wrong.”

  “Of course not. If we did, you wouldn’t have to play dress-up at all. Where’s the changing room?”

  “I’m not parading across L.A. in August dressed like I’m riding to hounds!”

  “Why do you think I was happy it’s raining?” He turned to Sister Agnes. “A yellow slicker would be peachy. One of those big loose ones like firemen wear.”

  She jerked her chin at the black woman, who went toward the stairs to the upper racks.

  “Great. Now I’ll look like a school bus.”

  “This isn’t about you, or how you’ll look to strangers,” Broadhead said. “It’s about Greed.”

  Fanta, back in her tank top and cargo pants and transparent plastic raincoat, returned while they were arguing, listened for a minute, and said, “You know you’re going to do it, so why don’t you save your voice? You’ll need it to carry off the accent.”

  “You approve?” he said. “Of course you do, what was I thinking? You’re our resident expert on civil disobedience. How do you keep your grades in ethics courses from dragging down your average?”

  “I passed with a term paper on conscience. Mine’s clear. I’m not the one who’s haunted.”

  “I’m not haunted.”

  “Sure you are. You don’t need chains and a creepy old house to qualify.”

  Valentino fumed, Broadhead purred, Fanta reasoned, Sister Agnes sighed and tapped her foot, and in the end her assistant escorted Valentino to a changing room behind a heavy curtain. Ten minutes later he exhibited himself to the others in a tweed suit that fit him loosely in the shoulders but snugly everywhere else, with a knitted tie on a soft Oxford shirt. He carried his street clothes in a bundle under one arm. The fumes from the mothballs forced him to hold his chin high to keep his eyes from watering; Broadhead said the pose enhanced the illusion of Erich von Stroheim at the arrogant peak of his powers.

  Fanta agreed. “You don’t look like the same man.”

  “I’m not. I’m a walking dress dummy. My skin itches all over. I think the poison’s working.”

  Broadhead said, “Save some drama for opening night. You’re probably just allergic to wool.” He squinted. “Something’s wrong.”

  “You’re just realizing that?”

  “He has too much hair,” Sister Agnes said.

  “That’s it. Von Stroheim was bald.”

  “I’m not shaving my head!”

  The professor took off his bucket hat, turned the brim up in back in a Tyrolean effect, and placed it on Valentino’s head at a rakish angle. Then he stepped back to take in the whole picture. “With a stick and a monocle, and if you remember to stand with your back to the light, it might not be a disaster. It’ll help if the old fellow has cataracts.”

  “He hasn’t,” Valentino said. “His eyes are fine and so’s his hearing. I’m beginning to worry about yours.”

  “The stick we can do,” Sister Agnes said. “No monocle. That’s the prop department.”

  Broadhead said, “A stick’s a prop.”

  “It’s contractual. My predecessor lived through the Great Falsie Strike: Wardrobe and makeup both claimed jurisdiction over bra pads. The unions ironed it out by assigning the rubber ones to makeup and the cotton ones to wardrobe.” She peered down at her watch.

  “Von Stroheim’s not von Stroheim without his monocle,” Broadhead said. “I don’t know anyone in the prop department.”

  Sister Agnes sighed. She took off her glasses and pressed at one of the round thick lenses with a thumb until something popped. She put the glasses back on and held the loose lens out to Valentino, shutting her naked eye. “Take care of it. Someone else will have to thread all my needles until you bring it back.”

  **

  CHAPTER

  21

  “STOP SQUIRMING,” BROADHEAD said.

  “I can’t help it,” said Valentino. “This suit’s scratching me to death. I’m breaking out in a rash.”

  “Can you two hold it down?” Fanta, behind the wheel, glared at them in the rearview mirror. “This car’s bigger than my roommate’s. It’s hard enough steering it through traffic without you weirding out in the backseat.”

  Broadhead thrust the makeshift monocle into Valentino’s hand. “Practice with this. It’ll take your mind off the itching.”

  It wasn’t just the suit that bothered him, or even the oppressive stench of camphor from the mothballs, which had forced Fanta to open all four windows to prevent asphyxiation, letting in rain. The bulky yellow oilcloth slicker he wore to cover his disguise was stifling. The heat increased perspiration, which aggravated the abrasion. He accepted the distraction of the monocle and tried fitting it to his left eye. It kept popping out.

  “Try the right,” Broadhead said. “That was where von Stroheim wore it anyway.”

  “That’s my dominant eye. I can’t see a thing through this lens. It’ll be tough enough convincing him I’m an immortal director without bumping into walls.”

  “Well, keep practicing. If a kid can balance a spoon on the end of his nose, you can keep a hunk of glass in your eye.”

  Fanta said, “I’ve got Crazy Glue in my bag.”

  Valentino redoubled his efforts. Eventually he screwed it into a position where the muscles held it in place.

  “Let’s hear the accent.”

  “Achtung! Gesundheit! Sauerbraten!”

  “That’s Chaplin. The Great Dictator. More Bavaria, less Birkenwald. And spare us the sum total of your German. Pegler’s wife’s name was Gerda. He may know more than you do.”

  “Varren? Varren Peckler, is dat choo?”

  Silence filled the car, surrounded by honking horns and the rumble of a motorcycle.

  “Dr. Zinnerman was wrong,” Fanta said. “I’m not the worst actor who ever lived.”

  “I never claimed to be any other kind.” His cheeks burned, as if the rash were spreading.

  But Broadhead was sanguine. “Even the best talents need direction. Try again. You’re a foreigner trying to sound like an American, not the other way around.”

  “Varren Pegler, is dat choo?”

  “Better.”

  Fanta said, “It sounded the same.”

  “No, this time I heard the g, and the V was softer.”

  Valentino said, “I sounded like a Katzenjammer Kid even to me.”

  “You’re not directing this performance. Try something else, this time with a soupcon of German.”

  “I vant mein Kindling!”

  “That was Garbo.”

  “I’m quoting von Stroheim directly. From my dream, I mean.”

  “Well, I wish you’d bring him back. It may take the greatest auteur of the last century to carry this one off.”

  “I told you it was hopeless.”

  “Try it again, without the firewood.”

  “Kindling isn’t—”

  “It sounds like it when you say it. Say, ‘I want Greed.”
r />   “I vant Greed!”

  “Give me the w.”

  “I want Greed!”

  “Drop the exclamation point.”

  “I want Greed.”

  Broadhead looked up at the rearview mirror. Valentino saw his satisfaction reflected in Fanta’s eyes.

  Broadhead said, “By George—”

  “Stop right there,” Valentino said. “Before you break into a number.”

  “Now shout it.”

  “I want Greed!”

  “Without the exclamation point, I said.”

  “How can you shout without exclaiming?”

  “Ask yourself that question. You’re von Stroheim.”

  “I want Greed.”

  “Again.”

  “I want Greed.”

  “Once more. You’re angry, but you’re desperate. You’re demanding and pleading at the same time.”

  “I want Greed.”

  This time it rang off the headliner, tearing something loose inside him and numbing him to his fingers and toes. Belatedly he realized they’d stopped for a red light. The Mexican cab driver stopped next to them turned away from the holy icons stuck to his dash to stare at the red-faced man in the Tyrolean hat and yellow slicker. Valentino raised a sheepish hand. The driver shifted his attention to the truck in front of him without returning the wave.

  “Congratulations,” Broadhead said. “That’s your first rave review.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t think he’s the one who was raving.”

  “He must be new to Los Angeles,” Fanta said.

  The light changed. They resumed moving. Valentino retrieved his monocle from his lap and returned it to where it had popped loose. “Give me something else.”

  Fanta said, “Do ‘Show me the money!’”

  “That’s the spirit, both of you.” Broadhead chuckled. “Sorry. I meant ‘enthusiasm.’”

  When Valentino ran out of lines and started quoting from Hogan’s Heroes, he began to get hammy again. Broadhead told him to rest his voice.