The Carpetbaggers

by Robbins, Harold

One of the assistant directors hurried up. "We're ready now, Mr. Carrol."

  The director nodded and the assistant turned around and yelled, "Places, everybody!"

  The director walked over to the camera as Nevada moved out on the set. I turned and saw Rina entering from the side. I stared, unable to believe my eyes. Her long, white-blond hair was tied up on top of her head and they'd bound her breasts so tight she looked like a boy. Her mouth was painted in a tiny Cupid's bow and her eyebrows were penciled to a thin, unnatural line. She was no longer a woman – she was a caricature of every ad in Vanity Fair.

  Dan's face was impassive. He stared at me, his eyes unrevealing. "They did a good job," he said. "She's right in the image."

  "She don't look like a woman."

  "That's what they go for."

  "I don't give a damn what they go for! I don't like it. Broads that look like that are a dime a dozen in this town."

  A faint smile came into Dan's eyes. "You don't like it, change it," he said. "You're the boss. It's your picture."

  I stared at him for a moment. I felt like walking out onto the set and blowing a fuse. But instinct held me back. I knew one more display like yesterday's would demoralize the whole crew. "Tell Carrol I want to see him," I said to Dan.

  He nodded approvingly. "Smart," he said. "That's the right way to do it. You may need me even less than I thought!" He walked over to the director.

  A moment later, the director called a ten-minute break. He came over to me and I could see he was nervous. "What seems to be the trouble, Mr. Cord?"

  "Who O.K.'d that make-up and costume?"

  The director looked at me, then over his shoulder at Rina. "I'm sure it was approved by wardrobe and make-up," he said. "Nevada told them to give her the full treatment."

  "Nevada?"

  He nodded. I looked at Dan. "I want everybody concerned in my office in ten minutes," I said.

  "Right, Jonas."

  I turned and walked out of the building.

  9

  I LOOKED AROUND THE OFFICE. I GUESS THE STUDIO knew what they were doing after all. It was just large enough to hold all of us.

  Dan sat in an easy chair to the left of my desk, Carrol, the new director, beside him. Rina and Nevada were on the couch, and across the room from them was the cameraman. On the other side of the room were the make-up man and the head of the wardrobe department, a slim woman of indeterminate age, with a young face and prematurely-gray hair, wearing a simple tailored dress. Finally, my secretary was on my right, with the inevitable pencil poised over her pad.

  I lit a cigarette. "All of you saw that test last night," I said. "It was great. How come that girl wasn't on the set this afternoon?"

  Nobody answered. "Rina, stand up." Silently she got to her feet and stood there looking at me. I glanced around the room again. "What's her name?"

  The director coughed and laughed nervously. "Mr. Cord, everybody knows her name."

  "Yeah? What is it?"

  "Rina Marlowe."

  "Then why don't she look like Rina Marlowe instead of an ass-end combination of Clara Bow, Marion Davies and Cynthia Randall? She sure as hell doesn't look like Rina Marlowe!"

  "I’m afraid you don't understand, Mr. Cord."

  I looked around. "What's your name?"

  She stared right back at me. "I’m Ilene Gaillard," she said. "I’m the costume designer."

  "All right, Miss Gaillard. Suppose you tell me what I don't understand."

  "Miss Marlowe has to be dressed in the very forefront of fashion," she said calmly. "You see, Mr. Cord, though we make certain concessions to the period in which the picture takes place, the fundamental design must carry forward the latest in high fashion. That's what most women go to the movies to see. Motion pictures set the style."

  I squinted at her. "Style or no style, Miss Gaillard, it doesn't make sense that a girl should have to look like a boy to be in fashion. No man in his right mind could be interested in a figure like that."

  "Don't blame Miss Gaillard, Jonas. I told her to do it."

  I turned to Nevada. "You told her?"

  He nodded.

  Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. I let my voice grow cold. "It's my money that's on the line now and the deal was that I'm the boss. So from now on, you worry about your acting. Everything else is my headache."

  Nevada's lips tightened and deep in his eyes I could see the hurt. I turned away so that I wouldn't have to see it. Rina was watching with a curious kind of detachment.

  "Rina!" She turned to me, an impassive mask dropping quickly over her eyes. "Go into the bathroom and wash all that muck off your face. Put on your usual make-up."

  Rina left the room silently and I went back behind my desk and sat down. Nobody said a word until she came back into the room, her mouth wide again, her lips full and her eyebrows flowing into the natural curve of her brow. Her hair spilled like white shimmering gold down to her shoulders. But there was still something wrong. Underneath the negligee, her body was still a straight line.

  "Go back in there and get out of that harness you're wearing."

  Still silent, she did as I told her. And this time when she came out, she moved. Nobody could miss the fact that there was a woman underneath that negligee.

  "That's more like it," I said. "We'll shoot those scenes again now."

  Rina nodded and turned away. Miss Gaillard's voice stopped her. "We can't photograph her like that."

  I looked at the designer. "What did you say?"

  Miss Gaillard stood up. "We can't shoot her like that. Her bust bounces."

  I laughed. "What's the matter with that? Tits should bounce."

  "Of course," the designer said quickly. "But on the screen everything is exaggerated." She looked at the cameraman. "Isn't that right, Lee?"

  The cameraman nodded. "That's right, Mr. Cord. They won't look natural at all."

  "We'll have to put some kind of brassiere on her," Miss Gaillard said.

  "O.K. Go see what you can do."

  A moment later, Rina and the designer came out of the bathroom. They walked toward me. It was better than the original harness but they didn't look as good as they did without restraint. It just didn't look right to me.

  I got up from the desk and walked over to Rina. "Let me see."

  Rina looked at me, her eyes deliberately distant. Impassively she dropped the negligee from her shoulders, holding it to her by the crook of her elbows. "Turn right," I said. "Now left."

  I stepped back and looked at Rina. I knew what it was now. Whenever she turned, the brassiere pulled and flattened, which was what gave her breasts that unnatural look. I looked at the designer. "Maybe if we took off the shoulder straps?"

  Ilene Gaillard shrugged. "We can try." She reached over and pushed down the straps.

  Rina stood there, her eyes fixed on some distant point over my shoulder. "Now turn." The brassiere still cut into her breasts. "Unhh-unhh," I said. "I still don't like it."

  "There's one other thing I can try."

  "O.K.," I said.

  A few minutes later, they came out again. Rina wore a wire-ribbed contraption almost like a small corset, except it didn't come down over her hips. And when she moved, her breasts didn't. You could see them all right, but they looked as if they had been molded out of plaster of Paris.

  I looked at the designer. "Isn't there some way we can cut out some of those wires?"

  "I think that looks fine, Mr. Cord. Anyway, I don't see why you're so worried about her bustline. Her legs are good and you'll see plenty of them."

  "Miss Gaillard, since you're not a man, I don't expect you to understand what I'm getting at. I can see all the legs I want to see just walking down the street. Just answer my question, please."

  "No, we can't cut the wires, Mr. Cord," she replied, equally polite. "If we do, she might as well be wearing nothing. There wouldn't be enough rigidity to support her."

  "Maybe if I show you what I want, you can do it. Take it off, Rina,"
I said, walking over to her.

  Impassively Rina turned aside for a moment. When she turned around again, the contraption was in one hand and with the other she held the top of the negligee closed.

  I took it and tossed in onto my desk. I put my hands to the top of Rina's negligee and pushed it down until it formed a square across her breast just above the nipples. Her breasts rose like twin white moons against my dark, clenched fists. I looked back at the designer. "See what I mean?"

  Maybe she didn't but there wasn't a man in the room whose eyes weren't popping out of his head.

  "What you want is impossible, Mr. Cord. Rina's a big girl. Thirty-eight C. There isn't a brassiere made that could support her bust like that. I'm a designer, Mr. Cord, not a structural engineer."

  I let go of Rina's negligee and turned to Miss Gaillard. "Thank you," I said, going over to the telephone. "That's the first constructive idea I've heard since this meeting started."

  Morrissey was there in less than twenty minutes.

  "I’ve got a little problem, Morrissey. I need your help."

  His nervousness disappeared slightly and he looked around shyly. "Anything I can do, Mr. Cord."

  "Stand up, Rina," I said. Slowly she got to her feet and walked around us. Morrissey's eyes widened behind his glasses. I was glad to see that other things could occupy his mind besides airplanes.

  "There isn't a brassiere made that can keep them from jiggling," I said. "And still look natural. I want you to design one that will."

  He turned back to me, an expression of shock on his face. "You're joking, Mr. Cord!"

  "I was never more serious in my life."

  "But- but I don't know anything about brassieres. I’m an aeronautical engineer," he stammered, blushing a bright pink.

  "That's why I called you," I said calmly. "I figured if you can design planes that have to withstand thousands of pounds of stress you ought to be able to come up with something that would hold up a little thing like a pair of tits." I turned to the costume designer. "Fill him in on what he needs to know."

  Miss Gaillard looked at me, then at Morrissey. "Perhaps it would be better if we worked in my office in Wardrobe. I have everything there you might need."

  Morissey had been staring at Rina's breasts while the designer spoke. For a moment, I thought he was paralyzed, then he turned around. "I think I might be able to do something."

  "I knew you could," I said, smiling.

  "I’m not promising anything, of course. But it's a very intriguing problem."

  I kept a straight face. "Very," I said solemnly.

  Morrissey turned to the designer. "Do you happen to have a pair of calipers?"

  "Calipers? What do we need calipers for?"

  Morrissey looked at her in amazement. "How else would we be able to measure the depth and the circumference?"

  She stared at him blankly for a moment, then, taking his arm, began to walk him toward the door. "I'm sure we can get a pair from Engineering. You'd better come with us, Rina."

  Morrissey was back in a little over an hour. He came in waving a sheet of paper. "I think we've got it! It was really very simple once we found the point of stress. The weight of each breast pulls to either side. That means the origin of stress falls between them, right in the center of the cleavage."

  I stared at him. His language was a curious mixture of engineering and wardrobe design. But he was too wrapped up in his explanation to pay attention to my look. "The whole thing then became a problem of compensation. We had to find a way to utilize the stress to hold the breasts steady. I inserted a V-shaped wire in the cleavage using the suspension principle. Understand?"

  I shook my head. "You went way past me."

  "You know the principle used in a suspension bridge?"

  "Vaguely," I said.

  "Under that principle, the more pressure the mass exerts against itself, the more pressure is created to hold it in place."

  I nodded. I still didn't understand it completely. But I had all I needed for now. What I wanted to know was would it work?

  I didn't have long to wait for the answer. Rina came into the office shortly after that with Ilene Gaillard. Deliberately she let the wrap fall to the floor and stood there in the repaired negligee.

  "Walk toward Mr. Cord," the designer said.

  Slowly Rina walked toward me. I couldn't take my eyes from her. The sweetest pair of knockers a man ever put his head down on. She stopped in front of my desk and looked down at me. For the first time that afternoon, she spoke. "Well?"

  I was conscious of the effort it took to raise my eyes and look up into her face. Her eyes were cold and calculating. The bitch was always exactly aware of the effect she had on me. She started to turn away. "One more thing, Miss Gaillard," I said. "Tomorrow when we start shooting, I want her in a black negligee, instead of that white one. I want everybody to know she's a whore, not a virgin bride."

  "Yes, Mr. Cord." Ilene came up to my desk, her eyes shining. "I really think we're going to set a new style with Miss Marlowe. Unless I'm completely mistaken, women all over the world will be trying for her style once this picture comes out."

  I grinned at her. "We didn't set the fashion, Miss Gaillard," I said. "Women looked like women long before either of us was born."

  She nodded and started out. I looked around the room. The meeting was over and everybody was getting stiffly to his feet. Nevada was the last one out and I called him back.

  He came back to my desk. I turned and looked at my secretary. She was still sitting there, her book filled with shorthand notes. "What've you got there?" I asked.

  "The minutes of the meeting."

  "What for?"

  "It's a company rule," she said. "Minutes of all executive meetings are recorded and copies circulated."

  "Give me that book." I held it over the wastebasket and set a match to it. When the flame caught, I dropped it into the basket and looked up at her.

  She was staring at me with an expression of horror.

  "Now trot your fat little ass out of here," I said. "And if I ever hear of any minutes of meetings in this office ever showing up outside these walls, you'll be looking for another job."

  Nevada was smiling as I turned back to him. "I'm sorry I had to speak the way I did, Nevada."

  "That's all right, Junior. I shouldn't have shot my mouth off."

  "There's a lot of people in this town think I'm a sucker and that I got conned into a bum deal. You and I know that's not true but I have to stop that kind of talk. I can't afford it."

  "I understand, Junior. Your pappy was the same way. There was only one boss when he was around."

  Suddenly, I realized how far apart we'd grown. For a moment, I had a wave of nostalgia for my childhood, when I could always reach out to Nevada for assurance. It wasn't that way any more. It was exactly the opposite. Nevada was leaning on me. "Thanks, Nevada," I said, forcing a smile to my lips. "And don't worry. Everything'll turn out all right now."

  He turned and I watched him walk out of the office. Shortly after he left Dan Pierce came into the office. I reached for a cigarette and lit it. "About what you said this morning. I think we ought to change the script. You better send for the writers right away."

  He grinned knowingly. "I already did."

  10

  WE COMPLETED THE PICTURE IN FOUR WEEKS. Nevada knew what was happening but he never said a word. Two weeks after that, we held the first sneak preview at a theater out in the valley.

  I got there late and the studio publicity man let me in. "There are only a few seats left on the side, Mr. Cord," he apologized.

  I looked down at the orchestra. There was a section roped off in the center for studio guests. It was jammed. Everybody at the studio from Norman on down was there. They were all waiting for me to fall on my ass.

  I went up into the balcony just as the lights went down and the picture came on. I found my way in the dark to a seat in the middle of a bunch of youngsters and looked up at the screen
.

  My name looked funny up there.

  JONAS CORD PRESENTS-

  But the feeling left when the credits were over and the picture began. After ten minutes had passed I started to sense a restlessness in the kids around me. "Aw, shit," I heard one of them whisper. "I thought this was gonna be somethin' different. It's just another friggin' Western."

  Then Rina came on screen. Five minutes later, when I looked around me, the kids' faces were staring up at the screen, their mouths partly open, their expressions rapt. There wasn't a sound except their breathing. Next to me sat a boy holding a girl's hand tightly in his lap. When Rina finally pulled Nevada down onto the bed with her, I could feel the kid squirm. He whispered, "Jesus!"

  I reached for a cigarette and began to smile. Nobody had to tell me this picture was box office. When I came down into the lobby after it was over, Nevada was standing in the corner surrounded by kids and signing autographs. I looked for Rina. She was at the other end of the lobby surrounded by reporters. Bernie Norman was hovering over her like a proud father.

  Dan was standing in the center of a circle of men. He looked up as I came over. "You were right, Jonas," he cried jubilantly. "She creamed 'em. We'll gross ten million dollars!"

  I gestured and he followed me out to my car. "When this is over," I said, "bring Rina to my hotel."

  He stared at me. "It's still eating yuh, isn't it?"

  "Don't lecture me, just do as I say!"

  "What if she won't come?"

  "She'll come," I said grimly. "Just tell her it's collection day!"

  It was one o'clock in the morning and I was halfway through a bottle of bourbon when the knock came on the door. I went over and opened it.

  Rina walked into the room and I closed the door. She turned to face me. "Well?"

  I gestured toward the bedroom. She looked at me for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders and nonchalantly started for the bedroom. "I told Nevada I was coming here," she said over her shoulder.

  I spun her around violently. "What the hell did you do a damnfool thing like that for?"

  Her eyes appraised me calmly. "Nevada and I are going to get married. I told him I wanted to be the first to tell you."