by Brian Hodge
Wasn’t it just the way of the world? Same as cars on the bad side of town. Something hangs around long enough, it’s bound to get stripped for parts.
The next day, the second Friday in August, Justin and account exec Leonard Greenwald caught an early flight out of Tampa to Richmond, Virginia. They were met by a driver who shuttled them an hour northeast into Essex County. Some 250-year-old mid-Georgian plantation called Hopedowne, all the Southern gentility money could rent. The owners normally kept it open with daily museum’s hours and ran a tour circuit through its sumptuous hallways, but were persuaded to shut down a few days to accommodate a film crew. They wouldn’t actually have to let potentially clumsy buffoons wielding cameras and kliegs past their doors. All location shooting was exterior only. Interiors would be mocked up on soundstages in Orlando.
Hopedowne’s front lawn was home to a swarming knot of thirty people, techs and talent and assistants on a green smooth enough for billiards. The mansion itself sprawled in the background, all grandiose columns and heart-tugging anachronism. Three stories of red brick, end chimneys, white trim around the windows and the portico. A row of dormer windows nudged proudly out of the roof. Magnolia trees even grew at the front corners. A. J. Mullavey would cream his chubby pants.
Justin and Leonard stood at the far reaches of the front lawn before intruding as Segal/Goldberg’s on-site eyes and ears. Leonard patted the back of Justin’s head.
“Do you appreciate the fact,” he said, “that all this came out of your noggin?”
Justin grinned. Last night’s misgivings while watching the movie notwithstanding, he couldn’t deny the thrill. You think, sweat, grapple with words and concepts, and in two weeks you watch a crew of experts give it flesh and form. Not a lot of people were privileged to experience such professional vertigo.
Eight-fifteen, and Hopedowne faced east, into the risen sun, while their pseudo-Scarlett posed on a velvet-cushioned swing suspended from an oak branch.
“Look at this, would you.” Leonard’s voice reverential. “Look at her. This is a wet dream come true.”
Justin watched the man swoon. “Big Scarlett fan, huh?”
“Fan?” Leonard’s face warped with distaste. “We’re talking about American myth here. Every red-blooded American man thinks at least once in his life that he would’ve been the one to tame that woman.”
“You’ve got the romance of the South in you, I can tell.”
Leonard didn’t hear; a man transported, a fool in fantasy-land love. “But how many of us get to see her right in front of our eyes, in the flesh?” He tossed an arm around Justin’s shoulders and joggled him close, nearly dragging him off balance. “So thank you. Thank you.”
Justin squirmed out of the bearish embrace. “Isn’t it the client’s ass you’re supposed to kiss?”
Leonard told him he was just too dumb to recognize universal overtures of male bonding, and they wandered forth to mingle with some crew while last-minute preparations preceded shooting.
But Leonard had a point. His rapture proved contagious. Thirty feet ahead, New York actress Holly Jardine made an eerie double for one of cinema’s most enduring heroines. Film mythology had taken a giant step forward by more than half a century to materialize on Hopedowne’s front lawn.
And, quite simply, she was enchanting. On her swing, Holly Jardine made a regal belle of the ball, surrounded by a minor court tending her hair, makeup, and wardrobe. Raven hair parted over a creamy unblemished forehead; pale porcelain cheeks glowed with a coquettish blush. Her green-sprigged white hoopskirt had been patterned after the one worn by Vivien Leigh during the Wilkes family barbecue scenes, early in the film, and a vast hat was tied off with a bow beneath her rounded chin. She was innocence, and she was fire.
Their eyes met, Justin was sure of it. He felt it, tasted that peculiar magic, illusion come to life. And how he longed to hear the gentle coyness of her voice.
Then, the answer to his unspoken prayer:
“Could somebody get their ass over here with an umbrella to keep this fucking sun out of my face … please!” she roared, her voice pure unadulterated Brooklyn, and this was terrible. Just terrible.
Served him right. For a moment he had almost believed the lie, when he’d written it himself. At least that the parts he hadn’t stolen outright.
Holly Jardine bellowed again, this time sent her stylist scurrying for a different brush. Something about these being the wrong bristles for her hair.
Leonard blinked, shook his head in mourning. “Well, this is an eye opener. I could’ve died happy without hearing that. Why’d she have to talk?”
“Now that’s sexist.” Justin smiled. “You pigs are all alike.”
Minutes later they met the director, Graham Ludden, one of the post-Spielberg breed who dressed ultracasual, from the bill of his baseball cap to the soles of his battered Nikes. Early thirties, with a short sandy ponytail pulled loosely together in back. Justin had heard at the agency that he’d gotten his big break a few years ago down the coast from Orlando, doing second-unit work on episodes of Miami Vice.
“So this is your brainchild?” Ludden said to Justin. “I’m not a coffee drinker myself, I’m sorry to say, but I like your scripts a lot. What director wouldn’t want to have been in the saddle for Gone With the Wind?”
“I was worried maybe we’d have some problems with directors thinking we were tampering with a classic.”
Ludden waved it off, a casual flip. “For most directors, I think you’ll see, if you look hard enough, a direct correlation between integrity toward the classics and last year’s after-tax income.”
Justin nodded. “So. How’d you do last year?”
Ludden stonewalled, expressionless. Then, “Well … I had time to start an herb garden.”
“I thought I asked for somebody to get an umbrella over here!” Holly Jardine screamed. “Graham, would you get this done before this fucking sun turns my face into rhino hide!”
Ludden lowered his head, shook it in weary hopelessness — why me, Lord?
“Demure lass, isn’t she?” said Leonard.
Ludden rolled his eyes. “Huh. If she gets any more demure, I might just have to cut off her head.”
“So how was herb gardening, anyway?” Justin asked.
“Okay, okay. Count my blessings.” Ludden put his assistant on tracking down an umbrella for the princess. “She balls the cameraman last night to make sure he makes her look extra great. Do I see any of that action? No. Not Graham Ludden, he just gets to find her a damn umbrella on a cloudless day. Did I tell you the rest of the crew is already calling her Harlot O’Scare-a?”
Moments later Ludden was swept away once more by the filmmaking process, and Justin and Leonard retired to the sidelines for the duration. Take after take, shot after shot. While Holly Jardine was on the swing a photographer shot rolls of stills for the print ads. Kill two birds with one stone. And to her credit, once the cameras started rolling it was like watching Holly flip an internal switch. Watch the tyrannical diva submerge, watch the coquettish flirt surface. Listen to that flawless Southern accent that could turn bastions of male strength to puddles of surrender.
It was all lost on Justin by now, though. Missing April, back in Tampa, probably at her drawing board with Dave Brubeck jazz piano wafting from the stereo. Justin, missing her already when last contact had only been four o’clock this morning, a goodbye kiss when she was three-quarters still asleep, grumbling amid the sheet with tousled hair and the stale breath of heavy slumber.
It must be love. It felt so real. No illusions there.
The set and crew idled into neutral around noon, union regs enforcing lunch. Justin’s ham and Swiss tasted like plastic wrap. He and Leonard ate alone, relative privacy under a sun at apex, a picture-perfect day in the cradle of Colonial America. So strange to be here at all, seven hundred miles from home, a world and a century or two wedged in between. Look how far we’ve come, look how far we’ve fallen.
Hal
f of Leonard’s second sandwich was gone before he said much of anything. “Are you having problems over this shoot?”
“Is it obvious?” Justin studied him back over the top of a Pepsi can.
“Well, to me. Maybe no one else.”
“I’m flip-flopping. Sometimes this whole Magnolia Blossom experience is like a rush of adrenaline and I love it, love it all. And sometimes … sometimes I feel like a grave robber.”
“The movie, you mean?”
Justin tossed the last corner of his sandwich aside, didn’t want its plastic taste in his mouth anymore. “Remember a few years ago when it came out that Ted Turner had bought up the rights to all those classic movies, black and whites, and planned on colorizing them? It’s A Wonderful Life, in that cheesy paint-by-numbers color scheme … it’s a travesty. I heard that, I was calling for Ted Turner’s head as loud as anybody.” He gestured with the Pepsi can toward the set, the camera, Hopedowne and Holly Jardine. “What we’re doing here — what I thought up to save our asses — is that much different?”
Leonard flexed his fingers, laced them together. “Should it even matter?”
Justin leaned back, canvas director’s chair bowing beneath him, behind him. “We know too much. We know too much about behind-the-scenes. Which is fine if you want to feel like an insider. But if you want to feel the magic when you see something on film, anything … this spoils it. We just know too much.”
“Can’t you put it out of your mind, a least for a while?”
Justin shook his head. “Used to, I thought I could. Used to, I could. I really could compartmentalize my life. Leave things separate so they don’t get messy, one thing doesn’t have anything to do with another if I don’t want it to. But it doesn’t work for long. I just ended up having a lot of little messes. And when they all got together they became one big mess.”
Leonard scruffed a hand along his jaw. He had shaved today and Justin had not. At least behind-the-scenes let you opt for casual. “But you’re really good at this. Part of you’s got to love it, thrive on it.”
Nodding, “Yeah. Oh yeah. Except when I see the results sometimes those worry me. When I present this chunk of selective truth. It’s glossy. Polished. All the aesthetics perfect so it looks better than it really is, and when it works it’s just like pushing a button in someone. Like there’s no such thing as free will, not really. The longer I’m in it, the more advertising seems like some sort of magic. Spellcasting through the media.”
“Justin, you’re the only guy I’ve ever known, the better job you do the more it gives you fits.”
Leonard toyed with the last remnants of his sandwich, as if Justin’s reluctance with his own had spread. He peeled it apart and sunlight glistened on meat that looked too pink, too shiny. Too plastic. He balled it up in its wrapper.
“We all go through this. Something like it, one way or another.” Leonard shook his head, nearly scowling, his high forehead creasing, then smoothing. “I remember when I thought I had scruples. No, I wasn’t going to kiss anyone’s ass, I was going to do my job with integrity … and pride … and everything I accomplished was going to happen because I’d earned it.”
Silent moments of oblivion to all else around, feeling that Virginia breeze from the east. Warm, summery, and if you felt deeply enough, a lonely hint of distant ocean chill.
“So how’d you resolve it?” Justin said.
“I didn’t. I just figured out how to forget better.” Leonard Greenwald hunched his shoulder for a second, flashed this brief, apologetic smile, and oh, the pity Justin could feel. This man lashed down by obligations and finances to a career that Justin was only now beginning to sense he regarded with something other than love.
“Brown washes off,” Leonard finally said. Touched his nose. “Brown washes off. But sometimes I still think I can smell it.”
Chapter 6
Petro
By the time Eel got to Charbonneau’s, on Toulouse Street, all that remained at its linen-draped tables were the last dregs of Thursday’s lunch crowd. Languid businessmen beneath soft glow of crystal chandeliers, squeezing another martini onto an expense ledger, eyeing one another for weaknesses. And tourists, coaxing nerve to go back out and brave the August sun.
The tuxedoed maitre d’ needed no prompting. Once someone met Eel, all bone-white six-four of him, the memory was indelible. Eel was led through the restaurant, past tables under preparation for the dinner crowd. Pristine settings awaiting diners, places marked by crisp white napery folded into cones as regal as a papal miter.
The maître d’ ushered him to an elevated alcove off the rear of the main dining room. Gave a stiff little bow for the benefit of the man already seated there, and disappeared with the propriety of servitude. The man rose, greeted him by name.
“Hi, Nathan,” Eel said with a nod, and they sat. Eel liked it here, Nathan’s little aerie — ownership had its privileges. Away from prying eyes and listening ears, and no one could sneak up unannounced. That was important. As were the two hulks sipping coffee at a nearby table below, who always wore jackets to conceal their pistols.
Nathan shuffled paperwork aside, followed it with his eyes as he carefully pushed it across the tablecloth. He was a man of moderate height, but trim, hard, compact. A dab of silver distinguished each temple, and he could watch you closely without your being aware of it.
“I saw today’s Times-Picayune. Damn shame, that burglary?” He looked at Eel, shook his head once while clicking the corner of his mouth. “The Looziana Jewboy’s place? Terrible shame.”
“Not to worry. They’d be insured.” A thin smile. “And they’ll get it all back soon enough.”
“Except for the pellets.”
Eel tipped a finger and a nod.
“You’ve got everything? No problems with Erskine?”
“He’s afraid. He hides it well, but he’s afraid.”
“Who’d’ve guessed,” Nathan said flatly. “When are you planning on transferring everything over to that Haitian?”
“No rush. Unless we hear about production schedules changing, I’d say we’ll be fine getting it into his possession, say, late the second week in September.”
Nathan nodded, lower lip curled down and eyebrows arched as he considered. “Gives a month for everyone to forget about the burglary. Yeah. That sounds good.”
A minute later one of the waiters came up to bring Nathan a steaming bowl. This was no college kid milking charm for tuition via tips; here you found career waiters, craftsmen of service. The bowl was filled with a dark, rich concoction, stewlike, smoky and mysterious. Nathan wafted its scent to his nostrils and all else was forgotten. He looked like a connoisseur with a rare Bordeaux that hadn’t seen ground-level daylight in decades. The foreplay went on forever before he finally got to the spoon.
Nathan groaned in ecstasy, then looked at Eel. “I’m considering hiring a new chef on. This’s a crawfish bisque. It’s what I check ’em all out on. If they can do the job on this, I figure they can handle damn near anything else.” He glanced at the waiter, then his bowl, then back to Eel again. Ever the considerate host. He offered the bowl to Eel. “Can I have him fetch you some? No trouble.”
Eel held up a hand to politely decline. Stuff was so dark and chunky, no telling what lurked in there. What was it with this town, anyway? Everywhere he went, someone pushing food at him. Try this, try that. Seven years in New Orleans and he’d just about had it with their culinary fetishes. Great place to live, otherwise, but dear god, the food. He’d grown up in Washington, D.C., lived there until his early thirties, and no one outside of family had offered him so much as a Slim Jim.
Eel watched as Nathan spooned more bisque, focused as a judge weighing testimony. A smile gradually broke out across the man’s face.
“He’s back there sweating bullets,” the waiter said, no doubt about the chef-on-trial. “What should I tell him?”
“You tell him welcome to Charbonneau’s.” As Nathan stirred, rice surfaced from
the bottom. “But tell him to cut back a pinch on the cayenne from now on. Yankees come down here to spend their money, we don’t want to send them back up north shitting blood, now do we?”
Nathan Forrest had been in the restaurant business for fifteen years, since his mid-thirties. The intervening years had been good to him. He appeared much the same man as had bought the place, still sharp of eye and jawline.
Charbonneau’s had already accumulated some three decades of history and prosperity by the time of Nathan’s acquisition, by Eel’s recollection. Which was no great shakes by New Orleans standards, not when you had Antoine’s over on St. Louis Street. Five generations of the same family over there, in business since 1840, which went beyond tradition to become dynasty. This Eel could respect. Few people could lay claim to so strong a tie to their heritage, not in this day and age. But in all honesty, he also felt the food — that which he’d dared sample, generally the blander entrees in deference to his tender stomach — was superior at Charbonneau’s. The young upstart with its new management. Eel recalled local scandal from a few year’s ago. A food critic at the Times-Picayune had given Antoine’s a scant two-star rating out of five. Public outrage clamored for the critic’s blood. Two years later, Charbonneau’s had lost a star and fallen to three, and Nathan had gone on an internal purge the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the decline of ancient Rome. Half joking, Eel had at the time offered to pop the food critic, several small-caliber shots to the back of the head. Just a friendly gesture. It was the only time Nathan had ever raised his voice to Eel, yelling no, no, it wasn’t a matter of muscle at all, not this time. This time it was a matter of pride, and if Eel didn’t understand the distinction, then he didn’t understand a damn thing.
Eel understood plenty. It was just a clash of priorities, nothing more. Four stars, three, in twenty years who would care? Eel had his own agenda to attend to.
“It’s in the stock, that’s the secret,” Nathan was saying. Half done with his bisque and savoring every spoonful. “If they don’t understand that, I don’t want to know them. You start with the right stock” — another spoonful — ”then you’ve got something to build on.”