‘Oh sure. I’m in favor of anything good. Thing is, I’m from Hollywood. That’s already settled ground, but everyone still fights over it.’
‘At least it’s contained.’
‘Oh, they squabble over their own turf, but we’ve long been infiltrated by the corporate dudes. I beat ’em off with a stick. You ought to see them breathe down producers’ necks.’
‘You’re fighting the good fight!’
‘Well, at least that’s the way I’m coming off to you. Thing is, peppery girl of the poppy-clad slopes in the sun, and the junebugs sprinting across the brae, I’m one of them. I tell you, I am. I want what I can get, and I want it while I’m young! If there’s one thing I can tell you about this whole sinking world, it’s that you’ve got to dip your bread into the gravy while it’s hot. Look at how far I’ve come! I’m directing really big pictures, with really big persons and their personalities, like that guy sitting over there. Oh, I know, here in your splendid isolation, you didn’t know about any of us. But in the outside world, we’re big. Yes, quite big. He who sits silently on the daveno over there is quite possibly the biggest motion picture star in the world right now. Bigger than Amitabh, bigger than Gable, bigger than Wm. H. Macy. And if we’re so big, it’s for valid reasons. What do you think that takes? We look out at the moon and we think, how can we use that scene? We cross a belt of land and wonder, would a drive-in or a movie palace look good against the mountains? Who cares, as long as either of them shows my pictures! We be cynics, because we take advantage. We know where the toeholds are, and when to make use of them. To you, who seem so free of guile, I cannot play the hypocrite. Honesty shall be my policy. I bless you, but I am not of you. Accept me! And if you choose, pray for me!’
The mature moonbeams crossed upon Jana’s facial features, rendering them sculpted, but harshly drawn, as befit her true personality, which now lay bare.
Truth in front of her, Pepper rose slowly, never letting her gaze of Jana’s face leave her field of vision.
‘Oh Jana! Don’t you see? You sit on the edge of the great realization! You’ve already stated it: that you are one of them. Them! What or who is ‘them’? Your key to success? The system by which you live – or strive to live? Dry reality… true, it presents itself, even though it be gloriously big. You say big quite a bit. But is it what you sense is the key to what you are? You say I am isolated. True, geographically, perhaps. On the other hand, what are the boundaries of your own isolation?
‘If, by chance, the still evening outside suddenly turned to storm, heavy storm – and I have seen it do so in all its magnificence – would you, sitting here observing it, be humbled? That is, humbled in the right way, as in, that’s a big show out there, bigger than I could come up with. Or would you sit here, absorbing it, gathering ideas, banking them up, like the massy storm clouds, to use as a retaliation, producing on film a storm that would top nature’s offering, thereby securing the attentions of anyone in the audience. And thus secured, you would be able to have power over them, for at least a time. Would that happen?’
Jana’s eyebrows were duly raised.
‘Pepper, your talk, I have to say, it – has the power to soothe the savage beast. What you ask, I don’t know. I suppose so. I think I would probably try to exploit the situation. That’s who I am, baby. You’re who you are. You are obviously the more admirable person. I am just a cheap hack, a common opportunist. I am of the air. I flit and focus, then move on. You are of the earth. The elements of substance. You are always here, because you care. Obviously. I can never be like you. I’d love to be. Well, maybe I wouldn’t, but let me tell you, you are a vision of loveliness. I? I am a director. I recognize you for what you are. You’re real. I am also, but I handle things which are only real for the seconds, minutes, hours that your persistence of vision is snagged with all the attention-getting devices that I can employ as a competitive distraction, especially in the face of all the other distractions that vie for the attention and the money of the consuming public out there. So, there. I know the territory I inhabit. So do you.’
‘Jana! You are grounded and wise. I didn’t mean to hurt you or insult you. You are my guest, and I presumed myself upon you. I apologize.’
‘No need to, Pepper-girl. You are above offense. I consider it a high privilege to have met you and been the subject of your hospitality and attentions. This eve has changed my life.’
Pepper drew back and over to the window.
‘See! How the splendor of the night comes down on us to savor! The stars radiate their beacons, trying to vie for the moon’s prestige, because they know they are many times brighter, but because they occupy the back balcony of the heavens, their status is known and respected, but limited by the locals’ predominance.
‘Oh Jana! Think of the possibilities! Nature determines the state of the theatre around us! We can only aspire! And you do. And you succeed. And you will succeed. With this picture. It will be your greatest yet. Fly into it, with all your might. You are plainly inspired. And you need all the inspirational support you can seek. And you have already found it. I know why you were so anxious and full of foreboding tonight! It was just that your anchor was threatened. Your source of artistic security, your sureness of purpose, your very reason for going onward, was in jeopardy. Maybe not always overtly, we women can sense the undercurrents of portent, and you saw yours, the threads reaching in to tie up and remove that source of protean creativity, which you yourself feed on, healthily, and give nourishment back, so that the mutual relationship can expand. I know you want it to stretch toward greatness, because greatness means liberation, and freedom from want, the want of longing, to see things through. I too, wish for the same. Perhaps through a different viewfinder, not unlike that which you wear about your neck, but it is the very same thing.
‘How I hope you can maintain your confidence in the standpoint of your view on the reality of things! I mean, you say you are a cynic. How then do you identify the validity of what I stand for, without being entirely disparaging? It is as if cynics of your type, if I can call you that, are most close and dear to what I am, what I aspire to be: of the earth and a credit to it, even though I cannot be anything but unworthy. On the other hand, I am accomplished myself, as are you, for together we have achieved more than perhaps we give ourselves credit for. Who said you have to come out here and prove yourself? You did know what you would find when you came this far out. Now you are in this remote district, and you are using it for your artistic purpose. It has not been easy. Thus the struggle. We know about such struggles, and we romanticize them, but what are the actual dimensions of those struggles? What is so appealing about them? Very little, I’m afraid. When immersed in them, we want out, but what is the result if we stay in and see them through? I don’t exactly know. You are the cinema artiste, not me. I can only empathize, and wish you the most passionate of successes.’
Jana could now fully link with Butterbugs’ response to Pepper. She had fallen in love with her, too.
‘Pepper! Do you see the tears that stream down my cheeks in this fulsome moon’s gift-light? Do you know of the longing I feel? You do, I know you do. I am moved. I am overwhelmed. With joy. And that being the case, I can only now say that I am –’
Jana’s words were cut off by a formidable double-knock – much louder than her own, earlier. This one made the front door tremble. There was silence in the salon. The double-knock returned, redoubled. The lodge was suddenly under siege.
Jana righted herself, as all fashionable and truly great directors must, especially in sequences involving extended takes, under serendipitous, if not military, circumstances. She had indeed accomplished such on a regular basis. But as the drama at hand was playing without benefit of camera or crew, a freezing of emotions and the thrusting of portent were urgently pushing their way in, to possibly scatter all the sensitive realizations that so salubriously bathed the salon’s cubic footage, this evening. Until now.
‘My associate produc
ers. I know it. They’re a wild bunch, yet canny. I think they’ve been drinking in the interval.’
Eyes went toward the direction of the door. The knock returned yet again, then remained constant.
‘Hooooooooooooooh! Jananana!!!! Na-na-na-na-NA! Come out, come out, whenever you are!!!!!!! Are you ready to spread ’em for us?’
A blast of Max Steiner-ish ‘Awful Truth Music’ wouldn’t have been adequate enough to accompany the horror felt in Jana’s heart at this instant.
‘Oh, no!’ she gasped.
Pepper moved toward the door.
‘Here, let me see what they want –’
Jana rushed over and placed herself between hostess and portal. Problem-solver that she was, she hastily figured out the locking-bolt mechanism and drew it into play with a heroic slide-through.
‘No! No, dear. You don’t realize what we’re dealing with here. You have no idea. I stayed too long. I gave them license.’
‘Maybe if I go out and parley with them…’
‘Parley? What are you, crazy?’
A shocking shatter then occurred. Two empty pure grain alcohol bottles and two empty rain water bottles burst through the clerestory window, the glass of which was so old that it rained like powder on the two women, who scattered, shaking the shards out of their hair.
‘JaaaNaaa!!! Come out!!’
‘But fill those bottles first!!! Huhhhhhh??? Where’s the liquor???’
‘JaaaNaaa!!! Come out!! JaaaNaaa!!! Come out!! JaaaNaaa!!! Come out!! JaaaNaaa!!! Come out!!!!!!’
Brushing the dangerous dust off each others’ bodies, Jana drew closer to Pepper and whispered:
‘Have you got any bleach or FlushPaste or wood alcohol?’
‘Some bleach, yes.’
‘Fill as many bottles as you can carry, then bring them back. I’ll hold them off. Now do you see how dangerous they are?’
Without a word, Pepper took her direction and stole off.
Jana went back over to the door and placed her palms on its panels. She felt firsthand the pounding, the trying of the latch, the pounding, and then the kicking.
‘You kick harder,’ said one. ‘I’ll pry the goddamned hinges off, then we’ll get her!’
Jana could hear their strategizing, so she called out in a low but strengthened voice:
‘Boys! I’m here. I’m on the other side. No need to get rowdy, you two. Jobs are done for the day. No reason not to party. Just be a little more patient.’
‘Why the hell should we… Buh… Be?’ slurred Bakyan Keb, Assistant Producer #1.
‘Yeah!! Why should we have to wait no more? Bout time you service-ed us for a change! You know you want to, you horny bith!’ shrieked Kirby Bashkog, Assistant Producer #2.
Jana put on a high-pitched jinks voice.
‘Why BashBak! You frisky devils! I didn’t know, I didn’t know! In that case, just hold your wankers. Won’t be but a minute. Let me freshen up. Say, uh, where’s the rest of the crew?’
Bakyan actually answered the question with clarity, as it served their purpose nicely.
‘Hah! They took off long time back. Perfect for us. Now we got privacy. Git out here!!!’
‘NOW, you gurli-gurl!! YAHHHH!!’
‘HOOOOOO!!!!’
For a moment, Jana contemplated ringing her security force, but she was so disgusted with them for bailing that she decided, as commander-in-chief, to handle the situation on her own.
‘Rent-a-Fuzz!’ she muttered contemptuously.
Then Pepper appeared out of the shadows with two full bottles of clear liquid. The looks they gave each other in the moony dimness were epic, and on the same wavelength.
‘Here,’ Pepper murmured, ‘I filled them. To the brim.’
‘That’s more than enough, honey. Now let’s see what can be done.’
There was an old disused parcel pass-through down from the door. Jana went over and called through it.
‘Boys! K.B. ’n’ B.K.! Down here! Drinks are on the house! Come and… get it!’
Then, placing the bottles in the outside tray beyond the creaky flap seal, she pulled her hands back quickly, lest they be gripped with iron gloves not too exhausted by masturbation, more than ready to grasp fuck-flesh for real, this time.
A greedy set of mitts missed their grapple-opportunity to take Jana’s own refined instruments as a prize, and instead settled on the fruits of her presentation. Throats made thirsty for grander, higher-caliber beverage now secreted expectorant, slobbery lubrication. To accommodate the advanced conduct of higher and higher inebriation, the hunger of bottle content temporarily overrode sex-lust at this juncture. Especially when woman-meat was still safely behind so much lodge mass.
‘Hell, let’s drink to burning this fukkin’ dump to the ground, so as to git ’er! I’m first on top, ya know!’ Kirby hooted.
‘Fuck if you are!’ wailed Bakyan.
It was Bakyan who beat rival Kirby to the bottle delivery, and he lost no time in sucking up to Jana’s and Pepper’s alco-tits. Flushed with euphoria and sheer luck at the free pop machine of unbridled booze opportunities, he loosened the already broken seal, flung his head back, bent the bottle up into the moonlit sky and let the clear, cool and crystalline flood pour out. From a clean bottleneck, down a sweaty Assistant Producer’s neck. Some drops spattered on his grimacing barbarian’s mug, but most of the flow was successfully channeled toward his interior pipe, where it was received with initial vigor.
But soon after, mortification.
Jana’s #1 sub-partner in motion picture production was instantly in agony, experiencing imprudent use of chemicals, on account of undisciplined intoxication. His entangled yowls were as excruciating for the listener as they were for the broadcaster, and Jana was cut to the quick as far as responsibility was concerned.
‘I don’t want to kill anybody, or anything…,’ she muttered, before calling her own ‘Action!’
On cue, she approached Pepper, who stood her ground bravely. In the wonder of the moon, on this border with imminent danger, the two regarded each other with a dignity that was mutual and a respect that wordlessly spoke of admiration.
Jana’s stylish fingers reached out and lightly cradled Pepper’s chin with a connoisseur’s finesse.
‘Oh, what I could do with you on the silver screen, loved one!’ she whispered, with more sincerity and soul in her voice than she’d ever thought possible. ‘And your little Prairie, too. But alas, not in this moonlit universe. I love you.’
Her dearest wish was to give Pepper the most passionate of kisses, but totally respecting her star’s first rights to a relationship with this special find, she instead gave a beautiful sisterly lip-press on Pepper’s tear-streaked cheek, and backed away.
Then she shoved back the bar, opened the door and rushed out.
There she beheld Bakyan, holding his throat, cheeks, nose, belly, head, hands. He was having a hard time deciding which front deserved the most attention. All were equally impacted by the sudden and horrific effect on his drunken but self-preservation-desiring well-being. In short, for him, there was an acute emergency at close hand, self-inflicted, intense, and world-shattering. High volumes of enriched sodium hypochlorite were suddenly confronting his oral zones, with… notable results.
‘You damned… troublesome… darned… skank!’ Bakyan screamed, ‘I’ll gouge out your cunt hairs!! Aaaaargh!!!! Garhhh!! How-dzuh!! Huz-zhuh!!!’
And he dissolved into a fit of choke-gargling and spitting, finally resorting to stuffing his mouth with gravel and flowerbed earth – like absorbent grease-sweep or cat dirt – in an effort to put out the chemical fires in his maw.
With Assistant Producer #1 successfully writhing and out of commission, Jana prepared to pull out her porta-phone to call 911.
‘OK turbo-bith!’ howled Kirby, who came up behind, out of nowhere, and pinned her arms behind her back.
‘Look what you did to my bithneth associate and fellow fuck-face! He’s indisposed! Maybe murdered! A
nd YOU indisposed him! Maybe murdered! Why you! –’
Suddenly, even in his drunken dimness, he was struck by the utter severity of reaction to two guys who were just out for a good time.
‘Wait a shittin’ minute! What is this, anyway?’
‘Don’t fuck with me, Kirby. This is a mega-million dollar production, not a skunk-shoot. What’re you guys trying to do, anyway? Kill something for the hell of it?’
‘No, no. I’m not gonna kill ya…’
‘You’re not?’ Jana replied snottily, more disgusted than fearful.
Kirby drew close to her ear and dribbled generously into it. He smelled like a public toilet in Hangchow. Or possibly Kharkov.
‘Ohhh, no. No no no no no. Well… maybe later. First off, time for you to see my big dick for the first time. Ready for some rear action? First-off, mebbe? Then you suck me, Jana-The-Whore! Ha-ha-ha-HAH!’
Just at that moment, Jana recalled that BashBakKebKirb productions had made some pretty hard coin on the repulsive ‘Shredder from Lava Canyon’ (Cinemation Industries) series for Jerry Gross, some years back. Even ‘Witchweed Magazine’ had found the films distasteful. Even producers can be impressionable to what they present to an appalled public.
‘You haven’t even got a dick, let alone a big one, sub-human! Treating a lady – and your director – this way! How about ‘Kirb-ing’ your enthusiasm, dickweed? Now cover up that silly little piss plug with your grease-rags, and let me go. We’ll talk about it tomorrow, OK?’ Then she added, in lower tones, still unwavering, ‘Before I have you crucified – upside down.’
‘Why you miserable – You’re really pissin’ me off now!’
He belched, farted, and enhanced his grossness by a number of other foul gestures.
‘Sweet Jesus, you are disgusting, Kirby. Try a little… tenderness…’
Even at this point, Jana tried to sound like the boys were just being boys, in spite of the true horror banging at her mind.
‘You is one noisy fuck, Jana-poo. Ya know, me an’ Bak – if he ain’t dead – are gettin’ mighty sick of you. Bossy-boo, puttin’ on airs. Wearin’ slut suits alla time. Keepin’ Butter-fuck-bugs – no, wait a minute! Better-fuck-bugs on his knees all the time! Oh, yeah, we know. We got full coverage and pix, ready to go viral, Ms. Share-ass! Share ’n’ share alike time now. We should be running this show. An’ we will! Jana-fucking-hotass-dy-rector! You know how many people hate your fuckin’… self? Huhhh? Gotta admit though, you is one fine body. Lotta good cum wasted while we’re spyin’ on those lunchtime fuck sessions, baby. Fuck, but I wanna rape-fuck you, knock you up, partial-birth-abort your rugrat myself, ’n’ then do ’er all agin! Time aft-tah time! No more waste. No more. Time to put my sploogies to good use!’
Forward to Glory Page 87