This Time We Love

by Reynolds, Mack

  He rallied to his philosophy, shrugging in self-irritation, even as he parked the little Porsche. Of course he wanted to stay on in Rome. Who in the hell would want to go back to the American rat race if he could stay on in Rome surrounded by movie starlets, drinking and eating the best in some of the world’s top restaurants and night spots? You’re damn right he wanted to stay on in Rome.

  Give him the wherewithal and he’d bend elbows with Bert, drink for drink, no matter what the little man’s unbelievable capacity. And he’d show Clara Lucciola a roll in the hay that’d have her walking bowlegged for weeks.

  He snorted inner deprecation even as he vaulted over the low-slung sports car’s side and made his way toward the walled enclosure’s entry.

  The guards would obviously be multilingual, so Max spoke in English, “Mr. Fix is expecting me,” and reached into his light jacket pocket for briar and tobacco pouch. Somewhere he’d picked up the idea that it wasn’t easy to get into a movie studio, so he was prepared to sit down and finish a smoke while waiting.

  However, there evidently wasn’t the percentage of autograph hunters, gawkers and gate crashers in Italy as there was at home. A guard was on the phone in moments. Max, even from across the room, could make out one of the words that came through the receiver. It was “pal.” Max grunted in amusement.

  The guard looked up. “Down that street there, Signore Fielding, to the third building. There will be directions on the door.”

  Max ambled down the paved street, taking in the newness of the surroundings. He’d seen outdoor movie sets before, here and there in various parts of the world, but had never been in a studio complex such as this. There were huge buildings to both left and right, monstrous buildings that could have been government edifices in the capital of a first-rate power. From them were eddying hosts in a ludicrous conglomeration of costumes of eras as far removed as Etruscan Italy and the American frontier.

  Largely, the costumes were of early Rome. Older men in togas, women in the flowing robes of the period, men in armor with short swords belted to their sides and shields on shoulders. There must have been several hundred of them. Max Fielding pursed his lips. If they were shooting scenes on indoor sets that involved this number of men, he wondered how many extras would be involved in the outdoor battle scenes.

  Some of the men were bandaged with bloody cloths, some made up so as to appear as though they had recently been struck in the face with sharp weapons. One foot soldier went by nonchalantly, with a bloody stump where his left arm should have been. Max had to do a double take, to realize that the real arm was bound to the man’s side, under his costume. They looked unbelievably realistic, even though clashing against the ultra-modernness of their surroundings.

  The third building to the right looked identical with the others that lined the street, the only exception being a one-storied canteen toward which a considerable number of the film extras were streaming, even as others spread typical Italian lunches on grass or benches and began midday picnics.

  There were half a dozen signs on the door. The one that counted read: Horatius at the Bridge. Public Relations. Mr. Bertram Fix, Robinson, Signore Luciano Maggiore. 2nd Floor.

  Max pushed the door open. Beyond there was a long corridor the ceiling of which was sky high. He could see a stairway to his right and made for it. At the foot was another set of signs, one of which said simply, Horatius, Public Relations, with an arrow pointing up. Max went up.

  At the top of the stairs he could hear the muted clattering of typewriters, and headed toward them. A door opened and a bearded, saintly-looking man of at least eighty emerged, a gnarled staff in hand to assist his walking. As he passed Max he muttered, “Sons of bitches,” in a most unsaintly tone.

  There was another door with a cardboard placard duplicating the original sign downstairs. There were typewriters and voices within. Knocking didn’t seem to be in order, so Max pushed his way through.

  The room beyond could have been the city room of a small daily newspaper. Desks, files, typewriters, cameras with mounted flashes, three men sitting around in shirt sleeves working at copy or soberly inspecting still film negatives. There was a small, shy-looking girl banging away at an electric typewriter at a speed that made the type a continual blur.

  Bert Fix, natty as ever, and paler than ever, sober, was standing in the room’s middle arguing persuasively with a stubborn-appearing young man who seemed slightly out of place in this atmosphere.

  Bert looked over at Max’s entrance, nodded without smiling and went back to the other. “All I’m saying, Jim, is that both you and Clark are swell people and it’s a shame you’ve managed to develop a foolish feud.”

  The moment the other opened his mouth, it was obvious he was British. “Foolish feud! See here, I don’t have to give Clark Talmadge publicity. If he doesn’t want to give me an interview, well, jolly good.”

  Bert said unhappily, “But look, Jim, all he needs is some little gesture from you. Drop him a note. I’ll write it, if you want. Say you’re sorry.”

  “I say — ”

  Bert was dogged. “Well, Jim, you did call him a queer, after all. He can’t stand that sort of item in a column with circulation like yours. He’s a muscle boy.”

  “Well, he is queer, you know.”

  “Well, I couldn’t admit that, Jim. But even if he was — ”

  Jim obviously didn’t want to argue. “See here, Bert. I came down from London with the expectation of getting an interview. I’m going back to the hotel. If Mr. Talmadge wants to see me in the next couple of days, jolly good. But I’ll tell you now, it’s been donkeys’ years since I’ve apologized to anyone.” He turned and, brushing Max slightly on the way to the door, said, on the lofty side, “Oh, sorry, old chap.”

  “Not at all,” Max said evenly. “Pip, pip.”

  The other shot him a quick glance but had his irritation too concentrated to want to spread it around. He pushed through the door. Max looked after him.

  “Who was that?” he said. “God?”

  Bert Fix wasn’t amused. He brought forth a handkerchief and mopped his mouth, unhappily. “As a matter of fact, yes,” he said. “James Duff-Browne. Most popular theatrical columnist in the damn Commonwealth. Broke my back getting him to come down here, and now it turns out Talmadge is in a huff about something Jim wrote a couple of years ago. Some morals charge bit when Clark was doing a personal appearance in London.”

  Max had seen the screen’s latest historical-movie-muscle-man in half a dozen films portraying characters ranging from Hector of Troy to Tarzan of the Apes. He blinked at the little movie flack. “You mean Talmadge is a homo?”

  Bert grunted unhappily and scratched his little beard. “Like a three-dollar bill.” He shook his head and changed subjects. “Glad you made it, pal. How’d you do last night with Clara?”

  “Fine,” Max said easily. He looked about the room again.

  “Hey, everybody,” Bert said, “here’s my pal, Max. Great guy in the clutch. Honey,” he said to the girl, “this is the guy I told you about.”

  She wasn’t quite mouselike, she had a something that disqualified her for that description, although she was softly brown of hair and eye, petite in figure and quietly self-deprecating in personality. She smiled, shyly, up at him and said, “Hello, Max.”

  Max took half a step backward, put his hand over his heart and said, as though anguished, “Good heavens, do you realize I’ve been dreaming about you practically every night of my adult life? And now, here you are. Do you believe in psionics, extrasensory perception, precognition?”

  She stared at him.

  One of the other three men present chuckled happily, “Man, what a line. Introduce us, Bert. I want to learn how to do it.”

  Bert was grinning at Max and shaking his head. He said, “Over here, reading from left and right and from skinniest to fattest are two demi-buttocked flacks I’m teaching the business and a top-notch photographer who knows his business already. Frank, Bi
ll and Lonny.”

  Max went around to their various chairs and shook hands, muttering the usual banalities. Lonny, the short, heavy-set one, was the photographer. On his desk were a Nikon, a Rolleiflex and several strips of miniature negatives at which he had been peering through a magnifying glass. His body was thick but not really obese, but his face was like pasty blubber. He made a bad first impression, purely through physical appearance. However, his handclasp was dry and firm.

  Frank Hamling and Bill Robinson could have been twin general assignment reporters on any sheet in the States; Max never did learn to tell one from the other. They exchanged grins with him and went back to their work.

  “Belt time,” Lonny Balt said. “On me.”

  Jeanette picked up the phone and said something into it.

  Max didn’t get it, so he turned his attention back to Bert, who was gushing happily about how Max could handle six men at once, all of them armed with brass knucks or blackjacks. “Max was a captain in the Marines,” he was explaining to Frank and Bill, “got the Congressional Medal of Honor for killing whole gangs of Japs on Guadalcanal and Hiroshima.”

  “You mean Iwo Jima,” Bill said.

  Max put in mildly, “He doesn’t mean either. At the time of Guadalcanal, I was a teen-age kid in school.”

  Bill chuckled. “You’ll have to get used to Bert, it’s his profession. If you were only a glider pilot, he’d tell everybody you were the first cosmonaut to land on the moon.”

  An Italian boy in a white jacket entered and looked at them inquiringly, Jeanette said, “Nothing for me. I haven’t had lunch.”

  Frank Hamling said, “Bourbon, and damn the price. It’s on Lonny.”

  “Beer,” Bert said. “Tuborg, none of this Dago hog-wash.”

  Max and Bill Robinson called for beer, too, and the boy disappeared on his errand.

  “You know,” Max said, “I’m beginning to think I might not mind a job with this outfit. Drinks served to your desk in the middle of the working day.”

  Lonny said, “Enjoy Italian ways of doing things while you can, chum. In Hollywood or London you couldn’t get a drink in a studio if you were Princess Margaret. What do you do, Max?”

  Bert Fix said, hurriedly, “Look, I’m taking Max over to see somebody. You people take over. Far as I know, there’s no crisis currently on hand.”

  The door behind Max pushed open and a brisk, business-suited girl in business-like, low-heeled shoes and wearing a business-like set of horn-rimmed glasses breezed in. Her air of efficiency and attire to the contrary, she was a knockout in the American working girl tradition. Her clothes and toilet were so crisply fresh and clean that she might have emerged from her dressing room a moment earlier.

  “Hello, everybody,” she clipped. “Hi, Jean.”

  Jeanette said, “Hi, Nadine. My, that’s a lovely material.”

  Bert Fix groaned, “Oh, oh, the messenger of doom. Nadine Barney, meet Max Fielding. Max, meet the messenger of doom, straight from Production.”

  Nadine Barney ran her eyes briefly up and down Max’s figure, which was currently drooped easily against a steel file. “Hello,” she said crisply.

  Max closed his eyes as though taken aback. “Good heavens,” he said, “did anybody ever tell you that you’re the spitting image of Queen Nefertiti, the most beautiful woman who ever lived?”

  “No,” Nadine said evenly. She turned her eyes to Bert and then Lonny. “La McEvoy has requested Production to remind Publicity that her contract reads that no shots of her, either still or movie, are to be released until she or her manager has okayed them.”

  Bert winced. “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes,” Nadine said. “Contract.”

  Lonny said, “I been through this before, with Lollabrigida. I quit.”

  “If you change your mind in the next half-hour, let us know, Lonny,” Nadine said crisply. “That’s the way the ball bounces, folks. Marcy wants to see any photo release of her before it leaves this office.”

  “But why?” Frank Hamling wailed. “Does she think we’re stupid enough to — ”

  “Yes,” Nadine said. “Besides, she doesn’t like the look of all the local talent we’re having to put into this production. In Hollywood she could pick and choose the gals who were to appear in the same production with her, but over here almost every actress in Italy has proportions poor Marcy can’t compete with, and proportions are everything in a film like Horatius. Proportions on the gals, muscles on the men, nothing else really counts. Let’s face things, the American moviegoer is a moron.”

  The Italian boy in the white jacket, now bearing a tray of drinks, entered again and began passing them around.

  “Have a belt, Nadine,” Lonny said. “Maybe you can talk Marcy out of this. It’ll hold up my work like a dam.”

  “No thanks to both,” Nadine said snappily. She looked down at her watch. “Not even one o’clock,” she said.

  Bert Fix said to her, “Don’t nag us, pal. Creative workers, like publicity men, have to have stimulants to bring out their best.”

  Nadine began to turn. “If what you bring out, drunk or sober, Bert Fix, is your best, then it’s no wonder you’re driven to drink.” She put her hand out for the doorknob, looked at Max in passing. “Nefertiti, wife of Ikhanton, eighteenth dynasty Pharaoh of Egypt, was a brunette. I’m a dirty blonde. She had a full mouth, I have a small one. Her nose was straight, I have just short of a pug. Her chin was quite sharp, mine is rounded. The only similarity between us is that we belong to the same sex. Otherwise, thanks for the compliment.”

  Max smiled his chagrin. “Sharper than a serpent’s tooth,” he quoted.

  A buzzing, something like a cricket’s invaded the room. Only Max looked blank.

  Nadine lifted her left wrist to which was attached a man’s watch. She pressed a button, turning off the tiny alarm. “One o’clock,” she said, as though to herself. “See Mr. King.” She was through the door and gone.

  “Hey,” Max said. “Who’s she?”

  “The messenger of doom,” Bert Fix said unhappily. “Come on, we’ve got to see somebody, too.”

  As they walked down the corridor and down the steps to the ground level, Max said, “No kidding, who was that girl? She’s as cute as an elf.”

  “Elf, my fanny,” Bert said. “Imp is the term. She’s a devil. Got energy enough for six people, and she’s Roger’s hatchetman.” Before Max could ask, he filled in. “Rogers is production manager. She’s his production secretary.”

  “What does a production manager do?”

  “He makes movies. The only ones the public know about usually are the stars. The more sophisticated moviegoers know the stars, the director, possibly the producer, and more remotely still, the man who either wrote the novel the film is based on or the screen script. But any insider in the game can tell you that the production manager is the one who makes movies. He does all the work — or, at least, he gets the credit for handling production. His production secretary is the one who does all the work. On Horatius, it’s Nadine Barney.”

  Max assimilated that. “She’s a live wire, all right. Where are we going, Bert?”

  “Pal, I told you I’d get you a job, didn’t I? I like you, Maxie boy. We’ll make arrangements so you can stay on in Rome.”

  “A job here on Horatius at the Bridge?”

  “No, no,” Bert said impatiently. “They wouldn’t pay you enough on anything you could hold down. No experience. You’ll need at least fifty bucks a day to make life worth living in Rome.”

  Max whistled softly through his teeth. “Fifty a day? What the hell am I going to do, rob banks?”

  Bert grinned up at him and again Max was reminded of an Irish pixie. “Nah. You’re going to appear in Italian sex movies.”

  Chapter Four

  “THE HELL I AM,” Max protested.

  “The hell you aren’t,” Bert grinned.

  “Now, look …” Max came to a halt and faced the other.

  “Come on,
come on,” Bert said, taking him by the arm and urging him toward the door. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you you got a sexy voice?”

  “No man,” Max muttered. “If he had, I’d have slugged him.”

  The movie flack laughed, obviously pleased with the situation. “We got a date with Filippo in his office,” he said. “He’s currently coining dough on a project it’s a wonder somebody else didn’t think of sooner. It all fits in with this new relaxation of the censor codes back in the States. For years, the Eyetalians have been making these sexy productions, see? Too raw to pass by the American censor boards. But then the barriers started going down. You know, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and Henry Miller’s books, that sort of thing. You can say almost anything in a book now.”

  Max scowled at him. “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Look, pal, the same freedom is slowly being extended to movies. Not as raw as novels yet, but the barriers are going down. So, fine. Filippo bought up American rights to a whole flock of older Eyetalian films. Things that were released here originally maybe fifteen years ago. He’s dubbing them with English, putting on tremendous advertising campaigns in the States, and releasing them there.”

  Max was beginning to see light.

  “So,” Bert wound it up reasonably, “he needs American — not British — voices for the dubbing. He’s been having a little trouble getting the right thing. So maybe you’re it. He’ll have to test your voice, of course.”

  “Yeah,” Max said vaguely.

  Bert was leading him down the street. “Pal,” he said, “you’ll love this town with old Bert to show you around. Stay away from the wops, except for the dames of course, and you’ve got it made. Here, in here.”

  “Here” was an entry into the main administration offices of Cinecittà. Bert led him down a short corridor and to another, less than ostentatious entry which opened into a small office. Bert explained, on the way. “Filippo does most of his work in another studio out on Via Tiburtina, but he keeps a place here, too.”