“Yes, she is.”
Christine groaned. “Oh, François, why do all the good straight ones have to be in a relationship?”
“Kiss, kiss.” She made a kissing gesture toward François and then to me.
When she walked away, François stared at her behind for a brief moment. As if catching himself, he closed up his makeup kit and studied me. “What?”
“You’re not…”
“Not what?”
“Homosexual.”
His voice lowered an octave, and I detected a hint of a Boston accent. “Okay, you caught me. My real name is Frankie O’Dowd, but only a few people at the studio know I’m straight.”
“Why don’t you want them to know?”
“Who would hire a straight makeup artist? In case you’re not aware, there’s a depression, and I need this job.”
Across the way, Christine and Laura were listening to Todd, who gestured with his hands, no doubt talking about the upcoming scene.
“Can we talk?”
François raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you want the skinny on Christine? Say no more.”
He offered the chair. “Sit. I doubt if you’ll want to disappear with me. We’ll be less conspicuous here.”
I sat in the chair while he removed a tube of moisturizer from his makeup kit. “Cold cream, indeed. This will do wonders.”
He began with my forehead. “Actors, especially women, share everything with their hairdressers and makeup artists. Christine was definitely sleeping with Eric.”
“Anything serious?”
“With Christine? She did Eric so she could get the role in Midnight Wedding.”
I suspected as much.
Laura glanced our way and began to laugh.
“You’re a lucky man, Jake. Laura’s quite a dish and a damn good actress as well. She’s naturally funny, while Christine has to work hard delivering her lines. Norman’s none too pleased with her. Neither is Todd.”
“Todd?”
“He’s the producer, the money man. He argued for someone else for the part, but Eric talked his old man into Christine. That’s when I realized they were sleeping together.”
I knew less about Todd than anyone else on the suspects diagram. “What’s Todd like?”
François waved a hand. “Oh, he avoids me like being gay might be catching. Besides, he’s…I really shouldn’t say.” After finishing with the moisturizer, he picked up a brush.
“No makeup.”
“No one will even suspect. I’m an artist. I’ll barely…”
Maybe he’d keep talking if I let him work on me. “You were saying.”
The makeup brush tickled. “Well, Leslie, one of the hairdressers, told me Todd was involved with Angie Burkheart. She’s Sonny Burkheart’s mother. Quite a looker, with a nice rack.”
“I know who she is. Why all the secrecy?”
“This is Hollywood. Where are you from?”
“New York.”
“There you go.”
As Laura approached, François went over my face with a light brush then stepped back. His voice rose an octave as he smiled at Laura. “What do you think, kitten?”
Laura hid a snicker with one hand.
I grabbed a mirror from the table beside the chair and studied my face. It didn’t look like makeup at all. “Well?” I turned to Laura.
“You look fabulous, darling, but I’m not going to share a makeup mirror with you in the morning.”
Chapter 10
Christine and the Creepy Clown
Laura helped me from the chair and led me back toward the set.
When she looked up, her eyes shimmered like moonlight dancing off the ocean. She hurried like a schoolgirl to Norman, flashing the ring on her finger. “Did Jake tell you? We’re engaged.” She squeezed my arm and pointed to a table along the wall where a dozen white roses sat in a green vase. “And he sent me my favorite roses. Isn’t Jake a doll?”
“Congratulations, my dear.” The old man squeezed Laura’s hands. “I’d kiss you, but Makeup would have to touch up your face.”
Laura removed the ring and handed it to me. “Would you hold this for me, darling?”
I slipped it in my suit coat pocket. Laura and I followed Norman to the set, where cast and crew greeted him with a round of applause.
Hunching his shoulders, Norman jammed both hands in his trouser pockets. “Thanks, all of you. We have heavy hearts today, but there’s a comedy to film. Let’s get started.”
I retreated to the pastry table as an assistant director unfolded a wooden chair with the word Director on the canvas chair back. The man set a black megaphone on the floor beside the chair.
Norman hooked the cane to one arm of the chair. He climbed into the chair as easily as he might a favorite sofa in his house, and he held his fedora in his lap.
On the set—a contemporary kitchen with fake appliances and a center island—Laura meticulously studied each prop. She pulled dough from a bowl and smacked it on the counter.
Norman held up one hand while Laura clamped her eyes shut, appearing to gather her thoughts.
“Quiet on the set,” called out the assistant director.
The crew grew silent, the only sound a loud swallow of doughnut by a crew member beside me. Norman called out in a voice that defied his fragile health, “Ready, Miss Wilson?”
Laura answered with a nod of delight and the schoolgirl grin that first captured my heart as a teenager.
I held my breath. I’d cut all the dialogue and removed Roland’s part entirely. Now all I could do was hope the scene worked.
“Action!” Norman shouted.
Christine entered through the kitchen doorway, humming a tune. Her black satin evening gown, a pearl necklace, and a silver hat that matched her high heels evoked her character’s wealth and elegance.
Ignoring Christine, Laura wiped her brow with the back of one hand. As if she was in her own kitchen, she spread flour on the dough and smacked it into a ball.
The flour drifted and speckled the front of Christine’s beautiful dress. She stared at the white spatter then snatched an egg from the counter. The shell cracked. Christine grinned as the raw egg slid down her arm.
“Cut!” Norman sailed his hat across the set and hopped off his chair. “What were you smiling about?”
“I had egg running down my arm. It’s funny!” She set her hands on her hips.
“Not to your character.” He ran a hand through his hair and lowered his voice. “You should be horrified.”
“This is a comedy!” Christine glanced around, as if looking for support.
Norman’s face turned as red as it had been earlier in the sun. “You’ve just come from a party where you met the love of your life…something that’s happened to you several times, Christine.”
She screeched and disappeared through the kitchen door.
“Take five, everyone.” Norman grabbed his cane and headed for the pastry table.
The crew scattered before he reached it. “You’d think it was her first movie. If Christine can’t make people laugh at a food fight, our comedy might be in trouble.”
The assistant director, with sweat dotting his brow, retrieved Norman’s hat then poured a cup of coffee and handed the brew to his boss.
Norman gulped and spit a spray of coffee over the pastries. “It’s hot!”
The harried assistant grabbed the cup and fanned it with one hand.
I felt responsible for the failure of the scene. “Would you mind if I talk to Christine?”
“Go!” Norman dismissed me with a wave of the hand. “Turn her into a comedian! When you’re finished,” he grabbed his fedora from his assistant, “pull a rabbit out of my damn hat.”
I crossed the set, where a young man with a purple shirt retouched Laura’s makeup with a brush. I squeezed her hand. “You were terrific.”
“She was fabulous.” The makeup artist put his brush away and studied Laura’s face like it was a painting. “Fabulous!”
Laura cocked her head. “I thought you were going to fade into the shadows, darling.”
“I will…in a moment.” I opened the prop kitchen door and came face-to-face with Christine sipping from a flask. She shrieked and dropped the flask, spilling some of the booze. She backed down a hallway of black curtains and props and collided with a life-sized stuffed dummy, a clown with bright red hair and green floppy shoes.
Clowns gave me the heebie-jeebies, and this was one of the creepiest ones I’d ever encountered. Nevertheless, I grabbed the flask, screwed the cap on, and went after her. “If you don’t quit crying, they’ll have to take a break until your red, swollen eyes clear.”
She dabbed her eyes with a hankie then snatched the flask and raised the container to her lips. “Don’t try to stop me.”
“Cheers.”
Christine clamped her eyes shut and hid the flask behind one of the clown’s shoes. “I don’t know what made me think I could be a comedian! I’m a platinum blonde with a nice rack.”
She was more than that but didn’t know it, or else she was playing me. “You’re an actress who wants to expand her bad-girl image.”
“But I’m not funny!” Christine practically shrieked. “Besides, what do you know about acting?”
“I know about creating effective comedic scenes and interesting characters.”
Christine crossed her arms.
“Novelists and screenwriters understand conflict drives drama, or comedy. What’s the most memorable Charlie Chaplin scene you can remember?”
“What does this—”
“Humor me.”
A frown escaped from the corner of her mouth. “When Charlie, as the little tramp in The Gold Rush, eats a boiled shoe.”
I loved Chaplin. A true genius. “He was brilliant, but the studio wouldn’t make a picture like that these days. The Depression’s made so many homeless people hungry.”
Christine balled the hankie into her fist. “What does that have to do with the food fight scene?”
“The conflict in the Gold Rush scene—hunger driven to the extreme—is played for laughs. Change directors and the movie’s theme about eating shoe leather could play as a tragedy. What I’m trying to say is, in Midnight Wedding, you’re still a bad girl. In the food fight, the humor comes from the conflict of two rivals. Don’t lose your character’s anger, and because it’s slapstick, you’ll be perceived as sympathetic and funny.”
A flicker of trust crossed her face. “You really think so?”
My lecture hadn’t been so much about acting or creating comedy as about propping up her deflated confidence. “Of course I do.”
Christine dried her eyes and fluffed her hair. She slipped her arm in mine and led me back toward the set.
“You’re forgetting something.” I glanced back at the flask by the creepy clown’s feet.
She pressed a finger to her lips. “Shhh.”
Outside the kitchen door on the set, Christine kissed my cheek. “How come all the nice guys are taken?”
When we returned to the set, a woman went to work blotting the flour from Christine’s dress while François touched up her makeup. “No more tears, honey.”
Laura turned her back to me.
“Everything okay?”
She ignored me and slammed a drawer.
I knew what was wrong. “Darling, I’m leaving now.”
I set my hat on my head and walked away. On my way out, Sonny Burkheart picked up a chocolate doughnut from the pastry table. “Howdy, Jake.”
“Sonny.”
He took a bite and crinkled his mouth. A brown smudge smeared his upper lip. “Tastes like coffee.”
I tried not to laugh at the chocolate on his face or the spray of coffee on his doughnut. Before I could say anything, Norman waved me toward his director’s chair.
I tossed Sonny a napkin and joined Norman.
The old man ran a hand over his chin. “How’s Christine?”
I shrugged. “Ready for an inspired comedic performance.” I tipped the brim of my hat.
“Donovan.”
“Yes, Mr. Carville?”
Although he’d been abrupt with actors, crew, and me at first, he was starting to show me a compassionate side. “I owe you.”
Back outside, I blinked in the bright sunlight. I shifted my hat to shade my eyes. At the entrance to the second soundstage, a group of actors dressed like circus performers entered the building. Only a well-built trapeze artist in his mid-twenties stayed.
Roland Harper, in a blue pin-striped suit, twirled a fedora in one hand and chatted with the young man. The two laughed like long-lost buddies. The trapeze artist stuffed a slip of paper into Roland’s coat pocket, flashed a performer’s bright smile, and entered the building.
Roland turned on his heel and froze when his gaze locked on mine. I didn’t want to intrude on his personal life, but I wanted to get a better read on him. After all, Laura and I had given him a short spoke in the diagram.
“Got a minute, Donovan?” He pulled a cigarette case from his pocket, lit a Lucky, and regained his composure. He strolled toward me gracefully, like Fred Astaire. “I could use a cup of coffee. You?”
“Sure.”
The actor crushed the barely smoked cigarette beneath his high-gloss black shoes. He pointed down the walkway to a one-story building with plenty of windows and a handful of outdoor tables. “We can chat at the commissary.”
Framed pictures of studio actors hung on the wall of the Carville Commissary, a quick, convenient cafeteria for cast and crew. Starched white tablecloths covered two dozen wooden tables that sat on black-and-white checkerboard tiles. The chatter and sound of chairs scraping the floor bounced off the metal ceiling. Two kitchen workers stood behind a counter where the smell of chicken and fish drifted up from steaming serving trays.
Roland and I filled plain white cups with coffee from large metal pots, and looked around for an empty table.
Actors, some in costumes; crew members; and studio employees occupied half of the tables. I followed Roland to a table by the front window, next to three belly dancers. He ignored the women and sat across from me. “A bitch of a heat spell.”
I sipped the strong brew. “You want to chat about the weather?”
Roland chuckled and lit another cigarette. “Fine, let me get to the point. You wrote me out of the scene completely.”
“This about your pride?”
He blew out a puff of air. “This is about the picture. I’m afraid you’re going to turn this movie into a Christine Brody and Laura Wilson film. If Midnight Wedding turns into a buddy film for two dames, the only people who’ll pay money to watch it will be elderly spinsters.”
I needed to determine whether the actor deserved a short spoke. I suspected the only way to win his trust was to agree with everything he said. “I was hoping you’d share your thoughts before I revise too many scenes. Please, let’s hear your ideas.”
“You’re serious?” He cocked his head. “That’s marvelous.”
“I’m a novelist, not a screenwriter. I need all the help I can get.”
Harper inhaled a satisfying drag on the cigarette and waved away the plume of smoke. “Eric wasn’t the right person to craft a romantic comedy. The bully didn’t understand romance between lovers. Probably because of his twisted upbringing.”
Roland spent the next several minutes focusing on his character. While he voiced his opinion on how the rich playboy needed to be the focus of the film, I tried to understand the man. Pompous and focused on his image, Roland usually portrayed charming playboys, but I’d seen plenty of his other movie roles where he played a rugged pilot, a boxer, or a tough-guy sheriff in a cheesy western. Why then were the attractive young women at the next table ignoring him?
One of the belly dancers gave me the once-over. When I didn’t appear to notice, she giggled and whispered to the other two girls. I thought back to the muscular circus performer and realized how good an actor Harper was. T
he women at the next table, and probably most of the studio, knew his secret. Roland Harper, America’s playboy, wasn’t interested in dames.
Roland leaned closer. His manicure was more polished than Christine’s or Laura’s. “It might sound harsh, Donovan, but most people around here are relieved Eric’s gone. Rumor has it he wanted to sell the studio when the old man passed on.”
“Now it’ll go to Todd.”
“What a relief. Eric…well, you observed firsthand his behavior at the party. He was a no-talent son of a bitch whose incompetence could no longer be hidden by his protective father. Eric had no business writing a screenplay this…this important, but his old man was always a pushover when it came to his boys. The first time I witnessed him being firm with Eric was when he asked you to fix the screenplay.”
“Pushover? He sounded pretty firm on the set earlier.”
“Norman’s a terrific director, assistive but fair.”
Clearly pleased, Roland stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray and finally picked up his cup. He drank most of the joe in one gulp.
“How did you get started in the business?”
“Just lucky. A close pal suggested I’d make a good actor. I worked vaudeville, part of a song-and-dance team, and I even tried my hand at being a magician.”
“What was your best trick?”
“Making Christine Brody’s underwear disappear.”
I laughed.
“Between gigs I did a little of everything, like tending bar or waiting tables. When talkies came out, I emptied my meager savings account, had a suit made, and went to an audition dressed to the nines. I didn’t get the part I auditioned for, but the producer hired me for a role as the star’s younger brother. I guess I had ‘the look’ or something, because roles of rich playboys came easy.”
He lit another cigarette and blew a plume of smoke away from the table. “You want to hear my biggest challenge as an actor? Acting like the Roland Harper the public thinks I am.”
Roland had a flair for the dramatic, but I couldn’t picture him putting a bullet into someone’s head. “If Todd does take over, your future will continue to be bright.”
“Ten years ago I shared a cramped apartment on the east side with three struggling actors who never made it. I’d kill anyone who threatens my career.”
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