Wake Up and Dream

by Ian R. MacLeod

  Although, he wanted to say, you still managed to leave in the intrepid reporter who just happened to live in the apartment next door. “Well, it’s got you some much-needed publicity for LA Truth. You both must be feeling pretty proud. The biggest story in years, and you’re the ones who broke it. Only problem you have is, what you’re going to do next…? But I’m sure you’ll find something,” he added, when Barbara began to look uncomfortable. “I mean, it’s not as if—”

  “Matter of fact, Clark,” she interrupted. “We’re negotiating with several buyers for the paper’s sale. And no, I don’t mean Hearst Newspapers. Contrary to all outward appearances, there are still some ethical corporations out there who’ll agree to keep to LA Truth’s core values and bring it to a much broader readership.”

  “Don’t tell me—they’ve offered you and Dale here a consultancy on the board.” He found it encouraging that she flushed at this. “When I’d always thought the whole point was—”

  “The whole point, Clark—and always, by the way, hardly comes into it—we’ve only known each other a few days, remember…? The whole point was and is that I came here to LA to write a defining work of fiction.”

  “You mean a…” He struggled to correct his incredulous tone. “… novel?”

  “A novel, yes. That’s what I’ve always wanted, and now that Dale and I are planning to relinquish day to day control of LA Truth, I finally have the time and the money I need to write it.”

  Maybe Barbara Eshel and Daniel Lamotte made a better pair than he’d realized. There the guy was talking in loud and quavery voice to gurning members of the press about how much he missed his wife, and what a great support his sister in law May had become, and how he now saw Daniel Lamotte doing this and Daniel Lamotte doing that in the future. After all, he and Barbara were both writers, which was just another way of saying self-absorbed and arrogant.

  “What I don’t get,” Clark said, turning back to her, “is how the hell you’re going to beat what really happened in a work of fiction.”

  She nodded, and squinted out at the city, which shimmered like a mirage in the early afternoon heat. “I used to think before all this started that a good writer had to be realistic. But now I understand that reality’s an illusion. If you can touch what people really think—or, better still, if you can reach into what they dream—then the truth no longer matters.” She smiled and shrugged. “If there even is such a thing as truth, that is. I mean, look at us here. Who’s to say this is the way things had to be? We could all so easily be dead, or living some other life… Look at you, Clark. You could have been the King of Hollywood—you so nearly were, and you deserve it far more than all these creeps…”

  She’d meant it as compliment, but the words gave Clark a strange chill as he watched Dale and Barbara link arms and walk away. It was that feelie sensation again. Someone had just walked once more over his grave.

  The cars were pulling away now. Doors were slamming. People were air-kissing, or shouting goodbyes. Amid the thinning groups, he saw one woman standing alone. She was blonde and exceptionally pretty, but no one went over to her, although many glanced her way. In real life, just as up on the screen of the feelies, Peg Entwistle managed to radiate a cool sense of independence and reserve.

  She removed her sunglasses and took his hand. “I wasn’t sure,” she murmured, “whether you wanted me to say hello.”

  “Course I do.” He smiled at that perfect face, those shining bluegray eyes. “But does the world know you knew April Lamotte?”

  She shrugged. “Everyone knows everyone else in the city. Or hadn’t you heard. Although our paths did legitimately cross when I was I working on The Virgin Queen.“

  “And that’s it?”

  “I wish it was. I’ll always know it isn’t.”

  “But you can still walk away from Thrasis.”

  This time, the shrug became a shudder. “I don’t think I can ever do that. But Otto—well, he was never going to name me. And as for your pretty little friend—I know she’s a journalist, but perhaps there are still some decent ones. And then there’s him.” They both looked over toward what was left of the crowd, which was still milling around Daniel Lamotte. “Although I did hear someone saying that it’s amazing how quickly a man can grow back his beard. But I’m sick of secrets. And this whole place.” Peg looked around. Her mouth tightened. “It’s lost its way. That’s why I’m leaving.”

  “Leaving LA? Isn’t that what everyone says?”

  “Not just LA—I’m leaving America. And don’t look at me like that, Clark. I’ve already got the tickets, and the press release will be out from Mina in a couple of days. It came to me after you’d left me up by that sign up on Mount Lee. Even before… all that’s since happened. It was as if I’d suddenly been released from something, or had woken up out of a bad dream. I just knew I had to leave. All I have to do now is hope the liner doesn’t get torpedoed, and in three weeks time I’ll be in England. And it isn’t because I know my career in the feelies can only go one way from here, or that I’ve got a sudden inkling to play Shakespeare at the Adlephi before the Germans destroy it.” She smiled. “Not just that, anyway. Apart from Mina, I don’t think many people here will miss me. Not the real me, anyway. And they’re welcome to keep or forget about what I’ve left up on the screen.”

  “You know what will happen, if you turn up in England?”

  “That’s the whole point. I want the English to use me as a propaganda tool. God knows, I’ve been used over the years to do far more terrible and worthless things. I want to be seen taking sides. The thing about most Americans isn’t that they really support the Liberty League. It’s just that the Liberty League is selling the illusion that no one has to decide and stand up for anything—just let them get on with it and everything will be alright. It’s the same lie Hitler sold to the Germans, and look where it’s got them. It’s the same lie that was sold to me. What’s happened these last few days is just a skirmish won, Clark. The war goes on—in every sense. But at least I now know what side I’m really on.”

  She was right. The Liberty League might have taken a setback with Herbert Kisberg’s disgrace, but they were already recovering. Kisberg was now being portrayed as someone who’d deceived them just as successfully as he’d deceived everyone else, and there was still plenty of time to put forward another presidential candidate of the more downto-earth kind that this changed climate suddenly seemed to demand. And as for those guys back east whom Penny Losovic had mentioned—the men in those big brownstone Wall Street buildings with their plans and schemes which went far beyond morality or simple politics—they remained as powerful as ever, and as nameless.

  “Well… Good luck, Peg. Go break a leg.”

  “I probably will.”

  She leaned forward to give him a kiss which was as cool as ever, and he watched as she put on her sunglasses and walked across the car lot. Others were watching as well. Peg Entwistle had always had that aura about her—that thing which even the iconoscopes had yet failed to capture. She was like some high priestess. A true star.

  Most of the cars had gone. A few more minutes and the guests for the next funeral would be arriving. Clark lit a roll-up and strode across the hot tarmac towards his dusty Ford.

  “Mr Gable?”

  He turned. Of all people, it was May Lamotte. She went a little heavier on the make-up than her sister had, and smears and sweat-droplets were starting to show through the powder. She stopped a few paces off and twitched her nose as if he gave off a nasty smell.

  “I’m sure surprised you came.” Her voice had a Midwest twang which her sister had shed.

  “I think I surprised myself.”

  “And you must have been one of the last people to see my sister alive.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Maybe that was why I came today. Felt like I owed somebody something. I’m still not sure who or how, though…”

  Her nose twitched again. Her eyes narrowed. “If you’re thinking about
that there contract you purported to sign on my brother in law’s behalf, Mr Gable, I really wouldn’t bother. We’ve taken legal advice, and there are absolutely no issues just as long as both sides are prepared to accept the variations we’ve agreed.”

  “You mean, more money?”

  “That’s none of your concern. You were acting under April’s authority and were effectively a sub-agent. And as for anything else… Well, I really wouldn’t know where to start with all the many crimes, beginning with false declaration, that you’ve committed. So if you think—”

  “No, no.” Clark held up a hand. “Believe me, I’ve got absolutely no desire to get involved in your or Daniel Lamotte’s affairs. As far as I’m concerned…” He drew on his cigarette, then tossed it aside. He couldn’t even be bothered to say good riddance.

  “Well, if that really is the situation…” May Lamotte made a stab at a winning smile. It didn’t suit her. “And speaking of owed…I believe that my sister hired you for a fee, and that, apart from an advance, that fee was never paid.” She’d already reached into her purse, and was holding out a scrap of paper. “I want you to take this here in full and final settlement. I believe it covers the agreed figure, plus a generous further amount to cover what I believe people of your profession call incidentals.”

  “Are you buying my silence?”

  “As we’ve already made plain, Mr Gable, we have that already. And in consideration of that, we’re also prepared to agree not to sue you for wrecking Daniel’s beloved automobile. So I don’t believe I’m buying anything from you right now. Unless, that is…” The smile was entirely gone now, and had been replaced by a far more convincing glower. “… You’re an even bigger fool that I’m thinking you are.”

  She was still holding out the check. In the feelies he’d have simply walked away. But this was real life—or the closest he could get to it. And he needed the money, and—what the hell—he really did feel he owed himself a new car.

  He snatched the check from May Lamotte’s fingers, and walked away with as much dignity as he could muster.

  The two guys in suits he’d seen earlier were still seeing off the last of the cars. As the smaller of the pair came heading up to him, Clark realized that his dwarfish stature was simply because he was a kid.

  “Roger? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I could say the same to you, Mister no-name.”

  Roger looked him up and down with something close to distaste. Clark was back to wearing his best first-client-visit suit, but it wasn’t anything like as flash as the outfit the kid was wearing. Roger offered Clark a hand instead of his usual act of spitting. His face looked clean and new and almost innocent now that it was no longer disguised by dirt. The shine of his Brylcreem-lacquered hair matched his suit.

  “My name’s actually Clark Gable. I’m a private eye.”

  “So?” The kid didn’t have to make any effort to look unimpressed.

  “So nothing, I guess. Just thought you might be interested. You can’t start asking people here for money to look after their cars, by the way. You’ll get yourself arrested.”

  “Couldn’t be more wrong Mr Gooble. Places like this, everyone pays to get their car looked after. Only difference is, the cops don’t call it extortion. But that’s not why I’m here, although my mate Pablo over there thinks it is. See this…” He reached into the side of his suit coat. For one alarming moment, Clark was sure he was going to pull out a gun. But instead he produced a camera little larger than a cigarette case. “Beauty, ain’t she? A Minolta, all the way from our cousins in the Reich.”

  “That thing really works?”

  “Jesus, Gooble, you should go more often to the feelies! The Nazi spies use them all the time. Tucks into a garter belt if need be, and it that happens, I ain’t complaining.” He gave it a spinning toss. “Got it with my first advance as LA Truth’s roving reporter. It’s already paid for itself ten times over. Sold a shot just yesterday of Toni Bartoli coming out of Company and Co with someone who didn’t look much like a proper broad, let alone his so-called wife.”

  “LA Truth doesn’t buy that sort of stuff.”

  “If they don’t, there’s always someone else that will. It’s the easiest job in the world, and to think that a few weeks ago I was hanging round street corners and not getting paid a cent—or at least only the pittance the likes of you were giving me. Up in Beverly Hills, you can take a few snaps of them cl-leb-ri-ties out shopping… Zap, zap …” He mimed the action. “Best of all as far as the editors are concerned is when they look like they’ve just been dragged out of the wrong side of the haystack. Touch of belly-wobble, double chin or varicose vein showing—that works just dandy.”

  “There’s a market for that?”

  “You’d be amazed.”

  “Not sure I would. But if you’re a budding journalist, Roger, you should be studying—learning how to write copy.”

  “Less of the budding, buddy.” He gave his camera a final six-shooter flip, then tucked it back into his suit coat pocket. “The written word’s no longer ze main method of communication for ze human species…” He was putting on his German college professor accent now. “Everything is about—how you say?—ze image … Still, maybe I might put in a few hours at the library. Gotta know how to read them contracts so’s I don’t get skinned. It’s a bad old world out there, so I hear.”

  “Yeah. So I hear, as well. But something tells me you’re going to do just fine in it.” Clark smiled. He’d have ruffled the kid’s hair, but he didn’t want to get his hands mussed with grease.

  SIXTY

  AS HE DROVE BACK DOWN through the city, he saw, along with news hoardings about Australia refusing entry to fleeing Dutch Jews and all the usual No Blacks signs and racist scrawlings, posters on the walls for the Liberty League guy who’d still be standing to replace Herbert Kisberg as Governor, and others for a new biopic of the Richard Wagner. Peg was right. They’d barely won a battle against whatever they’d been fighting—the guys in Europe with their uniforms and parades, or the ones over here who hid behind big business and Ivy League educations. Roosevelt had just lost another vote to support Churchill in Congress, and the Japanese were pushing out across the Pacific. Even if you could work out who the good guys actually were, they never actually won. That only happened in the feelies.

  The usual crowds were outside Saint Vincent’s Hospital. Their vigil had been going on night and day since the guy they still thought of as Lars Bechmeir had been rushed there after his onstage collapse at the Biltmore. If anything, their adulation for their hero had increased after his tale of deception and suffering. And as for his name—after all, why would the Bechmeir field be called after him if he hadn’t played a crucial role in its invention? Whatever Daniel Lamotte was planning on writing in his latest version of Wake Up and Dream, it would have to be at least as clever a mixture of truth and myth as any of the previous versions if the world was to believe it.

  Clark had to park a way off West 3rd, and then push his way through praying and weeping sightseers, souvenir hawkers, and various representatives of the media, to reach the hospital entrance.

  The atmosphere inside was closer to normal. Life went on, after all. Death, as well. Nuns clustered in their white cassocks. He passed a civilian nurse pushing a mewling newborn baby in a wheeled crib whilst an aged couple sat weeping on a side bench. There were also a fair number of police about. He’d liked to have looked in on old Otto but the LA Times had an exclusive deal and security around what both the state and federal authorities regarded as a material witness was intense. It sounded like the poor guy was dying in any case.

  He asked for other directions instead, and got a strange look from the orderly who sent him down a seemingly little-used corridor, then up a back flight of stairs. A nun bustled up to block his progress at the far end of an ill-lit corridor. She looked solemn even before her surprise registered at his request.

  “Are you sure you want to see her?”
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  “Well, I guess…”

  “No one else has been. Well, I mean no one from the real world. Just the police, although they seem more bothered with our famous friend down in east wing. Did you know her? You’d think she’d have some friends somewhere, wouldn’t you—even if…”

  “No, I’m not a friend. I guess you could say our paths just happened to cross.”

  “You’re not from the press or anything, are you?”

  “I’m not from anybody but me. I’m just this guy. My name’s Clark Gable. Like I say, we barely met…”

  She looked him in the eyes for a long moment before she nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone who I’d thought was a hopeless case,” she said as they walked along the corridor. “There’s always something we can do. But the priests talk of possession. The technicians talk of plasmic disturbance. The doctors talk of self-sustaining wound trauma. And the psychiatrists talk of madness.”

  “What do you believe?”

  She glanced back at him. The face of a pretty young woman framed beneath that black and white wimple was deeply troubled. “I’m a woman of faith, Mr Gable, and I believe in God. But I also believe in the Devil.”

  This was some part of the hospital which had been marked for improvement or demolition, and there was little else in all the rooms he glimpsed but dust and emptiness. Little light, as well. He glanced up at the lights along the corridor ceiling. Despite the blotchy gloom, they all blazed.

  “She’s here.” The nun’s hand trembled as she gestured. “I think I should come in with you—unless you want me to send for someone else?”

  “No. I guess we’ll be okay.”

  Clark had no idea what he’d find as he stepped through the doorway, but at first glance he was standing in a fairly ordinary, if rather ill-lit and old, hospital ward. The ceiling was high, and the windows were small and seemed to look out on nothing but another wall, and there was an intense smell of iodine. One metal-frame bed was set in the center of a linoleum space which could have housed a dozen, and on that bed, but somehow not quite in it, was the room’s—this whole wing’s—sole patient.