But the two biker boyos were not amused. Scuzzy’s film character had just humiliated them, and not being actors, they had trouble telling fiction from reality. It didn’t help that Gail and Tracy were their real-life old ladies, or that the pretty makeup girl was now slapping the two men with handfuls of touchup slime. Their biker nicknames were Crabs and Chains.
Crabs was a thick five-six and dressed mainly in his own hair, which sprouted everywhere with a weed-like disregard for proper place. The handle “Crabs” commemorated his unconscious habit of tugging at his crotch. Chains was six feet-three, a shambling tangle of limbs and clanking necklaces dangling sentimental charms: skulls and guns and tiny cans of motor oil.
Suddenly Chains had had enough: “Cut out that shit.” He shoved the makeup girl hard enough to slop goo on her bare legs and strode belligerently toward Fenster. “Turn her loose.”
Gail buried her plump face in Scuzzy’s chest and giggled. Scuzzy raised his arms to show who was clasping whom.
Crabs moved in to back his partner up: “Turn her loose, asshole.”
Scuzzy gazed down with the indifference of a tyrannosaur viewing two inedible shrubs. He sighed.
“Let him go, bitch!” Now Chains was screaming.
Crabs looked up at Scuzzy’s face, his own face showing second thoughts. He scratched his groin.
But Gail was unabashed: “Hey Chains, lighten up, okay?”
The biker grabbed her shoulder and tried to jerk her free; then Scuzzy’s massive paw closed on his wrist. The biker froze.
Scuzzy’s gargoyle face turned cold and his genial waves clicked off as abruptly as a radio. Perhaps this shrub was tasty after all. Scuzzy’s knuckles whitened. Chains’ face followed suit. Scuzzy looked at the hand still gripping Gail’s shoulder. Chains looked too. Scuzzy looked at Chains. Chains dropped his eyes and released his grip.
Instantly, Scuzzy resumed his benign broadcast and the frozen company relaxed. Diane moved in smartly to divert attention: “Okay, we’re ready for the next shot.”
Chains ignored her, staring murderously at Fenster: “You made a mistake, asshole. Yer big enough, but you ain’t a bro, and you got no bros behind you.”
“Come on, people: places.”
Chains continued his strained whisper: “Yer no biker; just a wannabe. Remember when we come for you.”
Scuzzy looked about as agitated as a boulder. He patted the girls, shooed them off, and lumbered away.
Smart Diane divided the opposition by throwing an arm around Crabs and leading him to his place in the mud hole. Oblivious of the ooze, she waded thigh-deep in slime, chatting him up in a low, private voice. Crabs looked pleased at this attention and Chains, deprived of audience, moved off in a face-saving strut.
Ken Simmons stared at his retreating back. “Mighty quiet out here.”
I completed the cliché: “Too quiet.”
Chapter 5
Baloney alfresco as the company broke for lunch: draped on rocks, perched on logs, squatting in the dappled dots of shade. The riverbed was cool and green and the spring rains had filled the stream to its two-foot maximum width. People pursued suntans, sleep, and Frisbees, in that order.
Scuzzy Fenster sat against a log, consuming lunch with prim good manners: cold cuts for six and a cubic foot of potato salad. He licked his thumb, then wiped it with a napkin.
I snitched a sweaty piece of Spam. “I wouldn’t take those bozos lightly, Scuzz.”
“Know what this is?” He sneered into his paper cup. “Kool-Aid.”
“Are you listening?”
“About ten gallons of water per package. Feh!”
“They don’t dare fight you by themselves, but they have friends.”
He raked his steel wool beard with dainty fingers.
“How will you protect yourself?”
“Say little, do much, and look cheerfully upon all men. Rabbi Shammai.”
“And how long did he last?”
“Cut off in his prime at eighty.”
“Hm.” I tried another tack: “When did you grow this big?”
Indifferently: “Time out of mind.”
I chewed on rubber lunch meat, rounding up my thoughts. “I think you’ve lost the instinct for caution. Most of us are physically threatened from time to time, and the fright we feel is salutary. But not you; no one would dare.”
His look asked, so?
“So you never get the feeling that tells you to watch out.”
He studied this with scholarly detachment, as if it were a sacred text. “Could be.”
“Be careful, Scuzzy.”
“Mmph.” He inhaled the final pint of salad.
I struggled upright, hands full of napkin, cup, and droopy paper plate. “Guess I better get people going.”
Scuzzy smiled and nodded, calm as Buddha. When he wraps himself in nonjudgmental silence, he simply won’t be talked to.
Nonetheless I gave it one more try: “The little arrow fells the mighty moose.” Scuzzy raised a shaggy eyebrow. “Rabbi Winston.”
Magic Hour: the early evening time when shadows deepen, hilltops glow, the sky shimmers, and the air resonates with complicated light - Eastman color heaven. A frantic time for a film company, who may rehearse several different setups without shooting so they can get them all in the can at Magic Hour.
Ken Simmons had slid smoothly into managing, though half-absorbed in cherishing his pants, and Crabs and Chains were contenting themselves with dark looks, like grade school bullies threatening playground reprisals.
In my new script for the scene we were shooting, Hallie Sykes, in jeans and flannel shirt, emerges timidly from her ratty clapboard gas station to serve a fearsome band of bikers who have thundered in, shrouded in their own traveling dust cloud. Terrified, she irritates her hairy customers with her clumsiness in trying to pump their gas. Seeing her fear, Scuzzy takes over, filling every tank without resetting the pump; then paying the total from a wad of filthy bills. The biker boys and girls spread out toward rest rooms and pop machine, leaving Hallie and Scuzzy at the pump.
The warm light was kind to Hallie’s pretty, fading face. “Thanks for the help.” Scuzzy nodded, his eyes opaque. “Where ya goin’?”
Scuzzy shrugged. “Out fer a putt.” He peered up the highway, scratching his paunch. “How far to town?”
She mimicked his shrug. “This is it.”
Edgy silence.
She almost looked at him: “Wanna soda? S’on me.”
“Gotta brew?”
The flat lines were just a carrier frequency for the actors’ silent broadcasts: Hallie remembered a beer in the office fridge, worried about admitting this hairy monster, decided what the hell - and every thought paraded through her eyes.
She looked Godzilla in the face: “Maybe inside.” She turned and trudged toward the office.
Scuzzy watched her sturdy form retreat, his eyes as eloquent as hers: was she offering a beer? Herself? Why him? Who cared? He thudded after her. The door spring sang, the door whacked shut.
“Cut! Beautiful!” Diane turned to the crew: “Close-ups on the double.”
Scuzzy burst out the door with Hallie slung in a fireman’s carry, doing Olive Oyl upside down into his back: “Oooh, put me down, you great beast!”
Scuzzy did Bluto: “Har-har-har!”
As the crew hustled lights and camera, I wandered over to the trucks corralled in the adjacent field, sweeping the terrain like a strolling beat cop. It’s a production manager’s habit.
A small female figure was bouncing toward me through the twilight, lugging something square. She drew closer. Something square and white. She stopped two yards away. Square and white with metal edging: a camera case.
She set it down, then tugged at her pink elastic boob tube, a cylindrical thorax cozy favored by biker ladies. It either held you up or vice versa, depending on your architecture, which in her case was substantial, and impressively engineered for its weight.
“Yer Stoney, ain’t y
ou?” I nodded. She twitched her plump right arm as if undecided about whether to shake hands. “I’m Molly: Pits Caudle’s ol’ lady?”
I couldn’t help smiling: “Molly Caudle?”
When she grinned back, a missing incisor gave her the appearance of a tramp at a costume party. “Molly’s just my handle - real name’s Alice.” She shook frizzed honey hair out of her face. “I found this; looks like yours.”
The Arriflex squatted in the box with the ugly German beauty of a fifties Porsche. “Where was it?”
“Y’know the rock pile where you were yesterday?” She waved a brown hand in its direction. “There’s this kinda gully little gully and this box was in it.”
“How’d you find it?”
“Pits left his shirt over there.” A sigh: “Seems like I pick up after him all over town.” Squatting, she peered into the case. “Is it important?”
“I’ll say; it’s our camera.” I closed the case and patted it.
“Then yer real lucky.” As we stood up together, a wave of Basic Female washed over me. Molly’s face was a jumble of incongruities: bump-bridged Roman nose dividing kewpie cheeks; cheerful lines around candid button eyes - a lived-in face with a gap-toothed, schoolgirl grin.
Her voice was also young and perky, with a strong echo of Oklahoma: “Whatcha do round here?”
“Right now I’m rewriting the script.”
“You a writer?” Her interest sounded genuine. “Did I read anything of yours?”
“The probability is minimal.”
Molly mimed being impressed. “You sure sound like a writer.” I smiled away my pomposity. “How things going?”
“Much better now.”
“That’s good. It’s fun havin’ you here - movie crew an’ all - nothin’ else happens.”
“You live here?”
“If you call it that.” Slight defensiveness: “I mean, we git out; ride into Newhall; over to San Berdoo; up the coast.” She looked around, wrinkling her big nose. “But this is it.”
“Do you farm or work in a store or what?”
“Ol lady’s a fulltime job. ‘Sides, Pits runs the club.”
“The Crossbones?”
“Yeah, and I hep. Like a maybe social director.”
I suppressed a smile at the image of Molly organizing biker tea dances in her short shorts and boob-tube.
Her sharp look said she’d sensed my thought. With dignity: “An’ I keep the books. Speakin’ a which, here.” She plucked an envelope from a pocket in her shorts. “Pits said you give the bills to Greystoke.”
“From now on.” I took the envelope.
“I hope it’s right, I never done a movie before.”
“I’ll check it. Thanks.”
She stood a moment as if wanting to extend the conversation. I thought about this musky, well-upholstered lady with her dumb/wise face and direct manner. Then I thought about her surly old man and his ugly minions. I picked up the case. “It’s getting too dark to shoot.”
Molly looked at me.
“I should go back.”
“Why? I mean, if you can’t shoot.”
“Well... to supervise the wrap.” Pointing to the camera: “I’d hate to lose something else.”
Molly nodded. We looked at each other some more. “What do you do after dinner?”
Um. “Write new scenes; stare at moldy walls; go to bed early.”
She grinned. “Me too, ‘cept for the writin’ part. Pits don’t sleep at home, nights.”
With a casual sincerity I didn’t feel: “You and Pits drop over.”
“He’s mostly busy.” Molly smiled, as if to say, you know; and I know you know.
She jogged away in the growing darkness, short, full-hipped, and swinging loose. Her nasal twang floated back: “See ya.”
I shook my head as if coming out of a trance. What was it about Molly? Her cheerful, contradictory face perhaps. Or more likely, her exuberant female upholstery. It reminded me of Sally, my equally abundant landlady. I loved Sally and she’d seemed to feel the same; but now she was on loan to the Seattle office of her computer firm. Three months, they’d said, but then it stretched to six. Sally called less often now, and when she did, she spoke increasingly of great opportunities in Seattle.
Molly didn’t quite budge my loyalty to Sally, but after six months of disuse, the glands will have their say.
The motel coffee shop was Truck Stop Traditional: counter and stools, plastic booths and tables, walls of dirty, rusticated wood, hung with light-up beer promotions and one intriguing touch: a framed blueprint, professionally drafted, showing elevation, plan, and isometric views of a cheeseburger. The dinner buffet was laid out in greasy crocks on the counter, behind which Molly toiled over a can opener, her round face streaming sweat.
Bikers commanded the biggest booths and crew preempted others, leaving cast and management to eat at scattered tables in the center. Absorbed in a battered Testament, Scuzzy packed away his stew indifferently, while Ken, Diane, and I stared queasily at ours.
Diane pointed at her plate and looked toward the counter: “Did you talk to Caudle’s old lady, Stoney?”
“Only about the camera.”
“She’s just got to do better with the food.” Diane pushed her plate away.
Simmons put down his spoon. “I’ll take the other camera back tomorrow.”
I shook my head: “Let’s keep it, Ken.”
“For the whole shoot? That’s too expensive.”
“We need it. With a second camera we can shoot the action scenes a lot faster.”
“We can’t afford the luxury.”
Diane helped me out: “Ken, we need that camera.”
“You need it but I have to pay for it.” He held up neat pink hands: “Okay, okay I better tell the D.P. He has to decide who operates it.” Another of Ken’s two-edged jokes: “Or should I hire extra crew as well?” Smiling, he rose and walked over to the booth where the fat cameraman was peering at his plate.
Diane watched him go. “He’s angry.”
“He has to watch the budget; it’s his job.”
“I mean angry all the time down underneath.”
“Just his way, I guess. He’s good though; I’ve worked with him many times. Thanks for jumping in there; it helped.”
“The old teamwork.” But her joking reply carried something extra. Diane looked at me uncertainly; then her eyes shifted to a point behind me.
A hand descended on my shoulder. “Howja like the mystery meat?” Molly loomed above me in her pink tube, flashing her snaggly grin.
“Diane, you know Molly?”
Diane returned Molly’s smile. “I guess it’s not your fault, but this food is impossible.”
Molly nodded cheerfully. “Me, I wouldn’t eat it.” Molly scrubbed her face and shoulders with a dish towel while I worried, from my seated perspective, about Spandex fatigue.
“Why can’t we get better food?”
“I know: you should see the shit Pits buys to fix.”
I craned up at her: “He buys it?”
“Uh-huh, an’ I never was much of a cook, but he won’t hire one.” She shook her frizzy head. “I could talk to him...” a rueful smile “...but I don’t think he’d care none.”
Diane’s look traveled from Molly’s face to the hand still parking on my shoulder. Her pleasant expression drained away.
I said quickly, “I’ll talk to him.”
“He might be in the trailer now.” Molly stood back, inviting me to rise.
In fact, Pits was in a nearby booth, guffawing with his pals. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Okay.” She shrugged and bounced away.
Diane watched her out the door, her face expressionless. “She seems friendly.”
“I guess.” I hoped that didn’t sound too offhand.
Diane looked up a second time as a tenor whine floated down in a bubble of fumes: “How come you dint ask me about the camera?”
I turned to confront the sway
ing paunch of our boozy cameraman, whom the crew had nicknamed Saturated Fats. He peered down with the concentration of a gunner sighting from a rolling ship. “How come?”
“Hi, Fred; sit down.”
Diane jumped up to free her seat and fat Fred descended with due care. “I mean, who’s in charge of the cameras anyway?”
“My fault, Fred; but Ken was going to take it back and I had to talk him out of it.”
“Who’s... who’s gon’ operate it?”
“I know you’ll think of something.”
“You can’t make that kinda decision. That’s my kinda decision.”
Evidently, he wanted an argument. “Let’s work it out tomorrow.”
“You can keep it but I’m not using it.”
I stood up. “Tomorrow, Fred.”
His voice rose as we walked away: “And that’s my final word!”
* * * *
Diane looked pensive as we strolled across the dingy parking area toward her room. Another silent mountain night, the hills theatrical silhouettes in front of an inky canvas sky pricked with backlit pin holes. I kept the silence.
She stopped to scan the Milky Way, which is never visible in town. “I wonder what’s with Fred.”
“Insecure about his authority. Drunk too, as usual.”
“I don’t know.” A long pause. “Where does Lee keep the cameras?”
“Locked in the camera truck.”
“And who else has a key?”
“Fred, of course. But why would Fred hide a camera?”
She sighed. “No reason. But nothing else makes sense either. Still, I wish we could replace him. He’s slow, he’s uncooperative...”
“And he’s a drunk; I know.”
When we paused again at her door, Diane looked tired in the harsh downlight of the yellow bulb. She stared at her key as if forgetting what it opened. “Seven a.m. call?”
“So Ken said. Why don’t you start with tight shots - give the sun a chance to get higher.”
Sharply: “Are you telling me what to shoot?”
“Get some rest, Diane.”
“You better believe it.”
“Good night.” She ignored me, fumbling with the lock. I started toward my room.
I was twenty feet away when her voice floated after me: “Thanks, Stoney.” Her tone carried an olive branch.
* * * *
I was sitting at the improvised work table in my room, under the glare of its one floor lamp, a piece of wrought-iron kitsch whose flaking parchment shade directed half the light sideways in my eyes. I removed Molly’s invoice from its grubby envelope and spread it for review.