Very competent: neat ranks of line items marching down a column four pages long: trucks, motorcycles, biker extras, location rentals, city fees, construction costs, costume and prop rentals, security, stunt doubles, rooms, meals itemized minutely, on and on. The entries were in ballpoint on an accountant’s worksheet, but the items were properly organized and each was expressed in standard production language. A tidy, thorough job.
I picked an entry at random. Let’s see: meal service for twenty-five people for seven days at $150 per person per day equals $26,250.
Wait a minute: twenty-six thousand dollars for food? For spoiled stew and rancid wienies? For Kool-Aid? What else was here?
Motel rooms for the same people and the same seven days: $21,875. That’s $125 a night for this flea bag and mostly two to a room. Trucks at four hundred a day; motorcycles at six; four thousand bucks to rent that gas station?
Every item was similar: inflated by a factor of ten, and the total for the week came to four hundred thousand dollars and change.
I stared blankly at the pale green pages while the crickets competed outside my dirty window. What was going on?
Chapter 6
I scuffed through the gravel in crisp darkness toward the clot of shaggy heads silhouetted in the coffee shop window, shaggy except for Pits Caudle’s lone bald dome. His honking laugh floated out the screen door, which smacked shut behind me when I entered. The laughter leaked away as I approached the booth, but the six bikers grinned as if I’d missed a joke at my expense. They huddled over the single table lamp like trolls around a fire, surrounded by beer cans and marijuana fumes.
“Evening, gents.”
Pits wagged a hand to greet this visitor to his cave. Crabs took the cue and nodded. Chains and the others stared at their Coors.
“Got a second, Pits?”
“Got nothin’ but firsts.” This riposte was duly appreciated by his boys. “Whaddya want?”
“Just a couple questions about the accounts?”
“I told ya, Molly does ‘em. Ask her.” His tone was faintly defensive.
“I’m sure she’s gone by now.”
“TV.” I looked a question. “Watchin’ TV.” To his audience: “All she does, dumb bitch.” They nodded.
“Okay, guess I’ll catch her tomorrow.”
Indifferent shrug: “She’s in the trailer: silver Airstream - first one inside the gate.”
“Tomorrow’s soon enough.”
Another shrug said suit yourself. Pits whispered something to Crabs, who nodded, snorting.
Crabs echoed, “Dumb bitch,” and pulled a virgin six-pack into view. The trolls closed ranks around their brew.
* * * *
In the parking lot, I listened to the breeze hissing through the eucalyptus trees in the stream bed and the evergreens higher up the slopes. Here on the desert side of the hills, the land unloads its heat soon after dark. I shivered. A car hummed past on the highway, headed north, its sound diminishing to nothing.
I thought about the invoice, about those manly chaps in the coffee shop, about Molly watching TV in her trailer. I wondered why Pits was so casual about my visiting her at nine o’clock. Then I rambled down the driveway to the road, turned right, and without really thinking, headed for the trailer park two hundred yards away.
The Airstream was a fat silver sausage on wheels, blocked up at each end by patent jacks and surrounded with the little fences, beds, and ornaments by which trailer folk assert their permanence. I climbed two wooden steps and knocked.
A pause and then Molly opened the door, tugging a blue tube top into place, as if she’d been half-dressed. She smiled, applied a final downward twitch that opened a cavernous cleavage, and fluffed her perm frizzed hair with both hands. “Well howdy.”
“Hi, Molly. Pits said you might be here.”
She sneered at the surrounding trailers. “Naw, I’m at the movies in our beautiful mall. Come on.”
“Thanks.” She held the door so that I brushed her on my way past.
The trailer was cleverly laid out: a bed across the far end, then a tiny bath, the cooking area, a dwarf table with tub armchairs, and a couch opposite the door, which Molly shut smartly behind me. The walls were hung with bike and biker photographs and posters touting cycle rallies. The TV set displayed a trophy cup surmounted by a little silver bike. On the TV screen, Charles Nelson Reilly stripped off his horn rims and hissed, “Mrs. Muir? Mrs. Muir, there is no ghost in this house!” Out here, all she could get was reruns of reruns.
I pulled out the invoice. “I wanted to check some items on your bill.”
“Well, I’ll try. Siddown.” She tapped a remote control and Charles Nelson Reilly vanished.
“In general, they look a bit high.”
“Hey, yer too big for this tin can. Siddown.” She plumped herself onto the couch. “Which ones?”
I joined her. “I’m afraid all of them.”
“You want a drink? I got white wine.”
“Thanks, that’s fine.”
She bounced over to the bar-size fridge and extracted a jug of Chablis. “I keep some wine around ‘cause Pits don’t drink it.” She poured two generous glassfuls, replaced the cork, slapped it down with a palm, then whacked her round stomach with exactly the same gesture. “‘Sides, beer puts a big belly on me.” She stood above me with the drinks. “Would you believe ‘til I was about fifteen, I was a real skinny thang.” As I watched her sit, I guessed her age at twenty-five.
I spread out the sheets. “How did you figure these charges?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then where’d they come from?”
“Pits give ‘em to me on a list.”
“What list?”
“Here: I’ll show ya.” Bounding up again, she strode over to a small cupboard below the sink, removed a legal size folder, brought it back, and sat down - a little nearer now.
The folder contained preprinted budget worksheets, the kind available in pads from Hollywood stationers. The dollar amounts were inked in a neat strong hand. “Where’d Pits get this?”
“Headquarters.”
“And where’d they get it?”
“Look, you know how the club works? We’re a chapter in the national deal - the organization?” She had the southern trick of inflecting a statement as a question. “They got maybe four, five thousand members all over.”
“Like Hell’s Angels.”
She made a face of comic disapproval: “Bite yer tongue, mister but yeah, like them.” Molly gulped some wine. “Okay, this movie deal come through national. Pits and me just run it ‘cause we live here and our club owns a lotta stuff around.”
“The motel?”
“Uh-huh, only it’s worth about as much as tits on a bull since the freeway went in. We run the bike shop, the gas station, own some houses.”
I looked through the remaining pages. “And the national headquarters sent you these sheets. Why didn’t you just give them to me?”
She sighed. “Copying’s a pain and that’s for sure; I gotta double-check each line. But they said save the originals.” She shrugged and smiled.
“Where is ‘headquarters’?”
“Above San Fernando. Guy who runs it name of Harry Dike. His handle’s Bull.”
I had to grin: “Come on.”
“I know: Like ‘Molly Caudle.’ Never did see the joke myself, but it’s how we do it: everbody got to have a handle. How’s yer wine?” She put her hand on my glass, touching mine. The hand was dry and warm.
“Just great. And that’s all you know about the books?”
“That’s it.” Molly leaned back and wrapped her arms above her head. “How long you been in movies?”
“Six or seven years, but I’m not in them.”
“Well whatever.” She sat upright again. “Bet it’s fun: always new places an’ movie stars an’ all.”
“Not for me; I’m pretty small potatoes.”
Molly patted my knee. “You’ll git there.
I watched you bust yer butt today. You work hard.”
We sipped in silence for a moment, then Molly continued with a certain doggedness. “Must be hard on yer family, you away all the time.”
“I’m by myself.”
She flashed her gap-toothed grin. “That heps.”
Another charged pause, then I said, brilliantly, “I better get some sleep.”
Molly gazed at me with candid button eyes: “You afraid of me or don’t ya like girls?”
“I thought you were spoken for.”
She snorted. “Pits don’t care.” Bitterly: “I mean he. Don’t. Care. I tol ya he’s never home.”
“Why do you stay together then?”
Molly looked as if she were trying to think of a reason; then she shrugged. “Habit, I guess.”
I smiled. “I do like you. You’re very direct.”
Another open-faced grin: “My daddy said the same. He called me bullhead Alice.”
“But I’m afraid you’re just bored and I’m a novelty.”
She sat up and leaned closer, staring at me fixedly. “Maybe, but there’s twenny-five novelties in town right now - fifteen if y’only count the boys.”
“Why did you notice me?”
“Yer sorta cute, in a funny kinda way.” She thought a moment. “An’ you talk to me like a real person.”
I smiled.
“But mainly ‘cause you noticed me.”
And I thought I’d been so cool.
“Didn’t ya?”
Her sloppy luxuriance was seductive and her out-front candor even more so. I could do no less than match it: “I did indeed.”
“Some men think I’m sexy.”
“Including me.”
“Then whatsa problem?”
The problem was Sally, and it was private, so I improvised instead: “You said I treated you as a real person. I’d like to work on that part first.”
Lame and phony, but Molly answered with a sweet smile.
I stood up. “Let’s talk some more tomorrow.”
Molly jumped up so quickly that her blue tube almost remained seated. She didn’t bother to heave it up and it lingered a tantalizing inch from full disclosure. “Okay, get yer sleep, straight arrow.” But another infectious grin took off the edge.
As we walked the two small steps to the door I thought of something. “Can you do me a favor?”
“I been offerin.’”
“See if you can find out how headquarters figures the invoices.”
“Sure. I’ll ask Bull next time he calls.” She pecked me sideways on the cheek, but the childlike effect was overruled by the swell of warm breast against my arm. “You take it easy, hear?”
“You too.”
A last slow grin: “Don’t worry about me.”
I popped out of the cramped trailer like a claustrophobe quitting a phone booth, with the eerie feeling I get on returning to the world after an intense, engrossing movie. Hosing down my brain with cold night air, I listened to the rural silence that half soothes and half unnerves us city folk.
* * * *
Ten minutes later, with invoice in hand, I knocked on Diane LaMotta’s peeling door. She appeared in bedtime uniform: shortie robe around her long body, loose hair feathered by hairbrush static so that the lamp behind her lit it like a nimbus.
“Did I get you up? Sorry, but it’s important.”
“That important?”
“Afraid so. Mind if I come in?”
She brought a hand up as if to grasp the neckline of her robe, then checked herself. She stepped back, shrugging.
I walked into the musty room and sat on the bed. “I’ve just been to see Molly.”
Her tone was dry: “I recognized the Eau de Woolworth. “
“Strictly business.” But I heard the defensiveness in my voice. I proffered the green ledger sheets. “Here: take a look at this invoice.”
Diane skimmed the pages and then frowned, returned to the first sheet, and started reading carefully. She sank onto the bed beside me, her face marching steadily from surprise through incredulity to anger. “It’s outrageous.”
“That’s right, and this bill’s for just one week.” She looked up, puzzled. “Four weeks at the same rates add up to nearly two million dollars.”
“Impossible.” Diane whacked the invoice down on the bed.
“There it is, all itemized. Ken said he had two hundred thousand production cash for lights, camera, grip equipment and salaries too. What does that tell you?”
“The location costs are way out of proportion.” She stared into space, making little negative head wags while the tacky floor lamp rim-lighted her severe profile.
I tried an idea I’d been developing: “This may be bad form, but I think we all better tell each other what Greystoke’s paying us. I’m getting seven-fifty a week, plus four points.”
Forgetting the short robe, she pulled her long legs up on the bed, tailor fashion, and said bitterly, “I might have known: I get the same four points, plus five hundred.”
“And the others?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know: everybody made their own deal with Greystoke.”
“First thing tomorrow, I’ll poll the cast and crew.”
“What for?”
“You and I each have four percent of the film’s profits. What if the others have similar points?”
“You’re leaving me behind.”
“Movies like this don’t make much profit - not on the ledgers anyway. After postproduction, release prints, promotion, distribution, they often show a paper loss - though somehow, some way, the producers often do very nicely.” I inhaled her subtle scent, which was decidedly not Eau de Woolworth. “And if Greystoke has a two million negative cost, that’s a guaranteed loss. The profit points will be worthless, and that means nobody will get paid more than a fraction of scale.”
Her bitter tone deepened: “They hired me to direct because they didn’t care about the film.” Small lines appeared around her mouth and she blinked rapidly.
Unsure of how to offer comfort, I took refuge in a lame joke: “I hate to see a grown man cry.”
Diane looked at me steadily while two tears leaked down her tan cheeks. “I guess that was well-meant, but I hope it’s not the best you can do.”
This evening was a wall-to-wall triumph in human relations. “I’m sorry; I did mean well.”
“It’s all right.” She suddenly seemed embarrassed. Looking down, she noticed her dishabille and put her legs down, then made a determined effort at smiling. “Okay, let’s drink and make up.”
“Were we fighting?”
“Oh Stoney!” Diane broke into a bemused chuckle. Shaking her head, she rose and walked to a cooler in one corner of the room. “How about rum and diet soda?”
“In this joint, it’s perfect.”
I admired her rangy grace and offhand deftness as she poured Bacardi into mismatched tumblers, added ice, popped a can, and topped the glasses with cola.
She sat on the bed beside me. “To the cinema.” We clinked glasses and drank. Comfortable silence. I tasted artificial sweetener and scraped my tongue on the roof of my mouth.
Diane looked at me and for the first time, her face lacked its usual wariness. “How’d you get in this racket?”
“I was an English major at UCLA. Took one course in the Motion Picture Division, then another, and then another.”
“That’s how addicts start.”
We sipped our chemical tonics.
I asked her the same question: “You?”
“My dad’s a big contractor in New Jersey. He paid for my preppie lessons: Emma Willard School, Wellesley - the whole shot.” She smiled at the memory of her young self.
“That’s why your rough talk doesn’t play: you’re too uptown.”
“Then I went to New York to work in Media.” Another smile. “We really called it ‘Media’ with a capital. I fell in love with a guy at NYU helped him make his thesis film. Nice enough guy but a
user. I worked my ass off for him.”
“Until?”
“I enrolled too. Turned out I made films better than he did. Threatened the hell out of him.” She looked at her glass as if phrasing her next sentence. “So when it came time to help with my film, he faded out.”
“Most everyone does.”
“I guess.” She drained her glass. “Okay, Stoney, no more fights.” She smiled at me. “Believe it or not, I appreciate what you’ve done. This mess would have collapsed without you.”
“Maybe not.”
“Yes it would.” After a pause, she continued quietly, “Perhaps that’s it: I can’t stand needing help.”
“A nodt uncommon neurosis, Fräulein.”
A quick, surprising grin. “You trying to get me on a couch?”
In her long, limber way, Diane was as provocative as plump Molly. Bad dog, Winston. Sit! Stay!
No, better go. I got off the bed just a little too fast and set my glass on her table. “Get some sleep, Diane. We’ll sort this invoice out tomorrow.”
Her smile turned wry.”I like the diplomatic ‘we.’“
“You know you are one contentious lady.”
“Don’t ‘lady’ me, buster.” But somehow our wrangling had turned genial.
For the second time, I sucked in lungfuls of cold night air, in lieu of a stinging shower. My loyalty to absent Sally was unshakably intact.
Wasn’t it?
Chapter 7
The skinny old-timer called Thirsty perched on a bar stool like an ancient spider, smacking toothless gums between swigs of Budweiser as he inflicted conversation on the bartender. “They’re out there, all right; I seen ‘em in the medder, down ta the crick. Mean sumbitches ever one.” He pushed his bulb-topped beer glass forward. “Agin.”
The bartender looked gray and dim, as if he needed dusting. “You paying?”
“Course I’m payin’, ain’t I? You dint give no credit since the gold rush.” Thirsty scraped a denim sleeve across his three-day beard while the bartender pumped suds into the glass. “But I ain’t payin’ fer foam.” The bartender spilled a token slop of froth and poured more beer. “Steal a man’s teeth if ya got aholt a them.” Thirsty slapped coins on the bar.
“You don’t got no teeth.”
“See what I mean?” Thirsty smacked the bar in triumph at proving his point. He stuck a twiggy finger in the foam and watched it settle. “One a them got to be the biggest sumbitch I ever did see. He looks like a bear wearin’ goggles.” The bartender was not visibly impressed. “And I’ll tell ya fer free gratis: they’re gonna tear this place up some - the whole damn town. I heard ‘em.” He drained his glass and tabled it with a bang. “And all you smart sumbitches are gonna deserve it - ever bit!”