“Why do you do it?” the Production Manager asked, his voice filled with admiration and wonder.
“Do what?”
“Why do you put up with us? I mean, you could be working with the bigtime outfits down in Hollywood. Or writing books. I’ve been reading your sci-fi books since I was a kid....”
Gabriel winced. Twice.
But Lipid didn’t notice it. “You’re a famous writer. You’ve won a lot of awards. Why are you putting up with this cheap outfit? I mean, this is the best job I can get right now. But you... you can do a lot better.”
Gabriel looked at him. The kid means it. He’s not putting me on.
Without breaking stride, he said gruffly, “This is my show. Comprend? Mine. I created this idea; it came out of my brain. I may have to deal with shitheads at Titanic and beaver-brains at Badger, but that doesn’t matter. I want this show to be good, man. Not pretty good. Not good enough to get some sponsors. Not good enough to get renewed after the first thirteen weeks.”
His voice was rising and the heat was building up inside him. Months of anger and frustration were bubbling close to the surface.
“I want it to be good! Good enough to satisfy me. Good enough for any one of us to point at with pride. I want you and me and every carpenter and electrician in this crazy cave to be proud to have worked on ‘The Starcrossed.’ I want even assholes like Earnest—and Finger back in his padded room in California—to feel proud of this show. They won’t, because they haven’t got the capacity. But we do, you and me. That’s what I want. Pride of accomplishment.”
“Wow,” gasped Lipid. “What commitment.”
And the money helps, Gabriel added silently. And the fact that nobody else in town would touch my work because Mongoloid idiots like Finger convinced everybody I’m too tough to get along with. And I’m broke. And this is the only decent idea I’ve had in the past year. And if I don’t make some money out of this I’ll have to give up my house.
As they stopped and looked over the next set, Gabriel realized that even those eminently practical reasons that didn’t sound so good when you voiced them, even they didn’t go deep enough.
I’m staying because she’s here, he admitted to himself. Rita’s close enough to touch and so beautiful that she’s driving me crazy. She smiles and says all the right words to me, but she never gets within arm’s reach.
He laughed silently, sardonically, at himself. They do articles in magazines about me, one of the ten most available bachelors in Hollywood. I have all the women I want. I spend half my Blue Cross getting cleaned up from them. And this one goddamned girl just smiles at me and I’m all putty inside.
His mind completely detached from his physical surroundings, Gabriel wondered where Rita Yearling was at that precise moment. Getting her costumes fitted? Taking color tests with the new camera system? Talking on the three-dee phone Finger gave her? Talking to him? Planning to go back to L.A. for the weekend to be with him?
Gabriel grimaced inwardly. I haven’t been writing fiction, he realized. I know exactly how Romeo felt.
Rita Yearling did not go to Los Angeles that weekend. Bernard Finger came to Toronto.
Gabriel was standing on the balcony of his hotel room, looking out disconsolately at the park-like front grounds of the hotel and beyond to the towers of the city that blocked what had once been a decent view of Lake Ontario. There wasn’t much smog in Toronto, since the Canadians used nuclear energy to a large extent. But the lake was still a fetid cesspool of industrial wastes.
Rita had smilingly accepted Gabriel’s dinner invitation the night before; he had treated her to a quick jet flight to New York for authentic delicatessen fare. All through the evening she was warm, friendly, outgoing, obviously happy to be with Gabriel. And that’s as far as it went. She eluded his grasp. Even in the plush passenger compartment of the rented jet (five thousand bucks, Canadian, for the night) she somehow managed to stay at arm’s length.
Gabriel couldn’t figure it out. Women didn’t act that way. Or at least, he’d never had any patience with those who did. “You either do or you don’t,” he had told hundreds of girls. But Rita’s different. Shy yet friendly. Innocent yet knowing. Desirable but distant. She’s driving me nuts, Gabriel told himself for the thousandth time.
He burped pastrami. The morning air wasn’t helping to settle his stomach. Just as he decided to go back inside and take some antacid, a long stream of cars came purring off the superhighway and onto the hotel’s approach road.
Finger! Gabriel knew instantly. No one else would demand such commotion. The carefully landscaped grounds of the old hotel had never seen such a flurry of sycophants. Bellmen and doormen seemed to spring out of the front entrance. Yesmen by the dozens poured out of the cars and yeswomen, too. Finger was no sexist.
As Gabriel leaned over his balcony railing to watch, it seemed as if the hotel was disgorging whole phalanxes of flunkies. It was easy to tell the Californians from the Canadians. The L.A. contingent wore the latest mode: fur-trimmed robes and boots and hats that made them look like extras from an old Ivan the Terrible flick. Or the minions of Ming the Merciless. The locals wore conservatively zippered business suits, while the hotel staff was decked out in bluish uniforms faintly reminiscent of the old RAF.
The whole conglomeration swirled and eddied around the car for nearly fifteen minutes. Then everyone seemed to fall into a prearranged pattern, and the rear door of the longest, blackest, shiniest limousine was opened by one of the RAF uniforms. Despite himself, Gabriel grinned. He ought to have a line of trumpeters announcing his arrival.
Bernard Finger’s expensively booted foot appeared in the limousine’s doorway, followed by the rest of his Cary Grant body. He looked gorgeous, resplendent in royal purple and ermine. And he bumped his head on the car’s low doorway.
Gabriel hooted. “You’re still a klutz, you klutz!” he hollered. But his balcony was too far above street level for anyone to hear him. Briefly he wondered if he’d have time enough to make a water bomb and drop it on Finger’s ermine-trimmed hat. But he couldn’t tear himself away from the barbaric splendor of the scene below, even for an instant.
Finger straightened his hat and sneaked a small rub on the bump he’d just received, then stood tall and beaming at the sea of servility surrounding him.
Rita’s not there to greet him, Gabriel noticed, and felt good about it.
Then with an expansive gesture, Finger said something to the people nearest him. Several of them were holding recorders and minicameras, Gabriel noticed. Media flaks.
Finger turned back toward his limousine and ducked slightly, beckoning to someone inside. New girlfriend? Gabriel wondered.
It was a man who got out. A guy who wasn’t terribly tall, but looked wide across the shoulders and narrow at the hips. Muscleman. He wasn’t wearing Hollywood finery, either. He wore a simple turtleneck sweater and a very tight pair of pants. Athlete’s striped sneakers. Dirty blond hair, cropped short and curly. Rugged looking face; nose must’ve been broken more than once. Good smile, dazzling teeth. Must be caps.
The newcomer grinned almost boyishly at the cameras, then turned and, grabbing Finger by the shoulders so strongly that he lifted the mogul off his feet, he kissed B.F. soundly on both cheeks.
As he let Finger’s boots smack down on the pavement again, Gabriel howled to himself, He’s got a new girlfriend, all right! Wait’ll Rita sees this!
But Gabriel was completely wrong.
Les Montpelier phoned almost as soon as Gabriel stepped back inside his room, inviting him to a “command performance” dinner.
“The whole team’s going to be here tonight,” Les said gravely, “to meet the show’s male lead.”
Gabriel blinked at Montpelier’s image on the tiny phone screen. “You mean that guy is going to be our big star?”
“That’s right.” Montpelier cut the connection before Gabriel could ask who the man was.
Briefly, Gabriel considered throwing himself off the balcony. But he decided to attend B.F.’s dinner instead.
