“Nervous?” he asked her.
Her eyes were extraordinarily blue today and they widened with girlish surprise. “Nervous? Why should I be nervous? I know all my lines. I could say them backwards.”
Gabriel frowned. “We’ve already got one clown who’s going to be doing that.”
“What do you mean?” Her voice was an innocent child’s.
“Dulaq. He’s going to get it all ass-backwards. I just know it.”
“Oh, he’ll be all right,” Rita said soothingly. “Don’t get yourself flustered.”
“He’s an idiot. He’ll never get through one scene.”
Rita smiled and patted Gabriel’s cheek. “Francois will be all right. He can be very much in control. He’s a take-charge kind of guy.”
“How do you know?” Gabriel demanded.
She made her surprised little girl face again, and Gabriel somehow found it irritating this time. “Why, by watching him play hockey, of course. How else?”
Before Gabriel could answer, the assistant director’s voice bellowed (assistant directors are hired for their lungpower): “Okay, set up for Scene Two, Dulaq and Yearling, front and center.”
“I’ve got to go to work,” Rita said, swinging her exquisite legs off the couch.
“Yeah,” said Gabriel.
“Wish me luck.”
“Break a fibia.”
She blew him a kiss and slinked off toward the set. Gabriel watched her disappear among the technicians and actors, and suddenly realized that her walk, which used to be enough to engorge all his erectile tissue, didn’t affect him that way anymore. The thrill was gone. With a rueful shake of his head, he walked toward the set like Jimmy Cagney heading bravely down the Last Mile toward the little green door.
Scene Two: Int., starship bridge. BEN is sitting at the control console, watching the viewscreens as the ship flies through the interstellar void at many times the speed of light. On the viewscreens we see nothing but scattered stars against the blackness of space.
BEN
(To himself.) Guess we’ve shaken off those Capulets. Haven’t seen another ship within a hundred parsecs of us.
ROM enters. He is upset, despondent. (Tell Dulaq that the Redwings will win the Stanley Cup next year; that should work him up enough for this scene.) He glances at the viewsscreens, then goes to BEN and stands beside him.
BEN
(Looking up at Rom.) Greetings, cousin. How are you this day?
ROM
Not as good. (Shakes his head)
BEN
What’s the trouble, cousin?
ROM
I dunno. Must’a been somet’in I picked up back on Rigel Six. Maybe a bug....
“Cut!”
“Francois... the script says ‘virus,’ not ‘bug.’”
“Ahh. ‘Bug’ sounds better. I don’t like all dose fancy words.”
“Try to say ‘virus,’ will you? And watch your diction.”
