“Here we are,” she said cheerfully.
“Here” was a low-slung modernistic house perched on the shoulder of a hill, in the middle of a long winding street lined by similar houses. Brenda had pulled the car up on the driveway, so that by sliding out on the driver’s side they could splash across one small puddle and dive directly under the protective overhang at the front door.
The door was more ornately carved than Queequeeg’s sarcophagus, a really handsome piece of work. Hanging squarely in the middle of it, under the knocker, was a tiny hand-lettered sign that said:
TRY THE BELL
with a drawing of a hand pointing one finger toward an all-but-invisible button, hidden behind a flowering shrub.
Brenda touched the doorbell button and a speaker grill set above the door grated:
“Yeah?”
“Ron, it’s Brenda.”
“Brenda?”
“Brenda Impanema... from Bernard Finger’s office.”
“Oh, Brenda!”
“Can we come in?”
Oxnard was beginning to feel foolish, standing out there with the wind cutting through him, wet and chilled, all the rain in Southern California sluicing down around them, watching a girl he had just met talking to a door.
“Who’s we?” the door asked.
Brenda seemed to be enjoying the fencing match; well, maybe not enjoying it, but at least neither surprised nor dismayed by it.
“Someone you’ll enjoy meeting,” she said. “He invented the...”
“He?” The voice sounded disappointed.
For the first time, Brenda frowned. “Come on, Ron. It’s cold and wet out here.”
“Okay. Okay. Come on in.”
The door clicked. Brenda pushed on it and it swung open. They stepped inside.
Oxnard blinked. It was like the first time he had tried sky-diving. One minute you’re safely strapped into the plane and the next you’re out in the empty air, falling, disoriented, watching the blur of Earth spinning up to hit you.
The door slammed behind him. The entryway of the house was ablaze with lights. Oxnard and Brenda stood there dripping and disheveled, gaping at the cameras, people, props, chairs, lights.
“Smile!” a voice shouted. “You’re on candid camera.”
“What?”
Ron Gabriel pushed past a tripod-mounted camera directly in front of them, a huge grin on his face.
“Only kidding, buhbula. Don’t panic.”
He was wearing nothing but a bath towel draped around his middle. He was a smallish, compactly built man in his thirties, Oxnard guessed: dark straight hair cut in the latest neo-Victorian mode, blazing dark eyes, hairy chest, the beginnings of a pot belly.
He grabbed Brenda and kissed her mightily. Then turning casually to Oxnard, he asked, “You her husband or something?”
“Or something,” Oxnard replied, feeling testy.
“Hey come on, I’m paying overtime already!”
A large, lumpy, bearded man stepped out from behind the cameras. He was swathed in a green and purple dashiki. Some sort of optical viewer hung from a silver cord around his neck.
Gabriel grabbed Brenda and Oxnard by the arms and walked them back behind the cameras.
“What’s going on?” Brenda asked.
“I’m renting my foyer to Roscoe for filming his latest epic.”
“Roscoe?” Oxnard was impressed. “The guy who did the underground film festival at Radio City Music Hall?”
“Who else?” Gabriel answered.
Now it all made sense to Oxnard. Two dozen girls of starlet dimensions stood around languidly, in various styles of undress. A couple of muscular, hairy guys were doing pushups over in a far corner of the foyer. Electricians, lighting women, camera persons of indeterminate gender, and a few other handymen were busily moving cameras and lights around the long, narrow foyer.
“All right already!” Roscoe bellowed in a voice four times too large for Grand Central Station, “Everybody take their places for the grope scene!”
