Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army (9 page)

“Say, that reminds me, I'm hungry.”

We ordered lunch—Roee was only slightly critical of it—and watched the blizzard slowly die away. Petey had promised a clear day for tomorrow, and I was hoping he would deliver.

~ * ~

The next morning was bright and clear and I decided to move Petey from minor to major divinity. The view I had of Central Park from my bedroom window was stunning in the Winter Wonderland aspect of it all. The sky was a blue beyond human comprehension. The deep-in-the-center feeling of joy at being alive was overpowering. It made me very hungry. For many things.

~ * ~

Roee was off to meet with Tom, a stunningly handsome young man I had met but once, but had immediately liked. A Midwestern boy charmed by that which was exotic in Roee. Hearts, I'm afraid, were going to be broken here.

As for me, I was determined to find Gilgamesh Paul.

~ * ~

As I walked out of the hotel I stopped for a moment to appreciate the grand gift I had given Manhattan. Quiet. It was so very quiet—wonderfully so; eerily so; wonderfully, eerily so. There was very little if any traffic, and what there was moved to a muted soundtrack. I took a step out from under the awning of the hotel and the crunch of snow my footfall caused seemed like a celebratory cheer. Then I noticed various other crunches at various other volumes around me caused by other hearty souls out to see their city in its great white pause. A short pause, it would only last for a matter of hours before dirt would demand its due; dogs would, in olfactory panic, begin to remark their territories, and slush would laughingly settle in, waiting to freeze up overnight to cause someone bodily harm the next morning, as is its purpose in existence.

I had planned to take the subway, but this was no time to be subterranean. It was going to be a long walk, but it was going to be one in a benign and fresh alternate universe. The subway would do for the trip back.

I made my way to the corner of Central Parks West and South and turned down Broadway. Before me was an inviting corridor. I took the first step and never looked back.

Sometime later I entered a small shop on Broadway close to Twelfth Street, which I was relieved to find open. At about three quarters of the way I had the sudden fear that no one would be there, prevented by the conditions from getting in. That would have been ironic. The door opened with the old fashion tinkling of a bell, though, and an ancient face looked up and greeted me.

“Good morning,” the man behind the counter said.

“Good morning. Glad to see you're open.”

“Why shouldn't I be?”

“A blizzard is a good excuse to take some time off.”

“Dying is taking some time off. Until then, I'll work.”

“I'm interested in finding the whereabouts of a Gilgamesh Paul. I was given to understand that you might—”

“Gilgamesh Paul,” he said with some awe. “That is a name I have not heard in many years.”

“So...?”

“Haven't a clue. Not here. Not for years. No one's interested.”

“I'm interested.”

“Make's you odd, then, doesn't it? Have you ever—”

“Never.”

“Not surprising.”

“But he sounds like—”

“Yes, so others have told me. I only remember one thing he said. He was at a summerhouse in the Hamptons and was asked if he wanted to go for a swim, and he answered—let's see if I can remember this—he answered, ‘The act of swimming should only be committed if one happens, by accident, never by design, to be in water of sufficient depth to reach from the bottom of your big toe whilst en Pointe, to the bridge of your nose at its highest possible elevation.'” The old man laughed. “I always liked that.” He laughed some more. “You see—I don't swim.”

“You don't swim?”

“Don't swim.”

“You live on an island.”

“A meaningless point if you never leave it—and I never have.”

~ * ~

Disappointed, I left the shop looking for the nearest subway entrance, when I suddenly noticed that directly across the street was the New York offices of Olympic Pictures, housed in a violently Art Deco building. It had been their New York offices since the founding of the company in the early Twenties. Of course, the Olympic Pictures of then is not the Olympic Pictures of today. The Olympic Pictures of then was founded by George Pangalos a Greek fishmonger who had developed a passion for the nickelodeon and photographing shorthaired flappers in short skirts, whereas the Olympic Pictures of today is owned by Sveriges Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden. Of course, the Sveriges Riksbank did not particularly want to own Olympic Pictures, it did so by default. Specifically the default on a billion dollar loan they had given to one of their least moral and least sane countrymen, Per Hjalmar, who had developed some of the same interests that had inspired George Pangalos, thereby creating, with the bank's money, a continuity of a sort after Olympic had been gutted in the Eighties by a fat financier from Atlantic City who sold off most of Olympic's film library and all of its Hollywood studio facilities, leaving behind nothing but the husk of its logo, a bright burning torch grasped in a strong hand. That is what Per Hjalmar convinced the Sveriges Riksbank to bank on, as he knew that Hollywood was becoming very brand name conscious. It was pure sleight-of-hand. A certain officer of the bank—no longer with the bank, of course—was charmed by Hjalmar into keeping his eye on the hand with the logo in it, rather than Hjalmar's other hand, the empty one, the one that was supposed to be holding collateral.

The rumors had it that, after several years of new management headed up by Sara Hutton, the Sveriges Riksbank was ready to sell, hoping to recoup at least the billion dollars of the original loan, if not the near billion they had had to pay to keep Olympic up, running and producing pictures to make it marketable enough to—

Speak of the devil.

As I was standing there musing on the recent history of Olympic Pictures, Sara Hutton emerged from the building. She was bundled up against the cold, but there was no mistaking her. Sara Hutton was more unattractive than any other person I could think of. Although unattractive may not be the right word, for she did attract—enough to have lovers of both sexes, enough to climb the Hollywood corporate ladder, which is surface sensitive, and enough to make more money than most. Nonetheless, she had a face that, by comparison, made the ugly look plain, the plain look beautiful, and the beautiful look divine. This was clearly demonstrated the second Bea Cherbourg followed Hutton out of the building. She was radiant; beaming. She and Sara smiled at each other; laughed; linked their arms the way women do, and began to walk up the street.

It seems another couple had kissed and made up at my suggestion.

~ * ~

The flight home offered no amusements. The movie was one of those vanity films forced into production by a still gleaming star of action and sex determined to reveal the deep soul within. The screenwriters and director, though, had obviously had a hard time finding the deep soul within, although I'm sure they looked just about everywhere, for the film was just simply small, dark, and quiet, but not at all soulful. Roee spent the time scribbling on a new play, so conversation was out. I had been hoping for Gilgamesh Paul, of course, but.... As we were traveling in the guise of the chairman & CEO, and the president of Prosthetics of Providence (Roee had put on our business cards the legend: Let Us Give You a Hand), we were not even graced with the solicitous attention of a VIP flight attendant. So I slept.

And dreamed of Bea Cherbourg.

It was a strange dream. It was flesh. Bea's flesh. I could see it, feel it, smell it, taste it. It was the center and all that surrounded. It was soft and warm and gave when I pressed into it. It was well shaped and fit. It was not naked. Naked had no relevance. It just was. Then it was her eyes. Then her smile. Which smile? The one that she had given the waiter? The one she had given Sara Hutton? Hey! Where's mine? The flesh is given. The smile is not. The eyes condemn—

The rude sound of landing gear locking into place woke me up. I took in a deep breath; scrub-cleaned the old brain with recycled oxygen, and stretched. Then there was a momentary sense memory of Bea Cherbourg's flesh in my arms—then it passed. Reflex wanted me to lunge out to pull it back, but I conquered Reflex, which is a dark and impulsive god.

~ * ~

Several weeks passed during which I did not dream or think of Bea Cherbourg. Nor did I give any thought to the fact that I wasn't dreaming or thinking of her. I forgot the matter.

A few small commissions came our way. The most interesting one was from Bill Baker, a film producer who had been hoping to direct his first feature. He had line produced the last three pictures of Joe Waugh, a current hot one in Hollywood, the last two films being the first two of a planned fantasy trilogy. Waugh had directed the first, he had turned over the reins to another director for the second, and had promised Baker the third. Although Waugh was the acknowledged genius of these high box-office grossing films, much of their story and elemental details came from creative jam sessions Waugh and Baker had had when they were near nobodies working on their first film together: a low budget road picture that became a sleeper hit. Baker felt that being able to direct the third film was his justified reward, but, unfortunately, the second film had gone way over budget, mainly due to the demands of the director, but Waugh blamed Baker. As Waugh was himself financing the second film out of the profits of the first, that blame carried weight. Waugh decided to direct the third film. Baker was devastated, but he swallowed his pride—or, rather, squirreled it away in his cheek—and begged to, at least, stay on as the producer. Waugh agreed and preproduction began for a shoot that would spend 16 weeks in the Brazilian rain forest, which was to double for the fantasy realm of Thunnorak. That's when Baker decided to find the Fixxer. He had heard of me, but wasn't sure I really existed. He decided to believe. It was important to him to believe. It took him eight weeks of searching before someone clued him in to Norton Macbeth.

Baker explained everything to me in a meeting Norton arranged at the Children's Museum in Downtown Los Angeles. This was three days before the production was to move to Brazil. I knew a lot about Waugh. Anybody who had become as famous as him, I get to know a lot about. I immediately told Baker that I could, for a price, fix his problem. That by the time he left for Brazil in three days, he would be the director of the film.

The solution was simple. I didn't even have to go into the computer database. It had been reported that Waugh never made a move without consulting Mary Anne Richardson, the all-American homemaker psychic/astrologer who worked out of her house in the Encino Hills, and had quite a list of “A” talent clients, who had all spread the word about her remarkable, natural gifts. This is not unusual in Hollywood, it is, indeed, far too usual, but such Hollywood normality was useful if you knew how to take advantage of it—and I did. For I happened to know that Mary Anne Richardson of Encino started life as Clara Brown of Southampton, England. She left her native land ten years before when her New Jesus evangelical message wasn't really bringing in enough sucker donations there to make it pay. So she came to America for the fruitful fields of the local suckers she had always heard about. Unfortunately, she found a preponderance of evangelicals running around sucking on the suckers. Too crowded. She tried to make ends meet by running a pyramid scam. Unfortunately the ends met in prison for eighteen months, where she picked up various American accents. Looking for a new gig, once she was out of prison, she had a revelation standing in a supermarket checkout line. She saw the stars—the ones in the zodiac and the ones on the big and small screens. She saw them merging under the protection of a spreading tabloid banner headline.
Just converge the two star groups
, she thought,
and let the brilliance illuminate the path to gold
. It worked. Another immigrant made it big in America.

I paid her a visit. I paid her a substantial fee. The next day she warned Waugh that if he were to travel any time in the next three months, doom would be his name. The film was ready to go. A huge investment had already been made. A crew was waiting in the middle of a Brazilian rain forest. He couldn't publicly delay the film giving his psychic's warning as the reason. Baker got to direct.

Roee was just congratulating me on a good job swiftly and lucratively done, when the call came in informing us that Bea Cherbourg's body had been found in a snowdrift on the frozen Bering Sea just off the Seward Peninsula in Alaska.

The call came from Norton Macbeth.

“Do you remember a while back, Fixxer, when you did a favor for Newsstand Mike?”

“Talking sense to his unrequited love.”

“That's right.”

“Obviously I do. Bea Cherbourg. Oddly enough, I saw her—”

“She's dead.”

Dead is a word analogous, for many reasons, with an inalterable period, or, as the British like to say, a full stop—which I did for half a beat. Then I asked if it was murder, although I knew the answer.