The Captains (48 page)

“And, if Osgood here hadn't shown up,” Major Lowell said, “you would have politely told me to go piss up a rope.”

“Major Lowell is just home from Korea,” Mr. J. Theodore Osgood offered in extenuation.

Courtwright smiled and wrote Georgia Paige's unlisted number on his business card.

“She's not home, Major Lowell,” J. Theodore Osgood said. “They're shooting
Unanswered Prayer
. I passed the sound stage on my way off the lot.”

“Can you get me into wherever she is?” Lowell asked, as the barber finished his shave and began to rub something oily onto his face.

“Yes, of course,” Osgood said. “I'll call ahead if you like and have a pass ready for you at the gate.”

Osgood didn't use the telephone in the barbershop. He used a house phone in the lobby and he telephoned his counterpart at Magnum Studios and told him that Craig Lowell, who was likely to be hard to handle, was coming to the studio to see Miss Georgia Paige. He had no idea why.

When Lowell saw the car provided for him, he wasn't surprised. The goddamn Jaguar was identical to Ilse's. He had impulsively shipped it to Marburg an der Lahn because she so loved that car. She had been driving it when the drunken quartermaster asshole had slammed into her.

As he drove to Magnum Studios, he had a clear mental image of Ilse sitting on the passenger seat with P.P. in her arms, and with her legs innocently arranged so that he could see her pants. Sex and motherhood.

“Major Lowell,” the man waiting for him at the gate said, “I haven't had the opportunity to meet you before, and I'm happy to now. I'm John Sanderland, and I'm Magnum's Vice President, Finance.”

“I see you spent some time in Philly, Mr. Sanderland,” Lowell said. Sanderland was wearing the insignia of alumni of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Doesn't everybody?” Sanderland said.

“'49,” Lowell said.

“Hail fellow, well met,” Sanderland said delightedly. “'40.” Perhaps, he thought, Major Craig W. Lowell wouldn't be as difficult as Osgood suggested.

They drove onto the lot. It was Lowell's first visit to a motion picture studio. He was somewhat disappointed to see that it looked more like a factory than anything else. Then he realized that it was a factory, the word actually being a shorter form of “manufactory,” a place where things are made by hand.

There was a red light flashing over the door of one of the warehouse-like buildings, and what looked like a retired cop, in a private policeman's uniform, standing in front of it with his arms folded. Lowell had seen enough movies about Hollywood to know the flashing red light meant that they were “shooting” inside.

The private cop did not step out of the way, however, as Lowell expected him to, when the red light went off.

“Closed set,” he announced. “You got to have a pass.”

“I'm a vice president of this corporation,” Sanderland said.

“I don't doubt that for a minute, Mister,” the guard said. “But you still got to have a pass. The set is closed.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake!” Sanderland said, but they had to get back in Lowell's car and go to the Administration Building for passes. When they returned to the sound stage, the red light was flashing again, and they had to wait ten minutes in the hot sunshine for it to go off again.

“They weren't shooting that long,” Sanderland said, angrily, as he hauled back on the heavy, soundproof door. “They just didn't want to be interrupted.”

“What the
fuck
is this?” a man screamed in a high-pitched voice, as they entered the sound stage.

Lowell, who had been looking for Georgia and had just seen her across the wide, cluttered room, was startled. Then he became aware that the screaming man was pointing at him.

The excited pansy recognized Sanderland. “What the
fuck
do
you
want?” he demanded of him. “And
who
the
fuck
is
he?
”

Lowell looked across at Georgia. She seemed to be running away. No wonder, with this sewer-mouthed pansy screaming his head off.

“You say ‘fuck' one more time, Slats,” Lowell said, “and I'll wash your filthy fucking mouth out with fucking soap.”

“
Who
ever this cocksucker
is
, Sanderland,” the skinny man said, “get him off
my
fucking set!”

Without much apparent effort, Lowell spun the skinny man around, marched him to a red fire bucket mounted on the wall, and ducked his head in it.

A man in a business suit who had been rushing toward the door when the incident started, now gestured to two burly laborers. They restrained the skinny man when Lowell turned him loose.

“What the hell is going on around here?” he demanded of Sanderland.

“Major Lowell,” Sanderland said, “this is Mr. Berman, the producer of this film. Mr. Berman, Major Lowell is from Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes, and he seems to object to your director's characterization of him as a cocksucker.”

“I'm walking, Sanderland,” the skinny pansy screamed. “I'm walking. That's it. I'm finished.” The laborers let him go, and he stormed, dripping, across the set.

“I'm not saying that wasn't a good idea Major,” Mr. Berman said. “I just hope you realize what that gesture cost us.”

“I have no idea,” Lowell said. “But whatever it was, I'll be happy to pay it.”

“I don't think so,” Mr. Berman said. “It will be two days before our director will feel the muse has returned sufficiently for him to resume the practice of his art. We're budgeted at thirty-nine five a day. Are you really willing to pay nearly eighty thousand dollars for the privilege of washing out that mouth, even considering how foul it is?”

“Hell, I'm sorry,” Lowell said, feeling like a fool.

“May I ever so politely inquire what we can do for you on this closed set?” Berman asked, sarcastically.

“I came to see Georgia Paige,” Lowell said.

“Indeed? Might I inquire why?”

“We're friends,” Lowell said.

“Well, in
that
case,” Berman said, sarcastically, “why don't you go over to her dressing room? She has nothing else to do at the moment but entertain friends. Not now. And probably not tomorrow. And probably not on the day after tomorrow, either. That should give you plenty of time for a friendly visit.” Berman gestured to a small house trailer on the far side of the building.

Aware that eyes were on him, Lowell started to walk toward it. He heard Berman ask Sanderland who he really was, and part of Sanderland's reply. Then there was an explosion immediately behind him, and by reflex action, he threw himself on the floor. He couldn't control it. He hit the dirt even as one part of his mind told him that the explosion was a bursting light bulb, maybe a big one, but a light bulb only, dropped from somewhere up above.

Shamed and furious, he got to his knees and looked upward. A burly man was sliding down a ladder, a look of concern on his face. He reached Lowell just as Lowell stood up.

“Hey, I'm sorry,” he said.

“About as sorry as I am for dunking the other wise-ass in the fire bucket,” Lowell said.

“No,” the man said. “Hey, I mean it. I dropped the bulb to say ‘hurray for you.' I didn't know you jump the way people like you and me jump when you think a sudden noise is incoming.”

“You got me, you bastard,” Lowell said, smiling. “You really got me.”

“You looked as shocked as our director,” the man said, “when you ducked his head in the fire bucket.”

He looked over the man's shoulder. Georgia was standing there, looking at him unbelievingly.

“My God,” she said, “Is that
you?
”

She came and he hugged her. She raised her face to his and he kissed her. Her lips were warm, but not as hungry as they had been on the IX Corps airstrip. He remembered that he had felt her heart beating then. She hadn't pressed herself close enough against him now for him to feel her heart beating, and neither were her arms holding him the way they had on the airstrip.

It wasn't the homecoming embrace he had held in his mind.

Sanderland came up to them.

“You should have told me you knew Major Lowell, Georgia,” he said. “I would have treated you differently.”

“How so?” she asked, somewhat confused that Lowell knew Sanderland.

“I would have treated you with greater respect and offered you less money.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You've often told me you'd like to meet one of the money men from New York,” Sanderland said. “To tell him off. So here's your chance.”

“Is he putting me on?” Georgia asked, looking at Lowell. Then she thought it over. “I get the feeling he's telling me the truth.”

“Does it matter?” Lowell asked.

“He must be telling the truth,” she said. “Otherwise you couldn't have gotten on the set. Why didn't you tell me you were coming?”

“I tried. I got out two days before I was supposed to.”

She dismissed him for something more important.

“Where's Derek?” she asked.

“He went home,” Sanderland said.

“What do you mean, ‘he went home'?” she snapped. “We're not finished.”

“Your friend gave him a shampoo,” Sanderland said. “In a fire bucket.”

“I don't believe any of this conversation,” Georgia said, smiling, showing her red gums and perfect teeth. “What the
hell
are you talking about?”

“Derek talked dirty in front of your friend, and your friend washed his mouth out by dunking his head in a fire bucket,” Sanderland said.

Georgia Paige immediately decided this was the truth.

“Great!” she exploded. “Great! Thanks a lot!”

She glowered at Lowell for a moment, and then walked quickly across the building toward the trailer Berman had pointed out to him.

“Now we're even,” Sanderland said. “
That
cost you.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Lowell said to him, and walked across the floor to the trailer. He knocked, but there was no reply. He pushed open the door and went inside. Georgia was lying on a chaise longue, legs spread, her head resting on her hands. Lowell walked up to her and looked down.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“You don't understand,” she said. “I have been working myself up all day for this shot. And then I don't get to make it.”

“I'm really very sorry,” Lowell said.

She looked up at him and smiled and held her arms out to him. She held him against her, but when he tried to touch her breast, she pushed him gently but firmly away.

“Not here,” she said. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

He didn't even get a chance to watch her change clothes. A gray-haired woman came into the trailer without knocking, gave Lowell a dirty look, and jerked her thumb toward the door. It took her fifteen minutes to change clothes, during which a steady stream of people entered and left the trailer, while he stood around outside.

He had to follow her to the house in Beverly Hills, trailing a studio Cadillac limousine in the Jaguar. Her house, he decided, was probably entitled to the term mansion. The banker in the recesses of his brain suddenly came to life. She hadn't been successful that long. He had read in a fan magazine that her father was in the insurance business in Ohio, and that she'd gotten her start in the movie business while acting in plays at the University of Ohio. Her rise, the fan magazine had said, had been “meteoric.” That meant that it was only recently that she had been making a lot of money, and that meant the house was hers only technically. The money for the house had probably come from the First Federal Savings and Loan of Beverly Hills.

They'd driven past that. The houses in Beverly Hills, Lowell thought, deserved much larger lots than they had been given. He had a quick mental image of the gate at Broadlawns, and the drive inside the gate. He came to the conclusion (which he shamefully acknowledged to be snobbish) that Beverly Hills, generally speaking, was a high-priced housing development, Levittown for the affluent.

When they finally got inside her house, there were half a dozen people there, including a man she introduced as her press agent, and whom Lowell disliked on sight. It was a very long time before they were rid of them, and the press agent lingered longest.

And then Georgia said she was hungry, and that Consuela, presumably the 300-pound Mexican, wasn't there. So they went to the Villa Friscati on Sunset Boulevard. A steady stream of people stopped at their table, all of them ignoring him after finding out that he was a soldier.