“No, thanks. I'm a neighbor, just looking things over. What is this truck?"
“This is props. I'm Butch Kowalski, Jake Elder's assistant."
“Glad to meet you, Butch. I'm Jane Jeffry. Are you and Jake responsible for those fake buildings? They're really impressive."
“Naw, that's the set decorator's job. Props are in charge of any objects that are used or touched. Set decoration's everything that's just seen.”
Except for Maisie, this young man was the first person on the crew who was genuinely friendly and forthcoming. He looked like a thug, with muscles that started just below his ears. He had practically no neck at all and his biceps strained the sleeves of his plaid shirt. He had teeth that would have made an orthodontist rub his hands in anticipation of the challenge and he had an unfortunate New Jersey accent. But for all that, his smile was engaging and his eyes sparkled with good spirits.
“You don't sound like a Chicago native, Butch. Do you live here now?"
“Yeah, for as long as I'm with Jake. I still got a lot to learn."
“So you want to do this yourself? Be a prop man?"
“Property master, ma'am. Yeah. But I won't be ready for a while yet."
“So, what is all this stuff?" Jane asked, gesturing toward the interior of the truck. As she did so, she noticed a movement inside and a glimpse of orange fur. "Meow! What are you doing in there!" she exclaimed.
“Oh, is this your cat, ma'am?"
“I'm afraid so. I'm sorry—"
“Oh, it's okay. She's a nice little thing.”
Meow, who normally ran for cover when a stranger was within a block, picked her way daintily through the truck and came up to Butch to have her chin chucked.
“You must have a real gift with animals, Butch. Meow doesn't like anybody but me, and she only likes me when she's hungry. You haven't seen the other one, have you. The gray tabby?"
“The one with 'Max' on his tag? Yeah, he's takin' a nap in the cab of the truck.”
Jane sighed. "I'll take them home. It didn'toccur to me that I needed to shut them indoors this morning."
“Naw, don't do that, ma'am. They're having a good time and I like the company. I'll make sure they're back to you before we shut down for the night so they don't get shut in somewhere. Which house do you live in?”
Jane pointed it out, got Butch's repeated assurances that he'd be happy to keep tabs on her adventuresome cats, and went back to her own yard. Shelley had gone somewhere and Maisie was busy putting salve on an extra's insect bite. Jane wandered over to the table where the phone was. The table had colorful stacks of papers, each stack held in place against the breeze by an unopened soft drink can or other heavy object.
Most of the photocopied piles meant nothing to Jane: call sheet, second unit requirements, a chart that appeared to show which scenes would be shot which days. But one stack said clearly, "Welcome Packet." Jane looked around for somebody to give her permission to study this, and since no one radiated authority or showed the slightest interest in what she was doing, she helped herself to one packet and went back to her lawn chair to skim through it.
“Is it okay for me to look at this?" she said when Maisie was through with the extra.
“Sure. It's for anybody who's involved in the production and you're involved — in a way."
“Maisie, I was counting the people on the crew list. There are over a hundred of them and it doesn't include a single actor! That's amazing. I had no idea it took so many people to make a movie. But isn't it awfully wasteful? When I was roaming around earlier, there were a lot of people just sitting and doing nothing."
“Like me right now? Well, it's a hurry-up-andwait kind of business. Everybody's an expert in their special, narrow area and when they are needed, they're needed desperately. But the ones who are sitting and doing nothing at any given moment are on instant call. We all have to be poised to do 'our things' at a second's notice."
“Sort of like a mother," Jane said.
Just then a young woman in jeans and a denim jacket approached with a clipboard. "Are you Mrs. Jeffry from this house?" she asked briskly.
“Yes."
“I just wanted to let you know that we'll be breaking for lunch in ten minutes and you can let your dog out for an hour if you'd like." With that, she made a check mark on her clipboard and moved on up the block.
Maisie grinned. "As I said, there are a lot of very specialized jobs.”
Jane went indoors to get Willard, whose fear of the dog run had come back full force. She had to put his leash on him and lure him with a piece of lunch meat to get him out the back door and then he stopped dead in horror at the sight of all the people in his yard. She hauled him to the pen and left him cravenly glued to the inside of the gate to the run while she went next door to put Shelley's yappy little poodle into its run. By the time she'ddealt with all the livestock, she returned to her own yard to find another table being set up.
“No, no. Not in the shade," Lynette Harwell was saying to three young men who were trying to get the table placed to her satisfaction.
Jane was fascinated by the sight of the movie star. Though Jane knew Harwell to be her own age, she looked like a slip of a girl in her old-fashioned costume and blond hair done in an artfully disarranged braided coronet. Even the slight smudges of makeup soot on her face were placed so as to emphasize her enormous blue eyes and high cheekbones. She looked absolutely stunning and not quite real.
Jane had always imagined that unearthly beauty of some stars was a camera illusion and that in the flesh, they would look like normal people, but this was obviously wrong. Lynette Harwell was awesomely beautiful. Jane edged closer to the group surrounding her, a group including an adoring Mike Jeffry, and she was pleased to see that there were faint lines of age in the star's gorgeous face — tiny lines radiating at the corners of her eyes, a hint of the softness that precedes crepeyness on her throat, and the merest suggestion of the onset of a sagging chin. But these signs of aging only added character to the astounding beauty rather than detracting from it. Still, when you got close to her, it was clear that she was forty, not twenty — as her role demanded she look.
And as Jane gawked at her, Lynette turned to Mike and whispered something to him with an intimate smile that chilled Jane to the core, especially when she saw Mike's reaction. He grinned, looked at his feet, and all but scuffed his toe in the grass in pleased embarrassment.
She's playing mind games with MY child, Jane thought furiously. That her "child" was eighteen and had always been remarkably self-sufficient made no difference. She'd have felt the same if he'd been a fifty-year-old "Captain of Industry."
“Yes, just there is perfect," Lynette was saying, sweeping forward to take her place at the table. Like Queen Victoria, she didn't look back to see if a chair was in place, she just sat down, confident that someone had taken care of it. Which they had.
“I'll get your lunch," Mike said. "What would you like? The menu on the catering truck said prime rib or grilled shrimp."
“No, no! I will get Miss Harwell's luncheon tray!" Olive Longabach said. She'd just caught up with them and was breathless and disconcerted by having lost sight of her charge, however briefly. "I know what she likes."
“Olive, dear, there's no need. Mike can do it," Lynette said, positively twinkling at Mike. But Olive looked as if she'd been stabbed in the heart and Lynette relented. "Oh, very well, Olive. Mike will stay here with me, won't you, dear?" She gestured for him to sit beside her.