By then, it was well past one in the afternoon and there were still five pages left to finish. Jack leapt from his chair, ordered the take golden, and screamed at everyone to move quickly to the next set. Cast and crew scuttled, moving equipment and changing costumes en route to the other end of the stage. There, an avant garde cemetery replete with angular tombstones and a high black fence stood in shadows, waiting to be illumined by stage lights. Once the light spilled down in sharply angled slats, Jack lighted a cigarette and directed the players to their positions.
Also smoking was the barrel-chested youth who shadowed the chief electrician, Horace, like a lost pup. As Grace floated over to her director, now dressed in a semi-transparent gown with a plunging neckline, the young man smiled awkwardly at her. She ignored him and paused at the edge of the set to talk to Jack.
“Ready to die, pretty thing?”
His starlet feigned an awkward grin and nodded, once.
Behind her, hurrying to form a semicircle around a flat tomb, were six day players in long brown robes tied at the waist with frayed ropes. Grace turned slowly to face them. The half dozen faces regarded her with deference, as though she were already a star, equal to Lillian Gish, Clara Bow. Anyone. The tops.
The director said, “Let’s get the scene done today if we can. No sense in wasting Mr. Veritek’s time or money.”
Grace took her place, lying on her back along the length of the faux tomb. Her tormentors shuffled in close. The one at the head of the tomb fingered a stage dagger jammed in the rope at his middle.
It was time to bring the Angel to the Abyss.
Jack growled, “Action.”
They guide her down, flat as an ironing board, upon the cold stone slab. She is pliant. They work in tandem, hands exchanging her silken flesh until she is, at last, in position. Like a well-oiled machine. Her eyes are open — wide, glassy — but she does not see. Above her, torches flutter flames and pale, angular faces change shapes in the dancing shadows of the light. At the head of the slab, in front of a narrow gray monument, stands one taller than his brethren — the chief minister, perhaps, if such groups have ministers — and he stretches his long white fingers out over her, snatching at air. The others sway slightly in a measured rhythm, join hands. The head man’s hands vanish into the folds of his robe and a pair of disciples, one on either side of her, whisk away the thin fabric that barely conceals her goose-pimpled form. The torches play havoc with the contours of her naked body and the minister produces a strange dagger, shaped like a serpent, and he strikes…
“A specter!” cried Saul Veritek, his right hand concerned with a tumbler filled to the brim with gin while his left played with some blonde bit player’s hair. “Risen from the grave!”
Grace Baron stood in the foyer of the suite, resplendent in her peach crepe gown. Lace at her neck, beneath the pearls that glittered in the chandelier light. If she imagined she heard a gasp, she wouldn’t have been wrong.
The band, all but the pianist Negro, played “Rhapsody in Blue.” Gowned and tuxedoed partygoers danced drowsily in pairs scattered throughout the suite, most of them clutching their drinks more desperately than their partners. Prohibition, it seemed to Grace, had only made liquor flow more freely in Los Angeles.
“Come,” said Saul, releasing his blonde and taking Grace by the elbow. “Have a libation. It isn’t every party that has a virgin sacrifice among its throng.”
His pink pate gleamed with sweat as he led her to the bar, where a Filipino barman was shaking up a martini for a tall, handsome man with a craggy face. Grace squinted at him, then whispered to Saul, “Isn’t that William Hart?”
Saul chuckled. “In the flesh. On his way out, the old cowboy. He’s been pumping everybody he sees for cash, trying to make his own last hurrah. Tumbleweeds, he calls it. Can you imagine? With Tom Mix filling movie houses he wants to make some drab old bore called Tumbleweeds?”
“I saw him in The Scourge of the Desert when I was a girl. We got a lot of oaters back in Idaho.”
“Folks liked that sort of thing back then,” Saul said. “What, you’re starstruck? Come now, I’ll introduce you.”
He guided her to the bar and extended two fingers to the barman. “A couple of gin and tonics, would you, Manny?”
Manny nodded and got to work. Saul turned to Hart and tapped his shoulder. Hart sipped his martini and looked down with a tired smile.
“Oh, it’s you, Saul.”
“Hart, you old horse,” Saul boomed, shaking the tall man’s hand. “I’d like you to meet my new star, Grace Baron. Turns out she’s a fan of yours.”
“You don’t say,” Hart said, widening his eyes at her. He took her hand and pecked the back of it. “I’m always glad to meet a fan, and a new star of the screen no less.”
Grace’s face filled with blood and she smiled. Saul heaved a laugh.
“She’s still fresh. Once people see the new picture and she’s on the cover of Picture Play, you’ll be blushing to meet her.”
“I’m certain of it,” said Hart. To Grace, he said, “Tell me about it. The picture, I mean.”
“Well,” she began, “it’s…”
“Secret,” Saul cut in. “You’re just going to have to wait, pardner.”
“Heavens,” Hart said with a grin. “I’ll wager it’s a corker.”
“You’d win that bet.”
“Say, have I said much to you about my new picture? I’m doing it independently, you know.”
“And I wish you the very best of luck with it, Hart. Really, I do.” Saul patted the tall man condescendingly on the shoulder and took up Grace’s elbow once again. “Look, Gracie — there’s old Jack. Let’s say hello, shall we?”
Quickly he led her away, and as she went she craned her neck and said, “Nice meeting you, Mr. Hart.”
The fading cowboy nodded and drank, his face fallen and colorless. He looked like the grandfather of the star of The Scourge of Desert, though only eleven years had passed.
“Tumbleweeds,” Saul snickered as they approached Jack Parson, seated alone on a windowsill with his eyes on the band. Jack sucked at a cigarette and slouched so that his back curved.
“Not bad, these fellows,” he said absently. “I think I’ve seen the saxophonist in some clubs.”
“Who knows?” Saul said. “One looks the same as another to me. Say, Jackie, where’s your drink?”
“Don’t you know there’s an amendment against that sort of thing, Mr. Veritek?”
“The law’s against making and selling the stuff — there’s no law against drinking it. Hell, I’ll get something from that Oriental over there.” He gestured broadly at Manny, the bartender. “What’ll it be, old boy?”
Jack sighed. “Scotch, I suppose.”
“There’s a man’s drink,” Saul opined. “Pleased to see you’ve some balls left, Jackie.”
The fat man giggled and waddled back to the bar, sloshing his gin on the carpet.
“He’s even worse when he’s in his cups,” Jack said to Grace.
She sat down beside him on the windowsill and took his cigarette from him, drew deeply from it, and then handed it back.