As I stepped into sunlight with my clumsy burden of sweets, Clea intercepted, steering me toward makeup. They were redoing Thad for the scenes featuring his twin — Morloch was to have a slightly harder, “Brechtian” edge. They held him captive in a big barber’s chair while a rash of newfangled skinware was applied. His hair acquired extensions, some wrapped in the same aluminum foil that covered the peach cobbler and melting vanilla ice cream; he looked like something out of Ed Wood. The guest star was allowed a moment’s respite so Clea could insert a spoonful of pie into his mouth before the gals went back to the surgical task at hand. An assistant director knocked at the door: he was needed on set. Another five minutes passed while cosmetic snake charmers called forth the cobra Morloch, then ten, then fifteen, the mood typically urgent, sweaty, and airless as walkies crackled outside and the nervous messenger hovered, fearing he’d be shot for the delay. Finally, the dark prince was released. Clea and I walked him to the soundstage, preceded by the A.D. as if by royal retinue. Occasionally, a bustling carpenter or grip whistled or shouted approbation of the ensign’s charismatically toxic transformation.
Thad strolled abstracted to his off-camera mark.
Clea and I had a few minutes to catch up before shooting began. She said Miriam called with good news: Mordecai Klotcher had expressed interest in The Soft Sea Horse, and wanted to “get Thad in a room” with some hot young director. Clea delighted in adding that there was a nice response to the Children of the Famous idea when her agent floated it past a certain Showtime exec. More importantly, things had been going well with the couple since the big upset — the San Rafael excursion had worked wonders. (She thanked me again for coming.) I told her Dad wanted to throw a soirée for them at the house on Friday night, and was particularly looking forward to meeting Thad.
An A.D. shouted imperiously.
We scrambled to our positions. A makeup girl gave my boots a sheen of Fellcrum fairy dust.
The director called “Action!”
I entered frame, out of breath, followed by the android.
“A landing party, Captain,” I said. “Headed this way.”
“How many?” he asked.
“Two,” said Cabott. “A male and a female.”
A beat later, Morloch arrived accompanied by his consort, Ambassador Trothex. With glistening cobalt blue hair and tackily resplendent jewel-woven bodice (native to this far-flung quadrant), Clea looked breathtaking — and astonishingly like her mother.1
After introducing himself, the flamboyant prince apologized for our awkward arrival, noting “how even Vorbalidian technology could not circumvent the devilish molecular tricks played by the magnetic properties of our Great Dome.” The captain didn’t buy it, going on record that our forced visit flew in the face of established Jano-Kryag Convention accords.
Morloch approached the ensign. (Actually the script supervisor. Thad would shoot the opposing part later in the week, the two images ultimately spliced together.)
“How soft you’ve gotten,” said Morloch.
“How hard you’ve remained,” said the script supervisor. “What is the state of Father’s health?”
“Your arrival will most likely finish him,” said Morloch, wonderfully witchy.
“And — Mother?”
“A shadow. A wraith. A phantom,” said the twin, gleefully chewing the blue screenery. It was fun as hell to watch.
As the scene continued I noticed Thad’s features, even beneath the shell of appliances, weirdly soften. Then, as if in a dream, he stepped languorously off his mark.
“O graceful moon, I remember, upon this hill I would come full of anguish to look at you… and you hung over that wood as now you do, lighting it all… and yet it helps me to remember, and to count the age of my pain—”
It wasn’t until halfway through the speech that some of us realized he’d gone “off book.” The actor suddenly appeared woozy and I rushed to his support; otherwise, I think he’d have fallen. After a moment’s recovery, he seemed embarrassed by his lyrical, improvised outburst. As the director helped us lower the fallen prince to a chair and the medic was called, Thad appeared to be in a fugue state. In time, the clamminess evaporated and color returned to his skin. He drew us in to explain that such spontaneous poeticizing (this stanza from a favorite, the venerable Giacomo Leopardi) sometimes foretold a migraine was imminent. He would try “the new medicine,” he said, already prescribed for this very event — Clea confirmed the Zomig was in her purse. All he needed, said Thad, was to lie down. The medic arrived but he politely turned the man away. A fifteen-minute break was called.
Clea walked him to his trailer. I followed at a few paces.
She turned and whispered, “He wants apple pie and ice cream. Can you get some, Bertie?”
Arriving with the goods, I tapped lightly on the door. No response. Cautiously, I stepped in. I heard soft voices and warily proceeded. Clea was framed in the bedroom door with her back to me, partially blocking the view. Thad lay north to south and she ministered like a nurse, motioning me to bring the dessert.
I caught glimpse of his face, ruddy and alert.
“An ambassadorship!” he muttered, with charm. “You’ve done well for yourself, Trothex.”
“Yes, darling,” said Clea, sponging his forehead with a damp cloth.
“He took the pill?” I whispered needlessly.
She nodded.
“What kind of name is that, anyway?” he asked. “Trothex.”
“Dumb,” I said, affably. “A dumb name.”
“Sounds like bleach,” he said. His brow furrowed and he turned to Clea as if they were alone. “When I first saw you on the bridge”—I realized he had leapfrogged to the lines of tomorrow’s scene—“looking out from the starscreen… all the years rushed back.” She tenderly put a hand on his. “And I thought: How terrible that I never even said good-bye.”
1 Throughout the day, I heard more than a few comments in that regard, in respectful sotto from the crew.
~ ~ ~
THE MIGRAINE DIDN’T COME BUT Clea worried nonetheless.
She confided to me something I already suspected: that our friend took a daily barrage of “meds” to control various manias, compulsions, and depression and that it was paramount he neither add nor subtract from the carefully calibrated chemical concoction as it might effect a harsh imbalance of mood. Clea had seen the consequences and it wasn’t pretty. She was worried — aside from the Leopardian lapse, there were recent blips, dots, and beeps on her radar that she couldn’t yet translate — so the two of us kept close watch. Gently, she asked Thad if he was currently taking this pill or that, careful not to antagonize, in the effort to determine whether to begin the begging campaign he not abandon the pills that mattered, at least not till the end of the shoot, a tantalizingly close yet shockingly distant ten days away.
Clea and I were old hands at caretaking — Mom had been a semi-invalid since my early twenties — and made a pretty good tag team. We made sure he was well fed and lightheartedly entertained but confined to his room by shooting day’s end. While prudently maintaining a general policy against overstimulation, Clea considered the sexual act to be palliative and good for his soul, a natural antibody and witches’ brew against the virus of soft-focus schizophrenia. (She took her custodianship with touching seriousness.) Every few days, Miriam called at a late hour in a sultry voice, as if catching mossy, musky whiff of Clea’s carnal healing; though it was more likely she was trying to atone for the celibacy of her last brief visit. If she did bring up Thad, it was by way of signaling phone sex was over — the topic of his cracked psyche definitely broke the mood. She’d usually mumble something about “coming out there if things get too rickety” before slipping back into sexy sign-off mode.