Shallow Graves

26

Trudie, tanned and dark-haired and model-thin (the best calves of any women he'd ever known but, alas, no freckles anywhere on her body), drove east on Santa Monica, moving slowly in the morning traffic toward the expressway.

John Pellam sat on the passenger side of her white Mercedes 450 SL.

He sat silently, with his suitcase (purchased on Main Street, Cleary, not Rodeo Drive) on his lap. Trudie was animated. She was preoccupied with a teleplay Lorimar was kicking around. She had a fifty-two percent interest in the property. He thought that's what she'd told him. The radio was loud and she nodded in time to the beat, smiling broadly, though Pellam knew that what she hummed was the tune of business, not a Top 40 hit.

Pellam thought she was a wonderful woman. He'd enjoyed going out with her. He'd enjoyed staying with her, lying in a huge bed, sipping sweet liquor drinks on a cement patio high above a junglish canyon (Trudie had a fall-er house).

They passed the park in Beverly Hills where one morning-must have been five a.m.-he'd found Tommy Bernstein, in a tuxedo, passed out. Pellam himself had been wasted. Tommy had said to him, "Fuck, it's the U.S. Cavalry. Get me home. Am I in bed? I don't think so, no, I don't. Get me home!"

After much time and effort Pellam had.

At Tommy's funeral the minister had been a hired gun, which wasn't too surprising, since Tommy hadn't been inside a church in thirty years. The somber man said a lot of innocuous things. Generic-brand sentiments. Not to put that down, of course. Pellam thought the doughy old guy with the stiff white collar had done a good job, under the circumstances. "The lively spirit that Thomas had, the spirit that touched us all with the love for the characters he played…" Well, Tommy'd have said, "Barf on that," and howled. But that was hardly the minister's fault. The funeral had been near the intersection they were passing through just then. Avenue of the Stars.

"I talked to that exec producer."

Trudie liked that, shortening words and slinging them around. Exec, photog, res, as in Make a res at a restaurant.

"Yeah?" he asked brightly.

"He was like beside himself."

"Yeah?" Pellam couldn't remember exactly which exec she was talking about, or why he was, or should be, beside himself. They drove in silence, through that brilliant light, California light, that seems to bring out some essential radiation from the grass and trees. It gets right in your face, like a beautiful, obnoxious teenage girl. From behind his sunglasses Pellam watched the scenery. And the cars-a thousand German cars, it seemed-moving opposite, toward Hollywood.

"Won't be back for a while, huh?"

"Probably not."

Trudie didn't answer, just squeezed his knee. She turned the radio up. They were in Beverly Hills; sentiment didn't exist.

"So," she said. "You sure you want to do this?"

"Yep," he said and didn't add anything else.

Ten silent minutes later she dropped him at the airport. He didn't want or expect her to get out. They kissed like siblings and the only clues to the deepest moments of their on-again, off-again year together was a shallow shaking of her head and the sad, mystified smile she lapsed into from time to time.

"Call me sometime," she said.

Pellam promised that he would.

He handed his suitcase to the curbside check-in attendant, and when he turned back, Trudie was gone.

John Pellam sat on a hundred-year-old gravestone, looking out over this upstate New York valley, filled with trees gone to vibrant yellow red. The sun had just disappeared under a row of clouds and the beautiful scenery had taken on an ominous nature.

Adding to which was the young man moving stealthily toward Pellam. He was dressed in a dark shirt and jeans. When he was twenty feet away the man paused and closed his eyes, as if finding strength from somewhere, then drew a black pistol from his back pocket.

He started forward once more.

Pellam rose from the cold stone and squinted at the furtive approach.

Suddenly motion on the ground nearby. The man reared back in surprise and stumbled over a low tombstone. "Jesus Christ," he called, dropping the pistol.

"What?" Came a booming voice from a loudspeaker.

"It attacked me!" the man called, standing up and brushing grass from his slacks.

The electronic voice of God yelled, "Cut it, cut! What the hell happened?"

The field filled with people. The crew walked around from behind the Panaflex camera, makeup went to work on the actor's face. He called, "A squirrel… he attacked me!"

A stuntman grabbed his jacket and leapt into the graveyard, crying, "Toro, toro!"

"Hilarious," the director called sarcastically through the loudspeaker.

Pellam walked away from the gravestone and sat down in an old green-plaid lawn chair next to his Winnebago. He said, "You cold? You want to go inside?"

Meg squeezed his hand and said, "No, I wouldn't miss this for anything."

"I want a continuous shot," the director sighed and walked back to the camera. Somebody from Wardrobe was rolling up the actor's cuffs so they wouldn't get dark from the moisture on the grass. The continuity girl began making notes of his position when the wild animal had attacked and the location of all the cameras and backgrounds.

"What's the take?"

"That'll be eight," someone called.

"Jesus. And we'll lose the light in ten minutes. What's the weather supposed to be tomorrow?"

"Rain."

"Jesus."

Pellam and Meg watched the crew in the field. He said, "That's the movies for you. Do it over and over then you wait for a while and do it again."

But Sam at least was enjoying himself, even if he would have preferred a space wars flick or something with machine-gunning robots over some stupid love story called To Sleep in a Shallow Grave. Mostly, it was the huge, complicated camera that he loved.

"Wow," he'd say to Pellam. "It's like a spaceship." And Pellam got the okay from the director of photography to put him in the operator's seat for a few minutes.

Alan Lefkowitz ducked out of his honey wagon and trooped toward the director. He was wearing his play clothes, his on-set clothes-chinos and a red-and-white striped shirt (Pellam told Meg, "That's what the refs would wear if Hollywood had its own hockey team"). The producer said, "Hey, Johnny." To Pellam he lifted his hand, which held an invisible glass of a very expensive single-malt scotch, and raised his eyebrows.

Pellam said, "Can't. I've got plans."

"Around here? Lefkowitz joked, gazing longingly at Meg's jeans-clad butt, and began waving papers at the director again.

"So," Pellam said, "what's happening in Cleary?"

She laughed and didn't answer. "Let's go for a walk. That'd be okay?"

"They've got the telephoto on. We walk that way, toward the forest, we won't be in view. You feeling okay?"

"Hell, yes."

She took the cane and got up without his help. They walked past the crowd of locals, which had grown by the dozens with each day of shooting; small-town life had skidded to a stop for the duration of the principal photography. The spectators were enthralled with everything-even the squirrel attack-and they stood silent and frozen as if their fidgeting motion might knock the magic camera to the ground.

Meg and Pellam walked a short distance down the road, Meg glancing back every few minutes to keep Sam in view. She said, "The doctor told me if I'd see a physical therapist and get some exercise the limp would go away in a month."

"And?"

"I see all these young professional gals on TV, running and doing aerobics and lifting weights… it all looks so silly. I'll wait till it goes away by itself."

"How's the brokerage business?"

"Sold a house last week. Got a couple of maybe-but-let-me-ask-my-wife. Nobody said it's easy."

"How's he doing?" Pellam's head swivelled back toward Sam.

"We keep talking about it. I don't want to, but I think it's for the best. That's what the therapist says. Get it out, get everything out. Maybe it's best for me too. Sam'll say, 'Tell me again about Daddy.' And we have our talk and he understands or he says he does. I don't, of course."

"What do you hear from him? Keith?"

"Trial's next month."

Pellam nodded. "They're going after your house?"

"It's a possibility. My lawyer says there's a chance we'll lose it. But that also means there's a chance we won't."

He felt her eyes turn toward him. A pause then she said, "I'm seeing my friend again."

"Ambler?"

"He was real good after I got hurt."

"He seems like a nice guy."

For a neo-Bircher, rampant capitalist bigot.

"I didn't really want to at first. I mean-"

"You don't have to explain," Pellam said.

She looked at the horizon. "I know I don't." She smiled. "Pellam, you think…" Her voice faded.

He had. A great deal.

And concluded that the answer was pretty clear and they both knew it. He didn't answer or look at her and she didn't repeat the question.

They came to a sign'on the edge of the road, facing away from the shooting.

Welcome to Simmons.

In the Beautiful Catskills.

Population 6300

"What was it when you grew up here?" Meg asked. "The population, I mean."

"Oh, I don't remember. I think maybe the same as Cleary."

"How come they're shooting here?"

"It's a dirty little town. That's what I needed for the story."

"They liked your screenplay after all, huh?"

"Most of it. Of course, the director's ignoring my camera directions."

"Why don't you tell him?"

"Writers don't tell directors where to put the camera. Except euphemistically and only after they get paid."

"Why didn't you set the movie in Cleary?"

"We've got a better cemetery here." He nodded back toward the actor. "For the shooting scene. And the funeral later. When Janice confronts Shep."

"Better cemetery than Cleary's? I'm insulted."

Pellam looked at her hair, now cut short (revealing a good dusting of freckles on the back of her neck), the country-girl jeans, a blue Saks work shirt, brown suede boots.

"Tonight," he said, "Let's have dinner at the inn, okay? Just the two of us?"

"She won't mind?" Meg nodded up the road, toward Pellam's childhood home, three miles away. Meaning Pellam's mother.

"She's seen more of me in the past week than she has in the past five years. She'll be glad to get rid of me. She doesn't cotton to men who drink whiskey. We'll loan her Sam for the evening."

A film crew assistant, a young woman in jeans and a brushed-denim jacket, a fringe of curly hair crowning her forehead, patrolled the road like an Israeli soldier. A huge walkie-talkie bounced on her hip.

He asked Meg, "When are you going back to Cleary?"

"Tomorrow. We can only stay the night. I don't want to keep Sam away from home too long. It's better, I think."

Meg was looking down at the long grass. In the coming dusk the day was taking on a sepia atmosphere. Very still. Quiet.

He motioned her to follow and walked slowly into the graveyard. He pointed to a grave, ten years old.

Meg looked at it. "Your father's name was Benjamin?"

"After Benjamin Franklin, he said."

Meg said, "I'm surprised he didn't name you William."

"William?"

"After Wild Bill, your ancestor."

Pellam gave an exaggerated sigh. "His name was James, not William. James Butler Hickok."

"Oh, right. You told me."

They heard the assistant director call through the bullhorn, "Quiet, everybody, quiet down!"

Pellam and Meg paused and watched the scene begin again. The actor stalking slowly through the tombstones, ready to murder.

Meg said, "So you're a writer now?"

"Nope. Still unemployed. Lefkowitz's gotta give me a writer's credit but that's only because of the Guild. I'm just here in case they need to doctor it. I'm still canned. I'm guilty of the worst crime in Hollywood. Aggravating a producer's ulcer."

"So write more scripts."

Pellam laughed and looked at his watch. "When the mood takes me. I've got a free-lance scouting job in Utah."

They heard the rise and fall of the actors' voices.

Then the director's staticky shout in the bullhorn. "Cut, cut! Somebody… you, yes you! Get that effing squirrel out of here. I don't believe it, I do not believe it."

They returned to the camper and sat down in the lawn chairs-slowly. Meg, because of the gunshot. Pellam, because of the popped shoulder.

"Any chance you'd get back east?"

"Lots of movies to be made."

Meg said, "If you do, why don't you come upstate for a visit? Sam'd like it."

Pellam stretched his legs out in front of him, the sharp tips of his stained Nokonas pointed up toward the gray sky.

"Suppose it's a possibility," he said, and they watched the crew fan out into the cemetery to adjust the grass, pluck up leaves, fix makeup, straighten cuffs, chase a squirrel toward the trees. Everyone serious, everyone rushed, trying to get one more take in the can before the November darkness fell.