Death of a Blue Movie Star

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

She didn't intend her life to be violent. She certainly didn't intend to die violently. But Shelly Lowe was an addict-addicted to the power that the films she made brought her, addicted to that raw urge that perhaps all artists feel to expose herself, in every sense, to her audiences.

And just like for all addicts, Shelly ran the risk that that power would overwhelm her.

She understood that risk, and she didn't back away from it. She met it and she lost. Caught between art and lust, between beauty and sex, Shelly Lowe died.

Carved into her simple grave in a small cemetery in Long Island, New York, is the single line: "She lived only for her art," which seems a fitting epitaph for this blue movie star.

FADE OUT To:

CREDITS…

"What do you think?" Rune asked Sam Healy.

"You wrote that?"

Rune nodded. "It took me a hundred tries. Is it too, you know, flowery?"

Healy said, "I think it's beautiful." He put his arm around her. "Is it ready to go?"

"Not hardly." Rune laughed. "I've got to find a professional announcer to do the voice-over, then spend about three weeks editing it all together and cutting about ten hours of tape down to twenty-eight minutes. Shooting was the fun part. Now the work begins… Hey, Sam, I was thinking. Anybody ever done a documentary about the Bomb Squad?"

He kissed her neck. "Why don't you call in sick today. We can talk about it."

She kissed him quickly, then rolled out of bed. "I'm already in the doghouse with Larry and Bob. I didn't bring in fresh croissants the other morning."

"This is for House O' Leather? Is that name for real?" "I just make the commercials. I'm not responsible for the client's poor taste."

She finished her coffee. She sensed him looking at her. No, it was more of a stare.

No, it was worse than that; it was one of those sappy gazes that men give women occasionally-when they get overcome with thisfeeling, which they think is love though it usually means they're horny or guilty or feeling insecure. You can die of suffocation under one of those gazes.

Rune said, "Gotta go." And started toward the door with a coquettish smile that sometimes had the effect of throwing cold water on men who were sloppy drunk on love.

"Hey," he said in a low way that made him sound like a cop.

I'm not going to stop. Keep it cool. Keep the distance.

There's no hurry. "Rune."

She stopped.

What I'll do is wink at him, on my way out the door, all flirty and bitchy.

"Come here for a minute."

Wink, girl. Come on.

But instead she walked back to him slowly. Deciding that she wasn't reallythat late…

Rune sensed it the moment she walked into the office, and what she noticed was not a good feeling.

Rune hung her coat up on the peeling, varnished rack and glanced around.

What was it?

Well, first: The mail was still on the floor. Larry usually carried it to Cathy's desk-well, Rune's desk now-and looked through it.

And there was the coffee machine, which Larry always got going right away, but which was now unplugged and wasn't giving off its usual sour, scorched smell.

And there was Bob.

Who was already in the office-at 9:45! Rune could see him though the bubbly-glass partition.

Something big was up.

Two heads moved, distorted by the fly's-eye effect of the glass. Larry was in too butthat wasn't unusual. Larry always got in early; he was afraid client checks would dissolve if he didn't pick them up early.

"It's "er." The voice was soft, but came clearly over the partition.

Her. That tone was not good.

"Right. Less 'ave a talk."

The door opened and Larry motioned to her. "Rune. You come in for a minute?"

She walked into the office. They both looked tired and rumpled. She began an inventory of recent screwups. It was a long list but included mostly minor infractions.

"Rune, sit down."

She sat.

Bob looked at Larry, who spoke: "What's happened is we got us a call from the client."

"Both of us," Bob threw in. "At nine this morning."

"Mr. Wallet?"

Son of a bitch, the postpro house missed the shipment. She said, "I told the postpro to ship it right away. I threatened him. He absolutely guaranteed me-"

"The tape got delivered to the client, Rune. The problem was they didn't like it."

They want me to take a cut in pay. That's what it is. House O' Leather's talked down the fee and they're going to cut my salary.

She sighed. "What was it he didn't like? It was the dominoes, right? Come on. I did the setup three times. I-"

Larry was playing nervously with a coin in his hand. "No, I think the dominoes were okay. " 'E said the logo was still a bit, you know, dodgy. But 'e could live with that."

Rune said, "The transitions? I did the dissolves real carefully…"

Bob said to Larry, "Show 'er what he wasn't too 'appy about."

Larry hit the play button of the Sony three-quarter-inch tape player. A colorful copyright slate appeared. The countdown from ten began, each second marked off with an electronic beep. At three, the screen went blank. Then:

Fade in: the smiling daughter, explaining how House O' Leather wallets were handcrafted from the finest cowhide, treated and dyed according to old family traditions.

Cut to: Factory workers making wallets and billfolds and purses.

Cut to: The daughter caressing a wallet (Model HIV 141).

Dissolve to: The dramatic domino shot.

Cut to: Two women performing oral sex on a water bed as the closing credits forLusty Cousins come on the screen.

Rune said, "Oh."

Fade out.

Larry said, " 'E fired us, Rune. They aren't paving the fee, they aren't paying expenses."

Rune said, "I guess something kind of got mixed in."

"Kind of," Larry said.

Bob added, "So we're out the profits and also out of pocket about seventy-five thousand."

"Oh."

Larry said, "I know it was an accident. I'm not suggesting it wasn't but… Rune, you're a sweet kid…"

"You're firing me, aren't you?"

They didn't even bother to nod.

"You better pick up whatever you got 'ere and 'ead out now."

"We wish you the best of luck," Bob said.

He didn't mean it, Rune could tell, but it was nice of him to at least make the effort.

Didn't mean she was no good.

Rune walked along the Hudson, staring at the olive-drab shadows stretching outward into the rippled texture of the water. Seagulls stood on one leg and hunched against the cool morning breeze.

After all, didn't Einstein get kicked out of school for failing math? Didn't Churchill fail government?

They went on to show everybody.

The difference was, though, that they had a second chance.

So that was it: no distributor. And no money for editing, voice-overs, titles, sound track…

Rune had thirty hours of unedited tape whose value would go to zero in about six months-the time when the world would stop caring about Shelly Lowe's death.

She went home to her houseboat and stacked up all the tape cassettes on her shelf, tossed the script on top of them and walked into the kitchen.

She spent the afternoon sipping herbal tea as she sat on the deck, browsing through some of her books. One that she settled on, for some reason, was her old copy of Dante'sInferno.

Wondering why that volume-not the one about purgatory or the one about paradise-was the best-seller.

Wondering about the levels of hell people descend to.

Mostly she meant Tommy as she thought this. But there were others, too.

Danny Traub, who, even if he donated money to a good cause, was a son of a bitch who liked to hurt women.

Michael Schmidt, who thought he was God and destroyed a fine actress's chance for no good reason.

Arthur Tucker, who stole Shelly's play after she'd died.

Rune wondered why descent seems the natural tendency, why it's so much harder to go upward, the way Shelly was trying to do. Like there's some huge gravity of darkness.

She liked that, gravityof darkness, and she wrote it down in her notebook, thinking she wished she had a script to use the phrase in.

If she hadn't died would Shelly ever have climbed out of the Underworld like Eurydice?

Rune dozed and woke at sunset, the orange disk squeezing into the earth over the Jersey flatlands, rippling in the angle of the dense atmosphere. She stretched and took a shower, and ate a cheese sandwich for dinner.

Afterward, she walked to a pay phone and called Sam Healy.

"I got fired." She told him the story.

"Oh, no. I'm sorry."

"My one regret is that we didn't ship it to the networks," she joked. "Can you imagine? Lusty Cousins on an ad during prime time? Boy, would that've been wholly audacious."

"You need any money?"

"Aw, this is no big deal. I get fired all the time. I think I get fired more often than people hire me. Probably doesn't work that way but it seems so."

"Well, you want to go out and get drunk?"

"Naw, I've got plans," she said. "Let's make it tomorrow."

"Fair enough. My treat."

They hung up and Rune took a couple dollars in quarters out of her pocket, called directory assistance.

She needed most of the coins. It took her quite a while to find a dance school that promised to make her an expert Texas two-stepper in just one night.

The place didn't exactly live up to that promise. It took a while to convince them she wasn't interested in signing up for a series of Latin dances or the "Chic to Chic" Fred and Ginger special.

But after the lessons got under way she picked up the moves pretty fast and she figured she could hold her own. The next night she surprised Healy by showing up at his place in a gingham skirt and blue blouse.

"I look like Raggedy Ann. I'll never be able to show myself south of Bleecker Street-I hope you're happy."

They went to his Texas club again and danced for a couple hours, Rune impressing the hell out of him with what she'd learned. Then an amateur caller got on stage and started an impromptu square dance.

"Enough is enough," Rune said. They sat down and started working on a plate of baby back ribs.

At eleven a couple of cops Healy knew came in and in a half hour the place was so crowded that they all left and went to another bar, a dive of a place on Greenwich Avenue. She expected them to talk about guns and dead criminals and bloodstains but they were just normal people who argued about the mayor and Washington and movies.

She had a great time and forgot they were cops until one time there was a truck backfire out on the street and three of them (Sam wasn't one) half-reached for their hips, then a second later, when they understood it was just a truck, dropped their hands, never missing a beat of the conversation and not laughing about what they'd done.

But that made Rune think of Tommy and that reminded her of Nicole and the evening went sour. She was happy to get home and into bed.

The next day she applied for unemployment at the office on Sixth Avenue, where she knew most of the clerks by name. The lines weren't long-she took that as a barometer reading of a good economy. She was out by noon.

Over the next week she saw Healy three times. She sensed he wanted to see her more but one of her mother's warnings was about men on the rebound. And getting too involved with anolder man on the rebound didn't seem real wise at all.

Still, she missed him and on Thursday when she called she got a pleasing jolt when he said, "Tomorrow's my day off, how about we go-"

"Blow things up?"

"I was going to say, have a picnic someplace."

"Oh, yeah! I'd love to get out of the city. The streets smell like wet dogs and it's supposed to hit ninety-seven. The only thing is I've got this interview at a restaurant."

He said, "You're making a movie about a restaurant?"

"Sam, I'm applying for a job as a waitress."

"Postpone it for a day. We'll get out of the city."

"You're twisting my arm."

"I'll call you tomorrow with details."

"I haven't said yes."

"Tomorrow."

He hung up.

"Yes," she said.