Death of a Blue Movie Star

CHAPTER TWO

Contrasts.

Rune sat in the huge loft that was the lobby of Lame Duck Productions and watched the two young women stroll to a desk across the room. Overhead, fans rotated slowly and forced air-conditioned breezes throughout the place.

The woman in the lead walked as if she had adegree, in it. Her feet were pointed forward, her back straight, hips not swaying. She had honey-blonde hair tied back with a braided rope of rainbow-colored strings. She wore a white jumpsuit but saved it from tackiness by wearing sandals, not boots, and a thin, brown leather belt.

Rune examined her closely but wasn't sure if this was the same woman she'd seen in the poster. In that photo, the one on the front of the porno theater, her makeup had been good; today, this woman had a dull complexion. She seemed very tired.

The other woman was younger. She was short, face glossy, a figure bursting out of the seams of her outfit. She had a huge, jutting-and undoubtedly fake-bust and broad shoulders. The black tank top showed a concise waist; the miniskirt crowned thin legs. There was no saving this cookie from tack; she had spiky high heels, feathery and teased hair sprayed with glitter and purple-brown makeup, which did a fair job minimizing the effect of a wide, Slavic nose.

Wouldn't be a bad-looking woman, Rune thought, if her mother dressed her right.

They stopped in front of her. The shorter one smiled. The tall blonde said, "So you're the reporter from, what was it, Erotic Film Monthly?" She shook her head. "I thought I knew everybody from the industry mags. Are you new with them?"

Rune started to continue the lie. But impulsively she said, "What I am is dishonest."

Which got a faint smile. "Oh?"

"I lied to the receptionist. To get in the front door. Are you Shelly Lowe?"

A momentary frown. Then she gave a curious smile and said, "Yes. But that's not my real name."

The handshake was strong, a man's grip, confident.

Her friend said, "I'm Nicole. That is my real name. But my last name isn't. D'Orleans." She gave it a Gallic pronunciation. "But it's spelled like the city."

Rune took her hand carefully; Nicole had inch-long purple fingernails.

"I'm Rune."

"Interesting," Shelly said. "Is it real?"

Rune shrugged. "As real as yours."

" Lot of stage names in our business," Shelly said. "I lose track sometimes. Now tell me why you're a liar."

"I thought they'd kick me out if I was honest."

"Why would they do that? You a right-wing crazy? You don't look like one."

Rune said, "I want to make a movie about you."

"Do you now?"

"You know about the bombing?"

"Oh, that was terrible," Nicole said, actually shivering in an exaggerated way.

"We all know about it," Shelly said.

"I want to use it as sort of a jumping-off point for my film."

"And I'm the one you want to jump to?" Shelly asked.

Rune thought about those words, thought about disagreeing with her but said, "That's about it."

"Why me?"

"Just a coincidence really. One of your pictures was playing when the bomb went off."

Shelly nodded slowly, and Rune found herself staring at her. Nicole was scrunching her broad, shiny face at the mention of the explosion and the deaths in the theater, closing her eyes, practically crossing herself, while Shelly was simply listening, leaning against a column, her arms crossed.

Rune's thoughts were muddled. Under Shelly's gaze she felt young and silly, a child being indulged.

Nicole took a package of sugar-free gum from her pocket, unwrapped a stick and began to chew.

Rune said, "Anyway, that's what I want to do."

Shelly said, "You know anything about the adult-film business?"

"I used to work for a video store. My boss said the adult films gave us the best margin."

She was proud of herself for that, saying something aboutbusiness. Margin. A mature way to talk about fuck films.

"There's money to be made," Shelly said. Hers were eyes that sent out a direct light. Pale blue laser beam. They were intense at the moment but Rune sensed they were switch-able-that Shelly could choose in an instant to be probing or angry or vindictive by a slight touch to the nerves. Rune assessed too that her eyes wouldn't dance with humor and there was a lot they chose not to say. She wanted to start her documentary with the camera on Shelly's eyes.

The actress said nothing, glanced at Nicole, who chewed her gum enthusiastically.

"Do you two, like, perform together?" Rune blushed fiery red.

The actresses shared a glance, then laughed.

"I mean…," Rune began.

"Do we work together?" Nicole filled in.

"Sometimes," Shelly said.

"We're roommates too," Nicole said.

Rune glanced at the iron pillars and tin ceiling. "This is an interesting place. This studio."

"It used to be a shirtwaist factory."

"Yeah? What's that?" Nicole asked.

"A woman's blouse," Shelly said, not looking down from the ceiling.

Shelly is tall and she isn't a stunning beauty. Her presence comes from her figure (and eyes'.). Her cheekbones are low. She has skin the consistency and the pale shade of a summer overcast. "How did I get into the business? I was raped when I was twelve. My uncle molested me. I'm a heroin addict-don't I cover it up well? I was kidnaped by migrant workers in Michigan…"

Nicole lit a cigarette. She kept working on the gum too.

Shelly looked down from the tin panels at Rune. "So this would be a documentary?"

Rune said, "Like on PBS."

Nicole said, "Somebody wanted me to do one once, this guy. A documentary. But you know what he really wanted."

Shelly asked, "Still hot out?"

"Boiling."

Nicole gavea faint laugh, though Rune had no idea what she was thinking of.

Shelly walked to a spot where cold air cascaded on the floor. She turned and examined Rune. "You seem enthusiastic. More enthusiastic than talented. Excuse me. That's just my opinion. Well, about your film-I want to think about it. Let me know where I can get in touch with you."

"See, it'll be great. I can-"

"Let me think about it," Shelly said calmly.

Rune hesitated, looked at the woman's aloof face for a long moment. Then dug into her leopard-skin bag, but before she found her Road Runner pen Shelly produced a heavy, lacquered Mont Blanc. She took it; felt the warmth of the barrel. She wrote slowly but Shelly's gaze made her uneasy and the lines were lumpy and uneven. She gave Shelly the paper and said, "That's where I live. Christopher Street. All the way to the end. At the river. You'll see me." She paused. "Will I see you?"

"Maybe," Shelly said.

"Yo, film me, momma, come on, film me."

"Hey, you wanna shoot my dick? You got yourself a wide-angle lens, you can shoot my dick."

"Shit, be a microscope what she need for that."

"Yo, fuck you, man."

Walking out of the Times Square subway, Rune ignored her admirers, hefted the camera to her shoulder and walked along the platform. She passed a half-dozen beggars, shaking her head at their pleas for coins, but she dropped a couple of quarters into a box in front of a young South American couple giving a tango demonstration to the rattling music of a boom box.

It was eight p.m., a week after she'd first met with Shelly and Nicole. Rune had called Shelly twice. At first the actress had been pretty evasive about doing the film but the second time she'd called, Shelly had said, "If Iwere to do it would you give me a chance to review the final cut?"

From her work at L &R, and her love of movies in general, Rune knew that the final cut-the last version of the film, what was shown in the theaters-was the Holy Grail of the film business. Only producers and a few elite directors controlled the final cut. No actor in the history of Hollywood ever had final cut approval.

But she now said, "Yes."

Instinctively feeling that it was the only way she could get Shelly Lowe to do the film.

"I'll let you know in a day or two for sure."

Rune was now out looking for atmosphere footage and for establishing shots-the long-angle scenes in films that orient the audience and tell them what city or neighborhood they're in.

And there was plenty of atmosphere here. Life in the Tenderloin, Times Square. The heart of the porno district in New York. She was excited at the thought of actually shooting footage for her first film but remembered the words of Larry, her mentor, as she was heading out of L &rR studios that night. "Don't overdo it, Rune. Any frig-gin' idiot can put together ninety minutes of great atmosphere. The story's the important thing. Don't ever bleedin' forget that. The story."

She eased into the swirl and noise and madness of Times Square, the intersection of Seventh Avenue, Broadway and Forty-second. She waited at the curb for the light, looking down at the accidental montage embedded in the asphalt at her feet: a Stroh's bottle cap, a piece of green glass, a brass key, two pennies. She squinted; in the arrangement, she saw a devil's face.

Ahead of her was a white high-rise on the island of concrete surrounded by the wide streets; fifty feet up, the day's news was displayed along a thick collar of moving lights.

"… SOVIETS EXPRESS HOPE FOR…"

The light changed and she never saw the end of the message. Rune crossed the street and passed a handsome black woman in a belted, yellow cotton dress, who was shouting into a microphone. "There's something even better in heaven. Amen! Give up your ways of the flesh. Amen! You can win the lottery, you can become a multimillionaire, billionaire, get everything you ever wanted. But all that gain cannot compare with what you'll find in heaven. Amen! Give up your sinful ways, your lusts… If I die in my little room tonight, why, I'd praise the good Lord because I know what that means. That means, I'm going to be in heaven tomorrow. Amen!"

A few people chorused withamens. Most walked on. Farther north in the Square, things were ritzier, around the TKTS discount ticket booth, where one could see the huge billboards that any out-of-towner who watched television would recognize. Here was Lindy's restaurant, with its famous and overpriced cheesecake. Here was the Brill Building-Tin Pan Alley. Several glossy, new office buildings, a new first-run movie theater.

But Rune avoided that area. She was interested in the southern part of Times Square. Where it was a DMZ.

She passed a number of signs in stores and arcades and theaters: stop the times square redevelopment project. This was the big plan to wipe the place clean and bring in offices and expensive restaurants and theaters. Purify the neighborhood. No one seemed to want it but there didn't seem to be organized resistance to the project. That was the contradiction of Times Square; it was a place that was energetically apathetic. Busyness and hustle abounded but you still sensed the area was on its way out. Many of the stores were going out of business. Nedick's-the hot dog station from the forties-was closing, to be replaced by slick, mirrored Mike's Hot Dogs and Pizza. Only a few of the classic Forty-second Street movie theaters-many of them had been grand old burlesque houses-were still open. And all they showed was porn or kung fu or slasher fiicks.

Rune glanced across the street at the huge old art-deco Amsterdam Theater, which was all boarded up, its curvaceous clock stopped at five minutes to three. Of which day of which month of which year? she wondered. Her eye strayed to an alleyway and she caught a flash of motion. Someone seemed to be watching her, someone in a red jacket. Wearing a hat, she believed. Then the stranger vanished.

Paranoid. Well, this was the place for it.

Then she walked past dozens of small stores, selling fake-gold jewelry, electronics, pimp suits, cheap running shoes, ID photos, souvenirs, bootleg perfumes and phony designer watches. Hawkers were everywhere, directing bewildered tourists into their stores.

"Check it out, checkit… We got what you need, and you gonna like what we got. Check it out…"

One store, the windows painted black, named Art's Novelties, had a single sign in the window. leisure products. YOU MUST BE TWENTY-ONE TO ENTER.

Rune tried to peek inside. What the hell was a leisure product?

She kept walking, listing against the weight of the camera, sweat running down her face and neck and sides.

The smells were of garlic and oil and urine and rotting food and car exhaust. And, brother, the crowds… Where did all these people come from? Thousands of them. Where was home? The city? The burbs? Why were they here?

Rune dodged out of the way of two teenage boys in T-shirts and Guess? jeans, walking fast, in an arm-swinging, loping roll, their voices harsh. "Man, mothafuckah be mah boss but he don' own me, man. You hear what I'm sayin', man?"

"Fuck no, he don' own neither of us."

"He try that again, man, an' I'll deck him. I mothahfuckin' deck him, man…"

They passed her by, Rune and her camera, as she taped a visual history of Times Square.

A place like no other in New York.

Times Square…

But every Magic Kingdom needs its Mordor or Hades and tonight as Rune walked through the place she didn't feel too uneasy. She was on her quest, making her movie. About the bombing but not about the bombing. She didn't have to justify the creepy place to anyone or worry about anybody's shoes but her own and she was careful where she put her feet.

Behind her, a huge snort.

Fantastic! Knights!

Rune turned the camera on two mounted policemen, who sat rod-straight in their saddles, their horses lolling their heads and stomping solid hooves into the piles of granular manure under them.

"Hey, Sir Gawain!" Rune called. They glanced at her, then decided she wasn't worth flirting with and continued to scan the street with stony gazes that streamed from under the visors of their robin's-egg-blue helmets.

It was when she looked down from the tall, chestnut horse that she saw the red jacket again. It vanished even more quickly than earlier.

A chill ran through her, despite the heat.

Who was it? she wondered.

No one. Just one of the ten million people in the Magic Kingdom. And she forgot about it as she turned the corner and walked up Eighth Avenue toward the site of the former Velvet Venus Theater.

Along this stretch she counted six porn theaters and adult bookstores. Some had live dancers, some had peep shows where for a quarter or a token you could watch films in little booths. She stuck the camera through the door and shot a sign(only one person per booth. it's the

LAW AND OUR POLICY. HAVE A NICE DAY) Until 3 big guy selling tokens shooed her away.

She got some good footage of commuters on their way to the Port Authority and their homes in suburban Jersey. Some glanced in the windows; most wore glazed faces. A few businessmen turned quickly into the theaters, not pausing at all, as though a gust of wind had blown them through the door.

It was then that a humid wind carried a sour stink of burn to her. From the theater, she knew. Rune shut off the camera and strolled up the street.

Still spooked. The paranoia again. But she still could hear, in her memory, the terrible bang of the explosion. The ground moving under her. Recalling the bodies, theparts of bodies. The terrible aftermath of the bomb and the fire. She glanced back, saw no one watching her.

She continued along the street, thinking: The press coverage of the event had been good. Newsat Eleven had devoted ten minutes to the incident and the story had been a hook for aTime magazine article on the trends in adult films ("Hard Times for Hard-Core?") and one in theVillage Voice on the conflict the bombing presented to the First Amendment ("Disrespecting Religion and Abridging the Press"). But, as Larry had predicted, those were all spot news stories, hard news. Nobody was doing a human-interest piece on the bombing.

Come on, Shelly, she thought. You're the key. I need you…

As she approached the ruins of the theater Rune paused, resting her hand on the yellow police tape. The odor was stronger than the day of the bombing. She almost gagged on the air, thick with the smell of wet, scorched upholstery. And something else-a sickening cardboardy scent. It would have to be the scorched bodies, Rune figured, and tried to force the image out of her thoughts.. Across the street was another theater. The neon said:

THE FINEST IN ADULT ENTERTAINMENT. COOL, COMFORTABLE

AND SAFE. Rune assumed that patrons were not much soothed by the illuminated reassurance and that business was slow.

She turned back to the destroyed theater and was startled by motion. Her first thought: Shit, he's back. Whoever was following her through Times Square.

A man's face…

Panic took her. Just as she was about to turn and run she squinted into the shadows and got a better look at her pursuer. He wore jeans and a navy-blue windbreaker that said NYPD in white letters on the chest. It was Cowboy. The guy from the Bomb Squad.

She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. Tried to steady her shaking hands. He sitting on a folding chair, looking at a white sheet of paper, which he folded and put into his pocket. She saw a thin brown holster on his right hip. Rune lifted the camera and shot a minute or so of tape, opening the aperture wide to get some definition in the gloom.

He looked at the camera. She expected the man to tell her to get lost. But he merely stood and began walking through the ruined theater, kicking at debris, bending down occasionally to examine something, training his long black flashlight on the walls and floor.

The image in the viewfinder of the heavy camera faded. Dusk had come quickly-or perhaps she just hadn't noticed it. She opened the lens wide but it was still very dim and she didn't have any lights with her. She knew the exposure was too dark. She shut the camera off, lowered it from her shoulder.

When she looked again into the building Cowboy was gone.

Where had he disappeared to?

She heard a scuttling of noise near her.

Something heavy fell.

"Hello?"

Nothing.

"Hey?" Rune called again.

There was no answer. She shouted into the ruins of the theater, "Were you following me? Hey, Officer? Somebody was following me. Was it you?"

Another sound, like boots on concrete. Nearby. But she didn't know where exactly.

Then a car engine started. She spun around. Looking for the blue-and-white station wagon, emblazoned withbomb squad. But she didn't see it.

A dark car pulled out of an alley and vanished up Eighth Avenue.

Uneasy once more. No, damn scared, for some reason. But as she looked over the people on Eighth Avenue she saw only harmless passersby. People on their way to the theaters. Everybody lost in their own worlds. Nobody in the coffee shops and bars paid her any mind. A horde of tourists walked past, obviously wondering why the hell their tour guide was leading them through this neighborhood. Another teen, a mean-looking Latino, propositioned her harmlessly and walked on when she ignored him, telling her to have a nice night. Across the street a man in a wide-brimmed hat carrying a Lord & Taylor shopping bag was gazing into the window of an adult bookstore.

Nobody in a red jacket, nobody spying on her.

Paranoia, she decided. Just paranoia.

Still, she shut down the camera, put the cassette into her leopard-skin bag and headed for the subway. Deciding that she'd had enough atmosphere for one night.

In the alley across the street from what was left of the Velvet Venus a bum sat beside a Dumpster, drinking from a bottle of Thunderbird. He squinted as a man stepped into the alley.

Hell, he's gonna pee here, the bum thought. Theyalways do that. Have beers with their buddies and can't make it to Penn Station in time so they come into my alley and pee. He wondered how the guy'd feel if the bum walked into his living room to take a leak.

But the man didn't unzip. He paused at the mouth of the alley and peered out over Eighth Avenue, looking for something, frowning.

Wondering what the man was doing here, why he was wearing that wide-brimmed, old-fashioned hat, the bum took another sip of liquor and set the bottle down. It made a clink.

The man whirled around quickly.

"Got a quarter?" the bum asked.

"You scared me. I didn't know anybody was there."

"Got a quarter?"

The man fished in his pocket. "Sure. Are you going to spend it on booze?"

"Probably," the bum said. Sometimes he'd hustle the crowds at the commuter stations by saying, "Help the blind, help the blind… I want to get blind drunk." And people gave him more money because he'd made them laugh.

"Well, I appreciate honesty. Here you go." The man reached down with a coin.

As the bum began to take it he felt his wrist gripped hard by the man's left hand.

"Wait!"

But the man didn't wait. Then there was a slight stinging feeling on the bum's neck. Then another, on the other side. The man let go of his wrists and the bum touched his throat, feeling two flaps of skin dangling loose. Then saw the razor knife in the man's hand, the bloody blade retracting.

The bum tried to shout for help. But the blood was gushing fast from the two wounds and his vision was going black. He tried to stand but fell hard to the cobblestones. The last thing he saw was the man reaching into his Lord & Taylor shopping bag, pulling out a red wind-breaker and pulling it on. Then stepping out of the alley quickly as if he were, in fact, late for his commuter train home.