Stardust

Chapter 7

PAULIE spent most of his time downstairs in the production office drinking coffee with the other drivers. Someone beeped him when Miss Joyce was ready. Anyone could have wandered in there and hung the doll.

The transportation captain, a big gray-haired guy named Mickey Boylan, sat in while I talked with Paulie.

“You need any help on this, you let me know,” he said when Paulie had told me all he knew. And maybe a little more. “This show is good for us, gotta lot of people driving.”

Boylan was a business agent with the union. “I’ll take anything I can get,” I said.

“You think there’s somebody really after her?” Boylan said.

“I guess so,” I said. “Otherwise what am I doing here? ”

Boylan grinned. “This sow’s got a lot of tits,” he said. “Could feed one more easy enough.”

I gave Boylan my card.

“I hate to spin my wheels,” I said. “Even for money.”

“No other reason to do it,” Boylan said as I left.

I wandered back down to the sound stage and leaned against the wall out of the way and waited for Jill Joyce. Watching a television show being filmed was like watching dandruff form. It was a long, slow process and when you were through, what did you have? Maybe Boylan was right. Maybe this was just a boondoggle and I was getting paid to make Jill Joyce feel good. She had yet to tell me a goddamned thing about herself. The hanging doll was easy to fake and came at the right time. I didn’t even know what other harassment there had been. So why didn’t I take a walk? The money was good, but there’s always money. Why didn’t I walk right now instead of standing around listening to some of the worst dialogue ever uttered, over and over again? I had my leather jacket hanging on a light tripod. Now and then someone would glance my way and do a short double-take at the gun under my left arm. The rest of the time things were much calmer. My head itched. The watch cap made my hair sweaty, but if I took it off, the way it matted my hair down made me look like an oversized rock musician.

On set, out of sight, but sadly not out of hearing, Jill Joyce was selling the closing lines of her scene for the fifth time.

“Where there’s love,” she said, “there’s a chance.”

I knew why I was waiting for her. It was what Susan had said at dinner. She doesn’t have anyone to look out for her. There was something so small and alone in her, so unconnected and frightened, that I couldn’t walk away from her. If she was staging these harassments she needed help. If she wasn’t staging them she needed help. I was better equipped to give one kind of help than I was the other. And equipped or not, whatever she needed, I was the only one willing.

At 4:25 the director said, “That’s it; thanks, Jilly. See you tomorrow.” And without answering, Jill Joyce walked around the set partition and stopped in front of me.

“You’ll drive me home,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

The people who’d been lounging around glancing at my gun were now busy dismantling the set wall in front of us. They swung it out to open up the set and two people moved the camera dolly around into the space where I was standing.

“Excuse me,” someone said, “coming through.”

“We’ll get my coat in wardrobe,” Jill said.

“Sure.”

I followed her off the sound stage and down the corridor past the carpenter shop to the wardrobe office. Jill went in and came out in a moment wearing a silver-tipped mink.

“Kathleen,” she spoke back through the open door, “did Ernie get me that white sable we talked about?”

A woman’s voice from the wardrobe office said, “Got it right here, Jilly.”

“Excellent,” Jill said. “I’ll come in tomorrow for a fitting.”

“Give us a little notice if you can,” the woman’s voice said.

Jill didn’t answer, nor did she appear to have heard the request for notice. We went on out through the production office and into the front parking lot where I had my car.

“You need to tell anybody, drivers, anyone like that?” I said.

Jill made a dismissive motion with her hand. “Which car is yours?” she said.

“The glorious black Cherokee,” I said. “Ideal for all-weather surveillance.”

“Well, it’s better than I expected,” she said.

I held the door, she got in, ran a hand over the leather upholstery, and, nodded approvingly.

“The Charles Hotel?” I said.

“In Cambridge. You know where it is?”

I did my Bogart impression with the flattened upper lip. “I know where everything is, sweetheart.”

She got out a cigarette, pressed in my lighter and waited for it to pop. When it did she put it against the cigarette and the pleasing smell of tobacco lit with a car lighter filled the front seat. She put the lighter back and leaned her hand against the back of the seat with the cigarette glowing in her mouth and closed her eyes. Her face was very white and still, nestled in the big collar of her fur coat. Without raising her hand to the cigarette, she took a big drag and let the smoke out slowly from the corners of her mouth. The early winter evening had settled around us, and the automobile headlights on Soldiers Field Road had a pale cold look to them. I let the motor idle while I looked at her, her hands plunged deep into the pockets of her mink, her body tucked well inside it, a little shivery from the cold as we waited for the heater. In the faint light she looked about twelve, except for the glowing cigarette, a tired child, not yet pubescent, the apple unbitten on the tree, the serpent yet to tempt her.

“I need a drink,” she said.

I didn’t say anything. Across the river lights were popping on as people came home from work. The mercury lamp street lights on our side of the river had the weak orange look they get before it’s fully dark and they turn blue-white. Wind whipped a small dervish of powdery snow off the frozen river and spun it west where the river turned toward Watertown.

“I said I need a drink.” Jill spoke around a slow drift of smoke.

“Yes, you did,” I said.

“Well for Christ’s sake, do something about it.”

“Maybe I could siphon off a little gasoline?”

“Don’t be cute with me, stupid. Just get this thing in gear and get us to the hotel.”

“I saw Gene Tierney do that once,” I said. “Smoked a cigarette just like that. Head back, eyes closed. And Sterling Hayden was her boyfriend…”

“Will you drive this fucking car?” she said.

I did.